Yet More Philosophy

 

Weirdsville Love -

I can't ever say it enough: I have some truly incredible friends: just check out this post by dear friend, Ralph Greco, Jr., over at the Von Gutenberg site about my new book Welcome to Weirdsville:

Well-known writer, part-time rapscallion and full-time great friend of us all here at Von Gutenberg, M. Christian sees not only the release of his new Welcome To Weirdsville from Renaissance E Books/PageTurner Editions but also a five part video series connected with it called Did You Know? (see it here) written Renaissance publisher Jean Marie Stine and produced by media master, Bill Mills. 

Prolific scribe that he is (the guy has 400 stories published in anthologies alone!) we know M. Christian’s ability to not only turn a phrase but to unearth some of the most interesting tidbits on a subject, as he does in the non-fiction pieces he has penned for us and in WTW you’ll find more of the same as we learn about a noble Word War 1 German pirate, the City of Fire, the giggling genius of Brian G. Hughes, The Antikythera Device and much much more. 

Knowing the diabolical naughty mind of M. Christian as we do there are also quite a few forays into things kinky in this book (read his excerpt about the Hellfire Club here) 

Welcome To Weirdsville is a must for any student, devotes or those of us with a passing interest in marquis weirdness written about with unmatched aplomb. 

You can check M. Christian out here: www.mchristian.com and get the book here.

Did You Know? Weird Facts #1: The Hellfire Club

I am ... speechless. This is just so damned cool: as a very special celebration of the release of my book Welcome to Weirdsville, Renaissance E Books/PageTurner Editions presenting a five part series Did You Know? written by our publisher Jean Marie Stine and produced by by our resident magnificent media master, and great guy, Bill Mills.

The first one, on the Hellfire Club, which I wrote about here, just went up.

"A wonderful compendium of interesting subjects and fascinating topics. Will keep you reading just to found out what's going to be covered next. Highly recommended for all lovers of weird & wonderful this side of the Universe." -Avi Abrams, Dark Roasted Blend.  

Peek under the rugs, open more than a few drawers, peek in the back shelves and you'll find that ... well, Lord Byron himself said it best: "Truth is always strange, stranger than fiction." Lakes that explode, parasites that can literally change your mind, The New Motor, a noble Word War 1 German pirate, the odd nature of ducks, the War Magician, the City of Fire, men and their too big guns, a few misplaces nuclear weapons, an iceberg aircraft carrier, the sad death of Big Mary, the all-consuming hunger of the Bucklands, the giggling genius of Brian G. Hughes, the Kashasha laughter epidemic.... Ponder that in a world that holds things like kudzu, ophiocordyceps unilateralis, The Antikythera Device, The Yellow Kid, Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, Alfred Jarry, Joseph Pujol, and suicide-bombing ants ... who knows what other kinds of wonders as well as horrors may be out there?

Welcome to Weirdsville 
M. Christian
$9.99
PageTurner Editions
183 Pages
Available where all ebooks are found 

Rainbow Reviews Likes Painted Doll!

Rainbow Reviews:

The first thing that stuck me about Painted Doll was the very mannered, structured and layered language; clause upon clause of dense evocative phrasing which could serve to push readers away, but instead drew me deeper into Domino's world. The effect is a little like standing on a beach with the waves of a rising tide lapping at your toes until you're standing calf deep without really having made the decision to get wet. 

The chaotic, dystopic future in which Painted Doll is set is expertly sketched amongst this layered detail. It is sufficiently fully realized to be concrete and real; sufficiently impressionistic to leave me with intriguing questions. I suspect the Ecole Polytechnique's creature may not be an obvious choice for a sequel, but the glimpses we're given into his/its mind really grabbed me. 

This rich, layered language also heightens the erotic scenes in the novel - both the artificial professional sessions, where Domino wields distilled emotions without so much as touching one finger to her male clients, and in the more innocent and earthy remembered sex she shared with her female lover, Flower. 

