Dark Roasted M.Christian

Here's a brand new Dark Roasted Blend piece on the mysterious Chinese pyramids:


Egyptian pyramids? Sure, everyone knows about the ones at Giza - and a few aficionados might know about the 138 others scattered around them. Mesoamerican pyramids? Okay, a lot of folks know about them, too -- or even that the great one at Cholula is considered to be the largest one in the world.

But, unfortunately, not many people know that pyramids have come in other flavors as well, including the mysterious and legendary ones in China.

“Legendary” because the story of the Chinese pyramids initially reads like something from a wild and woolly dime-store pulp serial: JAMES GAUSSMAN AND THE JEWELED PYRAMID OF CHINA!

It all began in 1945 – well, actually it started way before that, but for most folks out here in the West, that’s when they first heard that pyramids might exist outside Mesoamerica and Egypt.

While winging his way from India to China, the aforementioned U.S. Army Air Corps pilot Gaussman supposedly saw ... well, a jewel topped pyramid. Depending on who you talk to or what books you read, either his was the first sighting of this remarkable artifact or it was just part of a surge of woolly dime-store pulp serial mythologizing. Even if Gaussman wasn’t the first to spot the pyramids, it’s still interesting that many photographs of them were supposedly locked away in military files for decades.


Making the subject even more murky was Hartwig Hausdorf's book on the subject, which fueled fires of outrageous speculation – aliens, anyone? – but didn’t give a lot of accurate or verifiable info.

Despite Gaussman’s sighting (and Hausdorf's book), the pyramids definitely deserve at least the same recognition and respect their Central American and Middle Eastern cousins have received. Also like the pyramids in Giza, many of them are truly immense: the one at Mount Li, for example, is an impressive 250 feet tall; and the Great White one is a close runner-up.

Also like their kin in the Middle East, the pyramids in China were burial chambers and mausoleums, monstrous headstones for royalty and various courtly hangers-on: Mount Li was built for the legendary Qin Shi Huang and the Great White was constructed for Emperor Wudi.

But what makes the Chinese pyramids so interesting for many people – serious archeologists as well as passionate amateurs – is what isn’t known about them. Although we know they were crypts for Emperors and Kings, their construction details are a mystery. What makes them even more elusive is that while many of them are obvious and impressive, there are others you could walk right by – and many people have for centuries -- without realizing they were
anything but just slightly angular rises or low hills. The current guestimate is that there are around 38 pyramids, but both the serious professionals as well as the dedicated hobbyists believe that number is just a fraction of how many actual structures there are scattered throughout China.


But this knowledge just raises bigger, and more bewildering questions. Naturally, people know about the ones in Egypt, the legendary structures at Giza. Absolutely, a lot of folks have heard about the huge structures scattered throughout Central America, including the gigantic one at Cholula … but only until relatively recently had any of us Westerners heard that there were pyramids in China – and maybe a century or so before that, even many Chinese didn’t know what was dotting their landscapes.

See that hill? See that mountain? See that slightly angular rise? I wonder what’s under them? I wonder what other secrets are out there, laying just under the surface … or under our feet?

Nobilis Reads Dead Letter

This is wonderful: the great Nobilis reads my story, "Dead Letter", from my new collection, Licks & Promises, as part of his excellent podcast series.

A Guest Post

This is very nice: Lisabet Sarai asked me to guest post on her blog, Beyond Romance. So I took the opportunity to write a little something about the Coming Together project she and Alessia Brio are putting together and that they were very sweet to ask me to become a part of. Here's a taste, for the rest just click here to go to Lisabet's site.

Before I get started with this post I have to throw out not one but two very sincere 'thanks' -- to the same person.

Lisabet gets the first because she was so nice to ask me to writes something for this blog, and she gets the second because she's been fantastic to work with on a very special project -- which brings me to the subject of this post.

Alessia Brio and Lisabet have been working on Coming Together, a series of books by a wide range of writers, where the profits are going to be donated to charity. Alessia and Lisabet asked me to join in -- always a way to get me to do anything -- so I, with Lisabet's invaluable help, have put together a collection of brand new and never-before-seen as well as some of my (I say this with tongue firmly in cheek) "classic" short stories.

For my charity -- well, my charity is the reason for this post.

[MORE]

Kiss, Kiss, Hug, Hug From Licks & Promises

Here's a fun little story from one of my new collections, Licks & Promises. Well, I hope it's fun for you - but it might make you tear up a bit as well. It made me sniffle - and I wrote it!

Kiss, Kiss, Hug, Hug
By
M. Christian

We had played other games, this circle and I. Games of sex, pain, pleasure and everything betwixt, between, and off to the side.

Preface: San Francisco in a place called a dungeon to some, basement to others. It was just a typical Saturday night if you travel in the right circles. Yeah, you could call them gays, lesbians, straights, dykes, fags, hets, twisted fuckers -- whatever. They were just friends. And this was just a party.

