How did you get into writing? At what age did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I was a early dreamer but a late bloomer: I remember discovering that not only being a writer could be a career but was a career I wanted to REALLY do around the 4th grade. But I didn't begin to seriously write until high school … and I mean SERIOUSLY: I wrote, or tried to write, a story a week. I did that for about, oh, ten or so years off and on (mostly on). Didn't sell one of them, but I didn't stop. I'm not too sure if that was dedication or insanity but it paid off.
It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan for contests or awards for writers (yes, you may say "sour grapes") but I have to put aside all that to give a hearty, and well-deserved, congratulations to my great pal, Mykola Dementiuk who just received the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction for his novel, Holy Communion. Bravo, Mick!
A pal of mine asked an interesting question once: what’s my definition of erotica, or of pornography? Other folks have been asked these questions, of course, and the answers have been as varied as those asked, but even as I zapped off my own response I started to really think about how people define what they write, and more importantly, why.
It’s easy to agree with folks who say there’s a difference between erotica and pornography. One of the most frequent definitions is that erotica is sexually explicit literature that talks about something else aside from sex, while porno is sex, sex and more sex and nothing else. The problem with trying to define erotica is that it’s purely subjective – even using the erotica-is-more-than-just-sex and porn-is-just-sex-analysis. Where’s the line and when do you cross it? One person’s literate erotica is another’s pure filth. Others like to use a proportional scale a certain percent of sex content– bing! – something becomes porn. Once again: Who sets the scale?
A sweet - and very sexy - friend sent me this joke that I just had to share:
A writer dies and goes to the pearly gates. St. Peter says that everyone, no matter where they're going, gets a tour of Heaven and Hell. So they go to Hell first. All the writer can see is rows and rows of other writers, typing their stories on old, manual typewriters, while they are whipped and yelled at. He's really glad he's not going there.
St. Peter takes him to Heaven. All the writer can see is rows and rows of other writers, typing their stories on old, manual typewriters, while they are whipped and yelled at.
The writer is stunned. He turns to St. Peter and says, "What gives? It's the same thing as Hell."
But my dear child," says St. Peter with a smile, "In Heaven, you’re published."
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.
Here's a fun little piece I wrote sometime ago when I was doing an 'esoterica erotica' column. I found it in a drawer and thought, what the hell, might as well share it with you folks. I also, naturally, posted it to Frequently Felt.
For those unfamiliar with the term, ‘Yakuza’ comes from a loosing hand in an ancient card game, but it’s through their raking in of the chips in just about every illegal (and quasi-legal) business in Japan that they are most known for. Incredibly efficient, tremendously skillful, the Yakuza have ruled the Japanese underworld for centuries. Like their American counterparts (and unlike their Russian comrades) the Yakuza’s primary strength is through intimidation, and rarely direct violence – they usually only kill each other. Unlike our own underworld, the Yakuza’s most efficient weapon is the fear of embarrassment. To the status and face conscious Japanese, usually only the threat of being associated with the Yakuza is enough to make anyone bow in submission. For example, one of their favorite techniques is to simply check into a hotel. The staff and management, terrified of loosing business will do anything to get rid of them – which they usually do, by paying copious amounts of Yen. If they don’t, then other Yakuza might show up – making a big play of their flamboyant women, picking fights, and causing the horror of horrors to a Japanese business: embarrassment.
In an odd twist, the Yakuza are also in bed with the Japanese far right, using the fascists’ blaring sound trucks as weapons against businesses unwilling, or simply tardy, with their protection money.
Like many subcultures in Japan, the Yakuza have their own rigid code of ethics, their own rituals – in their case honed over the centuries to create a kind of social demon, guaranteed to frighten and intimidate the average Japanese citizen. One of their well-known rituals is the creation of a full-body tattoo – a sometimes shockingly beautiful work covering a member from head to foot, with only the face, hands and feet left untouched. There are many theories as to why the body-suit developed, but as to why it has remained is obvious: want to threaten some little shop-keeper and get him to couch up his protection Yen? Just allow him a sneak peak of your tattoo work. When faced with this colorful badge of status and Yakuza membership, there are very few in Japan who wouldn’t bow deep and pass along the bucks.
This symbol of Yakuza allegiance is so powerful that even today, with the influx of Modern Primitive practices and style, the Japanese still associate tattooing with the feared Yakuza. A nose ring is one thing – you’re hip. A tattoo? No way, you’d be a bosozoku (a biker, where the Yakuza often get their street-muscle) or a chimpira (a pissant, or lowly Yakuza stooge).
To gain status, a Yakuza solder or boss will add to his body suit – one beautiful element at a time, a definite qualifier for the fetish and S/M weirdness of this column. But when one of them screws up – well, again the Yakuza have a reason to be here. In a culture where perfection of body is usually associated with the quality of the person (and there the handicapped are undeservedly prejudiced against or shunned), the Yakuza have developed yet another way of proclaiming their ferocity, and at the same time terrifying their own members. After all, after you make a mistake and have your little finger neatly chopped off by our boss with a ceremonial sword in front of the heads of your local Yakuza chapter you’re not likely to make another one. Unless you’re a real fuck-up, in which case you just might keep loosing digits until you wise up – or, better yet, kill yourself.
But the one Yakuza practice that has definitely earned them a place in this space, is what they do when they get caught and have to serve time – which is rather common as Japan has an incredible arrest and conviction rate. Criminals in Japan, they say, expect to get caught – it’s just a matter of when.
All kinds of criminal groups have ways of passing the time in jail, or of demonstrating their time served. It’s common, for instance, for girlfriends of Latino gang members to get black tears tattooed on their cheeks for imprisoned boyfriends.
But certain Yakuza members go a rather extreme step further to show their jail-time. What makes what they do so fascinating isn’t just what they do, but that they manage to do it at all. Japanese jails aren’t like American pits – prisoners there are watched almost constantly, and their days aren’t just sitting and waiting.
Still, the tools are readily available: a fake (or better yet, real) pearl, and a sharpened chopstick, and balls – great big ones.
