Check out my flickr feed for a few more shots I took while running around this weekend (it was - ahem - a great adventure and then some)
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
The Next Big Thing - And Stroke The Fire
(from M.Christian's Queer Imaginings)
I'm extremely pleased to be part of the round-robin blog tour started by John Everson - my own invitation coming from the brilliant Lucy Taylor - called The Next Big Thing. By the way, I also got invites from a similar one from my pal Fulani (via Vanessa Wu) so I'm posting this one, at once, in thanks to all of these great folks!
From here check out the excellent blogs of five of my friends who I've tagged to carry on the tour - they should be posting their answers in about a week or so:
1) What is the working title of your book?
Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian!
2) Where did the idea for the book come from?
Well, to put it mildly I have written more than my fair share of queer erotica and fiction – starting with "Stroke the Fire" that was picked up for Best Gay Erotica 1994 – and ending with this brand new best-of-my-very-best short gay erotica: Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian!
The book is made up of my handpicked favorite stories from three of my queer erotic collections: the Lambda Award finalist Dirty Words, Filthy Boys, and BodyWork. What's even cooler than this brand new best-of-my-very-best book the great folks at Renaissance E Books/Sizzler editions – that also published Stroke the Fire – have re-released not just Dirty Words, Filthy Boys, and BodyWork, but my queer novels The Very Bloody Marys, and (the rather controversial) Me2 as part of a whole "M.Christian" imprint: The M.Christian: The Manlove Collection ... pretty cool, eh?
3) What genre does it fall under?
Even though Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian is basically queer erotica is also contains a lot of stories that run the gamut from horror (like "Wet," Boy," "Echoes" "Matches" and others) to science fiction ("Blue Boy," "Utter West," "Counting," etc) and even stories that, sure, might be gay and erotic but are more-than-a-but off-the-map (like "How Coyote Stole Sun" and "Coyote And The Less Than Perfect Cougar").
I also kept the introductions to the three books that were used to make up Stroke The Fire: my own from BodyWork Felice Picano's from Filthy Boys and Patrick Califia's from Dirty Words.
4) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Since the book is a collection that's really tough to say ... though I sometimes visualize actors when I write (like Christian Slater and R. Lee Ermey for my novel, The Very Bloody Marys) I rarely do it when I write short stories. But if I had to pick some actors to appear in Stroke The Fire: The Movie I'd have to pick Ian McKellen, Alan Rickman, Christopher Lee, Nathan Fillion, the boys from Supernatural -- sorry, girls, as it's a gay male book there aren't many roles for women, not that I wouldn't love to get Emma Thompson, Gina Torres, Judi Dench, in there somewhere ... if just because I think they are wonderful and it would be a blast to meet them.
5) What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian is quite literally a collection of the best-of-the-best of M.Christian's short queer erotic fiction, taken from his acclaimed collections Dirty Words (a Lambda Literary Award Finalist), BodyWork, and Filthy Boys.
6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian has been published by Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions as the benchmark of their The M.Christian: The Manlove Collection imprint, which reprints not just the erotic collections Dirty Words, BodyWork, and Filthy Boys but also the non-erotic queer novels The Very Bloody Marys, and Me2.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft?
As the book is a collection – made of other collections – that's really tough to answer. Dirty Words came out in its first edition back in 2001 ... with the other collections coming out every could of years since then. But then the earliest story in the whole book, "Stroke The Fire," first appeared in Best Gay Erotica 1994 so you could almost say that the book took both a month to put together but the content took 18 years ... and, boy, does that sound like a long time when you think of it that way.
8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
For me, Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian is a way of putting everything I've felt proud of writing – that's queer and erotic – into one juicy bundle of pages. Sure, there have been other collections but, as far as I know, there hasn't been a collection that's a collection of other collections ... so I think that Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian is more than a tad unique.
9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The wonderful Renaissance E Books/Sizzler editions asked me to put this book together as part of their launch of their special The M.Christian: The Manlove Collection – to be the one place, if people interested in my queer erotica needed just one place, to go to get the best-of-my-best. If you like what's here, in other words, then you'll no doubt love the other books, collections, and anthologies I've done.
10) What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Well, probably the most unique thing about Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian – and the other queer books and stories I've written over the years – is that I'm a straight guy.
It always takes folks more than a bit aback then I say that but – really, honestly – that's what I am: sure I might write about gay characters (and even gay sexuality) but, more than anything, I'm a writer ... and books like Stroke The Fire (and the books that make it up) are just part of what I do.
Now I want to be absolutely clear that I never, ever, lie to editors, authors publishers, or readers about my own sexuality – though there have been a few odd situations over the years, of course. To this day some people simply think that I'm lying to myself about my own sexuality ... but, honesty, unless you’re a woman (especially a BBW) then Mr. Happy just doesn't salute. Sorry, guys....
I got into being a 'gay' author pretty much the same way I became a horror/fantasy/non-fiction, etc., writer: I saw an opportunity – or was asked to participate in some project-or-other – and, since writers and regular human beings grow through challenges, I gave it a shot and (bingo!) I found that I wasn't just comfortable writing queer fiction but that people actually wanted more of it. No dummy, that's what I did: and so I have a few novels, collections and, with Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian, my own best-of-my-best collection of short queer erotica.
Speaking of other things, I also write non fiction (Welcome to Weirdsville, Pornotopia, and How To Write And Sell Erotica); science fiction, fantasy and horror (Love Without Gun Control); and erotic science fiction including Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than The Real Thing, and the acclaimed Bachelor Machine – as well as the erotic romance novel Brushes, the science fiction erotic novel Painted Doll, and over 25 anthologies like the Best S/M Erotica series; Pirate Booty; My Love For All That Is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes Erotica; The Burning Pen; The Mammoth Book of Future Cops, and The Mammoth Book of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowksi); Confessions, Garden of Perverse, and Amazons (with Sage Vivant), and many more.
I'm extremely pleased to be part of the round-robin blog tour started by John Everson - my own invitation coming from the brilliant Lucy Taylor - called The Next Big Thing. By the way, I also got invites from a similar one from my pal Fulani (via Vanessa Wu) so I'm posting this one, at once, in thanks to all of these great folks!
From here check out the excellent blogs of five of my friends who I've tagged to carry on the tour - they should be posting their answers in about a week or so:
1) What is the working title of your book?
Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian!
2) Where did the idea for the book come from?
Well, to put it mildly I have written more than my fair share of queer erotica and fiction – starting with "Stroke the Fire" that was picked up for Best Gay Erotica 1994 – and ending with this brand new best-of-my-very-best short gay erotica: Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian!
The book is made up of my handpicked favorite stories from three of my queer erotic collections: the Lambda Award finalist Dirty Words, Filthy Boys, and BodyWork. What's even cooler than this brand new best-of-my-very-best book the great folks at Renaissance E Books/Sizzler editions – that also published Stroke the Fire – have re-released not just Dirty Words, Filthy Boys, and BodyWork, but my queer novels The Very Bloody Marys, and (the rather controversial) Me2 as part of a whole "M.Christian" imprint: The M.Christian: The Manlove Collection ... pretty cool, eh?
3) What genre does it fall under?
Even though Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian is basically queer erotica is also contains a lot of stories that run the gamut from horror (like "Wet," Boy," "Echoes" "Matches" and others) to science fiction ("Blue Boy," "Utter West," "Counting," etc) and even stories that, sure, might be gay and erotic but are more-than-a-but off-the-map (like "How Coyote Stole Sun" and "Coyote And The Less Than Perfect Cougar").
I also kept the introductions to the three books that were used to make up Stroke The Fire: my own from BodyWork Felice Picano's from Filthy Boys and Patrick Califia's from Dirty Words.
4) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Since the book is a collection that's really tough to say ... though I sometimes visualize actors when I write (like Christian Slater and R. Lee Ermey for my novel, The Very Bloody Marys) I rarely do it when I write short stories. But if I had to pick some actors to appear in Stroke The Fire: The Movie I'd have to pick Ian McKellen, Alan Rickman, Christopher Lee, Nathan Fillion, the boys from Supernatural -- sorry, girls, as it's a gay male book there aren't many roles for women, not that I wouldn't love to get Emma Thompson, Gina Torres, Judi Dench, in there somewhere ... if just because I think they are wonderful and it would be a blast to meet them.
5) What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian is quite literally a collection of the best-of-the-best of M.Christian's short queer erotic fiction, taken from his acclaimed collections Dirty Words (a Lambda Literary Award Finalist), BodyWork, and Filthy Boys.
6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian has been published by Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions as the benchmark of their The M.Christian: The Manlove Collection imprint, which reprints not just the erotic collections Dirty Words, BodyWork, and Filthy Boys but also the non-erotic queer novels The Very Bloody Marys, and Me2.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft?
