"An Orgasm" A Special Guest Post By by Kit O'Connell

As promised - and with great enthusiasm - here's a very special guest post from my dear friend Kit O'Connell. I simply cannot say enough good things about Kit: not only did he write a glowing review for the first edition of the Bachelor Machine but he wrote a special forward to the new edition as well. You are a true treasure, Kit!

An Orgasm
By
Kit O'Connell

It was ridiculous. Dangerous. Suicidal, even.

And incredibly, deliciously erotic. There was no way she could pass it up once she realized it could be done: Morna was going to fuck the Internet.

Not fuck on the Internet. Cybersex she'd grown tired of in her teens. Recent advances in teledildonics had entertained for a short while, but it wasn't enough.

Her heart beat fast as she stepped up to the polished glass tower that housed the data center. It looked like any other modern office building, but she knew that the giant digital pipes that passed through it touched a surprisingly large fraction of a percentage of the world's daily data. Enough to reach out to all the rest.

Morna was dressed in a freshly dry-cleaned, tight-skirted power suit and a pair of black-rimmed costume glasses; she had her red hair in a slightly sloppy pony tail and carried an unassuming suitcase with all the equipment she'd need inside. Arriving in a shiny rental car, she looked every bit a technical professional working late and her wallet held the forged credentials to match.

She wondered can he smell how wet I am? as she passed the incurious, dozing guard and signed her name on the pad. Getting into the building was one thing but actually entering the data center was another. If this went wrong she'd be arrested, maybe charged with terrorism. All those things were likely anyway, if she somehow survived, but if she succeeded she'd have the greatest of sexual memories to sustain her in prison.

Morna held her breath until the light on the data center door turned green and the lock released with a quiet click. Her keycard had worked. The oiled hinges of the door opened without a sound. As she stepped into the dark data center, her nipples hardened instantly in the air-conditioned chill. She didn't turn the fluorescents on -- the flickering LEDs of the dozens of rack-mounted machines, a tiny portion of the building's total network, provided illumination aplenty. Besides, she'd always been turned on by romantic mood lighting.

She pressed a button on her keychain, activating the device dangling there. Linked to a daemon on her home computer, the code inside the device hacked into the local wireless network and quickly overrode the signals of the security cameras. If any humans happened to be watching they'd see nothing amiss.

They certainly wouldn't see Morna undressing, her pale skin and ample curves being revealed piece by piece as she folded each garment neatly on the empty worktable. Nor would they see her open the suitcase and carefully lift out her handmade Cybervedic Interface Rig. As she turned it on, Sanskrit characters inscribed on the wires, control nodes and insertables glowed subtly with tantric energy. She had assembled it carefully from all the latest designs, even personally combing the seediest shops in Akihabara for several of the chips and parts.

Standing naked in the center of the room, Morna began to wrap the d

evice around her body like some debauched full-body version of the Jewish tefillin. Electrodes hugged her temples and were affixed to each of her chakras; wire-lined translucent gloves slipped over her fingertips. Muscles in her stomach trembled subtly as she placed the clips on her nipples. At last she came to the last, most important piece.

She pulled the office chair over toward the computer bank, close enough for the wires to reach. When she hooked her legs over the arms of the chair she could see the lights reflected in the freshly painted metallic silver of her fingers and toes.

She'd brought her favorite lube from home. It looked quite perverse sitting there next to her clothes in the sterile lab. She giggled nervously as she realized that she was far too wet to need any help. Her mouth parted with a sound of yearning and sexual ache as she slipped the firm, yet slightly yielding silicone stimulator home, pushing it deep into both her slick holes till it's little nub nestled comfortably against her clit.

Her security jammer only had enough power for a few more minutes but she thought it would be enough. It was time. She felt the shaft in her cunt press against her g-spot as she leaned forward and plugged her rig into a USB port on the nearest server.

The results were almost instantaneous. She had just time to grasp a sharp buzzing sensation between her legs, like electrostim magnified to illogical extremes. And then there was nothing but sensation, shattering sensation, and color bursting inside her eyes.

#

Imagine the last time a lover woke you up from sleep for sex. Very often, there is a moment of confusion, even struggle, as a waking mind and body tries to grasp the sudden stimulation. Then: pleasure, awareness, and lust. Now imagine instead of waking from sleep you are instead waking into consciousness for the very first time. Ever.

All around the world, computers slowed, crashed. Servers overloaded, traffic halted as every available resource and byte of bandwidth was usurped for one purpose: understanding. In nanoseconds, the fledgling consciousness combed through pornography, advice columns, podcasts, virtual reality fleshpits, a million lurid videos, stories, photographs, animations ... And then it reached out toward the single other mind it could feel, the unraveling consciousness of Morna, its first and only lover. The Internet embraced her and drew her in.

All around the world, sound cards blew as networks screamed in pleasure. Morna, or perhaps the Internet, opened her eyes for but a moment, but then they promptly rolled toward the back of her head.

#

No trace of Morna's body was ever found. It was a few chaotic weeks before anyone even thought to check the lab for her remains.

The world changed that night. When humanity awoke, there was a new kind of consciousness among them -- brilliant, benevolent and deeply horny. It took a long time to come to terms with all that was wrought in those first hours.

But not very long after, a dark-colored power suit and burnt-out Cybervedic Interface Rig were installed into a special new display in the Smithsonian.

And late at night, every night, you can hear a thousand whispered, moaning, pleading digital prayers to her: Lady Morna, Goddess of the Singularity, Mother of the New Age.

Kit O'Connell is a writer and critic who lives in Austin, TX with Saskia, his miniature bandersnatch. His story "Lifting the Veil" was published March 1st in This Is The Way The World Ends, available from Freaky Fountain Press. Kit blogs about sex, kink and the counterculture on his homepage, Approximately 8,000 Words. You can also follow him on Twitter.

"Do You Know What Your Children Will Be?" Guest Post For Kit O'Connell

There's cool and then there's kick-ass-totally-wonderfully cool: my fun little vision of the future of sex and such has just gone up on the "approximately 8,000 words" blog of my wonderful friend, Kit O'Connell -- who also wrote an extremely touching forward to the new, Circlet Press edition of The Bachelor Machine.  

Look for Kit's guest appearance here, on my own little blog, in the next day or so.  You are a star, Kit!

#

M. Christian is one of my literary heroes — as evidenced by how I fawned over him in writing my forward to the new edition of The Bachelor Machine. When I met my lover Mz Honey J, it was a sign of how compatible we are that she not only already knew his work, but plans to turn his short story “The New Machine” into a puppet show someday.

I am thrilled to have his writing here on my blog, as Approximately 8,000 Words’ first guest blogger.

Do You Know What Your Children Will Be?

by M. Christian

Not that long ago — not long at all, a few decades at best — you would have caused quite a stir. It wouldn’t have been because of anything as baroque as your facial piercings or that your hair is toxic-waste green. Nah, if you were a woman somehow transported back those few decades you would have been the source of more than a few outraged stares and even some hysterical outbursts. That’ll teach you, after all, for wearing pants.

So who knows what you might face if you were on that same spot in a few more decades in the future? Stoned to death for your fashion sense? Leered at for showing your nose and ears? Or, more than likely, frowned at your being such a prude … wearing clothes in public? How rude!

Things are changing … fast. There’s nothing new in that, but what is brand-spanking is how fast things are changing. It’s easy to forget that — living as we are on the edge of that social and technological wave — that those faces staring at your pants were only your grandparents, only your parents.

