Tag Archives: Sweetmeats Press

The Voices in My Head by Janine Ashbless

tourbutton_fierceenchantmentsThe voices … the voices …

The really great thing about writing a collection of short stories is that you can stretch yourself in all sorts of directions, writing from many contrasting points of view.  In my Introduction, I warn the readers of my fantasy anthology Fierce Enchantments not to trust the narrators of the stories therein, and I mean it! Some of them are simply unreliable, some are ignorant of real-life modern moral standards, and some are downright wicked. You have to make your own judgment when reading the stories…

The book opens with a cold, cold voice – Too Much of Water is a fairy tale told in the embittered priggish tones of an old biddy sitting by the fire, warning her young audience not to go down the pagan primrose path to damnation. Some, in contrast, are burning hot: The Last Thing She Needs is an agonized, guilt-riddled confession by a sadist vampire-hunter who has bottled up both his lust and his love for years, not daring to confess what will truly make him whole. Guinevere in Knight Takes Queen is mired in a confused mess of a cuckolding triangle, because no one in Camelot has the vocabulary for bisexuality or BDSM, and they try to frame everything in terms of sin and honour. At Usher’s Well is drenched in rain and grief and pity, the narrative of a servant girl whose three lovers drown at sea … and then come back for one last tryst. The world of The Military Mind is a quasi-fascist future one where individual liberty and choice have been sidelined in favour of keeping the human race alive in the face of alien invasion – so psychic Peyton is prepped by a lifetime of biological and psychological conditioning to take up her role as comms officer and sexual plaything for a squad of horny marines.  The Merry Maid is another fairy story, but this one told with playful humour. And Sycorax is a Shakespearian tale retold by an inhuman monster: don’t expect any mercy or sympathy from her.

Just because these are ten smutilicious erotic tales doesn’t mean I want them to be true. Just because they are fantasy doesn’t mean I morally approve what goes on in them! But I do love listening to the protagonists’ many voices, however strange or frightening, and I love giving them shape on paper because I think they deserve to be heard.

xxx

Janine Ashbless

 

Fierce EnchantmentsExcerpt from Fierce Enchantments:

(from the story Sycorax)

 

But Prospero I have not forgotten. No.

The Isle is mine. It is the Omphalos—the navel of the world. I rule from the earth, by night. The sky above and the day: they belong to Ariel. Belonged, I should say. I … I think we had other names once, long ago. I do not remember them. It does not matter. All stories are leaves on one tree, and the branches may be long but they are all fed by the same roots. Names come and go, like dead leaves. It is perhaps better to forget them, in the end.

Are you hungry, little man? I have a haunch of meat here that is well-cooked and only a little gnawed upon.

Yes, it is from the wreck of your vessel.

Do not ask that. You are hungry, or not. And the night is long, and my story only just started.

Ariel ruled the Isle by day, and I ruled by night. At dusk and dawn we met, as husband and wife, to act out our carnal dreams. At sunset I would ride astride his long beam, and at sunrise he would pin me flat and plough my deeps. His seed came forth in great quantities, I recall—like sea spume, or like the white fluff of poplar-trees blown upon the wind. When I dug my long nails into his golden flesh, then the dawn would come up blood red.

I had many children by him. Have you not read that this Isle is full of noises? We are surrounded by legions; if you have not seen them yet, then it is because your mortal eyes are too dull. But this is the sorrow of it: Ariel let live only those babes I spawned that resembled him, that were of his delicate and airy nature. Those childer that bore my stamp—the dark and earthy, the heavy of flesh—those he hated, and devoured at first sight.

No. For years I bore this, until even I grew weary. And with age fewer and fewer babes were birthed at all. So when at last I whelped my youngest son Caliban, and saw that he favoured me and not his father, I knew that I must hide him to preserve his life.

Oh, have you seen my boy then? Don’t look so green. Think you he is ugly? I do not. Are not his teeth strong and keen? Isn’t his skin, hued with all the shot-silk colours of oil upon water, soft and smooth? The eyes that he opened upon me that first night, in such perfect trust, were as golden and beautiful as the eyes of a toad—and if two eyes are deemed lovely, must not many be even more enchanting?

I gave to Ariel a stone wrapped in blood-stained birthing cloths, and watched as he swallowed it whole. The babe I hid anew within the caverns of my body. And inside me, Caliban grew. But at last the night came when I could carry his weight no longer, so huge of limb was my child; so I birthed him a second time, half-grown. Even then, we both knew he was not safe. We went under cover of darkness to Ariel’s crag, and as the first light of the sun touched the sky with grey, Caliban seized his sire and I split a great pine tree, and together we thrust Ariel into the cleft and closed it tight. It was over in moments: when it was done Ariel was entrapped and my child was safe.

You think I played my husband false? Don’t bother to answer: I see it in your eyes. Well, you may be reassured to know that I have suffered great pangs over the years for my part in the betrayal. I missed his cock within me and his hands upon me; the ache of my loss brought forth great groans of anguish from my innermost being every dawn and dusk. For twelve long years.

That was when Prospero came to this Isle, with his infant daughter in his arms.

