Showing posts with label fairytale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fairytale. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Enchanted in the US

by Olivia Knight

Enchanted coverOnce upon a time, far far away... I first saw the bear as it came down the aisle between Travel and Biography... Everyone wanted to explain the love between Pearl and Thomas... There has been no sleep on the journey...

Enchanted, Black Lace's collection of three erotic fairy tales, is at now available in the United States. If, back in August, you were salivating, coveting, and cussing the Brits, it's your turn for the sexy happy-ever-after.

Enchanted includes...
Bear Skin by Janine Ashbless
The Three Riddles by Olivia Knight
The People in the Garden by Leonie Martell

A quick reminder of the tidbits and tasters we dangled before you...


Fairytale Feminists: the story behind Enchanted ~ by Olivia Knight ~ Friday 1 August 2008

Blog picture: dark castle turrets against a massive moon

When fairy tales were still sexist misogynist Barbie-Cinderalla bollocks, a host of feminist writers opened the floodgates for us to create the intense, mythic, and very sexy fairy tales of contempory Black Lace. A quick skip through the history of fairytales paves the way for the erotic fairytale collection, Enchanted.


Introducing... The Three Riddles by Olivia Knight ~ Monday 4 August 2008

Blog picture: dark castle turrets against a massive moon

The premise for The Three Riddles, the erotic fairytale novella in Enchanted, emerged from a flash of fruitless intuition and the tale of a button. Sometimes the smallest things can change the course of the world, as the elves well know. Unfortunately, they communicate in riddles - so how well would you do at deciphering them? With a sexy excerpt on Olivia's website.


Introducing... Bear Skin by Janine Ashbless ~ Friday 8 August 2008

Blog picture: haunting delicate picture of a girl riding a bear

Bear Skin is a retelling of the Norwegian folk-story East of the Sun, West of the Moon. This is a very old story (it has its roots in the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche) and it attracted me because it’s a story of a woman going on a quest. I decided to set it in modern-day Britain … which was fun, since it’s about a girl who marries a bear. Yes, a bear. How could I resist a premise that kinky? And how could I get it past the Black Lace editors? With a sexy excerpt and another on Janine's blog.



If you're whimpering and wishing all over again, leap over to Amazon.com and make a wish.



Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Wildwood - out this week

by Janine Ashbless

My new Black Lace novel Wildwood is out in the UK this Thursday! It’s a contemporary paranormal about rival ritual magicians, the English countryside, scary fairies, a love-triangle and of course SEX. Lots of that. And by the end, well, I haven’t brought human civilisation to crashing ruin but let’s just say it’s not far off.

So here I am to tell you a bit about this novel in the hope you’ll rush out and buy it … Or at the very least enter the draw below to win a copy.





Personal Background to writing Wildwood:

This isn’t something I’ve talked about online before, but about 15 years back I went through a fairly serious bout of depression ("Fairly serious" as in, I didn’t actually end up dead). This is far from uncommon – especially, I suspect, among creative types. Luckily I had a doctor who told me to change my life and a partner who supported me in doing so. I quit my well-paid job and swore I’d never work in an office again.

As I recovered I decided I needed to work outdoors, so I got into practical conservation volunteering, attained my chainsaw certification, and finally launched into a 3-year diploma course in Amenity Forestry – looking after trees in parks, gardens and cities.

This was just a little weird because I was the oldest person on the course, the only female and the only one with any sort of prior college background. I had to keep up with a bunch of 18-year old lads putting up fences, climbing ropes, and cutting down trees. Oh, and swearing. Boy did my spoken language suffer! I learned a lot about what I could make myself do in the face of fear and exhaustion, if I was determined. And I came out at the end with the "best on the course" prize and a serious need to stop using the word "fuck" as punctuation.

Did I end up with a long-term career in woodland conservation like I planned? Did I hell. Those jobs are rare as hens’ teeth. I moved into museum work and then finally became a writer, where at last I feel at home.

But when it came to writing Wildwood I could draw on my knowledge and love for trees, and I could write the character of Avril – individualistic, determined, aware she stands out like a sore thumb - and quite possibly Black Lace’s only chainsaw-wielding romantic heroine. Of course she’s taller, stronger, cuter, tougher and less geeky than me, but that’s what fantasy fiction is about!

"You crave respect, Avril, but at the same time you want to be the most monumental slut." – Michael Deverick

The Plot:

Avril Shearing is a landscape gardener and arborist brought in to restore an overgrown country estate for the handsome and manipulative Michael Deverick. He seems very keen on her exploring a particular patch of ancient woodland for him.

But inside the wood lurks a tribe of environment activists led by the enigmatic Ash, who regards Michael as a mortal enemy. Avril soon discovers that there is more going on than meets the eye. Creatures that belong in dreams or nightmares emerge after dark to prowl the estate grounds, and hidden in the heart of the wood is something that Michael wants at any cost and Ash is determined to keep him away from. The two men are ritual magicians locked in a deadly battle for the Wildwood, and as Avril is drawn into their fight it becomes a battle for Avril herself.