The game was Kiss and Truth. Before we started, a hat was passed and we all dropped slips of paper into it. “Something very unique or very special about you” was what we were told to write. We did, diligently scrawling them on the black leather furniture and on the nearest convenient black leather friend.

“If you hear me say what you wrote, and then you get kissed -- or kiss, sing out,” the leader of this said, a large, lovely woman in a white dress, chiming finger symbols for our attention.

The lights were put out, except for one on in the corner where she sat with her black leather beret on her head. The room was soft felt: a warm, comfortable, intimate kind of darkness. I’d done so much in that room -- traveled through pain to sex to pleasure to laughter and back again that I knew it like I knew my own fingers. I knew everyone else there just about as well -- maybe as well as my toes.

“I have a twelve year old son named Josh.”

Our mustaches met, bristly forests itching together. Faintly hiding silken lips, heated tongues, flashing whiteness of teeth, I kissed the man named Jack. From across the room a voice (female? male? Could have been both, or one, together. Many in the room were part way between the two) sang out, and giggled. “Here!”

“I’m pregnant.”

She was short, with breasts heavy and firm. Hair a mad burst of curls. Her feet chimed with tiny bells. Lips thin and hard, with a faint fuzz of hair. Mouth a furnace of heat, like she burned somewhere down deep and her tongue was a flaming anaconda, wrapping and constricting around my own. “Over here!” a light, sparking voice said from close by.

The room was bursting with laugher, with little clicking whirls of giggles and the silent light of smiles. “I had a bad day at work.”

I don’t consider Jay really between he and she so it’s hard to say it Jay was on the way to boy or girl. Jay was Jay, unique and himself: rail thin, face a perfect blend of hard and soft, full and not, Jay’s lips are strong (like both) and so soft (like both). We kissed hot, and long, even after half the room chorused with “Yes” “Right here” “Damned straight”. Laughter. Laughter. Laughter.

“I got a new tattoo.”

A mountain of mad fun. I didn’t know his name, but there was always a smile on his lovely lips. Ever since I’d seen him, smiling like a San Francisco Gay Leather Buddha, I’d wanted to plant one on his gorgeous face. It was a worshipful act, a divine act. Maybe not sex heat in it, but love all the same. He was next to me so I turned and looked him in the eyes -- matching intent with intent. His lips were spiced, a lingering bite of cinnamon and ginger from the cookies laid out upstairs. He didn’t offer me anything more than his velvet lips and I didn’t reach in to take more. This was a devout kiss, a spiritual kiss. My body remained limp meat, my mind soared at the sparks he brought into me. “Here!” someone sang very close, and all stopped for a few beats while she lifted her dress to show the serpent that ran, red and puffy from the recent needles, up her ankle to tickle her crotch with a brilliantly forked tongue.

“I got a new ring.”

When we’d made love at the last party I had almost been consumed by her. Ignited, our kisses had turned our tongues into tongues of flames. Sexual? Damned straight, but Dorothy’s hunger was almost scary, almost scalding. Our kisses seemed to last from foreplay, into sex, and into a still-warm after glow. Never did oral sex with my lover, Dorothy; couldn’t take our lips apart long enough to try.

Black like soot, not the kind of polished black some have. Her was a skin that looked like night rolled into breasts, belly, back and smile. Her lips -- how can I describe her lips enough? I can’t. You have to come all the way out to San Francisco and taste them. Words ... just ... will ... not .. work.

We kissed through the call of “Over here”: the young, slender reed of a man baring his chest to show his new nipple ring. We would have kissed even longer save for Dorothy’s insistence that we play “this game” a little more, first.

“I’m HIV positive.”

I knew Jerry. Knew him well. Friend, pal, something else -- very special. He mirrored me: long and lean, tapered and elegant. While mine was black, though, his was dirty blond. Look at pieces of Jerry and you would think him just another punk -- but I knew him from long nights of bad movies, tears (both of us) and many, many smiles.

Jerry’s lips were slightly scabbed from cruising downtown on his board, of biting them when he was nervous. His tongue was hard and strong, a vibrant touch that shivered me down to my bare toes.

“I am,” Jerry said, and I kissed him long and hard again.

The game lasted for a while more, before dropping away with the few remaining clothes. The toys game out: leather, latex, condoms, Saran Wrap ... the tools of our friendships. We played and kissed many times thereafter.

I could only wish that Jerry could have kissed me much, much longer.

Masquerade: Page 9

Here's another preview of a very special project: Masquerade was illustrated by my great pal, and a fantastic artist, Wynn Ryder, from a story by ... well, me ... for an upcoming graphic novel anthology called Legendary.

I'll be putting up more pages from the final over the next few months ... or you can read the entire thing on Wynn's Deviantart pages.

