Coming Attractions

Kristina Lloyd
Hold onto your heads because next week identities start slip-sliding all over the show, and soon you won’t know your ego from your elbow. On Monday, we’re putting the rot back into erotica as one mucky-minded Ms explores sexual degradation and the pleasure of unpleasure. Now who’s mad enough to tackle a subject like that? *Checks schedule.* Oh bugger, it’s me.

Eloise Pasteur is our guest blogger on Wednesday. Well, I think she is. Eloise inhabits the 3D virtual world of Second Life and she’ll be here talking cybersex, avatars and other stuff I’m mainly baffled and intrigued by.

Things start getting hairy on Thursday as award-winning, dick-owning Mathilde Madden marks the publication of The Silver Collar, the first book in Black Lace’s first ever trilogy, with three days of hot sex. Yes, the werewolves have landed! Well, what I mean to say is Mat will be offering us three days of previews, pics, excerpts, wolf chat and general rattling of handcuffs at the moon. What she does in her personal life is her own business. But I think there may be overlap. I've heard them howling.

Kristina X

PS. The heavenly body heading this post is by quemas.

Friday's Slot - Madeline Moore

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Competition Winner

The competition winner on my Sexy Gay Men post is Alison. E-mail me at deanna at deannaashford dot com and I'll send you a copy of Wild Kingdom.


Thank you to everyone who participated, and here is a picture of John Barrowman and James Marsters as they are due to appear in the upcoming series of Torchwood. If you recall they are both playing ominsexual characters. Can't wait for that!

Deanna Ashford

Death and the Maiden: killing characters

by Janine Ashbless

Eight down, maybe nine, thought Veraine, spinning on his heel and shaking the hair out of his eyes, ready for the next attack. The square was in uproar, with people everywhere shouting and shrieking. But when he looked for the Slavers he saw only fallen men, some lying dead and some wounded. He paced a tight circle, adjusting his grip on the slippery hilt of his sword. People scattered before him.

It’s done, he realised, incredulous - forcing his teeth to unclench, feeling the rictus mask of battle relax only slowly. He drew himself upright, taking deeper breaths. The villagers shrank away from him like grass withering before a fire. He tried to lick his lips but his tongue was dry and there was a terrible coppery taste in his mouth. He looked for relief and gratitude in the faces around him but saw only fear. At last he turned back to Tehli. She was staring at him, holding her torn blouse closed. There was no smile on her face either: her expression was one of naked horror.

Reflected in their eyes he saw a monster.

(from Burning Bright)

I am a serial killer.

I kill characters. Lots of them. Not just the villains who deserve it either, as above – though I certainly do relish killing off villains: in Divine Torment for example the high priest collapses with dysentery and shits himself to death. But that epidemic also affect thousands of innocents. And then there’s the earthquake, which partially collapses a clifftop temple on top of a barbarian encampment during a pitched and bloody battle … thousands and thousands of deaths, all so that my two heroes can get it together and run off into the sunset.

Now that’s what I call romance.

But wait, I’m not just ruthlessly profligate with the lives of faceless minions. In Burning Bright I introduce my protagonist Myrna to Anada, a fellow slave of the Tiger Lords; a bright, resilient young woman determined to make the best of her captivity. She falls foul of the sadistic Tiger Queen and is brutally killed during sex. It’s a turning point for Myrna, who determines not to accept her fate passively. A reader told me: "When I read that I got really worried. Because I realised you might not let the heroes survive."

He could be right. My personal idea of a satisfying ending is one which includes Tragic But Redemptive.

"La Petite Mort" is a conceit expressing the dissolution of the conscious self that comes both at orgasm and death. But death is a dangerous and uneasy participant in erotic fiction.. Sometimes it seems a seductively logical extension of where the action’s going: there’s a tendency in some (usually highly literary) fiction to kill off the female protagonist (it’s almost always a female one) because the writer makes her so submissive, so self-abnegating, so yearning for humiliation and surrender that he (yep, it’s usually a he) can’t think of anywhere else to stop. It’s like the writer is aesthetically offended by the idea of someone who finds profound satisfaction in pain and submission on an evening but gets up the next morning perfectly happy and goes off to work and meet her friends.

I don’t kill my characters for that reason. I don’t think BDSM tendencies are a mental illness. I don’t think submissive women characters are "asking for it." I’ve only once fucked a character to death – in The Temptation of St Gregory (a short story in Cruel Enchantment) – and it was a man, and he was a jerk who deserved his fate, and it I wrote it because I was so irritated by the sacrificial girlies in other collections. And it wasn't a bad way to go, with an ‘angel’ at one end and a ‘demon’ at the other:

She understood. With a smile of infinite compassion, she parted her robes with one hand, revealing a small, white, and perfect breast tipped with a little nipple of maidenly pink. Gregory gazed at it with holy awe. She tilted him toward her and his mouth closed over that cool, stiff point. As his despised flesh below thrust towards its unholy apotheosis, Gregory began to suck upon the angel’s breast. Ecstasy incomprehensible exploded in him. The fire and the light became a howling flame that tore him apart. His body poured pulse after pulse of acid seed into the hungry cunt of the demon, and his soul erupted forth.

That passage - in which the actual experience of dying is portrayed as erotic - is all but unique in my writing. I usually portray death as painful, frightening and to be avoided if possible. So I ask myself why I do kill characters.

