Guest author: Matthew Lang
Dec. 10th, 2011 01:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charlie_cochraneI'd like to welcome Matthew Lang today. He's one of my fellow MLR authors, with his story Christmas Memories in the series of Thanksgiving-through-to-New-Year releases.
Blurb:
Jake and Nathaniel found their happily ever after in The Secret of Talmor Manor. The problem is that afters, come with their own set of problems. How exactly do you navigate the minefield of a family Christmas and a new relationship without explaining you met in a dream—or that the dream included a crazy sister and her lover hell bent on killing you both? Is it better or worse when the reincarnated person you’re with differs oh so slightly from the man you fell in love with? After a year of paranormal, is a little slice of normal too much to ask?
What inspired you to start writing?
The great lack of gay characters and stories being told in mainstream fiction. You’ll probably notice that the stories I write are not typical character driven romance dramas, but rather have my characters facing a problem—or problems—that are unrelated or only peripherally related to their sexualities. It can make me unpopular with some readers, but then, I’m more than my sexuality and I believe my characters should be too.
Do you have another job (paid or otherwise) apart from being an author? If so, how do you juggle your time?
Yes I do, and sadly it’s a job that I need to do because of the money, rather than one I do to keep my hand in the real world and interacting with real people! But you know, given that I have one book out, it’ll be a while before I can work part time and write the rest of it! I juggle my time because I have a job, and a career in writing. I work when I’m at work and the rest of the time I spend doing things like living, socialising, geeking out and writing. It’s not so much juggling a job and writing, it’s more juggling the rest of my life and writing.
What does it feel like watching your first book fledge and leave the nest?
You know, a lot of people ask me that or a variation on it, like ‘It must feel great to see your book on the shelves, right?’. And the funny thing is by that point the excitement is mostly gone for me. The excitement and the fangirlish squeeing and the phone calls with lots of ‘Oh my god’s in the them generally happen when I get a story accepted, rather than when it comes out. Because by the time it comes out, there’s been months and drafts and drafts of edits, and by the time the book finally comes out, there was a sense of relief that the hard work was over, and that just for a moment, I could enjoy the sight of it leaving the bookshelves. Then of course the rest of the publicity machine kicks in for small authors like me, and of course new projects come along, so…yeah. Relief and a quiet sense of satisfaction.
Are you character or plot driven? What do you do if one of your characters starts developing at a tangent?
Yes? I mean, I have an overarching plot, but how my characters navigate that plot is really up to them. Honestly, sometimes I feel like the Games Master in a role playing game, trying to channel unruly players along the pathway of the plot. Actually, there’s worse things an author can do than sit down for a gaming session or two. It gives you new ways of looking at characters and stories with characters who are completely unpredictable. So I give my characters free reign to go where they will, as long as they go roughly where I need them to. If they don’t, I go back and either tweak the events that befall them or their environment so that they naturally choose to go where I want them to, or in the worst case scenario, I will actually tweak the characters’ attributes and backgrounds (rather than personalities) to make them go where I need them to. Does that make any sense?
If you were in a tight corner and had to rely on one of your characters to save you, which would it be and why?
One I haven’t written about. The ones I write about have flaws the limitations and personalities that means they might well choose to not save me. Some of my characters who will never see print are much nicer, more powerful and less flawed. And therefore much too boring to ever put into a sellable novel.
If you had no constraints of time and a guarantee of publication, what book would you write?
A cookbook, although I hear they’re actually selling very well, or a fully interactive choose your own adventure erotic fiction game/novel. I hear they’ve been written too, but I don’t know how well they’re doing. Anyway, the sort of thing I’d want to do would probably need to be done in Flash or something.
Is there a classic book you started and simply couldn't finish?
Ulysses by James Joyce. I looked at it in year 8 on a dare from my teacher and got bored after 2 pages. There’s also the Ghormenghast Trilogy. It was given to me by my ex, and I was having trouble engaging with the work before we broke up, and now I really don’t feel like going back to it. Maybe one day. When the internet runs out of erotic stories…
What’s your favourite gay romance/other genre book? And why?
