Lots Of M.Christian Fun In July!

(From M.Christian's Classes & Appearances)

Wow, this month is a busy one of little 'ol me and teaching.  Just check out these great events that are happening in July:

July 10th, Teaching FutureSex For Feelmore510 (oakland) 

July 13th, Teaching Alternative Bondage: Beyond Rope And Restraints for The Destination (Sacramento) 

July 20th, Teaching Impact Play: Beyond Floggers And Canes for Black And Tan (Sacramento) 

July 22nd, Teaching Tit-Torture For Boobs: A Breast Play Intensive for SF Citadel 

July 28th, Leading Polyamory Discussion/Support Group for SF Citadel
 

My Writing Process Blog Tour

From my sweet friends Lucy Taylor and Sabrina Kaleta comes this very fun little blog tour.  Here are my answers - for the rest check out the ,links to the other participants below.

1) What am I working on?

Let's see ... aside from the very cool stuff that's happening with Renaissance E Books (which includes our Futures Past Editions sf/f/h imprint and the erotic Sizzler one), where I am an Associate Publisher, and Digital Parchment Services, where I'm a Publisher (stay tuned, great stuff coming very soon), I just finished a sequel to The Bachelor Machine (a new edition coming out soon, btw), tentatively called Skin Effect. I also just started a brand new, non-erotic, allegorical/satire SF novel called Blue ... which (fingers: crossed) I hope to finish by the end of the year.

Beyond those, I'm still plugging away on a few dozen other projects that are way too nascent to chat about just yet.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Well, my work has always been – to put it mildly – rather unusual. Yeah, I've thought about trying my hand at more "commercially viable" things (despite having penned two vampire novels and a romance) but I'm simply having way too much fun writing odd stuff. Not to say that I haven't been open to opportunities: 90% of my stuff came because someone asked for it – erotica, gay fiction, romance, non-fiction, the whole enchilada – but I've always put my own odd spin on it.

In the case of Skin Effect ... well, the original Bachelor Machine was rather a creature of its time: full of cyberdelic psychedelics, dystopic architecture, and circuit-pattern tattooed outlaws. Not to get up on my soapbox but I'm frankly tired of the knee-jerk negativity that still seems to permeate SF these days. But what honestly scares me is that it could very well become a self-fulfilling prophecy: that we are looking forward to the apocalypse. So I challenged myself to create a book of erotic short stories that take some of the old cliché's of SF (memory manipulation, genetic engineering, AIs, etc) and give them a positive spin. I had a blast writing them ... just hope people enjoy reading them.

3) Why do I write what I do?

I don't really have a choice: while my day-job might be working for the wonderful Renaissance E Books and Digital Parchment Services in my heart I'm a writer – though my Publisher duties do give me a chance to try and be the Publisher I'd like to have as a writer. Sure, it can get damned hard to create anything these days – when everyone on the planet seems to have written a novel, a screenplay, become a photographer, or [fill in the blank] but I always try to stay to the fact that I just love to write stories. There's really nothing more ... to be woo-woo for a sec ... magical about putting words together to make a tale that has never existed in the history of ... well, history and, if I'm lucky, will outlive me by hundreds or maybe thousands of years by changing how people see the world. Can't get much better than that.

4) How does my writing process work?

While my Publishing jobs take up most of my time, I've been working very hard to give myself at least one or two days a week to just write. I don’t follow a regular schedule because I've always been very good about knowing what I have to do and when I have to do it. An odd thing about me is that I can't work in dead silence, so I have my Xbox running Netflix or Hulu or Amazon or whatever all kinds of tone-setting movies or TV shows. Another odd thing is that I don't read a lot of the genres I write in – sure, I do when I have to, as a Publisher, but for the most part I find it just gets in the way of what I want to do as a writer. But that's just me and my style ... your millage may vary.