Well, partly it’s because I write in fantasy/historical settings where armed combat is part of the milieu. I love my warriors, with their honed bodies and their self-reliance and their skill and their courage and their refusal to be victims. (To set the record straight, much like Madelynne Ellis in her Bloodstained Men post below, I like my violence safely distanced by fiction – and preferably a non-contemporary setting - or by a ritual/sporting context: real violence in the real world absolutely repels me.)

Partly it’s because in the context of these settings I want my villains to be real villains. If someone is introduced as a terrifying opponent to my heroes I want him to be genuinely worth opposing, not just a bit of an irritating sod. (In an early VBL novel which I shall not name, a character in a Norman Conquest setting was introduced as being almost diabolically evil – which was certainly worrying and intriguing for me as a reader until it turned out that by "evil" the writer meant "has such incredibly good sex with his floozies that when he dumps them they CAN NEVER FALL IN LOVE WITH ANOTHER MAN". At the time I concluded that the writer either knew nothing about Anglo-Norman history, or was a complete moron. Okay, nowadays I’d be more charitable and mutter darkly about romance genre limitations but back then I naively hoped for narrative honesty.) My own villains are real bastards and they do commit murder.

So it’s about drama.

It’s about doing something that matters. My fictional worlds are (almost as much as the real one) places of injustice and cruelty and sudden violent death. In the face of these, my characters get to decide where they stand. What it is that matters to them. What they are willing to fight for and perhaps risk everything for – in other words, because this is romance, for each other.

Other authors may be able to carry this off in the setting of, say, a pastel-coloured suburban wedding, but I like to paint with a broader brush and deep shadows. I find it difficult to define what has value and is good, except in contrast to what is terrible. I write erotic romance because I think love and pleasure have value: how can this be seen except against the contrast of loneliness and pain? How can a sacrifice have worth unless it involves loss? How can an action be courageous except in the face of fear?

Here’s Veraine, fettered in the dark and waiting to be tortured to death:

He was a soldier, and he had always known it would end this way, or worse. He had never had any prospect of dying in his bed, peaceful and happy. How many people did? Civilians got to fool themselves that death was not inevitable, that it wouldn’t hurt, that that it would wait until you were ready. But a soldier knew the reality. Death was not an option; it was inevitable. What you had on your side wasn’t hope or defiance but courage. Simply courage to face it.

I shall die silent, Veraine told himself: he will not make me scream

There was one shred of comfort and he wrapped his heart around that thought. Every man died, and few in the cause of anything of worth. They lost their lives for trivial reasons; for standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, for turning their head to the left instead of the right or the right instead of the left. For a misinterpreted glance, for an incautious remark, for being too cowardly to act or too brave to run. They died by mischance, by stupidity, by ignorance, by the casual malevolence or cool indifference of others more powerful than themselves. But he, Veraine, was going to die because he’d made a choice. He had let the gods know that there was something he wanted more than fame or riches, more than anything else in the world. Something he would sell everything in his life for. His soul’s desire. And for once the gods had listened.

He’d had her. For only a few hours, but with such intense passion that even before the priests had discovered them, he’d known that he wouldn’t emerge unscathed or unchanged.

In the darkness, invisible, his dry lips tightened in a fearful smile.

(from Divine Torment)

Along with real villains I want to read about heroes who are genuinely courageous. How can you be a hero if you aren’t mortal - if you risk nothing? Superman isn’t heroic – he’s just better than everyone else. Wolverine is a fake – I actively dislike the character – because no matter how many fights he gets into the hairy bastard is incapable of really losing. At worst he walks away to fight another day. That is just so wrong!

I’ve read happy-hippy-trippy erotica where the heroine tumbles giggling from fuck to fuck and finally for no reason at all decides she Loves the hero For Ever and Ever. No pain, no stress, no drama. And you know what? - I cannot bring myself to care. And oh God I want to care, when I’m reading and when I’m writing. I’m not just in it to give my wrist some exercise, you know. Just because it’s erotica doesn’t make it vacuous! I want to believe in these characters. I want to root for them (and along with them…) I want to fall in love with them. I want to feel their emotions.

I believe love and lust both matter. I believe in passion!

Once on another website I was thoroughly castigated for apparently holding the opinion that the ultimate heat-death of the universe renders all romance worthless. No guys – you’ve got it all wrong. I think that love only has value because we are so fragile, and ultimately at the mercy of an indifferent world. Our own unique experiences as are ephemeral as sparks. There are unimaginably vast tracts of time and space out there, and only in the human sphere does any of it have meaning. I think that mercy and justice and truth have value because we nurture them into existence against all the odds. I think that the things you make a stand for are what define you. I think that if you’ll give your life for something then it has value.

I kill because I think it matters.

So when I wrote a novella for Black Lace’s forthcoming Magic & Desire collection I took the decision to start with the death of the romantic hero. And when his lover, the high priestess of Inanna, chooses to descend into the Land of the Dead to find him again, she has to confront all her worst fears and surrender everything that is most precious to her. And she has to come face to face with her own motives and see herself in her nakedness:

I’m parched, and grateful when the gatekeeper eases me into the water. I wonder briefly what it is he has left to take from me – and then he dunks me beneath the surface and begins to scrub me. He is very thorough. There are moments when I am sure I am going to drown on the very threshold of the House of Dust. I’m too exhausted to struggle, almost too exhausted to care. He scrubs every inch of my skin. He scrubs my hair. He scrubs the inside of my mouth and my cunt and my arse. Then he drops me in the pool and wades out.

