Tag Archives: Christopher Keelty

The Next Big Thing – Christopher Keelty

Posted on by
Reply

The responses from the authors I tagged are coming in fast and furious. Well, furious isn’t really the right word. Fast and fiercely? Fast and fervently?

Here’s sci fi/fantasy author Christopher Keelty’s Next Big Thing…

What is the working title of your book?

Andromedan Sons. This could easily change. I’ve never been much good at titles, and rarely love what I come up with. For the record, it’s a book I’m shopping around right now, but I haven’t yet found an agent or publisher.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I created the main character when I was about 11 years old. He was one of my first ever fictional creations, sort of a blend of Superman, Batman, James Bond and MacGyver, with some original touches. He was definitely a traditional adolescent male power fantasy: handsome and sexy, rich, and with an answer for every problem.

Over the years I’ve had different ideas about how to use him. I finally had an idea I considered good enough for a novel. It’s an action-adventure novel, but it’s also a reflection on how such a figure would fit into a corporatized future America, what that would do to the kind of idealistic person who’d enter the super-heroing industry, and what it would do to the people around him.

What genre does your book fall under?

I like the term “Science Fantasy,” which reflects a story more concerned with character, action, and drama than getting all the science correct. There’s no such shelf in book stores, though, so I go with Science Fiction.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

It’s really not something I think about a lot. I’m sort of focused on seeing it as a book, let alone a movie. I guess Brad Pitt would help sell tickets, and I think he’d bring the right balance of sex appeal and introspection to my protagonist. I’d be happy to see Sean Paul Lockhart play my narrator. It’s an interesting approach, and I think his background would inform the role well.

The female lead is someone who pretends to be a brash and impulsive sexpot, but conceals a more complex, conflicted side. Being this is fantasy casting, I think Mila Kunis would kick ass in the role. She’d need a blonde wig, though.

That said, I’d be happier to see first-time actors cast in most roles. Sure, I’d like to sell tickets, but a long-term relationship with an actor has made me acutely aware how hard it is (harder than ever, seriously) to break into Hollywood. Liz would be fantastic, of course–but it would be super-weird to see her portray a character I invented.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

The world’s most famous super hero and the young reporter writing his profile are accused of assassinating the President of the United States, and flee their dystopic future Earth as they fight to clear their names.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

As often seems to happen, I wrote the first few chapters and set them aside. I picked them up a year or so later, and I think it took me about 18 months before I had a complete first draft.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I have to admit I don’t read super-hero novels. I intentionally tried to emulateFight Club and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay in some ways, like the interplay between characters and some of the background. Richard Morgan’s Black Man was a definite influence on the way I tried to subtly reveal the world to the reader.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

If I had to name a single inspiration, it was my friend Nick. In junior high school he and I used to spend nights writing, and then pass each other pages of product in the morning before school. He got used to reading a lot about this super-hero character, and one of the characters in the novel is a nod to one of Nick’s creations.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

While I tried to put the adventure, characters, and science fiction first, I try to write about what interests me–which means issues like environmental disaster and climate change, queer issues, racial and gender discrimination, sexual politics, and income inequality have prominent places. I hope not in a heavy-handed way–my aim is that someone with no interest in politics can still read and enjoy the book, but maybe come away unintentionally enlightened.

My On-Line Interview – The Next Big Thing Project

Posted on by
6

Here’s the skinny, my “next big thing,” as prompted by author John Copenhaver last week:

What is the title of the book?

Werecat: The Rearing

DSC_1329

 

Where did the idea come from for the book?

It started as an experimental piece. I got turned on to shapeshifter and vampire stories only recently, and, as with most everything I read, those stories made me think: how could I write a great story in that vein from a totally queer point-of-view? Not just with gay or lesbian sidekick characters – I wanted to create a gritty, sexy love story between two men that was central to the plot, and really central to a fantasy world. I’m also fascinated by cats, so writing the fantasy aspect came pretty naturally to me.

What genre does your book fall under?

Urban fantasy

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I actually blogged about that subject before my book got picked up by a publisher. What writer doesn’t daydream about casting her/his work? For Werecat, it’s extra fun because I think feline shapeshifters would have to be sexy and dark. I imagine an underground world populated  by hot, scruffy men, high-shouldered and lean, sort of a throw-back to the grunge or heroin-chic model trend of the 90’s. They would have to have great eyes too.

