An Interview with Jackson Spey

I decided to repost this, since Jackson (and Adin) will soon be reappearing.

Late last fall, I tracked down this elusive man and pulled him out of hiding for a moment. It wasn't easy, and he wasn't overly cooperative.

* * * * *

Hard to believe the wizard is a master craftsman and the master craftsman is a wizard. Actually practices magic and pulls off some stupendous stuff. I had a couple of beers before going to his woodshop just to take the edge off. And what the hell? Milwaukee is a good place to be drinking beer. I'd thought of bringing along a fifth of Jack Daniels, his drug of choice, but I know he doesn't drink when he's working. Besides, he's making a whole lot more money than I am and can well afford to buy his own booze.

I'm nervous, no denying it. This is a coup. Jackson Spey is intensely private and a bit intimidating. His sense of humor can get razory without warning. I don't know quite what to expect when I push open the door of his shop, tucked into a long, low, nondescript building in a central industrial valley.

Machinery isn't droning. When I walk in, I know why. Jackson is seated at a drafting table nearly hidden in a corner to the far right. As soon as he hears the door grind open, he stands and approaches me. The place smells like a logging site. I don't have time to examine his work, but I know it ain't cookie-cutter. This stuff is custom designed and handmade, one lathe-spin, plane-stroke, and chisel-gouge after another.

No wonder he has such phenomenal patience.

Seeing him is a shock. I've always known he's tall. Still, in person he's . . . tall. Being a shade under six-three isn't all that extraordinary, but the man's build and the way he carries himself seem to add a ruler full of extra inches. And then there's that slightly sinister facial hair. As neat as it is, it gives him a dark-lord look. The long braid is gone now. Thank God, I think, that he didn't opt for a lawyerly trim. His wavy hair, a little mussed, caresses the base of his neck.

Jackson might be flirting with middle age, but he still has presence. Even the simple black t-shirt and faded jeans contribute to it. I feel giddy as soon as I lay eyes on him.

"I was almost hoping you wouldn't show up," he says with a disarming smile that's bracketed by parallel creases. He extends a large hand toward me. Slightly roughened, it feels the way his voice sounds. His grip is firm and welcoming . . . even though, I suspect, he has an aversion to this kind of attention. Or most any attention.

"Thanks for agreeing to meet with me."

Inscrutably, he nods. The smile has shrunk but it's still there. Sitting on the stool in front of his drafting table, he rests his left arm on the surface and braces his right hand on his thigh, fingers pointing toward his crotch. His heels are hooked onto a crossbar. His legs are spread wide. The "pose" isn't intentional; it's just a comfortable position . . . I assume. But I can't help thinking of some lines from the movie This Is Spinal Tap -- Nigel pontificating about tight trousers and armadillos and fearful girls who run screaming . . .

"Alone this weekend?" I ask, treading lightly on the words.

"Mm-hm." He cocks his head into a laconic shrug. "Like most weekends. It's better than going out and getting drunk on my ass."

"Does that bother you?"

His smile resurfaces on a tilt. "That I don't go out and get drunk on my ass? Fifteen years ago it might have."

"No, I meant being alone." Why am I explaining? He knows damned well what I meant.

"I don't have a problem keeping busy."

It's a deft side-step. I almost let it pass. "Still, I suspect you wish Adin were here." What I wisely don't say is, Instead of two hundred miles away, in a cozy chalet with Celia.

He makes a throat-clearing sound, twists slightly to the left, picks a pencil off the table, taps it a five times -- three taps then two -- drops the pencil, faces forward once more. I can see that's all the answer I'm going to get. Morse Code?

His gaze drifts past me, maybe to one of his works-in-progress. Or maybe to something that can't be seen.

"How is Adin, by the way?"

"We're not joined at the hip, you know."

Just as I'm thinking, But you sure as hell would like to be, Jackson drops his head forward and gives it a little shake. His smile is different now, and it underscores a subtle eruption of pink on his cheekbones. I think I hear him whisper, "Shit."

Now I'm waiting for his eye color to start shifting. It's some wizardly little quirk. Occasionally, the natural hazel of his irises is swamped by one of its components -- smoky topaz, jade, amber. The gold, I've heard, can get pretty intense, depending on his mood.

