Until the most recent movie version, each iteration of Invasion of the Body Snatchers has been tailored to the up-to-the-minute fears of its generation. This eerie novel goes where the Nicole Kidman vehicle should have, drawing on conspiracy theories, urban anomie, identity theft and consumerism to create a subtle horror tale about erosion of the self. The nameless lead character is a shallow twink, over stimulated but isolated, who has acquaintances and tricks instead of friends, and products and catalogs instead of values. After a street crazy puts the idea of pod people in his head, our hero starts noticing strange things. People are referring to conversations he doesn’t remember and events he didn’t witness. Does he have a double? Is this doppelganger trying to steal his life from him? And does this interloper come from outer space, a secret government cloning lab, a disordered brain, or is he a thought experiment come to life? Christian keeps the reader guessing, using repetitive language and a deliberate pace to evoke our Everyman’s sense of disorientation and disconnection as he realizes that no one would notice if he were erased, while barreling towards a suitably trippy conclusion. Like a lot of good science fiction, this is as much a contemporary social satire as an unsettling fantasy.
Let me be very clear about this: I did not write the novel Me2. Yes, the book certainly sounds like a book I would write: a unusually constructed tale about queer identity, human existence, and the horror of having your life copied and stolen from you. Certainly it's with a publisher I have worked with many times before, having edited many anthologies, written one novel - Running Dry - and three previous collections of short stores - Dirty Words, Speaking Parts, and Filthy. Absolutely the style of the book - surreal yet lightly conversational and easily comprehensible - is very similar to styles I've used in past, for instance in my recently released gay vampire novel The Very Bloody Marys (from Haworth Books) ....
(the following is part of an ongoing series of columns I did for The Erotica Readers & Writers Association on the ins and outs and ins and outs and ins and outs of writing good smut)
This month's column comes from a request by my pal Tulsa Brown. Tulsa, and many folks on the ERWA list, have been frustrated by rejections for stories that seem to be just what the editor would be looking for: smart, stylish, deep, interesting, heartfelt, and all the rest. A sure winner, right? But even though Tulsa, and a lot of other writers, are trying their best, their labors of love keep getting shot down.
But first, a quick word about rejection slips. One of the other questions Tulsa asked was if those 'notes of doom' editors send out to let you know your baby isn't what they want for their precious anthology, are honest. Do they really express how the editor feels about your work? No, they don't. Now that doesn't mean that some editors aren't being sincere when they send out their rejections - especially if they include a personal message with their generic rejection - but it's just about impossible for one editor to write everyone who didn't make the cut. Answer: the form rejection letter. They can be polite ("Sorry, your story didn't meet the needs of our publication"), cold ("Your submission was not satisfactory"), sympathetic ("I know how tough this is") or even rude ("Don't you EVER send me this drivel again") but they mean the same thing: better luck next time.
But there is a bright side - really. Think of it this way; at least that editor spent the time to send those notes out. There are still some cowardly editors out there (shame, shame) who never reject; you just hear that your friends were accepted (and obviously you weren't) or the book comes out and you're not in it. At least getting a note - any note - means that you can now send the story somewhere else.
Now then, the Great Secret of Being Accepted. Ready? You sure?
Okay, okay, put the baseball bat down. The Great Secret of Being Accepted is ....
There isn't one!
If there were, don't you think I'd be selling it? If there were, then why the HELL do I still get rejected?
The fact is that even though you think, hope, and work really hard to give editors exactly what they want, the decision is still very subjective. In my own case, I've been rejected because:
a) The story is too long by a few hundred words
b) Didn't get aroused reading my story
c) There is already a story selected that's set in New York City
d) The editor doesn't like the use of certain 'words' in a story
e) The publisher may object to it
f) Some of the sex is 'objectionable.'
If it helps, rejection never gets any easier to give or to get. As an editor, I hate to give them out, but have to because I feel writers deserve to know whether they made they cut. I'm also in a position of having to put together the best anthology - as I see it. As a writer, I still get rejection notices and will get even more in the future. It's simply part of the writing life; good, bad, or indifferent. The only remedy I can offer is to keep writing because - as I've said before - the only way a writer fails is not when they get rejected but when they stop writing.
From The Bookshelf:Talk about an identity crisis.
M. Christian (or is it?) puts a whole new spin to the genre of mind-bending thrillers with Me2, a twisted and psychological tale of individuality and the lack of it. Though my description doesn't sound that scary or interesting, I can't do justice to Christian's pulse-pounding skill of turning one man's relatively simple life around with the numerological Genetic Mirror Theory, which says that every human has a genetic twin. (Those who haven't heard of it can check any message board or website for TV show Lost for more info.)
Christian is very unique in his delivery, carving a Starbucks-employed, California-destined, gay "Boy of Summer" into a paranoid, mentally-intuitive, questionably-sane wanderer trying to find his true self (not matter how contradictory those adjectives are). His character's pursuit for his copycat takes him many a party and gathering, one during which he unintentionally gets a little friendly with a darkness-veiled guest.
Christian's visual descriptions (when provided) are vivid and entrancing, gathered in a somewhat confusing order to throw off the reader and any concluding thoughts they may have about this so-called twin and his gradual reign over Christian's character. It's cryptic, enthralling, horrific, fascinating, and never truly reveals its secrets - a great story, indeed.
Well, this little horror novel is certainly introspective, certainly plays out a stream of consciousness, and seems more like an epic (even satirical) free-verse prose-poem, divided into long stanzas (like you used to study in literature class in college) than a conventional novel. There are eleven chapters, starting with “Me” and run through “Me11,” each starting with a pre-stanza in italics. There are three epilogues (composer Arnold Bax as always satisfied with just one in almost each of his symphonies), the last of which is a letter from his publisher. This arrangement pretty much washes up "the Me Generation," even with Bill Clinton as part of it.
