Awwww ...

I already mentioned a little essay I wrote about a rather special photo of myself for the great F-Stop site. Well, the photographer himself - the awesome and deservedly legendary Michael Rosen - just popped onto the site and left this wonderful comment. Thanks so much, Michael!

Don’t know why today I decided to finally check on who links to my site …

First, I’m sure I said it in 1992, but thank you and ex-wife for letting me into your lives that day. Over the years, my photography has given me an entry into the lives of many people. That entry has allowed me to get an insight into how they conduct themselves on our cosmic journey – to help me make my choices. And then I’ve published work to help others make their choices.

As one who has devoted his life to making sexual art, working with real people and documenting what they really do – as opposed to pornography – I bought in to, up front, knowingly or not, the fact that any reward shall be limited acclaim, rather than lots of money. So thanks to Chris and the others who said kind words in this thread.

I consider that picture one of the very best of my 30-plus year career, because of the juxtaposition between the, shall we say, extreme act depicted and the calmness and sanity of the participants. (In this case, participant singular; the ex-wife’s employment precluded showing her face.) And I’ve used it as an example of a particular aspect of photography (wide angle lens) in my presentation, “Take Your Erotic Photography To The Next Level”; I dead pan, “Notice how his left hand seems bigger than his face”.

I hear you about feeling old at 50 and not being to push yourself as when younger. I’m 68 and I still feel that I’m only as good as my most recent (don’t say “last”) work.

Coincidentally, I just published “Sexual Art”, the book where the picture first appeared, as a free PDF downloadable from michaelrosen.com.

Thanks, again, for letting me into your life, again.

Best wishes,
Michael

Dark Roasted M.Christian

Check it out: a brand new Dark Roasted Blend piece I did just went up: this time about Harry Bensley and the outrageous bet he agreed to.



Roll up, roll up, roll up! You, sir, say that you dream of fame, and all the rewards it offers, but lack any talent whatsoever? And you, over there, wish beyond anything in this world to be the recipient of innumerable offers of marriage? And you, kind sir, desire to earn a considerable fortune but without all the trauma of actual work? Well, ladies and gentlemen, I can make all these dreams and far more a reality. How, you ask? How can I impart to you kind and far-too-simple souls the possible ability to become known the world over, perhaps have innumerable ladies of fine, and maybe not-so-fine, breeding ask for your hand in matrimony, as well as maybe receive substantial financial rewards?

The answer, you see, is in this box. But before I reveal its contents, and the answer to all your desires, I must first tell you all a story – the story of one Harry Bensley.

Harry was, to put it mildly, a bit of a rogue, a rascal, a rake, a rapscallion. Born around 1877, Harry soon proved to as wily with his businesses and investments as he'd was with the ladies, the bottle, and the cards – creating for himself an self-indulgently lavish and totally outlandish lifestyle.

But, alas – or so some stories go – Harry's luck deserted him one day and he lost it all on a foolish wager. Facing absolute ruin, Harry had few options – until, that is, the intervention of John Pierpont Morgan and Hugh Cecil Lowther (the 5th Earl of Lonsdale).

What Morgan and Lowther did was offer poor Harry an opportunity to regain his fortune. All Harry had to do was accept another, very possibly, foolish wager.

THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK

Outrageous? Definitely! Bizarre? Assuredly! Insane? Absolutely! But what choice did Harry have?

Harry, you see, had to take a stroll. But not one simply down to the local for a point, or even a few dozen, or even hundred, miles. No, according to the terms of Morgan and Lowther's wager, Harry had to walk not just across England, or even down and through Europe, or into the Middle East and then China. No, ladies and gentlemen, Harry had to walk all the way around the entire Earth.

Yes, you may gasp. Assuredly, you want shake your heads in disbelief, but those were the terms of the bet. But that's not all. For not only did Harry have to walk all the way around this lovely world but he also had a few other, well, 'unusual' terms to obey if he was to regain what he'd lost.

First of all, Harry had to follow a very specific path through no less than 169 separate British cities, getting in each one a signature proving his visit. After this would follow travels to 18 other countries, again in a strict order.

Second, Harry would begin his incredible journey with no more than one British pound in his pocket. Any money made on the trip could only be made by selling novelty picture postcards explaining the bet.