As the book is a collection – made of other collections – that's really tough to answer. Dirty Words came out in its first edition back in 2001 ... with the other collections coming out every could of years since then. But then the earliest story in the whole book, "Stroke The Fire," first appeared in Best Gay Erotica 1994 so you could almost say that the book took both a month to put together but the content took 18 years ... and, boy, does that sound like a long time when you think of it that way.
8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
For me, Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian is a way of putting everything I've felt proud of writing – that's queer and erotic – into one juicy bundle of pages. Sure, there have been other collections but, as far as I know, there hasn't been a collection that's a collection of other collections ... so I think that Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian is more than a tad unique.
9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The wonderful Renaissance E Books/Sizzler editions asked me to put this book together as part of their launch of their special The M.Christian: The Manlove Collection – to be the one place, if people interested in my queer erotica needed just one place, to go to get the best-of-my-best. If you like what's here, in other words, then you'll no doubt love the other books, collections, and anthologies I've done.
10) What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Well, probably the most unique thing about Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian – and the other queer books and stories I've written over the years – is that I'm a straight guy.
It always takes folks more than a bit aback then I say that but – really, honestly – that's what I am: sure I might write about gay characters (and even gay sexuality) but, more than anything, I'm a writer ... and books like Stroke The Fire (and the books that make it up) are just part of what I do.
Now I want to be absolutely clear that I never, ever, lie to editors, authors publishers, or readers about my own sexuality – though there have been a few odd situations over the years, of course. To this day some people simply think that I'm lying to myself about my own sexuality ... but, honesty, unless you’re a woman (especially a BBW) then Mr. Happy just doesn't salute. Sorry, guys....
I got into being a 'gay' author pretty much the same way I became a horror/fantasy/non-fiction, etc., writer: I saw an opportunity – or was asked to participate in some project-or-other – and, since writers and regular human beings grow through challenges, I gave it a shot and (bingo!) I found that I wasn't just comfortable writing queer fiction but that people actually wanted more of it. No dummy, that's what I did: and so I have a few novels, collections and, with Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian, my own best-of-my-best collection of short queer erotica.
Speaking of other things, I also write non fiction (Welcome to Weirdsville, Pornotopia, and How To Write And Sell Erotica); science fiction, fantasy and horror (Love Without Gun Control); and erotic science fiction including Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than The Real Thing, and the acclaimed Bachelor Machine – as well as the erotic romance novel Brushes, the science fiction erotic novel Painted Doll, and over 25 anthologies like the Best S/M Erotica series; Pirate Booty; My Love For All That Is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes Erotica; The Burning Pen; The Mammoth Book of Future Cops, and The Mammoth Book of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowksi); Confessions, Garden of Perverse, and Amazons (with Sage Vivant), and many more.
Amos Lassen Likes Stroke The Fire
(from M.Christian's Queer Imaginings)
This is very cool: the wonderful Amos Lassen just posted a very flattering review of my new best-of-my-very-best short erotic fiction, Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian!
This is very cool: the wonderful Amos Lassen just posted a very flattering review of my new best-of-my-very-best short erotic fiction, Stroke The Fire: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian!
I do not read a lot of erotica but I do read a lot of M.Christian and I have, in fact, been reviewing him for almost eight years. “Stroke the Fire” is some of his collected erotica and the stories here are the writer’s own personal selections. Here we have hot sexy men having hot sexy sex, bad boys having sex with good boys and good boys having sex with bad boys. This is just what you need when you cannot get the real thing to keep you warm on a cold winter night.
Sunday, December 09, 2012
Friday, December 07, 2012
Reminder: Impact Play - Beyond Floggers And Canes
(From M.Christian's Classes And Appearances)
Just a little reminder that I'm going to be teaching one of my all-time fan favorite classes for the SF Citadel Community Center on December 11th: Impact Play - Beyond Floggers And Canes
Just a little reminder that I'm going to be teaching one of my all-time fan favorite classes for the SF Citadel Community Center on December 11th: Impact Play - Beyond Floggers And Canes
SF Citadel Community Center
181 Eddy Street, San Francisco, CA
Cost: $20 at door
Description:
Join this workshop to receive (ahem) 'hands-on' instruction in a wide and sometimes-strange variety of different impact toys hands, hairbrushes, paddles, crops, wooden spoons, batons, quirts, and more. While often the physics of these toys are sometimes closely related, to use each one effectively takes particular skill and techniques that are not immediately apparent. Participants will learn not only how to inflict the most pleasure as well as pain but also how to use each item without hurting the wield-er as well as the wield-ee.
Thursday, December 06, 2012
Lisabet Sarai Likes Technorotica
(from M.Christian's Technorotica)
This is a very, very special treat: an extremely flattering review of
Technorotica: Stories Shattering the Ultimate Taboo - a print-only special edition, made up of the Rude Mechanicals and Better Than The Real Thing ebooks, all published (by the very great Renaisssance E Books/Sizzler Editions) by the always-great Lisabet Sarai. Thanks so much, Lisabet!
This is a very, very special treat: an extremely flattering review of
Technorotica: Stories Shattering the Ultimate Taboo - a print-only special edition, made up of the Rude Mechanicals and Better Than The Real Thing ebooks, all published (by the very great Renaisssance E Books/Sizzler Editions) by the always-great Lisabet Sarai. Thanks so much, Lisabet!
Technorotica: Stories Shattering the Ultimate Taboo by M. Christian
Barbary Coast Editions, Renaissance E Books, 2012
One of the most enjoyable aspects of being an author is that you get to invent new worlds. Sometimes those worlds strongly resemble our so-called reality; sometimes they deviate wildly. Even the most bizarre fictional world, though, needs to feel real. The reader needs to see, smell, taste, and touch the alien environment in which she finds herself. Against all logic and common sense knowledge, she needs to believe.
Pulling this off is tough, especially in genres like paranormal and science fiction, where the story by definition is set somewhere other than the world as we know it. M. Christian is a master of this trick, as he demonstrates in Technorotica, his new collection of stories concerning the erotic connections between humans and machines.
I'll admit up front that I've long been a fan of M.Christian's work (I even edited one of his books, ComingTogether Presents M. Christian) and that I'm deeply in awe of his imagination. Despite what might be considered a positive bias, I still feel totally comfortable and justified in asserting: this is a fantastic book, in both the literal and figurative sense.
The stories in this collection could loosely be called science fiction erotica, but they vary a great deal in focus and tone. Several of them (“Hot Definition”, “Speaking Parts”, “Hack Work” and the excerpt from Christian's novel Painted Doll) are set in a shadowy, perilous, cyber-punk world where everything is for sale and everyone lives on the edge, staying alive through crime or luck or sometimes both. Prosthetics, holographic doppelgangers, constant electronic surveillance, mind-jacking and body snatching – fans of Gibson, Sterling and Cadigan will feel right at home. However, this author isn't primarily concerned with gadgets and technology (never mind the title of the book) but with feelings: fear, hunger, desperation, desire and love. These stories explore how humans reach out for one another, as the mechanical invades and erodes the meaning of humanity.
“Blow Up” and “I am Jo's Vibrator” are lighter in tone. The former lets us into the mind of a man with a peculiar fetish. The latter, as suggested by the title, is narrated by a sex toy. Both will make you smile (or at least, that was my reaction) though “Blow Up”, the first tale in the book, has a subtle darkness that's a preview of the more serious stories to come.
I've read the tale “State” in several other M. Christian collections. It remains one of my favorite erotic stories of all time. A human woman/sex worker impersonates a blue-skinned, state-of-the-art Japanese sex robot. The neat logical flip here satisfies the intellect. The woman's arousal at becoming the ultimate sex object provides satisfaction in other dimensions.
“The Bell House Invitation” is a fabulous new take on ménage, or more accurately, polyamory. Four individuals – two men, two women – live together and share a group mind. Together they seduce another woman with the aim of convincing her to join their communal consciousness. The sex scene in this tale succeeds in exploring all the participants' experience simultaneously, pulling the reader into the mix. It's lusciously explicit without losing the sense of wonder that derives from a level of communion most of us only dream about.
In contrast, “Billie” includes no overt sex at all yet still manages to convey an intense feeling of desire. This vignette of a butch woman speeding along the Pacific Coast Highway on her vintage 1977 Harley Davidson details a synergy between human and machine so strong it becomes erotic.
“A Light Minute” focuses on communication over a distance, as a reclusive woman terrified of the world outside opens herself to the lover she knows only via electronic missives.
Finally, “KSRN” is a dream-like reverie about speed and sex, chrome and compassion. If I'd been the author, I would have put this story last in the book. It leaves you feeling haunted and yet somehow complete.
Overall, my reaction to this book was “Wow”. But then, I'm seriously turned on by originality. If you share this trait with me – get yourself a copy of Technorotica.
