Gay zines, filthy football players, and hot little skaters: another Johnny Murdoc Update

[Johnny Murdoc]

I just realized that it's been awhile since I've written one of these. I'm learning quickly that there are fast periods, where there's a lot to talk about, and slow periods where there's nothing to talk about. Unfortunately, the fast periods are fast, and it's easy to forget that, on top of everything else you have to do, there's still other things you have to do. Right now is a fast period.

Crash Course comes out at the end of this month (or possibly sooner). So I'm writing a lot of new material: character bios, series overviews, and something akin to ad copy. These are all new exercises for me, writing muscles that I haven't flexed in awhile or ever had to. It's all a learning experience right now, and I'm loving every minute of it. Don't ever let me tell you otherwise.

If you follow my website, or my nonfiction essays for SexIs, you'll know that I recently wrote an essay on gay zines called Queer Print: Keeping the Coutnerculture Coming. For the essay, I had the opportunity to interview Christopher Schulz, Darren Ankenbaur, and Amos Mac, all zine publishers. This week on my website I'm posting links to the complete essays, including all of the material I was unable to include in the essay. If you're interested in zines, gay culture, print culture, or publishing, they're all very good introductory interviews.

This week marked the on-sale date for my first short story in a romance e-book anthology. The romance e-book market is an interesting one to me, and while most of my stories don't fall into that category, I can't help but experiment so I submitted a story to an anthology of erotic football stories. Ironically, the story is the filthiest that I've ever written, I think. Don't let the 'romance' label scare you off; the story is definitely a dirty one. You can find the anthology at Ravenous Romance. It's called Tight Ends.

The cover has been released for Skater Boys, an upcoming anthology of stories about skaters and the guys who love them. It's edited by Neil Plakcy, author of the Mahu series of gay mystery novels, and being published by Cleis Press. Selling this story is one of the highlights of my short writing career: I have a ton of respect for Cleis as a publisher of erotic books and sex education books, so having a story in one of their anthologies (the first of many, I hope) is incredibly exhilarating. Skater Boys won't be out until August, but it's available for pre-order now from Amazon now, and I can tell you that it's a hot one!

I'd like to say more, but I'm running low on time and I have other writing commitments I need to take care of this afternoon. I'm hoping that these updates will be a little more frequent, and a little more casual in the future.


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