This is beyond fantastic: the absolutely-glorious - and brilliant writer - Jan Graham just posted an interview with lille 'ol me on her site. Here's a tease - for the rest just click here.
The author hot seat specials are designed to help readers get to know some of today's popular and up and coming authors a little better. The questions are broken into four sections - About your writing, about you, fun stuff and finally. Some of the questions are easy, other may need a little more thought and some may cause our author friends to hesitate before answering. Still, they all answer.
Today we have a change of image to go with our hot seat interview and the main reason for that is our author today is a bloke (for those live in the rest of the world that's the Aussie term for a man). Today's hot seat is also different because our guest is the first author I've interviewed who doesn't write romance. I know, shock horror. Anyway, I digress.
Today we welcome M. Christian, author of erotica and many other genres, anthologist, teacher of classes in all things writing and BDSM, and Associate Publisher at Renaissance E books. Some of you may remember he appeared on Truth or Dare Tuesday at the end of last year. Well, he had so much fun that he agreed to come back, and not only answer our questions but also give away a copy of his book 'How to write and sell erotica.' So, today we turn up the heat and ask M the really tough questions...lets see how he goes.
About your writing:
How did you get started as a writer?
Funny story there: I always knew I wanted to do ... something creative with my life. I was one of 'those' kids – imaginative, smart, asking the wrong questions, drawing all kinds of things, making all things of things ... and, yes, I got beat up a lot – but it wasn't until High School that I finally sat down and decided that writing was the way to go.
And, boy, did I go after that dream with a vengeance. Reading somewhere that the best way to become a good – if not great – writer that you had to write, a lot, I wrote a story a week ... for close to ten years (yes, you may gasp).
Finally, totally out-of-the-blue I took a class in erotica writing from Lisa Palac, who at the time was editing a magazine called FutureSex. Totally out-of-the-blue I handed her a story I had written and – amazingly – she bought it for her magazine. A year later the same story was picked for Best American Eritica 1994 and, just like that, I was a writer ... a pornographer, sure, but all I cared about was that someone, finally, wanted to read what I wrote. That is was about sex didn't matter at all.
Even though I got my start with smut – and I have made like of a reputation in that genre – I write all kinds of things: science fiction, fantasy and horror (collected into the book Love Without Gun Control); historical fun tidbits and essays (collected into the book Welcome to Weirdsville); and even How To Write And Sell Erotica.
What a lot of people don't realize about my writing 'life' is that even though I've written a ... well, let's be honest, a huge amount of queer fiction (both erotic and non) I'm actually a straight guy. Now, I've always been very honest about my sexuality – I never, ever lie about being gay. I got into writing gay stuff – like my novels Running Dry, Very Bloody Marys, Me2, and Finger's Breadth; plus the collections, Stroke the Fure, Dirty Words, Filthy Boys, and more – is because, simply, I was asked to by gay editors and publishers.
No dummy, I wrote what people wanted to buy – which is why I write all kinds of things I'm always looking for new challenges and ways to expand myself as well as my writing. As I like to say: I never thought I'd be good at smut writing until I tried, never thought I'd be good at writing gay fiction until I tried ... so who knows what else I might be good at?
People, as well as writers and any other creative person, always need to be stretching themselves – it's how we learn and, best of all, grow.
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