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Monsters From the Deep

10/31/2024

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In the antipodes, Halloween is out of season, it’s spring here and all about rebirth and hope. So rather than talk about spooky things, this month I’ve mixed my interests in monsters and marine critters to talk about monsters from the deep.
 
As I’ve been writing the initial five Ghost Assassins of Bijou novellas, I’ve leaned into my training and expertise as a marine biologist. Bijou is a marine planet, with an equatorial archipelago of extinct volcanic islands making up the minor terrestrial habitat. Much like we Earthlings, the human inhabitants of Bijou are limited to the land and the coastal fringes and surface of the ocean. As the stories have progressed, it’s become obvious that, also like us, the human residents of Bijou know next to nothing about most of their planet. Unlike us, however, they do have relationships with the sentient inhabitants of their ocean—especially with the belosa, a cuttlefish-like creature, some of whom choose to be living spaceships for the ghost assassins.
 
I could have created an entirely new creature to fill this role, but the shape and motion of cuttlefish lends them beautifully to being spaceships. They’re also intelligent, have distinct methods of communication and are well studied. This made it (relatively) easy to take an extant creature and develop it into one of science fiction. And there’s so much more life in the depths that we can use in this way.
 
The deep sea is Earth’s largest habitat, offering a massive 97% of the habitable space available to life on our planet. Which is remarkable, given how little we know of the lives and range of creatures that exist there. It’s estimated that we know less than 10% of the existing species of the deep sea. What monsters lurk beyond our reach and understanding?
 
Let’s set the scene in our search for monsters from the deep.
The deep sea is defined as beyond the reach of light, on average this happens at around 200m of depth. No plants live beyond this depth. The water is cold (~2°C), and the pressures are immense (an additional atmosphere of pressure for every 10m of depth). Around 70% of the sea floor is abyssal plains, but there are a multitude of other habitats including: seamounts, canyons, troughs, ridges, cold seeps, hydrothermal vents, polymetallic nodule fields, and asphalt fields or brine pools. Life in these habitats requires extreme (to us) adaptations.
 
Many animals at these depths have foregone the need to move. Why waste energy on locomotion when the food comes to you? Others have abandoned the sun as their source of energy and rely instead on the energy contained in inorganic chemicals that leach through Earth’s crust at vents and seeps. Oxygen isn’t always required, and life has found ways to exist in extremes that should kill. Creatures are diverse, often long-lived, and can be surprisingly large.
 
Onto the monsters!
Let’s start with Cnidarians (the C is silent)—jellyfish, corals, anemones and hydroids.  These creatures have a mouth that also serves as their anus, they also have muscles, reproductive organs and tentacles. Already so much fun. But best of all, they kill with an explosion of tiny poison-tipped harpoons. Imagine visiting a strange planet, where simply brushing past a delicate feather-like shrub results in your body being swamped with a neurotoxin that stops your heart. The feathers wrap around you and the creature spends the next century feasting on your remains. Or your spaceship emerges from hyper-drive into the slow drifting tentacles of a massive space-jelly. There is no escape. Death is slow in the gut sac behind the creature’s dual-function mouth/arse—but it’s inevitable.
 
I’m not going to bother talking about marine worms, because…well…Dune. We all know what that looks like. All I’ll add is that the penis worm doesn’t hunt—it waits. To capture passing soldiers, the penis worm vomits out its toothed throat then retracts it, dragging the flailing prey with it. Death by penis worm—so noble.
 
Molluscs include a wide variety of life-forms including snails (gastropods); clams (bivalves); chitons; and squids (cephalopods). This group is rich pickings for premade monsters filled as it is with active predators armed with deadly toxins, camouflage and more terrifying tentacles. Probably the most frightening thing about molluscs is the weird feeding organ they all possess. It’s called a radula, a movable belt covered with teeth. The radula can scrape flesh from bones, drill holes in the hulls of space stations and inject toxins into unwary interplanetary explorers. Abandon all hope, weary travellers.
 
Crustaceans are equipped with many limbs. So many limbs. Delicate antennae that detect movement, taste, electrical currents to focus the hunt. Legs and more legs enable them to skitter over the barriers protecting a newly established colony. They swim through space and time using the oar-like appendages under their tails. Hidden beneath desert sands, they’ll spy on you with stalked eyes, then snap you up with claws and pincers that hold, slice and dice. Some of them move so fast they can teleport. You’ll never see the parasite before it steals your body for its own purposes—leaving you a more witless zombie than usual.
 
