Update On Yo Ho Ho - Pirate Erotica

Well, I've got some good news and no-so good news about all you great folks who submitted stories to the anthology I'm editing, Yo Ho Ho - Pirate Erotica: the good news is that I've made my selection (congrats!) but the bad news is that some people didn't make the cut (bummer). 

So, if you haven't heard from me today about your submission PLEASE drop me a line as I may not have gotten your submission ...

Next up is My Love Of All That Is Bizarre: The Erotic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. 

Stay tuned!

Billierosie Likes Finger's Breadth

I really do have some fantastic friends, and one of my very best is the ultra-sweet Billierosie.  Just check out this review she just sent me for my new gay thriller/horror novel, Finger's Breadth:

 

From the Prelude onwards, we’re carried along on a roller coaster, with this fasted paced novel, fresh from the keyboard of M.Christian. “Finger’s Breadth”starts with the cops, as they interview the latest character to be mutilated after a sleazy night, out on the San Francisco streets. Typically, the interviewee can tell them nothing; he doesn’t remember, or doesn’t want to.

“He cut part of your fucking finger off,” says the exasperated cop.

“Yeah, but it could have been worse.” is the philosophical response.

One thing you can rely on M.Christian for, is a damn good story And “Finger’s Breadth is no exception; I think it’s his best one yet. As always, I get the feeling that he’s dancing ahead of me; laughing, teasing. Never taunting; M.Christian is a writer who respects his reader. He just has fun along with us, weaving his superbly crafted tale.

I mean, who’d have thought that you could write a story about Gay men waking up in the morning, minus part of a finger? It’s surreal; a crazy notion. “right hand little finger amputated at the first joint…” Yes it’s a ridiculous idea -- and yet -- it works.

This is a visual novel, in the tradition of the best Film Noir. Dark, still and silent. Characters moving into shot, then out of shot. Yet, as I said earlier, fast paced too, as one character, then another, tells their part of the story. A jigsaw put painstakingly together and it’s only on the final pages that the reader sees the complete whole.

It’s erotic; a comment on desire. A comment on our crazed need to have the ultimate fashion statement.

This book is totally weird and unsettling. And the reader just accepts what is going on, with all its weirdness. The reader is complicit. But more than anything, it’s a great story, a great read. Takes me back to long ago, when I first discovered what a joy reading could be. It’s as simple as that; being intrigued, being told a good story.

Thompson confronting the object of his contempt - an IBM Selectric (1989)

"Christianity is the best way-"

“Christianity is the best way to cure gayness. Just get on your knees, take a swig of wine and accept the body of a man into your mouth.” 

- Stephen Colbert

How To Wonderfully WriteSex (12)

Check it out: my new post at the fantastic WriteSex site just went up. Here's a tease (for the rest you'll have to go to the site):

Even before writing about the sex in a sexy story you have to set the stage, decide where this hot and heavy action is going to take place. What a lot of merry pornographers don’t realize is that the where can be just as important as the what in a smutty tale. In other words, to quote a real estate maxim: Location, location … etc.

Way too many times writers will makes their story locales more exotic than the activities of their bump-and-grinding participants: steam rooms, elevators, beaches, hot tubs, hiking trails, space stations, sports cars, airplane bathrooms, phone booths, back alleys, fitting rooms, cabs, sail boats, intensive care wards, locker rooms, under bleachers, peep show booths, movie theaters, offices, libraries, barracks, under a restaurant table, packing lots, rest stops, basements, showrooms — get my drift?

I know I’ve said in the past that sexual experience doesn’t really make a better smut writer, but when it comes to choosing where your characters get to their business, it pays to know quite a bit about the setting you’re getting them into.

Just like making an anatomical or sexual boo-boo in a story, putting your characters into a place that anyone with a tad of experience knows isn’t going to be a fantastic time but rather something that will generate more pain than pleasure is a sure sign of an erotica amateur.

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Circlet Press Likes Painted Doll

While this isn't exactly a rave, I just had to share this review from the Circlet Press site about my cyberpunky erotic novel, Painted Doll, if just for the touching Woody Allen line ...

By the way, Painted Doll is going to be reprinted in a new edition from the always-fantastic Renaissance/Sizzler Books!

Disguises are as ancient as humanity. Think the biblical story of Tamar, who masks herself as a harlot so as to seduce her father-in-law, or call to mind every myth in which a god walks the earth in the guise of a mortal. Or you might recall Bertilak de Hautdesert, who appears to King Arthur and his men as the supernatural Green Knight. And is there any play of Shakespeare’s in which a character does not, at some point, don the garb of another to either comic or tragic effect?

In most of these stories, the disguise is adopted freely, but what about those cases in which an alternate personality is imposed upon someone who is fully conscious of the fact? How will she handle it, especially if her life, and the life of the one whom she loves, depends upon maintaining this ill-fitting fiction every moment of every day? These are the questions posed by M. Christian in Painted Doll: An Erotist’s Tale, an erotist being a body artist who specializes in neurochemical paints that evoke the purest emotion when applied to bare skin. The particular erotist at the center of this story is Domino—cold, calculating, and ultimately professional, the complete opposite of the shy and awkward Claire Munroe, who she once was, before her underworld boss Taka ordered her execution due to suspicion of theft. To escape his clutches, Claire became Domino, while her lover, a woman named Flower, fled to a commune in New Zealand. Though they yearn for each other every waking and dreaming moment, they must remain apart lest they attract the attention of Taka’s assassins, while Claire has to play Domino to the hilt, mixing the demureness of the geisha with the aloofness of one of the three Fates, even though every moment as Domino kills a little more of Claire, the woman who wants nothing more than to rest in her lover’s arms again and be safe.

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Condemning the Past so as Not to Repeat It

- and here's a brand new editorial piece I just did for YNOT: this time about how, even though things may look bad, being cynical in regards to sexual progress isn't a wise choice ...

YNOT – It's easy to see why optimism has fallen out of favor. The other side in the culture war has its own network: billions of dollars provided by adamantine corporations, hundreds of thousands of cloudy-eyed citizen solders willing to die — and even worse, kill — at the whim of their leaders. And the so-called friends crouching alongside us in the trenches have proved to be fair-weather at best; cowardly at worst.

Just looking at the headlines is enough to make even the most delusional of the remaining hopeful hang their heads in leaden defeat: Republican candidate Michele Bachmann (and others) solemnly signs a document pledging allegiance to a Christian fanaticism that would mean institutionalized bigotry for gays and lesbians and criminal persecution for “pornographers” (in other words, all of us). If Bachmann’s religious zealotry weren’t bad enough, there are others overtly attempting to sway the public perception that pernicious evil masquerading as “family values” somehow is mainstream.

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