Writings and ramblings

So I was worried about the lack of blood on my website? Macbeth is one of the darkest, bloodiest of Shakespeare’s plays, and this production, directed by Jamie Lloyd and performed at the Trafalgar Studios in London, had lots and lots of blood!

Plus, James McAvoy as Macbeth? Wasn’t going to say no to that opportunity when a friend mentioned it on Facebook. And when she managed to get us seats at the back of the stage, virtually on the stage, for the play was going to be in the round, I was even more intrigued. So back in March, we met in London to see the play.

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Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.

A girl on a bike in a flowing dress, decked in flowers, cycles through town, passing (apart from a troupe of Morris dancers) four men with sinister stares. When the girl, Hattie Sutton, goes missing, her absence from the May Day parade as May Queen conspicuous and troubling, we know one of these four is to blame. The question Mayday asks is which one, and why.

Rather than this being a question for the police, it is one put to four family members of these men – wives, brothers, sons. “You’d know if someone you loved killed someone,” Hattie dark-haired twin sister Caitlin says in the first episode. This is the thematic crux of the show – how much do we know about the people who are, supposedly, closest to us. And indeed, how much do we know about ourselves and what we are capable of when pushed to the edge. The four sets of suspects/suspicious family members all reveal themselves in surprising, shocking ways you did not anticipate from the outset of the show. I really did like this as a concept – a very unusual way of setting up a mystery.

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Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.

I first read Nikki Magennis a few months ago when I picked up Best Erotic Romance (edited by Kristina Wright, see here to purchase). Her story, ‘Dawn Chorus’, which closed that anthology, was one of, if not the, standouts. So when Nikki put a call out for reviews (and a free copy) of her self-published anthology Crooked Hearts, I couldn’t resist.

And I wasn’t disappointed. Nikki writes elegantly and poetically, a deep sense of both eroticism and romance, and also just the right amount of the grit of reality that doesn’t revel in it, but acknowledges that it is there and affects the way characters perceive the world.

There are touches of bondage and restraint (a creative, theatrical take in ‘Catch Me If You Can’) and submission to pain, as well as the more overt depictions (‘Under His Hand, I Blossom’ especially, an intoxicating D/s story on a mountain hike), and always, there are deep, intense connections between the characters, bonds forged in only a few sentences. Also present are the deeps aches of want and desire – the opening story ‘At the Break of Day’ especially brings this out, as does ‘St Hunna the Holy Washerwoman’, which also ventures into magical realism without quite crossing into the fantastical.

Erotica it definitely is, but it is not all idealised situations and sex. Characters live in intense relation to each other – the neighbours in ‘Dawn Chorus’, the couple in ‘St Hunna’, even the doctor and waitress in ‘Save Me a Bite’ who encounter each other in a diner. The intensity was only increased by Nikki’s use (for the most part) of first person POV. There is the sex that doesn’t happen, the sex that we want and don’t get, as well as the moments of finding each other. There is also the humour – Dublin-set ‘Picking Apples in Hell’ is particularly funny, and ‘Night Song’, told entirely in dialogue, uses the device to great effect.

I like an anthology that places its stories conscious of the relationship to the others. Crooked Hearts begins with ‘At the Break of Day’ and ends with ‘Dawn Chorus’, which seems very fitting, not only in the time frame of the early hours of the day, but also the desperate need of the first piece contrasted with the deep satisfaction found in the last.

What can I say? I thoroughly recommended Crooked Hearts, and am looking forward to reading more of Nikki’s work.

Crooked Hearts can be purchased at:

• Burning Books Press
• Smashwords
• Amazon.com
• Amazon.co.uk
• Kobo

Read more about Nikki Magennis and her work at her author website.

Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.

I was about 16 when I overheard my mother having a conversation with someone about the US version of Queer As Folk, which had just started airing in Australia late night on (of course, any Aussie will say) SBS. The friend said, not in a condemnatory fashion but more rather surprised, “It’s very confronting.” The thought that ran through my head was: really? What’s so confronting about it? Luckily I didn’t say this out loud, because I realised after my lack of shock at QaF’s more explicit scenes was no doubt due to me being an already seasoned reader of slash fanfiction. (Google it. Ask me about it you’re curious.)

Which probably accounts for my very mild response to the film famous (or infamous, depending on your view of the world) for having the most graphic, unsimulated sex on film outside of pornography, 9 Songs; or at least mild in terms of the sex.

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Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.

Reading Remittance Girl’s astute review of 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James, made me set set aside my writing plans for the day to finish reading it and knock something off the ‘currently reading’ pile. [I started the review and then came back and finished a few weeks after.]

I was, of course, curious about it when it came out – being erotica that has has done so well, making sales in ways that much modern erotica aspires to but doesn’t quite manage, it struck me as something that one ‘ought to read’, in the way that any kind of publishing phenomena becomes self-perpetuating in that readers start to read just to see what the fuss is about.

Basic plot (if you’ve somehow missed it): Anastasia Steele, Ana, an English student, is sent by her friend, who is ill and needs a replacement, to interview billionaire industry tycoon Christian Grey. Attraction between them ensues. But Grey has a dark secret – it’s not a spoiler at this stage to say he’s into BDSM, and he wants Ana to become his Submissive, a proposition that she is alternatively aroused and repelled by. Tension results from their trials to negotiate this and from Ana’s attempts to understand what is in Grey’s past that makes him desire ‘such things.’

Rambling thoughts below the cut.

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Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.

The anthology has been attracting some notice, which is lovely. So far, the following reviews have been posted. Very encouraging!

Review by Kitty Stryker – The desires in “Erotica Apocrypha” are both primal and divine, and they will captivate and enchant you. But beware when the gods come to seduce you… you may not get out alive.

Review by LJ LaBarthe – LJ reviews each story individually, but of mine she writes: I am so glad to see this here. This is Perun and Veles and their ongoing struggle. Beautifully written and very hot.

Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.