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Sèphera Girón is a horror author, tarot reader, editor, and paranormal investigator. Flesh Failure and Captured Souls from Samhain Horror Publishing are her latest forays through the dark fiction labyrinth. You can find most of her work as eBooks these days. She has stories in Axes of Evil, High Stakes: A Vampire Anthology, The Haunted Mansion Project: Part One and Part Two, The Unnatural Tales of the Jackalope, and Telling Tales of Terror. Enter Sèphera’s World at http://sephwriter666.blogspot.ca

Lucy Taylor was born in Rich­mond, VA, and never really got the South out of her sys­tem, as evi­denced by the fla­vor of South­ern Gothic in many of her works. She’s pub­lished seven nov­els, includ­ing NAILED, SAV­ING SOULS, and LEFT TO DIE (under the pseu­do­nym Tay­lor Kin­caid), and over 100 short stories.

Sabrina Kaleta is a poet, music journalist, mother, performance artist, Doo-Dah Queen, reluctant debutante, punk, hostess, fortune teller..all these labels might tell a bit of my story. As a poet, I have graced the stages of The Espresso Bar, The Old Towne Pub, Sam’s Book City, the Coconut Teazer and Highland Grounds and been published in Flipside, Saturday Afternoon Journal and Kether. Other publications include Guitar World, Metal Hammer, New Times, Diabolik and BAM. In my Pasadena, CA home, I continue to try to ignore the outside voices, have a good time and create what I can.
Sabrinakaleta.tumblr.com

 John Eder has been writing fiction for the last three years or so.  He’s also a photographer, with a career spanning the film and digital ages. You can see his photo work at www.johneder.com. Eder has always written, mostly non-fiction for mags like the Village Voice, Conde Nast Traveler, Creem, Photo District News, CurbedLA.com, and brink.com.  He also draws, illustrating his own work when it’s called for.  His work is still tragically (to me, anyway) unpublished, to which end he is starting his own house, Moon Base.  Also in production is an anthology podcast of my short stories, To The Manor Borne (By Robots), the idea being that in the distant future a giant monster has invaded Earth. It’s Scheherazade meets Godzilla. To The Manor Borne (By Robots) will be on www.radiotitans.com, a podcast network he’s recently gotten involved in as creative director.  He lives in L.A. and grew up in south Florida, and is the father of a wonderful daughter. May the wind be at your back as you go check out his blog. http://johnederjournal.tumblr.com/

Relationships And The Scene Discussion/Support Group @ SF Citadel

(From M.Christian's Classes And Appearances)

Just wanted to share the cool news that the next Relationships And The Scene: A Discussion/Support Group is coming up on Monday, June, 23rd, at the SF Citadel.

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Occasionally people in "The Scene" forget that they are not just dealing with sexual play but human interactions and relationships as well. In this discussion and support group, participants will be encouraged to share their experiences in an open environment to receive support and understanding from others who may have experienced the same, or just similar, situations.

You're welcome to pack snacks/dinner and munch during the discussion!

Time: 7:30PM to 9:30PM
Location: SF Citadel, 181 Eddy Street, SF
Cost: $10
Dress: casual

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M.Christian has been an active participant in the San Francisco BDSM scene since 1988, and has been a featured presenter at the Northwest Leather Celebration, smOdyssey, the Center For Sex and Culture, The National Sexuality Symposium, San Francisco Sex Information, The Citadel, The Looking Glass, The Society of Janus, The Floating World, Winter Solstice, and lots of other venues. He has taught classes on everything from impact play, tit torture, bondage, how to write and sell erotica, polyamory, cupping, caning, and basic SM safety.

M.Christian is also a recognized master of BDSM erotica with more than 400 stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and many other anthologies, magazines, and other sites; editor of 2t anthologies such as the Best S/M Erotica series, Pirate Booty, My Love For All That Is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes Erotica, and more; the collections Dirty Words, The Bachelor Machine, Love Without Gun Control, Rude Mechanicals, and more; and the novels Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Me2, Finger's Breadth, Brushes, and Painted Doll. His site is www.mchristian.com

Future Sex @ Feelmore510 On July 10th

(from M.Christian's Classes And Appearances)

This is gonna be a blast!  I'm going to be leading/teaching my Future Sex: A Class/Discussion On The Possibilities Of Sex In The Years To Come for the great folks at Feelmore510 on July 10th. You can pre-order tickets here.

Future Sex: A Class/Discussion On The Possibilities Of Sex In The Years To Come! 