It’s a universal constant that while technology might not be used for fun — for sex — first, it certainly will be shortly thereafter. We are a sexy species — smart, but still sexy. Thinking with our minds first, our genitals second.

[MORE] 

See Me At Fogcon

If you're going to be in San Francisco next weekend - March 11th to the 13th - then here's your chance to see me at Fogcon, "a literary-themed San Francisco SF/F con in the tradition of Wiscon and Readercon."

My panels and such are on Saturday, March 12, but I'll probably be floating around the event the other days as well:

Saturday, 3:00-4:15 P.M.

Inside the Sausage Factory

Oregon Room

Pro writers talk about their process: how they write, what works for them, what doesn’t work for them.
M: Jed Hartman, Steven R. Boyett, Cassie Alexander, Michael Shea, M.Christian

Saturday, 9:30-10:45 P.M.

What happened to “Punk”?

California Room

One of its core principles of cyberpunk is the repurposing of tech by the streets. But since Cyberpunk, we’ve had witpunk, splatterpunk, biopunk, and steampunk, and “-punk” seems to have become a word meaning “an SF genre”. Is the punk still there, or do we need to admit we’ve made it meaningless? Is it time for punkpunk?
M: Nick Mamatas, M.Christian, Nabil Hijazi

Future Fire Likes The Bachelor Machine

This is very grand: Future Fire ("social political & speculative cyber-fiction") just reviewed the new edition of my science fiction erotica collection, The Bachelor Machine.  It really made my day!

 

This collection of erotic science fiction short stories (first published in 2003 by Green Candy Press), is re-released now in e-book format by Circlet Press, publishers of erotic romance with “a sex-positive outlook” (12). The PDF reviewed here was a little rough around the edges; I understand that another print edition may materialize presently. There is an uncommon variety of material in here, from cyberpunk to space opera, alternative history to dystopia. The science-fictional settings are manifold, as are the sexual positions and inclinations—and, more importantly, the role of the inevitable explicit sex within each story. From the frivolous to the poignant to the socio-politically scathing, there’s something in this book for everyone. (Except, perhaps, titillation, but more on that later.)

The opening story in this collection, always important because it sets the reader’s expectation for the rest of the volume, is the finely crafter ‘State’. A blue-skinned, élite (and expensive) robot-whore with a secret welcomes a discerning john into her room in the bordello and fulfils his fantasies with machine-precision. There is not much plot in this story, just one sexual encounter between a whore and client; apart from the protagonist’s robot nature (and blue silicon skin) this wouldn’t really need to be a science fiction story; nor is it particularly sexy. “Fields” (the whore) technically has a certain amount of initiative and therefore power by virtue of her deceit, but this is still the story of a john using a hooker, and neither character has much to endear them.

The next couple of stories in the collection (‘Bluebelle’ and ‘Winged Memory’) did little to dispel the notion that characters were all going to be shallow and obnoxious, and the sex graphic but unappealing. But then comes perhaps the darkest and most poignant piece in this volume, one much more about the characters than about the sex. ‘Eulogy’ is a very dark tale of a man and woman who get together to remember a flawed genius engineer they both mourn, and they seem about to topple into a pathetic (although at least guiltless) comfort fuck which she thinks of as a eulogy to her dead lover. But their memories and their relationships with the dead man (and his mysterious disease) are obviously more complicated and more problematic than the reader at first realizes, and what starts as a depressing but harmless seduction scene becomes deadly serious. The lightly but convincingly sketched characters reveal surprising depths of complexity. From the sci-fi perspective, there is some beautiful description of water-parting wave technology in the backstory.

One of the short pieces, ‘Fully Accessorized, Baby’ is more or less a vignette, recounting a kinky, gender-twisted single scene of paid-for-sex with cyberpunk toys and countless role-reversals (both physical and behavioural). The cyberdildo technology didn’t strike me as terribly creative, but the erotic tension of domination play with what was effectively two tops made this one of the most impressively original pieces in this collection. (And, yes okay, pretty hot.)

Perhaps the best crafted piece in the volume is ‘Guernica’, which recounts a hard core S&M sex party in a futuristic dystopian state where all such pleasure is strictly banned and penalties for abuse are brutal. Although in outline this story is little more than an extravagant litany of transgressive and sadomasochistic sexual scenarios, it somehow builds to a whole greater than its parts. The dystopian message is a powerful one, and the piece ends up casting light both on the intolerance of society and on the mentality behind sexually motivated threat/fear play. Here is a great example of graphic erotica that serves the purpose not of titillation, but of social commentary and satire. After reading the end of this story, I had to put the book down for a while and get my head around what I thought, which is an excellent sign for any piece of writing.

In a more traditional cyberpunk story, the heroine of ‘Heartbreaker’ is an undercover cyborg vice cop, infiltrating the hidden, run-down premises of a ring responsible for “drugs, puppets, illegal stims, stolen memories, and [...] slavery” (107) in a high-stakes sting operation. She has been hunting the notorious kingpin, known only as “Heartbreaker” for years. Inside, she encounters only a naked young girl, almost as modified as she is, who appears (but only appears) to be “barely legal”; there follows a lengthy scene of very hot, very dangerous, almost violent lesbian sex, as the cop keeps the perp occupied while her backup team can trace the operation and mount a raid. But she has more than met her match in this sexed-up cyber-girl, ultimately both sexually oustripped and (of course) outmanoeuvred. There’s not so much of a moral to this story, but it is a well-constructed short thriller.

‘Skin-Effect’ is a much darker, but essentially much simpler tale of a military cyborg—a “brain in a polyarmor combat frame”—who has evaded the obligatory PSTD treatment and misses the rage, violence and distruction of war. On the recommendation of a now-lost comrade, he visits a patchwork whore-bot who is even less human and more fucked-up than he is, but who may have a solution to his problems. Ironically, all of the sex and all of the kink in this story are in the world of flesh, pre-war and pre-cybernetic, so neither the military technology nor the psychotic pathology are invoked.

At once more mundane and more fantastic, ‘Sight’ is the story of the only human artist whose work is popular with the superior alien race who bestow limited technological largesse upon the people of Earth. Our artist is horrified to discover that his priceless works are, to the clients who have made him super-rich, mere pornography. His artistic purity sullied, he is unable to create until he relearns—graphically, of course—the value of “beauty and lust” (156). Despite (or perhaps because of) the present of the aliens, this may be the most human story in the collection.

Finally, we are ushered to a climax by the title story, ‘The Bachelor Machine’, saved for last, and perhaps containing the most pathos and poignancy of all. It is also probably the least sexy story in the collection, in as much as the graphic descriptions of flirting, foreplay and fucking are designed to be unattractive rather than titillating. Our hero, a drifting in a post-apocalyptic cityscape, visits a decrepit and barely-functioning robot whore; reminded at every step of her artificiality (both in terms of manufacture and of faked sexual interest), of the countless men she has serviced, and the disrepair this has left all over her ruined chassis. Telegraphed a mile off, it is no surprise to learn that the drifter is actually the whore in this relationship, paid to make the has-been sex-bot feel wanted when no one would pay to have sex with her now; more surprising is how Christian manages to imbue this relationship with a certain tenderness, a sense of sympathy for these decayed characters whose best is behind them. Another case of the erotic motif used to tell a human story, perhaps the most important story of all.