(And by the way - the book includes a great preface and afterword, too!)
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
Reminder: Hear Me Read From 50 Writers On 50 Shades Of Grey
(from M.Christian's Classes And Appearances)
Just a reminder:
This is going to be a blast!
On Thursday, December 6th, from 7 - 8pm, join me and some other wonderful writers reading from the very fun new book 50 Writers On 50 Shades Of Grey at the Valencia Street Good Vibrations store, in San Francisco!
E. L. James’ Fifty Shades trilogy has fascinated and seduced millions of readers. In bedrooms, in book clubs, and in the media, people can’t stop talking about it!
In Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey, 50 writers—from romance and erotica authors, to real-world BDSM practitioners, to adult entertainment industry professionals—continue the conversation.
Fifty Shades as Erotic FictionErotic romance writer Sylvia Day speaks to the new opportunities the Fifty Shades trilogy has opened up for writers (and readers!) of erotica
Fifty Shades as Sexual EmpowermentRomance novelist Heather Graham praises the way the books encourage women to celebrate their own sexual shades of grey
Fifty Shades as FanfictionEditor Tish Beaty relates the process behind turning Twilight fanfic Master of the Universe into Fifty Shades of Grey
Fifty Shades as Pop CultureFifty Shames of Earl Grey author Andrew Shaffer compares Fifty Shades to sister-in-literary-scandal Peyton Place
Plus• Matrimonial lawyer Sherri Donovan examines the legalities of Christian’s contract• Master R of BDSM training chateau La Domaine Esemar evaluates Christian Grey’s skill as a Dominant (and offers some professional advice)• And a whole lot more!
Whether you loved Fifty Shades of Grey, or just want to know why everyone else does, Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey is the book for you.
Contributors:
• Heather Graham• Sylvia Day• Andrew Shaffer• M.J. Rose• Sinnamon Love• Judith Regan• Stacey Agdern• Laura Antoniou• Jennifer Armintrout• Tish Beaty• Mala Bhattacharjee• Rachel Kramer Bussel• M. Christian• Suzan Colón• Joy Daniels• Sherri Donovan• Angela Edwards• Melissa Febos• Lucy Felthouse• Ryan Field• Selina Fire• Megan Frampton• Sarah Frantz• Louise Fury• Lois Gresh• Catherine Hiller• Marci Hirsch• Dr. Hilda Hutcherson• Debra Hyde• Anne Jamison• D.L. King• Dr. Logan Levkoff• Arielle Loren• Sassafras Lowry• Rachel Kenley• Pamela Madsen• Chris Marks and Lia Leto• Midori• Master R• Dr. Katherine Ramsland• Tiffany Reisz• Katharine Sands• Jennifer Sanzo• Rakesh Satyal• Marc Shapiro• Lyss Stern• Cecilia Tan• Hope Tarr• Susan Wright• Editor X
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
Wonderful Time Teaching Cupping - Using The Ancient Medicinal Technique For Erotic Play At The Looking Glass
(from M.Christian's Classes And Appearances)
Just wanted to toss out a hearty thanks for the great folks who came out to my Cupping - Using The Ancient Medicinal Technique For Erotic Play class at the The Looking Glass ... it was a treat to teach and, I hope, everyone who was there had a good time as well!
Stroke The Fire Blog Tour: The Jeep Dviva
(from M.Christian's Queer Imaginings)
This is very fun - as part of the Stroke The Fire: The Best Manlove Fiction Of M.Christian blog tour that the great folks at Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions were so great to setup for me, the very first stop has just gone up: a very nice interview with yers truly by the great Jeep Diva.
This is very fun - as part of the Stroke The Fire: The Best Manlove Fiction Of M.Christian blog tour that the great folks at Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions were so great to setup for me, the very first stop has just gone up: a very nice interview with yers truly by the great Jeep Diva.
The tour also includes a contest to get some freebie books: so check it out and see what might happen ;-)
Here's a taste of it - and just clock here for the rest:
The Jeep Diva:
Vanessa: Would you please start by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Well, I’m a male human born in 1960. I have green eyes, black hair, am circumcised, have a rather thin build, and am a little short of six feet tall.
I am a writer. Yeah, I know there are a lot of people out there who say that they are writers but when I say I am a writer I mean that I eat, drink, breathe, telling stories. I first caught the bug in high school and (yes, you may gasp) ten years later I sold my first story.
Okay, it as a pornographic story – sold to the magazine (now defunct) Future Sex, and then picked up for Best American Erotica 1994 – but that doesn’t bother me: I am a writer and I love to write pretty much anything for anyone. Sex, as the old maxim goes, sells and – no fool I – I write what people want to buy. Oh, I write all kinds of other things, from non-fiction (Welcome To Weirdsville, Pornotopia, and How To Write And Sell Erotica) to science fiction/fantasy/horror (Love Without Gun Control) but erotica is where I’ve done my most work.
Here’s a quickie bio:
I think the biggest thing that ‘throws’ folks is that, even though I have written a lot – and I do mean a lot — of queer fiction and erotica (both gay as well as lesbian) I’m actually … wait for it … a straight guy.
I’m not even that kinky of a straight guy … okay, I have a fondness for big beautiful women but I always fall in love with a woman’s mind before I fall for her body.
Now I have to be serious (for a second) I never, ever lie about my own sexuality when I write gay fiction: I am very out about being a heterosexual who happens to write quite a bit of gay fiction. It all happened rather simply: I had a friend who suggested I try my hand at writing gay erotica so I contacted the editor of a gay erotic anthology and asked if he wouldn’t mind getting a story from a straight guy – and he not only said sure but also bought the story … which then ended up in Best Gay Erotica 1994.
To use the cliché, the rest is history: one story lead to two, three, four, being offered to edit my own anthology, then a novel offer and … well, here I am. Stroke the Fire, in fact, is my own, personal, best-of-my-very best gay erotic short stories, taken from three of my best-selling gay erotic collections, Filthy Boys, BodyWork, and the rather-celebrated Dirty Words. I even kept the very touching introductions to each of the three books in Stroke the Fire: Felice Picano’s from Filthy Boys, and Patrick Califia from Dirty Words.
Here's a taste of it - and just clock here for the rest:
The Jeep Diva:
Vanessa: Would you please start by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Well, I’m a male human born in 1960. I have green eyes, black hair, am circumcised, have a rather thin build, and am a little short of six feet tall.
I am a writer. Yeah, I know there are a lot of people out there who say that they are writers but when I say I am a writer I mean that I eat, drink, breathe, telling stories. I first caught the bug in high school and (yes, you may gasp) ten years later I sold my first story.
Okay, it as a pornographic story – sold to the magazine (now defunct) Future Sex, and then picked up for Best American Erotica 1994 – but that doesn’t bother me: I am a writer and I love to write pretty much anything for anyone. Sex, as the old maxim goes, sells and – no fool I – I write what people want to buy. Oh, I write all kinds of other things, from non-fiction (Welcome To Weirdsville, Pornotopia, and How To Write And Sell Erotica) to science fiction/fantasy/horror (Love Without Gun Control) but erotica is where I’ve done my most work.
Here’s a quickie bio:
Calling M.Christian versatile is a tremendous understatement. Extensively published in science fiction, fantasy, horror, thrillers, and even non-fiction, it is in erotica that M.Christian has become an acknowledged master, with more than 400 stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and in fact too many anthologies, magazines, and sites to name. In erotica, M.Christian is known and respected not just for his passion on the page but also his staggering imagination and chameleonic ability to successfully and convincingly write for any and all orientations.
But M.Christian has other tricks up his literary sleeve: in addition to writing, he is a prolific and respected anthologist, having edited 25 anthologies to date including the Best S/M Erotica series; Pirate Booty; My Love For All That Is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes Erotica; The Burning Pen; The Mammoth Book of Future Cops, and The Mammoth Book of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowksi); Confessions, Garden of Perverse, and Amazons (with Sage Vivant), and many more.
M.Christian’s short fiction has been collected into many bestselling books in a wide variety of genres, including the Lambda Award finalist Dirty Words and other queer collections like Filthy Boys, BodyWork, and his best-of-his-best gay erotica book, Stroke the Fire.He also has collections of non-fiction (Welcome to Weirdsville, Pornotopia, and How To Write And Sell Erotica); science fiction, fantasy and horror (Love Without Gun Control); and erotic science fiction including Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than The Real Thing, and the acclaimed The Bachelor Machine.
As a novelist, M.Christian has shown his monumental versatility with books such as the queer vamp novels Running Dry and The Very Bloody Marys; the erotic romance Brushes; the science fiction erotic novel Painted Doll; and the rather controversial gay horror/thrillers Fingers Breadth and Me2.