And she wants them both. She disapproves of Michael but is drawn into his mindgames and can’t resist his sexual hunger despite her better judgement. She really likes Ash but he keep pushing her away and sends the most incredibly mixed messages – at one moment they are in each other’s arms but the next he treats her as an enemy.

How far will Michael go to get his way? Which man will she choose? And what lies in the heart of the Wildwood that is so important – to everyone?




The Men of The Wildwood

This is my photo-model for Michael Deverick – a wealthy stockmarket trader and 200-year-old magus. He believes in a world without rules. Vain, clever, manipulative and absolutely ruthless, he makes it his mission to push Avril’s boundaries, whatever they are. If there’s something she doesn’t want to do, he is determined to change her mind.

Good points: generous, sexually inventive, GSOH.

Bad points: he kills people who get in his way.

Michael in Action:

But when he arrived on my doorstep an hour later there was a woman with him. At least, it looked like a woman at first.

‘Who’s this?’ I demanded.

Michael leaned casually against the door so that she could slip past me. She was short – only up to my shoulder – and slight, with long black hair that looked like it had just come out of a swimming pool. ‘This is … Jenny. You can call her that.’ He stalked into the hallway. ‘I found her by the pond.’

‘What are you playing at?’ I was wearing only a light silk dressing-gown, which I wrapped around me self-consciously as I followed them back into the house. ‘Did you hear a single bloody word I said?’

‘Oh, I heard.’ Michael stood in the middle of my living room floor. Jenny had climbed onto one end of the sofa and was watching us from under hooded lids. She was wearing a dark green slip dress that seemed to be wringing wet even though I was certain it wasn’t raining out there. ‘You are extremely clear about the things you want. You’d like nice, fun, discreet sex with someone you like, who’ll treat you with respect and never ever interfere with the rest of your life. Am I right?’

My jaw sagged. ‘So why do you go out of your way to do just the opposite?’

Michael gave an infuriating smirk. ‘Do I?’

‘You know you do.’

‘And do you enjoy that bad sex with me?’

‘I hate it.’ My voice didn’t carry much conviction.

‘So much that you can’t wait for the next time. So much that you’d get on your hands and knees and beg for it if I told you to. You’re wet right now, and all I’ve done is walk into the house.’ He walked around me, hands in his pockets, and I couldn’t refute him. ‘What does that tell you about what you really want, Avril? What does that tell you about your rules?’

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t look him in the eye.

‘The barriers are all in your mind, Avril. You don’t need to fear what’s on the other side. All I’m doing is helping you break out.’

‘Right. They used to have a word for that.’

‘Liberation?’

‘Corruption.’



This is Ash, the tattooed "ginger Rasta" who is camped out in the Wildwood, trying to defend its secret from Michael. He’s a ritual magician too, and a lot older than he looks, and very conflicted. Not unnaturally he suspects that Avril is a tool of his enemy, being used against him magically, so despite being desperately attracted to her he can’t trust her. On the other hand, she is his only hope to defeat Michael so he has to persuade her to his side...

Good points: he’s trying to save the world, even if it kills him.

Bad points: a bit self-righteous

Ash in Action:

It didn’t deter him from his mission of taking me back to my cottage. He didn’t ask permission this time to enter, either, steering me right through to the bathroom. My blood leaped hopefully as he reached over and turned on the shower. ‘You’ve got to wash, Avril.’

‘Join me?’ I suggested, easing off my shoes.

Ash smiled and shook his head. ‘Come on.’

I stuck my lower lip out and backed up against the door-frame, refusing to oblige. I wanted to feel his hands on me and his skin against mine; there was an ache like hunger in my belly. ‘Make me,’ I said with a quick grin.

With a sigh, Ash began to slip the shirt buttons down my breastbone. I didn’t resist. I bit my lip and watched his face, fascinated, as he undressed me. He was acting like a responsible bloke looking after a very drunk female friend, all detached self-deprecating concern. I liked that, in a strange way. I liked the gentleness of his hands too, and the way he took his time. I liked the way he had to keep reminding himself to look away from my breasts as he slid the shirt off my shoulders and undid the webbing belt cinched at my waist. I liked the line of his lips and the fall of his hair against his cheek and the glint of the rings in the red-gold of his eyebrow. I wanted so much to touch him. But I didn’t dare, not after the mess I’d made of things last time.

Out of nowhere, tears welled up in my eyes. Christ; I am drunk, I thought in amazement.

The bathroom was starting to fill with steam.

Softly he let the trousers slip down from my hips and pool on my feet. There I was standing against the doorframe, naked but for my wine-red knickers, yet it was the desire in my expression that was the most shamelessly naked thing about me. His fingertips brushed my hip and he caught his breath. As he lifted his eyes to mine I saw my longing mirrored there, its edge as keen and cruel as my own.

‘Avril.’ The word was inaudible; I saw only the movement of his lips.

Oh God - I was on the verge of begging, and I mustn’t do that. ‘I dream about you,’ I told him, and something flickered in the depths of his eyes.

‘Do you?’

‘Do dreams matter?’

