Welcome to the website of Janine Ashbless. I'm a writer of fantasy and paranormal erotica and - more rarely - scorching romantic adventure. I like to write about magic and myth and mystery, dangerous power dynamics, borderline terror, and the not-quite-human. And hot filthy sex, obviously...
News:
An anthology of post-apocalyptic erotica
Romance Novel: third in the Book of the Watchers trilogy
Rights to
Named and Shamed and
Fierce Enchantments have reverted with the closing of Sweetmeats Press - both have now been re-published with lovely new covers by Sinful Press.
I have begun self-publishing reverted works with my Ashbless "brand" covers. Erotica is released with red covers, Erotic Romance with blue, as above.
To my absolute delight I am immortalised on the "Islands of Erotica" in the
Map of Literature by artist
Martin Vargic. You should so buy this awesome best-seller of a
book!Recent Publications:
Short story: Sourdough
Vasily Vereshchagin
[Click on pics for full size]
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| Caravan of Yaks loaded with Salt |
Last week I turned in edits for a short fantasy story that was set in "Russian Turkestan" - imperial Central Asia in the 19th century. It was inspired by my Silk Road travels of course, but in the course of my research I came across Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin (1842-1904) and thought I'd share some of his pictures here because he's quite brilliant, was extremely controversial in his lifetime, and deserves to be better known.
He painted some places I've been myself! (Only with more severed heads)
He's known primarily as a war artist, and he traveled extensively with Russian troops during the Russo-Turkish and Russo-Japanese wars, being both wounded and decorated for his courage (and in fact he eventually died when his ship hit a mine).
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| At the Fortress Wall |
But his emphasis was very much on the horrors of war and he was banned and derided all across Europe for his uncompromising portrayals of just how shitty the military life was...
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| All Is Quiet - tryptych |
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| Night Halt of the Great Army |
... sometimes literally:
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| Russian Camp in Turkestan |
He painted aftermaths of battles, POW corpses, wounded soldiers being abandoned to the crows, and soldiers dying in hospital.
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| After the Attack |
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| Defeated: Memorial Service |
This is his most notorious painting, The Apotheosis of War, which he dedicated "to all conquerors, past, present and to come":
War-paintings aside though,Vereshchagin was an extraordinary recorder of his travels across Asia. He visited India, the Himalayas, Tibet, Siberia, China, Japan, Cuba, the Phillippines, Palestine and Syria. He loved painting the landscapes:
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| Glacier on the road from Kashmir to Ladakh |
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| Mount Kazbek |
the people:
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| Residents of Western Tibet |
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| Chorus of Dervishes, Tashkent |
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| Parsee Priest, Bombay |
the ruins;
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| The Gur-Emir Mausoleum, Samarkand |
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| Ruins in Chuguchak |
the temples
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| Entrance to the Temple of Niko |
and OMG the costumes:
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| Buddiskogo Lama |
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| Warrior of Jaipur |
If you want to look through (many) more of his paintings there's a good gallery HERE
"Hardcore and literate" (Madeline Moore)
"Vivid and tempestuous and dangerous, and bursting with sacrifice, death and love." (Portia Da Costa)
"One of the hands-down masters of erotic writing." "Janine Ashbless showed me that erotica can be literature." (Violet Blue)
"How one writer can produce story after story to such a very high standard is awesome - she puts other writers to shame." (Jade: the International Erotic Art and Literature Magazine)
"The best erotic fairytale writer around." (Saskia Walker)
"One of the most talented, original and brave authors in the erotica field" (Shanna Germain)
