Ancient and Modern

GEMINI HEAT and GOTHIC HEAT - Portia Da Costa

I'll keep this brief as I had a day on the blog last Friday too. Then I talked about how scary it was to write a sequel ten years on from the original novel... but I don't think that is anywhere near as scary as having my first ever BL reissued on the same day as my most recent one. Eek, it just invites a critical comparison, doesn't it? Is she as good as ever? Or has she lost it and should she be put out to pasture to make way for younger, hipper talents?

Well, I *think* I’ve improved. I’ve learnt a lot in fourteen years, both in terms of writing and life, and with any luck that shows in my stories and my characterisation. Okay, so there was a freshness I had back then that I feel a wistful nostalgia for but fingers crossed, I’ve gained far more with the years than I’ve lost. [I just wish I didn’t have to say the same about my waistline too!]

Will I still be writing in another fourteen years? Gosh, I’d like to hope so... even though I might well be balancing my laptop on my arthritic knees as I sit in my bath chair on the sea front at Eastbourne. Either that or I’ll be scribbling on the back of an envelope as I crouch in a cardboard box under the viaduct because I’ve become a destitute bag lady…

How about you, gentle readers? What have you learnt in the last fourteen years? What do you hope to learn/do in the next fourteen years? Let me know in a comment, and one lucky person will win a copy of both my then and now books!

Love

Portia
Still crazy after all these years...

More about Gemini Heat here

More about Gothic Heat here


Oh, and while we're about it, here's a taste of Gemini Heat... which is about identical twins. Both Deana and Delia fancy Jake de Guile, but Peter, the boy next door, is in love with Deana. When Deana goes out with Jake, it's down to Delia to console Peter...

Confused?

Read on...

'This must seem pretty weird to you,' he went on, pausing to swig down more wine, 'I'm telling you that I'm in love with a woman who looks just like you?'

'Not as weird as you think,' Delia answered taking another sip of her own wine as an unthinkable idea occurred to her.

With the slow, simple rationality of the far from sober, she saw an elegant solution to the sexual dilemmas of both herself and Peter.

'Do you want to make love to her?' she asked bluntly, feeling fire building low in her belly. She could see pictures in her head. Pictures of Deana, her legs wide open, being possessed by dark, ruthless Jake... But no, it wasn't Deana! It was herself. Delia. Her face! Her body! If she closed her eyes she could slip herself into that scene, live it, make it happen. All she needed was a hard, male penis to melt around.

And if she could make an illusion for the man who provided the penis?

Draining her glass yet again, she rose to her feet and walked across the room with infinite care. Pulling off her own tee-shirt, she dropped down onto the sofa next to Peter, and cupped her bare breasts in her hands, offering them to him as if they were a pair of sun-ripened fruits.

'Make love to me, Peter,' she said, her voice faint as she flicked her nipples to make them stiffen and grow hard for him.

'Delia... I don't...'

'It's "Dee",' she corrected him, 'Dee Ferraro. I play games, remember?' The wine made her powerful and she reached for his narrow hand with its square, neatly-trimmed nails and placed it on the peachy-soft slope of her breast.

'Just for tonight, Pete... Please?' It seemed strangely apt to be pleading. She would've grovelled to De Guile, wouldn't she?

'But I know the difference,' replied Peter, his voice cracking. He was protesting but his hand was already moulding her flesh and enjoying it.

'For comfort then... If you can't pretend.'

'Oh Dee,' he sighed, moving in on her, even though she'd no idea whether it was for comfort... or for fantasy's sake after all.

For a moment, she drew back within herself, and looked at the real man with her, not the sex-fiend who'd hijacked her body this morning. Peter wasn't Jake; he wasn't dark, or mysterious, or an insatiable creature of wealth and power. But his smooth, pale body was hard and wiry - and far from unpleasant on the eye.

His thin arms were strong as they pulled her to him and crushed her in a shockingly tight grip. Her nipples and his were pressed against each other, and as his mouth met hers, he moaned into it, shimmying his body against her as if his small brown teats felt all the pleasure that her larger rosy-red ones did.

And his tongue was bold too. Probing and tasting as their wine-scented saliva mingled in a way that pre‑shadowed a far greater blending.

'You're so good to me, Dee,' he murmured, then sucked hard on her tongue as if it were a lollipop, a nipple or a clitoris. Delia moaned, her hips lifting and beating against him with a life that was all of their own. There was a pressure and a heat down there now, a pulsating, tingling discomfort that wasn't really a discomfort at all. The mouth between her legs seemed to whimper and beg and cry out. She was hungry. Hungry for maleness. For flesh. For filling. Perversely, she knew still that Jake de Guile was the one she really wanted in there, but Peter was the man who was here. The man with the available penis. A penis that was hard against her body and pressing towards her sex like a unseeing missile homing in on its target and oblivious to the several layers cloth in its path.

Do You Remember the First Time?

By Mathilde Madden

Black Lace is 15 years old. To celebrate the big wigs at HQ have given us two super dooper goodie bags each containing copies of the two Black Lace novels out this month: a reprint of the first ever Black Lace - Cassandra's Conflict by Fredrica Alleyn and our own Madelynne Ellis's storming Phantasmagoria. Plus numerous other special Black Lace goodies.

