Elin Gregory

This Valentine’s Day, we invite you to join us in thumbing our noses at Cupid, Love and the Whole Schmaltzy Holiday!!

Introducing …

LOVE BITES: An Anti♥Valentine Blog Hop

Hostesses: The Inklingettes

Theme: Love Run Amuk, Aground or Otherwise Off Course

Schedule: Friday, February 8 through Thursday, February 14

Word Count: 250 Words

Incentive: Community spirit, inky fun and lots of laughs!

Further Incentive: Prizes! (Judging Details TBA)

* 6 Broken-hearted bookmarks made by the Divine Hammer

* A one-of-a-kind painting personalized with a quote from the winners piece donated by Lee Clements
*A one hour coaching session by Rebecca T Dickson

And this is where to sign up for it.

~:~

Here’s my bit:

Rome, about 50 AD

Valens winced as the slimy hide wrapped around his loins. It has lost the heat of its recently deceased previous owner but now smelled even worse.

Sextus, a pace or two to his right, gave a disgusted grunt, and Valens bit his lips together to stifle a snigger. Lupercalia was a serious religious ceremony. It was an honour to be chosen to have ones manly parts swathed with newly harvested goat skin, hairy side out, and to run through the streets of Rome whacking women with more strips of skin to increase their fertility.

There was little difference in hairiness between the goatskin and Sextus’s belly. It was a nice belly – rounded with good feeding, but with solid muscle beneath – and Valens wouldn’t have minded getting to know it, and the rest better. Sadly, they were so close in rank  that it was better not to ask.

Warm wet touched his face – the traditional anointing with blood on brow and cheeks and breast. After which he and Sextus were supposed to laugh uproariously. A drip tickled its way down his chest, skirting a nipple, then on down. Sextus was watching it as the high priest made the invocation.

“Don’t forget,” Sextus muttered as they prepared to run.  “Lucilla and Proserpina will be at the corner by the temple of Isis. I promised them both a good thwack.”

Valens sighed. Lupercalia – murdered goats, blood, laughter, whipping women . Surely there was an easier way to celebrate spring?

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Happy Wednesday! And it being Wednesday means that it’s time for another Hump Day Hook! 

Click on that link for a list of contributing authors. Not all of them are writing erotica – I’m not – and not all the snippets are hooks – mine aren’t usually – but they are worth looking at and great fun.

My bit is once again from years ago when I was in a dead boring job and desperately needed smething to occupy the squirrely bit of my brain. What better than writing pastiche of one of my favourite authors – Georgette Heyer – while cocking a snook at Barbara Cartland in the process? I had fun for about 40 thousand words, then my hard drive fried and I was left with 3ok printed out on continuous sheets on an old dot matrix printer – yes I’ve been using computers THAT long.

Anyhow – last week Sir Anthony and Chum decided to carry on playing cards together.

~~~

“I’ll cut with you,” Aubrey offered. “Your grey hack against my chestnut.”
“Oh no,” Cholmondeley shook his head, “not that ewe-necked nag, Put up something worth having for pity’s sake.”
Aubrey laughed, Chum’s affection for his grey was well known. He scribbled a few words onto a piece of paper and passed it to his friend.
“There’s my stake,” he declared, “take it or leave it.”
Cholmondeley shouted with laughter.
“I’ll take it by all means. You go first …Oh, very good Aubrey…But not quite good enough. I’ll keep this,” he waved the piece of paper, “next to my heart.”
“Just see that you do, “ Aubrey warned. “I’m ready for some supper. Coming?”
“Later. I’m off the join Charles and Freddy at the dice.” Chum rose to his feet and placed a cigarillo between his teeth. “If I can beat you tonight, I should be able to beat anybody!”

~~~

So, what did Chum win? Why will he keep the IOU close to his heart?

Not telling. You’ll have to come back to find out. 🙂

Click on the picture to see the list of Weekend Warrior participants.

