Congratulations USA!

The Supreme Court of the USA has ruled 5-4 in favour of gay marriage!

In a year stuffed with vile and depressing news from all over the world, this is like a ray of light. Well done SCOTUS!

I have the Power(point)

I made these!

I have been taking my first tentative steps with Powerpoint this week, just because it's an easy tool for adding text to images.

It's a start, anyway :-)
You can see one in all-flippy action up at Blissekiss.

Eyecandy Monday

Yesterday evening (well, 3a.m to be precise) I subbed Sons of Summer.
Today's job is to revise, edit and sub a contracted short story on the theme of Drenched. Hence the eyecandy :-)
No pressure then.

Call the Midwife

Look at me - I'm like a proud midwife! Look what those babies have done!

No less than three of the stories I was involved with choosing and editing for Geek Love have been accepted for reprint in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 13 - edited by Maxim Jakubowski and out at the end of this year (or possibly the start of 2015).

The authors and stories that so thoroughly deserve this honour are:

Kirsty Logan - The Purpose of Tongues (a Japanese coffeeshop f/f)
Jesse Bullington - Porn Enough at Last  (a post-apocalyptic manga-loving threesome)
Haralambi Markov - Pages and Playthings (dystopian superhero group craziness)

I'm so glad that Geek Love has received some recognition for the frankly awesome writing talent that went into it. Three out of forty-five stories (and it was nearly four, but one author declined) from a single anthology is a very good proportion indeed. Maxim always leans toward the literary in his erotica, and his choices are spot-on.

Go Geeks!!

Is that daylight?

Hallowe'en party last night, surrounded by lovely ab-normal people and very happy about it too! Don't be normal, guys. Be you.

Eyecandy Monday

 

Oh boy, I am doing so much travelling this autumn ... up and down, in and out ... off to the World Fantasy Convention and several LARP weekends, and dragging my parents in my wake (but not to any of the above). My calendar has gone completely crazy. I'm not even going to start on what I had to do last weekend, just to touch base with everyone I'd promised to be there for...

If I'm looked glazed and confused, please cut me some slack!

Eyecandy Monday

Yes, I'm back from my travels!  I drove in gone midnight last night, hallucinating from sleepiness. Not smart, I know.

Hoorah: I didn't kill my parents during the trip, either accidentally (though I came alarmingly close at one point) or on purpose :-)
The house is still standing - and so is the blog :-)
I met some old friends I haven't seen in years :-)
I have a load of photos of Furrin' Climes to share :-)
I have a NOVEL TO HAND IN VERY SOON 8-0

Holiday weight gain: 8lbs

Fitness Plan: write

Eyecandy Monday

---

I've just been to a 1920's LARP weekend as an Unconvincing Fake Nun (my "real" character was disguise); telling people I did "missionary things ... with little orphaned babies ... that sort of stuff."

That still made me way more convincing than the nuns in the Eyecandy pic above! And I was not even a bit naughty, I might add. For a start, it was too bloody cold in Featherstone Castle to take my coat off. Also, where would I have kept my revolver?

Relatively plausible

Not plausible

The trope of the Naughty Nun, btw, has a veeeeeeeery long history in art and literature:

Heinrich Lossow: The Sin (1880)

Tell people "this is not allowed" - and what happens? They want it even more.

Eyecandy Monday

Is it Monday?
Was there something I'm supposed to do on a Monday?

A weekend at Eastercon has left me totally EXHAUSTED.  All I want to do for the next 24 hours is this:

and this...

and this ..

and this ...

And when I've done all them I'll need a nice lie down.
*Bu-boom-tshh!*

Eyecandy Monday

 

Reader, I did not die of hypothermia LARPing out in the snowy woods ... though by 2 a.m. on Sunday morning it was looking like a close call for all of us. And my back was in more pain than I've known in ... years ...

We actually had a fabulous time, and the snow made it magical. I'm glad we can still push ourselves right to the limits though, even at our age :-)

I think that one of the Vodyanoi's Lovely Daughters still has possession of my bottle of lube, by the way. 

Out of the closet

I've been away from the blog for a little while. First of all I went into my regular writer's closet and got down to some serious work on Cover Him With Darkness.

Here's the view from the window of the closet, btw. Even in Italy*, it snows.