Boys, you might want to cross your legs. Ready? Take the male member of the fellow who wishes to demonstrate his a) loyalty, b) time served in jail, or c) the strapping size of said testicles, and carefully slice a small incision in the shaft of the penis. If the penis has to be flaccid or erect I have yet to discover – but both have their own degree of horror.
After cutting into the skin of the penis, carefully (like you needed to be reminded?) insert the pearl under the skin. Bandage so that the skin covers the pearl. If all goes well, then you should have a handsome lump under the skin of your penis. Some have been known to add pearls for each year served, while others – more major-league – have decided to simply insert one for each visit to jail. The penis afterwards is supposed to be lumpy when erect – and women who have encountered them have said that the pearls have added to the sexual experience. What is done to avoid infection isn’t known – as is exactly how painful the procedure is. I do know that several Modern Primitive acquaintances have played with the idea of repeating the practice, but have always failed to actually go through with it.
Aside from the fact that simply thinking of this unique way of marking time served makes me squirm, I do have to say that it makes a lovely piece of symmetry: here is a culture that uses the body to proudly proclaim themselves through brilliant tattoos, that punishes failure and disloyalty through body subtraction – ritual amputation, but then uses addition to the body through the insertion of pearls to show loyalty and dedication.
Though I also have to observe that both (failure or demonstrating honor) have a rather painful price.
We always seem to short-change the past. The pyramids? Must have been aliens: those Egyptians couldn't have been smart enough to build them. The Eiffel Tower? Sure it's impressive but it probably should have fallen down decades ago: after all, Gustave Eiffel didn't have computers and modern witchy mixtures of alloys and composites.
Bur our smug superiority is misplaced, our 21st century dismissal of everything created before the integrated circuit and plastic insultingly arrogant. The fact of the matter is that the past was more than grand, more than amazing, more than impressive.
Take, for example, Coney Island, or, as it was called, The City of Fire, around the turn of the previous century.
Originally just a tiny, sandy dot of land full of itchy scrub and wild rabbits -- or "Conies" which is where the place got its name -- the island became first a waypoint and then a tawdry vacation spot for the weary citizens of the Big Apple. But soon Coney began to change, to become a phantasmagorical place: a world of wonders, dreams, and -- tragically as well as mystically -- a City of Fire.
Take, for instance, Coney Island's elephant. Created in 1885 by James V. Lafferty -- who also created Atlantic City's famous pachyderm, which still stands today -- it was one of Coney's first amazements. The elephant wasn't just a statue, some cheap tourist novelty. It was an actual, functional, five-storey hotel and, to give you an idea of what kind of world early Coney Island was, a brothel.
But the elephant, while grand at the time and would have remained grand today like her sister in Atlantic City, was only a tusked taste of what was to come. In 1897, George C. Tilyou created one of the island's lost yet enduring parks: Steeplechase Park.
It's hard to imagine what it must have been like to be a visitor to Steeplechase in those early days. No one had ever seen anything like it: wild and raucous, rude and amazing, Steeplechase was a playground of laughter and thrills. The main attraction were the mechanical ponies. Racing at almost dangerous speeds on a up-and-down and round-and-round iron track, the horses were thrilling, terrifying and, as someone perfectly put it: Gave the boys a chance to hug girls, and girls a chance to be hugged by boys.
But the fun at Steeplechase didn't end with the ponies. Exiting riders, under the frighteningly cheery face of Tillie, the park's mascot, were assaulted by a clown and a dwarf. The clown would hit the boys with a cattle prod and try to blow the women's skirts up over their heads with a blast of compressed air. The giggling and shrieking boys and girls would then be allowed to sit on bleachers to watch other fun-seekers go through the same treatment.
In what would be a common theme for the island, Steeplechase burned in 1907 but was rebuilt on a scale that's hard to comprehend for us 21st century folks. In addition to the restored mechanical horses, Tilyou also added an immense steel and glass "Pavilion of Fun" with dozens of other rude rides including the Human Roulette Wheel, the Barrel of Love, the Cave of Winds, and many contraptions guaranteed to make men and women alike shriek and wail with laughter.
Steeplechase was amazing, to be sure. But it was mostly a broad and guttural place, acres and acres of architectural joy buzzers and whoopee cushions.
Then there was Luna Park, and with it Coney Island became a land of dreams. Built by Frederic Thompson and Elmer "Skip" Dundy, Luna was a hallucination, a disorienting vision of twisting minarets, undulating arches, and – at night – the brilliant spectacle of hundreds of thousands of then-novel electric lights. At Luna Park visitors were treated to rides – such as the famous soaking Shoot-the-Chutes, and the legendary animals, including the park's own herd of elephants – but, more importantly, they could walk the sprawling promenades of Luna Park and feel like they'd been whisked away from their ordinary lives in 1903 to a world of rapturous imagination: a world of fantasy made real. Albeit in lath and plaster.
The spectacle of Luna Park's, well, 'spectacles' is staggering, even today: mock navel battles, including an attack on Manhattan by the combined navies of Germany, France Spain and even Great Britain, only to be beaten back by Admiral Dewey's fleet; a trip to the moon that included mischievous 'moon men'; a trip to the north pole by submarine; and too many more for this small space.
Luna also featured the world of the time, which for most people touring the park might as well have been the north pole or the moon: entire villages, such as Samoan's, were uprooted and placed in the park for the education – and amusement – of the visitors.
Luna Park is a legend, and with it, unprecedented spectacle came to Coney Island. But then came Dreamland.
Built in 1904 by the very crooked William H. Reynolds, Dreamland was to be the crowning glory of the island, a factor-of-ten grander park than either Steeplechase and Luna.
It's hard to picture imagine the scale and majesty that Reynolds made with Dreamland, the outrageousness as well as the beauty that he created on the island. While Luna had a reported quarter of a million electric lights, Dreamland claimed to have more than one million: all of these lights giving the island its nickname of The City Of Fire.