"I think this would go smoother," he says, "if I slapped some duct tape over my mouth. Or maybe over yours. That way we could just look at each other while you make assumptions about me. Not to mention the man whose name you at least know how to spell correctly." He turns down his head to scratch an eyebrow, his head partially resting on his fingers, but his eyes are still turned up to me.

If it weren't for the two Sprecher Black Bavarians I'd poured down my gullet, I'd be indignant. And uncomfortable. Instead, I veer amenably onto neutral turf. "So . . . bike still running well?" Jackson rebuilt a 1972 Harley shovelhead chopper. It's his second lover -- not that he would put it that way.

This topic clearly pleases him, but he still seems wary. "Like a champ. Of course, it's stored for the winter now."

"Have you ever gone riding with--"

Abruptly, he groans into a chuckle. "Women." His dark brows hitch up on the word.

"I beg your pardon?"

In lieu of an explanation, he leans sideways toward his desk, yanks open a drawer, and pulls out a fat, silvery roll of tape. His eyes aren't quite hazel anymore.

* * * * *

"For most of my career, I've enjoyed following certain characters from one story to another. I say 'following' because when characters come sufficiently alive that I want to write more about them, it does feel as if I'm trailing along behind them recording their adventures rather than making them up."
~ Poppy Z. Brite

Jackson's chronicle thus far spans six books, in this order: Hoochie Coochie Man (main character), Cemetery Dancer (secondary character), Plagued (secondary), Tormented (secondary), Obsessed (main), Elevator Magic (secondary). The next installment of his saga -- and it's a big one -- is InDescent. His story is far from over. Same is true for the man whose name I at least know how to spell correctly.

A Really Naughty FREE Story

"A Cheeky Changeling" is Changeling Press's online magazine/newsletter. There you can find, among other things, free short fiction called Encounters. Mine, "Glories of the Blue Moon," is fourth from the top in the most recent issue. Click on the post title to find it.

But be forewarned: Encounters are short. Really short. And Changeling is an erotic e-pub. Really erotic. So what you're going to get is a jolt of sexual YEEHAH! Plot and character development? Go read The Scarlet Letter. My story, by the way, is about a man taking a risk to make himself, or part of himself, happy. The ending is ambiguous . . . the way I sometimes like my endings.

So don't complain. I warned you. Besides, the bugger is F-R-E-E.

Is more ever enough?

Remember when Harlequin introduced the "Temptation" line and Silhouette introduced "Desire" and "Intimate Moments"? Probably not. But believe me, compared with their predecessors, those titles contained some racy stuff. They signaled the banging open of the bedroom door. Unfortunately, Roget's Thesaurus banged open along with the door, so although readers were getting eyeful after eyeful of rapturous horizontalism, they were also being fed some really laughable euphemisms to describe the action. (Netherlips? Isn't that what the eastern and western edges of the Netherlands are called? Are they grasslands? Or swamp lands?)

Anyway, this silly sexspeak went on for a good many years. Then the bodacious Tina Engler came along and essentially decided it was time to call a spade a spade. Thanks to Ellora's rockin' Cave, readers no longer had to ask themselves, His "member" of what? The Elks' Club? And why does this member broadcast "seed"? Is he a conservationist? A landscaper? And what kind of seed? Ah, grass seed, I'll bet. In the Netherlips. All the delicate obfuscation came to an end with EC's "erotic" romances. A cock became a cock, plain and simple (and usually large and turgid), and it shot copious amounts of cum into every hot, dripping, swollen, gaping, achingly impatient pussy it could.

The dam had burst, so to speak. Once the Netherlips became as drenched at they could get, a kind of frenzied adventuring began. Erotic romance wouldn't content itself with settling in the land of explicit, one-on-one m/f sex. Nuh-uh. This was a Brave New World, by gum, and it had all sorts of raunchy regions to explore. Joyful masturbation. Happy-toys. Positions that defied gravity and rewrote the Kama Sutra. Menages of ever-increasing numbers. Hardcore BDSM. Fetishism. Sex with shifters, vampires, demons, aliens. Fantasy rape that veered this close (+) to actual rape. Double penetration. Multiple dicks. Twincest. Octucest (well, you know that's bound to turn up sooner or later!)