I kneel in the water until I regain my balance, then rise to my feet. I feel almost empty of sensation. The water is curiously heavy, reluctant to ripple even as I wade across it. The black surface reflects better than that of a mirror, and with one glance down I am snared by my own reflection. I stare in horror.

In all my life I’ve never seen my own face without the temple makeup upon it. My face, even to me, was that of the goddess: dark-eyed, dewy-lipped, smooth and lovely. Without the paint I have the face of - Well, I could be anyone. A merchant’s wife. A domestic servant. I’m a little paler than average perhaps, through working indoors. My wet hair hangs in black strings. My eyes look small and lack drama without kohl. My lips are less full. Two lines crease my neck and tiny bird-prints bloom at the corners of my eyes. There is no seduction, no fire, no delight in this face. Instead there are freckles across the bridge of my nose.

I didn’t know I had freckles.

I close my eyes briefly, searching within. The goddess has gone. I understand what the last gatekeeper has taken from me and it fills me with cold thick despair. I am not a goddess. I am not the centre of all desire, the heart of all love. I am not Inanna anymore. I am just me.

Throwing back the bar, the gatekeeper opens the Seventh and last Gate, then turns and looks at me.

‘I can’t go before her like this,’ I tell him. Even my voice sounds thinner.

That hooked beak opens to speak: ‘The laws of the Underworld are perfect. Do not question them.’

Bowing my head, I climb from the pool and pass through the door. Beyond is a short ramp down onto a grey plain. Slowly I descend, until I sink over my toes into the dust that covers everything, and the great lead doors close behind me.

(from The House of Dust)

xxx
Janine Ashbless
Blog: Website : Fiction/Photodump

Movie Deaths: Troy – The Fellowship of the Ring – Spartacus – Gallipoli - 300

And the winners are...

I know it's a bum rap [ouch] Fionn and Stacy, but your names came out of the hat in my Carry On Shagging/Wild in the Country prize draw!

Could you please get in touch with me a portiadacosta at gmail dot com [or the link on this contact page] so I can send you your books?

And thanks again to all who very kindly commented... I wish I could have given you *all* a prize!

love

Portia Da Costa

p.s. bottom courtesy of the lovely Madelynne Ellis. Not hers, obviously, just a choice piccie from her collection. ;)

Bloody men

by Madelynne Ellis


A few weeks ago, Kristina Lloyd teased us all with her love of wet men; well I have a similar fascination for bloody men. I’m not all that hot at analysing my own reasons for liking things, mostly I prefer to accept that something is and not delve to deep, but for the purposes of this collection I’ve done a bit of prodding and poking and made a few discoveries.

Let's get a few things straight: I'm talking cuts and bruises here, nothing more visceral, no gaping wounds and missing body parts, and I don't particularly enjoy watching men knock nine shades of hell out of each other, so it’s nothing to do with them being macho and fired up on testosterone that makes me tremble with delight. Maybe it’s a teeny bit to do with the knowledge that they can handle themselves, should the need arise, maybe not…

So what is it about a black eye or a bust lip that grabs my attention? Generally, I like pretty men, a bit of polish, even a hint of make-up, but add bruises to the mix and you instantly add layers of interest. How did he end up with blood smeared across his shirt? Why? Just one flaw in all that perfection adds a whole history.

"Vaughan’s body was lean but muscular and tapered neatly at the waist. His arms and shoulders were strong from his love of fencing, the same sport that had given him his oft-admired thighs. However, the most striking feature of his near-nakedness was the pale silvery line across his left side that marred the surface of his skin. Lucerne traced its length curiously with his fingertips, and then with his tongue. It appeared to be a duelling scar.

There’s a maternal aspect to my fascination to. “Are you all right?” I long to ask. “Here let me look at it? Let me kiss it better.” As well as a darker, sadistic one. “Does it hurt if I press it?’

And bruises are such pretty colours, all those purples and blues with a hint of green and a splash of yellow. I’m the child that given a present of eye shadow for the first time proceeded to make my sisters look as if they had black eyes. Actually, that same fascination lasted into adulthood, faking injuries is still my favourite bit of Stage Make-up. I’ll quite happily while away an hour or two painting bruises onto my knuckles, or faking taut silvery-white scars.

"A smile of satisfaction spread across his ruined visage. The skin across his left eye was creased into a web of red and silver lines. The eye itself was milky, while the rest of him was undeniable handsome. Once he’d have been painted, admired, celebrated, but the fates had turned a cruel hand. Thea clasped her fist to her chest. Stark turned his head to one side, then the other, showing her his flawless profile, then ruined one. The widest of the scars was the same breadth as her finger. It overwhelmed her with such a terrible urge to touch. He knew he was making an impact.

I love the fact that blood is so red and shiny against the skin, and the way it flows, drips and splashes. The way it runs inside a collar, just like a bead of sweat or a drop of water, but blood is
far more erotically charged than sweat or water, it's very essence tied up in the symbolism of life. It's forbidden imagery too in our post-HIV world, where its presence can mean danger to more than the injured party - although I'm not into blood play myself. Ms Jolie can keep her knives and her vials of her lover's blood to herself, thanks. Mine is a purely voyeuristic pleasure.

