Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker: What Makes a Good Publisher?

Check this out: I just wrote a brand new "Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker" piece for the always-great Erotica Readers and 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:



Before I begin (again), a bit of disclosure: While the following has been written in an attempt to be professionally and personally non-biased I am an Associate Publisher for Renaissance E Books. 

Now, with that out of the way (again)...

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The last time I wrote an intro like the above it was for my Streetwalker column Self Or Not? – about why I feel that, even though it can be very alluring, I still recommend writers work with a publisher rather than go the self-publishing route.

After writing that column I've been thinking, a lot, about what makes a good publisher ... especially these days.  Not to (ahem) brag but I've been in the biz for quite a few years and have worked with a lot of publishers – both when books were printed on (gasp) actual paper, as well as in the new digital age, so I think I can say a bit about what makes a good publisher.

As always, keep in mind that this is somewhat subjective: what I like in a publisher may not be what you like in a publisher ... but the somewhat is there because, tastes aside, it's a publisher's job to get your book out so, hopefully, people will buy bunches of copies.

The world – as I mentioned – as totally changed, and so has what publishers not just can do but should be doing.  It may sound a bit ... emotional, but I like a publisher I can talk to – and who talks to me.  Sure, many publishers are simply too busy to answer every email immediately but that they get back to me eventually is more than enough to keep me happy.  I've dealt with far too many publishers who I have to write, write, write and write again to get an answer to even the simplest question.

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Reminder: I'm Performing At Bawdy Storytelling's Gender Blender

(from M.Christian's Classes And Appearances)




Just a reminder, folks, that I'm going to be performing - on stage (gasp) - at the very fun Bawdy Storytelling event tomorrow night in Oakland.

Here's the info on the whens and hows and what-else's:

Gender Blender

The Uptown Nightclub
1928 Telegraph Avenue
Oakland, California 94612

Buy your tix here: Bawdy Storytelling’s ‘Gender Blender’

$12 in Advance/$15 at the Door

Storytellers include:
  • Sex Educator & Role Model Reid Mihalko
  • GenderFork founder Sarah Dopp
  • Erotica Author M.Christian
  • More storytellers to come! 
Gender blending, gender hacking, gender mash-up… it all comes down to how you identify – and if not forever, at least for that scene, that night, that cab ride. Because freedom is all about CHOICE, now isn’t it?

This week, Bawdy Storytelling – the Mr. Right in your tighty whities – brings six sexy sagas of genderfucks, drag queens, drag kings, and one-eyed jacks to the stage of the Uptown NightClub in Oakland. These are real stories told by real people and guaranteed to incite, excite, and if you’re so inspired, invite someone home with you to create your very own bawdy story – and then tell us about it. We love the dirty details!

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

A-Touring I Will Go!


(from M.Christian's Queer Imaginings)

This is very, very cool: as part of the release of my best-of-my-best queer erotica, Stroke The Fire, the great Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions have signed me up for a fun blog tour - running from November 25th to December 17th.

Stay tuned for info on what blogs I will be on but for now here's the cool logo the tour-organizer created for me:


Season Of The Witch By Jean Marie Stine

(From M.Christian's Technorotica)


Do not - and I repeat DO NOT - hesitate: rush out and get the brand new edition of Jean Marie Stine's fantastic, and legendary, Season Of The Witch ... in a brand new edition.

I cannot rave enough about this book - and Jean Marie herself: a rare case where the author is not just supremely talented but also a wonderful person!



sizzler-editions:
Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions is beyond proud to be able to bring you - in a brand new edition, the legendary Jean Marie Stine’s celebrated science fiction transgender masterpiece: Season Of The Witch - The Transgender Futuristic Classic! 
She was the first woman he had ever been! An SF transgender classic! Chosen “One of the “Thirty Most Important Science Fiction Novels of the 1960s,” Season of the Witch tells the story of Andre, a man who rapes and murders a woman in a post-apocalyptic future. A dangerously low population has resulted in an end to capital punishment. Instead of execution, Andre has his brain transplanted into his victim’s body, while his own body is given to an aging, brilliant scientist. Andre’s search for his original male body takes him through a series of physically and spiritually disorienting sexual encounters to an unexpected denouement during an Agape ceremony in the temple of a strange, hedonistic cult. No wonder Foundation called the book, “A powerful tale of biological transformation and sexual identity.” Or, that 20th Century Science Fiction Writers hailed itbook as, “A special combination of science fiction and pornographic detail and rhetoric. The quality of the novel artistically justifies this radical strategy.” In 1995 the book was filmed as Synapse (U.K. as Memory Run), introducing its unique mix of transgender and science fiction to a whole new audience. Plus New Afterword.  
Jean Marie Stine has been editor of Galaxy SF and Starblaze Books, and is currently editor of Futures-Past Editions. Her short stories have appeared in numerous publications including Amazing Stories, Galaxy, Pegasus, and SF Sagas, and are collected in Herstory & Other Science Fictions. During the late 1960s she served as personal assistant to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, working on special projects; and in the 1970s she wrote the now classic, The Prisoner: A Day in the Life, based on the cult television series starring Patrick McGoohan.  
MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK:  
• “Razorblade fiction!” -The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction  
• “Where science fiction is often male chauvinist this might raise male consciousness.” Worlds Beyond: A Critical History of Science Fiction  
• “A good SF book and a rather better novel qua novel. Stine never offers an explicit sexual scene in standard cliché pornographical terms — each one of his descriptions brings a personal and original observation into play. Many of these observations are not erotic — they may even strike some readers as anti-erotic — but they ring with truth. A genuine work of erotic realism, written far above the standards of pornography. The body of the novel lies in the male protagonist’s response to biological and physical constraints and the transformation of his personality forced upon him by his female body. Effective…rich…rewarding…engrossing and unusual… littered with genuine insights.” Ted White, editor, Heavy Metal  
• “What happens to a man’s mind in a woman’s body? Stine makes you inhabit that mind and slowly, imperceptibly, 
absorbs you into the existence of a woman until you as a man no longer exist. You become a woman, different from the one you raped and killed, and a better woman, at the end. Stine is a remarkable writer both for style, which is turgid with evocative detail and intense psychological insight, and for use of the second-person technique, which in fiction is used very infrequently, but which is required for the Punishment and Retribution parts in this book. There is eroticism in the book. The sex act is the most important sphere of life for this book, for Stine, for you, in the working out of the changes of psyche involved. …and it is there that Stine takes you to show the subtle altering of man to woman in the body of Josette Kovacs, deceased. If four-letter words bother you, don’t read this book. But then, perhaps you are precisely the person who should read it!” Science Fiction Review  
• “Passion, pain, real pluck … a good eye for physical detail and a strong feeling for the human predicament.” Fritz Leiber, Fantastic

Saturday, November 03, 2012

Tweet Tweet Tweet



Even though I have sincere doubts as to its effectiveness but, honestly, can't really say anything, really until I've tried it...

Which is a kind of convoluted way of saying that - ta da - I am now on Twitter.