Friday, September 21, 2012

MC In NYC

As I (ahem) keep mentioning I'll soon be winging my way to the Big Apple (for classes and - hopefully - tons of fun) so my blogging and such will be a bit spotty for the next week or so.  

But definitely keep an eye on my Flickr feed for shots of my New York wanderings...

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Dear Life Form-


Oh Get A Grip - Not Really Other

(From M. Christian's Queer Imaginings)

This is an extra-special treat: the great folks at Oh Get A Grip (Lisabet SaraiC. Sanchez-GarciaCharlotte SteinKathleen BradeanKristina Wright and Jean Roberta) gave me the fantastic opportunity to write, a bit, about what it's like to write queer fiction ... especially since I'm a straight guy.

Here's a tease, for the rest just click here.


Once again, before I start in on the subject at hand I want to give a well-deserved tip-of-the-hat to the fantastic folks here at The Grip for allowing me this little space to write about ... well, we'll get to that in a second.

A bit of background should probably be in order before I begin: I'm a writer. I write a lot of things, from science fiction to horror to mysteries to non-fiction to – let’s not dance around it – smut. Quite a bit of smut, actually.

But what's rather unique about my life in pornography ("erotica" if I'm talking to people of a 'delicate sensibility') is that I've written – and even sold – more a few stories, and even several novels, that are not in my own, sexual, 'familiar territory.'

Or, to put it another way, I've written (and still write) a lot of gay and lesbian fiction ... but I'm straight.

This (ahem) has naturally raised more than few eyebrows – straight ones as well as queer ones: how, they ask, can a heterosexual fellow write – somewhat successfully as well -- to such an orientation not his own?

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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

WAY Ahead Of His Time








(Philosopher Descartes's Sage Internet Advice)

Rainbow Reviews Likes Me2

(from M. Christian's Queer Imaginings)



Check out this very flattering review of my surreal/queer/horror. thriller Me2 by Ryes from Rainbow Reviews ... which has just been re-released as part of the wonderful Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions M. Christians ManLove Collection:


He looks just like you. He acts exactly like you. Every day he becomes more and more like you, taking away that what was yours until there's nothing left. You may think you've met your match ~ or your double ~ but that's not even close. 
Me2 is a psychological thriller about self and identity, written in a unique and interesting structure. The book starts off with an unnamed narrator who works at Starbucks. The narrator mentally labels the Starbucks customers by the flavor/cup sizes of the coffee they order and the personalities he associates with those coffees. This is not different from the way he views the world in terms of brand names. His description of himself also doesn't distinguish him from other men like him. His daily activities are routine, and he even gives his looks a name: a Boy of Summer look.  
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Monday, September 17, 2012

Reminder: M.Christian Is Coming To New York!

Just a little reminder that I'm not only going to be taking a nibble out of the Big Apple as a tourist in late September ... but teaching some very cool classes as well!


Here's what I'm going to be doing and where ... hope to see you there!

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TES MEETING: RELATIONSHIPS SIG - POLYAMORY: HOW TO LOVE MANY AND WELL

DATE: Wednesday, September 26, 2012
TIME: 8:00PM - 11:00PM
LOCATION: Joria Studios
260 West 36th St, 3rd Floor, between 7th and 8th Aves

CLASS DESCRIPTION:
Sure, you've heard of it – and maybe been intrigued by it – but what is polyamory and how do you love more than one person and make it work? How can you deal with jealousy, time-management, emotional rough patches, and more, to enter into multiple sexual relationships? We'll learn to separate the myths from the realities of polyamory, how to make tentative steps towards having more than one partner, and how to approach and deal with the problems of sharing yourself with others, and being involved with someone who, in turn, is involved with someone else.
Doors open at 7:30 pm - Meeting begins at 8 pm

COST: TES Members $4, Students with ID $4, Reciprocal Groups $6, Non-Members $10

FURTHER INFORMATON: TES (https://www.tes.org)

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MAGIC WORDS: USING EROTIC WRITING TO EXPLORE YOUR HIDDEN SEXUALITY AND SPIRITUALITY

DATE: Thursday, September 27, 2012
TIME: 6:30PM - 8:30PM
LOCATION:
SHAG ...a sexy shop
108 Roebling Street @ N. 6th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
347.721.3302
weloveshag@gmail.com

CLASS DESCRIPTION:
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, and to 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.