"Asha tentatively pressed her tongue to the first of the ten long gashes and licked. The mixture of blood and poison tingled on her tongue. It tasted bitter, although the ripple of pleasure that flowed down her throat was sweet. She licked again, her tongue delving into the wound, and the taste became acrid. She spat it out, then returned to the wound and began to suck. Beneath her, she felt him tremble, and his spine stiffen. ‘Shh!’ she soothed before tending the next gash.

So folks, tell me, am I alone in my obsession or do bloody men do it for you too? If so, have you a favourite image to share? I'm rather taken with Mr Sharpe's smile up top. You can check out a few others who didn't quite make it into the post over on my blog.

Madelynne Ellis

blog : website

Excerpts from i) A Gentleman's Wager ii) Desperate Measures (work in progress) & iii) Broken Angel.

Coming Attractions

Kristina Lloyd
Next week we’re all about violence, sex and death. The Lust Bites’ first aid kit has been buried deep in the garden, and I’ve kindly volunteered to keep our team of white-coated doctors occupied. Oh, the sacrifices I make for this blog.

With the coast clear, Madelynne Ellis kicks off the week with a parade of wounded men. ‘Look at the poor lambs!’ we will cry. ‘All broken, bruised and bloodied! Anyone seen the first aid kit? No? Oh dear. How terrible.’

On Wednesday we’ll be asking ‘Anyone seen an undertaker?’ as Janine Ashbless, fresh from looking up men’s kilts in Scotland, explores killing characters in fiction.

It’s our time of the month on Friday (please supply own blood joke), and Madeline Moore fills September’s smut slot with an excerpt from Wild Card, a novel in which lots of people die. No, scratch that. In which lots of people have lots of sex in a hotel room.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go make myself look pale and consumptive for the medical professionals. I’m taking my decoy role very seriously.

*Faints.*

Sexy Gay Men

by Deanna Ashford

The full title of this post should really read “Why do women find gay men so sexy?” However, I must make it clear here that the title cannot be taken as a generalisation. There are some gay men that I don’t think any woman would find particularly sexy. For instance Julian Clary is one that comes to mind. He may be reasonably pretty, or he was in his youth, as well as sharp witted and amusing but as far as I am concerned in no way could I ever fancy him even if there were no other men left on this earth.

There are, however, many gay men who are most definitely sexy. The idea for this post first came to me when I was watching John Barrowman on the Friday Night Project. John is good looking, in a very masculine way, with a great physique and he is charm personified. Also he has a dangerously wild side to his personality that allows him to say the most outrageous things on TV and actually get away with it. He has charisma in bucket-loads and also the guy can sing. What more could a girl want apart from a gender reassignment of course.

Not only is John an undeniably sexy guy he also freely professes to really like women. And he is into boobs in a big way – one up for me here! Deep down don’t many of us believe that we might well be the one and only female to be able to tempt him away from guys and make him fall for us instead. I think some of John’s charm also stems from his heroic alter-ego Captain Jack Harkness who has been featured in ‘Doctor Who’ and is now the major character in the new series ‘Torchwood’. Jack is a man who claims to be omnisexual, or in John’s word he’ll shag anything that moves whether it be male female or alien. There are sexual undercurrents between him and the doctor, which I for one find fascinating. Who wouldn’t fall for Captain Jack after seeing him chained hand and foot in a prison cell at the end of the last Doctor Who series? (What is it about chains that can be so sexy? Are we all into bondage in a subliminal way, or is it the idea of just having a man chained and at our mercy.) For all you Buffy/Angel fans out there – James Marsters, aka Spike, is due to guest star in the first episode of the second series of Torchwood which is due on our screens after Christmas. He plays an omnisexual alien who becomes involved in some way with Captain Jack. Sparks are bound to fly and I am already wondering who does what to whom! Last but not least on Dr Who/Torchwood – a piece of trivia - I’ll never be able to look at David Tennant in the same light again after learning during the Friday Night Project from John that David’s nickname on set is ‘ten inch’

There are of course many other sexy gay men in all parts of show business and beyond. Take for instance George Michael, part of the floppy-haired twosome known as ‘Wham’. Teenage girls the world over mooned over the two cute young men, Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael and a thousand hearts were broken when they split up. However, George then evolved into the moody sexy singer who could move us with songs like Careless Whisper and albums like Faith. George was a sex god, women worshipped him but little did we know at the time that sexy George was actually gay and didn’t fancy us ladies at all. George of course was famously outed when he was arrested in a Beverly Hills public toilet in 1998 for engaging in a lewd act. Did that negative publicity hurt him? No it did not. Women still adore him and he is now a Megga Star with records sales in the region of 85 million.

Other gay singers and actors have great success, not only because they are great at what they do but also because their female fans find them sexy. For instance: - the chubby cheeked doctor from Grey’s Anatomy, T. R Knight; Rupert Everett, with his, oh so British accent, and his upper class manners on screen: the sweet Stephen Gately from Boyzone (a few broken hearts again after he was outed); and one of my favourite singers Will Young.

