Masquerade: Page 11

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 pages from the final periodically ... or you can read the entire thing on Wynn's Deviantart pages.

Dark Roasted M.Christian (flashback)

Head over to Dark Roasted Blend if you want to read about things that shouldn't - but still do - explode.

There are rules about such things … or so we think. After all, apples don’t fall up, lions don’t have feathers, and lakes don’t explode.

Sure enough, Macintoshes don’t fall skyward, and panthera leo doesn’t have beautiful plumage.

But if you happened to be living in Cameroon you’d know all too well that lakes can, and do, explode.

Take for example the Lake Nyos in the Northwest Province of Cameroon. Part of the inactive Oku volcano chain, it’s an extremely deep, extremely high and, most importantly, very calm, very still, lake.

But it hasn’t always been so calm or still. In 1986 something very weird happened to Lake Nyos, a weirdness that unfortunately killed 3,500 head of livestock … and 1,700 people.

No jokes this time. No clumsy 50’s horror movie metaphors. What happened to the people in the three villages near that lake isn’t funny. Most of them luckily died in the sleep, but the 4,000 others who escaped the region suffered from sores, repertory problems and even paralysis. All because Lake Nyos exploded.

Before the why, here’s some more. What happened to the villages of Cha, Nyos, and Subum that time isn’t unique. The same thing happened to lake Monoun, also in Cameroon, in 1984. That time 37 people died, again not very pleasantly. What does sound like a scene from some only horror flick is the story of a truck that had been driving near the scene. Mysteriously, the truck’s engine died, and then so did the ten people who got out: suffocating within minutes of stepping down. Only two people of the dozen survived, all because they happened to be sitting on top of the truck.

The technical term for what happened to Lake Nyos and Monoun is a limnic eruption. To get one you need a few basic elements: one, a very deep volcanic lake; two, said lake has to be over a slow source of volcanic gas; and three, it has to be very, very still.

What happens is that volcanic gas, mostly carbon dioxide but nasty carbon monoxide as well, super saturates the lake. A clumsy way of thinking about it is a can of soda: shake it up like crazy and the fluid in the can, held back by pressure, doesn’t do anything.

But pull the top, or in the case of Nyos and Monoun, a small landslide or low magnitude earthquake, and all that trapped gas rushes out in an immense explosion. That’s bad enough, as there are even some theories suggesting that the subsequent lake-tsunami from the gassy blast has wiped out still more villages, but what’s worse is that those gasses trapped in the lake water are absolutely deadly.

Heavier than air, the carbon dioxide flows down from the mountain lake, suffocating anything and anyone in it’s path – which explains how those two lucky bus passengers managed to escape: they were simply above the toxic cloud.

Fortunately scientists and engineers are working on ways to stop limnic blasts. Controlled taping of the gasses, bubbling pipes to keep the water from becoming super saturated, it’s beginning to look like they might be able to keep what happened to the 1700 people of Nyos from happening again.

But what keeps other scientists awake at night is that there are more than likely lots of other lakes ready to explode, the question being … when?

Okay, so lakes can explode. But fruit doesn’t drop to the sky and feline African predators aren’t born with fluffy down, and frogs don’t pop … right?

Not if you happened to live in Germany a few years ago: for awhile there toads were doing just that. And we’re not talking a few here and there. Over 1,000 frogs were found burst and blasted in a lake that was soon stuck with the pleasant name “the death pool.”

Theories flew like parts of an exploding frog: a virus? A crazy who had a thing for dynamite and toads? A detonating mass suicide? What the hell (bang) was going (boom) on (kablam)?

The cops checked out the area and the local nut-houses but there wasn’t anyone with that very weird and very specific MO. Scientists check out the exploded remains but found no suspicious viruses, parasites, or bacteria.

They one veterinarian came up with the most likely answer: crows.

As anyone who has ever watched a crow knows they do not fit the label “bird brain.” Extremely clever and resourceful, crows are not only fast learners but they study, and learn from, other crows. What Frank Mutschmann, one clever vet, hypothesized was that it was happening was the meeting of smart crows and a frog’s natural defenses -- plus the allure of livers.

Wanting that tasty part of the toads, the crows had learned how to neatly extract it from their prey with a quick stab of their very sharp bills. In response, the toads did what they always go: puff themselves up. The problem – for the amphibians that is – is that because they now had a hole where their livers were that defense then became an explosive problem. Weasels might not literally go pop in that old kid’s song but that seems to be just what was happening to that lake of German toads in 2005.

But that still doesn’t change that Pipins don’t fall up, and lions don’t have tails like a peacock’s, right? And what about ants? They don’t explode, do they?