Third, his only change of clothing would be a spare set of undergarments.

Fourth, he pound push a baby carriage the entire way.

Fifth, Harry would have a companion who would make sure that Harry obeyed every term and requirement of the wager. No cheating, Harry!

Sixth, Harry would have to – somehow, somewhere – find himself a wife.


As said, this was outrageous, bizarre, insane, but Harry agreed to every requirement and term of the bet. He would push his stroller, he would have only a change of underwear, he would have no money except for what he made selling his postcards, and he would find himself a wife.

But there was one other term, ladies and gentlemen, one other requirement that Harry had to meet to win back his fortune. And that thing, the final condition, has to do with this box, right here at my feet.

You see Harry had to complete his round-the-world walk without a single, solitary person recognizing him. Yes, my rapt audience, Harry had to travel through Britain, across Europe, into Asia and beyond without even once being recognized – even by the woman he would somehow manage to agree to marry him.

And how was Harry supposed to accomplish this? And did Harry win his bet? Ah, but first things first – and now I shall open the box.

HOW TO WIN FAME, FORTUNE, AND MARRIAGE PROPOSALS

Amazing, isn't it? A real antique, too. It's hard to believe that anyone ever wore anything like this – or that Harry Bensley agreed to wear it on planned trip around the world.

The helmet is from a suit of armor and weighs almost five pounds and, yes, Harry had to wear it constantly.

On January 1, 1908, Harry began his journey: wearing his helmet, pushing his pram, followed by his monitor, he began his walk around the world.

Did Harry succeed in his outrageous, bizarre, insane voyage? Did he win back his fortune or did some cruel accident void the terms of the wager? Well, for a while things got sticky. As he traveled, the tale of the Man In The Iron mask grew and people began to flock to see him – as well as try and guess his identity. Even a newspaper of the time, in a moment of cruelty, offered a reward of one thousand pounds to anyone who could guess his identity.

Eventually Harry arrived in Italy, having walked over 30,000 miles in six years without ever voiding the terms of the wager. Alas, the fate – and the failure of diplomacy – intervened in 1914.

The details of what occurred next are hazy, at best. Some claim that Harry called off the wager to serve his country in World War 1, while others say that Morgan called it off and gave Harry a small sum, and there are even a few who argue that other, unknown, causes interfered. In any event, Harry fought for his country and, again the cruelties of fate, was seriously wounded – but Harry's poor luck continued when he lost whatever else he had and ended up having to take a series of low-end positions until his death in 1956.

You say you desire fame but lack talent? You say you lust after fortune but do not want to soil your hands with work? You say you crave the attention of women?

Well, maybe you will have better luck than poor Harry when you put on this ancient helmet and try to stroll around the world without once being identified. But before you disparage Harry Bensley you should know that even though Harry never won back his fortune, and his story is not as famous as some people's, Harry did manage to receive 200 or so marriage proposals from women who'd never seen his face.

But Harry, the once-rake, the once-rapscallion, never once accepted their offers. So maybe Harry did win a bit of something with his amazing bet after all: a special form of nobility befitting the knight's helmet he wore for over six years.

Is MY Face Red -

There I go, raving about the various editions of Love Without Gun Control (my new science fiction, fantasy and horror collection), and not once to I praise the absolutely incredible cover design by my great pal, Wynn Ryder. Sorry about that, Wynn! And if you don't know Wynn's marvelous work you have to check out his site and his Deviantart Page. He and I also did Masquerade together, if course.

Thanks!

- and keeping with the Love theme for today: my pal Drake at the great Drake's Way just posted the cover with this touching comment: "Stories from a master of erotic entertainment." Thanks!

LOVE In All Its Incarnations

Just because, here's a pic of all three versions of my science fiction, fantasy and horror (no smut, I promise) collection, Love Without Gun Control: the iphone app, the paperback, and the ebook. Kind of cool, eh?

Erotica Esoterica: Dressing For Failure

As I just mentioned my new non-fiction book, Pornotopia, and since I don't have much else to write about, here's a bit from the book: a little Erotica Esoterica piece on some truly spectacular fashion disasters. Hope ya like!