It must be admitted that the story is let down by some poor proofreading, which has let assorted typos, missing words, and formatting problems mar the text. This is a real shame as other details - the choice of title font, and the fans used as section breaks, for example - were so spot on. At the same time, there's more het sex and male-gaze than I was expecting from the back-cover blurb.
That said, the only element of the story itself that left me unsatisfied is that I am still, after two readings, unsure if the moment when Claire miss-steps, bringing the action to its climax, is meant to signal extremely strongly her fear and confusion, or if I have miss-interpreted how Domino's neuroscopic art works. I suspect the flaw may be mine. 

As a fan of the epistolary novel, it was an unexpected joy to find this vein of letter-based story telling running through this cyberpunk thriller. Although we never meet Flower directly, her character and her voice shines through. We only get to see the first flush of their love affair through the cracks in the masks of Domino's new life, but I could still see why they would fall in love, why it was worth risking so much to be together, which means that what happens to Flower as the story comes to an end really hits home. 

This isn't an easy romance, either in its plot or the reading experience, but it is a very strong, compelling story which drew me in, and which I will remember for some time. M. Christian masterfully slides between the different parts of Domino/Claire's identity, building and revealing the world, the character, the conflict at the heart of the story, and it's a grand ride.

Vladimir Ignjatovic, Boris Furduj & Aleksa Gajić - Rust In Peace

Another Reminder - GLBT Live Chats with the Pros At The Erotica Readers & Writers Association!

GLBT erotica is a genre to be reckoned with, and The Erotica Readers and Writers Association will help interested authors with two GLBT Live Chats with the Pros: Delilah Devlin and M. Christian will be on hand to answer questions, offer advice, and exchange ideas with authors of GLBT erotica. Whether you're penning your first gay fiction, or are a spicy-seasoned pro, don't miss this opportunity.

M. Christian will host a live chat Saturday, June16th, at 3:00pm EST (12 noon PST; 8:00pm GMT).

M. Christian, associate publisher for Renaissance E Books (which includes Sizzler Editions), is an acknowledged master of erotica with more than 400 stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, and Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica. If you want to know what GLBT editors want (and don't want) and how to make your submissions stand out, M. Christian will be happy to answer your questions.

Read more about M. Christian at www.mchristian.com

ERWA chats are held on the ShadowWorld chat server, channel#erachat.

(Follow the link above. On screen you'll see 'Connect to ShadowWorld IRC'. In the Nickname box, key in your name. Leave the channels box at #ERAChat, and click 'Connect'. A chat text box will appear at the bottom of your screen)

Just A Reminder - The Bachelor Machine

- that my acclaimed collection of science fiction erotica, The Bachelor Machine, is still available. Here's what Locus had to say about it:

In the 1980s, I read an article about some noted visionaries of the bold future of virtual reality. The visionaries uniformly denied that virtual sex would be a factor in this brave new technology. Apparently the visionaries hadn't noticed that several existing technologies were significantly subsidized by sex, among them the phone companies (by 900 numbers), Big Pharma (by The Pill), and the new videotape industry (by X-rated sales and rentals). Here in the Twenty-First Century, though we're still waiting for VR, phone companies enjoy the additional subsidy of surfers seeking X-rated websites, penile implants and Viagra keep multinational medical companies big in the stock market, and video stores add X-rated DVDs. 

SF authors are bolder, or maybe just less blind, than the VR visionaries; they routinely incorporate varieties of cybersex in their fiction. But SF authors rarely center plot and theme on sex, and the professional and semiprofessional SF magazines rarely publish speculative sex stories. Yet the enormous sexual changes of the last few years, both trivial (porn spam) and profound (legalized gay/lesbian marriage in Canada), demand more SF exploration of the subject. Fortunately, on the small-press margins of SF, at the border shared with the erotica genre, a few writers are speculating intelligently and imaginatively about the future of sex. Among the best-known and best of the erotic-SF writers is M. Christian.

The stories in his new collection, The Bachelor Machine, pass the litmus tests of both the SF and erotica genres. Take out the tech and there's no story; take out the sex and there's no story. This description may lead those unfamiliar with SF erotica to suspect that every story is about getting off with the aid of futuristic technologies, and that's true as far as it goes. But that's not going nearly far enough.

