Eyecandy Monday

Is it my birthday? This week people have been so generous and lovely ...

Jo has put up the most fantastic review of my short story collection Dark Enchantment on Amazon UK.  She says:

I've read Dark Enchantment slowly over the last few days, but if I'd had a choice I would have sat, consumed by it til it was finished. Thankfully Wildwood just arrived through the door this morning.

The first word that always strikes me as I read Janine's work is 'courageous'. The stories in this collection interweave myth and fantasy beautifully with fierce, passionate sex. They're gripping, they're scary, they immerse you in thier varied worlds, while still owning their own very different scenarios. "Ruby Seeds" is a perfect adaption of the Persephone myth, I can't imagine anything better.

Read this, and get drawn in to the frightening, evocative, creative and thoroughly erotic atmosphere. Janine doesn't pull back from the edge, she takes you right up to it.

I love this book.

What's more she titled her review "Ashblessed." You know how I love a good pun! And that's how I feel this week: blessed, in having friends all over the world.

Thank you!

Dark Enchantment on Amazon UK : Dark Enchantment on Amazon US

Going Naked at F-Stop

Rather more than her ankles, actually...

Today (and for the rest of the week) I am featured over at F-Stop: exposing the naked I. To say I was nervous when I subbed this would be just a bit of an understatement!

Here's F-Stop's manifesto:
This blog will feature all genres of erotic art with the focus on exposing the most vulnerable parts of each contributing creator. We’re looking for you to expose those exquisite soft and pink parts that lay hidden somewhere inside and are usually kept safely locked up. This blog will be the home for works of sensual expression and down to the bare bones of each artists subjective perspective – naked emotionally; naked physically and naked spiritually – We want you to dig deep; no deeper, hmmm…you’re almost there…go a little deeper still, inside yourself and expose the naked “I”, which we hope, no scratch that, which we know will be sexually provocative. We want you to fly free and high. Why? Because it is our belief that being truly exposed is both liberating and cathartic for both you the artist, and the lover of the art.

So I wrote a post about something that has shaped and changed my life and continues to affect my future as a person and a writer.

Oh yes: and there a picture of my butt-naked twenty-something-year-old body too. I must be crazy...

Hammer House of God

Well, it made me smile! (And it's in keeping with the WHC theme this week.)

If you're lucky enough to have a holiday break over Easter, I hope you have a great time.
:-)

We went to the World Horror Convention...

Wheee! Smutwriters go to the seaside! This is the view from the window of our hotel, where the World Horror Convention 2010 was being held. If I was to have turned round 180 degrees and taken another photo, you would have been able to see the hotel's historic features (and stains), plus more bald men with grey beards than you could shake a stick at. Nice friendly ones though. I spoke briefly to Tim Lebbon.
:-)

Here's one who isn't bald: it's Neil Gaiman, who was a surprise guest and hot off the plane from Moscow.

The focus of the convention was literary horror - there weren't any people in costumes or whatever. There were loads of panels covering subjects like "How to get an agent" and "Are zombies the new vampires?" There was an art show downstairs.There were bars open until 2am (hence a perilous lack of sleep). And of course there were authors doing readings of their work.

This one looks like she's enjoying herself, whoever she is...

Oh yes - I even got a couple of chances to get out and look around Brighton. Here's the Pavilion (which used to be a royal palace). The interior decoration has to be seen to be believed! Brighton Pier at night, btw, was a markedly unsettling experience. You've got the glaring lights of the carnival shows and cheesy pop music on one side, while from the other comes the noise of the distinctly hungry-sounding sea. The pier seems to hover in pitch-blackness, and below your feet the wooden boards sag rottenly in places. I don't think I've felt so irrationally nervous in years.

(L to R: Me, Olivia Knight, Mathilde Madden, Kristina Lloyd).

Oh yeah, the public reading made me pretty damn nervous too: it was my first time so I had virgin's jitters. Poor Olivia had to bear the brunt of me trying to second guess what the audience would want (How scary? How rude? How long?). But once I was up there reading out loud, I loved it. Our late-night audience stuck it out with us for two hours, despite being given a chance to escape halfway through, and they were appreciative and friendly. The four of us read two excerpts each. I did a bit from my short stories The Red Thread (Minotaur sex) and Montague's Last Ride (corpsy undead sex). Yes, all the way through to the icky and thoroughly offensive ending!

