Interview with M. King

M. King is a colleague of Max Griffin who also publishes with loveyoudivine. Like Max, she writes across a wide number of genres, and often includes GLBT characters in her fiction. In addition to her fiction, she has contributed poetry, reviews, and columns to print and online publications. You can find more about her at her website. Max did this interview in a sequence of emails starting on November 10, 2009.

M. Griffin: Hi. It's nice to get started on this. Since we're on the other side of the pond from one another, this will doubtless be a bit of a slow process. For starters, can you tell me what authors influence and inspire you?

M. King: Thanks! And nice to 'meet' you, by the way. I've always read pretty widely, and I write across a lot of different genres and styles, so I suppose my influences are rather varied.

My love of imagery probably comes from the amount of poetry I grew up absorbing, and a long-time love of folklore. I'm fascinated by different languages, different cultures--different experiences in all forms, really--as well as the actual mechanics of writing and the written word. I love John Steinbeck's elegant sparseness of style, but I'm also very drawn to the richness of writers like Felice Picano and Djuna Barnes. I also have a huge soft spot for Terry Pratchett, which might be something to do with the English sense of humour, and if I ever accomplish a fraction of the complexity of vision he's managed in his Discworld novels, I'll be happy.

As far as inspiration goes, I take a great deal more from individual books--either the way they're written, or the themes behind them--than from specific authors. Certainly, Picano's Like People in History was a big influence on me when I was working out how to write my first gay character, as was William S. Burroughs' Queer and, nothing to do with sexuality, also a lot of Ayn Rand and M. R. James. It probably comes back to that quest to put myself completely outside of my own experience. After all, getting inside a man's head is not easy for a woman, even though I do try to remember to wipe my feet first!

M. Griffin: Wow, what an interesting answer. There's so many ways to take this interview! I think I'll avoid asking about the creative dissonance between Ayn Rand and Felice Picano (unless you want to comment) and focus instead on poetry. Your web sites mentions that your work has been featured in mixed media exhibitions. Can you tell us something about that?

M. King: Ah, but isn't dissonance a catalyst for inspiration? LOL I think the trick is that I get such different things out of different authors, different books. Reading Rand, for example, is just coming face to face with this huge, unflinching view of the world that says so much about a certain time and place - and Picano, in his own way, does the same thing, but it's a totally different experience.

The mixed media thing was a while ago now - back in my home county of Kent (South East England). A group of local artists were exhibiting at the County Hall, and asked if I'd do some poetry inspired by the paintings to hang alongside them. It was a fairly informal thing, and at very short notice, but it was great fun playing with the distinctions (or lack of) between how we perceive art and the written word...which almost brings us back to Ayn Rand! I have to say, I don't take my poetry very seriously, but it is something I enjoy.

M. Griffin: Good answers! We both have written novels with gay characters. While I'm writing for a broader audience, I'm pretty sure that the people who purchase my books are predominately gay men. I know that there's a significant market for gay fiction among straight women, such as the yaoi sub-genre of manga. Do you have a sense who buys your books, and do you write with any audience segment in mind?

M. King: Oooh, I'm likely to make myself unpopular here! Readers are advised to have their rotten vegetables ready to throw. *grin*

The point about who buys my books I would love answered. Most of the readers and reviewers I've come across have been female, but certainly not all--and I would adore more contact with my readership. I know they're out there, I just worry that they think I'll bite...which I rarely do unless invited.

However, like you, I'm not really writing with a particular market segment in mind (far too clinical!), and I'd like to think my appeal is reasonably broad. I go with what the idea for a story presents, and that ranges widely. Right now, I have gay, lesbian, straight, and completely genderless fiction available, and I'm currently working on a book that features my first trans characters.

I definitely agree that there's been a sharp upswing of women reading and writing gay fiction. Temporarily side-stepping the whole debate about what is 'gay fiction' and what is 'm/m', and who has the experience to write what in any case--which I find really fascinating--and excluding sub-genres like yaoi, with which I'm frankly not really that familiar, I do see parallels with the blaxploitation flicks of the Seventies.

Once the pelting with pulpy tomatoes is over, I'll explain that. There are many wonderful writers of all genders out there producing great work that offers readers a tremendous amount of choice in (particularly) romantic literature, and that is commendable. I'm not suggesting for a moment that the marketplace is flooded with authors slapping penises on two-dimensional characters and calling their work 'gay', because the Brokeback Mountain movie made it fashionable. In many ways, I think it's a great landmark of equality that GLBT has simply become another sub-category on so many retail shelves, alongside 'interracial' or 'historical'.

But, personally, I'm selfish. I write what I want to. If I could stick to a given remit that said, perhaps, I'm writing gay erotica for women, I would probably have a much better profile. Unfortunately, for me, it's not enough that a character is gay/trans/has three heads and a dog called Rupert. That part of their identity needs to serve a purpose in my story. In Breaking Faith--my first e-published novel, which started me on the road I'm on today--the fact that my protagonist, Tommy, is gay is only as relevant as the fact he's mixed race. They're both (regrettably, but realistically) isolating factors in what is, for him, a very difficult life that ultimately leads to the crime he commits.