‘They can do. Depends what you dream.’

‘I dream we’re in the wood. It’s always the wood. Why’s that?’





So that’s Wildwood. It seems to have taken forever to have got to the shops, but I’m so proud to see it finally born! I’ll be running a longer, hotter excerpt in our August Smutslot on the 29th, but if you can’t wait there is an rather rude excerpt (featuring more of Jenny-from-the-pond) here in my blog archive. Or you could always buy the book…

Buy on Amazon UK : Pre-order on Amazon US

If you read and like it, please do me a favour and post an Amazon review!

Competition! I have one copy of Wildwood to give away this week. Just drop a comment on this post telling me which is your favourite tree and by the weekend I’ll pick a random winner.

xxx
Janine

Blog : Website

Monday, August 4, 2008

Enchanted ~ The Three Riddles

by Olivia Knight

Enchanted coverEnchanted is the final collection in Black Lace's novella books before we return (for a while) to short stories. Lust Bites was vampires, Possession was shape-shifting and invading spirits, Magic and Desire was fantasy, and Enchanted is fairy tales: be careful what you wish for...

The origins
Last Friday, in Fairytale feminists, I whisked through the origins of fairy tales and prostrated myself before the three wise women who opened the floodgates for us. The origins of my novella, The Three Riddles, are about as multitudinous, but two of the snippets that shaped the premise are...

On a languid, lazy day, I passed one of Oxford's most charming narrow roads and had an impulse to turn down it. It was barely a detour, but not my usual route, so I kept walking - then stopped. What was I doing, ignoring this impulse? Silencing the voice of my intuition? I turned back and strolled down it. Halfway down, a stone cottage bursting with lavendar and wisteria had a 'For Sale' sign outside. I stared. I yearned. I envied. I whipped out my phone, dialled the number on the sign, spoke to the estage agent, and...
Stone cottage with wisteria
...discovered I could sell all my internal organs on the black market and still not be able to afford it. Following the delicate promptions of intuition does not, in the real world, work especially well. But in the imaginary worlds I inhabit most of the day, it could - and should.

The other snippet was a game I played with my students when I used to teach - the third conditional negatives game: "If that hadn't happened, that wouldn't have happened..." We usually use that for regrets, but it's more fun to play with something wonderful in your life. Pick something you're thrilled about. Why did it happen? And what did that thing depend on? And what did that depend on...? How far does it go back and what tiny, insignificant thing does it all rest on? A purely ficticious example:

If I hadn't gone to his house, I wouldn't have met him.
If I hadn't been with my friend, I wouldn't have gone to his house.
If I hadn't lived in that shared house, I wouldn't have been with my friend.
If I hadn't bumped into an old friend, I wouldn't have lived in that shared house.
If I hadn't caught the bus, I wouldn't have bumped into that old friend.
If I hadn't been late sewing on that button, I wouldn't have caught the bus.
If the button hadn't broken off, I wouldn't have been late sewing it on.

button and threadIn short: If a button hadn't broken off, I would never have met him.

How would you know not to fix the loose button? In fantasy, a character might have magical abilities to feel their way through the interconnected threads of causality - in fairy tales, things are plainer and more tangible. You know because the elves tell you. And thus The Three Riddles was born:

The blurb
The elves, they say, know the secrets of events. How you tie your scarf can change the world. The elves, they say, are the guardians of fate, and so the people obey a dozen different whims a day, most of which make no apparent difference. If the elves really wanted to guide the country, thinks the queen, they might have an occasional word with its ruler.

She has envoys to appease, war brewing between Cantaland and Udia, trade negotiations with Tarpash, and no time for superstitions – so she deserts her childhood love, Sir Thomas of Minotha, for a diplomatic engagement with a foreign duke. Now the alliance between Kwestria and Minotha is failing, their enemies are gathering, the people are suffering, and Sir Thomas has vanished. She wants to believe she should find her lost love, but how can a queen risk her country on a whim?


The elves communicate in riddles, which the queen must learn to interpret and follow if she's going to right the wreck she makes of things. The three riddles in the story are below, for you to decipher.

Whoever writes the most accurate - or entertaining! - explanation of any of the three riddles will win a copy of Magic and Desire, which also features both me and Janine Ashbless. There's an excerpt on my website which will help with the first riddle...

The Three Riddles

The first riddle

Medieval manuscript in gold, white, green and blue
May the gold & the white, the green & the blue,
Receive in their bed a new lease.

May the union seal forever the two
In loyalty, conquest and peace.

May she always be vain of the colours of home
Before she is vain of her own.

May he always forgive and his pride never roam
In anger, away and alone.

Of course, they dismiss superstition, things go awry, and the elves are forced to supply a second riddle.

Tangled path
Return to the path you lost.
Give up what you love and seek
Alone and before the frost.

Then look for the craftsman swift,
Protect the defenceless weak,
And honour the humble gift.

If all you can find’s a dearth
Of hope and the sky turns bleak,
Then follow the tangled path.


The elves, understandably, are starting to get pissed off. The final riddle becomes more curt:

Sunset
You will follow the path of the setting sun

To the eye where the waters will never run,

To your grief succumbing, protecting none.