So, a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. But I fell asleep sat on the floor of the train on the way home...

---

P.S: Big thanks to Charlotte, our official photographer!

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.

I'm all tied up now...

... packing for the World Horror Convention this weekend. At least I've decided which stories I'll be reading from on Saturday night.

Gosh, this is like two halves of my brain in collision. If you know anything about the small, proud, insular world of horror-writing you'll know that they hate with being regarded as illiterate rubbish by the mainstream literary establishment. Innovative and passionate, they know they don't deserve the contempt in which the wider reading public holds them. But wait - there is one genre which Horror gets to look down upon and sneer! One even more despised than themselves!

Yes, you guessed: it's Erotica...

So I'm a bit nervous about sticking my smutwriter head over the parapet, but here goes. I'll be back here on the blog on Monday.

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Bondage picture with rats is one of the illustrations Harry Clarke (1889-1931) did for Poe's collected short stories. This one is The Pit and the Pendulum, of course. Clarke's style followed that of Beardsley, only with less sex and more horror. I was going to post his illustration for The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, but I didn't want to put you all off your tea. It's very appropriate for one of the excerpts I'm going to be reading this weekend, though!

This is NOT how I put my back out

I decided to make a new frog-pond in the garden. 

 1) I marked out the shape, roughly.

2) I attempted to protect the pitiful remnants of my lawn (This is what 10 years of dog-pee does to grass).

3) I dug an 'ole.

4) I lined the 'ole with cut-up carpet. This protects the pond membrane from roots and stones.

5) In goes a waterproof liner.

6) Fill her up from the water-butt.

7) Trim and edge. Yuck. The water need a few days to settle before plants and frogspawn get added.

In total this took about 4 hours, spread over 2 afternoons. My back was fine. Four days later I bent over to put my knickers on - and THAT is how I put my back out.

Eyecandy Monday

Liar, liar: pants on fire...

I so enjoyed lying to you all last week! Did anyone guess which two out of the seven statements were true? Well, here's a reprise:

1. As a special treat my Grandma used to feed me raw egg yolks.

 FALSE - it was raw bacon rind. Goodness knows how I didn't end up with tapeworm.

2. Out of the regular cast of Friends, the one I fancied was Ross.

FALSE - it was Chandler.

4. My Shamanic Power Animal is a fox.

FALSE - he's a reindeer.

5. I spent the advance from my first Black Lace book on surgical breast enlargement.

FALSE - reduction, actually.

7. I like kissing.

FALSE - as I explained over on Lust Bites, I do not Do Kissing.

Which means that the two TRUE statements were:

3. When I was a child I robbed a grave - and then spent years worrying that the dead person would track me down wanting his bit of skull back.

This probably requires further explanation. Believe me, I am not proud. When I was little I lived in Hong Kong, and one weekend we were staying out on one of the islands. There was a dell of trees in which there stood a number of large ceramic jars which contained the bones left over from cremations. Aged nine, I'd decided I was going to be an archaeologist - and what did archaeologists do but dig up bones, eh? So I opened one of the jars and took out the top lump of bone, which was clearly a piece of skull, and went off with it. About half an hour later I decided maybe this wasn't such a great thing and I buried it on a beach.

Kids, eh? *ahem*

6. I spent yesterday night in the Underworld.

Okay, I was cheating slightly, but lots of you guessed that. The Underworld is a club in London specialising in metal and waily goth music. We watched the last ever UK gig by Theatre of Tragedy. It was pretty good, but I was distracted by trying to think up lies.

Which all means that the only person who guessed right was Madelynne Ellis - who wins a copy of the Susie Bright anthology Bitten! Yay Madelynne - and how the heck did you know about the grave-robbing, eh?

XKCD

[click to enlarge]

Well, I'm really glad someone said it about these depressing little books (They are primarily insulting to men, btw, since they revolve around the conceit that men are so crap that the mere sight of one putting the toilet seat down, or noticing his wife's existence, is enough to send women into a masturbatory frenzy).