Listen well and mark this: the deposed Duke of Milan was no great sorcerer, however he styled himself afterwards. He was a second-rate alchemist—a mumbling book-wizard—a natural philosopher whose philosophy went no further than his own self-importance. But he was a man, and my cunt ached beyond bearing for the rough touch of a man. I saved his life, building him a cell in which to hide him from my own son; bringing him the fruits of the Island; fetching the contents of his leaky vessel from where it had foundered upon the rocks of the bay. I even let the girl-child live, though Caliban licked his drooling chops at the thought of such a tender mouthful. I forbade my boy to harm either of them.

In return I asked only that Prospero service my appetites. It was, I admit, not as easy for him as for my poor Ariel, for he was not so well-endowed. But he was a man of ingenuity and imagination, and where cock would not suffice, fist and forearm would. I demanded only that he persevere in his efforts.

In return for my mercy he betrayed me.

 

Cover Blurb for “Fierce Enchantments”

 

Inside the covers of this, Janine Ashbless’ third collection of erotic short stories, you will find delight and terror and lust – and perhaps even unexpected tenderness.

The wayward daughter of Shakespeare’s sorcerer Prospero; a runaway slave who becomes king only for as long as he can stay awake; a servant girl whose three dead lovers return for one last tryst; vampire-hunters haunted to the point of madness by what they have been through; warriors in a desperate future war for the survival of humankind – and one very dangerous frog prince – all appear in this collection of erotic stories that will take you to the edge and then pull you over into the glittering darkness beyond.

Weaving worlds of fantasy, Janine Ashbless draws from fairy stories, history, myth and the darkest depths of her imagination to bring you tales of passion and desire that will enchant, shock and dazzle you.

Buy links:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

 

Janine-AshblessBio:

Janine Ashbless is a writer of fantasy erotica and steamy romantic adventure – and that’s “fantasy” in the sense of swords ‘n’ sandals, contemporary paranormal, fairytale, and stories based on mythology and folklore.  She likes to write about magic and mystery, dangerous power dynamics, borderline terror, and the not-quite-human.

Janine has been seeing her books in print ever since 2000, and her novels and single-author collections now run into double figures. She’s also had numerous short stories published by Black Lace, Nexus, Cleis Press, Ravenous Romance, Harlequin Spice, Storm Moon, Xcite, Mischief Books, and Ellora’s Cave among others. She is co-editor of the nerd erotica anthology Geek Love.

Her work has been described as: “hardcore and literate” (Madeline Moore) and “vivid and tempestuous and dangerous, and bursting with sacrifice, death and love.”   (Portia Da Costa)

 

www.janineashbless.blogspot.com

Goodreads

Janine Ashbless Facebook

Amazon UK Author Page

Amazon US Author Page

 

Fierce Enchantments by Janine Ashbless

thingsthatgohump300x200Inspired by my love of M R James – and by a bunch of like-minded friends – I started writing ghost stories years before I wrote any erotica. The very first story I wrote (Wah!) was about a man who murders his wife by throwing her into the sea. She doesn’t stay there. This is how it ends, as he gets into bed with – he thinks – his lover:

After a few days of being unoccupied the air here in the master bedroom was, he thought, a bit stale. Tomorrow he would see to that, but it wouldn’t matter while they slept.

He blew out the candle. Darkness thickened around him.

“Goodnight, love, he said softly, as he pulled back the coverlet. Then Richard climbed into bed with a woman in whose hair was the smell of the sea.

 

From the start, it now occurs to me, I was combining Bed and “Boo!”

When my erotica career kicked off, I made sure to include at least one ghost story in every one of my collections. From Cruel Enchantment (2000) comes Montague’s Last Ride (See what I did there?), in which a very icky revenant is summoned from his tomb by the power of lust:

“My poor Lord Montague,” she murmured, “lying there all alone in a cold bed. No warm body to hold you close. I’ll bet that never happened to you when you were alive.”

Then she discovered that, standing, her mons was directly on a level with the top of the tomb slab. Where she stood now the corner of the stone pressed into her groin, and she could rub her swollen, needy sex against its cold thrust.

 

Dark Enchantment (2009) includes two ghost stories among all the gods, monsters and other scary mythological creature. Pique Dame is about a ghost who haunts a theatre and possesses two opera singers:

What if he comes back? I asked myself. Would he stand and watch, delighted, or would he pull up the back of my skirt and wrench down my knickers and stuff me hard from behind with his eager cock, just as I deserved? 

Reflected behind me, in the shadow behind the costume rack, two eyes glinted. A dark figure stirred.

 

Whilst Cold Hands, Warm Heart is about a night in a haunted house that goes incredibly wrong for the two upstanding Edwardian gentlemen who dare it:

Directly at my shoulder, barefoot in the pool, stood a young woman. She had not been there a moment before; she was there when I turned. My heart nearly flew out of my mouth. She wasn’t looking at me; she was staring up at Morgan, her eyes wide and unblinking. She was soaking wet. That was what you noticed about her first of all: she wore a sleeveless white linen shift of some sort and it was so sodden that it clung to her body and had turned half transparent on her pale skin. Her long dark hair was plastered to her shoulders.

