Pictures to make your mind wander

In between bouts of writing, I've been binging on Cthulhu mythos stories - which in turn, got me rummaging around Deviant Art in search of Old Ones pictures and and whatever else happened to grab my attention. Here's a fraction of the result.

Some of the pictures below became part of the Call of Cthulhu game, and some just stuck in my head because they're hot. But I'm going to refrain, very intentionally, from giving you any context in this blog post. You can imagine whatever scenario fits your fetish; and if you want to know what the artist really intended, you can click the author links at the bottom of this post. The author above left is Dave Palumbo. In the middle, left-to-right, the artists are Jowie Lim, Felicia Cano, and Thaldir.

 I need to say a bit more about the painting at right, by Donato Giancola. He's not a fetishist (although he does like robots and all the other SF/F tropes most of us enjoy); he's just an excellent artist whom I follow because I love his work. I'm including this picture because it perfectly feeds my fetish without even trying. But in fact, Giancola says in his description of the piece that it was inspired by a George R. R. Martin short story called "The Glass Flower." That intrigued me enough to make me buy the e-book (It's just $1.99); and I'm happy report that the story is excellent, it involves possession (I know some of you are into that), and Giancola's picture really is just "inspired by" the story. It doesn't spoil the plot at all. But ohh, does it makes me think of other ways the story could have gone!

Follow these links to find the pictures on Deviant Art:
Dave Palumbo (picture at the top of this post)
Jowie Lim (first of the three pictures in a row)
Felicia Cano (second of the three pictures in a row)
Thaldir (third of the three pictures in a row)
Donato Giancola (final picture)

Sneak Peeks

Life has been happening to me lately, and not in a good way, so I'm a little behind on my writing. But for some reason I've been doing a lot of artwork - some on the covers you see below, and some on vanilla topics related to my other life. It's like my creativity with words is running low, but my creativity with images has increased to fill the gap.

At left is the cover for my next story, which was originally called "If Wishes Were Horses." On the advice of The One-Handed Writers Facebook group, I've changed the title to "What Happens in Decon." They also gave me lots of great tips on the cover, although I have to brag that the subliminal images in the nebula were solely my idea. ;-) You might recognize the model as Agna, whom I've featured before on this blog. She has a Deviant Art gallery that used to be just photos of her wearing latex and zentai, but that now includes some not-very-good poser art. But oh well, you can skip those images and still find plenty to enjoy in her gallery.

Now here's the in-process cover for "Dark Spaces," the anthology coming out at the end of May. I started with a grungier, less sexy picture of a gynoid that you can view here if you're so inclined. The original artist is innovari, and he does a lot of stuff with aliens and sexy robot women that I know you'll all enjoy. I encourage you to check out his gallery.







So...where to now? I'd originally hoped to publish "What Happens in Decon" at the end of April, and I still might make it. I have the whole day to work on the story, and if Life continues to happen the way it's been happening, I might have several more free days. To my beta reader/reviewer volunteers: I hope to get you the story by next weekend. I'll let you know if that changes, and no matter what happens, I'll make sure you have at least a week to pre-read the story before it goes to publication.

To everyone else, especially those who don't know about the beta reader/reviewer thing, don't forget to check out this post. You still have time to get a free copy of "What Happens in Decon" and "Dark Spaces," and you still have time to get an autographed copy of "Dark Spaces." Just read the contest rules and decide whether you want to participate.

Two kinds of gorgeous

First, let me remind you that photographer LXXT has a gallery on Deviant Art that mostly features Princess Fatale and occasionally includes some of her playmates. It's updated frequently, so be sure to follow it or at least bookmark it. Here are some of the best pictures from recent weeks.

And now for something completely different. A few days ago I ran across an article on io9 called The Most Jaw-Droppingly Beautiful Cliff Top Hotels Ever Built. Now, I always like to look at beautiful architecture, but I'm not in the habit of sharing it on my blog (Facebook is a different matter; you get a fuller view of my interests there than you do here), but this pertains to the topic at hand. As I was writing What Do You Give the Alien Who Has Everything?, I had pictures in my head of how the Imperators' compound should look, but I never found any real pictures to convey the scale and beauty of it. Then I ran across this article.

The first picture, in particular, is almost completely true to my vision (All it lacks are the colonnades). The last one really isn't very true to my vision at all, but it's just so gorgeous that I had to include it anyway. And everything in between will at least give you a better idea of what was in my head as I was writing.

Siren Songs

by Julie Dillon

This post was sparked by the image at right, "Space Sirens," by Julie Dillon. First I was intrigued by the picture, and then I was even more intrigued when I read the description the artist gave for it. There's just one single thing holding it back from making great EMC. See if you can guess what it is:

The last remaining astronaut watched helplessly as his comrades left the ship one by one and were carried away deeper into the nebula. He told himself that he would not succumb the way his shipmates had; he knew he would struggle. But the creatures, if they could even be called that, somehow seemed to know him, and when his turn came and the singing of the cosmos reached a crescendo in his ears, his mind emptied of all but the desire to join them in the void. Gazing into the creature’s face, he mused on how tender, how gentle its embrace seemed, and even as his oxygen supply dwindled he did not resist.

by EuchridEucrow

Right: the victims die (well, probably). My first thought, on deciding to blog about Sirens, was how annoying it was that they typically killed their victims. Annoying, and also pretty irrational. What do the Sirens get out of that, besides some evil cackling? On the other hand, lots of mermaid/siren pictures show the creatures dragging studly young sailors underwater with the implication that what the mermaids really hoped for was hot sex...or maybe even hot sex slaves. So why not hot MC'ed sex slaves?