Cartoon is from the uber-smart and uber-geeky XKCD,  which is one of Mr Ashbless' favourite websites. Comedy with added mathematics.

(I can't bring myself to say "added math" ... In the UK we say "maths." Plural.)

UPDATE: You can read Violet Blue on the joy of geeks here.

Lady Godiva

Lady Godiva by John Collier (1898)

I've featured paintings by John Collier - notable Victorian atheist - before, for example in the Lilith post, but this is probably his most famous work.

Lady Godiva (Godgifu in her own time) was a real person - wife of Leofric the Saxon Earl of Mercia - and her story is worth knowing because it's one about sex and female courage. Leofric had imposed crushing taxes on the people of Coventry, who took their plight to his wife. She repeatedly asked her husband to be more merciful but he refused, until eventually he got so annoyed by her importuning that he said "Look, if you take off all your clothes and ride naked through the city then I'll do what you ask." So she did. The current version of the story is that everyone stayed respectfully indoors and didn't look except for Peeping Tom, who was struck blind by God for watching (the first case of masturbation sending you blind, perhaps? lol). The oldest version of the legend has it that the populace was assembled by Leofric to watch.

So it's a great story about selflessness and exhibitionism, and I'd like to write a version one day. The feel of the saddle between her naked thighs, the gasp of the crowd, her shame and determination and secret excitement...

Godiva outlived Leofric and was one of the few major Saxon landowners (and the only female) in England to retain her title and holdings after the Norman Conquest. She is still counted a heroine by the people of Coventry and an annual procession and festival is held in her name to this day (although as far as I can see from their publicity they seem to have given up the actual naked re-enactment ... shame). She was a popular subject for Victorian painters and sculptors, who just fell over themselves to depict her naked body and beautiful hair and - this was their usual emphasis - her crippling shame at having to apear in public this way. 

But when the city of Coventry decided to install a statue of her after the end of WW2, she acquired an altogether more serene expression - as befits the patron of a city which has been through trials and emerged victorious.

Hot Scientist (male): Dr Brian Cox

In praise of all the wonderful things Science has brought us: anaesthetics, contraception, antibiotics, the Hubble Telescope, t'internet ... and particle physicist Dr Brian Cox on TV weekly, telling us about the Wonders of the Solar System (you can download episodes here if have access to iPlayer).

The BBC has a simple formula for getting its plebian viewers switched on to science: special effects, impressive location shots and an attractive presenter. It works for me. So does a combination of joyous enthusiasm, floppy hair and an irrepressible smile that looks like he's just personally invented sex and he can't believe how awesome it is.

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Another good thing from Science (and specifically, The Scientist): an overview of studies into the effects of the availability of porn upon rates of sex crime concludes:

Over the years, many scientists have investigated the link between pornography (considered legal under the First Amendment in the United States unless judged “obscene”) and sex crimes and attitudes towards women. And in every region investigated, researchers have found that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased.

A major study of American prison populations comes up with some startling results:

Looking closer, Michael Goldstein and Harold Kant found that rapists were more likely than nonrapists in the prison population to have been punished for looking at pornography while a youngster, while other research has shown that incarcerated nonrapists had seen more pornography, and seen it at an earlier age, than rapists. What does correlate highly with sex offense is a strict, repressive religious upbringing. Richard Green too has reported that both rapists and child molesters use less pornography than a control group of “normal” males.

(Emphasis mine. How I laughed.)


You can read the whole article here.

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A surreal footnote: Dr Brian Cox, when he was younger, was the keyboard player in a popular beat combo called D:ream, who had an annoyingly catchy hit single with a notorious afterlife:

Eyecandy Monday - win a book!

It must be Spring - those noisy gits are back in my garden, having loud sex all day and half the night.Yet if I go out to take a peek they just jump in the pond and hide.

No, not those two above - the frogs:

 

(I adore 'em, actually.)

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Back on the interweb...

Want to win a smut anthology in which I don't feature?

