Sometimes the World Is Simply Wonderful

Just had to share my discovery of Theo Jansen's work. Check out my full post on meine kleine fabrik.

Special Offer to All of My Fans -

- both of you!

Since the garage has become a nightmare I've decided to start selling off some of the books I've been in. So here's your chance to pick up some mint condition, rare, out-of-print, anthologies with a story of mine in there. Oh, and I'll also sign the book.

Here's the ebay links:

Viscera (edited by Cara Bruce)
Sex Spoken Here (edited by Carol Queen)
Sex Toy Tales (edited by Anne Siemans)

Depending on how these do I'll probably be posting more.

COMING SOON: The Very Bloody Marys (reviewers wanted)

He’s the only vampire cop around—and a gang of Vespa-riding vampires threaten to drain San Francisco dry!

Big trouble at night in the city. A gang of Vespa-riding vampires are killing San Franciscans so indiscriminately they threaten to not only drain the city dry—but risk the discovery of vampires everywhere. Gay vampire cop Valentino is called upon to stop the group calling themselves The Very Bloody Marys before the situation gets worse. Unfortunately, it already has. You see, Valentino is still only a trainee who is in way over his head now that Pogue, his mentor, is missing. And this brutal gang is tough, smart, and very, very bloodthirsty. To do his job, Valentino must move quickly—and carefully—otherwise he may just get himself killed. What can a creature of the night do? The only thing he can, track the gang through the haunts of some very odd characters, unravel the mystery, and try to stay out of the sun. The Very Bloody Marys is a comic horror novel about vampires, ghouls, faeries, and the undead that move around after dark. Part chase, part gallows humor, part shivery excitement, this new story from the wildly imaginative M. Christian is funny, frightening, and very entertaining.


“M. Christian is a hybrid artist and knockout stylist on the order of Jonathan Lethem. HARD-BOILED, SHARP-EDGED, FUNNY AND FIERCE.”
—Jim Gladstone, author, The Big Book of Misunderstanding

“Combines several of M. Christian’s strengths, writing queer and supernatural/horror fiction, with only occasional touches of his other strength, erotica. Vampire protagonist Valentino is a reluctant trainee in the supernatural international law enforcement organization, Le Counseil Carmin. He half-heartedly assists his mentor, Pogue, in enforcing the rules in San Francisco that is, until Pogue goes missing and Valentino must strive to rise to the occasion to rid the City by the Bay of trouble in the form of The Very Bloody Marys and a deadly faery or two, using what he recalls of his training and the limited resources at his disposal. Readers will never view night life in San Francisco quite the same way. A WELCOME ADDITION TO THE VAMPIRE NOIR GENRE.”
—Maryelizabeth Hart, Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego

Publication Date: July 1, 2007.
Available: Available Spring 2007.
$12.95 soft. ISBN-13: 978-1-56023-535-4/ISBN-10: 1-56023-535-7
Pages: Approx. 192 pp.
LC#: 2006035688
Categories: Gay Male, Fiction and Literature; Horror
Web: http://www.HaworthPress.com/store/product.asp?sku=5329

For a pre-publication review copy contact M.Christian:

M.Christian
zobop@aol.com
www.mchristian.com

Reflection's Edge Likes Filthy

Mathilde Madden over at Reflection's Edge has a very nice review of Filthy:

What makes a good short story? Felice Picano, in his forward to Filthy offers some of the more traditional takes: a deft handling of voice, of place, of character. But really, what makes a good short story - what makes a great short story - is a truly good idea.

Luckily for Christian – and luckily for us – truly good ideas are not in short supply in this collection.

A perfect example comes in "Sunset Boulevard," one of many tales that puts a queer twist on an old story. Christian, riffing brilliantly on the campness of the original movie, recasts the central fading screen siren as an aging gay porn star. And it might seem risible to allow the gloriously queeny Norman Desmond to intone, "I am big. It's porno that got small," but Christian pulls it off.

Christian isn't shy of a little shameless genre straddling with his startlingly imaginative ideas either. In "The Hope of Cinnamon" we enter a future world in which gay men have mastered the art of time travel in order to save their queer brothers from oppressive regimens of the past. But this tale is also a good example of how the short story format can be frustrating for the reader when presented with such a dazzling concept as this one. The idea is simply too big for the form. The problem presented – that the rescued men cannot cope with a life in nirvana – isn’t so much explored as thrown at us before we are hustled away for the next story.