M.Christian is also the Associate Publisher for Renaissance E Books, where he strives to be the publisher he’d want to have as a writer, and to help bring quality books (erotica, noir, science fiction, and more) and authors out into the world. His site is www.mchristian.com.Vanessa: What is one thing about you that your readers would find surprising or never guess about you?
I think the biggest thing that ‘throws’ folks is that, even though I have written a lot – and I do mean a lot — of queer fiction and erotica (both gay as well as lesbian) I’m actually … wait for it … a straight guy.
I’m not even that kinky of a straight guy … okay, I have a fondness for big beautiful women but I always fall in love with a woman’s mind before I fall for her body.
Now I have to be serious (for a second) I never, ever lie about my own sexuality when I write gay fiction: I am very out about being a heterosexual who happens to write quite a bit of gay fiction. It all happened rather simply: I had a friend who suggested I try my hand at writing gay erotica so I contacted the editor of a gay erotic anthology and asked if he wouldn’t mind getting a story from a straight guy – and he not only said sure but also bought the story … which then ended up in Best Gay Erotica 1994.
To use the cliché, the rest is history: one story lead to two, three, four, being offered to edit my own anthology, then a novel offer and … well, here I am. Stroke the Fire, in fact, is my own, personal, best-of-my-very best gay erotic short stories, taken from three of my best-selling gay erotic collections, Filthy Boys, BodyWork, and the rather-celebrated Dirty Words. I even kept the very touching introductions to each of the three books in Stroke the Fire: Felice Picano’s from Filthy Boys, and Patrick Califia from Dirty Words.
[MORE]
Saturday, December 01, 2012
Hear Me Read From 50 Writers On 50 Shades Of Grey
(From M.Christian's Classes And Appearances)
This is going to be a blast!
On Thursday, December 6th, from 7 - 8pm, join me and some other wonderful writers reading from the very fun new book 50 Writers On 50 Shades Of Grey at the Valencia Street Good Vibrations store, in San Francisco!
E. L. James’ Fifty Shades trilogy has fascinated and seduced millions of readers. In bedrooms, in book clubs, and in the media, people can’t stop talking about it!
In Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey, 50 writers—from romance and erotica authors, to real-world BDSM practitioners, to adult entertainment industry professionals—continue the conversation.
Fifty Shades as Erotic FictionErotic romance writer Sylvia Day speaks to the new opportunities the Fifty Shades trilogy has opened up for writers (and readers!) of erotica
Fifty Shades as Sexual EmpowermentRomance novelist Heather Graham praises the way the books encourage women to celebrate their own sexual shades of grey
This is going to be a blast!
On Thursday, December 6th, from 7 - 8pm, join me and some other wonderful writers reading from the very fun new book 50 Writers On 50 Shades Of Grey at the Valencia Street Good Vibrations store, in San Francisco!
E. L. James’ Fifty Shades trilogy has fascinated and seduced millions of readers. In bedrooms, in book clubs, and in the media, people can’t stop talking about it!
In Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey, 50 writers—from romance and erotica authors, to real-world BDSM practitioners, to adult entertainment industry professionals—continue the conversation.
Fifty Shades as Erotic FictionErotic romance writer Sylvia Day speaks to the new opportunities the Fifty Shades trilogy has opened up for writers (and readers!) of erotica
Fifty Shades as Sexual EmpowermentRomance novelist Heather Graham praises the way the books encourage women to celebrate their own sexual shades of grey
Fifty Shades as FanfictionEditor Tish Beaty relates the process behind turning Twilight fanfic Master of the Universe into Fifty Shades of Grey
Fifty Shades as Pop CultureFifty Shames of Earl Grey author Andrew Shaffer compares Fifty Shades to sister-in-literary-scandal Peyton Place
Plus• Matrimonial lawyer Sherri Donovan examines the legalities of Christian’s contract• Master R of BDSM training chateau La Domaine Esemar evaluates Christian Grey’s skill as a Dominant (and offers some professional advice)• And a whole lot more!
Whether you loved Fifty Shades of Grey, or just want to know why everyone else does, Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey is the book for you.
Contributors:
• Heather Graham• Sylvia Day• Andrew Shaffer• M.J. Rose• Sinnamon Love• Judith Regan• Stacey Agdern• Laura Antoniou• Jennifer Armintrout• Tish Beaty• Mala Bhattacharjee• Rachel Kramer Bussel• M. Christian• Suzan Colón• Joy Daniels• Sherri Donovan• Angela Edwards• Melissa Febos• Lucy Felthouse• Ryan Field• Selina Fire• Megan Frampton• Sarah Frantz• Louise Fury• Lois Gresh• Catherine Hiller• Marci Hirsch• Dr. Hilda Hutcherson• Debra Hyde• Anne Jamison• D.L. King• Dr. Logan Levkoff• Arielle Loren• Sassafras Lowry• Rachel Kenley• Pamela Madsen• Chris Marks and Lia Leto• Midori• Master R• Dr. Katherine Ramsland• Tiffany Reisz• Katharine Sands• Jennifer Sanzo• Rakesh Satyal• Marc Shapiro• Lyss Stern• Cecilia Tan• Hope Tarr• Susan Wright• Editor X
Fifty Shades as Pop CultureFifty Shames of Earl Grey author Andrew Shaffer compares Fifty Shades to sister-in-literary-scandal Peyton Place
Plus• Matrimonial lawyer Sherri Donovan examines the legalities of Christian’s contract• Master R of BDSM training chateau La Domaine Esemar evaluates Christian Grey’s skill as a Dominant (and offers some professional advice)• And a whole lot more!
Whether you loved Fifty Shades of Grey, or just want to know why everyone else does, Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey is the book for you.
Contributors:
• Heather Graham• Sylvia Day• Andrew Shaffer• M.J. Rose• Sinnamon Love• Judith Regan• Stacey Agdern• Laura Antoniou• Jennifer Armintrout• Tish Beaty• Mala Bhattacharjee• Rachel Kramer Bussel• M. Christian• Suzan Colón• Joy Daniels• Sherri Donovan• Angela Edwards• Melissa Febos• Lucy Felthouse• Ryan Field• Selina Fire• Megan Frampton• Sarah Frantz• Louise Fury• Lois Gresh• Catherine Hiller• Marci Hirsch• Dr. Hilda Hutcherson• Debra Hyde• Anne Jamison• D.L. King• Dr. Logan Levkoff• Arielle Loren• Sassafras Lowry• Rachel Kenley• Pamela Madsen• Chris Marks and Lia Leto• Midori• Master R• Dr. Katherine Ramsland• Tiffany Reisz• Katharine Sands• Jennifer Sanzo• Rakesh Satyal• Marc Shapiro• Lyss Stern• Cecilia Tan• Hope Tarr• Susan Wright• Editor X
How To Wonderfully WriteSex (19)
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):
It’s a huge no-duh that we live in an Information Age: from high speed Internet to 4G cell networks, we can get whatever we want wherever we want it – data-wise – at practically at the speed of light.
But sometimes I miss the old days. No, they weren’t – ever – the Good Old Days (I still remember liquid paper, SASEs, and letter-sized manila envelopes … shudder), but back then a writer had a damned long time to hear about anything to do with the biz.
If you were lucky you got a monthly mimeographed newsletter but otherwise you spent weeks, even months, before hearing about markets or trends … and if you actually wanted contact with another writer you either had to pick up the phone, sit down and have coffee, or (gasp) write a letter.
No, I’m far from being a Luddite. To borrow a bit from the great (and late) George Carlin: “I’ve been uplinked and downloaded. I’ve been inputted and outsourced. I know the upside of downsizing; I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech lowlife. A cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, bicoastal mutlitasker, and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.”
I love living in The World Of Tomorrow. Sure, we may not have food pills or jetpacks but with the push of a … well, the click of a mouse I can see just about every movie or show I want, read any book ever written, play incredibly realistic games, or learn anything I want to know.
Here it comes, what you’ve been waiting for … but … well, as I’ve said many times before, writing can be an emotionally difficult, if not actually scarring endeavor. We forget, far too often, to care for ourselves in the manic pursuit of our writing ‘careers.’ We hover over Facebook, Twitter and blog-after-blog: our creative hopes of success – and fears of failure – rising and falling with every teeny-tiny bit of information that comes our way.
[MORE]
Friday, November 30, 2012
One More Reminder: Cupping - Using The Ancient Medicinal Technique For Erotic Play
(from M.Christian's Classes And Appearances)
Just one more reminder that I'm going to be teaching my very fun (and hands-on) class and workshop Cupping: Using The Ancient Medicinal Technique For Erotic Play for the great folks at The Looking Glass on December 2nd.
Where: The Looking Glass Arts
When: December 2nd, from 2:00PM to 4:00PM
Cost: $20.00 per person, $35.00 per couple with Advance Tickets; $25.00 per person, $40.00 per couple at the door.