The stories in The Bachelor Machine are not about sex, though they're stuffed with sexual acts; the stories are about what sex means. M. Christian is writing about the psychology of being human, and he often does so by exploring sexual possibilities and realities that are rarely discussed, even in private conversation. He not only thinks forbidden thoughts, he extrapolates them in the finest SF fashion.

The aptly named "Technophile" pushes technofetishism to the ultimate as it explicates an idea most authors (especially male authors) would never imagine, let alone write about. To put it bluntly, "Technophile" eroticizes castration. A character has his penis cut off and replaced with the top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art "Long Thrust." Another character wants to lose his virginity to the technological phallus, which he sees as hotter and better than the old-fashion flesh kind. But the cutting-edge implant needs a recharge and remains limp throughout the encounter, a bitter irony. 

In the decaying post-industrial future of "Winged Memory", Dusk does something most people couldn't imagine, and would find horrifying if they did: he sells (and loses) his memory of losing his virginity. He does this to buy thirty minutes with a prostitute "walking the street, eyes available red." To have her again, Dusk keeps selling memories, until he doesn't know who he is, or who this woman is that he inexplicably wants.  

The stories "Bluebelle" and "Skin-Effect" break taboo by making explicit the sexual undercurrents of the savagery and killing in nearly every Hollywood cop and military action flick. 

In "Guernica", several individuals meet secretly in a basement to enjoy sex acts outlawed by a repressive Twenty-First-Century government. Their practices, costumes, and toys deliberately, ironically, terrifyingly recreate the uniforms, actions, and tools of the cops who would arrest and punish — and kill — them. 

In "Butterflies", a hacker immersed in the full-sensory, Disney-perfect Glade of the Datasea finds herself assaulted — literally — by a flock of beautiful butterfly-sprites. I generally hate stories about rape/violation, yet Christian's skill, imagery, and insight kept me reading to the end... and I never felt violated by the story. It's an impressive achievement. 

In "Hackwork", Rosselyn Moss works for ExpressTaxi as a body that cyber-riders hire to carry their consciousness around New Orleans. They dictate her actions and, inevitably, drive her body into sexual encounters. One night, she is distressed to find herself whipping a beautiful young stranger — and even more distressed to discover the stranger loves it.

Like Rosselyn, the narrator of "Switch" is a rent girl. She isn't a taxi, but she may have an even more troubling job, for she never remembers who her clients were, or what they did to her. M. Christian travels deep into taboo territory by demonstrating that, for some, being so thoroughly controlled, so completely owned as to remember nothing, is the ultimate turn-on. 

In "Everything but the Smell of Lilies", Justine Moor is a whore with a deeply creepy specialty. She's been turned into "a hardwired dead girl, a chilling and stiffening hooker", dying over and over for money. If this bleeding-edge cyberpunk extrapolation isn't disturbing enough, Justine finds herself lying, a motionless but fully-conscious corpse, in an ambulance staffed by a necrophiliac. (In case it's not already abundantly clear, some stories in The Bachelor Machine are not intended to arouse.) 

Many of M. Christian's grittily urban stories are cyberpunk; "Heartbreaker" pushes the form to a logical extreme. When an undercover cop sets up the bust of an outlaw biohacker, the two women don't just have sex, they withdraw very special interface cables from inside themselves and connect them: "Linked, each hardwired into the other's genitals, mixed and matched, they surged and merged." 

In "Thin Dog", fans jack their minds into a full-sensory experience of what it's like to be superstar reactor-rock band Thin Dog. Members Johna, Paul, Georgina, and Jingo (ahem) play instruments that are nanotech implants woven through their bodies; playing includes on-"stage" couplings and quadruplings. 

Some stories not only share 1980s-cyberpunk's fascination with Japanese culture, but show the influence of "anime" (Japanese animation).  

