Mancandy Monday: Sam Rockwell

Yes, Sam Rockwell falls into the "some weirdo" category. But he deserves his own Mancandy Monday, I feel. Because I first loved him in the awful Charlie's Angels movie, which I came out of all those years ago saying: who was that guy?

I still remember that feeling of who was that guy. I wish he was more than who was that guy, now, but he's still the quirky indie kid who never does what you expect him to. He plays psychotic funny and funny psychotic and then BAM! Is suddenly in a sci-fi movie.

I wish he was in more sci-fi. His two best movies, Galaxy Quest and Moon, are sci-fi. I think he's just too weird and quirky to be contained in serious dramas. He needs otherworldly, he needs to advise people to make rudimentary lathes, he needs to be scared and desperate and running away from xenomorphs, maybe.

While looking like this:



Or this:



What? Don't look at me like that. Just trust me: with Sam Rockwell, the bigger the moustache and the wilder the hair, the more aliens he's saved you from and the better the crazy sex is going to be.

Or at least, that's the way it always is, in my head.

On Demand

You want to know why Justine Elyot is great? Because she wrote Advanced Corsetry, The Number, Office Sex and The Interview, all awesome stories that feature in Black Lace anthologies. She is a fresh and exciting new voice in erotica, and I find it amazing that I can say that without feeling like I'm delivering an insincere soundbite. Not only are her stories really well written, interesting and layered, they're also horny.

So you'll forgive me for getting excited because her own collection of short stories, On Demand, comes out in December. Or at least, I hope it does. Currently, Amazon seems to be dickering about with the date, which displeases me greatly.

I want On Demand now, dammit. Heh. No pun intended.

But anyway, support my sister in Black Lace and pre-order her fabulous book here: http://http://www.amazon.co.uk/Demand-Justine-Elyot/dp/0352345438/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1

Mancandy Monday: Some Weirdo

If you regularly read this blog - as I know you do, Bertha - you'll be aware that I like weird men. Men that only a select number of women like. Though I know the number of those women is growing.

Because women, I feel, sometimes find it easier to like weird men. As opposed to men, who even when they're weird often prefer babelicious women.

Though there's nothing wrong with that. I can understand why some weird men would like to be surrounded by hot babes. Sometimes I would like to be surrounded by Alexander Skarsgards.

Though the fact that I like Alexander Skarsgard because he is Swedish seems a bit odd, I have to say. Even the handsome men I like, I usually like because there's something weird about them. I prefer George Clooney when he's fat. Billy Zane when he's balding and also kind of fat. I would rather Sam Rockwell have a slight gut and that straggly moustache he sometimes wears, so that he looks like he just fell out of a trailer park somewhere at three o'clock in the morning, with no pants on.

I always like it when my dudes are playing some weirdo.

Of course the epitome of weird-cool at the moment is probably Jemaine Clement:

But maybe he's so weird that I can no longer like him. He's gone all the way around the scale and back into normal again. It would be too generic to surround myself with a gaggle of hims. Maybe if I surrounded myself with Rhys Darbys, who plays the even weirder band manager of Flight of the Conchords:

That would be weird enough?

I'm not sure. But here is another picture of Jemaine looking even weirder than he did in that other pic, to help me make up my mind:

I can definitely see him burning my heroine's name into a lawn somewhere, but leaving the last letter off because he didn't have enough gasoline: Popp.

Yeah, I can see that. I wish I could shake this feeling of helpless nothingness in order to write it. But then, it's even weirder than the other stuff I've written, so what's the use? You do me no favours, weird men. No favours at all.

Mancandy Mon- Tuesday: True Blood

I couldn't decide who to have for this belated Mancandy Monday. Mainly because the show True Blood is so full of pretty it should be outlawed.

But in particular I appreciate Sam Merlotte:

Who occasionally turns into this:

Bestiality: It's not just for weirdoes anymore.
.

And then there's this gigantic hunk of Swede:

He's also a hunk of cucumber, carrot and aubergine. Especially aubergine. Plus he has this amazing accent, the kind of accent that Stellan Skarsgard usually melts me with. On his son it's even better, because it's like this essence of Stellan in the body of a 6"5 young buck. It's this ancient cold...otherness, like he lived in the forests of dark European countries that had different names 1000 years ago.