Where: The Looking Glass Arts
When: December 2nd, from 2:00PM to 4:00PM
Cost: $20.00 per person, $35.00 per couple with Advance Tickets; $25.00 per person, $40.00 per couple at the door.
Cupping: Using The Ancient Medicinal Technique For Erotic Play
For thousands of years, Asian cultures have been using 'cupping' as a remedy for a variety of ills – from muscle strains to just a wonderful way to relax. In this unique class, participants will not just learn how to use cupping safely but also how to use it to enhance all kinds of erotic – and kinky – play.
Demonstrations will include not just how to use cupping on various parts of the body in new and exciting ways but also the different types of cupping sets that are available and what type is right for everything from advanced BDSM play to just soothing an achy back.
Fifty Impressions of Grey
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Did Someone Say ZOMBIES?
(from M.Christian's Technorotica)
Just because ... BRAINS ... zombies are ... BRAINS ... popular, I thought I'd share ... BRAINS ... an except from my own zombie ... BRAINS ... story from my non-smutty sf/f/horror collection Love Without Gun Control.
Btw ... BRAINS...
All in all, Presidential Aide Lawrence Tucker thought, it had almost been one fucking successful administration. He thought this while pushing the snapping, squirming corpse of the Assistant Secretary of Urban Affairs on a gurney. The gurney had one squeaking, spinning wheel, and it echoed down the flickering fluorescents of Access Tunnel B2, deep inside Cheyenne Mountain.
Yeah, he thought, almost –
They’d managed to get Hubbel into the seat with a clear 65%. For the conservative middles they’d used a budget-cutting and job development plank. Rehabilitation and civil liberties had pulled in the sandal-wearers and the granola-eaters. A hands-off business tax approach brought in the big campaign bucks from the old white men. A couple of clean overseas “actions” had cemented Hubbel as a man who took no bull. The loss of Peter, his eldest, in a gangland shooting had gotten him in real firm with the bleeding hearts – that, and his tearful plea to “stop the killing of our children” as he dedicated a big hunk of the domestic budget to education and law enforcement.
At the door of elevator shaft C2, Tucker unholstered the heavy army automatic that Major Clark had given him. Hitting the cycle button, he stepped out of the way of Henry’s clutching hands. The straps were definitely not slipping, but he was being extra careful. He’d had to pump six rounds into Julie, the personal secretary to the Chairman of Foreign Affairs, after she’d slipped free a week or so previous.
Leaning back and lighting a precious Marlboro, he watched the shaft door slowly crack, then ponderously open. Thinking, once again, of Hubbel.
[MORE]
Just because ... BRAINS ... zombies are ... BRAINS ... popular, I thought I'd share ... BRAINS ... an except from my own zombie ... BRAINS ... story from my non-smutty sf/f/horror collection Love Without Gun Control.
Btw ... BRAINS...
BURIED WITH THE DEAD
All in all, Presidential Aide Lawrence Tucker thought, it had almost been one fucking successful administration. He thought this while pushing the snapping, squirming corpse of the Assistant Secretary of Urban Affairs on a gurney. The gurney had one squeaking, spinning wheel, and it echoed down the flickering fluorescents of Access Tunnel B2, deep inside Cheyenne Mountain.
Yeah, he thought, almost –
****
They’d managed to get Hubbel into the seat with a clear 65%. For the conservative middles they’d used a budget-cutting and job development plank. Rehabilitation and civil liberties had pulled in the sandal-wearers and the granola-eaters. A hands-off business tax approach brought in the big campaign bucks from the old white men. A couple of clean overseas “actions” had cemented Hubbel as a man who took no bull. The loss of Peter, his eldest, in a gangland shooting had gotten him in real firm with the bleeding hearts – that, and his tearful plea to “stop the killing of our children” as he dedicated a big hunk of the domestic budget to education and law enforcement.
At the door of elevator shaft C2, Tucker unholstered the heavy army automatic that Major Clark had given him. Hitting the cycle button, he stepped out of the way of Henry’s clutching hands. The straps were definitely not slipping, but he was being extra careful. He’d had to pump six rounds into Julie, the personal secretary to the Chairman of Foreign Affairs, after she’d slipped free a week or so previous.
Leaning back and lighting a precious Marlboro, he watched the shaft door slowly crack, then ponderously open. Thinking, once again, of Hubbel.
[MORE]
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Reminder: Cupping - Using The Ancient Medicinal Technique For Erotic Play
(from M.Christian's Classes And Appearances)
Just a reminder that I'm going to be teaching my very fun (and hands-on) class and workshop Cupping: Using The Ancient Medicinal Technique For Erotic Play for the great folks at The Looking Glass on December 2nd.
Where: The Looking Glass Arts
When: December 2nd, from 2:00PM to 4:00PM
Cost: $20.00 per person, $35.00 per couple with Advance Tickets; $25.00 per person, $40.00 per couple at the door.
Where: The Looking Glass Arts
When: December 2nd, from 2:00PM to 4:00PM
Cost: $20.00 per person, $35.00 per couple with Advance Tickets; $25.00 per person, $40.00 per couple at the door.
Cupping: Using The Ancient Medicinal Technique For Erotic Play
For thousands of years, Asian cultures have been using 'cupping' as a remedy for a variety of ills – from muscle strains to just a wonderful way to relax. In this unique class, participants will not just learn how to use cupping safely but also how to use it to enhance all kinds of erotic – and kinky – play.
Demonstrations will include not just how to use cupping on various parts of the body in new and exciting ways but also the different types of cupping sets that are available and what type is right for everything from advanced BDSM play to just soothing an achy back.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Friday, November 23, 2012
SOLOMON'S SECRET by billierosie FREE READ!
If you want to read a great story - by an even greater person - then head over to by fantastic friend billierosie's blog to read her free story, "SOLOMON'S SECRET"
Here's a tease:
Only mid-afternoon and already it was dusk outside. And it was snowing again. Solomon watched the flakes falling faintly against the window pane. Faintly falling and falling faintly. A few flickering flakes were blown onto the glass in the freezing, gusting wind and stuck to the leaded criss crosses.
They were snowed in. Solomon’s heart sank. His stomach churned. He was trapped. There would be no getting away from it this time.
Amber was naked and moving gracefully around his large bedroom. She had disrobed playfully, like a burlesque dancer performing a naughty striptease. She was comfortable in her nudity, throwing him mischievous glances, tossing her hair. She was lighting candles, their flickering light casting shadows across the soft swell of her belly, her heavy, swaying breasts. Her skin glowed golden in the candlelight. Her long curly auburn hair glimmered with golden highlights, one hand gracefully behind her neck holding her hair back. She was a Pre-Raphaelite dream. Rossetti would have killed to have painted her.
The falling snow outside was mesmerising and Solomon stilled his fear and allowed his mind to drift.
He barely noticed Amber as she moved seductively around his bedroom. Any other guy would be turned on by the view. Solomon was not.
In a short while she would come to him and expect to have wonderful sex.
The snowy window, Amber; his gaze meandered around his bedroom settling on a large blue china bowl on a small wooden table. He used it as a place to keep keys, credit cards, replacement batteries, a cigarette lighter from his days as a smoker, a cork screw; all the random stuff that had no home, but you might need to put your hands on quickly. He watched as she scattered the contents of the bowl out onto the polished table and sprinkled in what looked like a heap of pot pourri. She struck a match and set fire to it, wafting out the flames with a fanning hand. She looked like a witch casting a spell.
[MORE]
Sigmund Freud's Letter Regarding Homosexuality
(from M.Christian's Queer Imaginings)
Sigmund Freud's Letter Regarding Homosexuality
In a response to a worried mother's inquiry about the sexuality of her son, Freud writes, “Homosexuality is … nothing to be ashamed of."
The original letter and complete transcript can be read at Letters Of Note.
(via BuzzFeed)
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
Bravo!
(from Frequently Felt)
(via vicemag)
VIGILANTES ARE TAGGING EGYPT’S SEXUAL HARASSERS WITH SPRAY PAINT
Despite worldwide publicity and campaigning, the approach to actually solving the sexual harassment epidemic in Egypt has sadly been a pretty apathetic one, with police giving less than a gram of shit about the situation, leaving street perverts to grope away until their hands are content. So it’s perhaps no surprise that anti-harassment groups in Cairo have gone vigilante, taking what’s left of the law into their own hands and patroling the streets to fight the harassment epidemic themselves.
We first heard about “Be A Man,” one of the more radical anti-harassment campaigns, from a story on NPR. The members of the group patroled during the recent Eid al-Adha festival celebrations, armed with cans of black and white spray paint, attacking, pinning down, and scarlet-lettering the shit out of grabbers and gropers with the words “I Am a Harasser.” Mostly men themselves, the activists wore matching fluoro jackets with “Harassment Prevention” scrawled across their backs in Arabic. I spoke to Muhammad Taimoor, leader and founder of the campaign, about their controversial tactics during the festival.
