Dark Roasted M.Christian

Here's a brand new Dark Roasted Blend piece, this time about birds - and some of the truly amazing things they do.


We see them all the time, rowing across a clear, blue sky, applauding into the air when we startle them, singing their sharp, sweet songs in the trees, spiraling, spinning over our heads … but when you take a bit of time and do a smidgen of research, you realize that birds are fascinating creatures, capable of some truly remarkable things.

Take, for example, the members of the anatidae family. Not familiar with them? Sure you are: aside from the city pigeon, they are probably one of the first birds people think of. Still fuzzy? Well, think ‘season’ and you might very well jump to ‘duck.’

The poor duck has gotten … if not grief then not a lot of respect, which is unfortunate because they certainly deserve it. Sure, they walk a tad comically and their quacks are more likely to get a chuckle than a salute, but they are capable of some astounding feats.

It’s common knowledge that many birds migrate – some halfway around the world, others not very far at all – but a few species of duck travel amazing distances as part of their regular travels, and at phenomenal speeds. The black brant is one such record holder, making the trip from the cold climes of Alaska to the much-warmer lands of Baja, California. No need to do the math: that’s more than 3,000 miles. A distance, by the way, covered in less than 72 hours.

The ill-respected duck is also a record holder for not just distance and time but also altitude. Although they commonly aren’t high flyers, preferring to stay relatively close to the ground, ducks have been recorded soaring to close nearly 20,000 feet. That most definitely is a ‘wow’ thing but what’s an even bigger – more like a real big WOW – is that a duck skeleton was found at 16,000 feet … in the form of a skeleton on Mount Everest.

This isn’t mentioned to make you want to shake the hand … er, ‘webbed foot’ of the mallard you see on the street with newfound admiration but to point out that if the common duck isn’t exactly common in its ability, consider the other long and high flyers among our feathered friends.

Take the Sooty Shearwaters. Sounds like a comedy character, doesn’t it? But what this seabird does is anything but funny. Remarkable, yes. Funny, no.

See, the Sooty holds the current record for the longest migration. Period. Think 3,000 miles was wild for a duck? Well, the Sooty travels from New Zealand, or thereabouts, out to the waters of the North Pacific (Japan as well as California), which is a trip much, much longer than just Alaska to California. In fact, it’s a round trip just shy of 40,000 miles.


WOW is right.

For altitude, ducks are amazing, no denying that, but if you want to get really, really high you have to look at the extremely ugly Rüppell's Vulture. That might not be fair to the bird, but ugly or not this vulture wears a handsome medal for going where no bird, or even a lot of airplanes, have gone. Ducks, sure, deserve applause for 20,000 feet but the Rüppell's Vulture goes more than just one better, attaining a remarkable 38,000 feet. Alas, the record was set when the poor bird got sucked into a jet engine at that height but you still have to admit that it was quite an accomplishment.

Here’s something that will really make you think twice about swearing at the next swallow that poops on your windshield: the Peregrine Falcon is not just a regal bird as well as a magnificent hunter: it can spot, and then swoop down on, its prey from more than half a mile away. But what’s astounding is the speed of the falcon, considered by many to be the fastest animal in the entire world, when it attacks. Faster than a cheetah, faster than a greyhound: the falcon has been clocked at close to 200 miles per hour.


Yep, that deserves another WOW.

But birds don’t have to be huge or travel long distances to be marvelous (though, in case you’re interested, the biggest living bird in the world is the ostrich, which can weigh as much as 350 pounds). The members of the family trochilidae – Hummingbirds to you and me -- aren’t big, don’t travel far, but they are certainly fast in their own way. Among the smallest of birds, they beat their wings up to 90 times per second – allowing them to fly every direction including backwards – and the hearts that power them can beat at more than 1,000 beats per minute.

Waddling across grassy fields, gliding through the air, becoming elegant silhouettes against the white of clouds, they are all around us: the magnificent – and amazing – owners of the sky. So let’s give the birds their due as well as some well-deserved respect.