COST: $20
FURTHER INFORMATON: SHAG’S SITE

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SEX SELLS: HOW TO WRITE AND SELL EROTICA

DATE: Saturday, September 29, 2012
TIME: 1:00PM – 3:00PM
LOCATION:
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual &
Transgender Community Center
208 West 13th Street
New York, NY 10011
Website: www.gaycenter.org
Phone: 212-620-7310

CLASS DESCRIPTION:
Celebrated erotic author M. Christian will be teaching his acclaimed sex-writing class and workshop Sex Sells: How To Write And Sell Erotica one time only in New York City!

The market for erotic fiction and nonfiction has always been popular but these days it's truly booming. Gay, lesbian, bi, straight ... you name it and it's selling like mad!

But even though the genre is more popular that ever, doesn't mean that there aren't important lessons to be learned in how to write, and sell, effective erotica.

For the beginning writer, erotica can be the ideal place to begin getting published, and - best of all - earning money ... and for the experienced author, erotica can be an excellent way to beef up your resume and hone your writing skills.

In Sex Sells: How To Write And Sell Erotica - this wildly entertaining class - M. Christian will review the varieties of personal and literary expression possible in this exciting and expanding field. Here you'll learn not just these creative techniques to writing stories that wonderfully sizzle but also essential lessons in dealing with editors, publishers, marketing your work, using social networking sites, and more.

In Sex Sells: How To Write And Sell Erotica you'll learn:
· How to create love and sex scenes that sizzle
· Current pay rates
· How to write for a wide variety of erotic genres
· Where and how to submit your writing
· The ebook revolution and what it means for writers of any genre
· How to cultivate your erotic imagination
· Where to sell your work to magazines, websites, anthologies, book publishers
· Techniques for writing convincing stories for sexual orientation and interests beyond your own
· The best Internet resources for writers of erotica
· How respond to fans, reviewers and criticism
- and much, much more

COST: $20
FURTHER INFORMATON: www.mchristian.com

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Yet More Philosophy

KABOOM! From Welcome To Weirdsville

(from M. Christian's Meine Kleine Fabrik)

Here's another fun piece from my collection of strange (but true) stuff: Welcome to Weirdsville: This time it's on the largest - non-nuclear - blasts on earth.


KABOOM

For most of us BOOM, KABLAM, KABLOOIE mean a mushroom cloud and a cute little animated turtle talking about ducking and covering – as well as the possible End Of All Life As We Know It.

But, unfortunately, not every monstrous explosion began with J. Robert Oppenheimer saying "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Even putting aside natural blasts such as the eruption of Krakatoa, which was so massive the sound of it was heard as far away as London, the earth has still to be rocked by more than its fair share of man-made, non-atomic BOOMs, KABLAMs, and KABLOOIEs.

One of the more terrifying non-nuclear explosions ever to occur was in 1917 up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Back in December of that year the Mont-Blanc plowed into another ship, the Imo, starting a ferocious fire. Ten minutes later the Mont-Blanc went up, creating what is commonly considered to be one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in earth history.

The Mont-Blanc was a big ship carrying a lot of extremely dangerous cargo – almost 3,000 tons of munitions bound for the war that was then tearing Europe apart. What happened that morning, which lead to the blast and the nightmarish loss of life, reads like a textbook example of whatever could go wrong, did. To avoid being torpedoed, the Mont-Blanc wasn't flying any dangerous cargo flags, so no one except for her crew knew her cargo was so dangerous. When the fire got out of control, the Mont-Blanc's crew tried to warn as many people as possible – but they only spoke French and the language of Halifax was English. Not realizing the danger, crowds began to form to watch the blaze. The Mont-Blanc, on fire, also began to drift toward a nearby pier ... that was also packed with munitions bound for the war.

When everything finally came together – the criminal negligence, the miscommunication, and worst of all the fire and the explosives – the blast was roughly equal to 3 kilotons of TNT. The fireball roared up above the town and the shockwave utterly destroyed the town and everything within one mile of the epicenter. Metal and wreckage fell as far away as 80 miles from the blast and the sound of the detonation was heard more than 225 miles away. The explosion was so huge it generated a tsunami that roared away from the epicenter and then back into the harbor again, adding to the death and destruction.

It wasn't until days later that the true horror of what had happened was realized: Halifax was completely gone, erased from the face of the earth, along with every ship in the harbor and most of the nearby town of Dartmouth. Approximately 2,000 people died from the explosion and another 9,000 were injured.