I sure hope they do the whole "Eric has no memory" storyline on True Blood. Oh, what I could do with distilled-Stellan-1000-years-old Eric Northman, if he had no memory.

Flying Away

So, I'm off. Just in case you got to wondering where I am, Bertha. I'm flying to the land of lobsters and massive cupcakes, to spend money I don't have on things I don't want.

I shall see you when I return, burnt in some impossible place, on August 17th.

Snogs to all who want them,

Charlotte

Mancandy Monday: Black Lace

The first thing I ever read that had some serious bonking in it was The Fog, by James Herbert. Even more astonishing than that first foray into frankly quite odd sex (seeing as how the people are kind of mental when they're doing it, turned insane by THE FOG!), was my first exposure to erotica: The Splits, by Ray Gordon.

Which wasn't quite all I could have hoped for, I have to say. Although I boggled at some of the detail he went into (and still does go into), the female protagonist seemed a little...over the top. She breathed every word she said and loved loads of stuff really suddenly, including some things that sounded as painful as the activities in Anne Rice's Beauty books. I suspected that secretly, the main character wasn't loving things as much as Ray Gordon claimed she did.

In fact, I suspected that she secretly hated having ten bananas shoved up her bum*. And I didn’t want women who secretly hated very painful sounding things. I wanted women who were dirty and naughty and loved and were loved and did all of these things while making me believe in them, absolutely. They spoke with my voice. Even when they had crazy things to say.

Which is when I read Path of the Tiger, by Cleo Cordell, Gemini Heat by Portia Da Costa, Crash Course by Juliet Hastings, Conquered by Fleur Reynolds, Dreamers In Time by Sarah Copeland, The Houseshare by Pat O’Brien, The Stranger, by Portia Da Costa, Menage by Emma Holly.

I’d never read anything like them. I still haven’t. I’ve read far and wide in the world of erotica, I’ve read erotic romances and paranormal erotic romances and books in which the hero and heroine travel through space and VR machines and lands populated by werewolves, while bonking. I’ve read about alpha males that look like Fabio, big girls and small girls and silly girls and clever girls.

But I’ve never read books like Black Lace books. When I was choosing my pseudonym, I almost called myself Claudia Winthrop. You know why? Because Claudia is the name of the central character in The Stranger, and Winthrop is the surname of the central character in Menage.

You meant a lot to me, Black Lace. I will always be grateful to you, for representing me. For showing me that it's okay to think men look hot and to talk about it, to write about women that can be tough and not tough and all things in between without seeming weak or stupid. And for not insisting that women like ten bananas shoved up their bums.

.

Or at least not in a way that I couldn't buy into.

.

I am glad I got to write for you, even if it was just for a little while. I shall miss you very much, in all ways that it's possible to miss something. Once, I was a young woman in her boyfriend’s little blue bedroom, marveling at the things you told me I could do, if I wanted to.

And I’m not just talking about the uses for garden vegetables.

All my love now and forever,

Claudia Winthrop

.

*May not have actually happened in book.

Mancandy Monday: Lord Bramhope

There is no Lord Bramhope, as I'm sure you know. He lives inside my head, in the file marked "cold and inaccessible yet filled with repressed Other-y passions posh bloke from them days".

Though I imagine he looks a bit like this:

And maybe some of this:

Occasionally he looks like this:

But mostly it's just this:

Probably without the mobile phone I like to imagine he's using there and all the laughing.

Lord Bramhope never laughs. He strides around the halls of some Gothic-y mansion, telling me lies about the strange moaning sounds coming from the attic. I catch him lurking in the darkness, and strike a match that illuminates his groin weakeningly blue eyes. But not in a Wayne taunting Garth with a torch and the movie Leprechaun sort of way.

More of the sort of way where he then takes me roughly on something that sounds like it's from them days, like a credenza or a doily. It's possible that he could also be doing filthy things with the maids, but sometimes I like my historicals to have everyone as repressed and oblivious to sex things as possible, and then WHAM! Sex hits them like a doily to the face.

Plz 2 b writing more of these, authors. I can't write it myself. I keep shoving televisions and can openers and the wrong sorts of shoes in there. They had flushing indoor toilets in them days, right?