Welcome to the World Of Tomorrow! Sure, we have iPads, iPhones, Viagra, the staggering depths of the Internet, but what could the day after tomorrow bring? In this combination discussion and lecture, participants will share in some thought experiments on what sex may be like in the year year or the next thousand years. Subjects included will be speculations on drug and chemical enhancements, extrapolation on current and future consumer technology, where gender and sexual orientation may be headed, the idea of artificial implants and enhancements, and even the prospects of intimate encounters with cyborgs, androids, robots, and artificial intelligences.

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M.Christian has been an active participant in the San Francisco BDSM scene since 1988, and has been a featured presenter at the Northwest Leather Celebration, smOdyssey, the Center For Sex and Culture, The National Sexuality Symposium, San Francisco Sex Information, The Citadel, The Looking Glass, The Society of Janus, The Floating World, Winter Solstice, and lots of other venues. He has taught classes on everything from impact play, tit torture, bondage, how to write and sell erotica, polyamory, cupping, caning, and basic SM safety.

M.Christian is also a recognized master of BDSM erotica with more than 400 stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and many other anthologies, magazines, and other sites; editor of 2t anthologies such as the Best S/M Erotica series, Pirate Booty, My Love For All That Is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes Erotica, and more; the collections Dirty Words, The Bachelor Machine, Love Without Gun Control, Rude Mechanicals, and more; and the novels Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Me2, Finger's Breadth, Brushes, and Painted Doll. His site is www.mchristian.com

Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker: Luck

Extremely cool - check out this brand new column I just wrote for the excellent Writesex site:

There’s a deep, dark secret that no writer wants to talk about. Oh, sure, in our braver moments we will talk about depression, anxiety, envy, frustration, spitefulness … the whole dark rainbow of negative emotions that come with being a professional author. And by professional author I don’t mean actually being paid for your work but, rather, being brave enough to send it out into the big, wide—and far too often cruel and uncaring—world.

This secret is lacking of mention in most books on writing—though it should have at least its own chapter, or maybe an entire volume, dedicated to it.

Okay, I won’t string you along any further. You’ve probably guessed it, anyway, by the one-word title of this article. We may not talk about it much, but luck is a powerful force in the life of a writer.

I wrote career in the last sentence before scratching it out and replacing it with life because, as I’ve said many times before, writers don’t have careers: this is not a profession—or even an unpaid pursuit—that you can plot and plan like many other occupations. You can’t, for example, say that this year you will write an award-winning story that will open the door to a major book contract, and then that book will be made into a flick starring Liam Neeson. You can dream about stuff like this all you want, but you can never, ever plan for it.

All because of luck.

Personal story time: I wrote—totally unsuccessfully—for ten years before I sold my first story (an erotic one … and so here I am). My wife at the time signed me up for a class taught by Lisa Palac, of the late-lamented FutureSex Magazine. At the end of the class, I brazenly handed her a story that I had written.  If I hadn’t taken that class, if I hadn’t handed her that story, if I hadn’t mentioned that Pat Califia and Carol Queen were pals of mine … I seriously doubt that she would have even glanced at it.

Personal story time (2): about this same time I was best friends with someone—who, sadly, I am no longer close to—who introduced me to all kinds of other writers and, more importantly, editors and publishers. Without his help, I don’t think I’d be where I am today.

I think you can see where I might be going with this.  If, if, if, if … looking back on my writing life I can see far too many branches that just happened to work out in my favor. Am I a good writer? I like to think that I am a capable writer—with a lot of learning still to do—but I’m not so arrogant as to think that my work is so absolutely brilliant that it would transcend the slush pile or get past the insecurities and nepotism of far too many editors and publishers.

In short, I am where I am today because of luck.

Dig around in any writer’s life—or the life of any creative person, for that matter—and you will see a lot of these branches that just happened to work out in their favor. Friends-of-friends, right-place-right-time … it’s pretty clear that ability is only one part of what can mean the difference between renown and obscurity.

This is just one reason why I despise arrogance in writers. Oh, I can certainly understand it: writing is damned hard—so it’s far too easy to protect a bruised and battered ego by lying to yourself, and the rest of the world, that your blistering talent got you where you are instead of admitting that it all would have been very different if the dice had landed ones instead of sixes.

