It Only Hurts When I Laugh -

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Out Now: Better Than The Real Thing - More Technorotica

It's always a real treat when I realize that, yep, we really are living in the future - and here's a perfect example of that: a wonderful new ebook by my all-time favorite publisher Renaissance/Sizzler: Better Than The Real Thing - More Technorotica.  Featuring a lot of great technology and science-fiction erotic stories, the book is a kick ... if I do say so myself!

It's ust $3.99 - and it's up on the Sizzler site right now but will also be available on amazon very, very soon.

Two great things even better together: technology and sex!  

Welcome to Better Than The Real Thing: More Technorotica - a pocket-sized collection of some of machine-obsessive erotica.  In these gloriously digital pages you'll find everything from sexy robots to virtual reality lovers, from shameless science fiction to contemporary explorations of technological impact on our sex lives and our sexuality. And they are all event better than the real thing. Or are they?  Decide for yourself. 

Charge up your own meat-machine processor for a wild and sparking ride into new frontiers of sexuality. In "State" a prostitute who is trained to behave like an expensive robot designed for sex; in "Hackwork" a high-tech form of possession allows a woman to hire her body out for sexual pleasure to clients that will feel her every sensation remotely; and many more outrageous and kinky stories! Pick up even Better Than The Real Thing: More Technorotica and you'll have your erotic world changed in all kinds of hot and interesting ways!  

"M. Christian is one hell of a writer. He paints his universes and characters in full, living color, thrills the reader with non-stop action. A no-holds-barred storyteller, he embraces his reader at the start and doesn't let go until long after the end." - Mari Adkins

Classes! Classes! Classes!

Wow, this this going to be a busy week:  first up I'm going to be teaching my class on polyamory for the great folks at the Citadel on Thursday, July 21st (from 8:00-10:00PM), $20:

Polyamory: How To Love Many And Well

Sure, you've heard of it – and maybe have been intrigued by it – but what is polyamory and how do you love more than one person and make it work? How can you deal with jealousy, time-management, emotional rough patches, and more to enter into multiple sexual relationships? In this  class, participants will learn to separate the myths from the realities of polyamory, how to make tentative steps towards having more than one partner, and how to approach and deal with the problems of sharing yourself with others, and being involved with someone who, in turn, is involved with someone else.

Included in this class will be simple emotional exercises, truelife experiences, unique techniques and innovative approaches to understanding the joys – and the risks – of beginning, or entering into, a polyamorous relationship.

Then I'm going to be teaching another class - this one on tit torture - for the fantastic Looking Glass on Sunday, July 24th (from 2:00-4:00PM), $20.00 - $35.00:

Breast Play Intensive: Tit-Torture And Bondage

Breast play offers wonderful opportunities for intensely powerful play -- but also comes with serious, even dangerous, risks. In this breasts-on seminar, participants will learn how to treat tits, both male and female, with exactly the right measure of sensuality and intensity to play well but also safely. Clothespins, nipple clamps, pinching, suction devices, gentle impact, bondage, and more will be demonstrated  as well as how to deliver effective aftercare. Additionally, participants will be given instruction in first aid, the dangers of breast play, and the limits of what boobs can take.

Check them both out if you can.  Come one, come all (no guarantees) 

Kit O'Connell Likes The Very Bloody Marys

I really, truly, honestly have some fantastic friends - take, for example, this very touching review of my neo-noir queer vampire novel, The Very Bloody Marys, by my pal Kit O'Connell ... thanks so much, Kit!

It’s no secret that M. Christian and I are friends. I’ve introduced one of his books and we’ve guest blogged for each other too. So even if I’m not the most unbiased critic, I still like to highlight interesting books I read from time to time even if they are by friends of mine.

One of Chris’ many recurring themes are alternate visions of the police. One of the characters in his wonderfully weird novel near-future novel Finger’s Breadth is a freelance officer who receives his orders and files reports via a distributed police ap on his smartphone. “Bluebelle” in The Bachelor Machine explores a future cop’s intimate relationship with his police vehicle, and Christian even co-edited the anthology Future Cops.