History is rife with fashion disasters. If you had to pick a single decade where dress sense did a complete Titanic, though, it has to be the 1960s. Taking their sense of freedom to embarrassing extremes, fashion designers all over the world struck out in all kinds of ludicrous directions, proving in their enthusiasm for the unique that they proved themselves the bastions of absurdity.

One of the biggest themes designers seized on during the ‘60s was sex. It was everywhere, thanks to the revolution, so why not bring it into the world of fashion? True, fashion designers had always thought of themselves as the cutting edge of sensual allure, but here was a chance to really pull out the stops. Alas, there are some stops that simply shouldn’t be pulled.

Fashion radicals in the ‘60’s took two directions: less and more. Less being less clothing and added skin, and more being … well, call it more options – the designers’ way of blurring gender roles.

One of the highlights of the ‘less’ movement was the topless bathing suit. Agreed, it was developed and released in 1964 by Rudy Gernreich as a publicity stunt to get his name in the papers, it was still a perfect example of how fashion designers were pushing the design – and taste – envelope. Nothing more than a pair of bikini briefs with a pair of thin straps coming between the breasts – leaving them bare -- and down the back, the, Gernreich’s creation received an interesting of mix of horror and scorn. The horror came from the likes of Vatican, who proclaimed the suit “desperate and senseless adventure of impudent shamelessness”, and even the Soviet Union, who called it “back to barbarism” – of course the Vatican also said that Rock ‘n Roll was the devil’s soundtrack and Khrushchev was publicly outraged when he watched the filming of the Shirley MacLaine movie Can-Can, so at least the suit was in very good company. The worst criticism came from those in the fashion know, who pointed out that all one had to do to have a topless bathing suit was to buy a bikini and leave half at home – and literally half the cost of the $24 suit. The suit really only caused a stir here in the puritanical US (“The police are apprehensive of what these suits will reveal. I’m apprehensive they’ll reveal nothing,” said Mort Sahl), as European women, of course, had been bathing topless for decades.

Additionally banking on the expansive of bare flesh that seemed to be one of the defining factors of the decade – and perhaps spawned by the publicity around Gernreich’s suit -- the famous fashion designer Kenneth (and you know they have to be famous if they only have one name) announced in ’69 a whole line of makeup products for the bare bosom. With such descriptions as “tip blush,” and “cleavage delineator” you can imagine how fast these products flew off the shelves – and into the private collections of transvestites.

As part of the ‘more’ school of design, there were many experiments in gender experimentation in the 60s – including the failed attempt to try and raise interest in skirts for men. As reported in Paul Kirchner’s wonderful book, Forgotten Fads and Fabulous Flops, Seventeen magazine put boys in kilts in a spread, and even Time was hooked by this supposed next fad with a report that the garment industry had big plans to import the concept of the male skirt. Alas, no amount of publicity and wishful thinking in the mind of fashion designers could change the mind of the American male.

One of the best examples of fashion insanity owes a lot to the gender play experimentation of the ‘60s -- as a radical reaction against it. Eldridge Cleaver is known for many things: Black Panther Minister of Information; author of Soul on Ice; misogynist; jailed in connection with a shoot-out with the Oakland Police, ex-patriot living in Cuba, Algeria, and Paris; and -- ready for this? -- failed fashion designer.


Eldridge had this problem, you see, with the current state of men’s fashion. He felt that men should be able to enjoy all the stylish and comfortable pants being offered for women. Why should they get all the fun?

But Eldridge couldn’t just wear the new women’s slacks -- after all, there was this little problem he had about sexual identity (and he had a lot of issues with sexuality, just read Soul on Ice). So what to do about this garment dilemma? His answer was to create a whole new line of clothing, slacks with all the style and comfort of women’s pants without sacrificing his pathologically all-important machismo: Cleavers, the pants with an “appurtenance.”

Cleaver probably threw a lot of bombs during his Black Panther revolutionary days, but nothing compared to his Cleavers. While the pants component received some praise, it was that all-important “extra” feature that most people had issues with. After all, it was one thing to go through the supposed embarrassment of wearing ‘women’s’ pants, but quite another to wear them equipped with a very present, rather exaggerated 20th century version of a external jockstrap.