This exuberant progression has led me to a question, which is the point of my post. Are sex scenes and sexual relationships, whether opposite-sex or same-sex, now considered too "vanilla" if they don't contain one or more of the above elements? (I'm really getting sick of the term vanilla, like I'm sick of Oh. My. God. and Wow. Just. Wow. But I digress.) Have readers begun to expect and even demand ongoing one-upmanship? Can relationships still be perceived as thrilling and satisfying if they are made up of (GASP!) two people who just like to fuck? Or (DOUBLE GASP!) make love?

I'm just wonderin'.

Better Late Than Never

That's what Fran Lee calls some of her book reviews, and for that I give her a truckload of credit. I'm a "better late than never" kind of reader myself. I usually get around to the stuff on my wish list well after the titles' release dates -- in other words, well after the initial buzz has died down and new faves have found their way onto reviewers' DIK shelves . . . or new fizzles have found their way into the virtual wastebaskets under those shelves. In fact, I think it would be abfab if more reviewers devoted, say, one day a week to resurrecting older, more obscure titles and bringing them to readers' attention.

Anyway, Fran Lee came upon Wing and Tongue, read it, and said some very, very nice things about this fantasy. You can peruse her review by clicking on the post title. (Oh, what I wouldn't give for more covers like that one!)

So thank you, Fran, and brava for digging through the dusty heap of books-gone-by. There's some gold in them thar hills!

The Sound of Two Lips Kissing

Many thanks to Tina at Two Lips Reviews for reading Seeking Something Wicked (I know how swamped these sites are) and giving it 4.5/5 kisses. And let me just take this opportunity, since it's my blog, to remind everybody that Book Three of the Utopia-X series, Exploring Savage Places, is coming out in mid June. My extraordinarily intelligent editor at Loose Id assures me it's the best of the series!

By the way, part of Book Three's title as well as its leitmotif (ooo, baby, I haven't had the opportunity to parade out that word in a long time!) come from a famous poem. And a very strange one.

What's better: crazy diatribes or crazy book titles?

So I go on my little late-night blog tour, just to see what's up in different sectors of the 'Sphere, and I come upon not one but three diatribes (I like that word better than "rants," which is really starting to bore me). Shee-it! One of 'em sent my eyeballs into orbit around my brain, because it was so godawfully lonnnnggggg and lacking in simple sentences that it managed to obscure its own point . . . if there was one. Another sent my brain into orbit around itself, because the "message" was both very earnest and just freakin' nonsensical. (That combination always makes me feel I've been dropped into a Lewis Carroll book.)

To put my head back into balance, I went to Oddee and found much more enjoyable kinds of weirdness. So, just in case you need the same adjustment, check out these lists:

fifteen insanely titled books,
twelve more insanely titled books, and
the final ten insanely titled books.
(You'll get to see the covers, too, which I think really enhances the experience!)

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Going Into Print

Sometime between now and the end of June, Ellora's Cave will be issuing FOUR of my titles as print editions. This strains my belief.

Better With Age is an anthology of six novellas centering on older women gettin' it on with younger men. My contribution's original cover (from EC's "Oh Yum!" themed series) is on the right. You can read a blurb and excerpt at the publisher's site. Other authors in the antho are Mardi Ballou, Lyn Cash, Karen Erickson, Calista Fox, and Eve Vaughn.

I have some rather unique sex scenes in Liberation, so if you're not averse to hetero romance and a heroine with a gay best friend, instead of the other way around, you might enjoy it. (Besides, bet you've never seen a cover model carved out of teak wood and saturated with lemon oil. If you get the ebook, you can seem him supersized!)

My three related debauchery-and-dragon fantasies -- Wing and Tongue, Cauldron of Keridwen, and Prince of Glacier Glas -- will be put together under one cover. I had all kinds of ideas for a title for this collection, from simple (Farfields) to suggestively smarmy (Galdesh Confidential) to suggestively passionate (Fire in the Soul) to suggestively traditional (The Chronicles of Galdesh) to ridiculous but catchy (Big Teeth and Boxer Briefs). Alas, all were shot down by TPTB. I'm not exactly thrilled with the final title (not telling you yet, 'cause it's stupid), so I'm hoping beyond hope the volume gets a cover as stunning as the one for Wing and Tongue. This might be asking too much, however.

