Cover Change & Movie Rec: Bound

I revamped the cover to His Sweet Prince, update here. I liked the idea of having an overlay spreading over the two figures like a communal tattoo.

Given that at the moment there's a schlocktastic TV show playing in the background which I won't bother naming but take a guess, historical, set in Italy, and the costumes are pretty, I'll be contrary & recommend a movie which I guess you could describe as noir/gangster, and I think may have been the first movie written and directed by the Wachowski's.

If you haven't seen or heard of Bound, check it out. It's worth it.

Here's the trailer…

Voting & Opinionating

*This should have been posted yesterday but I not only got wrenched away from the keyboard but didn’t have a chance to get back to this till now. So here goes:

I’ve been writing and rewriting furiously and am about to be wrenched from the keyboard in order to get out and walk the dogs. Or they get to walk us, better description. One of them weighs more than I do, sh+t!

Elections & voting. Hmm, yesterday we had the state elections and I voted, not only because in Australia, it’s a compulsory thing but because I really believe in it. And yes, the current crop of politicians are not inspiring (I’m talking Australian ones). And yes, I KNOW my vote won’t count, because while the area I live in, should, theoretically, be a 50/50 deal the boundaries were changed creatively some years back. Now hell would have to freeze over before any party but the one currently holding the seat gets kicked out.

What kind of thing do I think a political party should care about? Plain, simple stuff: the rights of all citizens, regardless of race, gender, sexual preference or religion to a decent education, decent healthcare and an equal opportunity in the workplace and in life choices. Equality. That’s pretty much it. Not much to ask for, and yet such a massive thing to ask for.

So yeah, I believe in getting out there and voting. And oh yes, I’ve voted even when I’ve thought every political choice on offer was crap. A real vote, not a donkey vote. Because if nothing else the simple act of casting a vote honors those that have fought so hard for that right, and may still be doing so.

Okay, off my soapbox now. Back to dogwalking and writing romance and a little dreaming.

This Tom Waits song seems incredibly appropriate for these dangerously interesting times. I think it also sums up my feelings about politicians well.

Gaultier Exhibition & New Stuff

Briefly, I pubbed His Sweet Prince (The Hellfire Vampires Bloodline 2) through Amazon last weekend, further info links in the His & His Sweet Prince Hellfire Vampires Bloodline + Titles & Outlets tabs in the header. Also check the previous, 8th November post: His Sweet Prince (The Hellfire Vampires Bloodline) 2.

Gaultier! I blather a fair amount about favorite films and television shows, I once threw in a link to a favorite artist of mine, Ray Caesar, but I’ll do a post here about the Gaultier retrospective which I saw last weekend.

Yeah, like everyone, I’m well familiar with the pointy bra/corset, and I’ve loved his film costumes – Besson’s The Fifth Element just would NOT be the same experience without his designs, but seeing around thirty years of work up close was extraordinary and amazing. And so, since I absolutely regard fashion design as an art, just as I would painting, film, music, writing, whatever the hell else comes along, and it all feeds the creative beast, not to mention soul, I was blown away and inspired and energized by the sheer genius and hidden hard slog of Gaultier’s work. It was wild, it was experimental, for some it would be “but where would you wear it” but there were very many exquisite and totally wearable items. I know I lusted after a pair of the sequined trousers a (mannequin) sailor was wearing, not to mention the leather jackets and wild shoes and boots.

I’ve included some photos here, taken on my phone, so excuse the quality. I was really bummed out that the one photo I really wanted to work, of his childhood teddy, complete with its own beta version cone bra, came out fuzzy, but I’ve included it just because it was so damned adorable. I’ve also included a link to a YouTube video of Gaultier being interviewed. For all I know he’s faking being funny, intelligent, endlessly curious and inclusive very well, but hell, he’s totally on my “Imagine The Best Dinner Party In The World” guest list. Catch at least a few minutes of it and see what you think.

Not to mention, about the only thing he and I have in common: we both had the best grandmothers going. His sounds pretty wild and I know mine was.

Ciao,

J… oh, and I'm currently midways through my hot rock star story. Hell yeah! Researching this one is a little different to Objects Of His Obsession :)

His Sweet Prince (The Hellfire Vampires Bloodline) 2

Hi all,

His Sweet Prince (The Hellfire Vampires Bloodline) Book 2 is now in the Amazon store.