The same is true of Safe House, to date one of my best-selling titles. It's short gay bondage erotica, but to me it's much more than that. Writing it was an exploration of how trust, risk, and honesty work between two people, and that dynamic would only have worked the way I wanted between--not just two men--but two men with the particular characteristics that Simon and Frazer have.

My Travellers' Tales series from loveyoudivine--short fantasy fiction inspired by Romany folk tales--is slightly different, in that I actively chose to link the series by giving them all a gay spin, so to speak. Again, it's got a undercurrent of relevance to the subject matter. In several parts of England I've seen Romani friends subjected to appalling discrimination, just the same way that gay friends have been, and indeed I have as a bi female. Orientation is not the only thing that--for no damn reason--makes people outsiders and, in my opinion, that's a social concern that still urgently needs dealing with.

So, no...hauling myself in from this very long rant, I don't write for any single audience. It's probably unlikely that the same readers who've enjoyed titles of mine such as Safe House or Breaking Faith would like, for example, Daemon--a very off-the-wall paranormal mystery novel in which an English grad student is haunted by the chain-smoking ghost of a murdered glam rock star from 1976.

Equally, some have, and have loved that variety in my work. Ultimately, I'm having fun, trying to consistently produce the best work that I can, and I welcome anyone who wants to come along for the ride.

M. Griffin. I'm loving your answers!! Our readers can learn more about the books you mentioned on the following websites: Breaking Faith, Safe House, Travellers' Tales, Daemon.

Can you give us a sense of your methods? Lawrence Block surveyed best-selling authors some time ago and found a wide variance in their approaches. Some authors start with a detailed outline and character portfolios, while others have a more organic approach and let the characters take the lead as the story the develops. How about you?

M. King: That's a good question. It would be wonderful to say I'm incredibly organised and always know what I'm doing, but I think people would just laugh if I tried to pretend!

It very much depends on what I'm writing. If I'm pretty much secure in knowing what I'm talking about before I start, it's usually just a case of pulling up the drawbridge, giving the dogs something to chew, and getting on with it.

But, if research is required, I go into a blind period of absorbing as much as I can about whatever it is I need to know--life in 1920s Paris, Assiniboine culture in Northern Montana, how somebody actually goes about self-administering hormones in a gender transition process, whatever--and then I sit on it for a while and let everything percolate. Once I've done that, I can apply the meat of the story onto its bones, and that is usually an organic process. Everything develops as I go and, more often that not, I end up with a totally different project to the one I started with.

I use music a lot to help me develop flavour. In writing Whistle Bait--a short lesbian romance set in the Fifties [www.flippedfrogcollective.com/whistle-bait]--I overdosed on Carl Perkins and The Collins Kids, and Daemon was probably at least half about expressing my love of seriously vintage glitter rock (think Alice Cooper, Marc Bolan & T. Rex, and Joan Jett). Things like that really build my perception of character, though, and the characters definitely do take the lead.

Sometimes, strange but true, if I've mismatched a character to a trait or physical description--say, describing him as blond when he 'wants' to be dark-haired--the story will stick until I fix it. That has actually happened, and convinced me that, unless I'm clinically insane, writing is predominantly about putting words to things we already know exist in our mind's eye...much like a sculptor who says he can already see the statue in the marble.

M. Griffin: I was only going to ask one more question, but now I've got two. I'll ask them both at once.

I loved your answer about music inspiring characters and scenes and how you insert references into the narrative and plot. Do you ever play music in the background while you write, to help inspire you and set the mood? If so, is there a favorite genre or composer?

My second question is more prosaic. Can you tell us a little bit about your most recent release and where our readers can purchase it?

M. King: Sometimes I do...I must confess Daemon was written almost entirely in 4/4 time, to a backing of my treasured collection of very, very rough Marc Bolan demos and studio out-takes (any readers unfamiliar with the self-proclaimed cosmic superstar who ruled the British charts in the early '70s should go Google him. Really.) plus a whole lot of Nick Drake, Humble Pie, Jimi Hendrix, and The Rolling Stones. I also really love good acoustic blues--largely because I'm a such terrible player--so I listen to a lot of Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Dave Van Ronk, Cliff Aungier...and far too much more to list!

Of course, if the house is actually quiet, I can be equally happy to work in silence. It's just that I so often forget what that sounds like.

As to recent releases, it's been a very busy year for me. It would be lovely to point people in the direction of my Travellers' Tales series, available from loveyoudivine, with a new story coming out each month. You can find all the releases so far in the series on my author shelf at LYD and my work is also available on Fictionwise, AllRomanceEbooks.com and through my Amazon author page. I'm dotted all over the internet.

For excerpts, free reads, further details on all my titles and sneaky peeks at what I have planned for 2010, you can find me at www.flippedfrogcollective.com, and I also welcome friends on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks for having me--it's been a genuine pleasure, and great fun!

M. Griffin: Thank you! It's been a pleasure.

Read M. King's interview of Alex Morgan at her blog.