Some of the reality shows we have had lately have been quoted by some as being gayness personified. Personally I loved the reality show Any Dream Will Do because it was full of cute young men who could sing, act, dance and appeared to sweet and charming. It was hosted by Graham Norton, an often wickedly entertaining gay guy, who isn’t particularly sexy (That’s only my opinion. Not that Graham would care if I found him sexy or not.) While one of the judges was my most favourite gay guy in the world, John Barrowman. Of course there are most likely quite a few gay men in musical theatre, as there are in all aspects of show business, but most of the participants were heterosexual young men who had the talents and skills to be West End leading men. As it happens Lee Mead, who won the prize role of Joseph in the new Andrew Lloyd Webber production, is clearly a blue blooded heterosexual male with a great voice, phenomenal stage presence and a great body. I can attest to that first hand. He looks very sexy on stage wearing a small very revealing loin cloth. So please bring on more of these so called gay shows Aunty Beeb, I love them.

Even in books and in movies we appear to find male/male relationships interesting and undeniably sexy. As far as books are concerned erotic romance is now one of the fastest growing genres in the United States and many of these books contain male/male relationships, even if the males concerned often are bi-sexual rather than gay. There is something so fascinating about two men in bed together enjoying the pleasures of each others bodies.

Justin was arse-fucking the man who had made love to her last night, and Helen’s entire body tingled at that thought. Her head spun and she was filled with the pain of wanting as she watched the thrusting heap of male testosterone straining towards a mutual climax.

In 2005 a new genre of movie found a place in our society when Brokeback Mountain was released and went on to be both incredibly successful and honoured by all the critics. It was an Oscar winning drama that depicted the relationship between two young men at a time when homosexuality was not considered an acceptable practice in the small town American West. Brokeback Mountain was a beautiful love story played out against the background of cowboys herding sheep in Wyoming. These two young men, Ennis and Jack, live together in near isolation for many months and gradually become good friends. One night they share a tent and a rather hasty coupling ensues but soon that turns into a deep and enduring relationship, which continues on over the years but eventually is destined to end in tragedy. The two young men are played by movie sex symbols Jake Gillenhall and Heath Ledger both straight young men but that didn’t matter as they played their parts with a delicate sensitivity that is a joy to behold. More trivia here – during filming it was reported that Heath almost broke Jake’s nose in a kissing scene as the scene required violent passion. For me a broken nose would have been worth it for a passionate kiss from either young man!

Sarin began to stroke Tarn’s cock in a smooth seductive rhythm that aroused his senses. Lust flooded Tarn’s veins and for a brief moment he was able to stand back and view what was happening as though he was not involved. He saw two men, fuelled by a primeval passion, cocooned in a white, frozen wilderness far from signs of civilisation, and he knew he was trapped in this world of magic and mystery where light and dark intertwined..

It is easy to forget that relationships, which are now quite acceptable in the twenty first century, were, only 40 years ago, considered a crime by British society. Fortunately we have moved on a lot since then but in the past gay male movie stars, who were considered sexy pin ups by the ladies of those days were forced to hide their true inclinations in order to survive in show business. Thanks goodness that has all changed.

Are gay men sexy? I think they are, do you?

Deanna

Lastly a short quiz the questions first mooted by John on the Friday night project. Who would you ( a) Fuck (b) Marry (c) Throw off a cliff ?

Best answers win a copy of either Doctor’s Orders or Wild Kingdom (from which the above quotes were taken)

The Box under the Bed

We all have one. That box under our bed, the one filled with stuff that has the potential to cause us shame and mega embarrassment. No Lusties, I'm not talking about the sex toys, I'm talking about the OTHER BOX, the one filled with manuscripts that went nowhere, ideas that were rejected by every agent, magazine and editor in the known universe and the often humiliating let downs on the road to our current starring role on Lust Bites. I have to say, I could've written this whole post about me, but in a spirit of sharing, I decided to ask some of the other Lusties if they were prepared to spill their own moments of less than stellar glory. Some of them were, which made me feel a whole lot better about my own checkered past.

Oh, where to start...

"It's kind of an environmental erotic futuristic romance with paranormal elements. The female represents Mother Nature and the three guys represent the elements the Earth needs to survive, kind of like Al Gore meets the pagans and sex solves all the problems of the Universe."
"Hmm...interesting...what else have you got?"
My agent moves swiftly along unimpressed by that particular pitch. At least I didn't write that one. Somehow it's far worse when you've sweated out 100,000 words and then find out there isn't a market for what you wrote.(see 'book of my heart, below)

The amazing Portia Da Costa and I share a secret. We both believed that we could singlehandedly convert Mills & Boon into a far more erotic romance friendly place to be. I gave up after rejection number 5. Apparently, Ms Da Costa has an even bigger secret...2 of hers did get into print! Tell me more, Portia, I want titles!

Ms Madelynne Ellis also confessed to writing a stirring tale called Desperate Measures , "The tale of a woman who is left destitute when her husband is thrown into a debtors prison and decides to make ends meet by cross-dressing as a male highwayman." Apparently it was dismissed on the grounds that highwayman are cliched. Cliched? I for one would've loved to see this book in print.

And back to me...how about the RWA conference where I was supposed to meet an editor at Bantam who was reading the full manuscript of one of my historicals, only to find out that she'd just left the company? Man, was I gutted. Although probably not as much as Ms Kristina Lloyd who wrote a non-erotica novel about adultery and obsession, snagged a major literary agent's interest and scored an interview with a BIG publishing house.