 

This autumn Fierce Enchantments (Sweetmeats Press) is being published and I’ve included stories about a zombie apocalypse, a group of traumatized vampire-hunters, Shakespeare’s Tempest, a Russian water-demon … and At Usher’s Well, a Scottish-set tale of three brothers who come home after being lost at sea for weeks:

‘Meg, stay here and serve at table. Bring them anything from the kitchen that they choose. My sons are to have all they desire, tonight.’ She turns away and walks off down the hall, leaving me alone with the dead men.

There’s a long, unpleasant silence. I know there’s no point in offering them food. The three men watch me from eyes filled with the grave’s darkness.

‘So Meg,’ says Rory quietly, pushing out his chair. ‘Will you sit on my lap, for old times’ sake?’

His thighs are as broad as ever, though his slowly drying clothes are stained with salt. I remember his playful embraces and the rasp of his hairy skin, rough as bark, against mine. I shake my head. ‘I think not, Master Rory. Your lap has grown cold since last I knew you.’

He doesn’t react, except with the slightest inclination of his chin. He doesn’t even blink. Not one of them has blinked since they arrived, I’m suddenly sure.

I fold my hands before me, determined to wait it out. The platters of wasted food steam.

‘Pretty Maggie,’ says Allan, with something approaching expression in his voice and—to my horror—a movement of his grey and bloodless lips that approximates a grin, ‘will you play at bob-apple between my thighs once more, for old times’ sake?’

Oh how well I remember the fever-heat of his lithe body beneath mine, and the unaccustomed narrowness of his bucking hips, and the urgency of his thrusts.

‘I will not, Master Allan,’ I answer him. ‘That’s a fruit that does not keep well in salt water.’

He nods.

Finlay presses his hands to the table and bows his head, and then lifts it to look at me directly. ‘Will you kiss me, my Margaret?’ he asks, his voice as stripped and thin and strange as sea-worn driftwood. ‘For auld lang syne?’

Oh Lord, help me.

His kisses had always made me blush, unaccountably. They’d been nothing like his brother’s straightforward pecks, but instead gentle, lingering creatures of breath and warmth, caresses bestowed on my mouth and throat that seemed to have no other purpose than their own pleasure. They’d made me feel almost uncomfortable. I feel a tear escape and run down my cheek, which I don’t doubt is as pale as theirs.

‘The taste of your clay-cold lips would be awfy strong now, Master Finlay,’ I say. My voice is hoarse, but I try to speak gently. ‘It would do me terrible harm, I fear.’

He doesn’t reply, but his expression holds me. I don’t know what to read in his still, harrowed face. It seems to me that there is pain there behind the mask of cold flesh: an ache that cries for respite. But whether it is the fires of Hell or the gnawing cold of the sea that torments him, I cannot tell.

I want to stroke back his damp locks. I want to see peace in those troubled eyes.

‘I’ll go fetch more wine,’ I mumble, though they have done no more than touch their full cups to their closed lips until now. But I cannot bear this. I have to get away. My insides are knotting under my ribs.

I get as far as the passage to the kitchen before my Mistress blocks my way. ‘Meg!’ she cries forlornly. ‘Their bedchambers are damp and drear—the rain has entered and ruined the linen. I didn’t know!’

‘Wheesht now,’ I say, daring to place my hand upon her arm. ‘It’s the weather; it’s not your fault.’

 ‘I wish them to sleep in my own great bed tonight. It’s warm and dry. We will make shift elsewhere tonight.’ Her voice, so weak and plaintive, becomes suddenly stronger as she pulls away and looks me in the face. There is something in her eyes—something that burns, that hurts, and that frightens me far more than the darkness in the open, watchful eyes of the dead brothers. ‘Go pile the fire in my room high, Meg. Don’t stint with the wood. I want them to be warm.’

No, I want to say. But she is my Mistress, and she is so alone, and love has broken her heart and her mind. I bite my lip and I nod. And I go out to the woodpile.

Up the dark stairs with the log-basket on my back I go, as I have done a thousand times. But not like this night. When you lay a corpse out for a vigil you normally keep the room cold, for obvious reasons. But not tonight.

On my knees in the split ashes, I build up the fire, coaxing the flames with my breath until they roar. The blaze scorches my pale cheeks. My insides are in turmoil. I don’t know what to feel. I am torn between horror and exultation at this dreadful miracle. I am torn between pity and a wicked, secretive pleasure I will not confess to anyone until my dying day: the joy of looking upon a face thought lost forever, a face longed-for and hotly desired. I am outraged that God has let them walk again—and yet, in my deepest core, sick with gratitude.

I am so afraid.

But not just of the dead.

Then I hear their feet, heavy and measured, upon the stair, and my heart nearly climbs out of my throat and bolts across the room. What do I do? I cast about myself in panic. I don’t want to be cornered here in their bedchamber. But to go to the top of the stairs as they ascend—to see those corpse-faces looking up at me through the darkness, while they tramp slowly toward me—that I cannot bear. There’s no other way out, only a door to the tiny garderobe. I might go hide in there all night, crouched over the draughty, stinking hole. Would I be safe in there? I’m as sure as I can be that they have no need for such facilities.

Ach—I have dithered too long. Their tread is at the door. My heartbeat punches me in the entrails, over and over and over.

The door creaks and falls back with a slam.