Next on our list of monsters from the deep are the armoured echinoderms—starfish, sea cucumbers, urchins, brittle stars, crinoids and the like—distinct in the animal world with their 5-sided symmetry. Ravenous and relentless they glide across the vast freeze-dried plains on hydrostatic tube feet. They’re impervious to your weapons. When they catch you—and they will catch you—they’ll hover over your trapped body and extrude their stomach out through their mouth. Once you’re digested, they draw their stomach inside and glide away. Behind them, the hollow husk of your once perfect body wafts in the currents of an alien breeze.
 
When you stare out at the night sky, filled with stars and mysteries, some of those stars aren’t what you think they are. Giant angler fish drift the universe on cosmic tides, their bodies invisible against the blackness of the void. Some of those distant stars are bioluminescent lures, hung out to draw in unsuspecting colonists searching for planets within the Goldilocks range. Once the unspeakably enormous maw closes its needled teeth around your interstellar generation-ship, the lights wink out—forever.
 
If, these macro monsters don’t offer you the perfect character for your next space horror…then what about the dangers of the micro monsters of the deep. Imagine bacteria that deplete the sulphur in your skin, leaving you with lesions that can’t heal and a compromised metabolism. Maybe the archaea in your gut are replaced by those that feed on, rather than produce, the methane you require for digestion? Deep sea viruses are more likely to be lysogenic, meaning they replace sections of your DNA with their own to reprogramme your metabolism for their own needs and they need to be cold…so very, very cold.
 
Honestly, I could write so much more but I think I’ve made my point. There’s no need to reinvent biology in the search for monsters. The way I imagine and extrapolate monsters from living creatures is, if it can swim it can probably also fly, if it can live in the dark expanse of the ocean, it’ll do just fine in space and if it’s small it can become very, very big.
 
Need more inspiration? Then, let your fingers lead you down a penis wormhole of online research. Or head to your local library and flick through any number of books about sea life (because it lives in my bookshelf, I referred to Peter Batson’s 2003 edition of, Deep New Zealand: Blue Water, Black Abyss, in my research for this blog). Finally, if you enjoy a field trip head to your nearest aquarium or marine research lab on an open day.

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Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud - a review

7/8/2024

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‘in a former life, in another time
a fox girl departs from the land of jade
in a former life, in another time
 
to a distant cloud where fortunes are made
nine obedient wives, all refugees
a fox girl departs from the land of jade’

 
The opening lines of Lee Murray’s extraordinary prose poetry collection, ‘Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud’, set the scene for the stories to come. A fox spirit finds herself displaced and alone in a ‘distant land of dark earth and drifting clouds’. In order to ascend to the celestial palace, she must first inhabit nine mortal lives.

Fitting a skull to her head the fox spirit enters the first life­—we follow along and share in her harrowing journey into the unspoken horror that was the lives of nine immigrant Chinese women in Aotearoa / New Zealand. Judged as curiosities, difficulties and not quite human, their only value is their capacity for reproduction—their worth measured in grains of rice.

Resurrected from the silence of death through the fox spirit, these women are given voice to tell their forgotten stories—stories of forced immigration, strangled hopes and dreams, subjugation, abuse, rape, and murder. Haiku interrupt these dark tales like a breath of forest air.

‘maple / in its container / rootbound’

Yes, ‘Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud’, is imbued with horror but with her profound depth of understanding and an extraordinary command of language and form, Murray brings a beguiling beauty to these grim tales. In contrast to the harsh lives of her characters, Murray’s lyrical prose flows and swirls. Words and phrases circle, spiral and repeat like the beating of a heart. They draw you in and immerse you.


I loved this book from its gorgeous gold-leafed cover to the full stop at the end of the Author’s Note. I read it in a single sitting. Like the fox spirit, I experienced this world, one in which I usually sit so comfortably, through different eyes—fingers scratching for a silver coin / a skull hitting concrete / a rising cleaver. It left me uncomfortable, filled with sorrow and rage. This is not horror as I’ve known it before. It’s closer, more personal, subversive and transgressive.

What is most disturbing is knowing that not only are these stories grounded in reality—drawn from the pages of Aotearoa / New Zealand’s history—but that they persist today.