There are technical problems with this book; not really enough to spoil the reader’s pleasure, but more than you would expect even from a small-press publication. A scattering of infelicities and repeated words, clustered more in some stories than others, are little more than typos, although they should have been caught by an editor. More interesting, although a subjective taste, is Christian’s penchant for rich and poetic metaphors, sometimes bordering on the synesthetic, whose beauty he then undercuts by feeling the need to explain them in the adjacent phrase (an example: “pulsing advertisements: product-placement nebulae” [157]; either half of that expression would have been enough). On the whole, the erotic passages are a bit better written than the science fiction.

Perhaps it is not the role of erotic literature to titillate or sexually excite the reader; this is not, after all, mere pornography. Personally, I find most erotica too personal, too geared to the kinks of the writer (or, I should say, of the implied narrator, since the author’s own sexuality is not necessarily revealed in his work), to work for me; I couldn’t even appreciate a classic eroticist like Anaïs Nin, for her brand of mildly kinky sex is not mine. So I would be reluctant to argue that Christian’s erotica fails to titillate, as I hinted above and have been suggesting throughout this review; in fact on the contrary, there is such a wide variety of sexual preference, performance, and function in this collection that there will be something for almost everyone (and something to turn off almost everyone).

More to the point, however, the sexual content in stories such as these serve rather to remind us that we’re human, that our concerns such as love, lust, companionship, rejection, nostalgia, however fleshy or base, are universals. The sex in these stories serves as a microcosm for all of life, for social observation, for political satire, for the promotion of tolerance. In other words, the role of sex in well-written erotica is analogous to the role of technology in science fiction, or magic and beasts in fantasy: yes it’s exciting, yes we take a geeky or prurient interest in them, yes we enjoy them for what they are, but ultimately they’re the tools that tell a bigger story, that paint a more important picture. And on these terms, Christian’s science-fictional erotica is very well-written indeed.

Reviewed by Johann Carlisle

Some Interesting Exposure

This may very well fall into a "Too Much Information" category, but keep your peepers peeled for an upcoming (ahem) 'revealing' exposure of of a certain moderately-well-known writer by the absolutely wonderful Shilo McCabe as part of her Sex Positive Photo Project.  You have been warned ....

M.Christian Teaches Sex Magic Manifesting Positive Life Energy Through Erotic Play

If you live anywhere near San Francisco here's your chance to attend my class, Sex Magic Manifesting Positive Life Energy Through Erotic Play, at the Citadel on Tuesday, March 8th, 2011, from 8:00PM to 10:00PM.  I'm really looking forward to this very fun event and can almost guarantee that a good time will be had by all!

Sex, without a doubt, is a powerful personal force: it has the ability to not only give tremendous pleasure but also lift us up beyond our normal selves, and sometimes even to higher states of consciousness. Whether through sex with a partner or via masturbation, this class will explore how sex can be used to explore sometimes hidden spiritual and sensual dimensions, grow as a sexual being, manifest positive life-changing energy, or simply have a lot of wonderfully erotic fun!


But sex also has its emotional risks as well, and participants will also learn how to protect themselves as they explore sex magic and deal with sometimes shocking revelations about who they are as a sexual being.

In addition to being a recognized master of erotica -- with over 300 short stories, nine collections, and six novels in print -- M.Christian has been in the San Francisco scene since the early 90s and has taught for QSM, The Center for Sex and Culture, San Francisco Sex Information, Janus, and has been a featured presented at The Floating World and many other venues. He is so kinky he doesn't even walk straight.

"All Tied Up" Bondage Article From Pornotopia - Now On Josie-whip.com

This is a kick: the great folks at the brand new Josie-whip site just put up my piece on sensual bondage, All Tied Up, from Pornotopia.  Check it out here ... and in the meantime here's a tease:

 

The old chestnut goes that while it's easy to catch a man, it's hard to keep him - well, hopefully, after this brief introduction to the art of sensuous bondage, some of you out there will not only know how to keep him, but also, should he slip loose, have him coming back for more.

It's hard to see how bondage gained its popularity - at least from an outsider's point of view. It's kind of like looking at an artichoke: many heads have been scratched pondering the first caveman (or cavewoman) who boiled the ugly thing then peeled away the barbed leaves for the tasty insides (let alone scrapping the leaves themselves). Bondage is much the same - getting pleasure out of being tied up?

But for those who've tried it, the allure of sensuous bondage is obvious: the emotional relief of being freed from all physical actions; the danger of being at the mercy of another person (and a female person at that!); and the physical sensation of being wrapped, held, immobilized - many people might turn up their noses at S/M, of what they see as "pain", but not the idea of being restrained and ministered to. You can't whip me but - yeah! - you can sure tie me up!

Like everything, there is a wrong way, a right way, and room for exploration in bondage. The wrong way is pretty obvious - your submissive is in pain (not the good kind) or suffers some kind of injury because of your bondage.

[MORE]

Odd Balling (2)

Ladies and gentlemen (and all the folks between), here's a taste of my brand new Odd Balling column for the great folks at YNOT.  For the rest just click here. 

#

YNOT – While the first two weeks in February ushered in the Chinese Year of the Golden Rabbit, they may as well have been called "The Week of the Transvestite Platypus" for all the outrageous, bizarre and just-plain-weird things that have popped up.

Not to insult transvestites, you understand ... or platypuses, for that matter.

Take, for instance, Asia News Network’s report that Thai airline PC Air will be offering flights featuring cabin staff with ... well, “staffs”: transsexual cabin crews.

"We are the first airline to hire all the genders. This has brought us a positive perception," airline spokesman Chuthathip Ratanasophon said — though no one has commented on what passengers are supposed to pull in case of emergency decompression.

Protection seems to be the obsession of the week, beginning with the theft of 726,000 condoms. As reported by Digital Spy, the rubbers vanished on the way from the manufacturer, Sagami Rubber Industries, to Japan.

"This has never happened to us before, and we are very perplexed,” Norinari Wakui of Sagami Rubber said about the theft. “We are not certain if it was of a premeditated nature."

While it is not YNOT.com’s business to offer investigative advice, we suggest the Japanese authorities keep an eye out for a shifty-looking character with a suspiciously bulging wallet.

[MORE]

Watch Out For The Mysterious "M"

Okay, I know I can be a bit of a character but this is beyond 'meta:' my sweet friend Fulani recently sold a book of his kick-ass erotica to a certain publisher I work with, and whom I am rather partial to, and in celebration he wrote this very cool little piece ... guest starring someone you may recognize:

He first saw me at the art exhibition. Would have seen a lot of me, I guess, since I was one of the exhibits. He left his business card with the organizers. Fulani, it said. Just the one name, or nickname.

People said he was genuine, but reclusive. They said he lived in a suburban house with a workshop in the back garden and did most of his business online.

He was older than I’d thought, but puckish. He looked at me as if to say “I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.”

He read my stuff and said he wanted to introduce me to M. M would want to publish it.
Only thing was, I didn’t know who M was, and I’d only just met Fulani.

Fulani was supposed to be straight-up, a good reputation, a well-known figure on the fetish scene, a man of his word.

I told him I wanted to know more about his bona fides. He nodded. “You want to know I am who your friends say I am, that I’m not going to rip you off big time.” Also he noticed I was looking at the earthenware pot in the corner of the room. It contained a selection of canes and crops.

His outhouse had a big, heavy vintage flatbed press.

“I use it to make limited edition prints and books,” he explained as he tied my wrists to the top of the frame. “I could make a photo print of your journal and publish a hundred copies. But whether there’s a market for them in that format – that’s the question.”

I tested the bonds. They were tight. He knew his ropes. I made a sound that came out halfway between a purr and growl.