I look up. I have to. All pretence is over.

The dead men stand, all three of them, beyond the foot of the bed. Finlay is a little to the fore, his brothers to either side. There is no sign of my Mistress; perhaps she kissed them goodnight downstairs. They are still as posts, still as earth: no breath, no flicker of an eyelid.

* * * * *

 

I love writing spooky. Have a very happy Hallowe’en season!

xxx

Janine Ashbless

 

*****

Fierce EnchantmentsCover Blurb for “Fierce Enchantments”

Inside the covers of this, Janine Ashbless’ third collection of erotic short stories, you will find delight and terror and lust – and perhaps even unexpected tenderness.

The wayward daughter of Shakespeare’s sorcerer Prospero; a runaway slave who becomes king only for as long as he can stay awake; a servant girl whose three dead lovers return for one last tryst; vampire-hunters haunted to the point of madness by what they have been through; warriors in a desperate future war for the survival of humankind – and one very dangerous frog prince – all appear in this collection of erotic stories that will take you to the edge and then pull you over into the glittering darkness beyond.

Weaving worlds of fantasy, Janine Ashbless draws from fairy stories, history, myth and the darkest depths of her imagination to bring you tales of passion and desire that will enchant, shock and dazzle you.

Buy-links for Fierce Enchantments:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

*****

JA-colorBio:

Janine Ashbless is a writer of fantasy erotica and steamy romantic adventure – and that’s “fantasy” in the sense of swords ‘n’ sandals, contemporary paranormal, fairytale, and stories based on mythology and folklore.  She likes to write about magic and mystery, dangerous power dynamics, borderline terror, and the not-quite-human.

Janine has been seeing her books in print ever since 2000, and her novels and single-author collections now run into double figures. She’s also had numerous short stories published by Black Lace, Nexus, Cleis Press, Ravenous Romance, Harlequin Spice, Storm Moon, Xcite, Mischief Books, and Ellora’s Cave among others. She is co-editor of the nerd erotica anthology Geek Love.

Her work has been described as: “hardcore and literate” (Madeline Moore) and “vivid and tempestuous and dangerous, and bursting with sacrifice, death and love.”   (Portia Da Costa)

 

www.janineashbless.blogspot.com

Goodreads

Janine Ashbless Facebook

Amazon UK Author Page

Amazon US Author Page

*****

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Falling by Annabeth Leong (@AnnabethLeong)

annabethleong_tourbuttonThank you so much for hosting me!

It’s a bit ironic to me that I’ve written some of my best scenes of people falling in love for a book that’s meant to be erotica, not romance. That’s not to say I’ve compromised the erotic elements by doing so—trust and believe that Untouched is wall-to-wall hot.

This is also the book that’s pushed me the farthest as a writer, though, so perhaps it’s no surprise that it led me to a deeper understanding of what happens when people fall in love.

I’ve written romances before, and I’ve had romances in real life, so I’m familiar with the stages of attraction and the realization that a connection is turning from attraction into something more. Untouched, however, made me step back and think about what’s going on in those cases.

I think falling in love feels like a private world is being formed. There’s a sense of wonder, accompanied by desperate hope that the feeling is mutual. There’s a sensation that the other person gets it in a way that’s special and different from most of the world.

When I’m feeling that, a lot of it hinges on the sense that the other person is feeling it, too, and that the other person does in fact get it. It hinges on the feeling that I am creating that same sense for the other person, that they, too, feel I understand them in a unique and important way.

There is a sense of being chosen, of setting each other apart and singling each other out.

To me, falling out of love is the collapse of this private world. It’s the realization that there was something false about it all along, or the admission that foundational pieces of it have been lost.

This private world is so heady and so wonderful to be in, that I think we’re all aware of how dangerous and seductive it can be. I want to see it so badly that I can convince myself it’s there even when it’s very much not there.

So this becomes the challenge of falling in love and then maintaining it—truly recognizing that private world when it appears, and then working to preserve it.

In many ways, that’s what Untouched is about. Celia, the heroine, is cut off from the world by her inability to allow someone to touch her. She doesn’t believe she can have that private world with anyone—until she meets Eli, and that sense of mutual understanding forms. From there, Celia’s plunged into a world of questions. Is this truly what it appears to be? In moments when it feels as if it will collapse, can it be saved? Is there something to rescue, or do those dark moments mean it was never there at all?

I enjoy the romance formula very much when I’m in the mood for it, but there’s a sense of safety that dulls the impact of those questions. In a romance, everyone knows that the characters are fated to be together, that the private world they’re glimpsing is true and right. It’s wonderful to go through that experience with characters, but in real life I’ve never had the luxury of knowledge of fate. For me, love has always felt more like the way I’ve written it in my erotica novel, Untouched. It’s large and scary and uncertain, and at the same time so heady and tempting.

 

UntouchedExcerpt:

The street where Eli had parked was empty except for a sleepy craft store and a few half-vacant apartment buildings. A grocery store circular drifted down the road, propelled by a lazy breeze. Everything contrasted with Celia’s sweaty urgency.

Eli drove an older luxury car, well-maintained, detailed, and cleaned, roomy on the inside. Celia grinned at him. “That looks perfect.”