VICE: Hey Muhammad. Can you tell me a little bit about what’s been going on in the past few weeks?
Muhammad Taimoor: Yeah, we’ve been working against harassment with our campaign, “Be a Man.” A big problem here is that women-only carriages on the subway are being invaded by men who are then harassing the women onboard, so we’ve been working against that. It was Eid a couple of weeks ago and we were expecting that would be a particularly bad time for harassment. In the three days of Eid that I participated in, we caught about 300 cases of harassment—that’s 100 every day.
Wow, good job. How do you “catch” these cases?
Our tactics this time were pretty violent—a lot of people were offended because they didn’t like what we were doing. Basically, we attacked the harassers and spray-painted “I Am a Harasser” on anyone we caught in the act. The police weren’t at all supportive of what we were trying to do and they clearly weren’t ready to keep Egyptian women safe during Eid, so we did all the work on our own.
Why did you choose tagging with spray-paint as a tactic?
Because, in our society, a girl blames herself when she gets harassed. When she speaks out to her family about it, they blame her. Sometimes they prevent her from going to school or going outside because they think that sexual harassment is the girl’s problem, not the harasser’s problem. So, when our group attacks the harasser, the girl feels confident in herself. She feels like she was right, she feels like the street is supporting her. She’ll have the confidence to walk in the street without fear and she won’t be afraid to speak out if it happens again.
Keep Reading
(via vicemag)
VIGILANTES ARE TAGGING EGYPT’S SEXUAL HARASSERS WITH SPRAY PAINT
Despite worldwide publicity and campaigning, the approach to actually solving the sexual harassment epidemic in Egypt has sadly been a pretty apathetic one, with police giving less than a gram of shit about the situation, leaving street perverts to grope away until their hands are content. So it’s perhaps no surprise that anti-harassment groups in Cairo have gone vigilante, taking what’s left of the law into their own hands and patroling the streets to fight the harassment epidemic themselves.
We first heard about “Be A Man,” one of the more radical anti-harassment campaigns, from a story on NPR. The members of the group patroled during the recent Eid al-Adha festival celebrations, armed with cans of black and white spray paint, attacking, pinning down, and scarlet-lettering the shit out of grabbers and gropers with the words “I Am a Harasser.” Mostly men themselves, the activists wore matching fluoro jackets with “Harassment Prevention” scrawled across their backs in Arabic. I spoke to Muhammad Taimoor, leader and founder of the campaign, about their controversial tactics during the festival.
VICE: Hey Muhammad. Can you tell me a little bit about what’s been going on in the past few weeks?
Muhammad Taimoor: Yeah, we’ve been working against harassment with our campaign, “Be a Man.” A big problem here is that women-only carriages on the subway are being invaded by men who are then harassing the women onboard, so we’ve been working against that. It was Eid a couple of weeks ago and we were expecting that would be a particularly bad time for harassment. In the three days of Eid that I participated in, we caught about 300 cases of harassment—that’s 100 every day.
Wow, good job. How do you “catch” these cases?
Our tactics this time were pretty violent—a lot of people were offended because they didn’t like what we were doing. Basically, we attacked the harassers and spray-painted “I Am a Harasser” on anyone we caught in the act. The police weren’t at all supportive of what we were trying to do and they clearly weren’t ready to keep Egyptian women safe during Eid, so we did all the work on our own.
Why did you choose tagging with spray-paint as a tactic?
Because, in our society, a girl blames herself when she gets harassed. When she speaks out to her family about it, they blame her. Sometimes they prevent her from going to school or going outside because they think that sexual harassment is the girl’s problem, not the harasser’s problem. So, when our group attacks the harasser, the girl feels confident in herself. She feels like she was right, she feels like the street is supporting her. She’ll have the confidence to walk in the street without fear and she won’t be afraid to speak out if it happens again.
Keep Reading
Sunday, November 18, 2012
A Great Night Of Godless Perversity
I had a real blast performing at the Godless Perversity reading at the
Center for Sex and Culture last night - as I just mentioned on my Classes And Appearances page.
If you (alas) weren't there I've posted a special, slightly-edited version of "Friday Night At The Calvary Hotel" that I performed on my M.Christian's Queer Imaginings site. The full version is available in both FILTHY BOYS: Male-Male Erotica and my brand new best-of-my-best queer erotica collection, STROKE THE FIRE: The Best ManLove Fiction of M. Christian.
BUT, as a special 'treat,' here's the piece I wrote but didn't perform - though if you happen not to be a Godless Pervert you might not want to skip the following ... but otherwise enjoy!
BIGGER THAN JESUS
"We're more popular than Jesus now ... Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary." – John Lennon
#
Your dad has one. Your brother has one. Your uncle has one. Your grandfather has one. Your great, great grandfather has … or more than likely had one. Albert Einstein had one. Babe Ruth had one. Michelangelo had one. Leonardo had one. Shakespeare had one. Lincoln had one. Ghandi had one. Hitler had one. Stalin had one.
Paul McCartney has one. Ringo Starr has one. George Harrison had one. Mitt Romney has a small one. Barack Obama has a huge one.
Anne Coulter has one.
The Dalai Lama has one. Pat Robertson has one. The Pope has one. Jerry Falwell had one.
I have one.
And there it is: the lead in to the question. But, as I said, the answer is not quite as important, as revealing, as the reaction to it.
So ... just how big was Jesus?
#
Aside from a few unfortunate accident victims it’s a universal constant: men, human males to be specific, have a penis.
Keeping the argument Christian because, let’s face it, Jews shouldn’t really have a problem with the idea: why shouldn’t he have had one?
So just how big was Jesus? Bigger than average? He was supposed to be the Son of God, wasn’t he? So he was pretty damned big, but he probably wouldn’t want to be too big – after all, he did say something about humility, right? It wouldn’t be right if he, say, couldn’t be big enough to fit through the eye of a needle, but so big that he might have been a diversion from the Sermon on the Mount.
Circumcision is a given as he was the King of the Jews and all. But what happened to that part of him? Considering how precious various parts of Saints have been it seems odd that there haven’t been there many great Raiders of the Lost Ark adventures trying to locate that missing part of the Son of God.
We know that Jesus rose after three days -- but like most men did a certain part of his anatomy rise before the rest of him? Granting him superhuman control we can skate over certain embarrassing ponderings, but others just beg to be asked. For instance, there’s a hunk of his early days missing from the Bible: were those simply too embarrassing to report. He was, after all, an adolescent – and like most adolescent's probably spent a large part of his time locked in the bathroom with the Aramaic version of Penthouse.
“Was Jesus bigger than John Holmes?” was the question I asked people on the street on a sunny San Francisco Sunday. Most of them didn’t know who John Holmes but said that Jesus was bigger.
Those that did know about John Holmes came close to inflicting physical bodily harm, so I’ve chosen to take their answers as affirmative-via-threatened ... though I wonder about their purity as they knew who John Holmes was.
Universally everyone interviewed said that he was bigger than the Beatles, but I have to wonder how they came to that conclusion: average length, intimate knowledge, or commutative measurement: Paul, John, George and then Ringo – one dick after another? Personally I lean towards the first as putting the Fab part of the Fab Four together would more than likely would make them bigger than John Holmes.
See, isn’t science fun?
But if he didn’t have a penis then what did he have? Was God so offended by one of his own creations, i.e. the penis, that he didn’t even give his son one?
Logic being apples to the oranges of faith, these few people couldn’t see beyond the playfulness of the question -- instead ramming headlong into a wall so inflexible they could only accept The Son Of God ... with the underparts of a Ken doll.
That's the question – that's what I'm asking here and what I asked those unfortunate pedestrians on a Sunday – but there's more to it, a more than I find even more disturbing than fundamentalist threats of violence.
Why is the idea of Jesus having a penis so upsetting? Before writing this I asked some people – religious or not – and got answers ranging from “turn the other cheek” hypocritical outrage to simple “squirming in seat” discomfort. Bad enough thinking of your father’s, let alone the son of a supposed all-father, was the flavor of the conversations.
Folks – mostly folks like us -- have talked about how Christianity has perverted and criminalized our flesh and blood natures, created a totally unrealistic and honestly disturbing fantasy world that real no human being could ever inhabit. A group-think nightmare worked out from very human self-interests of power and control from a few scraps of parchment and horribly distorted myths and fables.
The atheists, the agnostics, the insincere party-pagans -- we’ve given the Fundamentalists their little spot of land to burn each other at the stake on, stone gays on, refute evolution on, believe the divinity of the president and the USA on – at least in this little piece, but you folks are fair game: Christianity as an ignorantly adopted default religion, the divinity of Davy and Goliath, the ‘based on a true story’ mythology of Satan and his kick-boxing Son Of God nemesis, and the ‘proofs’ of divinity in tortillas and cheese sandwiches.
