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10

A little morsel: Dark

At the end of last year Tamsin Flowers – friend, erotica author and all round groovy lady – was kind enough to invite me to participate in her Superotica advent calendar: a smorgasbord of sexy story excerpts from a variety of different writers, designed to raise the old blood pressure (in a good way) in the lead-up to Christmas. I was unable to promote it on Chintz at the time, what with my move abroad, but I’m doing so now, festive season or no festive season, because it’s absolutely worth checking out if you’re into hot ‘n’ dirty reads; the quality of the calendar is excellent and the authors involved, including Alison Tyler and Justine Elyot, top-notch.

Anyway, brave lady that she is, Tamsin chose to include a snippet from an unpublished story of mine, Dark, in her line-up. Centred around erotic humiliation, it’s a tale I’ve had kicking about on my hard drive for a while now (I’m hoping to find a home for it in an anthology and am thus holding onto the full version with a death grip) but, as we head towards Valentine’s Day, I thought you were all deserving of a smutty little morsel to get you past the cheesy hearts and flowers currently coming at us from all sides. And it’s been a while since I posted some of my own stuff on Chintz.

I hope you enjoy this little taster of Dark; I’ll let you know if and when it finds a place beyond my laptop so that you can read it in its entirety.

Jane
xxx

PS – Tamsin’s up to yet more mischief with Superotica Valentine posts; she’s currently on Day 9, so hurry on over and catch your smutty selves up! Continue reading →

05

At Any Price (Gaming the System) – Brenna Aubrey

At Any Price (Gaming the System)Title: At Any Price (Gaming the System)
Author: Brenna Aubrey
Publisher: Silver Griffon Associates (13 January 2014)
ISBN: 9781940951010
Reviewer: Jane

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to work in the videogame industry. I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say, when At Any Price (Gaming the System) came to my attention earlier in the week via a link in this post by Skye Warren, I was immediately intrigued. My mind began to whir. Was the heroine going to get ‘serviced’ next to the servers? Would the hero decide to ‘review her build’ during the daily Scrum meeting? In my experience, game dev. is a whole load of (stressful) fun, but calling it sexy would be … a stretch, to say the least. Unless you count listening to hundreds of emote .wav files to make sure they don’t sound unintentionally orgasmic, getting shot (repeatedly) with Nerf guns when you tell the dev. team they need to fix a bug the night before manufacturer submission, asking the rigger to make a character’s boobs smaller, and informing the lead artist that the creature he’s spent the last few days concepting needs to look ‘less penis-like’.

However, it turns out that the videogame backdrop for At Any Price (the first in a series of three books by author Brenna Aubrey) is more peripheral than integral, despite the references to patches, servers and avatars. It’s true that Adam, the hero, can code like a god (apparently, he’s the Zeus of C++) but it’s his addiction to his mobile and laptop, rather than his association with MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing) game development, that ultimately define him in Ms Aubrey’s story. Continue reading →

03

Alert Me: Back from the dead, turning down publisher deals, and tasty little SexByte morsels

Hello? Anyone there?

Like Lazarus rising from the dead (although granted, in this case, the resurrection has taken a lot longer than four days), I’m finally (finally!) back on the laptop and twitching the florals. Woot! It’s been pretty damn frustrating not being able to blog and ramble as normal but I suspect it’s been far more so for those of you who’ve continued to visit Chintz over the past two-and-a-half months in the hope of finding a new post. So inappropriate hugs and kisses to everyone who’s stuck with me and offered their support as I’ve moved from one side of the world to the other; it’s been a long slog but at long last I have a reliable Internet connection and an actual house to live in. Largess.

I’ve decided to kick off my new (albeit slightly delayed) blogging year with an Alert Me. Given that I’ve been offline so much recently, it feels like there are about a billion news stories and articles that have passed me by, so in a lot of ways this round-up is as much for me as it is for you. Enjoy.