Luckily Cleaver’s vanished even quicker than cleavage makeup and the topless bathing suit, joining the ranks of Nehru jackets and bell-bottoms -- exiled to the deep, dark corners of fashion history. If we are lucky, their mistakes will never surface again -- but looking at the general history of garment insanity it’s more than like just a matter of time.

Pornotopia - The Book!

This is great news:  I just signed to do a brand new book with the wonderful folks at Xcite Books: Pornotopia: The Imaginative - and Informative - Non-Fiction Of M.Christian.  It's not the same Pornotopia I've mentioned before, instead this book is a collection of my non-fiction articles, essays and how-tos, including a lot of the stuff I've written for Forum UK and my sexy Welcome to Weirdsville pieces.  Stay tuned for more info.

Dark Roasted M.Christian

Check it out: a brand new Dark Roasted Blend piece I did just went up: this time about the some truly spectacular ruins.


Crumbling plaster, broken and splintered lath, cracked cement, fractured concrete, gap-toothed brick walls, rusting iron, daggers of shattered glass … no argument about it: there's something hypnotically alluring, darkly fascinating, about a truly great ruin.

What's now decay and rot once was bright and brilliantly full of hope: Who lived here? What were their lives like? What happened? How did it all come apart? How did it all crumble to almost nothing?

In the case of Hashima Island, or Battleship Island as it's often called, hope and optimism became dust and decay because one black resource was replaced by a cheaper black resource. Populated first in 1887, the island – which is 15 kilometers from Nagasaki – only began to really, and phenomenally, become populated much later, in 1959.

Hashima is, for many ruin fans, the rotting and collapsing grail, the benchmark all other crumbling structures are measured against – and seeing pictures of the place it's easy to see why. Not only is Hashima frighteningly preserved in some places, as if the residents had just stepped out as few minutes before, but it is also, contrarily, spectacularly falling down. Beyond its current awe-inspiring state of decay, the island's dramatic isolation and its bizarre history make it the ruin of ruins.


Before that day when coal, the old black resource, was replaced by oil, another black resource, Hashima was the most densely populated area – ever. On that tiny island, crammed into what are now decaying tenements, were thousands of miners, their families (including children), support staff, administration, and everything necessary to make their lives at least tolerable. It's hard to imagine when looking at the empty doorways, ghostly apartments, and hauntingly vacant corridors what the lives of those people might have been like.

Unlike the post-apocalyptic drama of Hashima, we can very easily imagine what the lives of the residents of the famous Walled City of Kowloon were like – in fact we can ask them, as their city was torn down in 1993. The reason why the Walled City gets so frequently mentioned as a ruin is, while it was there, it was as if the people who lived in it were living their lives in the guts of some great, monstrous, maze.

To say that the city had a long history is an understatement, as its roots go back to the Song Dynasty (960 AD, if you need to know the date). The city was a curiosity for a very long time – a strange bit of legal knotting making it Chinese and not British -- but the labyrinth didn't start to grow appreciably until after the second world war when it became a haven for … well, people without a state: refugees, squatters, thieves, drug-dealers, and much more (and much worse). Neither Great Britain nor China refused to have anything to do with the immense warren of walkways, apartments, workshops, factories, brothels, gambling dens, and opium dens.


The Triad, who represented most of the criminal element, were pretty much forced out in the 70s – by a police attack some 30,000 strong, no less -- but the city remained as a kind of anarchist warren, a world-unto-itself where the residents built and maintained pretty much everything. Looking at pictures of the city today, it looks like some kind of ramshackle prison, a cyberpunk nightmare of florescent lights, spectrally flickering televisions, and mazes of perpetually damp hallways and trash-strewn alleyways. Yet, for many people living there, it was simply home.

Alas, the end of the living ruin that was the Walled City came to an end in the 90s when the residents were evacuated and their fantastic city-within-a-city was torn down. Interestingly, the Walled City has a strong connection to Hashima as, at its height, the Walled City had a population density almost rivaling that Japanese island. Before the bulldozers came, it had a staggering population of 50,000 people, all living in an area the size of a few city blocks.

But if you're talking ruins you have to talk about the ruin FROM THE FUTURE .. or at least a ruin that looks like it came from there.