This is where the book wears thin. The stories in this book are short, averaging ten pages of in-out wham-bam. After a while it starts to feel like Christian is torturing his readers, deserting his unsatisfied readers for fresh thrills before they have quite achieved emotional climax. Too much is left undone and unsaid. This collection could have featured just the five best ideas – including the wonderfully disturbing quasi-religious "Friday Night at The Calvary Hotel" – and served up five wonderful novellas.

In the final story – the most enjoyable of the whole collection – Christian once again attempts a daring feat and pulls it off neatly as he spins us a tale of a young gay reader so besotted with an author of outrageous gay erotica he takes a pilgrimage to his grave. Angered by his discovery en route that his hero was in fact in a relationship with a woman, he means to urinate over the author's last resting place, but ends up recalling too many of the author's purplest passages and doing something entirely different. It is no surprise when Christian reveals the name on the headstone of this soiled grave.

While Filthy is a wonderful book, and just the thing if you are in the mood for an enjoyable quickie (or twenty), it's not the place to turn if you are more in the mood for a story that can go all night.

Kathleen Bradean loves Filthy

Here's a delightfully glowing review of Filthy from the ever-great Kathleen Bradean:

I read a guide to reviewing books recently. It said a reviewer should be impartial. I can see that point of view; the work should be judged on its own merit. However, it's impossible for me to pick up a book by M. Christian and not have expectations that are based on previous works I've read. So I guess it's only fair to begin this review with full disclosure: I'm a fan.

I'm torn over the idea of erotica as a distinct genre, and M. Christian's work is fuel for this internal debate. In The Hope of Cinnamon, a future society rescues gay victims from Nazi death camps and brings them forward in time to a sanctuary. Gen, one of the Helpers who works to integrate the Rescued into their new home finds out that few of the Rescued successfully survive the transition. He decides to travel back in time to experience the death camps for himself so that he will have a better understanding of why the Rescued fail to thrive in a society that fully accepts them. While this story does touch on sex and sexuality, it is a great example of speculative fiction that prompts further examination of our time and how current and future gay generations need to be aware of the history of gay culture and see it in proper historical perspective instead of viewing it, and judging, through hindsight.

As much as I hate the term coming-of-age tale, Utter West is a near-future story that shows a character coming of age, and more. Pony is the narrator's hero, the one who escaped their suburban hell and went beyond it to something wonderful and mystical - or so the narrator wants to believe. Unaware that he's destroying the beautiful myth that's grown around his disappearance, Pony comes back as an ordinary adult, prompting the narrator to break free and take the journey Pony failed to make into the beyond of the Utter West.

If noir is more your style, enjoy M. Christian's homage to Sunset Boulevard,
Hollywood Boulevard, or sink into the corner pocket of the night world of pool hustlers in The Hard Way. That Sweet Smell is really the scent of corruption, but keep telling yourself it's success, because in this story, that delusion is all the narrator has to cling to.

Moby is purely tall tale, told with the flair of real yarn-spinner. Could anyone stink that much, be that cussedly mean, or be that hung? It's all in the telling - joyously and outrageously over the top.

Or maybe you're in the mood for bittersweet romance and love. Flyboy is the soaring romance we all long for, crashed down to earth by the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. And Love is a writer's story, about how much it means to us when our stories are wanted, and how hard it is to separate the pure love of acceptance from the physical.

And then there's horror. Friday Night at the Calvary Hotel is the hardest story to read in this collection for it's intense mix of sadism, masochism, religious imagery and sex. Stories like that cling to you long after you've put the book down. You decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I like that. Suddenly, Last Thursday is horror of a different stripe - lush and gothic, where you might have to read a line several times before your brain accepts what it's telling you. That slow dawning of realization is delicious and shivery.

In the movie Sunset Boulevard, Joe Gillis says, "Sometimes it's interesting to see just how bad bad writing can be." Yes, but it's gratifying to see just how good good writing can be too. It's unfortunate that erotic writing has a reputation for bad writing, but sit down with this collection and let M. Christian change that prejudice.

Susie Bright Likes Perverse

My partner in various crimes, Sage Vivant, just sent me this nice little rave about the book we edited, Gardens of Perverse, from Susie Bright. Check it out here.