  • Two dead children found in a suitcase—their mother extradited back to New Zealand.
  • The body of a small woman found inside multiple plastic bags fished from the sea—she wore blue pajamas and remains unidentified.
  • A woman’s body abandoned in the boot of a car—not found for days.
  • A real-estate agent disappears and is presumed dead—her body still missing.

Until this horrific cycle is broken, for every fox spirit who completes her journey from this distant cloud to the celestial palace, another will find herself in this land of pounamu. Here, the new fox spirit will bear witness to nine more lives and ‘sing their spirits to the mountains’.
 
—Winner of the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize, Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud, is available from Cuba Press 
https://thecubapress.nz/shop/fox-spirit-on-a-distant-cloud/
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Why Speculative Fiction?

6/1/2024

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Human beings, and I expect many our hominid ancestors and relatives, have indulged in sharing speculative fiction for as long as we’ve spoken stories. We created myths and legends to explain the world around us – to rationalise what we saw, felt, heard, tasted, and smelled. We’ve always speculated about things that lie beyond our understanding. It’s in our very nature to ask, ‘What if?’

We love reading speculative fiction. According to Wikipedia – if we ignore religious texts (I have thoughts), comics and textbooks, and add Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (reportedly over 120 million copies sold in different formats) – 5 of the 8 best-selling books of all time are speculative fiction (and, yes, this is a western-centric assessment).

When we engage with speculative fiction, we’re not just entertained, we’re taken on a journey into the unknown. It allows us to indulge our desire for the extraordinary. It’s an invitation to dream and question.

Speculative fiction offers us an opportunity to interrogate the real world from a safe distance. We can investigate what it means to be human. Most of the stories in ‘Letters From Elsewhere’, my collection of speculative short stories, explore what it means to be monstrous. What better way to do that than from the perspective of a so-called monster. Who was more monstrous – Mary Shelley’s Dr Frankenstein or the monster the he created?

Another favourite character of mine, who offers a unique perspective on humanity, is the cyborg, Murderbot (The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells). Much of Murderbot’s understanding of humanity comes from streaming soap operas, but when they work alongside actual living humans the reality is quite different. Through internal, and often comedic, dialogue, Murderbot provides a running commentary on the dangers of human emotions and how they compromise our motives and behaviours.

Through speculative fiction, we can hold a mirror up to ourselves in a manner that isn’t dangerous or confronting but gets to the truth of who we are. It allows us to confront our deepest fears, desires, hopes and wildest dreams from within the safety of fictitious construct.

Think of how ground-breaking ‘The Left-Hand of Darkness’ (Ursula le Guin) was in challenging the concept of binary sexuality, and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ (Margaret Atwood) was in exploring the rise of fundamentalism. Both books brutally critiqued society. That’s what speculative fiction can do.

Sometimes, the answer to ‘What if?’ isn’t happy. I wrote ‘Rose Moon’ in response to the election of Trump as President of the USA. I imagined a human world darkened by repression, cruelty, environmental damage, and religious extremism – tragically, that didn’t turn out to be the speculative component of the novella!

In the upcoming ‘Ghost Assassins of Bijou’ collection of novellas, I’m delving into misogyny, repression and the patriarchy. To lighten the tone, I’m telling the stories in the form of a Space Opera with humour woven through the prose. The messages are no less confronting, they’re just delivered in a more palatable package.

In speculative fiction, we can imagine how different environments, technologies, or societies might alter the human experience. Speculative fiction can foster discussion about socio-political issues, encourage diverse thinking and offer concepts for technological innovation. Submarines, space travel, computers, cell phones and virtual reality all featured in speculative fiction before existing in reality.

Speculative fiction taps into our curiosity about the future, the supernatural, and the abstract possibilities that lie just beyond our reach. It’s also fun!
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Letters From Elsewhere

9/14/2023

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Letters From Elsewhere is my first published collection of short stories and is available as an ebook on all your favourite platforms.
Universal Link:
https://books2read.com/LettersFromElsewhere

For print version, search directly on your local Amazon or Barnes & Noble site.
 