“You’re sure? You would do this on the street? What if someone sees through the car window?”

“I don’t care,” Celia said firmly. Her pussy was already on the Internet. She could bare herself to Eli now without fear. “How about you?” she asked, trying to gauge his expression.

“Right now, I’d do just about anything.”

Again, tenderness compelled her to look out for him. “Will you be sorry tomorrow?”

“I can’t imagine how I could be sorry. This is the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Eli fumbled with his keys, shaking too much to fit them to the car’s lock. His hand slipped, and he dragged the point of the key a short distance over the car’s paint, marring it and creating a brief metallic screech. The keys dropped to the pavement.

“Jesus,” he said.

Celia felt brave and capable. “Take two steps to your left,” she said, and he obeyed her without question. When he’d moved out of the way, she knelt and picked up his keys. The metal was still warm from his hand. She cupped the keys in her palm, staring down at them in awe, feeling closer to him than she’d managed with another person in years.

Afraid that he wouldn’t understand, she slowly lifted her eyes to his face. Her fears proved unfounded. He wore a reverent expression that matched her feelings exactly. “That’s a big deal for you, isn’t it?” Eli’s voice was hushed.

“Oh yeah.”

“We have something, don’t we?”

“I think so.”

“We’ve got to get into that car.”

 

Blurb:

Celia Lambent lives in constant conflict. Her sexual appetite is voracious, and yet she cannot bear to be touched. Untouched is a raunchy journey of voyeurism and discovery as Celia seeks the cause and cure for her condition.

 

Preorder now:

Amazon US | Amazon UK 

Publisher site: http://www.sweetmeatspress.com

 

Untouched is also distributed in the U.S. by Consortium, and will be available at many fine bookstores.

 

Bio:

Annabeth Leong has written erotica of many flavors. She loves shoes, stockings, cooking and excellent bass lines. Her work has appeared in more than 40 anthologies and counting, including Made for Hire from Sweetmeats Press. Visit her website, annabetherotica.com, or find her on Twitter @AnnabethLeong

 

Preorder offer:

Preorder Untouched now and forward your confirmation e-mail to annabeth dot leong at gmail dot com. As a thank you, Annabeth will send you a complimentary e-book copy of your choice of one of her other single-author titles (You can see them listed at annabetherotica.com). Please include which e-book and format you’d like in your e-mail.

 

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Vanessa de Sade Reclaims the Fairy Tale In The Forests of the Night

Vanessa de Sade cover9781909181366I’ve always been in love with fairy tales.  From my earliest childhood they have fascinated me, not so much all those sweet Disney-happy-ending-books that well-meaning aunts bought for my birthdays, but the old tooled-leather volumes that my mother kept on her highest shelf, with browned pages that smelt of mouse droppings.  I used to love to sit on rainy Saturday afternoons with those rare tomes on my knee, their crackly old pages brittle as dead leaves, and immerse myself in the dark worlds that they opened up for me.

I liked Grimm’s stories the best, then Perrault, and though I found some of Andersen twee there were others of his tales that were just so heart-breakingly sad.  But it was the German stories with their dense black forests and nasty old witches that really got to me, and I loved that slate grey October country with all those woodcutters’ cottages buried so deep in the woods that the sunlight never penetrated; a land where evil often went unpunished and, it always seemed to be hinted, maidens lost their innocence behind the cover of spreading oaks.  The Famous Five were OK, but they didn’t come close to Wilhelm and Jacob.

And as childhood passed I never lost my love for this art form, and even when I went to university and discovered intriguing people like Kafka I could always find time to go back to Grimm.  And then one day I walked into a musty old bookshop in a back street and my life changed.  I never had much money in those halcyon student days, and, though I often salivated over the Victorian rare editions with their gold embossing and decorated spines, my purchases were always from the big cardboard boxes of cheap paperbacks that lurked moodily at the back of the store.

I bought two anthologies that day.  One, an old 1960s collection of “German Folk Tales” from the Olympia Press in its distinctive saffron yellow livery and obligatory “adults only” warning; the other a scruffy paperback by somebody called Angela Carter with the intriguing title of “The Bloody Chamber”.

And after that nothing was ever the same.

The German tales were badly printed and poorly translated but nothing could dampen their brilliance as I suddenly came face-to-face with pure untampered with peasant fantasy.  English busybodies like John Ruskin had already been snipping and expurgating away at fairy tales to make them child friendly, long before Unca Walt ever got his hands on them, and even the dear old Brothers Grimm had toned down the content of their own stories to make them acceptable to the publishing mores of their day.

So imagine, then, my surprise and delight when the Olympia Press book was packed with stories of woodcutters’ daughters who got pregnant to fathers and uncles; of old dames who lured young men into their woodland cottages and robbed them of their purity; or the maiden with the hairiest cunt in all the land who was relentlessly pursued by suitors until she set them all tasks to win her heart – and body!

This was the missing ingredient that I suspected had been bubbling away as an undercurrent all this time, the raw earthy sensuality of Victorian magic and the salty barbs of peasant wit, all missing from so many of the stories that I had pored over, but now suddenly restored.  It almost made these German tales exactly what I had been looking for, but with their poor and hastily compiled translations there was still something lacking in them.