Dreamland was an entire dazzling world, a complete universe of dazzling spectacle. Every hour on the hour 2,000 firemen would put on a performance of extinguishing a roaring blaze in a six-storey building. An entire town was built – half scale of course – for the park's resident 350 midgets. A 375-foot-high central tower lit up so bright it was often seen from Manhattan. There were also performances of the Biblical view of creation as well as a tour of Hell. And let's not forget the incubator babies.
Yep, that's right: one of the most famous exhibitions of Dreamland were the baby incubators, compliments of the brilliant Dr. Martin Arthur Couney. Unable to get hospitals to take his inventions seriously, Dr. Couney worked with Reynolds and – through some showmanship – finally got the world to take notice of his technique to save the lives of premature babies.
Unfortunately, as with that original elephant, Steeplechase, and many other Coney Island amazements, the City of Fire lived up to its name and Dreamland burned to the ground in a hellish blaze that, too ironically, began in the Hell Gate exhibition in 1911. Fortunately there were only a few tragedies, including a lion that had escaped from the fire and had to be shot by police. Unfortunately, the park never recovered and Dreamland became only a memory, the ghost of a dream for those lucky enough to have seen it before it became soggy ashes.
Even more sadly, Luna and Steeplechase's appeal and popularity slipped away in the decades afterward until they collapsed into tawdry ruins, their majesty becoming tainted by the desperation and failures of their autumn years.
These days we have our Disneylands and dozens of other parks around the world and feel like we've managed something amazing – but then you look at the pictures of Coney Island in its heyday and realize that what we consider amazing now is actually small and cheap and easy. For truly wondrous playlands and amazing spectacles, you have to go back at least a hundred years, to Coney Island, to that legendary City of Fire.
My sweet pal, Jason Rubis, just wrote me to say that my erotic science fiction collection, The Bachelor Machine, which is coming out very soon in a new edition by the great folks at Circlet press has been spotted in - of all places - the public library in Reston, Virgina. Makes ya wonder, don't it, what those librarians were thinking when they selected it. Still, it is very cool. I can only hope it's stacked between S for Sex and SF for Science Fiction ....
So, being made into an iphone app wasn't enough, huh? Well, if you're a science fiction luddite - weird, I know - and you have to have my collection of science fiction, fantasy and horror stories in an actual, real, print book then your dreams have been realized!
This is great news: my story of hippie-ghost love, "The Tinkling of Tiny Silver Bells," was just selected by my pal, Maxim Jakubowski for the next edition of his very-well-respected anthology series, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica.
If you don't want to wait until the anthology comes out you can read the same story - and lots of other juicy tales - in my collection, Licks & Promises. So what are you waiting for? Buy it!
Some of you - those of you who have known me for quite sometime - may know that I posed for a certain, kind of 'infamous,' picture. Well, the great folks at F-Stop (Neve Black, Donna George Storey, and Shanna Germain) asked me to write about the shot - which I have done.
It was really a very special thing to do and I want to really thank the great folks, the great friends, who gave me this opportunity to put my thoughts about the picture, and the man in it, out there. Thanks!
Since I try to make this, my 'professional' blog, SFW, I'm not going to post the picture but if you click here (or go over to Frequently Felt) you can not see the picture but also read the essay.
In the meantime, here's a teaser for the piece:
I know that’s me. I remember that afternoon: a house in the Sunset District of San Francisco with an intimate playroom in the basement, owned by a friend, since passed away. The woman was my wife, now ex-wife.
I remember Michael Rosen, the magnificent photographer who took the shot, saying “Open your eyes” over and over again. I remember she was almost standing on her head, laying backwards on a GYN table with her ass raised high. I remember the shot took a long time — so long my hand began to cramp. I remember the day Michael sent us a copy of his magnificent book Sexual Art with the photo published in it.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. They say that pictures don’t lie. They say ‘photographic evidence.’ I don’t know why ‘they’ are, but when I look at that picture I wonder about what’s real and not real, about who that man really is.
Okay, I admit it, I have a problem: I really like writing and putting together books. Now if I could just get people to buy the damned things I'd be happy ...
And here's a new, and rather special, one: a collection if my more ... shall we say 'out there' pieces, including the column I wrote for Suspect Thoughts, The View From Here, from Mindfuck books.
It's that time of year again: time to wish my very, very sweet friend, Pauline, another - and sincere - happy birthday!
Writers have different dreams than ‘civilians.’ Some of them are pretty obvious: big book deals; Pulitzers, Nobels, etc; “Honey, there’s a Mr. Spielberg on the phone; ” an Oprah sticker ….
But there are other dreams: less obvious ones. One of them, a very special one, even the most hard-core, hard-case, hard-assed grizzled hack has, but will never admit: a friend.
Not just any friend, but a friend who comes from them following your trail of silly little literary breadcrumbs. Not a fan, but someone more than that: a cherished pal, a smile on your face whenever they send a message.
I’m lucky, and very grateful, for many things: my various breaks and bursts of luck in writing; my cherished, so-wonderful Sage Vivant, my brother, Sam; the support of my mother; and – yes – some fantastic friends.
One of them, Pauline, is one year older today. I don’t really want to embarrass her but let me say a few things about this truly wonderful person.
Pauline is sweet and caring, smart and funny, giving and supportive, kind and generous – a real treasure to know.
Happy Birthday, Pauline: you’re a dream come true … for a writer or just anyone lucky enough to have you in their life.
FOR SALE: ONE ISLAND, OFF THE COAST OF SCOTLAND ONLY ONE PREVIOUS OWNER (HER MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT) CAVEAT EMPTOR
It's a nice enough place, this barren dome of rock between Gairloch and Ullapool. Conveniently close to the mainland, like most of Scotland it's not without a certain bleak charm. Just the place for a Heathcliff to do some Wuthering Heights or some Shakespearian witches to stir up a bubbling pot of trouble.
But if you'd landed on its shores just 17 years ago, you would have probably had a very different opinion, one formulated just before you began to suffer something kind of like a cold (high fever, aches, trouble breathing, etc.) and then ... well, how to put it?
You'd die.