I did get out for a couple of days - once to Parma (pics at a later date) and once to the Anatomy Museum, which was satisfyingly horrid.

When sword-swallowing goes wrong. No, seriously: that's what this is.

But mostly I stayed in the room and wrote - 15Kish in 5 days, which I think satisfactorily proves that I have a comfortable word limit of 3K a day even without Facebook, dogs, and human contact. I was starting to act a bit weird by the end, I admit (dancing! nude!), which probably means I wasn't getting enough exercise or something...

Anyway, when I got back to the UK I went to Eroticon 2013!

Kristina Lloyd, Harper Elliot, Kay Jaybee, KD Grace.

Under the banner of "Write Sex Right" (and this year's "XES - We Can't Go Backwards" campaign from our charity sponsors), sex writers, sex bloggers and sex workers got together to discuss everything from effective tweeting to dirty poetry. It's become the UK event of the year for my genre and you should all go next year. Yes, all of you.

Write-ups from Remittance Girl and Jennifer Denys and Kay Jaybee

I'm not going to go on (much) about the day, except to say that it was fabulous to meet with fellow writers and I attended some great workshops and ate shedloads of free cake. Highlight session for me was Remittance Girl's talk on "Erotica and Romanticism" - basically a call to arms, to write meaningful and courageous erotica that isn't just commercial pap or throwaway stroke-literature.

"Pints and pints of the stuff!"

Which makes it only appropriate that at the evening reading I did an excerpt all about troll-sex, because what could be more highbrow?  :-)

The "Aural Sex" location - it's the pub from the gangster movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

I was wrecked the next day, I tell you. I'm a real wimp ... But here's to next year!

And if you've made it this far, here's a freeby present - Dirty Thoughts From the Back of the Room is a collection of 10 bite-sized flash fiction pieces written by attendees at Eroticon 2012. It's FREE to download (until 8pm GMT / Midday EST MArch 6th) and it includes my micro-short Picture Perfect.

On Amazon UK
On Amazon US

---

 *I get free flights. That's how come Italy.

One does not simply watch The Lord of the Rings

The ultimate sweaty, unkempt, non-alpha hero

... one also has to eat massive amounts of homemade butter popcorn, wasabi peas, blueberry muffins and toast.

Yesterday we watched all three Lord of the Rings movies, directors cut, in blue ray format and surround-sound, on the biggest feckin' TV we could find.

14 hours, including breaks.

Now that's a birthday party :-)

Heart of Flame out in paperback!

Georges Rochegrosse (1859-1938): La Schiava e il Leon

Ugh ... I was up until 5.30 a.m. It was a very important date, after all. The paperback release of Heart of Flame! Oh, and some foreign election.
:-)

To celebrate my book release and my immense relief, here's an excerpt from Heart of Flame. Which, please note, is Arabian Nights romantic adventure and not, strictly speaking, erotica ... but it has some very steamy scenes nonetheless.

And a lot of arguing. This is by no means the last, or the worst, row my hero and heroine have...

---

 It took several hours pursuing the tracks of the magical mount, but she caught up with him eventually. She saw the Lion Most Strong from a good way off, standing motionless in the middle of the broken landscape with its silver body catching the sunlight, and as she neared she saw that it stood with one heavy paw on the chest of a supine Rafiq, pinning him to the ground. His waterskin lay to hand. He had crooked an elbow over his face to shield it from the afternoon sun, and she was perversely annoyed that he wasn’t struggling, even though he’d been held captive for hours and must have given up long ago. She would have liked to have seen him struggle and rage.

When she was ready she approached on foot and ordered the Lion Most Strong to stand back. It released Rafiq, who let out a grunt of surprise. He struggled up onto his knees, blinking at her, his face crusted with sand. ‘Taqla,’ he groaned.

She stepped in as he lurched to his feet and punched him as hard as she could in the face. At the last moment he saw her fist and flinched away so her knuckles stuck him only a glancing blow, which was perhaps a good thing because she managed to skin her knuckles on his teeth and split his lip even so. He staggered a little. She clenched her stinging fist, shocked how much it had hurt her and blaming him for that too.

‘Bastard! Thief!’

‘Taqla—’ He lifted a hand in dismay to his bleeding lip.