But luck doesn’t just magically appear. You can’t summon it with “likes” on Facebook or by chugging bourbon.  A cosmic alignment didn’t get me from where I was to where I am now. Luck is about circumstance but it’s also about people. My wife, that one friend who helped opened doors … they were my horseshoes, my rabbit feet, my four-leaf clovers.

Not to sound too Machiavellian, but it’s very important to look at the people in your writing life and think—at least on some level—how have they helped me? …or are they a hindrance? Writing can be hard, almost miserable, but it can be a glorious way to live when you have people surrounding you who are kind, supportive, and encouraging.

Another reason I can’t stand arrogance is that it’s ultimately self-defeating. An old stage maxim says that you should be careful of who you step on while on the way up—because you’ll be meeting them on the way down. By pissing off all kinds of people you are also severing your connection to all kinds of opportunities—luck in the making. Some of these rolls might work out, some may not, but none of them have a chance if you don’t have anyone out there to hand you the dice.

Skill? Very important. Dedication? Extremely important. Flexibility? Absolutely. Luck? We might not want to talk about it but, yes, luck is a key factor … but luck can only find you through friends.

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M.Christian has become an acknowledged master of erotica, with more than 400 stories, 10 novels (including The Very Bloody Marys, Brushes and The Painted Doll). Nearly a dozen collections of his own work (Technorotica, In Control, Lambda nominee Dirty Words, The Bachelor Machine), more than two dozen anthologies (Best S/M Erotica series, My Love for All That is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes Erotica, The Burning Pen, and with Maxim Jakubowksi The Mammoth Book of Tales from the Road).  His work is regularly selected for Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and others. His extensive knowledge of erotica as writer, editor, anthologist and publisher resulted in the bestselling guide How To Write And Sell Erotica. He can be found in a number of places online, not least of which is mchristian.com.

Help Save Roxy!

I've raved about my dear brother many times (deservedly) - but this time I'm asking the great, wide, wonderful world (yeah, I mean you) to hopefully help him out.

You see, his beloved truck, Roxy, has recently suffered a rather catastrophic engine problem ... and he's asking for help.

Check out his Indiegogo campaign here - and here's the campaign info (below).  Drop him a buck of two it you can - I'd appreciate it and I know he would, as well.

I am a 46 year old professional handyman for my local area (s)-From a few blocks away to 60 miles away. I am truly a small business,...its just me. I am up to date, polite, hire local help when needed, have tools, do show show by butt crack, clean up after myself, smoke free and good with pets.

I have it all,..almost: I rent a small cottage, meager expenses, lovely friends, it would be perfect, except my trusty truck has blown her motor..and that has reduced my work to very little, leaving me with little or no income.

My truck is a well maintained 1952 Dodge stakebed truck (see the above picture), I keep her clean and well maintained, and have replaced or rebuilt every part I could and it remained loyal workhorse for the past three years.

Sadly the engine failed beyond repair two months ago, and now it needs a new engine. I simply have no funds to fix her.

This is not a matter of vanity or simply a means of fixing a personal toy. My truck serves me well, it gets me work (because of the appearance), hauls paints, ladders, furniture, plant trimmings, tools, what have you. I have built it to serve my specific needs. It is my workbench, and my most useful tool.

Getting my truck back is giving me back the ability to work. to live, to eat. to be independent again. 

The plan to get me and my important tool back in form is straightforward: 

• Locate new engine: I have sourced new engines with factory warranty. The reason to go to a new more costly unit rather and a used one is to keep this from happening again.
• Installation: I have shopped around for the best candidate to put the new motor in. I have researched their reputation and skills.
• Back to use: I can re-run ads and postings in job referral sites for jobs that can allow me to rebuild by services and finances.

If I have any excess funds I will put towards more tools and advertising

In gratitude I have several useful perks that hopefully you will find of help

In donating you can help one small business, one person..to grow-and in that growing there will be more work for others who need work.

...most important of all you will give me a chance to pay back to others who need help.

Samuel Addison       

Baton Blog Post

 (from M.Christian's Technorotica)

This is very fun: I just took part in a kind of round-robin blog post with some very cool folks - including my great pal, Brent (Made In DNA). Enjoy!