Don't forget: you can find an excerpt on my website; write your explanation of any of the three riddles to win a copy of Magic and Desire.

:: buy Enchanted from Amazon.co.uk :: pre-order from Amazon.com ::

Friday, August 1, 2008

Fairytale feminists

by Olivia Knight

Tale as old as time
Song as old as rhyme
Beauty and the Beast
Theme song to Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’


For the very end of myths is to immobilise the world: they must suggest and mimic a universal order…
Roland Barthes, “Myth Today”


Next week introduces Enchanted, the novella collection of erotic fairytales – not a combination that startles us now, but a handful of decades ago, fairytales looked exclusively like this.

Collage of Disney heroines being carried, dancing, and being kissed, all with wasp-waists and happy smiles, and Snow White delivering a pie

Before Black Lace could blithely commission, or we blithely write, erotic fairytales, a lot of work needed to be done on them. Fairytales have always gone through a lot of work, though. Here’s the nutshell version: peasant makes good, joins the aristocracy, happily ever after, gets decadent. And in a slightly larger shell – an oyster, perhaps…

Illustration from Perraults Cinderella showing courtly life around the trying on of the shoeFairytales began life as good ol’ oral tradition – oh, the honest wisdom of the humble peasant! – and so were largely about humble peasants ceasing to be either humble or peasants. They broke the class barrier in the 16th and 17th centuries, when they became the pet of the French aristocracy and in particular of Charles Perrault, Mme D’Aulnoy, and Mlle L’Hériter – so if you wondered why the castles of the Loire look so fairytalish, it’s art copying life; sorry. Masculine chivalry and feminine charm ruled (and in Disney still do) and the importance of honest peasants remaining honest peasants was underlined.

The girl in the little red shoesWhen the French aristocracy were slaughtered en masse by their honest peasants, the fairytale – like so many of the aristocrats – fled to neighbouring countries, and took refuge amongst the bourgeoisie - in particular, the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and William Makepeace. It abandoned its dangerous courtly fripperies in favour of more earnest virtues, such as the domestication of women and subjugation of the working class, the sanctity of the patriarchy and family loyalty, good manners, justice, the Protestant work ethic, and the horror of red shoes.

But as the bourgeoisie veered towards capitalism, so did its fairytales – peasant-hero-makes-good returned (otherwise known as the American dream), romance ended happily-ever-after with wodges of hard cash and a great big dress, and at last, the fairy tale prostrated itself before the feet of Walt Disney and gave itself up wholly to this fresh, innocent, and charming form of family entertainment. And that’s where we got it.

You’re the girl in white or you’re the witch. If you look in the room, you’ll die like the others. Step off the path and you deserve to be eaten. Work hard; sob in the kitchen; have tiny feet: your prince will come. And we can laugh at this because of many extraordinary women, but in particular…

Cover: The Bloody ChamberAngela Carter is the unchallenged fairytale queen. The Bloody Chamber, ten inimicably rewritten fairytales, was published in 1979 and feminist criticism wet itself. Ellen Cronan Rose smashed the champagne on the boat that would float Angela Carter into PhD theses with wild enthusiasm: complete reclamation of fairytales for women! Yeeee-haaar! Then the arguments started. Patricia Duncker turned to Andrea Dworkin (of all-pornography-is-rape fame) and called it pornography. Being accused of pornography, in the early eighties of feminism, was like being accused of witchcraft in the fifteenth century. Llewallen agreed; Flora Alexander vacillated; Robin Ann Sheets suggested it was moral pornography, and the terms were set: was it pornography? Was that okay? Was Carter a traitor?

Carter was a goddamned heroine. She didn’t toe the feminist line as neatly as some wished, making all women glow and all men suitably humble; she skipped three steps ahead. And here, for the record, are my favourites of her naughty bits – of which she would thoroughly approve – and partly thanks to her, we don’t have to fret about whether all this is okay or not: she dunnit already.

In the cold, white cliff-top rooms of the castle, surrounded by mirrors, Bluebeard’s bride is finally taken:

Choker necklace
He made me put on my choker, the family heirloom of one woman who had escaped the blade … It was cold as ice and chilled me. He twined my hair into a rope and lifted it off my shoulders so that he could better kiss the downy furrows below my ears; that made me shudder. And he kissed those blazing rubies, too. He kissed them before he kissed my mouth. Rapt, he intoned, “Of her apparel she retains / Only her sonorous jewellery.”
A dozen husbands imapled a dozen brides while the mewing gulls swung on invisible trapezes in the empty air outside.


In The Tiger’s Bride, a version of the Beauty and the Beast, the beauty sends an automaton back home to her father and enters the beast’s room…

Tiger licking his shoulder
He dragged himself closer and closer to me, until I felt the harsh velvet of his head against my hand, then a tongue, abrasive as sandpaper. “He will lick the skin off me!”
And each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shiny hairs. My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.