My DREAMWalker Bio

Michael Walker of the DREAMWalker Group just sent me this very cool bio page he's made for me. Thanks so much, Michael!

A Treat for Your Ears: A Great Voice and a Good Story

Here's your chance for two treats in one: the wonderful Sage Vivant doing one of my stories for her fantastic Four Minutes, Once a Week podcast. Click here to here Sage's sultry reading of "Getting Up" - with graphics and everything!

Then head right over to the regular podcast for her wonderful new book, Your Erotic Personality. Here at Libsyn and here at itunes.

Wonderful movie, wonderful book, wonderful lady

Don't pause, don't hesitate, don't dither: click on this link to take you to Sage Vivant's video quiz for her new book, Your Erotic Personality.

By now the two or three people who read my blog know I have a 'fondness' for Sage, but rest assured that when I say that this movie is a kick and her book is incredible I am being completely impartial. Completely.

Gracias!

Thanks to all you fantastic folks who stepped up to take the Custom Erotica Source audition challenge. I've just sent out messages to let you know how you did. If you haven't heard back please drop me a line and I'll get right back to you.

On a personal note let me say that I am too aware of how much rejection can hurt (been there too many times). I hope this makes it sting a bit less: Sage and I received over 250 submissions, of which only six were chosen to be CES staff writers. Beyond that, remember that what you did took remarkable discipline and no small amount of courage. Most of you weren't selected, but all of you deserve applause for a truly noble effort.

Falles and Ninots: Sex and Scultpure

Having just posted something about the wonderful Falles festival in Valencia, Spain, on meine kleine fabrik I thought I might share some of the more, well, sexy falla I've come across over here on my professional and, well, sexy site. Enjoy!

Taste of Running Dry

Just because I can, here's the opening to Running Dry:

“They say the seas are going to dry up. Blow away.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“The moon, too. It’s going to leave, sail off into the sky. Leave us behind,” Sergio said, swinging his feet off the edge. First the left, then the right, dancing with the heights. “Do you think we’ll see that?”

“We could,” Doud said, arm around Sergio’s shoulders. To reassure him, and to remind himself that this was real, firm, and solid, he tugged him closer.

Mahogany eyes directed at him, Sergio said, “Everyone will get old, turn to dust. But we’ll still be here, won’t we? The earth will be like the desert. No oceans, no water, no one will be alive. But we’ll still be here.” His legs stopped swinging.

“Maybe. Other things could happen, too. You never know for sure. Time changes too much.” Sitting on the toes of rearing elephants, they looked down on the gleaming architecture of Babylon, a plaster movie set brilliantly white from a still-neighborly moon.

Despite their height, Doud wasn't afraid. Not of falling, at least. He knew the elephants Sergio had made for Mr. Griffith, believed in his lover’s craftsmanship, and so implicitly trusted them to carry their weight. He hoped he knew Sergio as well, but he was still quietly grateful for the simple strength of his sculpture. Men were too complex, too unpredictable. Apparent solidity and dependability all too often hid deep flaws. The elephants of Intolerance, though, were wood and plaster.

Dependable wood, trustworthy plaster.

“Ever been to the desert?" Sergio asked unexpectedly. "I went there, with some friends, just after I came here. Hot, like a stove. But I didn’t think of cooking, the kitchen, or food, only that it was like a line across a page, like the start of a drawing. Now, I think of it like the way the world will be. All boiled away -- just hot air and that line.” Drawing his hand across the horizon, he underlined distant Hollywood.

“Too hot and dry for me. But we can go sometime. Both of us.” He didn’t need to say we have lots of time.

“They say the war will end soon. The War to End All Wars -- but that’s not true, eh? We’ll find out, I guess.”

“It’ll end. They always do.” Doud tried to catch his attention again, but the other man refused to look away from the bright lights of the distant city.

“Even our Babylon will be gone. Mr. Griffith’s film is over. They’ll break up my elephants.”

“There’ll be other pictures. You’ll see.”

After a moment of tense silence Sergio's eyes swung back to Doud. “You’ll be there, won’t you?”

“I will,” Doud replied, gently stammering, delicately hesitant. I will. Not a promise, just desire. With it, abrupt reality on the toes of great white elephants: please, let this one work out. I don't want to kill him.

“Kiss me,” Sergio said, closing those dark marble eyes.

And Doud did, a simple kiss on the edge of a Hollywood eternity.