They're a lost cause. We can – rightfully – kick them aside. The future is not for them ... hell, even the present is not for them: they dream of – and deserve – a Disneyland Yesterday of smallpox, stonings, keeping the darkies in their place, and sex in the dark ... and only to make babies.
The Bible Thumpers have long since gone, slamming the door behind them -- so it’s just you and me now.
When I asked about Jesus's penis you smirked, you laughed through gritted teeth: oh, sure, Jesus had a penis. You can laugh at that one, self-righteously giggle at my lame jokes about how big The Son Of God was ... but, honestly, truthfully, how many of you hedged your bets by flicking your eyes at sky ... hoping that the Hairy Thunderer won’t be too pissed at you for even thinking about it.
That's the frightening thing: give the Fundimentalists their hysteria -- they’ve certainly earned it for running away from reality and into a land where the drugs that save their lives, the computers that let them scream and shout about the evils of a secular society, the engineering that puts roofs over their heads, all came from what they fear more than Satan and his cloven tap-shoes: science and thought. The dick of Jesus is theirs to scream and howl about.
But why should people who haven’t drunk the sacramental wine of Christianity found the idea of Jesus’s penis uncomfortable?
It’s understandable that the Fundamentalist rockers and mumblers would foam and froth, but why is the idea so disturbing for folks who have never read the Bible, any Bible, or even set foot in a church, any church, or who are – to put it politely – vocal about being not just unbelievers but that anyone who does believe is a complete, total, and utter moron.
We -- the atheists, the agnostics, the insincere party-pagans – far too easily forget what we are not believing about: where the real danger lies.
The Fundamentalists make themselves easy targets, dancing clowns in front of neon-green bulls eyes, but when people who have never been in any church, read any religious tract, or even openly sneer any anything to do with the idea of faith squirm in their seats, flick their eyes skyward, it pulls aside the curtain and shows that irrational belief is not loud and cartoonish but hidden in plain sight.
Sure, the Fundamentalists have left the party. But far too many people on this planet have all the ignorance but none of the dedication: they are the ones who shake their heads at evolution, gay rights, sexual expression, freedom of expression, and the Separation of Church and State while not understanding exactly why.
Will talking about Jesus’s penis change anything?
Of course it won’t – not immediately at any ate -- but I hope that maybe a few of you will think about it when you look out at the world and see only the burning crosses ... forgetting that the true darkness of believing the unbelievable, of irrational terrors of punishment by Dad in the Sky, is not just in the face of a screaming preacher but in the same discomfort that comes from walking under a ladder ... or thinking about Jesus's dick.
But one more thing: just to show that Jesus and his followers aren’t the only ones being picked on here – and, perhaps, reveal how deep this seam of fear runs through even we who consider ourselves above and beyond all these foolish fears, these ridiculous beliefs, these silly irrationalities:
Just how big was Mohammad?
Friday, November 16, 2012
Hashima Island ... and Skyfall?!
(from M.Christian's Meine Kleine Fabrik)
Well, now I HAVE to get out there and watch Skyfall ... as I wrote about the glorious ruins of Hashima island for Dark Roasted Blend, and - naturally - the same article is in my book, Welcome to Weirdsville:
Crumbling plaster, broken and splintered lath, cracked cement, fractured concrete, gap-toothed brick walls, rusting iron, daggers of shattered glass … no argument about it: there's something hypnotically alluring, darkly fascinating, about a truly great ruin.
What's now decay and rot once was bright and brilliantly full of hope: Who lived here? What were their lives like? What happened? How did it all come apart? How did it all crumble to almost nothing?
In the case of Hashima Island, or Battleship Island as it's often called, hope and optimism became dust and decay because one black resource was replaced by a cheaper black resource. Populated first in 1887, the island – which is 15 kilometers from Nagasaki – only began to really, and phenomenally, become populated much later, in 1959.
Hashima is, for many ruin fans, the rotting and collapsing grail, the benchmark all other crumbling structures are measured against – and seeing pictures of the place it's easy to see why. Not only is Hashima frighteningly preserved in some places, as if the residents had just stepped out as few minutes before, but it is also, contrarily, spectacularly falling down. Beyond its current awe-inspiring state of decay, the island's dramatic isolation and its bizarre history make it the ruin of ruins.
Before that day when coal, the old black resource, was replaced by oil, another black resource, Hashima was the most densely populated area – ever. On that tiny island, crammed into what are now decaying tenements, were thousands of miners, their families (including children), support staff, administration, and everything necessary to make their lives at least tolerable. It's hard to imagine when looking at the empty doorways, ghostly apartments, and hauntingly vacant corridors what the lives of those people might have been like.
Unlike the post-apocalyptic drama of Hashima, we can very easily imagine what the lives of the residents of the famous Walled City of Kowloon were like – in fact we can ask them, as their city was torn down in 1993. The reason why the Walled City gets so frequently mentioned as a ruin is, while it was there, it was as if the people who lived in it were living their lives in the guts of some great, monstrous, maze.
To say that the city had a long history is an understatement, as its roots go back to the Song Dynasty (960 AD, if you need to know the date). The city was a curiosity for a very long time – a strange bit of legal knotting making it Chinese and not British -- but the labyrinth didn't start to grow appreciably until after the second world war when it became a haven for … well, people without a state: refugees, squatters, thieves, drug-dealers, and much more (and much worse). Neither Great Britain nor China refused to have anything to do with the immense warren of walkways, apartments, workshops, factories, brothels, gambling dens, and opium dens.
The Triad, who represented most of the criminal element, were pretty much forced out in the 70s – by a police attack some 30,000 strong, no less -- but the city remained as a kind of anarchist warren, a world-unto-itself where the residents built and maintained pretty much everything. Looking at pictures of the city today, it looks like some kind of ramshackle prison, a cyberpunk nightmare of florescent lights, spectrally flickering televisions, and mazes of perpetually damp hallways and trash-strewn alleyways. Yet, for many people living there, it was simply home.
Alas, the end of the living ruin that was the Walled City came to an end in the 90s when the residents were evacuated and their fantastic city-within-a-city was torn down. Interestingly, the Walled City has a strong connection to Hashima as, at its height, the Walled City had a population density almost rivaling that Japanese island. Before the bulldozers came, it had a staggering population of 50,000 people, all living in an area the size of a few city blocks.
But if you're talking ruins you have to talk about the ruin FROM THE FUTURE .. or at least a ruin that looks like it came from there.
If you travel to Taiwan, up north to be specific, you will find yourself in a what looks like the fantastic set from some kind of big-budget science fiction epic: the resort of San Zhi. Built in the 1980s, the resort was supposed to be, planned to be, a vacation spot from the next century .. BUT TODAY!
Unfortunately, the dreams of the developers stayed just that and, beyond a few remarkably-well-preserved, sections, San Zhi never materialized. But what they did build, and that's still there in all it's ruinous glory, is amazing: crumbling residential pods on a bleak and blasted landscape, a mini-sprawl of the future falling apart BUT TODAY!
Decaying, rotting, crumbling, collapsing – ruins are the remains of what was, of the lives of the people who lived in them. In the case of Hashima Island, what remains teases us with thoughts of what it must have been like to live in the most densely populated area in the world, ever; with the Walled City of Kowloon, we instead dream of what it must have been like to a resident of a labyrinthine living, breathing ruin; and then there is the painful folly of San Zhi – a ruin not from the past but strangely, wonderfully, from a tomorrow that might have been.
In Skyfall, the Japanese island of Hashima serves as the secret headquarters of Raoul Silva, the well-coiffed Bond villain played by Javier Bardem. In reality, it serves as a sobering reminder of the pitfalls of industrialization, and the human toll it can exact. Late last month, Messy Nessy Chic published a detailed history of the island, which, at the turn of the 20th century, was a bustling coal-mining town owned by the Mitsubishi Corporation.
Things took a turn for the sinister at the dawn of World War II, when the Japanese turned the island into a bona fide labor camp for Chinese and Korean prisoners. By 1959, the island boasted the highest population density on Earth (139,100 per square kilometer), and living conditions soon...
Continue reading… (from The Verge)
Well, now I HAVE to get out there and watch Skyfall ... as I wrote about the glorious ruins of Hashima island for Dark Roasted Blend, and - naturally - the same article is in my book, Welcome to Weirdsville:
Crumbling plaster, broken and splintered lath, cracked cement, fractured concrete, gap-toothed brick walls, rusting iron, daggers of shattered glass … no argument about it: there's something hypnotically alluring, darkly fascinating, about a truly great ruin.
What's now decay and rot once was bright and brilliantly full of hope: Who lived here? What were their lives like? What happened? How did it all come apart? How did it all crumble to almost nothing?