The Erl-King lives in the autumnal forest and has birds in a cage, which perhaps she should have thought about more carefully before…

Cover detail from Burning Your Boats - rich reds
Cover detail from Burning Your Boats - rich reds
Cover detail from Burning Your Boats - rich reds

I lie down on the Erl-King’s creaking palliasse of straw. His skin is the tint and texture of sour cream, he has stiff, russet nipples ripe as berries. Like a tree that bears blossom and fruit on the same bough together, how pleasing, how lovely.
And now – ach! I feel your sharp teeth in the subacqueous depths of your kisses. The equinotical gales seize the bare elms and make them whizz and whirl like dervishes; you sink your teeth into my throat and make me scream.
…If I strung that old fiddle with your hair, we could waltz together to the music as the exhausted daylight founders among the trees, we should have better music than the shrill prothalamions of the larks stacked in their pretty cages as the roof creaks with the freight of birds you’ve lured to it while we engage in your profound mysteries under the leaves.
He strips me to my last nakedness, that underskin of mauve, pearlised satin, like a skinned rabbit; then dresses me again in an embrace so lucid and encompassing it might be made of water. And shakes over me dead leaves as if into the stream I have become.
Sometimes the birds, at random, all singing, strike a chord.
…The candle flutters and goes out. His touch both consoles and devastates me; I feel my heart pulse, then wither, naked as a stone on the roaring mattress while the lovely, moony night slides through the window to dapple the flanks of this innocent who makes cages to keep the sweet birds in. Eat me, drink me; thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden, I go back and back to him to have his fingers strip the tattered skin away and clothe me in his dress of water, this garment that drenches me, its slithering odour, its capacity for drowning.


Cover: The Djinn in the Nightingale's EyeA.S. Byatt is another trailmaker – far less contentious, possibly because her symbolism is well nigh indecipherable at times. Her fairytales don’t have that usual narrative shape, the sigh-yes-I’ll-sleep-now feeling, BUT – big but – they’re exquisite, she is the most fearlessly and unashamedly intelligent writer I have ever encountered, and she has the best-ever description of men’s bits-and-bobs in The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye. The djinn has just escaped the bottle to fill the middle-aged lecturer’s hotel room…

He seemed to be wearing a green silk tunic, not too clean, and not long enough, for she could see the complex heap of his private parts in the very centre of her rosy bed.

She asked him to make himself a more manageable size, and…

He did so, not all at once, so that for a moment the now only slightly larger-than-life being was almost hidden behind the mound of his private parts, which he then shrank and tucked away. It was almost a form of boasting.

Cover: BeautyFinally, Sheri S Tepper, whose fantasy book Beauty interlinks dozens of fairytales as the truth behind the tales: did you ever suspect Cinderella was a thoughtless brat? Well, how about her mother’s take on the story, masquerading as a godmother? So already, we don’t need to defend Cinderella as the subjugated woman but we can say, quite honestly, anyone who cares that much about shoes, princes, and balls has some long hard thinking to do. The only properly erotic scene in Beauty is between a couple who have known and narrowly missed each other since they were fifteen, and are now in their dotage, by the standards of the 14th century…

And Giles and I lay in the grass below the terrace, hidden beneath my cloak.
“Beauty,” he sighed, and I did not correct him. I was. He was. We were. Our bodies moved and touched and held one another, with nothing between us. We grasped at stars once, twice, three times, falling exhausted at last into the warmth of our nest. My kirtle was somewhere in the grass. My underdress was around my neck. Giles wore only his shirt. Our secret flesh was still wet and entangled, one with another’s.

At the end of all of which, Olivia Knight, Janine Ashbless, and Leonie Martell get to start fairy tales with the hero and heroine in bed, have Beauty and the Beast shudder and clench together in the dark, and throw spanking into a tale of witchcraft and sorcery. Our heroines have jobs, swords, and sex, their happily-ever-after doesn't come in the form of a white meringue dress, and all the issues we would have had to tangle with have been ironed out or stamped out already. But for more on that, you'll have to read our posts about Enchanted...

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Genesis of a Fairy Story...

ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT by Portia Da Costa [in Magic and Desire]



The inspiration for ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT germinated long, long ago as the idea for a vampire story that I was considering writing for a different publisher, not Black Lace. I'd never written a novella before, but I was intrigued by the idea of creating a shorter piece, something very tight and driven by a very simple and intimate storyline, yet shot through with the magic of the paranormal. I'd first flirted supernatural erotica back in 1996, with GOTHIC BLUE, but since then I hadn't written any more paranormals.

I first 'saw' the idea for ILL MET... while watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I can't remember which one, but in it, Spike is crouched on the top of a high wall or gatepost, then he leaps off it, descending almost in slow motion, his fabulous black coat billowing around him like the wings of a great dark bird until he touches down on the ground, as lightly as a feather. When I saw that incredible move, I just knew I had to write a story in which the hero did the same thing...

I didn't write the story straight away, as other ideas and commissions came along, but I still kept thinking about that image from time to time, and drawing together bits and pieces of plot and characterisation to flesh it out.