In fact, the gay content (the publisher is well known for that niche market) in some ways seems almost incidental to the literary form. Or perhaps not. The book is a meditation on the meaning of self, and a metaphor on the fear of self. The protagonist is the “young man next door” who works in the coffee business. I had a good friend in Minneapolis who did just that (he was straight and liked to try the local comedy circuit), and could tell you how cutthroat the business is – particularly on the Skyway. Here, the setting could be Anywhere, but it seems LA-ish.
Of course, “you know the story.” Doubles of himself start showing up, taking his job, thieving his identity. He’s not sure if it’s schizophrenia, bad memory, bipolar, or someone really doing him in. He sometimes seems unclear about which home is his. Along the way there is some real fantasy fulfillment. Is he with an imaginary self or someone real? I might have written the intimate scenes with a different kind of sartorial detail, inasmuch as I have a couple scenes in my own novel draft (in third person) a bit like Christian’s p. 140. Clive Barker could really turn these kinds of scenes out in “Imajica,” even when the partners were aliens or beings with ambiguous and bending gender.
Of course, here is where the “gay” part really matters. I have the impression that the protagonist, as much as he claims he likes himself, is self-indulging in “upward affiliation,” a kind of narcissism that George Gilder used to write about in the 80s in his bashings on “the perils of androgyny” (as in his 1986 these “Men and Marriage”). He would like to be affiliated with, or perhaps possess (I’m not sure which) a man who is as perfect as possible, before having his own family. He wants to become his own “god” before taking the dive. Then, it’s perfectly safe – except that you wind up in a world with “children of Men.” The problem comes if he is asked to stick his neck out, and take responsibility for someone else (perhaps a dependent, perhaps by having children), just “as he is.” In the epilogues, the author makes points about the Internet, which he fears has the potential of forcing more social conformity ....
Shot entirely in New Caledonia, South Pacific, this was made with 900 USD $ and recorded with a Sony Mini DV Camcorder. The Actors were shot on a black backgound and the lighting is from torch lights or Garden projectors, I don't have anything to record audio and to produce sound itself.
My actors are friends, students and teachers doing it for fun. No drama training at all.
What you see is 2D frame by frame animation, all done in photoshop. My main area is pre-production and graphics so the lack of dialogue don't really bother me at all.
As my strength lies more in the image department: GIJOE WIDEVISION TRADING CARDS, JOE COLTON CARDS, BIRDS OF PREY SEASON 2 LITHOGRAPHS, TRANSFORMERS LITHOGRAPHS
Tape BeginsIt's bad enough that this fraud, this impostor, this rotten so-and-so has the audacity to publish a book under my name, attempt to steal my very identity, but now he's managed to even garner a very nice review from Ann Somerville at Uniquely Pleasurable! When will this nightmare end!?I should first of all say this book is not a romance at all, so doesn’t really come under the umbrella of ‘original slash’ or whatever you want to call it. However, it’s such a clever bit of writing, it’s a shame to pass up the chance to draw readers’ attention to it.The story is told from a POV - not necessarily a single POV, but that’s part of the conceit of an unnamed male narrator. He’s gay, but this is not about him being gay - his sexuality is just part of what makes him who he is and how he lives his life. If you’re tired of gay novels which are all about the anguish of being gay or how to find gay love, then this will be a refreshing change. [Interestingly, on his website, the author claims to be straight - but there’s a good deal of fucking with readers’ heads going on there, so I don’t know if that’s meant to be taken at face value.]
Our narrator’s life isn’t exactly challenging his intellect. He makes a habit of assessing people by their appearance, judging, tagging them, never really delving under the ensemble to the person’s soul. He treats himself in the same way, living superficially, obsessed with his looks and how he appears to other people. He works at Starbucks, doing the same thing, living the same meaningless existence in the same way every day, his customers no more distinct or real to him than the kinds of coffee they order. Until he talks to a crazy man who tells him about the doppelgangers, the doubles, the fakes, and how there are people walking among us who are mere simulacra of humanity, trying all the time to perfect the imitation. Our narrator starts to wonder if he has a double too, and the horror starts for him when he realises he does - and that the double is rapidly taking over our narrator’s existence. For the first time, he has to question just what makes him, his life and what is there that he desperately wants to call his own and no one else’s.
It’s a clever story exploring identity, mass consumption, the search for individualism in a world which promotes uniformity, where differences are superficial, and we become the labels we hang on ourselves and which are placed by the people. Christian asks in Me2, exactly what is the nature of self, and how much of what we believe we are, is merely a product of accumulated possessions, experiences and delusions. He also asks how can we hold onto true individuality in a consumer driven mass-marketed society. It’s a rather bleak portrait of American life, very time and place specific in its popular references, though perfectly comprehensible to the well-read non American. As ‘McCulture’ takes over the world, and rage against consumerism and Americanisation grows, Christian is taking pointed aim at the emptiness and meaningless of an existence dominated by brand names and advertising. It’s the same target that American Psycho went for, but in a very different and less bloody manner.
It’s a confusing, gripping story, though it loses pacing slightly towards the end, where it becomes a tad tiresome with its extremely long denouement. It demands closed attention, and the writing is layered, literate and intelligent, so not something for a lazy afternoon after a big meal. He builds the horror of the narrator’s situation beautifully, but the elliptical narrative with all the quotes from other speakers, told out of sequence, will be challenging to read if you’re not used to science fiction or the horror genre.
The idea of cloning, of doubles taking over one’s life, isn’t exactly new, but Christian’s spin on the idea and the execution is crisp and fresh. If you want a sturdy, well-written horror novel which will make you think, with a protagonist who’s gay in a completely non-exploitative way, then Me2 is one to buy.