In many ways, the woman and situation in "State" are ideal for anime. The prostitute Fields lives in Japan and earns her living by pretending to be an almost mythically superior Japanese-made sex android. Her masquerade must always achieve perfection — from biochemically lowered body temperature, to "incredibly durable bonding polymer" applied daily to every millimeter of flesh, to behavior in orgasm — because her clients must never suspect she's human.  

Not every story is cyberpunk. "The New Motor" is an amusing steampunk entertainment set in Paul Di Filippo territory. Nineteenth-Century spiritualist John Murray Spear has a vision of "the Association of Electricizers... spirits with a mechanical turn of mind," and begins proselytizing for the creation of "the Physical Savior of the Race... the New Motor!" This charismatic messiah for "a new Age of Man Through Machine" leads his followers to transcendentalist New England, where they settle in the conservative town of Lynn, Massachusetts. Seducing and neglecting a particularly fervent follower proves seer Spear is dangerously blind to certain human truths. 

The collection has some flaws. Some futures don't seem entirely plausible (a minor problem, and one hardly confined to the erotic-SF subgenre). A couple of stories are vague in their SFnal elements. I never quite figured out what "Bluebelle" was (a micro Death Star? a flying fembot? a round mecha?). It takes too long to learn what the futuristic technology is and does in "Eulogy". The endings of "Eulogy" and "Winged Memory" left me wondering just what was happening. And frustratingly, the book provides no copyright data, providing no information about if or when the stories were previously published.  

M. Christian's prose is strong and supple and sometimes lyrical. If you don't like naughty language or graphic descriptions of sex, you'd better steer clear of his work. But if you like smart, taboo-breaking SF, then read The Bachelor Machine
- Cynthia Ward

billierosie Likes The Love that Never Dies

This is very, very special: my pal, and a brilliant writer billierosie (who wrote the great Fetish Worship) just penned this review of my new anthology The Love that Never Dies:

Finally. It’s here, and it is out NOW! “The Love that Never Dies”. The latest anthology of erotica, from the skilful editing of M.Christian. In this unique anthology, M.Christian takes us into the strange world of the undead. He knows what we like, does M.Christian. He knows what turns us on. He knows our dark secrets, dark desires. We yearn for those creatures that we can’t see and we can’t hear, but we have to acknowledge their presence. They taunt us, hurt us, make us bleed out our fear, and they are there, inside us and outside us. 

In “One Drop”, Laura Antoniou’s story, opens the anthology. Joyce and Rina have been lovers for years. They have been playing the same S&M games for what seems like centuries, to Joyce, and Joyce is bored. She feels guilt, that she is bored, but her psyche, is screaming for the sort of Domination that Rina seems incapable of giving. Then “My Lady”, makes an appearance. All it took was one drop of Joyce’s blood and a ravenous, cruel Dominant, fills Joyce with a terrifying, screaming fear. 

It is an excellent choice of story to open an anthology. Laura Antoniou, knows all about pace and rhythm; how to draw the reader in, that creeping up behind you tingle, that makes you stop reading for a second and glance over your shoulder. Did the curtain move just now, or was it just the breeze? Surely I closed the bedroom door? Was that a creaked I heard on the staircase -- third step from the top? The pulse rate increases and like all the best creepy tales, ends up with a startling twist. 

In “The Ghost in the Machine” Karen Taylor, gives a darker side of the Jewish psyche and traditions. The narrator of this beautifully crafted tale is a dybbuk, one of a group of souls hovering between the living and the dead. Being made into a dybbuk is a punishment for living an unworthy life. In life, dybbuks have been evil and malicious; in death, they are punished by a curse to hover as an essence, in an in between existence. Never moving on; it appears that there is no redemption for a dybbuk. A dybbuk can be called from his wretched, wispy existence, when a living being utters a curse upon a another person. It is the dybbuks’ duty to wreak havoc on the life of the recipient of the curse, and effectively fulfilling the curse. The dybbuk clings to the recipient until he is exorcised by a Rabbi.  