For most of the world post-9/11, the word has an immediate stomach punch of frightening recognition. But well before some of it was sent out in envelopes piggybacking the terror of Al-Qaeda, anthrax has been tossed around as a weapon of last resort. There's only one problem when you toss anything around: you just might drop it.
Gruinard Island wasn't an accident, but it could be argued that the testing that took place there in 1942 exceeded the British Government's wildest expectations to a frightening degree. The special breed of anthrax, Vollum 14578l, that was released there via special bombs killed the flock of test sheep within only a few days but had the side effect of leaving that Scottish hunk of rock completely uninhabitable for close to fifty years. In 1990 the island was decontaminated and today it's considered safe for man and beast, though I doubt Gruinard will become a common tourist spot.
Once again, Gruinard can't really be considered an "ooops" if the island was intentionally turned into a terrifyingly lethal spot, though that doesn't really make it any easier to think about.
But then there's the town of Sverdlovsk, as it was called back in the days of the USSR (it's now called Ekaterinburg). Lovely little spot, I'm sure, full of all kinds of restfully quiet quaintness and charm, or maybe just the heavy grayness of a typical Soviet town. On a bad day back in 1979, though, Sverdlovsk got even quieter. It was close to a biowarfare lab; one that had an accident.
What happened to Sverdlovsk wasn't known until 1992 when the KGB finally released its death grip on the info. What came to light was this: because of Soviet slippery fingers, some people died from anthrax exposure.
Sixty-eight of them to be precise.
Another scary Russian spot is Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea. Ironically meaning "Rebirth," Vozrozhdeniya was used for extensive biowarfare testing. That is until the Soviet Union fell and researchers stationed there decided to walk off the job in 1991, leaving behind anthrax and bubonic plague containers. Bad enough, but what's chilling is that the containers weren't treated with the respect they deserved and many began to [shudder] leak. Vozrozhdeniya was cleaned up in 2002 but between 1991 and 2000, the island was simply posted as a no-go zone. Vozrozhdeniya and Sverdlovsk are scary enough, without getting into the fact that anthrax and bubonic plague can survive for decades even i some very harsh environments, but consider this: we know about Sverdlovsk and Vozrozhdeniya. What about other places we don't know about?
The Japanese against the Chinese in World War II, Iraq versus Iran, Irag against the Kurds, the Holocaust, Germany against the allies in World War I, the Aum Shinrikyo cult against Japan, Russian troops against Chechen terrorists: all kinds of countries and groups have used chemical weapons in battle, or as an attempt at genocide, and what hasn't been used has been developed and stored as forms of chemical and biological Mutual Assured Destruction. In addition to the Russians and the British, we've also conducted more than our fair share of experiments with nasty bugs and chemicals. And although the U.S. hasn't had any accidents -- that we know of -- we've not been particularly careful with these nasties, either.
While anthrax is frightening because of its longevity and biological spread, for really scary stuff, dig into such delights as Novichok, the v-series, the g-series, and VX. Death in the animal kingdom is one thing, but if you really want to kill, leave it up to our own inventiveness: choking, nausea, salivating, urinating, defecating, gastrointestinal pain, vomiting, then comes the twitching and finally coma. Nerve gas exposure is not a fun way to go.
If reading about Vozrozhdeniya and Sverdlovsk leaves a bad taste in the mouth about the way Russia's handled its biological weapons, how about the way the U.S. has handled what could be potentially worse: until 1972 the military basically had carte blanche to dispose of nerve gas agents by dumping them into the ocean. Let's let that sink in for a moment. Nerve gas -- 32,000 tons of it. In the ocean. Not just any ocean, mind you, but in 26 dump sites off the coast of 11 states.
Bad? Hell yes, but it gets worse. "How can it get worse?" you ask. Well, how about this: we know where about about half those sites are.
But the rest, because of poor record keeping, are a mystery. Those drums are out there, right now, rusting and no doubt leaking, spilling nasty death into the sea, doing who knows what to crabs and lobsters, fish and ocean flora, and thanks to the food chain, probably even us.
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 pages from the final periodically ... or you can read the entire thing on Wynn's Deviantart pages.
There are rules about such things … or so we think. After all, apples don’t fall up, lions don’t have feathers, and lakes don’t explode.
Sure enough, Macintoshes don’t fall skyward, and panthera leo doesn’t have beautiful plumage.
But if you happened to be living in Cameroon you’d know all too well that lakes can, and do, explode.
Take for example the Lake Nyos in the Northwest Province of Cameroon. Part of the inactive Oku volcano chain, it’s an extremely deep, extremely high and, most importantly, very calm, very still, lake.
But it hasn’t always been so calm or still. In 1986 something very weird happened to Lake Nyos, a weirdness that unfortunately killed 3,500 head of livestock … and 1,700 people.
No jokes this time. No clumsy 50’s horror movie metaphors. What happened to the people in the three villages near that lake isn’t funny. Most of them luckily died in the sleep, but the 4,000 others who escaped the region suffered from sores, repertory problems and even paralysis. All because Lake Nyos exploded.
Before the why, here’s some more. What happened to the villages of Cha, Nyos, and Subum that time isn’t unique. The same thing happened to lake Monoun, also in Cameroon, in 1984. That time 37 people died, again not very pleasantly. What does sound like a scene from some only horror flick is the story of a truck that had been driving near the scene. Mysteriously, the truck’s engine died, and then so did the ten people who got out: suffocating within minutes of stepping down. Only two people of the dozen survived, all because they happened to be sitting on top of the truck.
The technical term for what happened to Lake Nyos and Monoun is a limnic eruption. To get one you need a few basic elements: one, a very deep volcanic lake; two, said lake has to be over a slow source of volcanic gas; and three, it has to be very, very still.
What happens is that volcanic gas, mostly carbon dioxide but nasty carbon monoxide as well, super saturates the lake. A clumsy way of thinking about it is a can of soda: shake it up like crazy and the fluid in the can, held back by pressure, doesn’t do anything.
