Amos Lassen Likes Finger's Breadth

I am ... simply speechless: Amos Lassen is not just a fantastic reviewer and writer but he is also a dear friend - which makes his very touching review for my brand new (and just released) new novel, Finger's Breadth so touching.  You are the best, Amos!

I have long been a fan of M. Christian. His erotic writings are what I called literary erotica and he is one of the founders of that genre. His horror writings also are in a class of literary horror and when he tells you a story, you simply cannot stop reading. When he combines horror and erotica, you are in for a special treat and that is exactly what he does in his new book, “Finger’s Breadth”. The idea for this book is clever and terrifying, probably because something like this could really happen and when you have a story that could be real, you actually shudder twice as much.

The story is set in San Francisco of the near future and something very strange is going on.  Someone is haunting the city, drugging the gay men and then cutting off the tip of their little finger. But that is not all. The ensuing terror causes a transformation of the men of the city and the very idea that something like this can happen causes everyone to cower in fear. People begin to suspect each other and no one seems safe.

The story begins with a prelude that sets tone of what is to follow and from the very first line, we feel a sense of gloom as an uneasy atmosphere takes over.

Session No.: 10977642-2
Case Ref: AS-D-341945491
Date: May 7 —
Location: 1: McAllister Detention Center, RM 146
Subject Name: Kenneth Allen Wertz
Subject ID: N946671291
Interrogating Officer: Eric Knorr
Officer ID: CSS-7992309
Attorney Present: No

Officer: Okay, right, so you said you didn’t see anything?
Subject: Yeah, I didn’t see anything.
Officer: You just woke up like that, huh?
Subject: Yeah. On Muni. In the morning, I mean.
Officer: Someone cut your fucking finger off and you
didn’t see anything?
Subject: Yeah, I guess so.
Officer: Tell it to me again”

And we are off on an adventure into the unknown where things become stranger and stranger as the novel moves forward. I Feel I may have already said a great deal about the plot and I do not want to give too much away and spoil the reading experience. Suffice it to say that I was on the edge of my seat as I read. If I am to give you my opinion, let me first say that what makes this novel really unique is that it is not propelled by characters nor plot but by the story that Christian has managed to write in a way that the language and the style that pulls the reader in. For me that has always been the author’s trademark and why I was so free to use the word Literary as I described his erotica and horror stories. It is not that hard to come up with an idea that can be turned into a horror story and that is why horror has been part of the folklore of America and why these stories are so popular on camp-outs as we sit around a campfire. To successfully do this, we need a combination of characters and plot but more important than all else is a novel way to relate the story. For me that is the definition of M. Christian. This book is unlike anything I have read before and I suspect that it will stay with me for quite a while.

Out Now: Filthy Boys - Sizzling Gay Male Erotica

Remember how I mentioned that my queer collection, Filthy (now called Filthy Boys: Sizzling Gay Male Erotica), would be coming out in a brand new edition from the always-fantastic Renaissance/Sizzler?  Well, guess what - it just came out!  It will be on amazon very soon (and a print-on-demand version coming in a few months) but check out the new edition here.

"M. Christian's stories are the fairy tales whispered to one another by dark angels whose hearts and mouths are brimming with lust. He goes beyond the pale, ordinary definitions of sexuality and writes about need and desire in their purest forms. Readers daring enough to stray from the safety of the path will find in his images and words a garden of delights to tempt even the most demanding pleasure-seeker." –Michael Thomas Ford, Lambda Award winner

• "To say this is a great book is an understatement. Filthy transcends its genre of erotica and enters the realm of literature." -Donovan Brown, author My Brotha My Brotha
  
• "While Filthy is a wonderful book, and just the thing if you are in the mood for an enjoyable quickie (or twenty)." –Mathilde Madden, author Reflection's Edge
  
• "The hottest explosion since the Big Bang." -Ian Philips, author See Dick Deconstruct
  
• "If you are looking for sexually-charged fiction that also has heart and intelligence “Filthy” is the collection for you." –Emily Veinglory, author Lovers and Ghosts

Ernest Hogan On Love Without Gun Control

Did I say cool - when I was talking about being blown-away by one of my favorite writers blurbing The Bachelor Machine?  What I mean to say is extremely cool as he just sent me a blub for my non-smutty collection, Love Without Gun Control.  Thanks again, Ernest - yer the best!

A few years ago I tried to read a tasteful literary magazine full of stories where nothing much happened, and the authors and characters were proud of it. The stories in LOVE WITHOUT GUN CONTROL are not like that. M. Christian lets the reader have it with booth barrels in story after story that set a new standard for Twenty-First Century pulp fiction. From far-out science fiction to gritty, hardboiled realities these are the kind of stories that make the reader hang on for dear life on a wild ride.

- Ernest Hogan

Guest Post: I Masturbate!

The coolness just keeps on coming.  You, no doubt, remember me mentioning - and undressing for - Shilo McCabe, right?  If not then take a look at the shot below by her of my magnificently naked self.

Well, the really-great Shilo just posted an old classic of mine, "I Masturbate," on her site as the final part of her awe-inspiring project of the same name.  I'm posting a taste of it below but for the rest you need to go to her site ... and be sure and check out the rest of the great series.  Thanks, Shilo!

Here we have a final adieu to National Masturbation Month 2011. I'm pleased to offer a guest post by my friend M. Christian.  It was the title of this piece of writing that inspired me to name my month of masturbation photos "I masturbate..." 