She fretted for days choosing what to wear, sorting out train times, no doubt making herself even more beautiful than she already is, only to find out the day before the meeting that the editor had been sacked! OMG-I feel for you...

Of course, there's also always a danger that you'll write something totally amazing and it gets published and then you realize you're supposed to write several more books in the same vein except you really don't want to. I have a futuristic novel a bit like that. I'm quietly terrified that if it gets published I'll have to commit to writing more and then my brain will start seeping out of my ears again, and that's not only very messy, but not a good thing overall.

Janine Ashbless will understand this feeling quite well."My Machenesque fairy novel "Wildwood" has been accepted for Black Lace. It was going to be the first of a trilogy, but that isn't going to happen...I shall go and do something easier next time...like wrestle a giant squid."

Janine, I'm sure that all our readers would quite happily pay real money to watch you wrestle a giant squid, so keep it in mind. Maybe we could make it an annual Lust Bites tradition along with the muddy rugby players.

I have 3 manuscripts in the box under my bed, all of them probably deserve to stay there, especially the first, Mosaic, the book of my heart, as we call it in the romance community, the one I love until this day. How was I to know that setting a gritty historical romance in the Dark Ages was a complete waste of my time? I LOVED writing that book, I thought I was the best writer ever born. I thought the publishers would be banging down my door to sweep me away to Bestsellerdomland. (That is a real place you know, I checked on Mapquest. Nora Roberts and Stephen King live there,honest.)

But maybe the book of my heart was simply too much. I sent it to every agent in the USA. After the first fifty or so rejections, I'd almost stopped crying into my tea and started writing another book. Suddenly, out of the blue, a New York agent asked to see the full. I sent it off. Three weeks later he sent me a contract. I was totally stunned because by then I'd had so much rejection that a positive response left me bewildered.

I signed the contract, sent it back and heard nothing...
My American pals were all, 'call him, ask him what's going on', but I couldn't do that,
1. I'm British
2. I have severe PTSD (phone traumatic stress disorder) for handling public inquiries for the Inland Revenue (IRS) for 2 years. Eventually I received an email from his wife. He had died, the day after he'd sent me the contract...my steamy erotic historical manuscript was the last thing he ever read.

So perhaps somethings really are better off left under the bed...

The book cover at the top is for my upcoming 'Cheek' book "Roping the Wind" out in the UK in Dec and the US next Feb. It's a stirring tale of a washed up cowboy, an orthopedic surgeon and their shared interest in kinky sex and leather.

Anyone else like to share their tales of publishing woe? We have tissues...

Coming Attractions

Kristina Lloyd

I am very excited by next week. Mathilde Madden and I will be getting up to no good. 'So what’s new?' you might ask. Well, this time we’ll be bringing you the results.

Before we do, Kate Pearce will be here on Monday revealing the unseen side of Lust Bites. All writers suffer the agonies of humiliation (or is that just my sex life?), so brace yourselves for our tearful tales of manuscripts that missed, ideas our editors mocked and rejections to make you squirm.

On Wednesday, Deanna Ashford dishes up a hefty helping of fag haggery by crushing on sexy gay men. And on Friday, I get even more excited than I already am at the prospect of so many queer pics. Because that's the day we’ll be showing you exactly what happens when you combine me, Mat, a camera and a massive, rock-hard cock.

Gosh, maybe I should check the archives to make sure we haven’t done a post like this before. Nope, looks like a world-first.

Kristina x
Proud owner of a pre-publication copy of The Silver Collar

Works in Progress

Deannna Ashford

Our smuts slots have brought you, dear readers, excerpts from our latest novels just before or around about the dates of their release and judging by your comments you appear to like these tasty tit-bits. However we writers don’t want to think that we laze around in our beds half the morning drinking coffee and eating chocolates, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Although we must admit that on occasions we ladies do indulge ourselves a little. Nevertheless, we write because that is what we really want to do. As the writers among you will know writing is a compulsion that takes one over at times.

We therefore decided that you might enjoy occasional little peeps at our work in progress and consequently this new post was born. From now on at fairly regular intervals we will be whetting your appetites with short excerpts from our work in progress - whether it be our next book, a novella or a short story.

To start this off this month’s offering consists of excerpts from the work in progress of Janine Ashbless and Portia Da Costa and the two extracts couldn’t be more different.

We start off with The House of Dust, by Janine, which is going to appear along with novellas by Portia and Olivia in Black Lace’s “Magic& Desire" collection in 2008.

Setting the scene - This story is set in ancient Mesapotamia. The main character is Ishara, priestess of the love/sex/fertility goddess Inanna and ritual wife of the king. When the story starts the king is dying - poisoned by his brother. Ishara eventually descends into the Land of the Dead to try to bring her lover back. The excerpt here is a flashback to happier times.

There on the balcony Tamuz found me in prayer, my hands raised to the heavens. Softly he dismissed the company and came up behind me. I faltered in my words as he slipped his hands about my upper body, cupping my breasts as he pressed up against me.