A Review Of "All Eyes On Her"

Sometimes life can give you the sweetest gift, like this nice review of my story, "All Eyes On Her" by the Viscount, via billierosi's excellent blog:

I loved this short story by M. Christian. He has a fabulously descriptive writing style that places one there in the scene with the eager participants. I could smell the tar and feel the heat of the sun beating down. I was on that rooftop. I even found myself getting slightly aroused, at this young women amusing herself in such a public place. She is surrounded by the all seeing eyes, hidden behind the blank looking glassy panes of the buildings all around her. For a queer reader like me that's saying something as this guy likes guys. They can see her, she can't see them and my -- what a display she gives.

Most of us are voyeurs to some degree or other, even general cinema, or TV is a kind of voyeurism. However in these circumstances the subject of desire isn't physically present. Is it the physical presence of the object of our desires, is that what makes voyeurism so arousing? Is it the fear of being caught that turns us on?

This story got me thinking. The subject of most voyeuristic desires don't know they are being watched, so that must add to the 'thrill' the voyeur has. The power -- he/she is in control.

As a young teenager of around 13, I would sometimes on my way back from babysitting some neighbours kids, peer through the garden fence that overlooked our neighbours. Most Saturdays they would be making out in front of porn on the TV, you could really see pretty much everything but they had no idea I was there. I got really turned on by that as I was in control, but also I was terrified that I would be caught.

A bit later on in my formative years, at around 15 I caught a voyeur, looking. I was the voyeur watching a voyeur being a voyeur and that was quite thrilling. My aunt employed a lad to do some gardening work one summer and he was hot in every respect. I watched him from the bathroom window and he was as buff as anything and about 10 years older than me at the time; I guess around 25. I noticed him trying to get a better look at something and from my vantage point I could see a young woman sunbathing topless a few gardens down. She had no idea our randy gardener was watching her and he had no idea I was watching him. He was really turned on and so was I at his arousal.

My Mr Christian, what has your story done to me all of these memories as a result of your trigger.

Cindy in Christian's story on the other hand takes control; she is empowered and is turned on at being the subject, not the unwilling participant. Could I give this delightfully titillating short story a feminist reading? Well yes, I expect so. Cindy is woman taking back what is hers, she is no longer the passive pin-up, or downtrodden street walker or abused porn star. She isn't doing this for the kids, or to pay for mum's care home, she is doing it because she wants to.

M. Christian really does know how to write, and write well. I want some more please so get busy with it!

Best of Dark Roasted Bend: 2009

One of my favorite things is writing for Dark Roasted Blend, so it was a real treat that so many of my articles were mentioned in Dark Roasted Blend's Best of 2009, including:


Hellish Weather on Other Planets










Most Powerful Supercomputers: Brains & Beauty










Monstrous Aviation, Part 2: Huge Helicopters!









Apocalyptic Scientific Experiments










One-Track Wonders: Early Monorails









Incredible Astronomical Clocks









The World's Most Magnificent Pipe Organs










Mysterious Non-Egyptians Pyramids










Walled Cities: Keeping Out the Joneses










The Art of Science, the Science of Art









Here's to even-more Dark Roasted Wonderfulness in 2010!

Grace & Beauty

I'm very excited to have some stories recently posted to the very-fun Grace & Beauty site. So head on over if you want to read "Blow Up" from Rude Mechanicals, and "Nighthawks" from Licks & Promises.

Be sure and keep an eye on the site as even more stories and such will be going up very soon!

Love Without Gun Control - on your iphone!

Talk about a perfect match: my new collection of science fiction stories, Love Without Gun Control, is now available as an app on the iphone - technofetish stories on a technofetish device!

Masquerade: Page 10

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

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

Padded Kinky!

If you're like me and (ahem) appreciate a kinky BBW, then check out the newly-opened Paddedkink.com by the one-and-only Kelly Shibari - and featuring stories by yours truly and my pal Ralph Greco Jr.

And, yes, it's a pay site (pornographers gotta eat, ya know)

Dark Roasted M.Christian

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

Nobilis Reads Dead Letter

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

A Guest Post

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

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

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

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

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

[MORE]

Kiss, Kiss, Hug, Hug From Licks & Promises

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

Kiss, Kiss, Hug, Hug
By
M. Christian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m pregnant.”

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

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

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

“I got a new tattoo.”

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

“I got a new ring.”

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

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

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

“I’m HIV positive.”