If you travel to Taiwan, up north to be specific, you will find yourself in a what looks like the fantastic set from some kind of big-budget science fiction epic: the resort of San Zhi. Built in the 1980s, the resort was supposed to be, planned to be, a vacation spot from the next century .. BUT TODAY!


Unfortunately, the dreams of the developers stayed just that and, beyond a few remarkably-well-preserved, sections, San Zhi never materialized. But what they did build, and that's still there in all it's ruinous glory, is amazing: crumbling residential pods on a bleak and blasted landscape, a mini-sprawl of the future falling apart BUT TODAY!

Decaying, rotting, crumbling, collapsing – ruins are the remains of what was, of the lives of the people who lived in them. In the case of Hashima Island, what remains teases us with thoughts of what it must have been like to live in the most densely populated area in the world, ever; with the Walled City of Kowloon, we instead dream of what it must have been like to a resident of a labyrinthine living, breathing ruin; and then there is the painful folly of San Zhi – a ruin not from the past but strangely, wonderfully, from a tomorrow that might have been.

Creative Writing Talkes to Me

This is very sweet: I just did a nice little interview with the site, Creative Writing Help. Here's a teaser, and to read the rest of just click here.

#

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.

[MORE]

Congratulations, Mick!

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!

How To Wonderfully WriteSex (4)

Check it out: my new post at the fantastic WriteSex site just went up. Here's a tease (for the rest you'll have to go to the site):

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?

[MORE]

Heaven and Hell

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."

Masquerade: Page 11

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.

Welcome to Weirdsville: A Cut Above the Rest

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.

Dark Roasted M.Christian

Check it out: a brand new Dark Roasted Blend piece I did just went up: this time about the incredible world that was Coney Island.



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.

At Your Local Library?

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 ....

Love Without Gun Control - Now In Print!

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!

Just click here to go to amazon where you can get the very-lovely print edition for just $15.99. You will not be disappointed!

The Tinkling of Tiny Silver Bells - In The Mammoth Book Of Best New Erotica

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!

WriteSex and SavvyAuthors!

Check it out: The wonderful Writesex bunch (including Sascha Illyvich, Oceania, and Jean Marie Stine ... and me) are going to be holding a special forum/class on Defining Erotica – A Primer for Authors of All Genres for Savvywriters. First up was Sascha Illyvich (on the 26th), after Sasha is Jean Marie Stine (on the 27th), then it's Oceania (on the 28th), on the 29th it's me, on the 30st it's Thomas Roche. For more info go to the Savvyauthors site. Tune in, have fun, and learn something.

Less Than 1000 Words About A Certain Picture

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.

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The View From Here - The Book!

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.

And this is even more special (if that's even possible): my great pal, and amazing artist, Wynn Ryder, did the cover. What do you think? I love how Wynn described it on his blog:

Must be some Monty Python influence in this one... I can imagine the hills animated, sprouting up from the ground and talking.

Happy Birthday, Pauline!

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.

Dark Roasted M.Christian (flashback)

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.

Masquerade: Page 11

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.

Dark Roasted M.Christian (flashback)

Head over to Dark Roasted Blend if you want to read about things that shouldn't - but still do - explode.

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.

How To Wonderfully WriteSex (3)

Check it out: my new post at the fantastic WriteSex site just went up. Here's a tease (for the rest you'll have to go to the site):

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.

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Billierosie Likes The Bachelor Machine

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.

Case in point, my dearest pal, Billierosie, just posted this review for my science fiction erotica collection, The Bachelor Machine, on her great blog. The book, btw, is coming out in a brand nw edition very, very cool, from Circlet. Stay tuned!

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.

Said it before -

- 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.

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Anthology Update(s)

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.

(Blush)

Thanks ever-so-much to all my pals who sent me birthday wishes - it means a lot to me! And extra special thanks to the always-brilliant Wynn Ryder for this new sketch of yours truly. Thanks, Wynn!

The Big 5-0!

Funny, but I don't feel old ...

Welcome to Weirdsville: Within and Without You

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.

Richard LaBronte Likes Running Dry (Redux)

While I'm taking a trip down memory (and publicity) lane, here's another great review for my recently re-released gay vampire novel, Running Dry - by the one-and-only Richard LaBronte, no less!

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.