It is an intelligent tale, told with wit and intellect, but in such a matter of fact way, that the reader has that shifting uncomfortably; do dybbuks exist? Can someone really put a curse on you -- a curse so powerful, that it can wreak homes, marriages, lives? Yes they can, the piercing comment in the final sentence tells you.

Jay Lawrence’s contribution to the anthology is “Deliverance.” Here, we have one of those writers whose voice speaks the tale to the reader. We are sitting before a blazing fire, we are sleepy, as Jay’s voice tells us the story. “Deliverance” has the rhythm of a fairy tale; a quest story. And of course there is an erotic encounter. The sex scene is powerful enough to blow off the top of your head. Who would have thought that erotica could be compelling enough to be condensed to a few short paragraphs? And then there is the morning after. That awful feeling that you have done something so terrible, that your mind is frantically trying to erase it. Was it Rape? Buggery? Necrophilia? All three? A profound sin has been committed and you daren’t look back.

Sexy, sexy, sexy -- PM White composes prose like a musician composes music. PM White is an Offenbach, rather than a Grieg, leading the reader in so seductively to a safe place. But this place isn’t safe at all, like Orpheus’ trip to the underworld, PM White, slams you with erotica so powerful, that you are chasing your breath. Such is “Memory Man.”  

The moment when Tanya sees the Memory Man, is shocking, pure electricity. How do we know whom, or what is watching us, in our most private moments? Tanya questions her own sanity, when she not only sees the Memory Man, but hears his voice. It is a carefully crafted paragraph, worthy of Edgar Allan Poe, blending the forbidden, with the terrifying. 

The writer draws on our childhood fears; we know that there is something there, in our bedroom, watching us. The adults tells us to sleep, there is nothing there. As children, we know different. 

Tanya is a voyeur; so is the reader. We watch Tanya, as she watches the young, Hispanic couple, fucking each other, by moonlight in the swimming pool. The reader watches Tanya, as in a beautifully worked piece of writing, Tanya divests herself, like a burlesque dancer. We watch her masturbate into a lonely orgasm, with her thick vibrator. Thrust for thrust, Tanya synchronises her wet fucking, with the lovers in the swimming pool. 

Enter, the Memory Man; he is a voyeur too. Cruising, hotels and apartments, looking for folks getting off; either alone, or with multiple partners. The Memory Man’s inspiration is the orgasm. Passion is on his agenda. 

There’s the idea that stuff can happen in a place, usually a creepy house, or a smugglers inn, which is so powerful that somehow that the event replays over time, like an old VHS tape. That isn’t what PM White is talking about at all. His concept is that actual memories of an event, can have a manifestation, that is a thinking, feeling being. The being can’t be seen, or heard, so it is like a ghost, or how we all think of ghosts. But he is there, watching and growing stronger with each memory that he stores.

And what a treat -- a tale from the keyboard of M.Christian himself. It has been far too long! I have been starved, I am hungry for his tales. You see, I never know where M.Christian is going. He is an elusive writer and always when I think I have got him sussed, he surprises me! 

In “HORROR VACUI” M.Christian, gives us a protagonist whose whole existence is controlled by fear. A fear of his apartment, a fear of leaving his apartment, a fear of the open space outside, a fear of being unable to fill the empty space, what will happen to the empty space when he leaves it? It is that same crawling, slamming fear that makes me reach for the light switch, as I wake from a bad nightmare. Sweating, hot and cold clammy fear, clinging to my face. The protagonist in this frightening tale, is nihilistic. And that is what he is most fearful of, as his mind unravels. 

It is a tale of love and betrayal and death. A homeless man talks about it, and we don’t yet know what that “it” is. Or the roles that the players, have played. We learn the names of the lovers; Danny and Theresa. How perfect their love was, how they adored each other and then we learn the part that our protagonist played in their destruction.

He goes to a diner. It is just a short walk from his apartment, but it reads like an odyssey. You can feel him losing his grip on reality. The pace speeds up, like a cat frenetic, on amphetamine. His senses are confused. Is he really hearing things? Are the things he glimpses, real, or visions? Tastes, smells -- they shouldn’t be there, but they are. 