Eventually the call came for the Black Lace paranormal erotic romance collections, and it seemed the time had come to write my 'black coat' story. However, I'd moved on from crushing on James Marsters to crushing on Vincent D'Onofrio, so the mysterious dark clad figure who leapt down from a high vantage point had morphed quite a bit. Not least of all, I'd decided to make him a fairy rather than a vampire... a big, butch, muscular and very masculine fairy with a naughty and very powerful magic wand inside his black denim jeans!

And thus, Robin was born. A creature of energy and magic power who, every year during May, is able to assume human form and experience all its myriad physical sensations and pleasures, as well as taste the joys and the anguish of our complex emotions. Year after year, he indulges his curiosity, but then during one Maytime, Lois, a lone young woman comes to stay in a holiday cabin on the edge of the fairy wood, and Robin himself becomes enchanted, and compelled to take steps that he's never taken before...

In this very short, not particularly explicit excerpt, Lois has just woken up from a vivid erotic dream, induced by Robin, and she wonders why on earth there's dust [of the fairy variety] all over everything... and why she can still smell the intoxicating odour of the lover she's just been dreaming about. At the same time, Robin, the unusual and curious fairy and part time human, muses on his temporary condition and how it feels to experience tangible physical sensations and the wild, confusing emotions of lust and passion...


Why the hell is this stupid place suddenly covered in dust? It wasn't here earlier… Where is it all coming from?

The cabin had been impressively spick and span when she'd arrived but now, a delicate veil of dust lay over most of the surfaces and drifted across the floor. There were even whorls of scattered over the bed and on the pillows, with several strange heaps against the head and the foot rails.

What the f…

She shivered. She sniffed the air. And then tentatively, almost reluctantly, she slipped a hand down into her knickers and touched her wetness.

Of which there was a lot. Far more than there ought to have been from simply playing with herself.

But it wasn't the quantity that bothered her, it was the way it smelt.

As she withdrew her fingers, a familiar odour made her head spin.

Lavender… It was lavender… Why does my crotch smell of lavender?

Pulling the quilt over her head, she tried hard not to think.


In human form, Robin crouched on the woodshed roof and tasted the flutters of fear in Lois's mind.

No, this was not what he wanted. Not at all… He'd wanted to give her pleasure, not scare the living daylights out of her. Savouring the physical sensations of sighing, he sent out his mind, and touched hers again, filling it with soothing waves of peace that granted sleep.

There, that was better. Unable to resist the temptation, he disassociated and floated through the roof of the cabin so he could be close to the new object of his attentions.

Touching down, he re-associated, and stood by the bed, just looking at her. Not that there was much to see with human eyes. She was curled up beneath the thick quilt like a hibernating dormouse, and only a few tufts of her tousled blonde hair were protruding from the top of it.
There was much to be said for being what he was though. If she woke up now, and emerged from her hiding place, she would see a man… but what she couldn't perceive were the powers he still retained.

He could see through the quilt to the pretty face, and even prettier body that lay beneath.


She was delightful and complex and Robin liked that. Connecting with her gave him everything that was delicious about assuming human form. Every year in the month of May, when the transformation was possible, he tasted and interacted with humans, feasting indulgently on their complicated and sometimes turbulent feelings. His own kind had emotions, true, but they were mild, bland and somewhat basic. Contentment… Satisfaction… A kind of wistful regret, occasionally… The only emotion that had really stirred him while he was in his true form was curiosity. And in that, he knew he was unusual amongst his breed.

And one of the very few to pursue the ancient privileges of merry May…

But look where it had got him!

He was addicted now, perhaps polluted somehow. Even while discarnate, he was gripped by powerful yearnings. Feelings had filtered through by osmosis into the whole of his existence… and he only felt truly alive when he was 'human'… or as near as to that condition as he could approximate.

And tonight, with beautiful Lois, he'd almost believed for a moment that he was a man.


Read more about Robin the macho fairy in much naughtier excepts here and here.

Magic and Desire is available from Amazon.co.uk now, and from Amazon.com in July.

Leave a comment and you could be the lucky person who wins today's copy of MAGIC AND DESIRE. :)

Happy Reading!

Portia Da Costa
So fond of big, macho fairies...


Saturday, May 5, 2007

Fairy Tale Winner


by Janine Ashbless

I've rolled my dice and the winner of the Friday Hairy - oops, Fairy Tale Competition is....



Rachel

Congratulations Rachel! - You win a signed copy of Cruel Enchantment and I wish you many happy hours of reading.

All you need to do is e-mail us at
lustbitesblog at yahoo dot com with your terrestrial address and I'll get the mail goblins to bring it to you.

"If we shadows have offended
Think but this and all is mended;
Time that here from you hath fled
Would just've been wasted on YouTube instead."

What d'you think, by the way? Too hairy?

xxx
Janine Ashbless

Saturday, April 28, 2007

A Friday Fairy Tale

by Janine Ashbless


I’ve got fairies on the brain right now and there’s only one way to deal with it: share it with you. My first Black Lace book, Cruel Enchantment, was a collection of "unique and breathtakingly beautiful" erotic fairy and fantasy stories, so I did consider offering you an excerpt from one of those. Then I thought No: if you haven’t read it already, why not offer you a chance to win a copy? Drop a comment in to this post and I’ll pick a winner at random, sometime soon. After all, unpredictability is a Fay trait.