‘You stole my Horse! You dumped me in the desert! You son of a whore!’ She was burning too hot with fury to judge her attacks; when she struck again at his face he grabbed her wrist and pulled her hard against him, seizing the other hand as it flailed and wrestling both wrists behind her to pin them at the small of her back. She was still too angry to be afraid. ‘How could you?’ she spat. ‘After everything?’

‘Taqla!’ he shouted as she twisted furiously in his arms; “Shut up! Stop it! Listen to me!’

‛I hope street dogs eat your corpse!

‛Stop!’

She stopped struggling to draw breath, snarling. He was very strong and held her easily, his face over hers.

‘Taqla, I’m sorry.’ His eyes burned. ‘Listen. Listen. I haven’t betrayed you. Believe me.’

‘You left me!’

‘I had to take the Horse. I am sorry, but I need it to find the house of the djinni. I had no choice. I would have returned it when I could.’
 
‛Tell me your ass is made of solid gold and you shit diamonds! Shall I believe that too?’

He shook his head, teeth bared. ‛Taqla—I left because I couldn’t bring you with me and see you hurt.’

‘Me—hurt? Haven’t I saved your life before now? Haven’t you needed me every step of this journey?’

‘Yes!’ He turned his face aside so he could spit blood into the sand, then caught her gaze again, his eyes hot with anguish. ‘Yes. I’ve needed you. But this is different. There’s so much chance of you getting killed-’

‘You think I’m afraid?’

‘No. Never. Taqla, listen to me: I couldn’t see you hurt for my sake. I couldn’t bear it.’

‘We had a bargain,’ she snapped. ‘We were in it together. You get what you want and I get what I want.’

He shook his head as if in pain, and when he spoke again it was under his breath. ‘I read the scroll.’

‘What?’

‘The spell in the Scroll of Simon.’

She felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. ‘Oh,’ she said, while the import of his words sank in and the desert seemed to reel about her. It had never occurred to her that he would be able to read Greek. She was suddenly horribly conscious of the way he was holding her up tight against his hard body. ‘No,’ she whispered, trying to shrink away from him. She couldn’t move an inch.

John Singer Sargent 1856-1925

‘How could I let myself hurt she who loves me the most?’

‛I ...’

‛Look, I saw you drowned in the swamps of Basra. I couldn’t do that to you again—not now. I couldn’t let you risk your life out of love for me.’ His voice was soft, all shouting done.

‘No, you’ve misunderstood…’

‘Taqla, why are you afraid of admitting it?’

‘I … It isn’t like that…’

‘Isn’t it? What is it like then?’
 
She groaned. His lips curved, self-deprecating, as if knowing he was inviting another blow.
 
‘I think I know exactly how it feels. Taqla, is it not obvious that I’ve been falling in love with you this whole time?’
 
She went still, her eyes widening.
 
He smiled lopsidedly because of his split lip. ‘I’ve been like a man sliding down a sand dune, trying to keep on my feet and all the time falling. Can’t you see that?’
 
She tried to speak but for once had no words. Not even when he bent his head and kissed her through her veil. She felt the warm softness of his lips on hers and the ghost of his breath through the silk. Her heart slammed painfully in her chest, sending the blood roaring through her head.
 
Quietly, while his lips still held hers, he let go of her wrists. One hand stayed to hold her close to him, but the other rose to touch her face through the folds of her headscarf. Then he drew back a little so he could look into her eyes. She could read his intent. She knew what he was going to do and the voices of warning were roaring in the back of her mind, but still she didn’t resist when he gently drew down the fold of her veil and bared her face.

---

Buy e-book at Samhain : Buy paperback at Samhain
Amazon US paperback  :   Amazon US kindle  :  Amazon UK Kindle

Eyecandy Monday

LARP dryads do not look like this. Ever.

So I spent the weekend running round in the woods, smiting monsters, trying to rescue distressed maidens out of trees (boy did THAT go badly), and managing on 3 hours sleep a night. I ache now, though my biceps are like rocks and I appear to have lost 5 lbs - probably all in sweat.