Blurb
This genre-blending collection is rich in characters who aren’t always what they seem at first glance. Space pirates, Fire Elves and living grotesques take us on journeys across the multiverse and deep into the hidden crevices of the mind. These stories interrogate what it is to be monstrous; and along the way, they confront the patriarchy and explore the spectrum of sexuality. If you like your fantasy and science fiction a bit dark, laced with humour and sometimes spicy, these stories will entertain, disturb and challenge you.
​
“Jacqui Greaves titillates with this outstanding collection of speculative encounters, visits and ventures by otherworldly beings, each tale sharpening our understanding of the human condition and the tiny role we play in the universe. Cosmic, cautionary, and compelling, served up with a sprinkle of humour and a good dose of sauce, Letters from Elsewhere is a satisfyingly good read.” —Lee Murray, five-time Bram Stoker Award®-winning author of Grotesque: Monster Stories.

What inspired you to put together this collection?
I’ve been writing short stories for almost a decade now, so I’ve built up a large catalogue. Quite a few have already been published in various online magazines and anthologies, but over the years most of those publications have disappeared into the ether, leaving my stories orphaned. Others have just never found their place in the world.
Earlier this year, SpecFicNZ ran an online workshop on getting your short stories published. It got me thinking. When I went through my files, I realised I had a lot of orphaned and unpublished stories just sitting there doing nothing. So, ‘Letters From Elsewhere’ was born.
The collection covers a broad range of speculative fiction, including fantasy, science fiction, erotica and horror.
 
What on earth possessed you to mix your genres?
Honestly, I don’t set out to mix genres. I set out to ask “What if…”
Most of the stories in this collection are either fantasy or science fiction, with a few lying further afield on the spectrum of speculative fiction. A little under half incorporate explicit sex.
My genre blending is best demonstrated in the story ‘Moths to a Flame’, which has elves fucking in space – so fantasy, science fiction, erotica and a hint of historical fiction all twisted together in the space of a couple of thousand words.
I’m not afraid to include sex in my stories – after all it’s such a primal driver for humanity. I use the word erotica, because it’s a catch all, but I get frustrated when people interpret that to mean romance. The sex in my stories is not often of the romantic kind, it’s more about pleasure, and sometimes it’s weaponised. In ‘Flower Girl’ sex is used for pleasure, as a punishment, to celebrate and as a negotiation tool.
 
Does the collection have a theme?
For me the theme of the collection is ‘what it is to be monstrous.’
Are we born monstrous, or do we become monstrous? It’s not that simple. Our genes, our family, our experiences in the universe all feed into creating who we are. I believe we all have a monster lurking within. Whether that monster is unleashed on the world is a consequence of multitudes of small decisions and actions.
Several stories in this collection, e.g., ‘Persuasion’, ‘The Grotesque Wars’, ‘Please Sign the Waiver’, cause us to question who the real monster is. Often my tales are told from the perspective of someone we would consider a monster, e.g., ‘Starkiller’, ‘You are Already Dead’, ‘The Abyss’. I want my readers to sit in the monster’s skin and question their own monstrousness.
 
Most of your stories include strong female characters. Why?
I’m a feminist and a bisexual, so I naturally include strong female characters and queerness into my stories. I’m so tired of misogyny and the patriarchy – it’s just exhausting having to deal with them decade after decade. So, I write ‘What If’ stories where women rebel against expectations and oppressors get their comeuppance. Some of these stories, e.g., ‘Redundant’, have been influenced by real life.
 
You use humour to great effect. Why?
I once went to a book launch where someone else read out one of my stories. The audience were in hysterics. I was surprised because I hadn’t intended for it to be funny; it just was. That still happens, but I’m more aware of it now and use it consciously.
Some of these stories deal with big, serious issues, like death and the end of the world. By adding elements of humour, I think it makes it easier for the reader to handle these heavy subjects, while not slipping into a pit of despair.
​



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Lust in Tooth and Claw

10/7/2016

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This week I'm hosting the authors of the latest edition of the Lust anthologies.

​Thank you so much, Jacqui, for hosting us on your blog! We’d love to tell you all about Lust in Tooth and Claw, and the authors who have contributed to it.
About the anthology
This lusty, hardcore anthology is brought to you by four authors with a special place in their hearts for paranormal creatures with fangs and claws. Our stories will dig deep into your imagination with tales of mythological creatures and erotic horrors who tantalize, titillate and electrify.
Sink your teeth into a quartet of lusty novellas. In the third volume of the Lust series, our authors bring you atmospheric tales of creatures sharp in tooth and claw, and hotter than hot. Werewolves, vampires, the Sidhe, plus a side helping of gods and demons, deliver erotic horror with a nip of romance.
About the Lust series
This is an ongoing, ambitious project, managed and published by Devi Ansevi, in which an anthology of paranormal erotica/erotic romance, featuring novellas by a variety of authors from different countries, is produced, from concept to publication, within six weeks or so. It’s extremely tough work, and relies on the co-operation of everyone involved, but these anthologies are incredibly exciting to work on – and equally as exciting to read!
We celebrate the international nature of our authors: language, grammar and style may vary between novellas, reflecting their country of origin.