The fairy story I did choose to excerpt for you was actually published in More Wicked Words. I called it
My Gentle Puck, Come Hither (which should tell you who and what "Robin" is) but it was published as Midsummer Madness
.

So here it is: a visit from the Smut Fairy:

Mel is on the night train to Manchester Airport. It’s Midsummer Eve, and she’s been Seeing Things on the station platform, the trackside and, now, in the carriage with her…


******

Mel’s heart thudded. Her reflection gaped at her in the glass. On the far side of the train something dark and inhuman crouched on a seat. She turned.

The man sitting across the aisle was smiling at her. He probably wasn’t Indian as she’d first surmised, not unless he’d escaped entire from a particularly melodramatic Bollywood musical. He looked in fact more like the pirate king from some operetta. Dark hair in unkempt curls, jawline beard, lithe muscularity. Even the insouciant grin was just right. But he was barefoot, obviously so because one was planted up on the table in front of him. He wore a long-sleeved white T-shirt that clung like a second skin and black leggings that were – if possible – even tighter. He looked like nothing so much as an actor resting between scenes in a play.

‘Melanie,’ he said. Beneath the arched black brows his eyes weren’t dark at all: they were a wild, pale hazel. Yellow, she would have said, if that had been possible.

‘Go away,’ she whispered.

He tutted. ‘That’s not much of a welcome. Not what I call friendly. I was hoping for something warmer.’ His accent held a hint of the rustic.

‘I’ll call for the conductor.’

He shook his head gently. ‘I don’t think that would help.’ By way of demonstration he unfurled himself from the seat, leaned over the table to the woman reading in the far corner and opened his mouth over hers, his tongue entering with swift and practised ease. Withdrawing after a moment’s avid exploration, he reseated himself. The woman didn’t react. She wasn’t ignoring him from shock or fear; she simply seemed unaware of his existence. She turned a page and settled further into her novel. The man smirked.

Mel felt her heart hit the pit of her stomach. ‘I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing,’ she said, ‘but you’ll have to-’

‘Really? I’m sure you do. You’ve got a degree in English Lit.’

‘How the hell did you know that?’

His grin was complacent. ‘You can call me Robin if you like.’

‘If I like?’

‘If it makes you feel better to have a name.’

‘Oh hell,’ she groaned. Her head was spinning. ‘Shouldn’t you have wings?’

He raised his eyebrows and stretched out more comfortably, the black leggings straining over his sculpted muscles and the prominent bulge of his crotch. He seemed to have a talent for lolling stylishly, even in the confines of a standard-class train seat. ‘I can have a pink bloody tutu if you want,’ he said. ‘But I thought you might prefer this.’

Mel remembered too well the reflection in the window. ‘This isn’t your real shape, is it?’ she said, playing for time until she could think straight.

Robin’s grin broadened, became pure evil. ‘No. No, of course it isn’t. Don’t you like this one? There was such a naked threat in his words that Mel’s throat, already dry, almost closed up.

‘It’s fine,’ she grated. ‘Please leave me alone.’

Laughing, he shook his head. His laugh was dark and soft like soot. ‘You don’t want me to go, Melanie. You’re lonely and you’re bored, just like me. I saw that in Leeds station. Come on, Melanie. Don’t waste time. You want your pot stirring before it burns.’

Mel went pink, though she hated it when that happened. It showed up on her pale skin like a signal of weakness. ‘I do not!’ she protested.

Robin pulled a face and rolled in his seat until he was sprawling out over the aisle, long arms and legs spread extravagantly. ‘Melanie, how long is it since you had a hot cock in you? Don’t torture me. It’s Midsummer! I’ve got such a length on me that I could roger a cow-elephant. In fact I might, later. I’m so hard you could run a flag up my pole and salute it.’ He hefted the bulge in his leggings, grimacing.

Mel, awash with shock, couldn't help looking over at her fellow passenger, but the woman with the book seemed not to have heard a word.

‘Pity me, Melanie. I’ve been over all over the city tonight, trying to get a good hard grind. I slipped into the Lady Mayor’s bedroom at midnight to give her one in the fat behind while she grunted into her silk pillowslips. I’ve humped no less than eight lucky jenny-cats on the rooftops. I’ve done the business in every club and bar in town, pumping in the sweat and press of the dancefloor until my ears rang. I’ve even given the statue of Britannia in the civic square a faceful that she wasn’t expecting. And while I was waiting in the station I put the night cleaner face-down over her shiny sinks and slipped her a length she hadn’t felt the equal of since she was a girl in Jamaica. Melanie – it’s not as if you’ve got anything better to do on a boring train journey. I’m desperate here. My balls are going to explode.’

Her cheeks were blazing. ‘You’re disgusting.’