But they do. Ladies and Gentlemen allow me to present camponotus saundersi. Native to Malaysia, this average looking ant has a unique structure giving it an even more unique behavior when threatened.

Running the length of it’s little body are two mandibular glands full of toxins. That’s bad enough, as any critter that decides to try a bite will get a mouthful of foul-tasting, maybe even deadly, venom, but what sets this ant aside from others is what happens when it gets pushed into a corner.

By clamping down on a special set of muscles these ants can commit violent and, yes, explosive suicide: taking out any nearby threat with a hail of nasty poisons. It’s certainly a dramatic way to go but you can bet anything threatening it’s colony will get a shock it won’t soon forget.

Sure apples do not fall up and lions don’t have feathers – but what with exploding lakes, bursting toads, and suicide-bombing ants it you might want to check that your grandmother’s homemade pie doesn’t float away or that lions aren’t about to swoop down from the sky and carry you off.

How To Wonderfully WriteSex (3)

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):

Writers are professional liars: it’s our job is to tell a story so well that the audience believes it’s the truth, at least for the course of the story. The technical term, of course, is suspension of disbelief – the trick of getting the reader to put aside any doubts that what you’re saying isn’t the truth, the whole truth, so help you God.

For erotica writers that means convincing the reader that you really are a high school cheerleader named Tiffany who likes stuffed animals and gang-bangs with the football team … or that you’re a pro tennis player named Andre who has a mean backhand and can suck cock like a professional. A writer’s job is to convince, to put aside doubts … in other words to lie through their fucking teeth.

As any liar worth their salt knows, the trick to telling a good one is to mix just the right amount of truth with the bullshit. You don’t tell your mom who went to the movies rather than church: you say you had a sick friend, that your car broke down or that you had a cold. The same goes for fiction: spinning something that everyone knows is a lie (“the check is in the mail”) is flimsy, but adding the right amount of real life experience makes a story really live. Rather than Tiffany and the football players, how about a young woman who really wants to do a gangbang but doesn’t know how to break it to her boyfriend or girlfriend? We’ve all had the experience of trying to find a way to communicate our sexual fantasies to someone, so that rings true … even though our character is a total fabrication.

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Billierosie Likes The Bachelor Machine

Maybe I should start to use of some kind of acronym ... like IHSAF ... but that would diminish the fact that I really do Have Some Amazing Friends, people who I treasure for their kindness, support and, well, just because they are true friends.

Case in point, my dearest pal, Billierosie, just posted this review for my science fiction erotica collection, The Bachelor Machine, on her great blog. The book, btw, is coming out in a brand nw edition very, very cool, from Circlet. Stay tuned!

It's a joy to re-read these stunning stories, but M. Christian has a lot to answer for! His Bachelor Machine zaps the reader with a selection of wildly erotic short stories, set to raise the blood pressure and increase heart failure statistics.

This is futuristic pornography. The sleaze of porn is there, combined with the mysterious worlds of galaxies never before dreamed of. M.Christian’s imagination is really, beyond belief.

The gloves are off, taboos shattered in this daring collection of futuristic fantasy erotica. If your taste in fantasy is hobbits, noble deeds and happy endings these stories are probably not for you. If you're up for a challenge, if you can run with Metropolis meets nine and a half weeks, meets dark, vintage erotica, then the Bachelor Machine will give you the fix you need. M.Christian's stories are superbly written and well crafted. Can the sensation of spinning rotation be erotic? When it comes from M.Christian’s keyboard; yes! As I read, I am constantly pushed into the giddy, whirling position of inter-galactic voyeur, leaving me shattered and spinning, helplessly, with a glorious, life threatening attack of vertigo.

Said it before -

- but have to say it again: I have some fantastic friends. Case in point, the extremely-talented and extra-ordinarily nice Jeremy Edwards. Jeremy not only asked me to write a guest post on his blog but wrote a very touching intro. Here's a tease - for the rest of the post just click here to go to Jeremy's site.

When I was first becoming familiar with the landscape of the contemporary erotica scene, I quickly learned that one of the preeminent masters of the genre was an intriguing writer and editor called M. Christian. And it was obvious why M.C. had such a status: his work was not only extraordinary in quality and originality, but also in its versatility. This was clearly a writer who went beyond the familiar challenges of writing convincingly from different genders and orientations and psychologies and walks of life, in different settings, subgenres, moods, and tones; this was a writer who seemed to take all this one step further, to thoroughly reinvent himself, as a voice, every time he picked up the pen—and with glorious results. I'm sure I'm not the first to use the word "chameleon" in describing the man's genius: yes, M. Christian is a rock star of a chameleon.