Thanks to everyone who helped to make "I masturbate..." such a success. I can't wait for May 2012! 
-Shilo

_______________________________________

I Masturbate!

Sure, I masturbate. Yeah, I jerk off. Damned straight, I yank it, pull it, stroke it, rub it, and jerk it. Lube, soap, shampoo or split. Left hand, right hand, frotage (look it up), other’s hands, sheets, and gizmos (manual, electric, and even diesel). Like it, love it--do it a lot.

Let’s get this straight--we all do it. Sure, yeah, right: “not me” someone says. Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. We all do it. Nuns do it, dogs do it, cats do it, bees do it, Newt Gingrich and Jessie Helms do it (god, what a thought!). You say you don’t do it, you mean it when you say you don’t do it. Well, who leaves the wet spot on the bed, a topless Tinkerbell?

I masturbate. Come on, let’s say it together, enunciate those syllables: “I” --rounding chorus of self identification. Come on, belt that fucker out--“I”--mean it now, say it true--“Mast-ur-bate.”

I masturbate. He masturbates. She masturbates. They masturbate. We all masturbate. That out of the way? Breathing maybe a bit easier now? Let me tell you this, the old cliché of imagining folks in their underwear has zilch over thinking of all of you sitting there rubbing stroking, jacking, jilling yourselves into a grazed euphoria of self-love. Makes saying that I do it real easy.

[MORE]

Ernest Hogan On The Bachelor Machine

I will not say cool ... I will not say cool ... I will not say cool ... okay, screw it: this is the very definition of cool.  Normally I resist reaching out to writers I admire (bad experiences and all that) but I am such a fan of Ernest Hogan I just had to write him - and was wonderfully pleased to discover that the author of two of my all-time favorite books - High Aztech and Cortez On Jupiter - is a as nice as he is brilliant.


How brilliant?  Well, read this books and find out.  How nice?  Just check out this blurb he just sent me for my erotic science fiction collection, The Bachelor Machine:

These stories report in from the outrageous frontier of the possibilities of technology plugged into sexuality. The world may not be ready for this. I hope M. Christian isn't "eliminated" by fundamentalist terrorists, or taken prisoner by a porn cartel that will mine his twisted brain for ideas.

- Ernest Hogan

Still More Philosophy

Circlet Likes The Bachelor Machine

This is very sweet!  Okay, Circlet may have published the new version of my erotic science fiction collection, The Bachelor Machine, but that still doesn't mean this rave review of the book by Gayle C. Straun isn't a real treat!

 

Readers of such erotic “classics” as The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival, the Belle of Delaware can perhaps be forgiven for imagining every representative of the genre to be a trite bildungsroman in which the narrator awakens to sexual maturity through a successive series of literally incredible erotic encounters featuring highest rate of simultaneous orgasm known to mankind. However, there has long existed another strain within the genre, perhaps best exemplified by the great Renaissance satirist and pornographer Pietro Aretino, whose Dialogues exhibit an awareness that sex is not so separate from social class and power, while at the same time expressing a deep and abiding sympathy for those who lack both.

M. Christian comes from the latter tradition of erotic storytelling, and his collection of short stories, The Bachelor Machine, marries action both hot and steamy with what the Japanese call aware, or “beautiful sadness,” all set in future worlds where the lines between man and machine, reality and illusion, necessity and desire have become blurred, forcing people to stake out their own identities. Unlike the characters in a Philip K. Dick novel, who regularly fret over what to take as “real,” M. Christian’s creations are much more at home with this ambiguity, be it the courtesan Fields in “State,” a human who dolls herself up as a robot for men who believe they are fucking something mechanical, or the eponymous “Bachelor Machine,” an old robot whore who pays human clients to come in, just so that she can feel needed once more. The author even skirts the boundaries of the consensual—but without ever indulging in tired rape fantasy—in such stories as “Bluebelle,” “Butterflie$,” and “Everything But the Smell of Lillies,” the last most notable for featuring a hooker wired so that clients can kill her and have their way with her, while she experiences everything, only to revive later and start it all over.

Imagine the stories of Anїas Nin dosed heavily with William Gibson, and you might approximate this collection by M. Christian. Sex, futurism, and narrative mix seamlessly rather than taking turns (now a bit of story, now a bit of tech, and now the sex you’ve been waiting for) as in so many erotic tales, underlying the truth that we never stop being sexual creatures, and we never stop being people of our time and place. Add to that the reality that we simply aren’t always successful, for these are the stories of both hackers and hacks, and the machinery with which they interact erases none of their humanity: the man who sells off his memories, one by one, to buy a few minutes with a favored woman, or the technophile who has his penis replaced with a state-of-the-art mechanical model but forgets to charge it before a hot date. Oh, the sex in The Bachelor Machine is amazing, to be sure, but the characters will haunt the reader’s thoughts long after they’ve passed out from orgasmic bliss.

Northwest Leather Celebration - thanks!

Thanks to all the great folks who came out to hear my Polyamory: How To Love Many And Well class at the the Northwest Leather Celebration last weekend.  It was a real treat to do - I just hope you all had as much fun as I did!

Finger's Breadth - The Final Cover!

Ta-da! Here's the final version of my new novel from the great folks at Zumaya Books: Finger's Breadth.

Here's a bit about it:

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

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

Yet More Philosophy

Jesus Saves

The Cover Of The New Edition Of Filthy [Boys]

Now THIS is cool: check out the new cover of the re-release of my queer erotica collection Filthy [Now titled Filthy Boys], coming VERY soon from Sizzler Books.