But pull the top, or in the case of Nyos and Monoun, a small landslide or low magnitude earthquake, and all that trapped gas rushes out in an immense explosion. That’s bad enough, as there are even some theories suggesting that the subsequent lake-tsunami from the gassy blast has wiped out still more villages, but what’s worse is that those gasses trapped in the lake water are absolutely deadly.
Heavier than air, the carbon dioxide flows down from the mountain lake, suffocating anything and anyone in it’s path – which explains how those two lucky bus passengers managed to escape: they were simply above the toxic cloud.
Fortunately scientists and engineers are working on ways to stop limnic blasts. Controlled taping of the gasses, bubbling pipes to keep the water from becoming super saturated, it’s beginning to look like they might be able to keep what happened to the 1700 people of Nyos from happening again.
But what keeps other scientists awake at night is that there are more than likely lots of other lakes ready to explode, the question being … when?
Okay, so lakes can explode. But fruit doesn’t drop to the sky and feline African predators aren’t born with fluffy down, and frogs don’t pop … right?
Not if you happened to live in Germany a few years ago: for awhile there toads were doing just that. And we’re not talking a few here and there. Over 1,000 frogs were found burst and blasted in a lake that was soon stuck with the pleasant name “the death pool.”
Theories flew like parts of an exploding frog: a virus? A crazy who had a thing for dynamite and toads? A detonating mass suicide? What the hell (bang) was going (boom) on (kablam)?
The cops checked out the area and the local nut-houses but there wasn’t anyone with that very weird and very specific MO. Scientists check out the exploded remains but found no suspicious viruses, parasites, or bacteria.
They one veterinarian came up with the most likely answer: crows.
As anyone who has ever watched a crow knows they do not fit the label “bird brain.” Extremely clever and resourceful, crows are not only fast learners but they study, and learn from, other crows. What Frank Mutschmann, one clever vet, hypothesized was that it was happening was the meeting of smart crows and a frog’s natural defenses -- plus the allure of livers.
Wanting that tasty part of the toads, the crows had learned how to neatly extract it from their prey with a quick stab of their very sharp bills. In response, the toads did what they always go: puff themselves up. The problem – for the amphibians that is – is that because they now had a hole where their livers were that defense then became an explosive problem. Weasels might not literally go pop in that old kid’s song but that seems to be just what was happening to that lake of German toads in 2005.
But that still doesn’t change that Pipins don’t fall up, and lions don’t have tails like a peacock’s, right? And what about ants? They don’t explode, do they?
But they do. Ladies and Gentlemen allow me to present camponotus saundersi. Native to Malaysia, this average looking ant has a unique structure giving it an even more unique behavior when threatened.
Running the length of it’s little body are two mandibular glands full of toxins. That’s bad enough, as any critter that decides to try a bite will get a mouthful of foul-tasting, maybe even deadly, venom, but what sets this ant aside from others is what happens when it gets pushed into a corner.
By clamping down on a special set of muscles these ants can commit violent and, yes, explosive suicide: taking out any nearby threat with a hail of nasty poisons. It’s certainly a dramatic way to go but you can bet anything threatening it’s colony will get a shock it won’t soon forget.
Sure apples do not fall up and lions don’t have feathers – but what with exploding lakes, bursting toads, and suicide-bombing ants it you might want to check that your grandmother’s homemade pie doesn’t float away or that lions aren’t about to swoop down from the sky and carry you off.
Writers are professional liars: it’s our job is to tell a story so well that the audience believes it’s the truth, at least for the course of the story. The technical term, of course, is suspension of disbelief – the trick of getting the reader to put aside any doubts that what you’re saying isn’t the truth, the whole truth, so help you God.
For erotica writers that means convincing the reader that you really are a high school cheerleader named Tiffany who likes stuffed animals and gang-bangs with the football team … or that you’re a pro tennis player named Andre who has a mean backhand and can suck cock like a professional. A writer’s job is to convince, to put aside doubts … in other words to lie through their fucking teeth.
As any liar worth their salt knows, the trick to telling a good one is to mix just the right amount of truth with the bullshit. You don’t tell your mom who went to the movies rather than church: you say you had a sick friend, that your car broke down or that you had a cold. The same goes for fiction: spinning something that everyone knows is a lie (“the check is in the mail”) is flimsy, but adding the right amount of real life experience makes a story really live. Rather than Tiffany and the football players, how about a young woman who really wants to do a gangbang but doesn’t know how to break it to her boyfriend or girlfriend? We’ve all had the experience of trying to find a way to communicate our sexual fantasies to someone, so that rings true … even though our character is a total fabrication.
Maybe I should start to use of some kind of acronym ... like IHSAF ... but that would diminish the fact that I really do Have Some Amazing Friends, people who I treasure for their kindness, support and, well, just because they are true friends.
It's a joy to re-read these stunning stories, but M. Christian has a lot to answer for! His Bachelor Machine zaps the reader with a selection of wildly erotic short stories, set to raise the blood pressure and increase heart failure statistics.
This is futuristic pornography. The sleaze of porn is there, combined with the mysterious worlds of galaxies never before dreamed of. M.Christian’s imagination is really, beyond belief.
The gloves are off, taboos shattered in this daring collection of futuristic fantasy erotica. If your taste in fantasy is hobbits, noble deeds and happy endings these stories are probably not for you. If you're up for a challenge, if you can run with Metropolis meets nine and a half weeks, meets dark, vintage erotica, then the Bachelor Machine will give you the fix you need. M.Christian's stories are superbly written and well crafted. Can the sensation of spinning rotation be erotic? When it comes from M.Christian’s keyboard; yes! As I read, I am constantly pushed into the giddy, whirling position of inter-galactic voyeur, leaving me shattered and spinning, helplessly, with a glorious, life threatening attack of vertigo.
- but have to say it again: I have some fantastic friends. Case in point, the extremely-talented and extra-ordinarily nice Jeremy Edwards. Jeremy not only asked me to write a guest post on his blog but wrote a very touching intro. Here's a tease - for the rest of the post just click here to go to Jeremy's site.