Unfortunately Halifax wasn't the first such explosives-related accident in 1917. Unbelievably, before the Mont-Blanc destroyed the town, 73 people were killed in the explosion of a munitions factory in Silvertown in West Ham, Essex. The sound was heard as far away as 100 miles. A year earlier, the Johnson Barge No.17 went up Jersey City. Although only a few people were killed, the explosion managed to damage not only Ellis Island but also the Statue of Liberty. There were many other blasts as well, but these are only a few of the more dreadful highlights.

You'd think after these nightmarish explosions, caution about things that go BOOM would have sunk in a bit, but the second world war also saw more than its fair share of explosive accidents. In 1944, for instance, the SS Fort Stikine went up while docked in Bombay, India. When her cargo went up, the blast killed 800 men and injured 3,000. The fire that followed took more than three days to control.

Also in 1944, the UK experienced what is commonly considered the largest blast ever to occur on British soil when 3,700 tons of high explosives were accidentally detonated in an underground munitions store in Fauld, Staffordshire. The explosion was so massive it formed a crater 3⁄4 of a mile across and more than 400 feet deep – and destroyed not only the base but a nearby reservoir (and all the water in it).

But one of the biggest blasts – aside from the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan – was also one of the largest in human history, and one of the most tragic.

Once again in 1944, on July 17 to be specific, munitions being loaded onto a ship in Port Chicago, California, (very close to San Francisco) detonated. No one knows what exactly caused the blast, but the damage was biblical. All in all, more than 5,000 tons of high explosives, plus whatever else was in the stores on the base and on any ships docked, was involved. The explosion was so massive it was felt as far away as Las Vegas (500 miles distant) and people were injured all over the Bay Area when windows were shattered by the immense pressure wave.

320 were killed immediately and almost 400 were seriously injured, but that's not the real tragedy. Most of these men were African American and this single disaster accounted for almost 15% of African American casualties during that war.

Still fearing for their safety, the remaining men, who had just spent three weeks pulling the bodies of their fellow sailors from the wreckage, refused to load any further munitions. The Army, in a characteristic show of support, considered this an act of mutiny and court-martialed 208 sailors, sending an additional 50 to jail for 8 to 15 years.

Fortunately, the 'mutineers' were given clemency after Thurgood Marshall fought for them, though the final member only received justice in 1999 in the form of a Presidential pardon by President Bill Clinton.

Today in Port Chicago there's a marker on the spot and it states that the event was a step toward "racial justice and equality."

And all it took was one of the largest non-nuclear, man-made, blasts in the history of the world – and the deaths of 320 sailors.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

O. Henry on Writing Short Stories

(lifted from Open Culture)

Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of the short story writer O. Henry. He was born William Sydney Porter in Greensboro North Carolina on September 11, 1862, and his life was not easy. He chose the pen name “O. Henry” while he was in the penitentiary. 
Trained as a pharmacist, Porter came down with tuberculosis in his early twenties and moved to the drier climate of Texas, where he worked as a ranch hand, a draftsman for the Texas Land Office, and a clerk at the First National Bank of Austin before striking out on his own as a writer and launching a humor magazine called The Rolling Stone. When the magazine folded the following year, Porter took a job as a reporter, columnist and cartoonist at the Houston Post
Meanwhile, though, Federal investigators were looking into shortages in Porter’s accounts from his days at the bank in Austin, and in February of 1896, when he was 33 years old and had a wife and a young daughter to support, Porter was arrested and charged with embezzlement. 
While being brought to Austin for trial, Porter managed to elude his captors and hop a train to New Orleans, where he arranged passage on a freighter bound for Honduras. Despite the appearance of guilt Porter would always maintain his innocence, saying that his flight from justice was brought on by panic. He compared himself to the protagonist of one of Joseph Conrad’s classic novels, a sailor who abandoned a fully loaded passenger ship that he thought was sinking. “I am like Lord Jim,” he said, “because we both made one fateful mistake at the supreme crisis of our lives, a mistake from which we could not recover.” 
When Porter got to Central America he began making plans for his family to join him there, but soon learned that his wife was dying of tuberculosis. He returned to Texas and was with his wife when she died. A few months later he was sentenced to five years in a federal penitentiary in Ohio. While behind bars, Porter began writing short stories in earnest. To disguise his identity he used a series of pen names, eventually settling on “O. Henry.” 
Porter was released from prison in 1901, two years early for good behavior. He moved to New York to write stories under his new name for magazines. From there he skyrocketed to success. Between 1904 and his death in 1910, he published some 300 stories and ten books. “O. Henry worked at whirlwind speed,” writes Victoria Blake in the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Selected Stories of O. Henry, “producing more over a shorter period than any other writer of his time and cultivating a literary demand unmatched by anyone, anywhere in the history of American letters.” 
Some of the very same elements that made O. Henry’s stories so popular in his lifetime–the sentimentality, the “twist” endings–have caused them to age poorly since his death. A few of his stories, like “The Gift of the Magi,” are still widely read, but his reputation has been surpassed by more modern writers like Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and Sherwood Anderson. A little of his former prestige is revived every year with the awarding of the O. Henry Prize for the best short fiction. 
For his 150th birthday we bring you what is said to be a rare recording of O. Henry’s voice. Although the date and authenticity are an open question, the recording was apparently made on an Edison cylinder sometime between 1905 and the writer’s death in 1910. It was included in the vinyl record The Golden Age of Opera: Great Personalities, 1888-1940. Here is a transcript: 
This is William Sydney Porter speaking, better known to you, no doubt, as O. Henry. I’m going to let you in on a few of my secrets in writing a short story. The most important thing, at least in my humble opinion, is to use characters you’ve crossed in your lifetime. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. All of my stories are actual experiences that I have come across during my travels. My characters are facsimilies of actual people I’ve known. Most authors spend hours, I’m told even days, laboring over outlines of stories that they have in their minds. But not I. In my way of thinking that’s a waste of good time. I just sit down and let my pencil do the rest. Many people ask me how I manage to get that final little twist in my stories. I always tell them that the unusual is the ordinary rather than the unexpected. And if you people listening to me now start thinking about your own lives, I’m sure you’ll discover just as many odd experiences as I’ve had. I hope this little talk will be heard long after I’m gone. I want you all to continue reading my stories then too. Goodbye, folks. 
(O. Henry on the Secrets of Writing Short Stories: Rare Audio Recording)