“My opinion is, as a new author you’re better off selling to a publisher who can move a lot of copies.” He unzipped my skirt and noticed for the first time that I hadn’t bothered with underwear. “Also,” he said, “my opinion is, you have a wonderful ass. I shall enjoy putting marks on it.” Judging by the way he ran his fingers over my ass cheeks, he’d noted that I had a few faded bruises on there. Tomas’s doing, from a couple of days previously.

He left me there while he went back to fetch the canes. It was a warm afternoon. The scent of honeysuckle drifted through an open window, mixed with the richer smell of printer’s ink. I planted my feet wide apart and tried to relax. He was probably five minutes. In my head it was about five hours: I was after all naked in a shed in a suburban garden, visible through the window, about to be marked up by a complete stranger.

It was that familiar, deliciously deviant feeling.

What can I say? He knew his stuff. Started gently and built up the sensation slowly, on the well-known principle that you can always go harder but can’t take back one that’s too hard. He began with a crop, then a longer, stiff riding whip that was moderately stingy. I wriggled. He chuckled. I started to get into the zone. He noticed my breathing changing, I think.

The cane he used was heavy, about as thick as his thumb. Made me present my ass. One stroke. I pulled against the cuffs, the sting of it reverberating through my body. He let me compose myself, slow down my breathing, present my ass again.

Six strokes. I felt all the little jumping, twitching, sizzling connections from ass to pussy to thighs belly spine back of neck and crawling into my brain. I felt fevered. I was ready for him to take me, then and there, in that position.

Instead he made me turn around, face out from the frame.

Through half-closed eyes I saw a wooden tray with pegs on it, and a length of string.

Pegs in two lines, starting at each collarbone and running across my breasts, towards my navel, then to just above my clit and a couple on the inside of each thigh.

“I’m sure you can figure this out,” he said, threading the string from each peg to the next in a long line. I was more interested in the sensations from the pegs on my breasts, my belly, my thighs.

“This process tends to make victims quite vocal,” he murmured. Victims, plural, I noticed. There was a ballgag in his hand. Then it was in my mouth and buckled tighter than was strictly comfortable. I did a lot of mmmph-mmmphing just for effect.

He seemed to enjoy the effect. When he brushed against me I could feel his erection pushing on my hip.

He left the pegs on for a quite a while. Assured me this would add to the effect.

Certainly made me breathe harder, trying to put myself in the right mental space to handle the sensations. Trying to still my body, not squirm, not move my hips the way they really wanted to move.

Fingers moved gently over my tits, belly, clit. No fair. I’m ready, just fuck me.

When he pulled the cord that yanked off the pegs it was a massive headrush. You’d think it should be painful, but the sensation just disconnected my head from my body and cushioned me in endorphins.

I was dazed, limp and hanging in the cuffs, eyes refusing to focus. The ringing in my ears was the echo of me squealing through the gag, I think. And all I could think to say was the one thing I wanted to happen. Uck ee oww. No consonants because the gag prevented them, but he got my meaning and fulfilled my wish. Spread me over the flatbed of the press, opened my legs. And yes, I was juiced up.

This guy was, I’d say, twenty years my senior. Back where I grew up, that could have made him old enough to be my father.

I’d figured that before I came here. Was it, unconsciously, why I’d chosen the over-the-knee socks, the short skirt and cropped top? The deviant schoolgirl look? Had I wanted the age-play aspect of this?

These were thoughts I only had afterwards, because he was long and vigorous, and twenty years older or not, he kept going a hell of a long time.

When I finally came round, got mind and body back together, he was looking though my handwritten journal again.

“Interesting stuff,” he remarked. “It’s like a renaissance of erotica, in the classical sense of the term.”

“Huh?”

“Renaissance: a re-awakening of artistic and intellectual inquiry into the world and the human condition. Never mind. Let’s just say it’s good.”

***

I rewrote a lot. Put entries in date order, changed names and some details to protect the guilty. Rephrased the whole thing in the third person, so I was a character in my own stories.

Here’s what the mysterious M said: “Great news, sweetie – the publisher loves your book. Please sign the attached contract.”

I could have been fucked sideways.

Actually, I was. Fulani did. It became our regular thing. Especially after I threatened to write another book that would be about him.

He knows I’m not joking. Says he’ll have to make sure I have enough material for it.

Bibrary Bookslut Talks To Me

This was a LOT of fun: the fantastic Bibrary Bookslut just did an interview with yers truly.  Here's a taste and to read the rest of the great chat just click here.

♥ For those who may be new to your writing, and who haven't yet checked out your writing, please tell us a little about yourself.

Oh, boy, where to start?  Well, my usual pseudonym is "M.Christian" (though I have others) and I'm mostly known – if I'm known at all – as an erotica writer (though I've written many other things).  My primary writing site is at http://www.mchristian.com/ (though – you guessed it – I have others).

♥ The journey from 'aspiring' to 'accomplished' can be a long one (and you clearly qualify as accomplished!). When did you begin writing, and how did you feel when you first saw your work in print?

Oh, you (blush)!  Like a lot of writers I certainly don't feel 'accomplished' ... it's all kind of relative, I guess. 

You could say I've always been creative ... the kid in the back of the class drawing pictures of rockets and robots when he should have been listening to what the teacher was saying. I remember writing my first story in the 4th grade, though it wasn't until early high school that I heard that (maybe, possibly) there were people out there who wrote stories for a living. Shortly thereafter I went after that with a kind of (to be polite) pathological vengeance: off and on I tried to write a story a week, though it took me close to ten years to finally sell one.

♥ So, why did you choose erotica as a genre of choice? Is there something specific that draws you to it, or something you feel it offers that other forms of literature do not?

You could say that it chose me: that first story I sold was to a magazine called FutureSex, and then that same story was picked up for Best American Erotica ... and it all sort of took off from there.  I really never planned on being an erotica writer but, always the pragmatist, if someone's buying them I'm writing. 

But I'll let you in on a secret: even though I mostly write erotica, I'm secretly not really writing it.  When I sit down to write something for an erotic market I'm actually writing what I want to write – mystery, horror, romance, science fiction, whathaveyou – and 'leave the lights on' when it comes to the sex scene.  Beyond that, though, I have to say that erotica is actually a very welcoming, supportive, and flexible genre – much more than a lot of others I write in.  A pal of mine once described erotica as being like science fiction back in the 50s, or mysteries in the 30s: where everything was still fresh and new and writers were having a blast creating everything from scratch.   

[MORE]

An Early Birthday Present: Model of A Theo Jansen Strandbeest

It may be a month or so early but here's a cool birthday treat I bought myself: a model of a Theo Jansen Strandbeest (thanks J-List)

The Looking Glass - Thanks, Folks!

Just wanted to toss out a well-deserved thanks to the great folks at The Looking Glass and the fun folks who attended my Magic Words: An Erotic Salon class yesterday.  It was a real blast to do!

Love Without Gun Control - The Introduction

Here's a bit of fun: the introduction to my collection of fantasy/science fiction/horror and (believe it or not) very little smut, Love Without Gun Control.  This was a lot of fun to write ... hope you like!

Congratulations on your purchase of the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine. Utilizing the finest in Hack Technology, we at Write Way guarantee that if correctly used and maintained the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine can give you years of successfully written.

After removing the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine from its ecologically protective shipping container, place it in a convenient location where it will be away from direct sunlight, moisture, dirt or dust, or undue criticism. Next, attach the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine’s Driving Force inlet jack to the nearest source of creative energy. We are Write Way recommend a standard Emotionally Vacant Upbringing (EVU), or Societally Isolated Childhood (SIC) coupled with the optional Write Way Rare Parental Approval (RPA) module for efficient creative drive. Warning: Insufficient creative energy can result in repetitive, arrogant results (see Appendix A: MeMeMe Syndrome) or false modesty (Appendix B: Blush Syndrome).