When I was first becoming familiar with the landscape of the contemporary erotica scene, I quickly learned that one of the preeminent masters of the genre was an intriguing writer and editor called M. Christian. And it was obvious why M.C. had such a status: his work was not only extraordinary in quality and originality, but also in its versatility. This was clearly a writer who went beyond the familiar challenges of writing convincingly from different genders and orientations and psychologies and walks of life, in different settings, subgenres, moods, and tones; this was a writer who seemed to take all this one step further, to thoroughly reinvent himself, as a voice, every time he picked up the pen—and with glorious results. I'm sure I'm not the first to use the word "chameleon" in describing the man's genius: yes, M. Christian is a rock star of a chameleon.
But literary brilliance in an incredible range of voices is just part of what M. Christian is about. I have also observed, and indeed repeatedly experienced firsthand, his dedication to supporting other writers. For example, he uses his Frequently Felt blog to showcase our work, generously using his time and bandwidth to curate.
How typical it is of his spirit that when I invited M.C. to make an appearance here, he chose to use this opportunity, in part, to praise me. But I can't let you go without reprinting his bio, because my message here is a twofold one: M. Christian is a great guy AND M. Christian is a rock-star chameleon.
Well, folks, it may have taken be far too long but I've finally read and selected the stories for Sex In San Francisco. Apologies to the people who didn't make the cut - I hope my little $5 act of contrition takes a bit of the sting away. If you sent a story in for the book and haven't heard from me please drop me a line asap - I think I contacted everyone who submitted but I do make mistakes sometimes ....
And for all you great folks in Best S/M Erotica 3 please stay tuned for some very cool news, including a cover design and a release schedule. As with any of my projects feel free to write me at any time if you have any questions or just want to chat.
Here's a brand new - well, something actually from my cold and dark files - Welcome to Weirdsville piece, this time on the very strange, very odd, and more-than-a-bit creepy world of bacteria and parasites. Enjoy!
It's come to my attention that a few folks have been insufficiently creeped, weirded, disturbed, freaked, frightened, terrified, or just plain disgusted by the idea and behavior of parasites, especially ones that demonstrate the nasty habit of affecting their host's behavior. Never one to disappoint, I'm here again -- lucky you -- with some further examples of how nature isn't just playful puppies and frolicking kittens.
Hardly.
This time we're going to be bouncing around a bit, so keep your trays in the upright position. Parasites, you see, aren't the only living things living in other living things. In fact there is a whole world of organisms that take up residence in us and other creatures that are all but guaranteed to make us rethink the idea of what it means to be "alone."
Before we get to the exotics let's visit the deep blue sea again and another parasite. This one didn't get mentioned the last time around because although Cymothoa exigua is a perfect example of a creature taking advantage of another creature it doesn't immediately make its host do anything it normally wouldn't do. But that doesn't make it any less ... well, you'll see.
Your hand is your hand, right? Your foot is your foot, correct? No one snuck in during the night and replaced them, lopped them off, and exchanged one or the other with something else. You're lucky, because if you were a fish then that might not be ... not your foot or your hand but rather your tongue.
Cymothoa is a crustacean that, while as a larvae, enters a fish's gills and makes its way to the mouth where is latches onto the tongue. No, it doesn't stop there. Yes, it gets worse.
Ready? Here we go: cymothoa then methodically eats the fish's tongue, chewing it up until there's nothing left but a little stub. But this crustacean isn't in it for the short term, just a snack of tongue and then onto the next unlucky fish. Instead, the crustacean hangs in there for the duration: Cymothoa becomes part of the fish, joining its host as a surrogate tongue. It spends the rest of its little crabby life feeding when the fish feeds, and the two of them go along swimmingly through life.
If you think that's bad, let's talk about sex.
Marlene Zuk, with the University of California, Riverside, has an interesting theory, and it's a whopper. First, let's talk evolution, let's chat survival of the fittest: the critter that breeds the most passes the secret of its success along to the next generation while the ones that don't have a leg-up die off. This is true of every critter on the earth, including us as well as bacteria.
Even bacteria like syphilis. For those who didn't see the film in high school, syphilis is what's commonly called a social disease. You catch it if you sleep with someone who has it. The good news is that it's treatable and really isn't a big deal anymore.
The bad news is that it's evolving with the rest of us, and according to Dr. Zuk, syphilis is working to make us better looking -- or at least not looking sick.
Think of it this way: dumb disease acts up, makes itself known. We spot it, we cure it, and it dies. A smart disease works to keep itself quiet, so we don't know we have it and so it doesn't get killed -- and so we pass it along. What I want to know is how long it'll take for the bacteria to take the next step: if it wants us to pass it along why shouldn't it work not just to make us less infected but rather more attractive? Give it time ... give it time ....
Let's go one step beyond parasites, when an organism doesn't merely look for a free ride but becomes such an integral part of the host that the two basically become one. The cell, the smallest part of any living thing -- excluding viruses, if they qualify as being alive -- began as individual protobacteria that figured out, over a very long time, that working together was better than swimming along through primordial soup. That happened before and it's still happening now.
Behavior can be affected by parasites, creatures can take over parts of other bodies, bacteria have developed to be more easily spread, but we are ourselves, right? We own our biological domain, correct?
Sorry but that's not true.
There are approximately 100 trillion cells in the human body. They make up our feet, our hands, our faces, our minds: blood cells, skin cells, brain cells, etc. That's a lot of cells.
But there are more of them than there are of us. They live even between our cells, in our guts, our mouths, our blood, our skin, and even in our brains. Conservatively speaking, there are are ten times as many bacteria – more than 100,00 species -- in our bodies than there are human cells. Some of them are invaders, sure, but many of them are symbiotic: they can't live without us and we can't live without them. We live together in - mostly - biological harmony.
You are reading this. The words appear like a voice in your mind. But do they? Living in you, mixed with your human cells, are those tens of millions of bacteria. Are they listening in, wishing you would read something much more interesting or are they, somehow, adding their own tiny opinions? Where do you start and they stop?
