 |
|
• EROS CITIES •
EROTICA
/ ZINE•
MASTHEAD
•
ADVERTISE |
|
erotica fictiongallerylifestyles fetishbdsmqueer/bi/transswingersfeatures news
briefsarticlessexy
spreadsfree speech x-presseros bits sound
offtriviasexfessionsdiva's debaucherysexual intelligence
reviewsclubs sf
archiveslondon
archiveslos
angeles archivesnew
york archiveslas
vegas archiveseros photo classified ads about eros zine
Sponsored Links
|
If you read short erotica in book form -- gay, straight, bi, queer, trans, mixed or just about anything else -- you've read a story by M. Christian. As one of the English-speaking world's most widely-published authors of erotic fiction, he's seen his short stories in literally hundreds of anthologies. But he's also known as an author of science fiction, fantasy and horror, most recently with his gay San Francisco vampire mystery The Very Bloody Marys. Though he's straight, he writes some of the hottest and filthiest gay -- and lesbian -- erotica around, as well as telling the gay coming of age story (as in Marys) with moving inspiration, proving that the erotocreative impulse is nature's guaranteed genderfuck, a font of imaginative subversion that crosses, blurs and at times obliterates all gender and orientation lines. As if that weren't enough, Christian, Chris to his friends, also blogs extensively and writes uproarious articles about weird history, science and the arts, exploring a list of obsessions that ranges from robots to Japanese culture to classic film to spy novels and Victorian crime fiction, publishing hundreds of articles in addition to his fiction output. If any writer out there can keep up with M. Christian, I'm betting they sport a chrome skeleton and radionuclide power source crammed up their ass. We caught up with Chris for a long-overdue chat about writing, sex, history, death, and perversion.
Eros Zine: Your first professional publication was an erotic science fiction story called "Intercore," which appeared in the magazine Future Sex and was immediately picked up for Susie Bright's Best American Erotica. Since then, you've published in almost every genre; you've written and edited gay erotica, straight erotica, bi erotica, tranny erotica, vampire stories, horror, crime…dude, I'm sensing a pattern here, and if I let the list go on we'd run out of space on the fricking WEB. Do you have a favorite mode or style? Any particular genre you really love to dig into? M. Christian: Oh, man, what a question! I guess the answer would have to be whatever is tickling my fancy at the moment, or whatever the editor or publisher wants. Smut is holding less and less of an allure, though, but that doesn't mean I still don't do it or wouldn't do more it it. It's just that I've done more than my fair share of it so it's nice to do something different. I really never thought that writing gay books would be so much fun -- like with Running Dry and Very Bloody Marys -- so I would definitely be open to doing more of that, especially with a press that would let me have some serious conceptual fun. I also love doing something brand new, it really gets my creative juices going ... though that can be messy. Westerns, thrillers, historicals, even romance: I'm willing to try pretty much anything. That's how I got started in this 'biz' to begin with, so who knows what I might find I love doing or that people love reading? Eros Zine: How did you come to write "The Very Bloody Marys"? What inspired you to crossbreed detective, vampire fiction and gay fiction? M. Christian: Here's a secret: I don't mind werewolves, I'm impartial to mummies, can take or leave ghosts, am fair to middlin' with wizards, but the one creature I've never really liked are vampires. Frankly they've been done to death ... er 'undeath' I guess I should say. My big beef I guess that that they have become such an established playground for reader fantasies that writers haven't been taking many risks with their established allure: powerful? Check. Mysterious? Yep. Put-upon? Absolutely. Snappy dressers? Sure. When I was with chatting with Haworth about novels they told me that vamps were big so I took the hint and hit them up with Very Bloody Marys. Early on I decided to make a character that was everything that traditional vamps aren't: Powerful? Nope, Val is anything but -- if anything because of the sunlight thing he's less of a threat than regular Joe humans. Mysterious? Hardly: Val is a bit of a fuck-up, kind of bitchy and whiny (though funny about it), and never seems to catch a break. Put-upon? He's that but not because he's a vamp but because vamps in his world are sort of supernatural cops who keep the really weird things from eating us humans. Snappy-dresser? Jeans and a t-shirt is all he wears in the book. What I didn't see coming was how much fun Very Bloody Marys would be to write. It was a serious, balls-to-the-wall, kick-ass, blast to do. Exhausting, yeah, because the style is a bit frantic, but it was a real pleasure. I really would love to do another (hear that publishers?) but we'll have to see how Very Bloody Marys sells first (sigh).