Time for another eight sentences from On A Lee Shore. If you recall Kit had a painful awakening when someone grabbed his family jewels.

~~~

Denny sat on the floor, holding his nose and sobbing. “You di’n oughter dun that,” he wept. “That HURT!” He waved a hand at Wigram who was a few paces away, holding his sides. “He said you was a maid. He said you wouldn’t mind.” Denny seemed more heartbroken at the betrayal than from the pain of his nose and Kit was overcome with pity, and with rage at how both he and poor Denny had been made to look ridiculous.

“Wigram,” Kit snarled and flung himself at the bo’sun’s throat.

~~~

So – what’s the pirate punishment for striking an officer? Find out – um – in a few weeks. Eight sentences at a time doesn’t exactly speed the story along.

If you write derivative [fan] fiction – I used to, it’s a brilliant way of trying things and getting feedback on what works and what doesn’t – you’re probably used to getting criticism from people who feel that it’s plagiarism, parasitic, unfair to the author etc.

I wonder what they’d make of this video trailer for the BBC?

I think it’s rather gorgeous, especially for the inclusion of 2 same sex couples, but found some of the lines in the poem familiar while not recognising the whole, if you know what I mean. Today I remembered to Google a bit of it and it jolly well should have been familiar. There are bits of Keats, Longfellow, Walter Savage Landor, Shelley Tennyson and Arthur O’Shaughnessy with a couple of filler phrases from the compiler poet Alison Chisolm. Apparently the style of poem, which Chisolm invented, as called a ‘cento’.

If this isn’t derivative I don’t know what is.

The idea of taking book covers with women in impossible poses and reproducing them with men trying to emulate them isn’t new – Jim Hines has been doing it as a fundraiser and whipping in fellow Sci-fi/fantasy authors to help him in the ensemble pieces – but I do like the idea of redrawing comic books with Hawkeye in the place of the distorted females.

Just cast an eye over the Hawkeye Initiative and join me in having a giggle.

The Insecure Writers Support Group is – well – what it says on the can really. One day a month we can let out all our fears and frustrations without our readers telling us to put a sock in it or smiling sweetly as they murmur about “First World problems”.

Actually they can if they want, but this is the one day of the month that I’ll feel justified to ignore them.

So – problems.

I’m not writing. Simple as that.  My word count has gone up by approx 1000 words since Christmas and that’s no way to write a novel.

It could  be because a string of interrupted nights means that even if I get up early enough to write I don’t achieve much. Or that I’ve spent 55k words making characters one can care about and now I have to kill most of them off. But wither way it’s blinking well frustrating!

On the other hand, I have edited the second draft of a short story and am about to start a final sweep for things like passive voice and peripatetic body parts. By this time next month I hope I’ll have developed the backbone to have submitted it somewhere.

IWSGis – see you next month.

This is my second bash at Hump Day Hook, a weekly event where authors post bits of WsIP or published works or, like me, things they are just stooging around with. Click on the link for the list of other participants.

My paragraphs come from a project that is lodged in my files as “Historical Novel” though actually it’s nothing of the kind. It was inspired by a friend who, on a slow day at work, witnessed me acting out all the different roles from a Georgette Heyer novel. “You should write one like that,” she suggested, “only sillier”. So I did.

I’m carrying on immediately from last week. Sir Aubrey Stanton-Rivers, young and foolish, is in a Regency gambling hell with his best mate Cholmondely [pronounced Chumley if that makes it easier] and is generally very pleased with life.

~~~

The red-faced young subaltern opposite just grinned and continued to shuffle the deck.
“Another game?” Aubrey suggested. His coat was off, his neckcloth was on the floor and his blond curls were wildly dishevelled. With his wide-set blue eyes and ingenuous grin he looked like a youthful seraph that had strayed into an antechamber of Hell and found it much to his taste.
“Dammit, you’re too lucky for me,” one of his companions grumbled. “I’m not having you make Chum’s fortune at the expense of mine. I’m for the dice table. Coming, Charles?”
The other man grunted and drained his glass and they both disappeared into the howling throng at the other end of the room. Aubrey gave a crack of laughter.
“You’ll play. Won’t you, Chum?”
“Of course. Your luck never lasts,” Chum pointed out. “Besides, once the drink is in the sense is out and here comes our third bottle.” He grinned and placed the deck squarely upon the table between them.

~~~

Can this end well? Not at this point in the story.