But literary brilliance in an incredible range of voices is just part of what M. Christian is about. I have also observed, and indeed repeatedly experienced firsthand, his dedication to supporting other writers. For example, he uses his Frequently Felt blog to showcase our work, generously using his time and bandwidth to curate.

How typical it is of his spirit that when I invited M.C. to make an appearance here, he chose to use this opportunity, in part, to praise me. But I can't let you go without reprinting his bio, because my message here is a twofold one: M. Christian is a great guy AND M. Christian is a rock-star chameleon.

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Anthology Update(s)

Well, folks, it may have taken be far too long but I've finally read and selected the stories for Sex In San Francisco. Apologies to the people who didn't make the cut - I hope my little $5 act of contrition takes a bit of the sting away. If you sent a story in for the book and haven't heard from me please drop me a line asap - I think I contacted everyone who submitted but I do make mistakes sometimes ....

And for all you great folks in Best S/M Erotica 3 please stay tuned for some very cool news, including a cover design and a release schedule. As with any of my projects feel free to write me at any time if you have any questions or just want to chat.

(Blush)

Thanks ever-so-much to all my pals who sent me birthday wishes - it means a lot to me! And extra special thanks to the always-brilliant Wynn Ryder for this new sketch of yours truly. Thanks, Wynn!

The Big 5-0!

Funny, but I don't feel old ...

Welcome to Weirdsville: Within and Without You

Here's a brand new - well, something actually from my cold and dark files - Welcome to Weirdsville piece, this time on the very strange, very odd, and more-than-a-bit creepy world of bacteria and parasites. Enjoy!


It's come to my attention that a few folks have been insufficiently creeped, weirded, disturbed, freaked, frightened, terrified, or just plain disgusted by the idea and behavior of parasites, especially ones that demonstrate the nasty habit of affecting their host's behavior. Never one to disappoint, I'm here again -- lucky you -- with some further examples of how nature isn't just playful puppies and frolicking kittens.

Hardly.

This time we're going to be bouncing around a bit, so keep your trays in the upright position. Parasites, you see, aren't the only living things living in other living things. In fact there is a whole world of organisms that take up residence in us and other creatures that are all but guaranteed to make us rethink the idea of what it means to be "alone."

Before we get to the exotics let's visit the deep blue sea again and another parasite. This one didn't get mentioned the last time around because although Cymothoa exigua is a perfect example of a creature taking advantage of another creature it doesn't immediately make its host do anything it normally wouldn't do. But that doesn't make it any less ... well, you'll see.

Your hand is your hand, right? Your foot is your foot, correct? No one snuck in during the night and replaced them, lopped them off, and exchanged one or the other with something else. You're lucky, because if you were a fish then that might not be ... not your foot or your hand but rather your tongue.

Cymothoa is a crustacean that, while as a larvae, enters a fish's gills and makes its way to the mouth where is latches onto the tongue. No, it doesn't stop there. Yes, it gets worse.

Ready? Here we go: cymothoa then methodically eats the fish's tongue, chewing it up until there's nothing left but a little stub. But this crustacean isn't in it for the short term, just a snack of tongue and then onto the next unlucky fish. Instead, the crustacean hangs in there for the duration: Cymothoa becomes part of the fish, joining its host as a surrogate tongue. It spends the rest of its little crabby life feeding when the fish feeds, and the two of them go along swimmingly through life.

If you think that's bad, let's talk about sex.

Marlene Zuk, with the University of California, Riverside, has an interesting theory, and it's a whopper. First, let's talk evolution, let's chat survival of the fittest: the critter that breeds the most passes the secret of its success along to the next generation while the ones that don't have a leg-up die off. This is true of every critter on the earth, including us as well as bacteria.

Even bacteria like syphilis. For those who didn't see the film in high school, syphilis is what's commonly called a social disease. You catch it if you sleep with someone who has it. The good news is that it's treatable and really isn't a big deal anymore.

The bad news is that it's evolving with the rest of us, and according to Dr. Zuk, syphilis is working to make us better looking -- or at least not looking sick.

Think of it this way: dumb disease acts up, makes itself known. We spot it, we cure it, and it dies. A smart disease works to keep itself quiet, so we don't know we have it and so it doesn't get killed -- and so we pass it along. What I want to know is how long it'll take for the bacteria to take the next step: if it wants us to pass it along why shouldn't it work not just to make us less infected but rather more attractive? Give it time ... give it time ....