Poetry

And in that battered copy of “The Bloody Chamber” I discovered the true power of the real fairy tale, dark, magical, potent, poetic, mysterious and, most of all, breath-takingly erotic.  It’s safe to say that I grew up on Angela Carter and the magic realist writers, though none of the others in the genre ever quite matched her skilful blending of the lyrical with the sexual, or her ability to paint word pictures that so perfectly resembled the insane canvases of Victorian painters like Richard Dadd.  I adored every story in “The Bloody Chamber” and read and reread them over and over again.  I delighted in other books like “The Magic Toy Shop”, I fell in love with “Wise Children”, and I totally went to pieces when the movie of “The Company of Wolves” was released.

No-one had ever heard of either Angela Carter or Neil Jordan in those far off days, and I queued alone to see “Company of Wolves” amongst hoards of spotty splatter-geeks and bespectacled Fangoria readers who eulogised endlessly about the transformation scenes and the prosthetic wolf effects; whole cinemas full of people blind to sheer fucking ART that was being projected onto that screen, while I sat quite overwhelmed – in between swooning at David Warner and having my knees turn to water when Terrence Stamp played his cameo, looking so suave in his white Rolls Royce.  I grew up lusting at Terrence, by the way – BBC 2 played a season of his films late at night when I was about thirteen and I devoured classics like “The Collector” and “Billy Budd” with my hands wedged firmly between my legs, I can tell you, darlings!

So, many years later, when I read Nancy Friday and decided to start writing my own sexy stories that featured woman who looked like me, it should be no surprise to anyone that I’ve come up with a collection of highly explicit erotic fairy tales of my own.

Vanessa de Sade imageForest-1a_600x722In the “Forests of the Night” is a modern urban reimagining of some of those classic Grimm tales that so turned me on in my youth.  I haven’t simply retold the originals to incorporate sex scenes, but, instead, I’ve written new urban fables that evoke all those dark woods and even darker deeds, transposing them to the cement jungles and weltering neons of my own city life.

Thumbelina takes place in a midget’s strip club in a seedy costal town in the north west of England; a vampiric Hansel and Gretel plays out in a Manhattan Penthouse; Cinderella fights for her place to appear nude in a TV-reality show; while Little Red Riding Hood is reenacted in a decaying Hollywood hacienda, the overall tone of the entire collection being Angela Carter meets Hustler magazine, rich in imagery and peopled by weird and eccentric characters.

It’s all being published by the wonderful Sweetmeats Press and comes in a handy ebook edition if you need a quicke (that’s a quick reading break, what did you think I meant, Smutburger?) or as a lavishly illustrated paperback in October.  I’m quite over the moon since this is easily my finest collection to date, and I’m absolutely thrilled that it’s seeing print in such a great edition.

So, here’s a little excerpt to whet your appetite:

Excerpt from Rapunzel:

He should have known about the coming storm, everybody else did, but Edward read no newspapers and listened to no radios, so his first inkling of the downpour was when thunder rumbled and the blazing August sky suddenly clouded and turned a sickly green and then yellow and eventually black like a ripe bruise and the rain began to fall.  Edward’s crops were secure, well banked in and staked against the possibility of inclement weather, but the girl’s were not, her greenery lying thick and abundant in the loose soil, ripe for the slaughter.

And the rain, when it came, was like a biblical torrent, great sheets of water thundering down from the heavens and washing away everything that stood in its path.  Edward had not even known that she was there until he saw her from inside his shed, the rain water slewing down the  window pane like a fishmonger’s display, making her form undulate like a warped film as she ran through the wet trying to keep her crop from being uprooted and washed away by the waters of Noah.

He hadn’t thought about what he was doing, but he found himself out in the unrelenting wet with her, the two of them working as one, staking down great sheets of black plastic that billowed like ghost ship sales in the storm as they hammered stakes into the splunging-wet soil to cover the crop which, he suddenly realised, was what would keep her family fed over the coming winter.  The girl worked like a field slave, her body a sinewy machine in the pouring rain, the faded dress soaked through and clinging to her, her only care the saving of her crop, and she did not rest until they had it secure, tucked in against the elements like a favourite child in its cot.

*****

Outside the rain was still hammering on the asphalt roof of the shed and through the tiny window the world outside looked like a greenish aquarium, eerie in the storm light and everything undulating to the pulse of the tempest.  Inside, though, the little hut was still warm from the heat of the day, and Edward lit the hissing gas ring to boil a kettle and dry their clothes.

He worked soundlessly, methodically, not speaking, and was shocked when the girl broke the silence.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, and her voice was soft and well-modulated, not the coarse accent of the tower blocks.   “Is there something I can do to repay you?”

Edward shook his head.  He had everything he wanted right he here.  He needed no more.

The girl shivered, her wet clothing clinging to her, her long chestnut hair, worn in a single braid, hanging sodden to her back.

“Come closer to the stove,” Edward chided, “dry yourself off.”

She did, and he suddenly became aware of her scent.  Cheap shampoo, wet clothing, supermarket deodorant.  Nothing extraordinary, but in the confines of the little shed with its comforting smells of resin and new wood, she was heady and potent.