My main character Jacks is a lost, rebellious college drop-out, and I’d be delighted to cast François Arnaud from the Showtime series The Borgias in that role. Jacks’ love interest Benoit would have to be smoking hot with a dangerous vibe. My first pick is Michael Fassbender. Then there’s a supporting character Farzan who may or may not get in between Jacks and Benoit. Farzan is tightly-wound and kind of goofy. He makes me think of Kal Penn from Howard and Kumar.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Werecat: The Rearing is about a young man who goes to Montréal for Spring Break, gets picked up by a handsome drifter, and ends up on a terrifying and erotic journey into the world of feline shapeshifters.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Werecat: The Rearing is the first book in a series of novellas, which are 20-40K words apiece. I wrote the first draft in about three weeks.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Allison Moon’s lesbian werewolf novel Lunatic Fringe was a major departure point. Beyond her excellent re-imagining of werewolf mythology, her book made me think about the similarities between the shapeshifter trope and the experience of being queer, both in obvious ways like having to hide and being misunderstood, and in ways that are important to me politically and spiritually.

I think there’s something liberating about being able to inhabit two worlds. Queer people learn how to fit in, and sometimes pass within a heterosexual world, and we also cross “genders” at least in our private lives if not publicly. The Native American idea of two-spirit intrigues me – possessing both a female and a male aspect – and I could go on about that subject extensively. Suffice it to say, when I started writing about gay, feline shapeshifters, I found opportunities to explore the different facets of having a dual nature — socially, sexually, and politically.

I also worked a good bit of cat mythology – ancient world and native – into the story. Retold myth and legend is a fairly steady thread in everything I write.

Is your book out in print, upcoming from a publisher and/or represented by an agency?

NewVPBlogo72dpiWerecat: The Rearing will be published by Vagabondage Press and is upcoming in May.

Authors I am tagging next for The Next Big Thing Project:

Lydia Sharp – YA contemporary, fantasy, and romance author and blogger extraordinaire

Charlie Vazquez – Avant-garde author, poet, and master-of-ceremonies for New York City’s underground literati

Christopher Keelty – Fantasy/sci-fi author and civil rights activist

C.A. Clemmings – Author of literary novels and short fiction

 

 

COLLECTIVE FALLOUT: Queer Speculative Fiction!!

Posted on by
4

Cover art from Collective Fallout Vol. 3 Issue 3

While researching queer fantasy markets, I discovered Collective Fallout. It’s a literary magazine dedicated to queer speculative fiction.

Issues are themed, and the one I ordered – Vol. 3, Issue 3 – was called “Futuristic.”

It blew my mind. In a good way. If you’ve read my reviews, you know it doesn’t happen often that I go off raving about stuff I read.

The stories are imaginative and tightly written, and I’ll get to some of my favorites. But what I responded to, most wonderfully, was the sum of the issue’s parts: wild, conceptual fiction as a platform for queer possibilities, and often queer transcendence.

Most of the authors take the future theme from a dystopian perspective. Warren Rochelle’s “Green Light” posits the rise of a multinational, totalitarian empire, genetically engineered warriors, and a substratum of outcasts fending for survival on a war-ravished frontier. In Christopher Keelty’s “Toll Road,” bio-contamination leads to a politically-fractured state where Catholic knights vie with leather-clad biker dudes called “the Dawn.”

Somewhat smaller in scale, and charming in its quiet way, is Terence Kuch’s “Other I Now.” In Kuch’s future, media technology has born the creepy pastime of ‘voying’, downloading other people’s memories. When Kuch’s narrator Ned rents out a memchip that is uncannily like his own memories, he goes in search of his “other I,” and discovers another life he might have lived.

The struggle to live queerly and authentically is a theme tying many of the stories together. It’s sometimes the main narrative drive, as in the case of Rochelle and Keelty’s stories where an accumulation of heterosexual power has begotten a nightmarish era of persecution for their queer protagonists.

In Derrick W. Craigie’s “Tales of K’Aeran: A New Road,” opportunities for queer living are contrasted when two strangers, from different fantasy clans, band together for survival in a sub-zero neutral zone. The Highborn woman Tatyana comes from an elite society where being caught with her female lover brought about a campaign for her assassination. Her companion Garon, from the martially-centered Nathikan clan, reflects on the more nuanced traditions of his people, who hold heterosexual marriage as a tribal obligation, but believe in the essential practice of choosing additional lovers for personal fulfillment, whether hetero or homo.

Caleb Wimble’s “Singularity” evokes queer otherness through allegory. The central character’s choice to undergo experimental cloning, after a terminal diagnosis of brain cancer, sets off  violent, global organizing by “humanists.” “Synths” are criminalized because they are seen as an affront to the way God intended humankind to be.

I was surprised by the romantic spirit of the stories, a universal thread, which may be a bit too ‘on-the-nose’ for some readers, but it worked quite well for me. Rochelle’s “Green Light” has an outcast teen and a young warrior, trained to exterminate the masses, deferring life and limb to be together. The story invokes the poetry of Walt Whitman. “Singularity” finds love possible between a man and the clone of his former boyfriend.

Not a bad thought that in the future, love will conquer all.