Let's go one step beyond parasites, when an organism doesn't merely look for a free ride but becomes such an integral part of the host that the two basically become one. The cell, the smallest part of any living thing -- excluding viruses, if they qualify as being alive -- began as individual protobacteria that figured out, over a very long time, that working together was better than swimming along through primordial soup. That happened before and it's still happening now.

Behavior can be affected by parasites, creatures can take over parts of other bodies, bacteria have developed to be more easily spread, but we are ourselves, right? We own our biological domain, correct?

Sorry but that's not true.

There are approximately 100 trillion cells in the human body. They make up our feet, our hands, our faces, our minds: blood cells, skin cells, brain cells, etc. That's a lot of cells.

But there are more of them than there are of us. They live even between our cells, in our guts, our mouths, our blood, our skin, and even in our brains. Conservatively speaking, there are are ten times as many bacteria – more than 100,00 species -- in our bodies than there are human cells. Some of them are invaders, sure, but many of them are symbiotic: they can't live without us and we can't live without them. We live together in - mostly - biological harmony.

You are reading this. The words appear like a voice in your mind. But do they? Living in you, mixed with your human cells, are those tens of millions of bacteria. Are they listening in, wishing you would read something much more interesting or are they, somehow, adding their own tiny opinions? Where do you start and they stop?

I know: that's a lot to think about. Let's take a walk, let some of this heady stuff float around in a brain that may or not be only yours.

Oh, look; it's snowing. Isn't it nice? All those little flakes floating down from the sky: ice crystals supposedly unique. There's a whole world in each of those little things. Weather, chemistry, geometry, physics, and – I hate to tell you this -- biology.

They are all around us and, they outnumber us. And they are falling from the sky. Researchers recently discovered that snowflakes are snowflakes not just because of cold temperature and water vapor. According to these scientists a snowflake has needs. It has formed a kind of biological/chemical symbiosis with the very creatures that outnumber you in your own body: bacteria.

That's all for now, but that's not all there is. Go on with your day, your life, just remember one important little thing: you are never, ever, alone.

Richard LaBronte Likes Running Dry (Redux)

While I'm taking a trip down memory (and publicity) lane, here's another great review for my recently re-released gay vampire novel, Running Dry - by the one-and-only Richard LaBronte, no less!

Let's see. Vampire bites man. Man becomes vampire. The biter and the bitten are in love. Must be a gay vampire novel. But not just another gay vampire novel. RUNNING DRY is, yes, about vampires. Hardcore vampires. Unless they're passing along the vampire gene, they don't just sip blood - they suck out every sweet empowering ounce of a body's bodily fluids, leaving behind but a dusty husk. Christian, author of hundreds of acclaimed short stories and editor of many fine anthologies, has crafted a brisk combo of decades-arcing romance, contemporary suspense thriller, and original horror story - Doud, the vampire longing for the lover he thinks he's lost forever, is a mysterious artist whose every painting is daubed with the blood of victims he's had to kill in order to survive, a spooky kind of homage. This is a rip-roaring read that ought to come with this warning: don't read the last page before starting the first, then devouring the rest. The book's ending is a shocker, as lives end and another begins. Enough said.

Weirdsville on The Cud

Check it out: The Cud, a fantastic Aussie zine, has just posted my article (originally from Dark Roasted Blend) Welcome to Weirdsville: On Destroying the Earth:


We like scientists. We really do. After all, without them – and the scientific method – we’d still think lightning was Zeus hurling thunderbolts, the sun was an enormous campfire, and the earth itself was balancing on huge turtles. Without science we’d be ignorant troglodytes – too stupid to even know that we’d evolved from even simpler life forms.

Yep, we love science – but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t scare us. After all, when you’re dedicated to cracking the secrets of the universe it’s kind of expected that sometimes, not often, you might crack open something a tiny bit … shall we say … dangerous?

The poster child for the fear that science and engineering can give us – beyond Shelley’s fictitious Frankenstien, of course -- was born on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico. Not one to miss something so obvious, its daddy, the one and only J. Robert Oppenheimer (‘Oppy’ to his pals) thought “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” from the Bhagavad Gita – but Kenneth Bainbridge, the Test Director, said it even better: "Now we are all sons of bitches."

Sure, the Trinity Atomic Bomb Test -- the event that began the so-called atomic age, leading to our now-constant terror that one day the missiles may start to fly and the bombs begin to fall -- was the first, but since then there have been all kinds of new, if not as flashy, scientific investigations that could be ten times more destructive. In other words, we could be one beaker drop from the destruction of the earth.

