by Cara McKennaNot sure what that visual is all about? Well, a few weeks ago one of my favorite Twitter bitches, Charlotte Stein, pointed out that we each have new stories coming from Ellora's Cave on the same day (tomorrow!) We're both a bit cagey about self-promo, so we decided to forgo it and just pimp each other instead. Thusly, I'll be flogging her new sci-fi erotica
The Horizon right here while she plugs
Backwoods for me on her
blog. Oh yeah, so simultaneous.
But wait—back to the weird-ass picture. I asked Charlotte for a list of stuff she loved, so that I could use those items for a bit of Photoshoppery. Included in that list were the movie
My Demon Lover, actor Sharlto Copley, winter, and "stuff to do with feet, like one shoe coming off". There was more, but I couldn't fit black jellybeans, her husband, or the US version of
The Office into the scene. Oh, did I mention Charlotte is from jolly old Englandia? She is. She's totally exotic. Throw another shrimp on the barbie, Charlotte! A dingo ate your baby!
CONTEST ALERT! We've got two prizes to give away to Charlotte's favorite commenters on this post. One is a copy of
The Horizon (out tomorrow) and the other is a $5 gift card to
Good Vibrations. Charlotte will pick the winners by noon EST on Saturday and announce them via the comments. You should totally enter. I mean, lookit the cover!
Grrarrrr! You know you want it. This is Charlotte's first release with EC, but she's no erotica newbie—she's got a bajillion other books out already. Just scroll down the right-hand side of her
blog and behold all the covers. Holy crap, lady! Slow down! But she just won't. And just the other day I saw upon the Twitterz that she's already sold her second EC title. Shazam!
To give you a further sense of how cracked (and hence awesome) Charlotte is, I have conducted the following highly professional and well-researched interview:
CM: So, Charlotte, we met on Twitter, which if I'm not mistaken, you invented. How exactly did you conceive of and construct Twitter? What is it built of? Does it involve carrier pigeons? How can people stalk you most effectively on Twitter?CS: At last, someone has given me the proper credit! It's true: I invented Twitter. I'll prove it, too: I conceived of Twitter by thinking, wow, I'm going to wildly underestimate the popularity of my social network invention, and then run it like a mountain man whipping an aged donkey up a hill, with twenty million billion people on its back. That's essentially the whole story. It's made up of wrinkled old donkeys, summat like that. And robots with only one hand. And flying whales. And people can sometimes stalk me through twitter without encountering donkeys, whales or robots, by just coming to
http://twitter.com/Charlotte_Stein and saying hi. I'll never suspect that "hi" is the beginning of a stalking relationship. Not only that, but I'll actually probably really like you stalking me.
CM: Aside from being the inventor of Twitter, you're also an unapologetic celebrity man-candy glutton, flitting from one quasi-famous male to another like an insatiable hummingbird, gorging yourself stupid on their manful nectars. Tell us about your favorite, most stalkable men of late, and what makes them so lustacular.
CS:
Unapologetic, gorging and
manful nectars are definitely the right terms for my everyday life. I would also throw in "keeping men in the cupboard under the stairs". Currently my man under the stairs is definitely Sharlto Copley—you know, that dude from
District 9? Yeah, my taste is…suspect at best. Don't look at me like that! He's hot. I want him to blow my vuvezela, because he's from South Africa and vuvezela totally sounds rude.
Oh, and you said men. So I should probably mention that Sharlto likely encountered Michael Fassbender and Bradley Cooper somewhere in the back of that cupboard. Both of them shivering in the darkness, naked, babbling about the things I did with a carrot and lots of baby oil.
CM: I occasionally have a famous guy's face or body in mind when I'm typing up the movie playing in my head as I'm writing a story. Are any of those fellas the inspiration for any characters in your upcoming Ellora's Cave release, The Horizon?
CS: Nah, Bradley, Sharlto and Fassbender didn't inspire anything in
The Horizon. My always-in-the-top-ten man, Nathan Fillion, did. His face and body and especially his magnificent ass floated through my mind while I bashed on my keyboard with my elbows. His disembodied parts told my elbows what to do. I am just a conduit for Nathan Fillion's ass.
CM: Now that I've corralled this interview into effective pimping territory, would you tell us about the book? What inspired it? Is it as delightfully off-kilter as your other erotic stories? To give us a sense of its mood, for example, what song does it bring to mind for you?
CS: You corral so beyootifully, dahlink!
Okay, so aside from Nathan Fillion, the other things that inspired
The Horizon are:
Firefly, Red Dwarf, Total Recall, Terminator, cool heroines like Sarah Connor and sex pollen stories (my secret weakness!). And if my other stories are delightfully off-kilter, than this one is...full kilter. It's balls to the wall kilter. I didn't hold back with this one, and poured all my craziness and any funny I have right into it, and loved it too much for sanity's sake. I cried when I wrote the second to last bit. I loved the characters too much. And whenever I think of the songs I wrote it to —
As If By Magic and
Armour Love, by La Roux—I think of it.