Pauline Likes Rites Of Spring, Chapter 2

I can't say it enough: I am very lucky to have some truly fantastic friends - and one of the most-fantastic is Pauline. Just check out this review she sent me for Chapter 2 of my "weird science fiction, bawdy adventure, sideways humor, and delightful strange" project, The Rites of Spring:

In this strange new world, Gazelle runs. Every beat is torture on her aching body. She is proud, she is the Messenger; stopping, pausing to catch her breath, never occurs to her. Her vocation as Messenger, dictates her raison d’etre. It is what she was born to do. Simple as that.

M.Christian opens chapter two of his serialized novel, THE RITES OF SPRING, with the pounding beat of Gazelle’s feet on the hard, unforgiving concrete. The vista of The City opens up before her, spell binding her, mingling with the endorphins racing through her blood; a rushing anaesthetic for her suffering body.

The Elders have whispered tales of the old City, around night time campfires. The mysteries, the mythologies, all the old stories mingle in Gazelle’s consciousness as the City opens up beneath the glaring sun. The City is haunting and holy; so is Gazelle’s run. The City is an infrastructure of totems, just as Gazelle herself is.

And then a shock. The scent of testosterone; the scent of man. Another totem. For the first time Gazelle is distracted from the world of the City. She wants to stop, seeing first one man, then another; then thousands. The men are wild, wanting her; Gazelle wants them too. But she doesn’t falter. The rhythm of her run doesn’t change, but Christian changes the pace into a frenetic frenzy. Gazelle’s imagination tips on the edge of insanity as she craves the naked, erect cocks in her every orifice.

M.Christian’s use of words, his instinctive use of language is a delight. I’ve used the words, ‘lyrical’ and ‘panache’ to describe his stories before. But I can’t think of better words to convey to a reader, what a breathtaking experience it is to read the perfection of a master storyteller. I want to know more about this strange city, that is at once, so familiar and yet so alien. And as with all the very best serializations, I want to know, what happens next in THE RITES OF SPRING?

OUT NOW: The Rites of Spring - Chapter 2

Here we go again, folks: What do you get when you cross weird science fiction, bawdy adventure, sideways humor, and delightful strangeness?

Frankly, I haven't the faintest idea, but if you want to see what might be might be pretty damned close, check out the second chapter of my serial story, The Rites of Spring - which was just published

So, if you like your science fiction weird, your adventure stories bawdy, your humor tilted, and your strangeness delightful then head on over to the great Paper Bag Press site and download the second chapter of my fun new project - or, if you want to pick up the story from the beginning, check out the first chapter.

And, naturally, if you want to write a review of either chapters drop me a line and I'll send you over a copy.

Mykola Dementiuk Likes Rude Mechanicals

This is ... well, I don't really have the words for how wonderful this is: Mykola Dementiuk - who is a brilliant writer as well as a fantastic friend - just sent me this very sweet review for Rude Mechanicals. Thanks, Mick!

It’s always a treat to read a new M. Christian ebook, especially at this holiday time of year, and though Rude Mechanicals isn’t Christmasy at all it has a lot of surprises and wonderment in its pages. I would even say it’s as surprising as his other books Me2 (body changes), Very Bloody Marys (hip vampires), and other books by this prolific author. He’s only getting better and better…

In the one of the stories, "Blow Up," the theme of masturbation is prevalent throughout the tale until it explodes right in one’s hand or satisfied face, you might say. In "Billie" a female motorcyclist meets up with another female on the highway and the fun begins, if you can call it fun. While in "Beep" a machine orders a character to sexually respond, and he does so, by telephone to a mechanical voice. And by "Hot Definition" a pretty Japanese girl is sexually taunted by holographic images until she gets the better of them, in more ways than one. In "I Am Jo’s Vibrator" a woman, Josephine, gives her vibrator a good going over, until you have to question who is getting the working over, Jo or the vibrator. But by "Speaking Parts"…well, I think I will leave that up to you to see how great writing of a story can be…that is until you try it. The story is a marvel!

Yet Rude Mechanicals is more than just stories about mindless dirty fucking it is sex with a living thinking brain, devious at times, soft and tender at others, or as good as a machine can do it. With Rude Mechanicals M. Christian shows us he is reaching the top with his creative power in that the writing is more complicated but also very satisfying as a whole. I can just imagine how high he will reach up as a prolific writer. The best to you, M. Christian, show us what it takes to be a great writer, because you certainly are one…

Mykola (Mick) Dementiuk author of Holy Communion, Vienna Dolorosa, and Times Queer and others.

Brushes ... In Paris!

I'm very jazzed that a chapter from my erotic romance novel, Brushes, was just picked up by Maxim Jakubowksi for the Paris edition of his "sex in cities" anthology series. Thanks, Maxim!