Synopses of the novellas
Clara Randall has a problem: Vampires keep attacking her. They haven't killed her yet, but a girl's luck has to run out some time. In Devi Ansevi's Blood and Chaos, Max Forsyth can protect Clara from other predators, but can he protect her from himself? Even the gods are betting against them.

In Leanan Sidhe and the Wordsmith by Ina Morata, struggling writer Andy Marshall has just secured a place as writer-in-residence on a tiny Irish island. It's not exactly the position he's been expecting. When a beautiful muse offers to seduce him, and gift him with all the success he desires... will he agree to pay the price?

In Katherine Nevitt's Bitten by the Wolf, Lily is a loner in a dead end job. When she's attacked in the street by a giant wolf, her life will never be the same. The Alpha wants her for his mate, and that's not an honor she's allowed to refuse. When the Alpha's brother helps her escape, can they survive the savagery of Pack justice?

In Essemoh Teepee’s Panic Room, Matt and Miranda get away from it all, taking time out of their busy lives to reconnect. What could beat the romance of a remote cabin by a tranquil lake over a Full Moon weekend of sexy fun? And then they meet Fabian. Their lives will never be the same - if they survive.

Extract (Panic Room by Essemoh Teepee)
[and this story gets hotter and hotter…!]
Fabian stood in the shadows under the trees watching the couple kiss in the clearing. Fire ran along his nerves as he watched the man lift the green dress over the girl’s head and run his hands over her pale body. Fabian shifted position to more clearly see them both as they moved to a fallen tree trunk.
The girl bent forward and grasped the dead branches to steady herself, arching her back to push her rump towards her mate. Fabian licked his lips as he watched her lover kneel behind her and bury his face between her rounded cheeks.
***
Matt tasted Miranda with the tip of his tongue before plunging it between her labia and licking inside her. She was soaking and so ready. Her legs spread further as she bent her knees to allow him more access. Lapping at her sex, he favored her clit and parted her buttocks with his fingers.
He knew exactly what he wanted to do to Miranda. He licked further and felt her shudder as the tip of his tongue pressed into her ass. Her groan and pushing her hips back onto him made his cock stiffen even more.
***
Miranda felt Matt stand up and slip his hand down between her legs, sliding his fingers into her, making her moan. She felt him doing something and then his other hand came into view with his leather belt dangling. The sight of it made her gasp; she had felt its bite before but not for some time. The memory of exquisite pain and pleasure made her writhe and sit lower onto his hand, taking his fingers deeper.
“Good girl, that’s it. Take it, Mirri.” His voice, deep with desire made goose bumps rise on her back and arms.
"Relax, baby, just relax for me."
Miranda gasped as he twisted his fingers inside her, easing them a little deeper with each movement. She was so aroused, so wet and so very ready that when she spread her thighs wider his hand slid all the way up inside her.
"Oh God! Fuck, yesss."
"Good Girl, easy now, get used to the feel. You okay?"
"Fuck yes. Don't stop Mattie."
Miranda groaned, deep down as his knuckles stretched her, raking across sensitive nerves with each slow, grinding twist. She could feel the bones of Matt's wrist sliding under his skin against her labia as he carefully rotated his fist inside of her. She cried out as he began to gradually push deeper and then withdraw and she gasped the words,
"Deeper, push deeper."
Matt pumped his fist in her cunt and each thrust pushed her towards a precipice, a long fall of pleasure that threatened to break her with its intensity.
"I'm cumming Mattie, don’t stop, don’t stop."
Miranda's body tightened around his fist and she arched her back as the overwhelming climax overtook her every sense. Blackness threatened to engulf her and she felt her legs weaken. Matt's arm around her waist supported her from falling. She screamed with a second release as Matt carefully twisted his hand out of her, a hot gush following its withdrawal.
Still supporting her, Matt wrapped his belt around her wrists and strapped her hands to a branch. She trembled now, not knowing what he would do next but wanting him to do it soon. She was floating, high from the powerful orgasms but needing even more. It scared her, just how much she wanted to come. She had never felt so aroused, so wanton. She wanted to be filled, stretched possessed. She wanted to fuck. Miranda whimpered as Matt slid his fingers into her and then out and up to play with her sensitive pucker, slippery from his tongue and her release. The tip of one finger slowly easing into her ass made her groan; when he twisted it she moaned more loudly.
“Take me, hurt me. Make me feel you.”
He worked a second finger in and began to stretch her, readying her. Her sex was so wet now that she could feel it streaming down the inside of her thigh. She so wanted this, wanted him to own her, possesses her utterly in every way. She wanted his thick heat to drive those fascinating grey eyes from her mind.
“Fuck me, Matt, fuck my ass.”
The feel of his hardness opening her cunt drove her arousal even higher. Miranda pushed back and Matt slipped easily into her wet heat, making her groan as she felt the ridge slide inside. She moved her hips, fucking herself on his cock, moaning with loss as he withdrew. Lubricated with her essence, Matt pressed against her once more, a little higher and with more force to ease himself partly into her tighter entry.
She cried out, “Oh God, Matt. Do it now,” and ground her hips back against him, forcing him deeper into her ass. Then everything was outside her control.
Matt drove into her until she felt the fur at the base of him against her rump. With each fresh thrust his sac struck her clit making her whimper. Miranda wanted to move further and help him take her more deeply but her wrists dragged against the leather bonds, the sensation of helplessness driving her higher. She squirmed as Matt reached under her and gripped one breast, using it to drag her back onto him.
Matt twisted her silk scarf, tightening it around her throat, using it like a halter to control her, to overpower her, while he rode her even harder. Her orgasm was explosive and she arched and screamed. It was a different type of climax when he fucked her there, deeper, mellower in a way but it still shook her whole body. The feeling of surrender and freedom in submission was so much more poignant when he took her this way.
“That’s it, Mirri, take it. Take it and cum hard for me.”
She bent her knees a little more, pushed back to meet him and did as he demanded, screaming every time she came for her man.
***
Where Fabian had stood in the shadows was empty, the trampled grass splashed with thick white seed, semen dripping from leaves in slow extending strings to pool at the base of a tree.
 