‘Don’t stop,’ he murmured, kissing my neck. Such informality was permitted during the time of the Great Marriage, so I carried on praying while he rolled my nipples to points of exquisite frustration between his fingers and bit softly at my ears, tugging at the clusters of golden balls strung from my pierced lobes. I made it to the last verse in a stumbling rush, my spine arched so as to press my shoulders and my buttocks back against the hard wall of his body. I could feel little bolts of lightning chasing across my breasts and down to the wellspring of my sex, as if great Enlil himself were playing with my nipples. When Tamuz laid a firm hand upon my navel and slid it down to cup my pubic mound I gasped out loud. I wanted so much for him to set me face down over that low wall and root me there high above the flat roofs of Uruk, now touched with faintest pink from the approaching sunrise, so that I might encompass the whole of my realm with my eyes as he filled me, so that Utu the shining sun might blind me with his glory as I was made incandescent from behind and within. But Tamuz turned me instead and sat me upon the edge of the wall, lifting my skirts over my knees to reveal my smooth thighs and sliding his hands up their inner surfaces, all the way to the mound of my delta. I put my arms around his neck and drew him closer, my legs encompassing his. Gently, with the tips of his fingers, he stroked my purse until he broke the fragile seal of flesh and let the moisture within seep out.

‘Daughter of the Moon,’ he whispered, his eyes shining; ‘we’ve hardly met and yet I have wounded you sorely.’

‘You did,’ I breathed. ‘The pain is unbearable. My whole body cries out.’

‘Forgive me. I thought you might be healed by now.’ He circled the pomegranate-pip of my clitoris expertly, making me shudder. I dug my nails into his skin.

‘This is a wound that can’t be healed. You hurt me too deeply and now I must live with it forever.’

‘Can I make reparation?’

‘You might, if you are brave.’

His fingers were slippery now to the root, moving slickly in and upon my sex, stirring me beyond endurance. ‘And how shall I do that?’

‘You must staunch the wound,’ I said, parting the layers of his long kilt to reveal the length of his prick, the skin already taut and glistening; ‘with the weapon that made it.’ I took hold, and Tamuz’s expression made it clear I had his undivided attention. ‘It’s an ancient magic,’ I confided, my eyes wide and serious. ‘Only by wounding me again can you ease me of my pain.’

‘Then,’ he said, his voice hoarse, ‘I see you’re skilled in the magical art.’

My hand was working his copper to harder bronze. ‘Oh yes, my King.’

‘And it is my duty to help you.’ With infinite care, both of us breathing shallow and quick, he nudged into me, sheathing perhaps two-thirds of his length. The wall held me at just the right height for him.

‘Don’t let me fall,’ I whispered.

His arm tightened about my waist. ‘Never.’

* * *

The second excerpt is from Gothic Heat with is a sequel to Portia Da Costa’s popular novel Gothic Blue.

Setting the scene - Possessed by the discarnate spirit of the evil sorceress, Isidora, Paula Beckett has come to remote Sedgewick Priory with her lover Rafe Hathaway, in search of her friends, Belinda and Jonathan, who may be able to help find a solution to her predicament.

‘I thought this was a priory?’ Rafe rubbed rain out of his eyes, and peered at the structure, ‘It looks more like a baronial castle than a religious institution… Love the kitsch Gothic style…’ He pointed towards the dark, elaborate building that seemed to sit and sneer at them from amongst seven circles of hellishly overgrown formal garden. ‘Shit, it’s even got a Rapunzel tower!’

‘It doesn’t look as if it wants visitors, does it?’ Paula followed Rafe’s pointing fingertip to the peculiar tower, perched atop one corner of the rambling, black windowed priory. She’d never seen a less welcoming place in her life, and a tumbling festering structure that might have been a chapel, set to one side, didn’t help matters. Flickers from the lightning seemed to suggest blue wraiths drifting in and out of its broken down stones.

‘It doesn’t look as if anyone’s been here in centuries.’ Rafe blinked more water out of his eyes as it began to teem even more ferociously from the sky, ‘Are you sure your friends are here?’

‘No, not exactly sure… But I can’t think of anywhere else… They’ve disappeared from their workplace and their flat… and I can’t raise them on their mobiles…’

Indeed, it was just a hunch that Belinda and Jonathan had come back here. That, and an inkling she suspected she was getting from Isidora.

Within the chill from her sodden clothing, a deeper, older chill gripped her innards, making her sway.

Is this all a trick, you bitch? she demanded silently of her ‘guest’. Is there something here you want?

A lightning bolt crashed somewhere right over her head, and she shrieked with fear, tripping as eldritch laughter filled her head.

But instead of hitting the sharp, wet gravel, Paula experienced a moment of total disorientation as she seemed to fly up into the air. Grabbing wildly for purchase, she realised that Rafe had whisked her up off her feet and was holding her cradled in his arms, leather jacket and all.

‘I’m all right! Put me down!’ She wriggled, but his gentle hold didn’t yield.

‘No you’re not. You’ve hardly been sleeping and you’re worn out.’ Adjusting his grip on her, Rafe started off down the path that led to the house, carrying her effortlessly, ‘We need to get in there…’ He nodded towards the dark, unprepossessing building, with its glaring blank windows that glittered blackly. ‘Even if it is a ruin, at least it’ll give us some shelter until this lot dies down.’