Dark Roasted M.Christian

Here's a brand new Dark Roasted Blend piece on the art of science and the science of art:

It reads contradictory, conflicted: the art of science/science of art – the mixture of the logical and methodical with the imaginative and emotional.

But science and art – or, if you’d prefer, art and science – have held hands, if not close friends, for a very long time. Greek and Roman artists followed often strict guidelines considering the correct mathematical proportions of the figures in their frescoes and sculptures, Japanese woodblocks were as much about mechanical precision as they were about the subject being printed, the Renaissance was all about using science to bring a literal new dimension to painting, and then you have the work of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka.

No, you haven’t heard of Leopold or Rudolf Blaschka – but you certainly should have. Unlike the Greeks and and Romans, the Japanese Ukiyo-e artists, Michangelo and Leonardo, Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka aren’t well known outside of either esoteric or scientific circles.

Which is what makes them so remarkable: they mixed the staggering beauty of pure art with a precision and dedication worthy of great scientists.

Leopold and Rudolf were glass artisans – possibly some of the greatest, ever. But what they created weren’t just glass and goblets, lampshades and windows. Nope, Leopold and Rudolf created nature.


Simplified, here’s the story: Professor George Lincoln Goodale, of Harvard, wanted to teach botany. But the problem with teaching botany is that plants have a tendency to … well, die. Sure, you could preserve some specimens but lots of species just don’t look the same after being dried – the plant version of stuffed and mounted. Yes, you could try using paintings or even photography but plants are – and here’s a surprise -- three dimensional. So what Professor Goodale did was ask the Blaschkas to create glass plants to help him teach his students about real ones.

But the Blaschkas did more than just recreate plants: they created astounding works of not only scientific accuracy but pure, brilliant, art. Looking at even the simplest of their efforts is deceptive – a sign of their genius. Their reproductions don't resemble the original plants – they look EXACTLY like them, created by hand, in fickle and fragile glass. All from 1887 to 1936.

What’s even more impressive is how many they created: more than 3,000 models of some 850 species – many of which can be seen on display at Harvard while many others are being painstakingly restored.

But the Blaschkas didn’t stop at plants. Not to take anything away from their artistry, but plants are relatively simple subjects. In some cases the Blaschkas could even work from live, or recently plucked, models. But there are much more difficult subjects out there, creatures so rare and fragile that very few men have ever seen them in their delicate flesh – even more frail than the glass the Blaschkas used to recreate them.


When these reproductions were made, in the late 19th century, only a few marine explorers and a few lucky seaman had seen any of them. Octopi, urchins, sea cucumbers, anemones, jellyfish, cuttlefish – they were too rare, too fragile, to be seen outside of the sea. That is until the Blaschkas.

I wish there was some way to request a moment of silence. I wish there was some way to ask you to stop reading this and look at the pictures here and at other places of the web. I wish there was some way for you to have a nice glass of wine, put on some nice music – maybe Bach, who also mixed science and art – and just admire the care, the craft, and the pure art the Blaschkas created.


The Blaschka brothers left an inspirational legacy. Josiah McElheny – the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant – is a kindred spirit to the Blaschkas, another mind-blowing artist who works in the whimsical and temperamental world of glass … and the disciplined domain of science.

McElheny’s works -- like that of the Blaschka brothers -- finds inspiration in the universe around us, particularly with one sculpture that depicts a key moment. In many ways this is a perfect place to stop: the Blaschka brothers created perfect artistic reproductions of nature to teach science, and McElheny created a sculptural interpretation of the ultimate act of creation, as discovered by science: the Big Bang.

The art of science, the science of art … in the end they are both looking for the same thing: a way to show the nature of everything.

Patrick Califia Likes Rude Mechanicals

This is a very special treat: a blurb from the legendary Patrick Califia - a great writer and an even greater friend. Thanks, Pat!


Here is the latest collection of M.Christian's insightful and original work. Fabulous! I have yet to read anything Chris has written without feeling that my own assumptions were challenged, and I was pushed to think about sexuality, politics, gender, and literature in a whole different way. There aren't enough people who can write from the polymorphous perverse perspective that he seamlessly adopts. He is a genuine ally of sexual minority communities and has walked the walk and talked the talk in dozens of different erotic and edgy experiences. If you'd like to expand your horizons and spread your wings (or your legs, or somebody else's legs), you couldn't have a better guide than the wise, wry, irreverent, and twisted M.Christian.
--Patrick Califia, author of Mortal Companion, Hard Men, and Macho Sluts.

Masquerade: Page 8

Here's another preview of a very special project: Masquerade was illustrated by my great pal, and a fantastic artist, Wynn Ryder, from a story by ... well, me ... for an upcoming graphic novel anthology called Legendary.

I'll be putting up more pages from the final over the next few months ... or you can read the entire thing on Wynn's Deviantart pages.