 Buy links for Lust in Tooth and Claw
 The universal link for Lust in Tooth & Claw is:
http://mybook.to/LustinToothandClaw.
This link will direct you to your local Amazon country site.
 Or we have a link for Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M0JNJU1
And one for Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M0JNJU1

About the authors of Lust in Tooth and Claw

Devi Ansevi
I'm a prolific author, avid reader, closet romantic, incurable optimist, and owner of a very fertile, very naughty imagination. In my books you will find two or more people enjoying vanilla and non-vanilla sex, including spanking, bondage, dominance, toys, delicious punishments, and other naughty but oh-so-nice things. All of my stories explore the dynamics of power in a relationship, and all have an HEA or HFN.
Tweet me @sexidevi or find me on Facebook. Learn more about books I’ve written, read and reviewed at my Goodreads author page, my Amazon Author page, or my Crush Blush blog.
Want to stay in the know about all my new releases? Sign up for my newsletter! Once or twice a month, you’ll receive an email with all kinds of goodies, including exclusive behind-the-scenes peeks at my latest projects. 
Free short stories and flash fiction are posted on my Crush Blush ‘Free Stories’ page
***

Ina Morata
I'm a bibliophilic, hopeless romantic with a fascination for mythology. Matters of the heart play a big part in my erotica and erotic romance, as do psychological, emotional and physical boundaries. My work contains vanilla and non-vanilla sex between two or more people, and includes spanking, dominance in real and virtual situations, bondage, voyeurism, and a whole number of other delicious, erotic themes.
I’d love to hear from you! You’re very welcome to connect with me on Twitter @InaMorataWriter, or on my Facebook Author Page. Find me on Pinterest, Instagram, or on Goodreads, too.
If you’d like to be kept up to date with all my news, including new releases, special offers and sexy, subscriber-only stories, sign up to my mailing list, which you’ll find on my Ina Morata website. Or you can visit my Amazon Author Page for more details of my books.
***