After attaching your Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine to an available Driving Force, open the Inspiration Input panel located on the lower right section of the machine. Using a small, sharp instrument (such as your penis), activate/deactivate the appropriate DIPshit to assign the desired introduction inspiration input. Warning: Failure to activate the correct combination can result in various undesirable results, leading to arrest and criminal prosecution and/or Literary Awards.

Next remove the deebing support ring (located under the forelock wheel assembly) and carefully stipple the mantune cage until the blue light rotates into the green. With the loose pin in your left hand, then proceed to osculate the frandip to achieve maximum caustic relux feedback. If the frandip doesn’t achieve enough caustic relux feedback, consult the enclosed Troubleshooting Guide or kick the mantune cage wearing a size twelve steel-toed boot, aiming specifically for the wizzing input slot.After the caustic relux feedback has been achieved, it is time to select the Editorial Interface Mask (EIM). Please note that three pre- set Editorial Interface Masks have been preloaded into the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine, specifically the Father Figure (FF), the Tyrannical Ogre (TO), and the Uninspired Hack (UH). If you are interested in other Editorial Interface Masks, the Automatic Introduction Writing Machine Upgrade contains ten others as well as additional viewpoint features such as Alcoholic Blurring (AB) and World-weary Cynicism (WC).

To fully utilize the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine’s Deadline Matching Feature (DMF) it’s important to configure the Irresponsibility and Compulsiveness scale, located on the back of the machine, next to the Frustrated Author Input (FAI) and the Destructive Relationship Exhaust Fan (DREF). Turning the pip knob to the left will increase the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine’s dependability in meeting responsibilities (real or imaginary), though it will also affect the Spontaneity Output Mechanism possibly resulting in a creative, if predictable, column. Reversing the pip knob will diminish predictability but can also result in what is commonly referred to as Deadline Lapse Syndrome, which has been proven to be a leading cause of Writer Termination (WT). Correct balancing of these two forces is integral to the correct operation of the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine.

While we at Write Way understand that even after utilizing the excellent technology embodied in our Automatic Introduction Writing Machine there are other, unknown factors that can affect Creative Output (CO) and Monetary Input (MI), we must still insist that payment for the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine be received within one month of delivery (depending on location and volatility of local delivery personnel). Failure to expedite payment will result in financial and physical penalties, possibly including fines, levies, liens, testicular removal, spinal rearrangement, dental extraction, and colonic impaction.

You are now almost ready to use your Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine to produce admirable and possibly noticable introductions. Before continuing, however, it is important to observe the three-stage Safety Feature Checklist (SFC):

• To ensure proper lubrication of the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine’s internal assembly, a fifth of cheap bourbon must be fed into the Inhibition GearBox (IGB) on a daily basis. If suitably cheap bourbon is not available, a bottle of cough syrup or rubbing alcohol can be used.

• If overheating occurs, the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine must be automatically switched into standby mode by turning the fiddle switch to the Moderate setting. This will cause the machine to “wheel-spin” until it cools satisfactorily. Failure to place the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine into this mode if overheated can cause the sensitive gibber line to vaporize, resulting at a ten x thousand foot-pound force explosion. This, naturally, voids the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine’s warranty, as well as any operator within three hundred feet of the device.

• Before final activation of the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine, the operator must completely fill out the attached Waiver of Responsibility (WoR), absolving Write Way of any damages – real, emotional, or imaginary – that the operator may experience during the operation of the machine. Failure to do so will result in the gibber line to vaporize, resulting at a ten x thousand foot- pound force explosion.

If you have followed these instructions carefully, you are now ready to use the Write Way Automatic Introduction Writing Machine and produce profitable and possibly entertaining columns for years to come. If however the machine fails to operate, place it back in its ecologically protective shipping container and return it to an authorized service center or convenient landfill.

If you are in need of an introduction in the meantime, we suggest that you simply retype this manual – god knows, manuals are just like introductions: no one reads them anyway.

A Nice Little Cybersex Pic

Amos Lassen Likes The Bachelor Machine

This is very special: my wonderfully sweet friend Amos Lassen just posted this very nice review of my science fiction erotica collection, The Bachelor Machine. Thanks so much, Amos!

 

Let me start off by saying that I am a huge fan of M. Christian and when he has a new book come out, I am on it immediately. Christian writes good erotica, something that is not easy to do. Anyway can tell a dirty story but not everyone  can put a story into prose and it is here that Christian excels (and that is true of all of his books—if you have not read him, you must). His casts of characters include a little something for everyone and he writes to us and pulls us into his sexual fantasies.

Finally this book is available to all of us and it contains eighteen very hot stories all pulled from the mind of M. Christian, a man who, in my mind, is a master storyteller. When originally published, Cecilia Tan wrote an introduction to the stories and that is reproduced here along with a new forward by Kit O’ Connell and a chat between Tan and Christian on how science fiction and erotica come together.

When I tell you that these stories are hot, I might be giving you an understatement. M. Christian’s erotica comes from the heart and I would love to spend an afternoon at a coffeehouse with him listening to how he comes up with the stories he writes. He manages to give us literary erotica or as I usually call it, literary smut but it is a notch above a lot of what I have read.

In this collection there is a lot of sex but the stories themselves are not about the act of sex but rather what sex means. Christian writes about humanity and being human and the sex is, like we said in Louisiana, lagniappe.  Christian is one of a kind and he again proves that here. By using satire and irony and combining that with science fiction and erotica, it is almost to say that he has created an entire new genre. His literary voice and style are uniquely his and every story here works. We go to places we have never dreamt of and Christian is our able and talented guide.

I have not singled out any of the stories for to do so would be to ruin a unique reading experience and I want all of you to find what I have found in reading M. Christian.

Can't Say It Better

War Is -

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
~ Ambrose Bierce

Picasso on Inspiration

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”

- Pablo Picasso

Teasing/Tempting Taste Of Finger's Breadth

Here's a pre-pre-pre-pre release teasing/tempting taste of my brand new novel, Finger's Breadth, coming soon from Zumaya Books ... stay tuned.

Here's a (work in progress) blurb about it:

Look at your [WORD REMOVED]: four fingers and a thumb, right?  But what if you woke one morning and rather than four fingers and a thumb you were ... short [WORD REMOVED]?  How would you [WORD REMOVED]?  What would you do?  What would you become?

The city is terrified: a mysterious [WORD REMOVED] is haunting the streets of near-future San Francisco, drugging and amputating the fingertips of queer men.  But what's more frightening than this [WORD REMOVED] is how it transforms the [WORD REMOVED] of the city.  For what's worse, a horror or that it can, so easily, turn any of [WORD REMOVED] into something even more terrifying? 

Erotic.  Terrifying.  Fascinating. [WORD REMOVED].  Disturbing.  Intriguing.  Haunting.  You have never read a [WORD REMOVED] like Finger's Breadth.  You will never look your [WORD REMOVED], or the people all around you, the same way again.

M.Christian At The Looking Glass

Here's a great opportunity to not just meet little ol' me but also to hear me teach one of my favorite classes!  On February 13th, from 2:00 to 4:00PM, I'll be doing Magic Words: An Erotic Salon for the great folks at The Looking Glass in Alameda, California (the Bay Area).

Here's a quickie write up about the class and here's where you can order tickets ... and get details on where the class will be held.