In the case of Hashima Island, or Battleship Island as it's often called, hope and optimism became dust and decay because one black resource was replaced by a cheaper black resource. Populated first in 1887, the island – which is 15 kilometers from Nagasaki – only began to really, and phenomenally, become populated much later, in 1959.
Hashima is, for many ruin fans, the rotting and collapsing grail, the benchmark all other crumbling structures are measured against – and seeing pictures of the place it's easy to see why. Not only is Hashima frighteningly preserved in some places, as if the residents had just stepped out as few minutes before, but it is also, contrarily, spectacularly falling down. Beyond its current awe-inspiring state of decay, the island's dramatic isolation and its bizarre history make it the ruin of ruins.
Before that day when coal, the old black resource, was replaced by oil, another black resource, Hashima was the most densely populated area – ever. On that tiny island, crammed into what are now decaying tenements, were thousands of miners, their families (including children), support staff, administration, and everything necessary to make their lives at least tolerable. It's hard to imagine when looking at the empty doorways, ghostly apartments, and hauntingly vacant corridors what the lives of those people might have been like.
Unlike the post-apocalyptic drama of Hashima, we can very easily imagine what the lives of the residents of the famous Walled City of Kowloon were like – in fact we can ask them, as their city was torn down in 1993. The reason why the Walled City gets so frequently mentioned as a ruin is, while it was there, it was as if the people who lived in it were living their lives in the guts of some great, monstrous, maze.
To say that the city had a long history is an understatement, as its roots go back to the Song Dynasty (960 AD, if you need to know the date). The city was a curiosity for a very long time – a strange bit of legal knotting making it Chinese and not British -- but the labyrinth didn't start to grow appreciably until after the second world war when it became a haven for … well, people without a state: refugees, squatters, thieves, drug-dealers, and much more (and much worse). Neither Great Britain nor China refused to have anything to do with the immense warren of walkways, apartments, workshops, factories, brothels, gambling dens, and opium dens.
The Triad, who represented most of the criminal element, were pretty much forced out in the 70s – by a police attack some 30,000 strong, no less -- but the city remained as a kind of anarchist warren, a world-unto-itself where the residents built and maintained pretty much everything. Looking at pictures of the city today, it looks like some kind of ramshackle prison, a cyberpunk nightmare of florescent lights, spectrally flickering televisions, and mazes of perpetually damp hallways and trash-strewn alleyways. Yet, for many people living there, it was simply home.
Alas, the end of the living ruin that was the Walled City came to an end in the 90s when the residents were evacuated and their fantastic city-within-a-city was torn down. Interestingly, the Walled City has a strong connection to Hashima as, at its height, the Walled City had a population density almost rivaling that Japanese island. Before the bulldozers came, it had a staggering population of 50,000 people, all living in an area the size of a few city blocks.
But if you're talking ruins you have to talk about the ruin FROM THE FUTURE .. or at least a ruin that looks like it came from there.
If you travel to Taiwan, up north to be specific, you will find yourself in a what looks like the fantastic set from some kind of big-budget science fiction epic: the resort of San Zhi. Built in the 1980s, the resort was supposed to be, planned to be, a vacation spot from the next century .. BUT TODAY!
Unfortunately, the dreams of the developers stayed just that and, beyond a few remarkably-well-preserved, sections, San Zhi never materialized. But what they did build, and that's still there in all it's ruinous glory, is amazing: crumbling residential pods on a bleak and blasted landscape, a mini-sprawl of the future falling apart BUT TODAY!
Decaying, rotting, crumbling, collapsing – ruins are the remains of what was, of the lives of the people who lived in them. In the case of Hashima Island, what remains teases us with thoughts of what it must have been like to live in the most densely populated area in the world, ever; with the Walled City of Kowloon, we instead dream of what it must have been like to a resident of a labyrinthine living, breathing ruin; and then there is the painful folly of San Zhi – a ruin not from the past but strangely, wonderfully, from a tomorrow that might have been.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Don't Forget The 50 Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey Contest
Just a reminder, folks, about the very cool Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey contest that's winding up very, very soon:
Reminder: I'm Reading At The The Godless Perverts Story Hour
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Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Bitten By Books Likes The Very Bloody Marys
(From M.Christian's Queer Imaginings)
Here's a very nice review of The Very Bloody Marys (out now in a new edition as part of the M.Christian ManLove Collection)
Bitten By Books:
Here's a very nice review of The Very Bloody Marys (out now in a new edition as part of the M.Christian ManLove Collection)
Bitten By Books:
Valentino, a daylight hemosapien, is training to become a vampire cop for the Le Counceil Carmin. He has been training for over a century and his boss/trainer, believes that he is worthless. Valentino readily agrees with him.
Valentino is running late for work as usual and is worried that his boss, Pogue, will get angry with him, again. He jumps in a cab with a driving corpse and heads to Pogues home. Ombre who is a liaison for the Counseil tells him that Pogue is missing and Valentino has been chosen to look for him. Ombre believes that the Very Bloody Maryshave something to do with it.
During the night Valentino must not only find his boss and the Very Bloody Marys but he needs to figure out how. As the night goes on his To Do list becomes bigger and bigger.
I had a lot of fun reading this book. It was a nice change to have a bumbling vampire and watch him fight Vespa riding vampires. He tries so hard to make it look like he knows what he is doing but in the end it is all for not. The cast of extras were wonderful additions to the story. Saul a wizard who owns a cat that talks and is addicted to cat nip, a chef who is a coroner who works at a morgue/restaurant was hysterical. A worthy under dog story.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker: What Makes a Good Publisher?
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:
#
Here's a tease:
Before I begin (again), a bit of disclosure: While the following has been written in an attempt to be professionally and personally non-biased I am an Associate Publisher for Renaissance E Books.
Now, with that out of the way (again)...
#
The last time I wrote an intro like the above it was for my Streetwalker column Self Or Not? – about why I feel that, even though it can be very alluring, I still recommend writers work with a publisher rather than go the self-publishing route.
After writing that column I've been thinking, a lot, about what makes a good publisher ... especially these days. Not to (ahem) brag but I've been in the biz for quite a few years and have worked with a lot of publishers – both when books were printed on (gasp) actual paper, as well as in the new digital age, so I think I can say a bit about what makes a good publisher.
As always, keep in mind that this is somewhat subjective: what I like in a publisher may not be what you like in a publisher ... but the somewhat is there because, tastes aside, it's a publisher's job to get your book out so, hopefully, people will buy bunches of copies.
The world – as I mentioned – as totally changed, and so has what publishers not just can do but should be doing. It may sound a bit ... emotional, but I like a publisher I can talk to – and who talks to me. Sure, many publishers are simply too busy to answer every email immediately but that they get back to me eventually is more than enough to keep me happy. I've dealt with far too many publishers who I have to write, write, write and write again to get an answer to even the simplest question.
[MORE]
Reminder: I'm Performing At Bawdy Storytelling's Gender Blender
(from M.Christian's Classes And Appearances)
Just a reminder, folks, that I'm going to be performing - on stage (gasp) - at the very fun Bawdy Storytelling event tomorrow night in Oakland.
Here's the info on the whens and hows and what-else's:
Gender Blender
The Uptown Nightclub
1928 Telegraph Avenue
Oakland, California 94612
Buy your tix here: Bawdy Storytelling’s ‘Gender Blender’
$12 in Advance/$15 at the Door
Storytellers include:
This week, Bawdy Storytelling – the Mr. Right in your tighty whities – brings six sexy sagas of genderfucks, drag queens, drag kings, and one-eyed jacks to the stage of the Uptown NightClub in Oakland. These are real stories told by real people and guaranteed to incite, excite, and if you’re so inspired, invite someone home with you to create your very own bawdy story – and then tell us about it. We love the dirty details!
Just a reminder, folks, that I'm going to be performing - on stage (gasp) - at the very fun Bawdy Storytelling event tomorrow night in Oakland.
Here's the info on the whens and hows and what-else's:
Gender Blender
The Uptown Nightclub
1928 Telegraph Avenue
Oakland, California 94612
Buy your tix here: Bawdy Storytelling’s ‘Gender Blender’
$12 in Advance/$15 at the Door
Storytellers include:
- Sex Educator & Role Model Reid Mihalko
- GenderFork founder Sarah Dopp
- Erotica Author M.Christian
- More storytellers to come!
This week, Bawdy Storytelling – the Mr. Right in your tighty whities – brings six sexy sagas of genderfucks, drag queens, drag kings, and one-eyed jacks to the stage of the Uptown NightClub in Oakland. These are real stories told by real people and guaranteed to incite, excite, and if you’re so inspired, invite someone home with you to create your very own bawdy story – and then tell us about it. We love the dirty details!
Saturday, November 10, 2012
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