I know: that's a lot to think about. Let's take a walk, let some of this heady stuff float around in a brain that may or not be only yours.
Oh, look; it's snowing. Isn't it nice? All those little flakes floating down from the sky: ice crystals supposedly unique. There's a whole world in each of those little things. Weather, chemistry, geometry, physics, and – I hate to tell you this -- biology.
They are all around us and, they outnumber us. And they are falling from the sky. Researchers recently discovered that snowflakes are snowflakes not just because of cold temperature and water vapor. According to these scientists a snowflake has needs. It has formed a kind of biological/chemical symbiosis with the very creatures that outnumber you in your own body: bacteria.
That's all for now, but that's not all there is. Go on with your day, your life, just remember one important little thing: you are never, ever, alone.
Let's see. Vampire bites man. Man becomes vampire. The biter and the bitten are in love. Must be a gay vampire novel. But not just another gay vampire novel. RUNNING DRY is, yes, about vampires. Hardcore vampires. Unless they're passing along the vampire gene, they don't just sip blood - they suck out every sweet empowering ounce of a body's bodily fluids, leaving behind but a dusty husk. Christian, author of hundreds of acclaimed short stories and editor of many fine anthologies, has crafted a brisk combo of decades-arcing romance, contemporary suspense thriller, and original horror story - Doud, the vampire longing for the lover he thinks he's lost forever, is a mysterious artist whose every painting is daubed with the blood of victims he's had to kill in order to survive, a spooky kind of homage. This is a rip-roaring read that ought to come with this warning: don't read the last page before starting the first, then devouring the rest. The book's ending is a shocker, as lives end and another begins. Enough said.
We like scientists. We really do. After all, without them – and the scientific method – we’d still think lightning was Zeus hurling thunderbolts, the sun was an enormous campfire, and the earth itself was balancing on huge turtles. Without science we’d be ignorant troglodytes – too stupid to even know that we’d evolved from even simpler life forms.
Yep, we love science – but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t scare us. After all, when you’re dedicated to cracking the secrets of the universe it’s kind of expected that sometimes, not often, you might crack open something a tiny bit … shall we say … dangerous?
The poster child for the fear that science and engineering can give us – beyond Shelley’s fictitious Frankenstien, of course -- was born on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico. Not one to miss something so obvious, its daddy, the one and only J. Robert Oppenheimer (‘Oppy’ to his pals) thought “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” from the Bhagavad Gita – but Kenneth Bainbridge, the Test Director, said it even better: "Now we are all sons of bitches."
Sure, the Trinity Atomic Bomb Test -- the event that began the so-called atomic age, leading to our now-constant terror that one day the missiles may start to fly and the bombs begin to fall -- was the first, but since then there have been all kinds of new, if not as flashy, scientific investigations that could be ten times more destructive. In other words, we could be one beaker drop from the destruction of the earth.
Naturally this is an exaggeration, but it’s still fun – in a shudder-inducing kind of way – to think about all these wildly hypothetical doomsdays. Putting aside the already overly publicized fears over the Large Hadron Collider creating a mini black hole that immediately falls to the core of the earth – eventually consuming the entire globe – some researchers have expressed concern that some day we may create, or unleash, a subatomic nightmare. The hunt for the so-called God particle (also called a Higgs boson), for instance, has made some folks nervous: one wrong move, one missing plus or minus sign, and we could do something as esoteric and disastrous as discovering that we exist in a metastable vacuum – a discovery made when one of our particle accelerators creates a cascade that basically would … um, no one is quite sure but it’s safe to say it would be very, very strange and very, very destructive. Confusing? Yep. But that’s the wild, weird world of particle physics. It's sometimes scary. Very, very scary.
A new threat to everyone on the planet is the idea of developing nanotechnology. If you've been napping for the last decade or so, nanotech is basically machines the size of large molecules: machines that can create (pretty much) anything on a atomic level. The question – and the concern – is what might happen if a batch of these microscopic devices gets loose. The common description of this Armageddon is "grey goo." The little machines would dissemble the entire world, and everything and everyone on it, until all that would be left is a spinning ball of, you guessed it, goo.
Another concern for some folks is that, for the first time, we’ve begun to seriously tinker with genetics. We’ve always fooled with animals (just look at a Chihuahua) but now we can REALLY fool with one. It doesn’t take a scientist to imagine – and worry about – what happens when we tinker with something like ebola or, perhaps even worse, create something that affects the reproduction of food staples like corn or wheat. Spreading from one farm to another, carried perhaps on the wind, this rogue genetic tweak could kill billions via starvation.
And then there’s us. What happens if the tweak – carried by a virus or bacteria – screws not with our food but where we’re the most sensitive: reproduction? Unable to procreate we’d be extinct as few as a hundred years.
While it’s become a staple of bad science fiction, some scientists see it as a natural progression: whether we like it or not, one day we will create a form of artificial intelligence that will surpass and replace us. Even putting aside the idea that our creations might be hostile, the fact that they could be better than us at everything means that it would simply be a matter of time before they go out into the universe – and leave us poor throwbacks behind.
There are frightening possibilities but keep this in mind: if something does happen and it looks like it’s going to be the End Of The World As We Know It, there is going to be one, and only one, place to turn to for help: the world of observation, hypothesis, prediction and experiment.
In other words, we’d have to turn to science. They would have gotten us into it, and only they will be able to get us out.
I am a somewhat disillusioned fan of vampire fiction. I have a few hundred vampire books and have read a few hundred more than that. The days when I would buy a book just because it was vampire fiction are long gone given the sheer quantity of them out there and the average quality, which seems to sink every year. In the last week I just happen to have read three vampire books over the last week or so and this one, 'Running Dry' by M. Christian, made me think: Oh, right. This is what I loved about vampire fiction all along.
And I should probably make clear is that we are not talking about bats, tuxedos and mock-European-accent type vampire cliches here. The very essence of the vampire mythos is having to take something from someone else to live, take so much that they die. That is the monster inside the man, that is the dilemma. Modern vampires who have immortality, angst and superpowers but no real down side to their state pale in comparison to this.