What do you have to do to be in with a chance of grabbing the goodies? Simple. Tell me about the first Black Lace book you ever read. And to get you in the mood, I asked a few friends to tell me how they lost their Black Lace virginities.

Let's start with someone who's work is at the forefront of the celebrations. Our own Madelynne Ellis:
"My first brush with Black Lace was back in 1996. I´d been working my way through the local bookstall´s collection of Victorian erotica eg The Pearl, and there were some Black Lace books mixed in amongst it.

The first one I read was Ace of Hearts by Lisette Allen. It´s a Regency set historical featuring rather a lot of fencing and a fight over an inheritance. Its most memorable scene is near the start where the heroine, having come off her horse, is tied to a heavy saddle in the middle of a field by the hero and roughly taken from behind.


I guess it made an impression as I sent off for the Black Lace writing guidelines shortly afterwards.

I´m not going to tell you how many of them I´ve now read. Let just say it´s a lot."

Next up, Anne Tourney:
"There are so many classics I recall, but the two that had the most impact on me creatively -- the novels that opened up a world of possibilities for combining an honest portrayal of sexuality with the exploration of the author's imagination -- were Artistic License, by Vivienne LaFay and Gothic Blue, by Portia Da Costa.

I had been writing erotic short fiction for a few years when I first found the Black Lace series, but it had always been my dream to write erotic novels. Discovering these two books, both written from a thoroughly feminine perspective, with vividly atmospheric settings, compelling plots, and characters I could identify with and care about (oh, and did I forget to mention the hot sex?) was revolutionary to me.

Artistic License is a historical novel about a young woman in Renaissance Italy who poses as a boy so she can fulfill her dream of being an artist.

Gothic Blue, of course, is the erotic classic by our own Portia Da Costa, a story of supernatural machinations in an eerie castle, with a sexual obsession that crosses the boundaries of time. They're both incredible novels which deserve to be in print for years to come."

And here's Teresa Noelle Robert's confession:
"I think the first one I ever read was The Crimson Buccaneer by Cleo Cordell - a historical lavishly laden with flagellation and d/s, which made me forgive some lapses in the history - which I bought at the airport.

I confess I bought it because I was so pleased to see obvious erotica on the shelf, albeit the top shelf where I had to stretch, in an airport bookstore."

When I told Kristina Lloyd (gone but not forgotten) what I was doing - she was keen to add her first time with Odalisque by Fleur Reynolds:
"Odalisque was published in 1994, back when there were only two types of BL books: historicals and posh contemporaries. This is a Posh, steeped in that godawful cold, aspirational, 80s aesthetic. It’s all glamour, wealth, chauffeurs and unpleasant, bossy women. This was so removed from my life I could’ve been reading about aliens.

However, chapter 2 is a wild, gratuitous, 20-page long, MFM and for that I adore it. As far as I can remember, two of the characters don't even appear in the book again but who cares? The scene feels like it’s about to burst out of the pages and reading it felt like hearing from a woman who’d finally been allowed to speak. And she was saying stuff like: ‘If you lie on the desk,’ said Kit to Gerry, ‘this dirty bitch can suck your cock while I’m screwing her arse.’

Fabulous!"

God, Kristina's really changed, hasn't she?

One person we can always rely on for an opinion at Lust Bites is Janine Ashbless. I had to ask her how she popped her BL cherry:
"My first Black Lace was Avalon Nights by Sophie Danson (which was actually originally published by Nexus, as Knights of Pleasure). It was given to me by my friend Chris and it's not an exaggeration to say that it changed my life.

It's a collection of tales told by various Knights of the Round Table, strung together (just about) by a story-arc. Each individual knight has their own kink so there are stories themed around male dom, femdom, lesbianism, big dick romps, BDSM etc - and a very naughty bit involving a horse. I thought it was great - and it inspired me to write down my own fantasy stories and submit them as Cruel Enchantment. And so Janine Ashbless was born...

I've still got the book. It has one of those classy old sepia-tinted covers that I still think are the best Black Lace ever did. And the very first line is "It was a stormy night." Which, frankly, requires balls of brass to get away with!"

And for some final recommendations from the early days, I tracked down AWOL Lustie, Alison Tyler:
"15 years. It’s a long time. It’s as long as I’ve been professionally writing porn. Which is why I can’t remember what my first Black Lace book was. I mean, I have read so many of them, dog-eared the pages, rumpled the covers, dropped them into the bubble bath. But thinking back, my virgin Virgin title was probably Kerri Sharp’s collection of women’s fantasies, which I remember adoring and passing onto a friend, and then having to buy again.

Much better, I remember my last Black Lace read—Mathilde Madden’s intense and amazing The Silver Collar—which I also adored and lent to a friend and had to buy again.

You’d think after 15 years, I would have learned something, if only this: never lend your favorite porn. Happy Birthday, Black Lace!"

Ah, you wouldn't believe how much it cost me to get her to say that. Our much-missed trollop might look cheap, but she drives a hard bargain.

So tell me about your first time. How was it?

Mat x