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

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

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

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

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

Masquerade: Page 9

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

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

Pauline Likes Rites Of Spring, Chapter 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

OUT NOW: The Rites of Spring - Chapter 2

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

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

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

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

Mykola Dementiuk Likes Rude Mechanicals

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

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

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

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

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

Brushes ... In Paris!

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

Dark Roasted M.Christian

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

Patrick Califia Likes Rude Mechanicals

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


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

Masquerade: Page 8

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

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

Rude Mechanicals - The Commercial! Part 2

To go along with their commercial, here's a special solo spot the great folks at Renaissance E Books/Sizzler books put together for my erotica collection, Rude Mechanicals!

What People Are Saying About -

- my collection of science fiction stories, Love Without Gun Control. Alas, I couldn't use all these wonderful blurbs for the book but I also couldn't just let them just stay in a drawer. Thanks, guys!

M. Christian is responsible for making me blush on the train: If there were ever a Nobel Peace prize for overcoming prudish sexual mores through acceptance, understanding, and racy literature, it would be won by M. Christian.
-- Brian Wanamaker: an arguably bilingual game developer who has made Osaka, Japan his home for the last 8 years. Like Snake Plissken, he has escaped from Los Angeles.

Fantasist, futurist, eroticist, satirist, humorist, dentist drilling deep into the nerves of the here and now ... M. Christian wears a lot of hats in this multifaceted collection, and they're all a splendid fit.
— Brian Hodge, author of Mad Dogs and Lies & Ugliness

M. Christian's stories are both personal and visionary. He not only explores the outer boundaries of his imaginary worlds, but dives deeply into the lives and minds of the characters who live there.
-- Kit O'Connell is a writer, poet, and critic from Central Texas. He is a member of the Society of Voluptuaries and a founder of the Continuous Coast Project.

M. Christian is a chimera, an amazing combination of tour guide and magician. Whether he's writing science fiction, horror or erotica, he can take you to places you've never imagined, show you sights no-one else will get to see, introduce you to some fascinating people, and guarantee that the trip will be memorable from start to finish. Buy a ticket and fasten your seat belt: you're in for a wild ride!
-- Stephen Dedman is the author of The Art of Arrow Cutting, and Shadows Bite

M. Christian always writes like dream whether he's creating fantastic visions or ghastly nightmares. With this collection, you get both!
-- Paula Guran, DarkEcho

To enter into the twisted world of M. Christian is akin to entering into a nightmare realm from which you'll never awaken. As long as you keep turning the pages, the nightmare continues. Amazingly, you keep turning the pages...
-- Rick R. Reed, author of IM and Orientation

M. Christian's imagination and writing talent never cease to amaze me. Both are limitless and his stories can be addictive.
-- Cecilia Tan, author of Mind Games, White Flames, and The Velderet

M. Christian offers something in his writing that has become rare these days: art. His craft is elegant, captivating the reader's mind and then molding it like clay into whatever he desires. He plays rough at times, but it hurts so good.
-- Jerrod Balzer, author of Fear The Woods, contributor to I Was A Sasquatch Love Slave

Rude Mechanicals - The Commercial!

Check this out: a very cool commercial from Renaissance E Books/Sizzler books, including my own Rude Mechanicals!

Sex In San Francisco (Update)

Just a little update (and an apology) about the anthology, Sex In San Francisco: I know I've been promising to read the submissions soon but (here's the apology) personal things keep getting in the way.

I really do plan on finishing the final selection within the next month or so. I ask all those patient folks who sent me stories to just hang on a little longer. Thanks!

Holy Moses! Have a look!

One of my heroes ...

Wiki:

Amanda McKittrick Ros (8 December 1860–2 February 1939) was a novelist born in Drumaness, County Down in Ireland. She published her first novel Irene Iddesleigh at her own expense in 1897. She wrote poetry and a number of novels. Her works were not read widely, and her eccentric, over-written, circumlocutory writing style is alleged by some critics to be some of the worst prose and poetry ever written.

Amanda McKittrick was born in Drumaness, County Down on 8 December 1860, the fourth child of Eliza Black and Edward Amlave McKittrick, Principal of Drumaness High School. She was christened Anna Margaret at Third Ballynahinch Presbyterian Church on 27 January 1861. In the 1880s she attended Marlborough Teacher Training College in Dublin, was appointed Monitor at Millbrook National School, Larne, County Antrim, finished her training at Marlborough and then became a qualified teacher at the same school.