CM: Now I know you're an enthusiastic fan-girl of many things. What shows, movies, books, fictional characters and so forth are you salivating over at the moment?
I think the word "enthusiastic" is underselling it, just a tad. More like "drooling rabid". My things at the moment are
The A-Team (obviously),
Masterchef (always), the movie
Starman, the show
30 Rock (I, like, Liz Lemon, sleep eat), Murdock from
The A-Team (of course), the books of Madison Hayes and Christopher Pike, the singer Robyn, Michael Fassbender running around half-naked in
Centurion...I could be here a long time, listing stuff. Did you know Fassbender gets half-naked in
Centurion? And then he RUNS.
CM: Describe for me the best possible movie ever. Stars, plot, soundtrack artists, setting? If you're one of the stars, describe the filthy filthy consummation scene between you and the leading man.
CS: HOMG greatest question ever. The best possible movie of all time is clearly
Charlotte's Manhunks Prance Around, And Sometimes Get Scared Of Alien Robots From The Future. Now, you need the alien robots in order to facilitate gratuitous tortured half naked shots of the manhunks, and to give adequate peril to the heroine, so she can rescue and be rescued. Cos it's just a pile of sweating heaving limbs without some kind of daft plot device, and though I like sweating heaving limbs I do want a bit of pretend plot. So basically, Sharlto Copley, Michael Fassbender, Nathan Fillion, Bradley Cooper and Alexander Skarsgard are all on the run from alien robots from the future. The alien robots shoot laser beams, that make your clothes fall off and give you the sudden desire to have a massive six-way with some plain nobody called Starlotte Chein. And all of this probably happens in some
Blade Runner-esque dystopia with giant coke ads everywhere, and the theme song to
Total Recall playing in the background.
Masterpiece. Twenty Oscars. A billion pounds at the box office. Can't believe no-one's thought of it before.
CM: So, um…what are you wearing?
CS: I knew you fancied me. Don't try to deny it, now.
And I'm wearing a big orange tube dress, and nowt else. No, really.
CM: Oh, wow, that sounds hot. What about Sharlto Copley? I presume you've got him on a leash at the moment, slathered in something. What's he slathered in? Does he like it?
CS: As though I'd have him wearing anything! Maybe you
don't know me. I mean, you're also asking me if he likes to be slathered. Of course he likes being slathered! He cries when I cover him in peanut sauce, but they are tears of JOY, I tell you.
JOY. NOT an allergy to peanuts.
CM: Okay, okay. Tell us all why My Demon Lover is so awesome, because really, you're the only person who's ever seen it, as best I can tell.CS: It's true. I am. I'm in the secret club "Only Fan of
My Demon Lover". I watch it by myself, and tell myself how orsum it is. Then I write letters to myself, telling myself that the bit where he turns into a woman and his head explodes is sheer genius.
But there are other reasons it's orsum, besides that. He turns into a demon whenever he gets horny. That's all I need to say, surely? I mean, that's got to be the greatest premise of any movie ever. Plus it stars Scott Valentine, who played Nick on
Family Ties.My God, what are you all waiting for?
CM: Last question. We're both about the same age and grew up obsessed with Labyrinth. So, David Bowie's tight gray pants in that film: sexy or unnerving?
CS: A smidgen of both, I reckon. My thirteen year old self both desperately needed to know what lurked beyond that preposterous bulge, and hid behind a cushion at the thought of it. Which is, bizarrely, the exact same reaction I had while watching
Alien for the first time. So I'm guessing he has a facehugger hiding inside those tights, somewhere.
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Now that you've gotten a taste for Charlotte's particular flavor of crackedness, here's the blurb for
The Horizon:When Quade swoops in to save his archenemy, Sol, from bloodthirsty Cybers, he doesn’t expect to find himself almost torn apart, terrified beyond imagining and even worse—declaring his love for her.Now they’re trapped on Sol’s spaceship, both half-insane due to the Cybers pumping them full of some lust drug. If they can’t get a hold of themselves quickly, they’re going to be doing some pretty dirty things.But surprisingly, Sol doesn’t seem to mind that newfound feelings are bursting out all over—especially when said feelings pave the way for wild and constant sex with her former enemy.Want more? Read the
excerpt!Now without further ado (and because Charlotte included "hamsters being flung off their running wheels" in the aforementioned list of stuff she loves) here's a selection of hamsters!
Don't forget to comment by Saturday at noon EST for a chance to win
The Horizon or a $5 gift card for Good Vibrations. A very big thanks to saucy slag Charlotte for prostituting herself with us so willingly today. Be sure to check out her blog,
The Mighty Charlotte Stein, and if you do the Twittah, stalk her
@Charlotte_Stein. See you in the comments!