The girl sighed and drew nearer, lifting her arms behind her head to undo the band that held her wet hair in it plait, and he saw that her limbs were silky and white and her armpits were covered with thick jungles of soft brown hair, slowly undulating like bracken in a spring breeze and awakening in him all the long buried desires that he thought his wife and the old paper-cut-out judge had burned out of him for ever.

He looked at the girl, fixing her long brown hair, saw the thick down in the white of her armpits and visualised her cunt, and the girl, seeing him and seeing what he was seeing, read his mind and smiled.  “So there is something,” she said quietly, and Edward Edwards nodded.

*****

There was only one chair in the shed, a steel frame and gaudy canvas folding deckchair, and she pushed him into it and unzipped him, taking his cock out with great and meticulous care, like an antique dealer carefully unwrapping the tissue paper from an intricately carved ivory tusk.  He was already huge, his member like an engorged monolith, the red and purple head already inflamed beyond the confines of his foreskin and poking out insistently.

She smiled and took him gently in her hand and pulled the soft chamois leather skin first up and then down, exposing the full proud head of his uncircumcised cock and marvelling at its size and scent, noting how the gaping snake’s eye hole was already weeping clear come, and slipping her hand below his clothing to feel his warmth and run her fingers thorough his thick pubic hair.

“You thought about my cunt, didn’t you,” she said, running her fingers up and down his veiny shaft, “you visualised me naked and this is what grew up from your dirty thoughts.”

He nodded.

“And now there’s something you need after all, isn’t there?”

He nodded again.

“Then ask for it,” she whispered.

Edward Edwards blushed scarlet but found his voice nevertheless.  “Show me,” was all he said.

About Vanessa:

Vanessa de Sade is a passionate lady in her early forties who likes exploring the darker sides of sexual desire.  An obsessive lover of old movies, operatic theatre and authors like Angela Carter, Vanessa likes to fill her own stories with lush imagery and people them with bizarre characters, misfits in search of love.

She is  a contributor to many anthologies, including Naked Delirium, and her solo story collections include Nude Shots and Tales from a Tangled Bush.

Find Vanessa here: www.taboo-quickies.com

Buy In the Forests of the Night Here:

Amazon UK – £3.99 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00F3K08VS/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B00F3K08VS&linkCode=as2&tag=sweetmeatspre-21)

Amazon US – $5.99 (http://www.amazon.com/Forests-Night-ebook/dp/B00F3K08VS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378997910&sr=1-1&keywords=9781909181373)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who’s Really to Blame for Seven Deadly Sins

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Okay, so here it is; the real story behind the story. Here’s the truth about what happened  when dirty minds ran amuck late at night after Eroticon 2012 in the Ibis Hotel in Bristol. I swear it’s the truth because I was right there running amuck with the best.

I can’t say we’d had too much to drink. We hadn’t. I can’t say there were any drugs involved, unless you want to count the cold tablets I was popping for the springtime sniffles I had. What I can say is that we were high on smut writing. We’d just spent the day at the first annual Eroticon in Bristol. That was last March. We’d had dinner with some of our naughty compadres, and then Lily Harlem, Victoria Blisse, Lucy Felthouse and I went back to our hotel, which had a lovely all-night bar. Since we live in opposite directions in the UK, we seldom get the chance to catch up and talk writing, so we were up for the long haul.

Seven-Deadly-Sins-Cover-450(1)Lily Harlem started it. Yes, she’s the one to blame! After some raucous conversation about what we found sexy and what we liked to write about, she pulled out a pen and a scrap of paper and we began brainstorming ideas for smutty anthologies. We considered sex at work for an anthology; we considered sex alfresco for an anthology, we might have even considered food sex. Oh, the possibilities! And then Lily did it! Lily brought up the idea of an anthology about the seven deadly sins, the perfect way to cover all the naughty bases in one filthy swoop.

My hand was the first in the air to write a story about lust. Bet that surprises you, doesn’t itJ Victoria wasn’t far behind me, volunteering for gluttony. Lily was all up for envy and Lucy put in for pride. And so the night went. I’m not sure how serious we all were at the time. It was long after midnight, and to say we were punchy is an understatement. When a party of rather inebriated lads flooded into the bar singing Iris folk songs loudly and badly, we adjourned to Victoria and Lucy’s room and continued planning and scheming.

The next day we all hopped our trains and went back home. My sneaking suspicions is that it was Lucy Felthouse who is to blame for what happened next, though I’m sure that Lily was partly responsible for filling in the three remaining sins with naughty writers, Sarah Masters took up the cause to wax filthy about wrath, Lexie Bay weighed in with sloth and Rebecca Bond took on greed.

And, after that the blame all goes to KoJo Black over at Sweetmeats Press who bravely agreed to take on the brainchild four under-slept smutters had mapped out on a scrap of paper in a hotel bar. Thanks KoJo! Nine months later, Voila! A very naughty, anthology is now available for your reading and viewing pleasure, with illustrations by John LaChatte in the paperback version and in the Waterstones eBook version. Thought the eBook is available in all the usual places, do remember, if you want the naughty illustrations in your eBook version, you have to get it from Waterstones.