 

In Which I Explain Why I Turned Down a Three-book New York Print Deal to Self-publish
Source: Brenna Aubrey (via One Handed Writers)

At Any Price (Gaming the System)This piece by Brenna Aubrey makes for fascinating reading. If you’re a self-published or aspiring author, then I strongly encourage you to swing by her Website and cast a beady eye over it. Not least because it gives an excellent breakdown of some key contractual clauses that writers will come across when presented with book deals drawn up by traditional publishers. Pay careful attention, people, to the Non Compete clause. This is a bloody important bit of legal jargon. And can I add that any new author who has the guts and strength of character to turn down a six-figure deal in order to stay true to her own personal writing goals and aspirations has my undying admiration. On the strength of this post of Brenna’s, I’ve now downloaded the book in question, At Any Price (Gaming The System). I’ll let you know how I get on with it; stick figures may be on the horizon. Continue reading →

03

Sinful Sunday: Little Berries

Slightly after Sunday midnight, but I hope Molly won’t mind! The theme for this week’s Sinful Sunday is macro shots. I took the below picture some time ago while playing around with the idea of nipples being called ‘berries’ in (what seemed like) every second erotic book I was reading. And that lead to the idea of clamping them … I know it’s not a ‘true’ macro (I don’t have macro lens) but – I hope! – it’s close enough to pass the doorman.

Little Berries

Continue reading →

24

Wicked Wednesday: Glad Tidings

Christmas Fairy

Image: Christmas Fairy. (Me, wearing my halo, whilst sitting in a Pohutukawa – also known as the ‘New Zealand Christmas tree’.)

This Wicked Wednesday is an unapologetic, sentimental and festive ‘thank you’ – a big one! – to all the amazing people who have made my 2013 so happy and wonderful.

Bloggers, writers, readers, fellow kinksters … There are so many of you that I am pleased and proud to know (both online and in person), and who have been totally selfless in support of me and this little Chintzy corner of the Interweb these past twelve months. To that end, I’d like to embarrass a few of you by specifically calling out your awesomeness. Continue reading →

22

Make Me Yours Evermore – Cari Silverwood

Title: Make Me Yours Evermore
Author: Cari Silverwood
Publisher: Cari Silverwood
ISBN: 9781311900234

At one point, Chris, a character in Make Me Yours Evermore, mentions brain bleach. By the end of the book, I was surreptitiously checking supermarket shelves for a bottle of the stuff.

Redemption? Remorse? Morality?

Phtt.

Love?

Wash your mouth out.

This book is about lust, desire, control and corruption. But, above all else, it’s about power. Held absolutely and resolutely over another human being. Consensual? No. But compelling and intoxicating, nonetheless.

Brain Bleach

I can’t recall a single time I’ve ‘enjoyed’ (not to be confused with ‘been impressed by’) a book featuring a core protagonist I was unable to like, empathise with, or warm to. But in this particular case, I did. Continue reading →

05

A Princess Bound: Naughty Fairy Tales for Women

A Princess BoundI’m back! On the other side of the world, granted, but hooked into the interweb at long last. I don’t have a house (that’s still a work in progress) and the contents of my chintzy home are on a ship in the middle of one of the world’s oceans – likely the Atlantic. Pray that my container-load of worldly possessions isn’t one of the thousands that ends up lost at sea every year (I need all those books and, er, play things).

In the middle of all this chaos, however, I’ve just received some extremely exciting news: my short story, Thorn King, will be appearing in Cleis Press’s naughty fairy tale anthology, A Princess Bound, in June 2014. Woot! Edited by Kristina Wright, it’s a fabulous collection of fairy stories – both reworked and original – that celebrate the fanciful, dark and the sensual. Needless to say, I’m totally thrilled to have been included, not least because I’m going to be sliding between the covers with some very fine writers, including Kristina herself. Continue reading →

06

Because I’m leaving, on a jet plane …

Departure

Image: Kenny Louie

Yeah, I know it’s been a bit quiet around here these past few weeks. Sincere apologies. I’m currently preparing to move abroad – literally to the other side of the world – and it’s kind of eating into my writing and blogging time. :-/ I hope to be back up and running properly in early December once I’m resettled but, fingers crossed, I might be able to squeak in a few posts here and there. Continue reading →