His Sweet Prince is a shifter/witch novel linked but totally standalone to the Hellfire Vampire world, so if you are into shifter/supernatural action, this will be the one for you. Following is the blurb:::

Shifters and witches don't mix, no matter how combustible their sexual chemistry. Especially when one is an assassin, and the other a lycan prince he has been sent to slaughter.

Easton Caird is many things. To his Agency, he is codenamed Scarlet. Scarlet for blood spilled, Scarlet for the rentboy he impersonates. Damaged, dangerous, he trusts no one.

And when he reads his would-be mark, Grisha Vasiliev, a lycan prince who has turned his back on the shifter pack and crime empire headed by his ruthless father, he realizes that the intel he was given on the commanding male was comprised. Vasiliev is no Russian mobster, trading in drugs, guns, and human misery. But Vasiliev's father, a lycan king is.

The two of them will be thrown together and with death so close, the raw lust between them cannot be denied. With so much blood spilled the consequences of success or failure will be devastating.

Will Easton ultimately make the greatest sacrifice, the most eternal trade of all in order to gain a love, secure a bond he has never had before? Grisha may just be worth it.

xoxo,

J

Wild About Harry

“I have invited our little seamstress to take her thread and needle and sew our two mouths together.” Harry Crosby

My last blog post was about heroes, in particular, one of my favorites, Houdini. As one who believes that without personal freedom, there is nothing, the world’s most famous escapologist is naturally right up there for me.

This post … well, Harry Crosby, as you may have guessed by that quote, was the Jazz Ages answer to Lord Byron: mad, bad and most definitely, dangerous to know. There is a great biography of him, Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby, which I first read in my teens and thus began my Harry fixation. He is not a hero of mine, but he does still fascinate me, because he is, ultimately, unknowable.

I’m not alone in that fascination. Lisa St Aubin de Teran wrote a novel based around Harry, Black Idol, wound around opium, orgies and death, and I don’t think she is the sole writer or creative intrigued by his elusive, no-boundaries life and personality.

He was from a blue blood Boston family but volunteered as an ambulance driver in France during World War 1 and survived Verdun. Whatever his natural eccentricities were, by war’s end he was also probably suffering – as a massive amount of those veterans were – from PTSD, which was scarcely even conceived of at that point.

Either way, he arrived in Paris at the perfect time, the nineteen-twenties, with his wife, Caresse (and yes, that was not her original name. Rather, it was Polly). They set up the Black Sun Press which they ran as a serious enterprise, publishing early, in exquisite editions, some of the literary superstars of succeeding years including James Joyce and Hemingway.

But what he, and to a degree, Caresse, were famous for, was their headlong dive into sex, drugs and rock and roll– before rock and roll. He was outrageous, pushed every boundary, broke every rule, was a complete arsehole, entitled, spoilt rotten in world of shattered postwar survivors, and yet had a ferocious personal charm, allure and spirit of adventure. Later, having survived Harry himself, Caresse Crosby became known as a patron of the arts.

It all ended in 1929. Harry and a mistress he named the Fire Princess were found dead in what was probably a suicide pact. It was the perfect time for Harry to have checked out. With the stock market crash, the expat party scene in Paris was over.

If Harry had not met that bullet, exactly what would have happened? So much of his legend revolves around his early death– he was 31. And so he stays enigmatic. Whatever promise he had, stays simply that. It is the force of his personality, an extraordinary life as art, that holds attention rather than a body of work as the poet he saw himself as.

For anyone interested in that era, especially Paris in the twenties, reading about him is essential. Along the way you’ll encounter, as Harry did, just about every known literary and artistic figure on the scene from Hemingway to Dali and Cartier-Bresson and many others. No small feat. And if you can work out just exactly what made Harry tick, kudos to you.

Heroes & Villains + A Taste of the Next Hellfire Vampires

As I was thinking of things to blog about, I thought one cool thing would be my heroes. One blog post at a time, lovelies! Ha! …If you asked me what quality I admire most in others, it would be guts. Or courage, if you want to be smooth about it. And the most important thing in the world: freedom.

That can be freedom to love who you want, be who you want, live the life you want.