I confess, this anthology is truly sinful X seven, and I do hope that this little peek into the naughty origins of The Seven Deadly Sins will lead you into temptation to get your copy, and then let the filthy authors and that dirty boy of an illustrater, John LaChatte do the rest. I forgot to mention you can also buy each of the seven stories separately in eBook format if you have a favourite vice.

Seven erotic tales from seven sinful sirens. The Seven Deadly Sins have never been so sexy!

Aphrodite Gets a Piece of the Action by K. D. Grace
A young voyeur finds himself faced with the almighty task of going global with Lust!

Caged by Rebecca Bond
Greed pushes a policewoman straight to the top. But her quest for power uncovers more desire than she ever knew she had!

Glutton to Gourmet by Victoria Blisse
Anabel has never known when to say ‘when’. But the dashing Roman shows her that quality is just as delicious as quantity.

Green Eyed Monster by Lily Harlem
Penis Envy takes on a whole new meaning when Helen hatches a plan to use her own “cock” to its fullest extent!

An Indolent Seduction by Lexie Bay
When the demon of Sloth sets his sights on the angel Industria, apathy becomes dangerously alluring.

The Sweetest Revenge by Lucy Felthouse

Abigail’s crush on Mackenzie has made her do something stupid. Will Pride come before a fall…or cause them to fall in love?

Something Else by Sarah Masters
A man’s Wrath at the loss of his lover sets him on a vengeful path that leads him through a seedy and sexually charged underworld.

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Blurb for Aphrodite Gets a Piece of the Action:

There’s no place to go but down when, against all odds, sexually inexperienced, nerd’s nerd, JACK CALENDAR gets shanghaied into being APHRODITE’s PA. And she has him going down a lot! Who could have guessed that the moonlighting Goddess of Love had head for business? The hours are long, the work is difficult and the Goddess is demanding and insatiable. Then there’s her family, who make the Corleones look like the Brady Bunch.

A PA’s work is never done, and Jack wasn’t hired for his impressive organizational skills. Nerdy Jack is at Aphrodite’s beck-and-call, because he’s the only mortal she has ever known with a lust powerful enough to match her own. Jack’s never had so much sex. He didn’t even know one could have so much sex – with someone other than themselves, that is. Just when he’s starting to get the hang of serving the goddess, Jack meets the husband, whose jealous temper is volcanic to say the least. Can Jack survive a run-in with the original dysfunctional family, or will he end up just one more manipulated mortal fucked by the gods?

Excerpt from Aprodite Gets a Piece of the Action

‘Hey you! Ass-wipe! Don’t make me come up after you.’

Coming up wasn’t necessary. Startled, Jack lost his balance on the limb and fell out of the tree backward, his fall being slowed by the hard thwack, thwack, thwack of a half a dozen smaller, more supple branches before he hit the manicured lawn flat on his back leaving him winded and stunned.

‘Izzee dead?’ A voice hissed from somewhere above Jack’s prone, breathless body.

‘Course ‘es not dead. His cock’s still hard. Sonovabitch! Hat’s off to ‘im, I say.’

‘Don’t matter. When her dad gets through with him, he’ll wish he was dead.’

‘Shut up, you two. No one asked your opinion,’ a third voice said. Then the owner of that voice grabbed Jack by the arm and hauled him to his feet nearly dislocating his shoulder in the process. He found himself nose to nose to a man with perfectly coifed hair that looked like it came straight from an eighties cop show. And the rest of him looked like a poster boy for a hard core muscle mag, right down to the bad-ass eagle tat rippling up his bulging right bicep. If that wasn’t crazy enough, the man was wearing a toga, for chrissake! His pecs bulged and his nipples looked like they’d been clamped within an inch of their lives. And who the hell noticed a man’s nipples, Jack wondered, especially when Blondie’s old man was about to make him wish he were dead.

‘Tuck it in, Bub,’ Toga Man nodded to Jack’s cock which, embarrassingly enough, still offered a full frontal salute. He shoved and shifted it back into his track suit, but even then it led the way as he fell into step behind Toga Man with two black-suit security types flanking him. What the hell was the matter with him? He could die or worse and he still had enough wood to start a bonfire.

‘Big Z ain’t gonna be happy you watching his daughter do the dirty,’ the suit to his left spoke out of one side of his mouth.

‘You shut your pie-hole,’ Toga Man said. ‘You dunno what makes Big Z happy. Besides, she ain’t his daughter.’

Big Z? What the hell was this, Jack wondered, some kind of Mafioso toga party? They made their way through the enormous marble foyer of the house Jack hadn’t noticed being anywhere nearly so huge from his perch in the oak tree. But then it wasn’t the house he’d been looking at, was it? At last, Toga Man dismissed the Mafia-thugs and fast marched Jack, both hands protectively folded across the bounce, bounce, bounce of his erection, to another set of double doors at the end of a long hallway. He threw them open and with a hand on Jack’s shoulder, half shoved him into an opulent study. There, Jack found himself face to face with the bare ass of a bloke doing the nasty up the bumhole of another, a situation that didn’t prevent Toga Man from announcing loudly. ‘We found this scumbag up the oak tree watching Aphrodite.’

Buy Seven Deadly Sins Now

Print:
Amazon UK
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eBook:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
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