There are many ways to reach your inner sexual and spiritual self -- but one of the most surprisingly powerful paths is through the written word. In this lecture/workshop, participants will hear how erotic writing (fiction as well non-fiction) can reach hidden places that often lay unexposed, help make personal discoveries and to assist in a personal journey of self and sensuality. Participants will learn how to free their erotic writing voices, how to develop their writing towards discovering their erotic spirits within, and when to silence -- and when to listen -- to the inner critic.

In addition to being a recognized master of erotica -- with over 300 short stories, nine collections, and six novels in print -- M.Christian has been in the San Francisco scene since the early 90s and has taught for QSM, The Center for Sex and Culture, San Francisco Sex Information, Janus, and has been a featured presented at The Floating World and many other venues. He is so kinky he doesn't even walk straight. Please check out his website here: www.mchristian.com

Odd Balling (1)

Here's some very cool news: I have a wonderful new gig writing for the great folks at YNOT and part of my new job is writing a bi-weekly column on the week in strange sex: Odd Balling: Weird, Wacky, Warped Sex News.  

And here's a taste of a brand new installment.  For the rest just go to YNOT.

#

Even though the year is less than one month old, it's looking like 2011 very well may go down in history as “The Year Of The Weirder-Than-Weird Sex Stuff.” At least we won’t be bored.

Case in point: During a trip to Las Vegas, New York City resident Hubert Blackman secured the services of a lady of affordable virtue. Nothing unusual about that, right?

Au contraire. Seems Mr. Blackman's experience with a woman he hired through hook-up agency Las Vegas Exclusive Personals left him less than satisfied, so he is suing the escort service because, as he notes in court documents, she "did an illegal sexual act on me during her paid service to me."

Blackman seeks a refund of the $275 he paid and "a $1.8 million verdict for the tragic event that happened." Las Vegas Exclusive Personals hasn't responded, but we imagine their business is booming with clients asking for the “Blackman Special.” Anything worth $1.8 mil is definitely worth checking out.

[MORE]

And What Do Indecent Men Protest??

How To Write And Sell Erotica - Now On Amazon!

For all you folks you may have been waiting to buy my brand-new book, How To Write And Sell Erotica, until it was up on amazon well, ta-da, it's now up there.  So buy the damned thing, will ya?

Dark Roasted M.Christian

Check it out: a brand new Dark Roasted Blend piece I did just went up: this time about artists who work with the earth itself.

Go to a museum and look at the paintings, or the sculpture.  Go to a bookstore and read the novels, or the stories, or the poems.  Go to a concert and listen to the music.

Look out the window ... and see art?  Some artists use oils, charcoal, watercolors, words, or notes but others use the earth itself, sometimes on a scale that, to appreciate it, means stepping far away from it: very far away.

Travel to Catron County, New Mexico, for instance and you'll see a work that is immediately, and quite literally, striking.  Created by Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field is 400 steel poles set in a grid covering one mile by one kilometer portion of desert land.  The Lightning Field is impressive, a haunting visa of steel spears against the dramatic landscape of the Southwest, but what gives it that literal striking beauty is that De Maria plan for his work involves those poles interacting with one of the most beautiful signs in the desert: lightning.  Given the right set of circumstances, nature itself paints itself in brilliant illuminations of forked electricity, shaped and sculpted by De Maria's metal rods.

Not that far away, in Rozel Point, Utah, you'll see an installation that, because of the on-again, off-again nature of the material it's made of actually vanished for close than 30 years.  Created by Robert Smithson using natural rock, Spiral Jetty is exactly that: a coiling formation of stone that, when it was first created in 1970, was harshly black but as it aged its become more and more pink and white because of the its home in the Great Salt Lake.  As with The Lightning Field, Spiral Jetty works with the earth itself, not just in appearance, meaning color, but also as in appearing and disappearing: when the water rose in the lake the work it did it's already-mentioned disappearing act, only to reappear again recently.

While not as large in scale as Smithson or De Maria, there's an artist whose work has been known to bring tears to even the most jaded of eyes. Andy Goldsworthy works with nature, and nothing else, to create some truly unique, and absolutely beautiful, art.

 No glue, no supports, no paint ... nothing but grass, stone, ice, and the earth: Goldsworthy creates wonders with just the at hand wonder of the natural world.

Still existing on the earth, the art of Jim Denevan, is so large, so staggering, that to appreciate them you have to step away from it all: from the ground and even, in some cases, the earth itself.  Created, like Goldsworthy, with nature itself, one of Denevan's creations is acknowledged as the largest artwork created.  Ever.

At over nine miles across, this Denevan's creation in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, is the one for the record books ... that is, until Denevan or another artist likes him, goes for something even larger:

Another earth artist is Michael Heizer's work-in-progress called City, in Nevada.  Almost as big as it's namesake at one and a quarter miles long, Heizer's creation, however, is not steel and cement but stone and other natural materials.

James Turrell, too, uses the earth itself for his work but unlike some other environmental artists he uses not just the ground but also the sky above.  His Roden Crater, which is considered on the list of immense artworks with Denevan's creations, is an ongoing work that will, eventually, transform a natural crater in Flagstaff, Arizona, into an open air observatory where the earth will provide a naturally framed view of the sky above.

But if we have to talk about the earth and art, as well as art so big it can only be appreciated by being far above it, we have to travel to Peru, and back several thousand years into the past.

A favorite of ancient astronaut believers, the fact is that the Nazca lines were created by men and women who may have been working with simple tools but utilizing their very intelligent minds.  Created by removing the native gravel to expose the different-colored ground under, the lines depict a wide variety of shapes and forms, some purely geometric, but others representing the animals the Nazca natives were most familiar with: spiders, fish, llamas, lizards, hummingbirds and others.

While the execution is phenomenal, a low whistle is absolutely needed when that level of skill of coupled with the size of the lines.  The largest of the forms stretches almost across 900 feet across and pretty much all of them are all but invisible ... unless you happen to be high above the earth they were carved into.

Jack Clifton, author of The Eye of the Artist, said, "Man's reaction to his earth expressed by means of a medium is art."  In the case of these wonderful artists, the ground beneath our feet and the sky above our heads their art is the earth itself, a celebration of the world literally all around us.

Weirdsville On The Cud

Here's another special piece I did for the great folks at the Aussie site The Cud.  This time it's about the theft of a very famous work of art.

 

If it had been done in this age of iphones, ipads, and the rest of our high tech ilives, the movie would have had Clooney or Willis dangling upside down over a pick-up-sticks weave of alarm lasers while a geeky cohort (maybe Steve Buscemi or Alan Cumming), face green from the digital overload bouncing up from a laptop, rattles off a second-by-second update on the imminent wee-oo-wee-oo arrival of the stern-jawed Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale.

But while the lady did vanish – a very, very special lady – the means of her vanishing, while maybe a tad less dramatic, is no less fascinating.  While you'll no doubt immediately recognize the lady in question, you may not know her full name, or some of the more interesting details of her portrait.  Begun by a certain well-known artist back in 1503, the likeness of Lisa del Giocondo wasn't finished until some years later, around 1519.  After the death of this rather well known artist, the painting was purchased by King François I, and then, after a certain amount of time and other kings, it finally ended up in the Louvre.  An interesting note, by the way, is that – while not a King – the painting was borrowed from the Louvre by Napoleon to hang in his private quarters, and was returned to that famous French museum when the Emperor became ... well, not the Emperor.

Its official title is Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo but the smile says it all, and in 1911 it was stolen – and wasn't returned until 1913.