Well, even as I pondered that idea, I stumbled across the picture at left ("Kiss of Life," by EuchridEucrow), which shows a mermaid reviving the victim she's just caught. Yes, she's saved his life, but I really doubt she plans to let him go. And I also doubt he really wants to go by now. After all, her kiss almost has to be drugged, right?

by cg_warrior

Then there's the picture at right, by cg_warrior. To me, it's the most intriguing of the first three because of the victim's eyes. I really don't think that's the glaze of death. I think it's the glaze of enchantment. The mermaids have this man in their clutches in more ways than one, and he's deeply enough enthralled that he's enjoying it. Why else would his arm be drifting to embrace his captor's tail? Also be sure to notice that he's adopting the mermaids' pallor, but he's not white all over yet. That means he's still falling, deeper and deeper, into their clutches. I wonder how it'll feel when he succumbs completely. It has to be mindless ecstasy, right? It just does.

Oh, and for the record, cg_warrior's gallery has a lot of this kind of stuff: creatures who may be innocent or malevolent and people who may be dead or just enspelled. I love it.

by Herbert James Draper

Now here's one more note, maybe the best of all. When I first asked myself what Sirens could get out of killing their prey (well, besides vicious pleasure), I immediately thought of Odysseus. When you get right down to it, isn't it pretty suggestive that he had his men tie him up before they reached the Sirens? It's like he was saying, "Look, ladies! Here's your next slave, already bound and waiting!"

And if you remember your mythology, you know that Odysseus stopped his sailors' ears with wax so they wouldn't hear the Sirens' song and could keep steering while he had all the fun. But come on, look at this picture! Not only have the mermaids come out in force, but they're actually climbing aboard the ship. If just one of them manages to unstop even one ear of one sailor, he'll be totally in her power. Then he'll turn on his mates and Odysseus and help the Sirens enslave them all. Can't you just picture it (Hmm, and hey, couldn't I just write it?)

Clearly, the version of The Odyssey that many of us read in high school was a just cover story. The truth is out there - and it's wallowing in brainwashed bliss.

 

credits for the final three pictures, left to right: Fred Appleyard, Edward Burne-Jones, and Frederic Leighton

Kinky elves

I was going to post something more sensible, but I've been sick for a week and a half (which, BTW, is why I didn't post last weekend), and my brain still isn't back to normal...by which I mean "as normal as it ever is." So this is what you get today.

Never mind why, but I've spent the day Googling for Tolkien-related art. I've found some great stuff; and then I've found, well, this sort of thing. The artist clearly has skill, and if she finds my post here, I hope she'll understand that I'm not really making fun of her...well, not entirely. I'm delightfully aghast (which is quite possibly how she meant me to feel anyway). And since I know a lot of my readers are into Tolkien and/or BDSM and/or gay sex, I hope you'll enjoy these pics as much as I did.

And now, without further ado, I present a very non-traditional love story between an Elf and a Dwarf.

Ladies and gentlemen, Princess Fatale

There's a series of pictures I've see floating around the web for years: two skinny young women of indeterminate age, with brown hair and pouty lips, posing in shiny black latex catsuits. I won't post any pictures from that set (even though they're easy to find) because I'm not sure how old those models were when they posed for those pictures. But apparently one of them goes by the nickname "Princess Fatale," and she has a lot of more recent shots online. She also, as I recently discovered, has a Deviant Art account. Here are some of the best shots from that, as well as two manips I did based on the last shot because it looked so good that I wanted to make it even better.

Now here's the one I manipped, to make it look as perfect as I imagined. You get a silver version and a gold version. ;-)

Big Trouble 2...x2

So here's the follow-up to last week's manip.You're getting two versions of it because I know some of you want to see Jack's johnson and some of you don't. Yeah, it's a shame that you can see his equipment when you can't see Susan Wayland's, but I doubt the male model gets as much exposure (hah) as she does. He's not a porn star, just some kid who was willing to get his kit off for a photographer.

That photographer, BTW, takes lots of pictures of handsome, submissive men; so if you're into that sort of thing, check out his Deviant Art page - and also check out this guy's Deviant Art page. I plan to use more of these photographers' images for this series, but hopefully I won't have to do as much work to them as I had to do with this model. See, this is what I started with. I'm showing him to you because even though this manip isn't perfect, I want you to know how much work I put into it. ;-)

And this is how much work I put into to the Susan Wayland part of the image. Again, I mainly just want you to know; but I also know that more of you come to this blog to see hot women than to see hot men. So enjoy.