It was during her first visit to Larne that she met Andrew Ross, a widower of 35, who was Station Master there. She married him at Joymount Presbyterian Church, Carrickfergus, County Antrim on 30 August 1887. She died after a fall in her home in 1939.

Ros was strongly influenced by the novelist Marie Corelli. She wrote: "My chief object of writing is and always has been, to write if possible in a strain all my own. This I find is why my writings are so much sought after." Her admirers included Mark Twain, Lord Beveridge, and Aldous Huxley. Her novel Irene Iddesleigh was published in 1897. It was reviewed by humorist Barry Pain who sarcastically termed it "the book of the century." Ros retorted in her preface to Delina Delaney by branding Pain a "clay crab of corruption," and suggesting that he was so hostile only because he was secretly in love with her. But Ros claimed to have made enough money from her second novel, Delina Delaney, to build a house, which she named Iddesleigh.

Belfast Public Libraries has a large collection of manuscripts, typescripts and first editions of her work. Manuscript copies include Irene Iddesleigh, Sir Benjamin Bunn and Six Months in Hell. Typescript versions of all the above are held together with Rector Rose, St. Scandal Bags and The Murdered Heiress among others. The collection of first editions covers all her major works including volumes of her poetry Fumes of Formation and Poems of Puncture, together with lesser known pieces such as Kaiser Bill and Donald Dudley: The Bastard Critic. The collection includes hundreds of letters addressed to Ros, many with her own comments in the margins. Also included are typed copies of her letters to newspapers, correspondence with her admiring publisher T.S. Mercer, an album of newspaper cuttings and photographs, and a script for a BBC broadcast from July 1943.

Nick Page, author of In Search of the World's Worst Writers, rated Ros the worst of the worst. He says that "For Amanda, eyes are 'piercing orbs', legs are 'bony supports', people do not blush, they are 'touched by the hot hand of bewilderment.'"

Aldous Huxley wrote that "In Mrs. Ros we see, as we see in the Elizabethan novelists, the result of the discovery of art by an unsophisticated mind and of its first conscious attempt to produce the artistic. It is remarkable how late in the history of every literature simplicity is invented." This is how she tells us that Delina earned money by doing needlework:

She tried hard to keep herself a stranger to her poor old father's slight income by the use of the finest production of steel, whose blunt edge eyed the reely covering with marked greed, and offered its sharp dart to faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness.

Her novel Delina Delaney begins:

Have you ever visited that portion of Erin's plot that offers its sympathetic soil for the minute survey and scrutinous examination of those in political power, whose decision has wisely been the means before now of converting the stern and prejudiced, and reaching the hand of slight aid to share its strength in augmenting its agricultural richness?

Page comments: "I first read this sentence nearly three years ago. Since then, I have read it once a week in an increasingly desperate search for meaning. But I still don't understand it."

The Oxford literary group the Inklings, which included such luminaries as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, held competitions to see who could read Ros' work for the longest length of time while keeping a straight face.

Northrop Frye said of Ros's novels that they use "rhetorical material without being able to absorb or assimilate it: the result is pathological, a kind of literary diabetes".

A poet as well as a novelist, Ros wrote Poems of Puncture and Fumes of Formation. The latter contains "Visiting Westminster Abbey," which opens:

Holy Moses! Have a look!

Flesh decayed in every nook!

Some rare bits of brain lie here,

Mortal loads of beef and beer,

Some of whom are turned to dust,

Every one bids lost to lust;

Royal flesh so tinged with 'blue'

Undergoes the same as you.

As of 2004, none of her works are in print. Her books are rare and first editions command prices of $300 to $800 in the used-book market. Belfast Central Library has an archive of her papers, and the Queen's University of Belfast has some volumes by Ros in the stacks.

The Frank Ferguson-edited collection, Ulster-Scots Writing: An Anthology (Four Courts, 2008) includes her poem, 'The Town of Tare'.

On 11 November 2006 as part of a 50 Year celebration, renowned librarian Elspeth Legg hosted a major retrospective of her works, culminating in a public reading by 65 delegates of the entire contents of 'Fumes of Formation'. The theme of the workshop that followed was 'Suppose you chance to write a book', Line 17 of 'Myself' from page 2 of Fumes of Formation.