Stay tuned. I'll post when this print plan becomes a reality.

My New Superstition

I'm starting to think blogs are self-fulfilling prophecies -- seriously -- and that's making me hinky about posting. I recently pondered the phenomenon of diametrically opposed reviews of the same book . . . then ended up on the receiving end of just such a pair. I did a study of wankfests . . . and inadvertently ended up hosting one.

Is there some kind of juju to prevent this? Or should I just post about the joys of being a wildly successful, wealthy, critically acclaimed, prize-winning author who photographs well . . . and then sit back and see what happens? ;-)

All of a sudden, Mormons are HOT.

Who'd a thunk it? The Osmonds wanted to be perceived as hot but failed. Quite miserably. Nevertheless, they set the stage. Then Mit (Mitt? Mitttttt?) Romney came along and tried to be -- in an appropriately understated way, of course -- Mr. Hottie of the American political scene. (What the hell does Mit stand for, anyway? Or is it German, as in "With" Romney? Sind Sie mit Romney oder gegen Romney? ) Anyway, he didn't quite make the cut, although he definitely caught our interest.

But in the world of books? WHOA. Jump back, Jack!

First, Stephenie Meyer, bored hausfrau and reluctant author extraordinaire, decides to kill some time by trying her hand at writing. Why not, eh? She doesn't have to work thanks to hubby's considerable earning capacity, and since she really doesn't give a rat's ass about the craft of fiction, she can just go ahead and dabble around to entertain herself. But something entirely unexpected happens. Whoosh! -- down comes the angel Moroni with more golden plates, but on this set are inscribed holy words called the "Twilight" series. Young girl gettin' jiggy with a hungry vampire, both quivering with unspent passion. Meyer looks at the first book and says, "Jiminy, will I have to claim this came out of me?" And the angel answers, "First of all, my name isn't Jiminy. And you betcha, babe. The book sucks too bad for me to claim it, but you'll be well compensated for your embarrassment."

It isn't only in the realm of hetero romance where Mormon sizzle has been sending out steam signals. James Buchanan's most recent release, Hard Fall from MLR Press, features a gay Mormon hero (and, from everything I've read, is an infinitely better book than Meyer's dreck). Then that incomparable greenhouse of eroticism, Ravenous Romance, followed suit by publishing a most provocatively titled short story, "The Missionary and the Artist," which also features a gay Saint.

Makes me want to move to Utah, I'll tell ya.

I wonder which religion or denomination will generate the next eruption of verbal smexxin'. Got any ideas?

Feedback Most Fine

Holy jamoly, sometimes winners do offer feedback! In spades!

Madame Butterfly, aka MBLeah, chose my m/m novella Obsessed at one of Jessewave's recent book-giveaways. That was flattering in and of itself, because Wave invariably gets scads of donated books from her author fans. Leah didn't just pick this book, she accepted it most graciously. And what's more -- astonishingly more, in my world -- she devoted a lot of space to Obsessed on her blog when she gave it a lengthy review. (Click on post title to view.) And then, stretching my incredulity even further, she didn't just devote time and a great deal of thought to the review, she wrote to me afterward and asked follow-up questions!

That is so extraordinarily excellent, I don't know what more to say. If the scale of being impressed went from 1 to 10, I would be impressed to the level of 12, at least.

Never, ever do I want to become so used to such attention, so jaded by popularity or editorial fawning or any other measure of success that such consideration fails to move me enough to respond. I can't imagine taking any interest in my books for granted. Just can't imagine it. And if I ever show the slightest sign of doing so, I expect somebody to lob a rotten grapefruit at me to smack me right back to this post.

Thank you, Leah!

(And you know what else? I just snapped up Clare London's Freeman at Wave's most recent free-for-all, and you can bet you'll all hear about it once I get it read. Gotta keep the good karma flowing!)

EDITED TO ADD: That cover you see below? That's for the sequel to the book Leah just reviewed.