Eros Zine: As a longtime San Francisco resident -- practically a native, by now -- what did you want to get across about the city in a very SF-centric novel like The Very Bloody Marys? M. Christian: I never really thought about San Francisco in regards to the book. Most of the time when I write I don't feature the place much aside from vague impressions, but in the case of Very Bloody Marys I thought that I might as well have some kicks describing the city as I saw it, staying away as much as possible from the usual clichés. Every San Francisco set book talks about the Castro or the Mission, for instance, and while both those neighborhoods are in the book I also wanted to show a bit of the Avenues, SOMA, Twin Peaks and other seldom explored parts of the city with more of a nitties and gritties people who actually live here know about. Eros Zine: "Marys" paints a picture of San Francisco that's very detailed, to the point where those very familiar with the Castro and North Beach may be tempted to try to figure out actual buildings, corners and back alleys mentioned in the novel. Will they be successful, or did you take some liberties with the city's details? How closely can you stick to reality when plotting out a novel that's got action scenes as detailed as this one? M. Christian: I tried to be pretty accurate because I know the city so well -- or at least I thought I did. If I had to do it over again I'd definitely change some things (which is another reason I want to do a sequel). For one thing I have Val living in a secret apartment above the Midnight Sun, which is kind of ridiculous if you've ever seen the place. For the next book I'll instead have him live in the upper floors of the End Up, which with it's painted-over windows just screams for a resident vampire. Same with the "17 Reasons" sign. If you've lived in the city for some time you probably remember that weird thing in the Mission. But after I finished the book I found out that it'd been removed. Luckily I did some tap-dancing and made the sign just in Val's memory as well ... but, man, I miss that weird sign. What the hell were those "17 Reasons" anyway? Eros Zine: In a similar way that it deals with San Francisco, Marys is also detailed when it comes to the vampire genre -- the narrator Valentino actually addresses the reader directly early in the novel, setting up and knocking down vampire legends and realities in order to create the mythology of the novel. How did you decide on which parts of the diverse vampire mythos you were going to stick to? Now let's ask the same question, or the second part of the question, about gay fiction -- was it a conscious process of figuring out which tropes suited your purpose, or did you simply find out which ones "stuck" as the narrative evolved? M. Christian: This gets back to trying to make Val a vamp with none of the usual vamp bonuses, but with a more limited, and in some ways serious, liabilities. So when he chats with the reader about what it's like to be a vamp it's my way of saying to the reader: think vamps are cool? What about no shape-changing, no hypnosis -- none of that fun stuff. Okay, crosses and running water also won't hurt you but take a second to think about what that leaves you: half the day having to hide from the sun, pretty much normal strength, and serious longevity. Kind of sucks, doesn''t it? Especially when the nighttime seems pretty much packed with weirder, stranger, much more frightening creatures than yourself. As for the gay angle of the book, I also didn't want Val to be a toppish kind of character, but also not too much of a ... well, let's just stop there for a second. I don't think I'm explaining myself very well. I really didn't know much about Val until I started the story except that he was a vamp, he was gay, and he's kind of a screw-up. The rest of what kind of a vamp he was, what kind of gay man that he was, kind of spun off from that. If anything I wanted him to be a character you wanted to like, and who wanted nothing more than to be respected, liked, and loved -- which really could be the same for anyone, gay or straight. The real fun was where I got to play with his own definition of what he was and what he wanted. But for more details on that you gotta buy the book (hehehehe). Eros Zine: Your collections have included Dirty Words, a gay collection, The Bachelor Machine, a science fiction collection, and Speaking Parts, a lesbian collection. It seemed like the lesbian collection was the one that raised eyebrows, having been written by a male gendered person, but I (another male gendered person) have always felt like your lesbian stories are some of your most creative and interesting. Do you have a particular jones to write about characters who are sexually different from you? Do you think there's a political strength to writing whatever the hell you want to write, with whatever characters you want to write? M. Christian: I don't think much about 'orientation' when I think about stories. I usually start with a basic idea of what I want to do -- or what the editor is looking for -- and from there I start to play with ideas or concepts about what I want the final to be. So I think your point about a 'political strength' is spot-on, but I think it's more like taking a more universal character approach. As I like to say, I don't know what gay sex is like, and I'm not equipped to understand lesbian sex, but I do know what hope, desire, fear, lust, love, disappointment feels like and that's something everyone shares. So when I do a story there's definitely a 'feeling' for one orientation or another but I don't really set out to write what people might consider to be a 'gay' or 'straight' story. Okay, sometimes the story just won't work as a gay or a straight story but most of the time I'm more concerned about emotional impact rather than being conscious about its orientation. I appreciate what you say about my stories, though I'm way too close to them to see what you and other folks might be seeing. But I think I do have a tiny 'bent' towards lesbian stories more than anything because, like vamps, people think the stories should be a certain way so I take some effort to make the characters as 'rounded' and 'general' as possible. There's also a certain sense of ... okay, call it 'pride.' The fact that I can write gay stories doesn't seem to faze people much, what with having a penis and all, but when people respond to my lesbian stories positively it makes me feel very warm and fuzzy: meaning that I reached people so different that what I am, that I might have demonstrated some small amount of writing skill. Eros Zine: Also, not to editorialize here too much... but writing about characters that don't share the same gender, or type of body, or cultural background as you -- that seems to be in direct opposition to