Anything by Terry Pratchett. If you’ve read him, you’ll understand why. Basically I love the way he effortlessly mixes humour, gripping narrative and the way he educates you while you’re having fun and laughing. To me that’s his true genius. He educates and informs through his writing and makes it so entertaining you come back for it over and over again and don’t even realise he’s being doing it.
What's your next project?
The next big project is a novel called Prophecy, which takes a modern gay man (i.e. current day) and drops him into the hero position of a standard quest narrative—you know, kill the dragon, rescue the princess, marry the princess, rule half (or all) of the kingdom—and looks at the fallout. It’s a bit of a rebellion at the heteronormative nature of most of the fantasy novels out there. Hopefully it’ll work.
What do you love best about this time of year?
The heat! I’m in Australia and it’s getting towards summer. And I’m not very good with the cold. So yeah, the heat, sun, the beach, the fact that it’s the sun’s up until 8 at night. And the post holiday sales aren’t bad either.
What inspired your new story?
Mostly, Laura Baumbach did. I’m not fantastic with short stories (or rather, I think I’m not that fantastic with short stories), and I was doing some work with banQuetPress at the time, and wondering if I’d be able to write anything for their next Anthology or if I’d tap out and not have anything to say in that short a medium. I had a half formed scene in my head, but it was mostly all sex and nothing substantive. Then Laura came onto our author mailing list missing everyone and suggesting Christmas stories, and then Jake and Nate climbed back onto my shoulder and started demanding to have the Christmas they never got in The Secret of Talmor Manor, and the rest is history.
Aside from your book—which everyone should buy—what do you think is a failsafe Christmas Gift?
Something from Oxfam unwrapped. It’s a bit hard to be mad at someone who’s bought a buffalo for those in need, and you’d have to be a bit of a tool to begrudge someone clean drinking water. And if kids don’t like it and throw a tanty, well, their parents need to teach them better.
What’s your best Christmas Recipe for dinner party success?
Well, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, or have a really warm house, it’s a bit hard to go past homemade ice-cream, and this creation of mine is rather spectacular.
The first thing you need to do is make a basic ice cream, and then you add flavouring. While you can find an ice cream recipe just about anywhere, I’ll put the one that I use here for convenience.
Basic Vanilla Ice-Cream
Ingredients:
1 Cup full cream milk
2 Cups (500 ml) cream (heavy for preference)
¾ cup (150g) sugar
5 egg yolks
1 vanilla bean
1 pinch salt
1) Heat milk, salt and sugar in a pot.
2) Scrape out the inside of the vanilla pod and add this, and the pod itself to the pot. Cover the pot until it’s just about to boil.
3) Cover the pot and remove it from the heat. Infuse and cool for 1 hour.
4) Prepare an ice bath—put a 2 litre bowl inside a larger bowl that is filled with ice.
5) Strain the cream into the 2 litre bowl.
6) In a new bowl, stir the egg yolks. Rewarm the milk and gradually add milk to yolks (do not to this the other way around to prevent the yolks from cooking, otherwise you’ll get scrambled eggs rather than custard).
7) Pour the custard mixture back into the pot. Cook on a low heat until thick (when you can wipe a stripe across the back of a wooden spoon without the custard running down to fill the gap).
8) Strain into heavy cream.
9) Stir until cool, cool in the fridge overnight
10) Remove the vanilla pod and freeze in an ice cream maker, adding the flavouring of your choice.
The Best Flavour ever:
Ingredients:
4 passion fruit
2 limes
A 1 inch thumb of ginger.
1) Peel the ginger (using a teaspoon to lightly scrape off the skin is highly recommended)
2) Finely grate the ginger.
3) Open up the passion fruit and scoop out the inside, seeds and all.
4) Grate the zest of the lime and squeeze out the juice, straining out the pips
5) Add the ginger, passion fruit, lime zest and juice into the churn with the custard and churn until appropriately thick.
You’ll find the passion fruit gives the ice cream a tangy crunch, while the ginger gives a very subtle warmth to the dish, followed by the lime refreshing your mouth. I made this quite by accident while trying to spruce up some store bought ice cream, and eventually tried it out during an ice-cream making night with one of my friends. Since then it’s become known as ‘Granny’s Orgasm’, because another of my friends was trying to explain the flavour to his Grandma, and the conversation went a bit like this:
“It’s like a…like a… as good as…”
“An orgasm?”