Naturally this is an exaggeration, but it’s still fun – in a shudder-inducing kind of way – to think about all these wildly hypothetical doomsdays. Putting aside the already overly publicized fears over the Large Hadron Collider creating a mini black hole that immediately falls to the core of the earth – eventually consuming the entire globe – some researchers have expressed concern that some day we may create, or unleash, a subatomic nightmare. The hunt for the so-called God particle (also called a Higgs boson), for instance, has made some folks nervous: one wrong move, one missing plus or minus sign, and we could do something as esoteric and disastrous as discovering that we exist in a metastable vacuum – a discovery made when one of our particle accelerators creates a cascade that basically would … um, no one is quite sure but it’s safe to say it would be very, very strange and very, very destructive. Confusing? Yep. But that’s the wild, weird world of particle physics. It's sometimes scary. Very, very scary.


A new threat to everyone on the planet is the idea of developing nanotechnology. If you've been napping for the last decade or so, nanotech is basically machines the size of large molecules: machines that can create (pretty much) anything on a atomic level. The question – and the concern – is what might happen if a batch of these microscopic devices gets loose. The common description of this Armageddon is "grey goo." The little machines would dissemble the entire world, and everything and everyone on it, until all that would be left is a spinning ball of, you guessed it, goo.

Another concern for some folks is that, for the first time, we’ve begun to seriously tinker with genetics. We’ve always fooled with animals (just look at a Chihuahua) but now we can REALLY fool with one. It doesn’t take a scientist to imagine – and worry about – what happens when we tinker with something like ebola or, perhaps even worse, create something that affects the reproduction of food staples like corn or wheat. Spreading from one farm to another, carried perhaps on the wind, this rogue genetic tweak could kill billions via starvation.

And then there’s us. What happens if the tweak – carried by a virus or bacteria – screws not with our food but where we’re the most sensitive: reproduction? Unable to procreate we’d be extinct as few as a hundred years.

While it’s become a staple of bad science fiction, some scientists see it as a natural progression: whether we like it or not, one day we will create a form of artificial intelligence that will surpass and replace us. Even putting aside the idea that our creations might be hostile, the fact that they could be better than us at everything means that it would simply be a matter of time before they go out into the universe – and leave us poor throwbacks behind.


There are frightening possibilities but keep this in mind: if something does happen and it looks like it’s going to be the End Of The World As We Know It, there is going to be one, and only one, place to turn to for help: the world of observation, hypothesis, prediction and experiment.

In other words, we’d have to turn to science. They would have gotten us into it, and only they will be able to get us out.

Emily Veinglory likes Running Dry (Redux)

While I'm having some flashes to the back, here's another one: a very nice review of the first edition of Running Dry by Emily Veinglory:

I am a somewhat disillusioned fan of vampire fiction. I have a few hundred vampire books and have read a few hundred more than that. The days when I would buy a book just because it was vampire fiction are long gone given the sheer quantity of them out there and the average quality, which seems to sink every year. In the last week I just happen to have read three vampire books over the last week or so and this one, 'Running Dry' by M. Christian, made me think: Oh, right. This is what I loved about vampire fiction all along.

And I should probably make clear is that we are not talking about bats, tuxedos and mock-European-accent type vampire cliches here. The very essence of the vampire mythos is having to take something from someone else to live, take so much that they die. That is the monster inside the man, that is the dilemma. Modern vampires who have immortality, angst and superpowers but no real down side to their state pale in comparison to this.

The basic story is about Doud, a conflicted man trying to reconcile what he needs to do to live his long life with his respect for human life. Shelly is his friend, a middle-age gallery owner who has to confront a few of her own personal demons when she finds out what Doud really is. And finally the story starts with the return of Doud's old lover Sergio who had every reason to want Doud dead. The kind of creature Doud really is would take a little long to explain. He needs to feed off others but his nature springs from the author's unique vision and has none of the surface features of the stock blood-sucking monster.

There really is very little to complain about in this book. I do think some of the events in the last third of the book could have been described at more length to help us setting into the twists and turns and to add pathos to the ending which could (should?) have had more emotional impact. But this is a quibble. The characters are likeable without being particularly heroic or virtuous (like real people). The story pulls you along with something new unfolding in every chapter. More than anything the writing is effortless to read, so it is more like watching the story through a window than wading through a swamp of words (this being the greatest difference between this book and the others I read this week). Based on my experience of M. Christian's writing so far (this book and his anthology 'Filthy') my main advice is this, if a book has his name on it you should buy it.

If you like fiction with gay themes their presence here is a bonus, but the reason to buy this book is because this book is good.