1) What am I working on?

Let's see ... aside from the very cool stuff that's happening with Renaissance E Books (which includes our Futures Past Editions sf/f/h imprint and the erotic Sizzler one), where I am an Associate Publisher, and Digital Parchment Services, where I'm a Publisher (stay tuned, great stuff coming very soon), I just finished a sequel to The Bachelor Machine (a new edition coming out soon, btw), tentatively called Skin Effect. I also just started a brand new, non-erotic, allegorical/satire SF novel called Blue ... which (fingers: crossed) I hope to finish by the end of the year.

Beyond those, I'm still plugging away on a few dozen other projects that are way too nascent to chat about just yet.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Well, my work has always been – to put it mildly – rather unusual. Yeah, I've thought about trying my hand at more "commercially viable" things (despite having penned two vampire novels and a romance) but I'm simply having way too much fun writing odd stuff. Not to say that I haven't been open to opportunities: 90% of my stuff came because someone asked for it – erotica, gay fiction, romance, non-fiction, the whole enchilada – but I've always put my own odd spin on it.

In the case of Skin Effect ... well, the original Bachelor Machine was rather a creature of its time: full of cyberdelic psychedelics, dystopic architecture, and circuit-pattern tattooed outlaws. Not to get up on my soapbox but I'm frankly tired of the knee-jerk negativity that still seems to permeate SF these days. But what honestly scares me is that it could very well become a self-fulfilling prophecy: that we are looking forward to the apocalypse. So I challenged myself to create a book of erotic short stories that take some of the old cliché's of SF (memory manipulation, genetic engineering, AIs, etc) and give them a positive spin. I had a blast writing them ... just hope people enjoy reading them.

3) Why do I write what I do?

I don't really have a choice: while my day-job might be working for the wonderful Renaissance E Books and Digital Parchment Services in my heart I'm a writer – though my Publisher duties do give me a chance to try and be the Publisher I'd like to have as a writer. Sure, it can get damned hard to create anything these days – when everyone on the planet seems to have written a novel, a screenplay, become a photographer, or [fill in the blank] but I always try to stay to the fact that I just love to write stories. There's really nothing more ... to be woo-woo for a sec ... magical about putting words together to make a tale that has never existed in the history of ... well, history and, if I'm lucky, will outlive me by hundreds or maybe thousands of years by changing how people see the world. Can't get much better than that.

4) How does my writing process work?

While my Publishing jobs take up most of my time, I've been working very hard to give myself at least one or two days a week to just write. I don’t follow a regular schedule because I've always been very good about knowing what I have to do and when I have to do it. An odd thing about me is that I can't work in dead silence, so I have my Xbox running Netflix or Hulu or Amazon or whatever all kinds of tone-setting movies or TV shows. Another odd thing is that I don't read a lot of the genres I write in – sure, I do when I have to, as a Publisher, but for the most part I find it just gets in the way of what I want to do as a writer. But that's just me and my style ... your millage may vary.

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And now it is my great pleasure to introduce to you four authors (in no particular order):

Jason M. Griesse
Jason M. Griesse is an author from Southern California who dabbles in all kinds of storytelling. Not content to stick to one genre, his books often incorporate elements of horror and science fiction with a pinch of mythology for flavor. He also writes articles and books concerning PTSD and Mental Illness and is two semesters away from finishing a degree in Psychology.

Brandon Black
Having learned to read at an early age in part due to an ancient cardboard box in his uncles’ room at his grandparents filled with Golden Age comic books, Brandon Black has read science fiction and fantasy his whole life. Raised by a physicist father and sociologist mother, instead of receiving a teddy bear as other children did, Brandon was given an inflatable astronaut.

Falling in love with shows about space travel, exploration and combat from an early exposure to Star Blazers and Robotech, Brandon was inspired to write his own science fiction after hearing the narrator’s line in Robotech — “Meanwhile, twenty light years away…” The idea that a story could have such scope and breadth as to involve relevant, simultaneous events light years distant from each other was a miraculous thing to young Brandon who decided then to give writing a try.