The basic story is about Doud, a conflicted man trying to reconcile what he needs to do to live his long life with his respect for human life. Shelly is his friend, a middle-age gallery owner who has to confront a few of her own personal demons when she finds out what Doud really is. And finally the story starts with the return of Doud's old lover Sergio who had every reason to want Doud dead. The kind of creature Doud really is would take a little long to explain. He needs to feed off others but his nature springs from the author's unique vision and has none of the surface features of the stock blood-sucking monster.
There really is very little to complain about in this book. I do think some of the events in the last third of the book could have been described at more length to help us setting into the twists and turns and to add pathos to the ending which could (should?) have had more emotional impact. But this is a quibble. The characters are likeable without being particularly heroic or virtuous (like real people). The story pulls you along with something new unfolding in every chapter. More than anything the writing is effortless to read, so it is more like watching the story through a window than wading through a swamp of words (this being the greatest difference between this book and the others I read this week). Based on my experience of M. Christian's writing so far (this book and his anthology 'Filthy') my main advice is this, if a book has his name on it you should buy it.
If you like fiction with gay themes their presence here is a bonus, but the reason to buy this book is because this book is good.
It always gives me the giggles when people are shocked to find out that I have a day job. The wages of sin (or at least erotica) just aren't enough to live on, even in the more-affordable part of the Bay Area I recently moved to.
People are even more shocked when they hear that not only do I have a job but that it's driving a truck for an organic mushroom company. It's a pretty good gig in many ways: all the mushrooms I want, plenty of exercise, and lots of time to think. But as I drive I can't help but think about two of my favorite flicks: Roadgames and The Wages of Fear. So the next time you're driving around, and a truck passes you buy, think nitroglycerin, Aussie serial killers, or (maybe) me.
You know the El Rio? Down on Cortez? Well, I’m not surprised; I’d be surprised if you did. It’s not exactly what you’d call a memorable ‘establishment’. Nothing, really, but a cinder block bunker in the middle of a red-dust parking lot. Hell, you wouldn’t even know it was a bar except for the pieces of neon in the black, narrow strip of window. It didn’t even say ‘El Rio’ anymore — so maybe you know the ‘E___io?’ down on Cortez?
Whatever. It was the dive of dives, the black hole of Paris, Texas; frequented, as far as I know, by alcoholic kangaroo rats and inebriated rattlers, or at least the two-legged equivalents.
I still can't get over the fact that I actually have a collection of science fiction, fantasy and such out there - or that the book is out from the very-great folks at Renaissance ebooks/Futures-Past! Check out this announcement they've sent out about Love Without Gun Control:
The collection features "the cream of Christian's fantasy, horror, and science fiction stories. Only M. Christian could have imagined what happens when a boy's uncle blows Tibetan days powder in his face, or when a woman gave birth to a new species… but not one of flesh and blood, or when the Goddesss of the Road gave the gift of beauty to a mortal man." Some of the stories in this book first appeared in Talebones, Space & Time, Skull Full of Spurs, Graven Images, Horror Garage, and Song of Cthulhu.
Contents: "Some Assembly Required" "The Rich Man's Ghost" "Medicine Man" "Wanderlust" "Buried & Dead" "Nothing So Dangerous" "Shallow Fathoms" "Constantine in Love"
Christian is an author of erotica and speculative fiction, and the editor of more than 20 anthologies. Futures-Past has been publishing contemporary and classic science fiction, fantasy, and horror in ebook form since 2001.
If you don't know the name M. Christian, then you're really not reading enough, now are you? The San Francisco-based scribe is a writer, anthologist, editor, blog-ist in contemporary genre fiction, with a heavy emphasis on cross-genre dirty stories and anything else you can name. I got lucky enough to catch up with the gregarious Mr. C. during one of his usual busy writing days.
In your bio you're listed as an anthologist, writer, editor . . . which are you first and foremost?
Oh, I'm very definitely a writer. While I like to edit anthologies, because it's fun to play with weird and wild themes, I'm first and foremost a writer. I find myself dreaming and thinking in stories, dialogue, narration . . . I've got it bad, man!
Shelly manages an art gallery in Los Angeles, a job that's lost its appeal for her. A handsome stranger comes in and asks for contact information for an artist who had a showing in her gallery a year before, Doud. The stranger claims he wants Doud to work as an artist director for a horror film, but Shelly is leery of giving out Doud's private information, so she pretends she's lost it.
When Shelly takes the stranger's card to the reclusive Doud's apartment, Doud panics and forces her to flee with him to Bakersfield. On the way, Doud tells Shelly that he's a vampire, and that the man who was looking for him was another vampire, a dangerous ex-lover named Sergio whom Doud thought dead.
Shelly has a hard time accepting Doud’s story. But when they arrive at Doud's secret house in Bakersfield, a mindless new vampire has been left there as a warning to Doud, and to deliver a message. Doud fights the vampire, killing it. He wins, but the combat has drained his energy, bodily fluids, and almost all his reason. Shelly sees him for the monster he can be and finally believes his story. She flees.
After feeding, Doud appears human again; his victim is reduced to dust. Doud remembers the message the other vampire delivered - he must go to Needles, a small town in the middle of the Mojave Desert. When he gets there, he can't find any trace of Sergio. A friendly local artist cruises Doud and invites him home.
Shelly conquers her fear and decides that Doud needs her help. She returns to Doud's house. While she’s there, Sergio walks in. Sergio tells Shelly that he wanted to warn Doud about another vampire who was out to kill him, an artist from Needles.
As Doud and the artist kiss, Doud realizes that the artist is a vampire who intends to feed off him. Doud runs for his life, but the artist relentlessly pursues him. Shelly and Sergio come to his rescue. Sergio and Doud's reunion clears up old misunderstandings, and together they stop the malevolent vampire.
M. Christian delivers a fresh outlook on vampires, something this genre has long needed. Although he has published hundreds of short stories, this is M. Christian's debut novel. I'm sure we'll be seeing more of his longer works.