a certain philosophy of creative writing I experienced in creative writing classes in college, in which the only "important" writing is "personal" in that it reflects your own background and, I would assert, your own limitations. I know I've already had this conversation with you, so I know that I've heard from your lips, to paraphrase, sort of a "Who cares?" attitude -- that you write whatever fiction with whatever characters, and the writing is what's important to you. But is there a hunger for exoticism that drives you to write about characters who aren't like you, maybe the same sort of thing that drives you to write about, say, vampires? M. Christian: Not to repeat myself, but I do think that writers do need to write about themselves, but not the details and the events but rather what it feels like to be a human being. Too often writers think that people who aren't immediately like themselves must somehow be down deep very different, alien and cryptic -- that's why they so often resort to cliches. But the fact is we all (mostly) have the same emotional landscape, the only differences being in the specifics. I don't need to know how, exactly, a gay man might look at another gay man, but I know enough about my own mind to be able to project it with a tweak to how I look at a woman, with -- once again -- the anxieties and hopes and fears and lusts we all feel when we step into the sexual arena. For otherworldly creatures that's another reason I made Val less of a powerful otherworldly being and more of a poor schlub. I could have made a clumsy guess about what a larger-than-life vamp might be like and maybe been lucky and made him accessible and sympathetic, but I sure as hell know what a schlub is like, so it was easier - and more enjoyable -- to take that route. One thing I've always wanted to learn how to do is just that: make understandable and approachable a very different kind of being. I tried to do it a bit with Doud from Running Dry but I think I could have done a better job of it. Some of the stories in The Bachelor Machine come close as well but all-in-all I think I need to do some work on that. Maybe for the next book…
Eros Zine: In addition to your fiction and your books and your editing projects and your rampant literary perversions (gasps for breath) you... I say it in hushed tones, now... BLOG. Recently you've started posting articles from your "Welcome to Weirdsville" column from Gothic Net and elsewhere, focusing on historical topics like lost nuclear weapons or the 1919 industrial accident where 21 Bostonians were killed by 2 million gallons of molasses. Is there sometimes a relief to being able to write about something other than sex? M. Christian: I love to write about anything, really. Sex has always just been more expedient, publishing-wise, but I've always wanted to work in non-fiction as well. Ever since I was a young-ish reanimated corpse back in the "old country" I've been fascinated in weird and unusual history. For God's sake, there's all kinds of really bizarre things out there that no one seems to know about. Screw UFOs and Big Feet: what about iceberg aircraft carriers, the Hellfire Club, biological weapons accidents, infamous con men, and all that kind of stuff? Weirdsville (and the four other columns I did about strange things) gave me a chance to do that. Problem with the web, though, was most of the stuff I did had vanished with the sites I'd done them for. Putting them up on my the the site my brother and I have started, Meine Kleine Fabrik, which means "My Little Factory" by the way, is just our way of sharing the wonderful strangeness that both of us have stumbled across. I'm also putting up the columns I did for the fantastic Erotica Readers and Writers site (my "Confessions of a Literary Streetwalker) on my own 'professional' site at www.mchristian.com, and just started a new site called Frequently Felt, which is a place for the stuff I've either written about or just tripped over that's not quite (ahem) Safe For Work. Down the road I also might try and put up my half-way finished book on movie villains, "They Only Wanted to Rule The World" but what with my various writing things and the three blogs I'm feeling a bit maxed out. Eros Zine: You also recently blogged about fictional thief Arsene Lupin, the lesser-known French answer to Herlock Sholmes, er, Sherlock Holmes. His stylish character I think maybe lends a hint of 3rd-republic charm to the character of Ombre in The Very Bloody Marys, or maybe that's the only European I can think of.... How much of an influence are works you've read & loved on your writing? Is porn writing an influence, as well? M. Christian: Other writers, movies, shows, you name it has a huge influence in my work. Very often I'll watch, read, whatever something and then try my hand at something similar, if just to push myself as a writer. What would my Seinfeld episode be like? My CSI? My Batman comic? My manga? I don't completely use the end result but I do often tweak it or take it apart and use it somewhere else. I also love putting little jokes and odd references into my stories as well. 'Ombre' is kind of like that as is Pogue (who is modeled after actor R. Lee Ermy). I also love odd or rare characters. Lupin is definitely one of those, as are the villains Doctor Mabuse, Fantomas, Diabolik, Maldoror, etc. If I had the chance I'd love to create a character like any of them or just have fun trying my hand at adding to their existing mythos. One day perhaps ... (fingers crossed). Eros Zine: Speaking of which, here's my "Do you sleep in the nude" question: After well over a decade in the biz, is there any writing that still turns you on sexually? M. Christian: Not really. It seems like a strange thing to say but I've found that erotica doesn't really do much for me -- sexually or as an inspiration for my work. I guess having written so much of it, or read so much of it as an editor, has twisted my outlook. I keep thinking things like "poor dialogue," "plot holes," "clumsy description" when I read it. Not to say I don't get turned on by other things. I'm a very visual person as well as very tactile, so stories just don't reach me like a real person or pictures do. Of course having sexual interests like mine also means that even finding anything that works is rare enough as it is. Part of the reason why I think I'm so sympathetic to gay and lesbian characters is because my own sexuality isn't, on the average, very well respected. Of course there's a huge difference between being fond of large ladies and being gay, but we are both not very common out in the mainstream so there's a similar feeling of isolation. Eros Zine: Thanks, Chris! Readers can always find out more about M. Christian's work at MChristian.com or at his other blogs Frequently Felt and Meine Kleine Fabrik.
|
|
|
||
|
 |
|