Brandon received a Bachelors in Military and Political Journalism from UNO and went on to receive a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from LSU. Brandon’s time travel story, “Time and the Wrinkled Prostitute” has been published in Dark Oak Press’Dreams of Steam III. His stories, “Songs of the Divine Pulsation” and “The Gift” were published in New Orleans By Gaslight, an anthology of gaslamp fantasy and steampunk poetry and fiction set in Victorian-era New Orleans, which Brandon edited with Christopher Wong. Brandon’s most recent short story publication is “I Knocked Up My Fairy Girlfriend” which appears in Seventh Star Press’ A Chimerical World: Tales of the Seelie and his steampunk poem “Ballad of the Dashing Skywayman” has been recently published in Cowboy Poetry Press’ Unbridled anthology.

Brandon’s upcoming projects are Cairo By Gaslight, a steampunk anthology set in Cairo, Egypt and The Other World, an anthology of modern-day short stories about the Fey. He has also written a children’s book, The Tortoise and the Little Witches Three, and is currently writing his first steampunk novel. Brandon lives with his charge and protector, Battle-cat Princess Kaleidoscope, in his home town of New Orleans, Louisiana.

M. Christian
Calling M.Christian versatile is a tremendous understatement. Extensively published in science fiction, fantasy, horror, thrillers, and even non-fiction, it is in erotica that M.Christian has become an acknowledged master, with more than 400 stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and in fact too many anthologies, magazines, and sites to name. In erotica, M.Christian is known and respected not just for his passion on the page but also his staggering imagination and chameleonic ability to successfully and convincingly write for any and all orientations.

But M.Christian has other tricks up his literary sleeve: in addition to writing, he is a prolific and respected anthologist, having edited 25 anthologies to date including the Best S/M Erotica series; Pirate Booty; My Love For All That Is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes Erotica; The Burning Pen; The Mammoth Book of Future Cops, and The Mammoth Book of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowksi); Confessions, Garden of Perverse, and Amazons (with Sage Vivant), and many more.

M.Christian’s short fiction has been collected into many bestselling books in a wide variety of genres, including the Lambda Award finalist Dirty Words and other queer collections like Filthy Boys, BodyWork, and his best-of-his-best gay erotica book, Stroke the Fire. He also has collections of non-fiction (Welcome to Weirdsville, Pornotopia, and How To Write And Sell Erotica); science fiction, fantasy and horror (Love Without Gun Control); and erotic science fiction including Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than The Real Thing, and the acclaimed Bachelor Machine.

As a novelist, M.Christian has shown his monumental versatility with books such as the queer vamp novels Running Dry and The Very Bloody Marys; the erotic romance Brushes; the science fiction erotic novel Painted Doll; and the rather controversial gay horror/thrillers Fingers Breadth and Me2.

M.Christian is also the Associate Publisher for Renaissance E Books, where he strives to be the publisher he’d want to have as a writer, and to help bring quality books (erotica, noir, science fiction, and more) and authors out into the world.

Shon Richards
Shon Richards is allegedly an erotica writer who writes science fiction, pulp adventure, sexual magic and the occasionally suburban bondage. He is really a herald of an unnameable erotic entity who writes to prepare the psyches of the human population for the coming Apocafuck. His latest book, Doom Vagina, tells the story of a groupie for the world’s most demonic girl band. His current plane of existence can be found at ShonRichards.com

Worth a Thousand Words: My Life with Tumblr

Check it out: the piece I wrote for the wonderful Writesex site just went live for the equally-great Erotica Readers And Writers Association:

A bow to the fantastic WriteSex site, where this column first appeared

It may come as a surprise, but far too often authors—people who are supposedly very comfortable with words!—have days when they just don’t want to write at all.

It’s a common mistake writers make when they begin to think about social media, marketing, and all that other fun stuff: this idea that words are the be-all and end-all for them. They force themselves far too often to script tweet after tweet, Facebook post after Facebook post…until they just can’t write another line of original content, even if only to say “Look at my book!” Worse, they come to feel that because they’ve burnt out on writing tweets and posts and marketing copy, they have failed. They think about all the potential readers they have lost; markets they haven’t tapped; piles of beguiling words they should have written—because are they not supposed to be endless fonts of text? (Spoiler: no.)