‘I’m not sure… I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.’ God, how clichéd did that sound? Like something out of a low budget horror movie, complete with stock footage haunted mansion. ‘What… what if there’s something even worse than Isidora in there?’ Her arms tightened around Rafe’s neck as black, formless fears floated through her imagination, and she imagined that low voice saying, there isn’t anything worse than me, you little ninny.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from the ghosts and ghoulies.’ Rafe sounded almost cheerful, as if being half drowned by a rainstorm amused him rather than pissed him off. ‘I’m a big guy… I can handle myself.’

‘Oh, I’m sure everything will be just fine,’ Paula shot back at him.

Inside though, she felt a slow, honeyed thrill. There was something primal about being carried in a big man’s arms, and the heat of Rafe’s body was both reassuring and exciting. He was strong, she had no doubt about it, and her desire, which had been dowsed by the relentless rain, came storming back. A swift, raw scenario unfolded behind her eyes as her body rocked to the rhythm of his long stride. She saw him kicking down the door of the crumbling Priory, laying her down right there in the entrance hall or whatever… then ripping off her jeans and her panties and thrusting straight into her.

Well that's all for now but don't worry there will be a couple of tasty excerpts from two more ladies of Lust Bites in a few weeks.


Deanna

Being and Nakedness: Crushing on Troubled (and Hot) Existentialists

Anne Tourney

To observe that life is absurd is not an end, but a beginning. – Albert Camus

I was a typical adolescent female in that I tended to develop rabid crushes on males who were safely unreachable. I was somewhat atypical in that the guys I crushed on were dead. Dead poets, dead novelists, dead philosophers – if they were eloquent, handsome, and deceased, they were crush-worthy, in my feverish teenage mind. In seventh grade I carried around a postcard with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s portrait on it, mooning over the introspective sensuality of his face. Later I replaced my Hawthorne postcard with a black-and-white photo of French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus, after reading The Plague in my high school French class. Maybe the switch was a sign of maturity: I had become realistic enough to see that Albert was more attainable than Nathaniel. After all, Camus had died a lot more recently.

But it was also Albert himself who drew me. Those keen dark eyes, that shock of glossy black hair, the lips twisted wryly around a cigarette. I’ve always thought of him as the “warm, fuzzy Existentialist,” not only because he was such a dedicated humanitarian, but because I had a much stronger desire to cuddle up with Camus naked.

I hadn't only discovered Camus – I had discovered Existentialism, with its stark metaphysical landscape, its rigorous standards of personal responsibility, its exploration of the alienated soul. I didn’t throb as fiercely for Camus’ French compatriot Jean-Paul Sartre, though Sartre’s vertiginous vision of human existence did and does make my flesh tingle.

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth. – Jean-Paul Sartre

Swoon.

And I have to pay homage to Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who preceded the Frenchies in chronology and thought. He was known as the “father of Existentialism,” which makes sense, because he set a precedent for hotness in that school of philosophy.

Here is such a definition of truth: An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person. – Soren Kierkegaard

My crushes on brooding Existentialist men continued into college. I was a French major, and since the study of French literature and philosophy are intimately intertwined, I got heavy doses of both. Actually, I got most of my philosophy at the university pub, where I would seek out some messy-haired misfit sitting alone at a table in the corner, a draft beer in one hand and a copy of The Myth of Sisyphus or Being and Nothingness in the other, an unfiltered Camel spinning a vertical skein of smoke in an ashtray beside him. I’d wander over to his table, as if pulled by the centrifugal force of his intellectual intensity, and if my confidence were fortified by enough cheap wine, I’d try to impress him by tossing out a reference to Heidegger (mispronouncing the German philosopher's name in the process). If I weren’t drunk enough, I’d simply sit at an adjacent table and watch my outcast brood.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. – Albert Camus

Brooding. Now we're getting to the hot, steamy core of my obsession. I’ve always been deeply attracted to intensity in men – physical, emotional, intellectual. Nothing turns me on more than a man of conviction, one who’s fully engaged in life. I love guys who not only read and write and contemplate with passion, but who propel those thoughts into action. Camus was active in the French Resistance during WWII. Andre Malraux was also in the Resistance, was passionate about the arts, and served as France’s Minister of Cultural Affairs. These men didn’t simply ponder the human condition, they bit into its troubled heart.

Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act. – Andre Malraux

But before a man’s thoughts explode into action, I wanna watch some brain cells smolder. He can brood about the absurdity of life, about the ultimate isolation of the individual, about the problem of moral responsibility, or about whether his boxer shorts are clean enough to wear on a first date: doesn’t matter to me, as long as he’s deliciously troubled. Just contemplating those pouting lips, that hooded gaze, makes me burn with the desire to tear off his clothes and invade his alienated state. And as he plunges naked into the abyss of being, I want him to plunge straight into my eager, open . . . . uh, library.

To prove that I’ve gained sexual confidence over the years, I’ll post drool-inspiring photos of a few men who are still unattainable to me, but sexily, broodingly alive. Okay, maybe they’re not pondering the question of whether existence precedes essence, but whatever they’re thinking about (probably not my nude body, but one can always dream), they look damn good doing it.

Rufus Sewell, looking gorgeous in black and white
while trying to make rational sense of human experience

Christian Bale, attempting to reconcile the
absurdity of life with his own smoldering hotness

Jake Gyllenhaal, undoubtedly contemplating
the slavery of the human condition

Who are your favorite brooding, troubled hotties?