M. King writes predominantly for the His and His Kisses line, although she also has a short story – Whistlebait with Femerotica, and another – Filth, coming out with the TransFix line.

 

 

Bryn: You came to lyd with the Immortal Fire project… how did you get involved with that?

M King: Well, I was first approached by Nix Winter and Jaime Samms, who had the idea for a fantasy m/m anthology. It sounded great to me, especially as there are some pretty strong similarities in our writing styles. Nix suggested pitching the idea to loveyoudivine, so we did, and the rest was, as they say, history! 

From the first moment, lyd has been a lovely working environment. I can’t stress that enough. It’s clichéd to say it’s like a family, but that really is true. As the Immortal Fire project picked up speed, of course Clare London, Adrianne Brennan and, um, you came on board (*grin*), and the anthology really developed a distinctive feel that, I think, has carried through to the finished volume.

My copy is sitting on my shelf now, complete with Nix’s beautiful artwork, and it has been an unqualified pleasure, and a privilege, to be part of it.

Bryn: I get the impression from your website that you write as a number of people. How does that work, and do you ever get confused about who you’re being?

M King: Those who know me might suggest I’m always confused, but it probably doesn’t have much to do with pseudonyms….

It’s a fairly new thing, as a matter of fact. I’ve written anonymously or under different names for a long while, and M. King is the first pen name I’ve treated as a cohesive identity. It’s just a short version of my real name, after all. The idea behind using a set of different names came about because I’ve found a lot of readers identify M. King as a writer of gay and m/m fiction and little else, which isn’t really true. 

The plan might have been to break everything up into well-organised chunks that could be clearly identified – one name for horror, one for gay fiction, one for straight erotica – but of course I don’t find it that simple. Too much of my work cuts across various genres at once, and then there’s the whole issue of social media and networking. It’s one thing to list a webpage for a pseudonym, but I’m not sure I could hold down half a dozen different profiles as well!

Plus, frankly, I don’t think readers really need to be that mollycoddled. Sure, it helps to know that such-and-such author writes a particular kind of fiction, but I’m not sure how far readers expect them to do that and nothing else. I certainly don’t read just one genre, and I don’t write that way either. 

That said, there are probably issues of style in the different names I use. I’ve written very explicit erotica as Chastity Vicks that isn’t necessarily much like M. King erotica, while as E. A. Gray, I’m writing a series of mainstream medieval historical thrillers. And so on. It’s really about me trying to make everything I write as accessible as possible for as many readers as I can. 

Bryn: How much writing do you do in a typical day?

M King: In terms of ideas, I’m never off the clock, and I have a selection of notepads, backs of envelopes (and occasionally household bills, beer mats, napkins etc…) that I scribble notes down on to work up later.

Usually, I find time to clear a minimum of 1500-2000 words a day, in between the dreaded housework, doggy things, and various other stuff. But, if I have a deadline or something’s going really well, then barring accidents I’ll attach myself to the computer by an umbilical cord and just write until it’s done. That can mean anything from 5000-10,000 words…but sleep isn’t important, right?

Bryn: And you do covers as well… (gorgeous ones in fact). Do they take a lot of work?

M King: Thank you! It’s probably no secret that I learned most of my cover art skills from Emmy Ellis (http://emmyscovers.wordpress.com). I’ve always been a keen fiddler-about-with of artistic things, but she taught me a lot about adapting nebulous ideas into cover graphics that actually work!

Of course, loveyoudivine also boasts two other fab cover artists in the form of Nix Winter, who uses her own art and photography in her designs, and Dawne Dominique, who just topped the Pre-Editors’ and Editors’ Poll as best cover artist of 2009. They both produce awesome work, but probably the most difficult thing for me is filtering the first idea that I have into the final design. I’ll go through various different drafts to achieve the look I’m after, but that’s not always a bad thing.

Bryn: You and Emmy do have a similar look to your covers, but I’d not put that together at all. Ok, off at a tangent… you’ve just done a whole series of Gypsy tales, soon to be in paperback. I wondered what drew you to that theme?

M King: Mwah-hah! Yes, Travellers’ Tales. The stories are all inspired by traditional Romany folklore which–as readers may or may not know–is a wonderful, rich, intense oral tradition going back centuries in England and Europe. They only started to be written down in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and survived through people like John Hampden and John Sampson, who collected the tales as they were told by fascinating figures such as Matthew Wood, the famous Welsh Gypsy story-teller. I’d wanted to use these stories in some way for a long while, because folklore in all its forms is a passion of mine, and I’m also a strong advocate of Romani rights.  

Back in the Fifties, my mother spent her summers with a Romani family in Kent (South East England), learning to ride, listening to stories (and yes, eating baked hedgehog!) and she recalls how the Caravans Acts of the 1960s curtailed the traditional way of life for travelling families, leading up to the situation we have in England today, where there is not only a great lack of available permanent sites for travellers, but also an appalling degree of prejudice. I lived for some time in East Anglia, probably one of the worst areas for that kind of attitude, and it was terrible to see people actually having to box their horses and transport their vardoes (caravans) in plain trailers to avoid being stoned on the road. 

Obviously, my fiction has some pretty crucial differences from the original stories, which is why I’ve said ‘inspired by’. The fact the tales all feature gay characters wouldn’t have gone down well at the time they’re set (the first years of the twentieth century) and probably wouldn’t go down too well with many Roma communities today! The way of life, both for travellers and gaje (non-travellers, also known as gorgios, or various other forms of the word) described in the stories has changed a great deal since the time I’m writing about, and that’s really the point of the tales. Yes, they’re very much folk tale-inspired fantasy, but they’re also about the way society isolates people–whether by race, gender, orientation or culture–and how that can, and must, change. 

Bryn: And… where can people find you online?

M King: You can find full details on all my published titles, along with excerpts, free reads and more, at http://thenakednib.com, where you can now sign up for my monthly newsletter (exclusive freebies and special offers for subscribers!) 

 I also loiter on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/mkingauthor), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/originalcinnamon) and MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/originalcinnamon), and I love hearing from readers and fellow writers.

Thanks for having me.

Tags: author interview, erotic fiction, His and His Kisses, Immortal Fire, loveyoudivine, M. King

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 7:02 am and is filed under Bryn Colvin, Interviews, M. King. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.