I've been tagged by Charlotte Stein, who wants me to lie to you all. The idea is that I tell you seven things about myself, two of which are true. You have to guess which ones, and tell me in the comments below. Get it right and you'll be put into a hat to win a copy of the rather lovely gothic/erotic collection Bitten, edited by Susie Bright. Closing date on this will be, oh ... Next Monday.

Here goes - which two are not lies?

1. As a special treat my Grandma used to feed me raw egg yolks.

2. Out of the regular cast of Friends, the one I fancied was Ross.

3. When I was a child I robbed a grave - and then spent years worrying that the dead person would track me down wanting his bit of skull back.

4. My Shamanic Power Animal is a fox.

5. I spent the advance from my first Black Lace book on surgical breast enlargement.

6. I spent yesterday night in the Underworld.

7. I like kissing.

Oh, btw - I tag Jo and Jeremy (but only if they want to play).

Magazine review: Filament #4

Filament Issue 4 is out now. I've reviewed previous issues in the past and I now want to say that I am genuinely in awe. This is a magazine that has forged itself a unique identity and truly found its feet. It's an acheivement for all the creators - and particularly editor Suraya Singh - to be proud of.

The line on the cover now reads "For women who like hot men and intelligent thought," and there's plenty of both inside. In fact the amount of nudity - predominantly male, but female too - has climbed steeply over four issues since its inception. Yet it's the fact that it's a magazine with sexual content that doesn't assume sexy = mindless that I really appreciate. My personal favourite articles in this issue are:

• Nick Ord on the foundations and limits of tolerance in society - yet again a new slant on a familiar issue (I always turn to the philosophy article first, after flicking through the eyecandy!)
• Borderline Personality Disorder - what's that and what's it like to suffer from it?
• Prehistoric porn: ancient archaeology and sexual depiction
• An enticing look at alternative erotic photography website Shot With Desire, and an interview with its creator.

There are also articles on the practicalities of setting up threesomes, how to get started with Japanese rope bondage, an interview with Annie Sprinkle (porn star, director, artist, political activist), women in computer gaming, vegetable gardening and a slew of pictorial articles with men getting their kit off to various extents. And I am green with envy at the superb set of photos illustrating Heidi Champna's erotic short story about a m/f/m threesome - she must be SO pleased! 

It's an eclectic mix. Did I mention the recipe for tea cake? As it says in the editorial: "The single most controversial thing about Filament isn't the cocks; it's that we have some content that isn't about sex. Our critics have honed in on that fact obsessively ... confused by the idea that women can be interested in perving on hot men as well as the big questions of society, like tolerance, or even the little questions like How do I bake a tea cake? The rest of us call this being human." 

Honestly; if you're female, heterosexual and have more than two brain cells to rub together, you should be reading this magazine. Even if you don't fall into all three of those categories, it would be worth your while taking a look. 

Filament is out quarterly, priced £4.99 + P&P

Buy at their website - back issues and subscriptions are discounted

  

Spam spam spam spam

This has nothing to do with anything, but I just wanted to share my spam with the world. Recently I've been receiving fewer enticing offers from French pharmaceutical companies ("Votre libido enorme!"); my inbox has instead been filled with hopeful mail from purveyors of fake designer watches. Bad targeting there, guys. I don't think that I have ever in my whole life noticed whether a bloke was even wearing a watch, never mind what type it was (I was probably too busy looking at his crotch  nice hair). So, like, what's the attraction of a fake Rolex?

Then all my questions were answered, as one of my spam slices came through helpfully entitled:  "You will look like Hollywood actor if you wear Swiss watches. Even if you have no money to take a taxi others will think that you forgot your wallet." This was just the title, mark you.

How endearingly optimistic! If you wear a big watch, people will respect you when you catch the bus.  If you take these diet supplements you will feel energetic and filled with life.  If your cock were only an inch longer, women would be queuing up to have sex with you.
Ah, if only life were really that simple.
:-)

The men in the kinky lace-up wetsuits, btw, are Nazi Kampfschwimmers, synchronising their Rolex-Panerai watches. Yeah, I bet they never had to worry that they'd look silly if they didn't take a taxi.