It is a tale of teetering on the edge of the precipice of madness. A Roderick Usher madness. The fear of madness. The fear of everything, and the fear of being nothing. A vision that Goya might have painted. The reader may never have been to those places, where everything is disconnected, but like the writer he is, M.Christian lifts the corner of the veil. We see, and we understand. 

“The Love that never dies is published by wonderful Sizzler, and will be available through Amazon very soon. There will also a printed version of the anthology later this year!

[Via Frequently Felt] 

Logic

Out Now: The Love That Never Dies: Erotic Encounters With The Undead By M. Christian

I am ... BRAINS ... very excited to announce ... BRAINS ... a brand new anthology from ... BRAINS ... Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions ... BRAINS...

Kidding aside I'm very happy to be able to announce the release of The Love That Never Dies: Erotic Encounters With The Undead.  Right now it's up on the Sizzler site but it should be available everywhere (ibooks, amazon, etc) in a week or two.

Thousands of books have been written about love and sex between humans and werewolves, vampires, aliens, shapeshifters, ghosts, and other supernatural creatures. But, what about the real, honest, and alluringly bizarre world of the undead.  Not just zombies - though a few are stumbling through this anthology - not just the once-alive - but also the differently-living?  In these pages you'll discover things shambling out of tombs, existing on whole new plains of existence, and more.  In the hands, and minds, of these deeply talented and wonderful writers nothing will be quite what it appears. Buckle yourself in and get ready for a ride will of unexpected twists and turns, where your libido and desires may go in one direction while your brain - screaming all the time "No no no no no no!" - goes the opposite.  Including stories from erotic writing celebrities like Laura Antoniou, Nobilis Reed, Jay Lawrence, Billierosie, PM White, Ralph Greco, Jr. - and science fiction/horror stars such as Jean Marie Stine, Ernest Hogan and Chris Devito! 

Contents

One Drop By Laura Antoniou
Robber By Kannan Feng
Monster By
Vamps By Dominic Santi
Winnat's Pass By Billierosie
The Ghost In The Machine By Karen Taylor
Deliverance By Jay Lawrence
Memory Man By PM White
The Wolf Man And The Mule By Linda Watanabe Mcferrin
Between Despair And Ecstasy By Angelia Sparrow
The Man Who Visited Or Poor Brother Ed By Ralph Greco, Jr.
Ghost By Heather Towne
A Rock And A Hard Place By J. T. Seate
Alive She Cried By Chris Devito
Les Bon Temps By C. C. Williams
Only In Your Dreams By A. Leigh Jones
The Frankenstein Penis By Ernest Hogan
A Pearl Of Great Price By Jean Marie Stine
Horro Vacui By M. Christian

Confessions of A Literary Streetwalker: What Is Sex ... And How Much?

Check this out: I just wrote a brand new "Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker" piece for the always-great Erotica Readers & Writers site - all my previous columns, of course, have been collected in How To Write And Sell Erotica by Renaissance Books.  Here's a tease:

So let's ask the question: what is sex – especially what is sex when it comes to writing erotica? 

I will not begin with a dictionary definition ... I will not begin with a dictionary definition ... I will not begin with a dictionary definition ...

It's a very common misconception that erotica is supposed to turn the reader on ... or to be exact, that it is supposed to be written to turn the reader on. 

There's a huge problem with that, though: mainly that you, as a writer, have no idea what turns a reader on.  Even getting the cheat sheet of writing for a specific anthology there is no way you can possibly cover every permutation of that theme. 

Let's pick anal sex, just to be provocative: some people like anal sex people of the pure sensation receiving, or giving; while others have their desire mixed with domination or submission, etc., etc, etc.  Bottom line – sorry about that – you, as an erotica writer, cannot cover everything, erotically, when you write.

So how do you know how much sex to put into a story – and how to approach what sex you do put into a story? 


[MORE]

Book Autopsy by Brian Dettmer

Book Autopsy by Brian Dettmer