Continuing my seven (possibly terrifying) weeks of M.Christian, here's my newest installment...
...my reasoning behind this is that I haven't really talked a lot about myself for a while so I thought it would be a fun little experiment to post - once a week, for seven weeks - a series of essays about little ol' me: where I came from, my professional journey, being an editor, being a publisher ... and even my hopes and dreams for the future.
Hope you like!
(this week's piece was also run on Buffy Kennedy's site "Buffy's Ramblings" as part of the Stroke the Fire Guest Blog Tour that the great folks at Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions were so kind of set up for me)
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Wanna hear a funny ... well, if not funny then at least odd
... story? In our previous
installment you heard of my journey from amateur to professional writer. Pornographic (mostly) but a
professional writer, nonetheless.
Since I published by first story in 1993 I've been – to put
it mildly – writing up a storm.
I'm not going to inflict my entire bio on you (that's at the bottom of
this piece as well as on my site at www.mchristian.com) but let's just say that
I've written quite a few stories – that have been collected into quite a few
collections – as well as more than a few novels.
Onto the funny: quite a few of those stories, more than a
few of the collections, and most of those novels – plus a serious number of
anthologies where I've been an editor – feature gay or lesbian characters. In fact I've had stories in the
celebrated Best Gay Erotica, Best of the Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian
Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Transgendered Erotica, and I was even a
finalist for the gay literature award, the Lambda's...
Anyway, I think you get the build-up, so here's the
punchline:
I'm straight.
Not even bisexual.
Oh, sure, I've gotten more than a few offers (very flattering) but, as I
like to say, Mr. Happy only responds to women. Now I also like to say I'm politically gay in that I vote a
very purple ticket and consider gay rights to be the litmus test for any
politician, nation, city, and so forth; socially bi in that I have no problem
kissing and telling my male friends that I love them; and sexually ... like I
said: straight.
Now I want to be very clear that my reason for being a
non-queer author in a queer world did not spring from any kind of deception: I
am very out about being a straight guy (though a few of my gay friends don't
believe me), and when I teach classes in smut writing I tell my students – with
great emphasis – never to lie about who they really are to sell a story.
How I got to where I am is actually a simple – but important
– story, especially for writers. It
started very simply: a friend of mine suggested writing a gay story for a
special anthology. Now, I had
never thought about anything like that – hell, I'd only just selling stories so
I hadn't considered much of anything – so I gave it a shot. Surprise: it was bought. This put me on the gaydar, so to
speak. Soon I was not just writing
gay (and lesbian) stories but editors and publishers were actively seeking me
out to write for them. No dummy, I
wrote what people wanted to buy ... which puts me close to where I am now.
While I may, at worst, be a literary opportunist – one of my
taglines is, after all, is that I'm A
Literary Streetwalker With A Heart of Gold – I truly feel honored to be not
just accepted but in many ways honored by the gay and lesbian community. I've been brought to the verge of tears
more than once by a gay, lesbian, bi, or transgendered person telling me that
anything I wrote has touched them, or when a member of the community asks me to
write for them.
In this, I feel, is a lesson for any writer: I did not know
– at all – that I could write queer stories until I tried. Who knows what you could be good at
until you try? I tell my students
all the time to try, experiment, with everything and anything – even if it’s
something you may not even like. The
worst that happens is that you find out that a certain genre is not for you,
but then you could be wonderfully surprised that you not only enjoy, but are
quite good at, writing for that genre.
Stretch, play, have fun, try, experiment ... in writing but
also in life, to get a bit philosophical.
Before I close, I want to touch on one final thing. Often I get asked is how I can write
about characters that don't share my sexual orientation. Now, writing beyond yourself is what
fiction is all about: horror writers don't really kill people, science fiction
authors don't – mostly – come from other worlds ... you get the idea. Fiction is fiction, and good fiction
suspends our disbelief to the point where we forget that what we are reading
isn't exactly true.
But I do have one bit of advice that's come from being a
straight guy in queer clothing: I don't write about queer characters ... I
write about people.
While I may not know what being a gay man is actually like,
and I'm not equipped to know a lesbian one, I do know about hope, fear,
delight, wonder, the giddy thrill of arousal, the nervousness that comes with
the first few moments of sex, the lightheaded joy that comes when lust turns
into love ... I may not know a few (ahem) details but I know what it means to
be a human being, and no matter what anyone says we are all, down deep where it
matters, more alike than not.
Yes, I write about gay characters, but – following my own
advice – I am also constantly trying to expand my repertoire: challenging
myself as much as possible. I've
tried my hand at romance, horror, science fiction, non-fiction, mysteries, historical
... sometimes I succeed, sometimes I feel I need a lot more work ... but no
matter what I write, and where my life goes from here, I will always hold in
the depths of my heart a love for all the gay men and women who have been so
kind and supportive of me and my work.
I may not know everything about what it means to be queer –
but I certainly, absolutely, totally know what love feels like.
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