That sole word can mean a wide range of things to each and every individual.

I have a mile-long list of my creative and life heroes (I can’t even begin to go near politics with this one, it would take forever!) Instead I’ll just list the person who has held my imagination ever since I had scabby knees and collected tadpoles.

Houdini … yep, the world’s most famous escapologist. An escapologist. What’s not to admire?

So yes, Houdini. Freedom, escaping from knotty (literally) situations, and just a little bit of magic dust thrown in there about the whole thing. What more could you want?

I won’t go into history and his bio here. There is plenty of stuff about him on YouTube and elsewhere, and I highly recommend checking it out. He died in 1926, almost a hundred years ago, and yet in certain ways, there is something so very modern about him. He'd be headlining in Vegas now, and I know I'd pay money to see him.

WRITING times: It’s looking like the lycan story, the second of the Hellfire Bloodline Vampires series, is going to be finished before the rock star contemporary I am also working on. I have a habit of working on two things at once, it keeps things bubbling. For some months my productivity dropped right back to near zero due to a nightmare of a job. That’s done and dusted and I’m writing like a fiend. It’s lovely. (For me at least).

So yes, the next Hellfire is close to completion and that makes me very happy.

*After the jump is a snippet, not for those under eighteen, which may or may not make the cut:

Missing Histories & An Exhibition Worth Seeing

I am shockingly bad at regularly posting, which, since it is nowhere near New Year’s (thank God), todays resolution to post twice weekly will have to count as a New September 21st one. So as I find blogging about me me me boring, I thought I’d comment on stories, film (as ever), books and people I’ve found intriguing, thought provoking or just plain funny.

That said, the me me me stuff out of the way: right now, I have two main stories on the boil (about the only cooking I ever agree to) after a near-absence from being able to write solidly of quite some months. I had a killer of a 9-5 schedule that was more like 7-7 and it nearly wiped me out along with any creative abilities. Yep, poor me, etc. I managed to get In The Flesh and Angel Angel done but that’s pretty shit productivity compared to my usual speed. Fortunately my mojo is back together with my word count. Hopefully it will wind up with some good things resulting.

Meanwhile … please, click on the link (I finally realised you could embed a tweet!), and read the article, because it’s pretty extraordinary and it really bears on this post. 

The black Victorians: astonishing portraits unseen for 120 years http://t.co/Ar13XRcgmp pic.twitter.com/fBC17VuDYd
— The Guardian (@guardian) September 15, 2014

I’m never going to know the story of the woman in this photograph, but what strikes me is how modern she looks. I want to know her story. I doubt ever will. Certainly I had never heard of Sara Forbes Bonetta, also represented in the photo exhibition (which I would love to see – anyone reading this in London, I am jealous), and that is amazing, as I've read enough histories, both of the art, social scene and general life, of Victorian London, and she should have merited inclusion.

What that article did was emphasise something well known– just how history gets rewritten, chunks get left out, and often, they are the parts that tell so much about the world in that instant of time. They are parts that it is so important to acknowledge, no matter how grim many of those stories will be.

Victorian England is a time and place that fascinates me, originally I think because I, early on, had such a love of the over-the-top art of the time and still do. The Pre-Raphaelites were an inspiration for the Surrealists, and little wonder. Take a look at any Rossetti or Burne-Jones, and you’ll be tripped out. The Victorians were conflicted, torn apart, I think, as our age is, by the incredible speed at which things were changing.

But none of the histories go into the stories of people like the woman in that first photograph. Not white, not male. A visitor from Africa. And other people of color were obviously living in Britain. What were their stories?

At the moment I am working on two books, one a paranormal, another a rock star contemporary. On the backburner I have thirty thousand words of a retro paranormal with one of the characters loosely based on Josephine Baker, that incredible jazz-age singer and entertainer. She had to travel from America to Paris to gain the recognition and fame she deserved. Even so, reading now what counted as praise then often sounds incredibly stereotyped if not plain offensive. I wonder what she truly thought of it. It would be fascinating to know, and is something I speculate about within the story and the context of the character.

Well, it’s Sunday morning here, still, just, and I need to get back to the paranormal. Blood has been spilled, and yet more will be. It’s fun to rule the world, if only a virtual one…

Xoxo

J