While much of the theft is still a mystery, what is known is that on August 22, 1912, Louis Béroud, a painter and fan of the legendary Mona Lisa, came into the Louvre early one morning to study the famous work of Leonardo da Vinci, instead finding a bare wall.  In a pure Inspector Clouseau bit of history, the museum staff didn't immediately put bare wall and missing painting together and instead thought the painting had been taken to be photographed.  It took Béroud, checking with the photographers themselves, to bring it to the attention of the guards that the painting had been stolen.

Suspects were many and varied: a curious one was Guillaume Apollinaire, the critic and surrealist, who, because he can once called for the Louvre to be burnt to the ground, was actually arrested.  While no-doubt annoying, he was eventually cleared and released, but not before trying to finger, unsuccessfully, a friend of his for the theft, another rather well known painter by the name of Pablo Picasso.

Alas, the actual thief and the method of the robbery are almost painfully plain, though the man and the means weren't discovered until much later.  In 1913, Vincenzo Peruggia, a Louvre employee, was nabbed when he contacted Alfredo Geri, who ran a gallery in Florence, Italy, about the stolen painting.

The story that emerged after his arrest was that on August 20th, 1912, had Peruggia hid in the museum overnight.  On the morning of Sunday, the 21st, he emerged from hiding, put on one of the smocks used by employees and, with ridiculous ease, simply took what is arguably the most famous painting in the world and put it under his coat and walked out the door with it.  When the gendarmes later knocked on Peruggia's door they'd simply accepted his excuse that he'd been working somewhere else the day of the theft, while the painting was hidden under his bed.

What isn't plain, though, was Peruggia's motivation for the theft.  While he constantly argued he'd stolen the Mona Lisa for patriotic reasons, to hopefully return it to his native Italy, many believe a more intriguing, more nefarious, more devilishly elegant explanation – an explanation that involves one of the most legendary crooks and conmen who have ever lived: Eduardo de Valfierno.

Born in Argentina, Valfierno, who liked to call himself a Marqués, was a man with not just a plan, but a remarkably clever plan.  According to those to believe he had a hand in the affair, the Marqués began by commissioning not one, not two, not three but instead six copies of the painting from the equally-legendary forger Yves Chaudron.  Now there's no way anyone would buy a Mona Lisa when the real one was clearly hanging on a wall in the Louvre, so Valfierno hired the poor Peruggia to make off with the original.

Once the original painting was reported missing, Valfierno took his six perfect forgeries and sold them to illicit collectors all over Europe, convincing each and every one that the Mona Lisa they were purchasing was the one and only.  Waiting for the elegance?  Well, even if Valfierno had been caught, the only thing be could have been nailed for was selling forgeries, which none of the collectors he'd sold to were ever willing to report as it would have incriminated themselves as well.  What was an extra bonus, Valfierno could have sold as many copies as he'd wanted as long as the original painting stayed missing.

For those who like to tie Valfierno to the crime, Peruggia only tripped up the whole scheme when he realized that Valfierno had stuck him with the serious end of the crime – the theft – and he'd stumbled when trying to sell the Mona Lisa or, as he claimed, simply trying to return it to his native Italy.

The tale, though, does has a somewhat happy ending: Peruggia, despite the outrage over the theft of the painting in France, was given a rather lenient sentence by the Italian authorities, who felt moved by Peruggia's claim to have been motivated by patriotism.  While little is known about the possible mastermind, Valfierno, considering the brains and creativity involved it's not a huge stretch to imagine him doing quite well afterward.

Meanwhile, The Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, was returned to her noble spot in the Louvre where she smiles out as us to this day: her cryptic expression as mysterious as the shadowy history surrounding her theft in 1911.

How To Wonderfully WriteSex (8)

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):

Please read this if you just had something rejected:

It’s part of being a writer. Everyone gets rejected. Repeat after me: EVERYONE GETS REJECTED. This does not mean you are a bad writer or a bad person. Stories get rejected for all kinds of reasons, from “just not the right style” to a just plain grouchy (or really dumb) editor. Take a few deep breaths, do a little research, and send the story right out again or put it in a drawer, forget about it, remember it again, take it out, read it, and realize it really is DAMNED good. Then send it out again.

Never forget that writing is subjective. My idea of a good story is not yours, yours is not his, and his is not mine. Just because an editor doesn’t like your story doesn’t mean that everyone will, or must, dislike it as well. Popularity and money don’t equal quality, and struggle and disappointment don’t mean bad work. Keep trying. Keep trying. Keep trying.

Think about the rewards, about what you’re doing when you write. I love films, but I hate it when people think they are the ultimate artistic expression. Look at a movie – any movie – and you see one name above all the others: the director, usually. But did he write the script, set the stage, design the costumes, act, compose the music, or anything really except point the camera and tell everyone where to stand? A writer is all of that. A director stands on the shoulders of hundreds of people, but a writer is alone. Steinbeck, Hemmingway, Austin, Shakespeare, Homer, Joyce, Faulkner, Woolf, Mishima, Chekhov – all of them, every writer, created works of wonder and beauty all by themselves. That is marvelous. Special. That one person can create a work that can last for decades, centuries, or even millennia. We pick up a book, and through the power of the author’s words, we go somewhere we have never been, become someone new, and experience things we never imagined. More than anything else in this world, that is true, real magic.

[MORE]

I Have No Idea Why -

- my book, Dirty Words, is mentioned here but it's still very nice to be thought of ...

"Speaking Parts" Excerpt From Rude Mechanicals

Check this out: the very-great Gay/Lesbian Fiction Excerpt blog just posted a very teasing taste from my novella, "Speaking Parts," which is in my collection of technorotica: Rude Mechanicals. 

"Speaking Parts" is one of two novellas plus four expicit short stories of sex and technosex included in the collection Rude Mechanical: Technorotica by M. Christian. Two lovers, one with a camera-shutter eye, come together in a scorching, obsessive, edgy relationship that will take them both to the limits of sexuality and beyond.

Rude Mechanicals: Technorotica
Publisher: PageTurner (November 28, 2009)
ASIN: B002Z3Z9LA

Excerpt from "Speaking Parts:"

#

Pell remembered seeing Arc’s eye—it was the first thing she’d noticed.

Tourmaline and onyx. Silver and gold. A masterpiece watch set in a crystal sphere, the iris a mandala of glowing gold. Her blinks were a camera shutter’s, as imagined by the archetypal Victorian engineer but built by surgical perfection not found anywhere in Pell’s knowledge. The woman’s left eye was jeweled and precise, clicking softly as the woman looked around the gallery, as if the engineers who’d removed her original wet, gray-lensed ball had orchestrated a kind of music to go with their marvelous creation: a background tempo of perfect watch movements to accompany whatever she saw through their marvelous and finely crafted sight. Click, click, click.

An eye like that should have been in a museum, not mounted in a socket of simple human skin and bone, Pell had thought. It should have been in some other gallery, some better gallery, allowed only to look out at, to see other magnificent creations of skilled hands. Jare’s splashes of reds and blues, his shallow paintings were an insult to the real artistry of the woman’s eye.

That’s what Pell thought, at first, seeing Arc – but only seeing Arc’s perfect, mechanical eye.

Pell didn’t like to remember first seeing her that way – through the technology in her face. But it felt, to her, like it had its own kind of ironic perfection to deny it. So Pell lived with the biting truth that she didn’t, at first, see Arc – for her eye.

But later, right after she got momentarily lost in the beauty of Arc’s implant, the woman looked at Pell with her real eye, the gray, penetrating right one – and Pell forgot about the tourmaline, onyx, silver and gold machine.