The most recent book I read by him is The Very Bloody Marys. Like Finger’s Breadth, it takes place in an alternate San Francisco but  creatures of the night. Our hero is Valentino, a young gay vampire so uncertain of his place in the world that he can’t even decide how to start telling his story at the beginning of the book, so he begins again 2 or 3 times. Somehow, despite his Lestat-like confidence or prowess, he’s been selected to join an undead police force charged with maintaining the secrecy of the undead and the weird. Here, Valentino laments his own impending doom after his superior officer disappears:

Two hundred years. It’d been a good run. Lots of … well, there’d been blood of course. Moons. Stars. Rain. Fog. Hiding, too: all-night movie theaters, bars, discos, stables, warehouses, churches, a few synagogues (even a mosque or two) [...] Lots of … I was going to say friends but, to be honest, the nightlife might be advantageous to boogying but doesn’t make for long-term relationships. Some back-alley assignations, sticky stuff in my mouth or pants; not blood, or at least not up until a few years ago. 

Two hundred sure sounds like a lot, but … the time just seemed to have hopped, skipped and jumped by. Never skied, never sailed, never surfed, never had two guys at once [...] What surprised me the most, though, was what I wanted more: orchids, bow ties, potato salad, string, oil or watercolor, hooks and line, two of everything.

The book has a breezy, playful noir style which would make it perfect summer reading. Though it doesn’t have the usual romance (though it has a handful of interesting unrequited ones), I found it especially interesting as a queer take on the torrid vampires-and-werewolves subgenre of urban fantasy.

Circlet Likes Finger's Breadth

Wow, wow, wow, wow ... if I do say so myself: check out this very touching review of my gay erotic thriller, Finger's Breadth, from the Circlet Press site.

Finger’s Breadth hinges upon a serial crime in a future just a few years from now: someone is stalking the gay community of San Francisco, drugging men one-by-one and cutting off the tips of their pinky fingers. Not quite the bloody stuff of Hollywood thrillers, but scary business nonetheless, and the book has, of course, its cop (freelance, this one) trying to track down the perpetrator, as well as its cast of scared potential victims, hooking up in bars and wondering if the glorious hunk of flesh currently occupying their fantasies is Mr. Snip-it. The book also follows Varney, a newspaper columnist who was reportedly the first victim of this unknown attacker; Taylor, a translator by profession, who had a close encounter with the serial cutter (or so he thinks) and is now shacking up with a former lover, afraid to leave the apartment; Conrad, who goes seeking for the cutter because he wants “to do more than fuck and suck… to feel really big and powerful”; and many others, some characters making only a brief appearance before they disappear again.

But the story is bigger than this crime spree, for as more and more people show up with a bit of their fingers missing, others are soon feeling left out, and some even take to cutting themselves, just to fit in—like a yakuza initiation. And many discover, whether self-inflicted or not, that the experience somehow proves validating, as if the worst that might happen to them is now behind them. In a modern society that has largely left behind rites of initiation, and among a middle-class population whose struggles may seem tiny compared to those of our forebears, how many might long for such a valedictory and validating experience? M. Christian hits upon these questions with full force, and if at times I thought he was reaching too far, exaggerating the extent to which people would embrace injury and harm, I remembered—against my will, almost—a revival I attended in Colorado Springs (very long story). One speaker was a young woman who regaled the crowd with tales of her Christ-less past of rampant drug abuse and wanton sex, yelling tearfully at the audience, “I was a whore! I was a whore before I met Jesus!” I turned to the girl with whom I had traveled to this event, only to find her gently weeping at the spectacle. Finally, she said, so longingly, “I wish I had something like that in my past. It would make my Christian witness so much stronger.”

No, M. Christian nails it right on the head, and beautifully, too, with writing poetically spare (“A scream tried to claw its way out of his throat, the sharp edges of its shame and pain like trying to throw up a breakfast of razors”) and fully realized scenes of sex that run the gamut from the desperate and uncomfortable to the absolutely celebratory, all mixing effortlessly with the horror of the broader situation. Finger’s Breadth may well rank as one of the most psychologically astute erotic novels since Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs, and it deserves to be just as widely read.