So if that hasn’t grossed you out, give it a try. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to make.
Blurb:
Jake and Nathaniel found their happily ever after in The Secret of Talmor Manor. The problem is that afters, come with their own set of problems. How exactly do you navigate the minefield of a family Christmas and a new relationship without explaining you met in a dream—or that the dream included a crazy sister and her lover hell bent on killing you both? Is it better or worse when the reincarnated person you’re with differs oh so slightly from the man you fell in love with? After a year of paranormal, is a little slice of normal too much to ask?
What inspired you to start writing?
The great lack of gay characters and stories being told in mainstream fiction. You’ll probably notice that the stories I write are not typical character driven romance dramas, but rather have my characters facing a problem—or problems—that are unrelated or only peripherally related to their sexualities. It can make me unpopular with some readers, but then, I’m more than my sexuality and I believe my characters should be too.
Do you have another job (paid or otherwise) apart from being an author? If so, how do you juggle your time?
Yes I do, and sadly it’s a job that I need to do because of the money, rather than one I do to keep my hand in the real world and interacting with real people! But you know, given that I have one book out, it’ll be a while before I can work part time and write the rest of it! I juggle my time because I have a job, and a career in writing. I work when I’m at work and the rest of the time I spend doing things like living, socialising, geeking out and writing. It’s not so much juggling a job and writing, it’s more juggling the rest of my life and writing.
What does it feel like watching your first book fledge and leave the nest?
You know, a lot of people ask me that or a variation on it, like ‘It must feel great to see your book on the shelves, right?’. And the funny thing is by that point the excitement is mostly gone for me. The excitement and the fangirlish squeeing and the phone calls with lots of ‘Oh my god’s in the them generally happen when I get a story accepted, rather than when it comes out. Because by the time it comes out, there’s been months and drafts and drafts of edits, and by the time the book finally comes out, there was a sense of relief that the hard work was over, and that just for a moment, I could enjoy the sight of it leaving the bookshelves. Then of course the rest of the publicity machine kicks in for small authors like me, and of course new projects come along, so…yeah. Relief and a quiet sense of satisfaction.
Are you character or plot driven? What do you do if one of your characters starts developing at a tangent?
Yes? I mean, I have an overarching plot, but how my characters navigate that plot is really up to them. Honestly, sometimes I feel like the Games Master in a role playing game, trying to channel unruly players along the pathway of the plot. Actually, there’s worse things an author can do than sit down for a gaming session or two. It gives you new ways of looking at characters and stories with characters who are completely unpredictable. So I give my characters free reign to go where they will, as long as they go roughly where I need them to. If they don’t, I go back and either tweak the events that befall them or their environment so that they naturally choose to go where I want them to, or in the worst case scenario, I will actually tweak the characters’ attributes and backgrounds (rather than personalities) to make them go where I need them to. Does that make any sense?
If you were in a tight corner and had to rely on one of your characters to save you, which would it be and why?
One I haven’t written about. The ones I write about have flaws the limitations and personalities that means they might well choose to not save me. Some of my characters who will never see print are much nicer, more powerful and less flawed. And therefore much too boring to ever put into a sellable novel.
If you had no constraints of time and a guarantee of publication, what book would you write?
A cookbook, although I hear they’re actually selling very well, or a fully interactive choose your own adventure erotic fiction game/novel. I hear they’ve been written too, but I don’t know how well they’re doing. Anyway, the sort of thing I’d want to do would probably need to be done in Flash or something.
Is there a classic book you started and simply couldn't finish?
Ulysses by James Joyce. I looked at it in year 8 on a dare from my teacher and got bored after 2 pages. There’s also the Ghormenghast Trilogy. It was given to me by my ex, and I was having trouble engaging with the work before we broke up, and now I really don’t feel like going back to it. Maybe one day. When the internet runs out of erotic stories…
What’s your favourite gay romance/other genre book? And why?
Anything by Terry Pratchett. If you’ve read him, you’ll understand why. Basically I love the way he effortlessly mixes humour, gripping narrative and the way he educates you while you’re having fun and laughing. To me that’s his true genius. He educates and informs through his writing and makes it so entertaining you come back for it over and over again and don’t even realise he’s being doing it.
What's your next project?