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

MORE FANTASTIC NEWS: Stroke The Fire - The Best Manlove Stories Of M. Christian

(from M. Christian's Queer Imaginings)



The great news just keeps on coming! Not only have the wonderful folks at Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions just released most of my queer novels and collections (The Very Bloody MarysFilthy BoysMe2Dirty WordsBodyWork, etc) under my own banner section (M. Christian ManLove Collection) but they have also just published my very first best-of-the-best of my gay erotica in a very special book: Stroke The Fire - The Best Manlove Stories Of M. Christian

Sizzling tales of bad boys, bruised hearts, and sweaty encounters. Lambda Award finalist M. Christian’s stories of men-who-love-men have been selected for Best Gay Erotica, Best American Erotica, and Best of the Best Gay Erotica. 
Evesdrop on what hot men who are doing hot things with other hot men say to each other between the sheets ... and up against the wall. Start reading the firey ManLove fiction of M. Christian with this personally selected collection of his best. 
"A wonderful book … just the thing if you are in the mood for an enjoyable quickie (or twenty)." -Mathilde Madden, author Reflection's Edge. 
"Fairy tales whispered to one another by dark angels whose hearts and mouths are brimming with lust." -Michael Thomas Ford, Lambda Award winning author Looking for It. 
Don't miss the other books in M. Christian's ManLove Collection from Sizzler Editions - and don't miss his Lambda Finalist book, Dirty Words.  

Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker: What's Erotic?

Check this out: I just wrote a brand new "Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker" piece for the always-great Erotica Readers and Writers site - all my previous columns, of course, have been collected in How To Write And Sell Erotica by Renaissance Books.

Here's a tease:




It's one of the most common questions I get asked – by budding writers via email or in person during one of my (ahem) Sex Sells: Erotica Writing classes: what makes an erotic story ... erotic?

But before I answer [insert suspenseful music here] a bit of exposition is in order: there is a huge difference in writing for yourself, such as when you are first dipping your ... toes into erotica writing, and when you've made the very brave decision to throw your work out into the professional world.

If you are writing for yourself then you really don't need to be thinking about sex (or the amount of it) at all: you're writing for your pleasure, or just as practice.

But if you do decide to send your work out you really do need to be pay close attention to where you're submitting: when a publisher or editor puts out a call for submissions they are often – or should be – quite clear about the amount of sexuality they need or want from a writer.  If you're sending a story, say, to a site, anthology or whatever it's always a good idea to scope out the territory, so to speak: read what the editor has accepted before, take a gander at the site ... and so forth.  That, at least, should give you a ballpark feeling of what (and how much) they are looking for.

But [insert dramatic drum roll] as far as the right, perfect, ideal, amount of sex for a story that isn't just for your own pleasure, or a very specific market, goes ... well, what's sex?

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Still More Philosophy