Katherine A. Nevitt
Thank you for reading Lust in Tooth and Claw, I hope you liked it! Please let me know what you thought by posting your review on Amazon or Goodreads or anywhere else you may think of. I’d love to hear what you think about my work. 
See all of Katherine’s books on her Amazon Author Page.
***

Essemoh Teepee
Essemoh Teepee (www.smotp.com) has been published by Circlet Press, Cleis Press and Renaissance/Sizzler. He shares in an IPPY Gold Medal for the acclaimed anthology Carnal Machines, published by Cleis Press, which includes his steampunk story ‘Doctor Watson Makes a House Call’. While he enjoys writing erotic fiction that skirts the darker side of human experience, many of his stories turn out to have romance lurking in them, however hard he tries to expunge it!
Essemoh writes on the darker, harder side of erotica. His fascinating creation of Fabian in this story, Panic Room is very dark and extremely hard! It is a tale of a paranormal ménage et trois, (or is it quatre?) that drips with passion and arousal from almost every line. Go to Essemoh's website www.smotp.com for more on his writing.
Would you like to experience and feel the sensations of what it is like to give yourself to a creature like Fabian? You can immerse yourself in just such an experience with the free audio download 'Surprize!' It uses the unique Directed Erotic Visualisation© audio technique, created by Essemoh Teepee to take you right in to the heart of the story. It feels so real it's scary. You can download this free .mp3 file from www.esensualbooks.co.uk
There are also two scenes from Panic Room to experience if you dare. A tryst with Fabian for Gay and Bi-Curious Men and another with Matt in the woods for Hetero Women
There are nearly 200 DEV© audio experiences to suit nearly every kink, gender and orientation along with Vampires, Dragons, Incubi, Succubi, Tentacles and even Dolphins! You can find out more at the website www.smotp.xxx.

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Grabbing the grotesque by the tale.

9/26/2016

6 Comments

 
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Feels like it's about time that I joined the legion of authors with blogs. To be honest, it's something that I've been putting off for quite a while now, and I'm still more than a little unsure about it. Part of me feels as though I've got nothing much to say...the other part of me never shuts up!
I do have a niggling concern that time spent blogging could be spent writing. But I'm also aware that a writer needs readers, and an active blog can help to achieve that. So here I am. Nervous and excited all at once.
To help ease my way in I've decided to start with an excerpt from my recently published novella, Blood of Stone, which you can find in the Lust on the Wing anthology.
The initial inspiration for Blood of Stone came from the skull paintings of Takashi Murakami, they gave me the opening scene. The plot and characters were then influenced by the French legends of the gargouille and the Tarasque. I hope you enjoy this snippet...and if you do then feel free to leave a comment.


Clovis inhaled, re-inflating his lungs as the silver light of the second moon touched his freshly exposed skin. He roared, raising his arms and face to the night sky, wings stretched to their full span. The burst of flame illuminated the entire chateau and Fredegund trembled in awe and desire at his magnificence.
“Clovis. I am Fredegund, the Guardian. Remember me.” Her voice rose, powerful and commanding despite her raw emotions.
Turning his terrible regard in her direction, the vertical slits of his pupils widened. Clovis tipped his head sideways to stare down at her. His nostrils flared and his forked tongue flicked out through parted thick lips to taste the air. His cock engorged and hardened as the flavours ignited his desire.
“I remember you, Guardian. Service me.”
Stung he’d used her honorific, and not her name, Fredegund hesitated in her response.
Clovis didn’t ask twice. Using his tail, he knocked her off her feet.
Realising her mistake, and the danger she’d put them in, Fredegund flipped herself over onto all fours. She spread her legs and raised her tail to expose her sex. Although she would never ripen, she felt the pull of the moons. Her lips wetted with anticipation.
Dropping to his knees in an instant, Clovis pressed his erection into her, pushing hard against her tight resistance until he was fully sheathed. Fredegund groaned. The friction of his entry heated her from the inside. Each time Clovis withdrew and punched into her again, the heat grew. His pounding increased in tempo. Fredegund imagined she could taste his saltiness at the back of her throat.
Her limbs quivered and the walls of her cunt began to pulsate in ecstasy. He plunged on through her screams, only heaving into his own orgasm when her final contraction fluttered away. Fredegund gasped in delight as Clovis jerked and filled her with a wild roar.
With the waking of the males, stone ground against stone, causing the air to vibrate around them. She would be busy tonight if she was to protect them all.



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