The next big project is a novel called Prophecy, which takes a modern gay man (i.e. current day) and drops him into the hero position of a standard quest narrative—you know, kill the dragon, rescue the princess, marry the princess, rule half (or all) of the kingdom—and looks at the fallout. It’s a bit of a rebellion at the heteronormative nature of most of the fantasy novels out there. Hopefully it’ll work.
What do you love best about this time of year?
The heat! I’m in Australia and it’s getting towards summer. And I’m not very good with the cold. So yeah, the heat, sun, the beach, the fact that it’s the sun’s up until 8 at night. And the post holiday sales aren’t bad either.
What inspired your new story?
Mostly, Laura Baumbach did. I’m not fantastic with short stories (or rather, I think I’m not that fantastic with short stories), and I was doing some work with banQuetPress at the time, and wondering if I’d be able to write anything for their next Anthology or if I’d tap out and not have anything to say in that short a medium. I had a half formed scene in my head, but it was mostly all sex and nothing substantive. Then Laura came onto our author mailing list missing everyone and suggesting Christmas stories, and then Jake and Nate climbed back onto my shoulder and started demanding to have the Christmas they never got in The Secret of Talmor Manor, and the rest is history.
Aside from your book—which everyone should buy—what do you think is a failsafe Christmas Gift?
Something from Oxfam unwrapped. It’s a bit hard to be mad at someone who’s bought a buffalo for those in need, and you’d have to be a bit of a tool to begrudge someone clean drinking water. And if kids don’t like it and throw a tanty, well, their parents need to teach them better.
What’s your best Christmas Recipe for dinner party success?
Well, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, or have a really warm house, it’s a bit hard to go past homemade ice-cream, and this creation of mine is rather spectacular.
The first thing you need to do is make a basic ice cream, and then you add flavouring. While you can find an ice cream recipe just about anywhere, I’ll put the one that I use here for convenience.
Basic Vanilla Ice-Cream
Ingredients:
1 Cup full cream milk
2 Cups (500 ml) cream (heavy for preference)
¾ cup (150g) sugar
5 egg yolks
1 vanilla bean
1 pinch salt
1) Heat milk, salt and sugar in a pot.
2) Scrape out the inside of the vanilla pod and add this, and the pod itself to the pot. Cover the pot until it’s just about to boil.
3) Cover the pot and remove it from the heat. Infuse and cool for 1 hour.
4) Prepare an ice bath—put a 2 litre bowl inside a larger bowl that is filled with ice.
5) Strain the cream into the 2 litre bowl.
6) In a new bowl, stir the egg yolks. Rewarm the milk and gradually add milk to yolks (do not to this the other way around to prevent the yolks from cooking, otherwise you’ll get scrambled eggs rather than custard).
7) Pour the custard mixture back into the pot. Cook on a low heat until thick (when you can wipe a stripe across the back of a wooden spoon without the custard running down to fill the gap).
8) Strain into heavy cream.
9) Stir until cool, cool in the fridge overnight
10) Remove the vanilla pod and freeze in an ice cream maker, adding the flavouring of your choice.
The Best Flavour ever:
Ingredients:
4 passion fruit
2 limes
A 1 inch thumb of ginger.
1) Peel the ginger (using a teaspoon to lightly scrape off the skin is highly recommended)
2) Finely grate the ginger.
3) Open up the passion fruit and scoop out the inside, seeds and all.
4) Grate the zest of the lime and squeeze out the juice, straining out the pips
5) Add the ginger, passion fruit, lime zest and juice into the churn with the custard and churn until appropriately thick.
You’ll find the passion fruit gives the ice cream a tangy crunch, while the ginger gives a very subtle warmth to the dish, followed by the lime refreshing your mouth. I made this quite by accident while trying to spruce up some store bought ice cream, and eventually tried it out during an ice-cream making night with one of my friends. Since then it’s become known as ‘Granny’s Orgasm’, because another of my friends was trying to explain the flavour to his Grandma, and the conversation went a bit like this:
“It’s like a…like a… as good as…”
“An orgasm?”
So if that hasn’t grossed you out, give it a try. You’ll be surprised at how easy it is to make.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-10 03:44 pm (UTC)And I adore that cover.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-11 01:44 pm (UTC)