I do not ache as badly as Mr Ashbless, however, who upon seeing me bearing down upon him brandishing my staff, decided to run away instead of standing and dying like a snake-man should (Mr Ashbless' monsters always try to survive ... the wimps.) Haring off into the PITCH DARKNESS, he ran off the edge of the path and face-planted in a ditch full of brambles.

There was blood. He can't walk today  :-(
*sigh*
 And the moral of the story is - if your wife wants to smack your ass, it's safer to just let her.

But if you prefer to see my more decorous weekends, do pop over to Jennifer Denys' blog, where she spills some of the beans on what erotica writers chat about over tea and cookies :-)

Eyecandy Monday

After a hard weekend's LARPing, we're all aching and exhausted...
;-)

(Posed by models. Sadly, my life does not really look like this picture.)

Well, sorry about that unexpected failure to post for a few days. I was up until 4.30am two nights in a row, getting my ass kicked first by paladins and then undead. I now have aches in all my fighting muscles (thighs, shoulders, ribs). I actually managed a trip + backward roll head-over-heels at one point. It was all just GLORIOUS - but everything outside that little pocket unverse went right out of my head!

Now I need more sleep...

Eyecandy Monday

Oh, I feel rough! A weekend of sleep-deprivation and massive carb-intake will do that to me. Also, being repeatedly chased up and down the grounds of a country house by an Indescribable Monstrosity. And now it's snowing and I have to drive hundreds of miles home before this evening when I have a game to run...

I think I am going to sit and look at this nice picture, of  a sunny sea and a naked man, until I feel better.

Eyecandy Monday - get back

Well, she said: I'm back ... with a  thousand photos to sift (be patient, my sweetlings), a head full of Foreign Stuff, and a gut full of unco-operative bacteria. Heh. Another successful holiday. Although I never got to see any of the Moche erotic pottery, curses.

I did however manage to write a short story while I was away. Longhand. On PAPER. Who could believe it?

Here are some more rather attractive backs:

And here's the new cover for Bound By Lust, the forthcoming Shanna Germain BDSM anthology that includes my story Being His Bitch:

(Full author lineup here.) Woohoo! Back soon!

Eyecandy Monday - blissed out

This wasn't the post I was planning.

My family were supposed to be turning up today for a week, but Dad just rang and cancelled because they're trapped at home by snow. So I'm not in the hurry I expected to be. I was out with the dogs at the crack of dawn, walking over the snowbound fields under pale blue skies, with a bastardised Tim Minchin lyric spinning round in my head.

It's my life 
And it's fine 
It's where I spend the vast majority of my time
It's not perfect
But it's mine.

I've spent a week with friends I love dearly: mostly writing: walking in snow, seeing the dogs dance with joy. I have no words for how beautiful the world looks from here.

In Appreciation of my New Editor

I've just finished the fourth and final round of edits for my first Ellora's Cave story, In Appreciation of their Cox. My head is spinning. New publisher = new house style, new vocabulary, new grammar. For a start, I'm going to have to learn to write in American. And curb my semicolon fetish. And banish hyphens. Though luckily for me, this first time, my lovely editor did the job of working through 10K of story and altering all the single quotes to double quotes!

In Appreciation of their Cox is e-published on October 14th.

To say that Ellora's Cave have exacting standards would be to understate matters. Every sentence comes under scrutiny. I have been given a slew of files to assimilate into my life, including the mighty tome of House Style Rules (93 pages!!) which covers everything from the correct dirty words ("cunt" but not "hole" - unless it's anal - and never use "squirt"), to collective nouns, to lists of registered trademarks, to which character names are overused in romance and should be avoided. It's awesome. I am bowled over by such attention to detail and accuracy, and their concern for the perfecting the final product.

And Oh. My. God. I've been asked, for the first time in my career, to fill in an official form suggesting what the cover illustration of my story should look like. My editor has sent the art department videos of competition rowing so that they get the detail right. And she has asked them for an interior line drawing to make it all look even better.

I may be about to cry.

Eyecandy Monday

Uh ... Wah day is it?   'S Monday, isit?

Did not get enough sleep over the weekend at the World Horror Convention. Had fun though! Reading went well. Report 'n' pictures later in the week.

Today's plan: Walk dogs. Sleep.

P.S: picture [REDACTED] was sent to me by Eloise. There are many more on the same theme at Bend Over Boyfriend.