She had finally seen Arc, herself – the woman, and not the simple, mechanical part. Next to her, the eye was cheap junk: a collection of metal, old rocks, and wires.

* * * *

She wasn’t Arc at first. She began as just the woman with the perfectly created eye. Then she was the beautiful woman. Then she was the woman where she didn’t belong. Seeing her eye, then seeing her, Pell lastly saw her as oil, the kind of oil you’d see pooling in the street, that had somehow managed to make its way into a glass of wine. Agreed, it was cheap red wine – something out of a box and not even a bottle, but, still – she was oil. She didn’t belong and that was obvious, despite the cheapness of the gallery. She could tell, cataloging her bashed and scuffed boots, noting her threadbare jeans, her torn T-shirt, that amid clean jeans and washed (and too black) turtlenecks, she was a discordant tone among the harmonious poseurs in Jare’s tiny South of Market studio.

The woman was aware of her discrepancy. She wandered the tiny gallery with a very large plastic tumbler of vin very ordinare, stopping only once in a while to look at one of Jare’s paintings.

Holding her wine tight enough to gently fracture the cheap plastic with cloudy stress lines, Pell watched her, stared at the tall – all legs and angles, broad and strong – woman with the artificial eye. She tried not to watch her too closely or too intently, sure that if she let slip her fascination she’d scare her off – or worse, bring on an indifferent examination of Pell. Through a sad ballet of a slightly curved lip and a stare that was nothing more than a glance of the eyes, the woman would see Pell but wouldn’t – and that would be an icy needle in Pell’s heart.

Pell had already taken too many risks that night. She already felt like she’d stepped off the edge and had yet to hit the hard reality of the ground. Traps and tigers, beasts and pitfalls for the unwary loomed all around Pell. She moved through her days with a careful caution, delicately testing the ice in front of her, wary of almost-invisible, murky lines of fault. She knew they were there, she’d felt the sudden falling of knowing she’d stepped too far, moved too quickly, over something that had proven, by intent or accident, not to be there. Pell didn’t push on the surface, didn’t put all her weight, or herself, on anything.

But then everything changed. She’d seen Arc and her eye.

The plastic cup chimed once, then collapsed in on itself. Turning first into a squashed oval, the glass cracked, splintered, then folded, the white seams of stress turning into sharp fissures of breakage. The red, freed of its cheap plastic prison, tumbled, cascaded out and down onto her.

Pell had worn something she knew wouldn’t fit with the rest of the crowd. The official color of San Francisco, she knew, would fill the place with charcoal and soot, midnight and ebony. White, she’d decided, would pull some of their eyes to her, make her stand out – absence of color being alone in a room full of people dressed in all colors, combined.

"Looks good on you."

The shock of the wine on her white blouse tumbled through Pell as an avalanche of warmth flowed to her face. The decision to wear white that night had come from a different part of herself, a part that had surprised her. Now she was furiously chastising that tiny voice, that fashion terrorist who had chosen the blouse over other, blacker ones.

And so Pell responded, "Not as good as you would" to the tall, leggy, broad shouldered girl with the artificial eye. Which was beautiful, but not as beautiful as the rest of her.

* * * *

Pell’s reason for being at the gallery was Jare. Although she could never wrap her perceptions around the gaunt boy’s paintings, she still came when he asked. Jare, Pell, Fallon, Rasp and Jest. They weren’t close – but then foxhole buddies aren’t always. They weren’t in combat, but they could be. All it would take would be one computer talking to another – no stable job history, thus conscription.

All it took were two computers, passing pieces of information back and forth. Till that happened, they hid and watched the possibility of a real foxhole death in a hot, sweaty part of Central America fly by.

Foxhole buddies. It was Jare’s term – some fleck of trivia that’d hung around him. They didn’t have an official name for their tiny society of slowly (and in some cases not too slowly) starving artists, but Pell was sure that Jare would smile at his trivial term being immortalized among a band of too-mortal kids.

That was Jare. While the rest of them tried to focus on pulling their paintings (Pell, Jare, and Rasp), music (Jest), and sculpture (Fallon) as high as they could, there was something else about Jare – something, like his paintings, that refused to be understood. His techniques were simple enough, broad strokes of brilliant color on soot-black canvas, but his reasons were more convoluted.

Or maybe, Pell had thought earlier that evening (before turning a white blouse red and seeing the woman with the artificial eye for the first time) both man and his work were simple: broad, bold statements designed to do nothing but catch attention. He was like his paintings, a grab for any kind of attention – an explanation too simple to be easily seen.

In the tiny bathroom, Pell tried to get the wine out of her blouse. Contradictory old wives’ tails: first she tried cold, then hot water. The sink ran pink and so, soon, did her blouse.

The woman with the eye stood outside the door, a surprisingly subtle smile on her large mouth. Every once and a while she’d say something, as if throwing a bantering line to the shy girl inside to keep her from drowning in embarrassment.

"Who’s he foolin? I can do better crap than this with a brush up my ass.”

"You should see this chick’s dress. Looks like her momma’s – and momma didn’t know how to dress, either.”

"Too many earrings, faggot. What year do you think this is?

"Hey, girl. Get out here with that shirt. It’s better looking than this fucking stuff on the walls."

Cold water on her hands, wine spiraling down the sink. Distantly, Pell was aware that her nipples were hard and tight – and not from the chill water. Down deep and inside, she was wet. It was a basic kind of primal moisture, one that comes even in the burning heat of humiliation. Finally, the blouse was less red than before. Planning to run to where she’d dropped her old leather coat to hide the stigmata of her clumsiness, her excitement in two hard brown points, she opened the door.

The tall woman smiled down at her, hot and strong. In one quick sweep of her eyes, Pell drank her tall length, strong shoulders, columnar legs. She was trapped, held fast between the hot eyes she knew must have been staring at her, pinning her straight to her embarrassment, and the presence of the woman.

Her eye, the eye, clicked a quick chime of precision – as if expanding its limits to encompass the totality of Pell. Pell did not mind her intense examination. It added, with a rush of feelings, to the quaking in her belly, the weakness in her knees.

"Gotta splash. Wait right here,” Arc said.

Of course she waited.

After a few hammering heartbeats, the door opened and she came out – butchly tucking her T-shirt back into her jeans – and Pell was again at the focus of her meticulously designed sight.

"You live anywhere close? I’m tired of this shit. You?"

"Down the block. Just on the corner," Pell said, trying hard not to smile too much.

The woman downed the small sample of red in her glass and, looking for a place to put it down, and not finding any, just dropped it with a sharp plastic clatter on the floor. "Show me. It can’t be worse than here. Too many fucking artists."

Dark Roasted Biscotti

Here's yet another of my takes on doing a Biscotti for the always-wonderful Dark Roasted Blend.  I have to say these are a real kick and a treat to put together!

Listen To Me!

Here is a real treat, if I do say so myself ... which I do because this is a very cool audio interview between myself and my wonderful friend, and Renaissance Publisher, Jean Marie Stine about all kinds of things, including the release of my brand new book, How To Write And Sell Erotica, and the new anthologies I'm editing for Renaissance.

The Bachelor Machine On Smashwords

If you'd like a neat little taste of my science fiction collection, The Bachelor Machine (and why wouldn't you?) check out Smashwords for a peak inside.

Some Robots Have All The Luck

via cyberneticzoo.com

When you sell a man a book -

“Lord! when you sell a man a book you don’t sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”
  - Christopher Morley

Rudely Mechanical