‘Isn’t that what you need? A good, hard, filthy fuck? How long since you’ve had that? Or you can sit on my face and dance for me. I could get down between those pale thighs and lick your pretty clit till I drowned, my sweet maid. I could reach parts of you that never felt a tongue before. I’ll get my prick so far up your slippery crack that it’ll be banging on your heart. You’ll love it, I promise. You’ll beg me for more.’

His eyes were lambent and fierce; for all his grinning and banter he was in deadly earnest.

‘Don’t,’ said Mel hoarsely. ‘I’m not the one you want.’

In an instant he was out of his chair and crouching on her table. She shrank into her seat, trying not to see his hard body straining against the thin cotton of his clothes, or the strong tanned hands raised toward her. Above all, trying not to see his hot eyes and hungry mouth.

‘You are the one I want. Haven’t you been listening to a word I said?’ His touch was soft on her hair. ‘You can see me, Melanie: it’s a rare trick and it won’t last forever.’ Both hands met at the top of her blouse and he slipped the first button. ‘You can feel me when I touch you. You can shiver under my hands. You can writhe in my arms and rock your hips against me. I want you all right, my little peaseblossom. And I know you want me. You’re aching for it.’

He laid open her thin white blouse and surveyed the breasts revealed. Fat tits, she'd always thought of them, unremarkable in their plain M&S bra. But as he slipped his hands around them they seemed to flare with inner heat.

‘Sweet little birds,’ he murmured. He pressed them together to make a deep soft valley. She laid her hands on his to prise them off, but his wrists were like iron. The warmth seemed to be running along her veins into her arms and belly, making her weak. ‘Oh yes, he said, and planted a hot kiss on the upper curve of each breast.



******

Want to win a copy of the "peerless and bestselling"Cruel Enchantment (with the original, impossible-to-buy, Goth-succubus cover)? Post a comment!

Want MORE fairies and
dirtier
smut? I’ve posted a sneaky preview from my current novel-in-progress, Wildwood, on my blog.

xxx
Janine "Fairy Snuff" Ashbless.

www.janineashbless.com

Friday, April 20, 2007

And so they lived happily ever after.

All this time you were pretending,
So much for my happy ending…

One of my erotica stories actually ends with the words ‘they lived happily ever after’. It’s a fairy tale, so it has to. All my ‘erotica’ ends well, whereas my other writing tends to end in death, desolation, mourning, tragedy, and bleak bitter triumph – but my other writing is also erotic, just not categorised as such. With erotica sliding increasingly towards erotic romance, the Happily Ever After question raises its dewy-eyed head with some peculiarly specific problems.

In straight romance, the final resolution is when they get together, kiss / shag / marry / confess their undying love, and that’s about as Happily Ever After as we need. The plot challenge for the writer is inevitably how to keep the characters apart until this joyous union, while raising the sexual tension. In erotica, that’s more problematic. How do you keep your characters away from a romantic resolution until the end of the book while filling said book with swathes of horny sex? One trope is misunderstandings, but I’m impatient with that. If two characters can’t be bothered to sit down over a glass of wine, put away their egos and lay their cards on the table, they don’t deserve happiness and their relationship is probably doomed anyway. Another trope is having people who're incredibly attracted to each other but can't stand each other / fight passionately throughout the book, which is all a bit silly really. I prefer my erotic wine without cheese.

There’s another problem. If the Heroine’s having sex with the Main Man, why is that not Happily Ever After? If not, who is she having sex with, and why is she, when she fancies this other bloke? What is the defining moment of ‘romantic resolution’ if not the long-awaited shag and confessions of love?

A good writer (and all the Lustbiters are!) will resolve these within the nature of the individual plot: its singularity supercedes all ideas of ‘tropes’ and the characterisation dictates what Happily Ever After is for these two. All my happy endings took care of themselves, without being my primary story goal. The more we insist on romantic resolution as our major aim, however, the more we risk slipping into clichés. Is H.E.A. even what we want? Any sentence beginning “What women want is…” should be struck off the record and the culprit sent to do a proper representative survey of women around the world. Disney is not the international female ideal for narrative. What my female characters usually want, like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, is sovereignty: power, authority, mastery. Their relationship lies alongside that, rather than coming first.

Let’s duck out of ‘romance’ for a while, and look at other love-story plot-lines. Think of the epic tales: Tristan and Isolde; Romeo and Juliet; King Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot… The tragedy didn’t spoil these; it defined their resonant power. Guinevere and Lancelot’s doomed night together is doubly charged by its illicit nature and the looming discovery. Crying has never ruined a story for me.

My definition of erotica is quite factual: stories with sex in. Not love-stories or romances, just stories. Most people have sex regularly and it usually does affect their lives and relationships. Including sex-scenes that are relevant to the plot is as easy as breathing. The plot itself could be drawn from fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, thrillers, crime, realism, anything at all, and sex will always be pertinent. Now that women are allowed to own property, vote, and work, love and marriage no longer define our lives: should they still define our stories? Or are there other more varied plots into which passion is woven as seamlessly as it is in life? Should erotica be borrowing from the romance genre or defining itself simply as quality writing that leaves the sex in?