Fortunately for you if you’re one of these writers, there are some great options for social networking that don’t require you to write a word. They are wordless yet powerful, simple yet evocative, easy yet poignant.

In short, Facebook and Twitter are not the only games in town when it comes to keeping yourself and your writing in the public eye.

I’m talking about using pictures rather than words. Using Flicker, Instagram, Pinterest or Tumblr to make your point, catch your Twitter followers’ imaginations, engage them emotionally in a way that leaves a favorable impression of you in their minds. An image-sharing tool like these can help you reach out to others, and save you a thousand words of writing, every day.

There are quite a few image-sharing venues out there—and while your mileage and social media needs may vary, in my experience they’ve basically boiled down to just one. Allow me: Flickr is ridiculously clunky and doesn’t share well with others—just spend a few minutes trying to either find an image or a keyword, or pass along a photo. Pain. In. The…youknowwhatImean. Instagram is fine and dandy for taking snapshots of your dinner, your dog, your kids, your whatever…but when it comes to sharing what you snap, or using images from other sources, it’s not exactly user-friendly.

This basically leaves us with two choices, if you want to save those thousands of words: Pinterest and Tumblr. I’ve tried both and the choice was extremely easy to make—it comes down to one thing: sex.

Let’s face it, when you’re an author of erotica and erotic romance, you are dealing with—in one way or another—characters having sex. Like lots of erotica authors, I’ve learned to (sigh) deal with platforms like Facebook that will wish you into the cornfield for showing—or in some cases even talking about—something as threatening as a nipple. We deal with Facebook because we have to. But an open-minded image-sharing social media venue is a bit like Twitter: the more the merrier.

Pinterest doesn’t like sex…at all. I used to have a Pinterest account but then I began to get messages, here and there to start, but then tons: each one about a posted image of mine that was removed due to the dreaded Terms of Service. A few were obvious, but then the images they were yanking became and more innocent. Bye-bye Pinterest.

Tumblr isn’t perfect—far from it—but even after being purchased by the search engine deity Yahoo, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times it has caused me any kind of headache. Mostly they will reject anything that really pushes a button—think of the deadly erotica sins, but with pictures, and you know what I mean (hate speech, rape, bestiality, incest, underage, pee or poo, etc).

In a nutshell, Tumblr is easy, fun, and—best of all—a rather effective social media tool that also neatly and simply integrates into Twitter and Facebook…and, no, I do not own stock.

The way it works couldn’t be less complicated: you can create any number of Tumblrs—think folders—(even with an “age appropriate” warning if you want), and then design them with any one of a huge number of themes. From your master dashboard you can see—and tweak —all the separate Tumblrs you’ve created. The themes are a blast, and the interface takes very little skill to navigate.

As for what Tumblrs you should create…well, that’s up to you. Like food? Make a nice edibles Tumblr (and they have an app that lets you to take shots of your meals if that’s what you’re into). Like history? Create a vintage photo site. Love sex? Well, it’s pretty obvious about what you can do with that.

Where do you get your pictures? You can certainly take them yourself or upload them from your various devices, but where Tumblr becomes a real social media machine is in reposting. Once you create your account just look for other Tumblrs by interests or keywords and then hit that little follow button. Then, when you look at your dashboard, you’ll see a nice stream of pictures that you can like, share, or repost to your own various Tumblr incarnations. Plus, the more people you follow, the more people will follow you.

Just to give you an idea, I started—rather lazily—my dozen or so Tumblrs four or so years ago and now my main one, Rude Mechanicals, has close to 4,000 followers. You can imagine the reach you could have if you really put some work into it.

And if you want to see how far that reach extends, you can go back and look at your posts to see how many times they’ve been liked or reposted. It’s harder to tell when it’s a reposted picture but it can also be very heartwarming to see that, for instance, when you post about a good review or a new book announcement, dozens of people liked your news or, even better, shared it with their own vast audience.

What’s also fun about Tumblr is the auto-forward feature. It’s not perfect, as there are some periodic glitches, but all in all it works rather well. When you set up your separate Tumblrs you can then select an option where—if you choose—you can also send any image to Twitter or to Facebook.  That increases the number of people your image will potentially reach. It can even go to a Facebook page you’ve created. Neat!

One trick I use is to click the handy “like” button to create an inventory of images and then—once or twice a day—go back into my list of likes to repost them to my appropriate sites…with or without Twitter or Facebook reposting as I see fit. Tumblrs also feature RSS, which means you can subscribe to one of them through an aggregator like Feedly.

What’s also neat about Tumblr is its flexibility: you can post images (duh) but you can also embed video (from YouTube or wherever) and post text, quotations, links, chat streams, and audio.

Let your eyes do the walking and let the images they find do the talking. Image-sharing tools like Tumblr are a super easy way to fulfill your need for social media presence without having to write anything.

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M.Christian has become an acknowledged master of erotica, with more than 400 stories, 10 novels (including The Very Bloody Marys, Brushes and The Painted Doll). Nearly a dozen collections of his own work (Technorotica, In Control, Lambda nominee Dirty Words, The Bachelor Machine), more than two dozen anthologies (Best S/M Erotica series, My Love for All That is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes Erotica, The Burning Pen, and with Maxim Jakubowksi The Mammoth Book of Tales from the Road).  His work is regularly selected for Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and others. His extensive knowledge of erotica as writer, editor, anthologist and publisher resulted in the bestselling guide How To Write And Sell Erotica.  He can be found in a number of places online, not least of which is mchristian.com.

Out Now: Mammoth Book of Erotic Romance and Domination

(from M.Christian's Technorotica)

As I mentioned before, I'm extremely jazzed to have not one but two erotic science fiction BDSM stories in my pal Maxim Jakubowksi's new anthology Mammoth Book of Erotic Romance and Domination - which just came out! 

Steve Williams Loves Brushes

Steve Williams from Suite101:

A Look At The New Erotic Book From A Talented American Author

A sensual compilation published by Renaissance E Books, makes up 'Brushes', author M.Christian's new novel detailing the rise to fame of artist Escobar, ranging in points of view from his embittered wife to his estranged brother, his bile filled art dealer to a reporter hot for the seduction, and right through to the lonely artists himself.

In style, M.Christian is an artist in his own right. The pacing of his work effortlessly captures the denouement of the book’s Parisian setting, whilst M.Christian’s characterisation, seeing from the eyes of Estobar's nearest and dearest, his embittered wife to his estranged brother, his bile filled art dealer to a reporter hot for the seduction, and right through to the lonely artists himself, glides seamlessly and integrates subtle blends of the human psyche together to create rich and vibrant characters firmly recognizable as real people.

Of course, as with any compilation work, there are some stories that work better than others. The art dealer character, for example, is a truly rewarding creation to read, as we follow his need for high class call girls at the end of his working day as a means of ‘celebration’, but, quite surprisingly, he never touches them lest the illusion of perfection be broken.

Until, that is, a new girl attends him one night. She is not what he asked for, with a bob of pink, punkish hair and a body that is full where he would want it slim, unkempt where he would like it smooth, but she captivates him with her show and moves him into a realm of texture and taste.

This gives insight into the paradox of art: that it should move the soul in the experience of viewing, but remain static and untouched, fenced off and held high, because of its perfection and there in we realise it can only ever give a limited experience for anyone but the artist themselves.

The above concept is portrayed with devout finesse, however M.Christian’s like for repetition occasionally clunks a little too obviously, and there are the odd technical errors that it would be preferable not to see in a writing otherwise of such quality. None of these, it must be said, ever break the spell that this book casts and the revelation as we finally see things from Estobar's own point of view in the end chapters is both heartbreaking and intensely human.

It must be mentioned that there is also the inherent problem in any erotica or novel dealing with such a specific subject, that sexuality can quickly become monotony, but M.Christian acts with due care and attention, and whilst the acts themselves are given considerable detail on the page, we are also consistently learning about the characters too, and for this M.Christian should be applauded.

Overall, this book is of a standard that is found rarely, and structurally it is a highly accomplished piece. It would be fair to venture a guess and say that M.Christian is an author yet to reach his peak, but this current novel is a steep climb towards it.

The Best People Are

The Loophole by Garfunkel and Oates