ALEX’s BLOG - April 17, 2013

TWO NEW NOVELS FOR SPRING EVENTS

    I'm going to have TWO new novels to sell and sign at IML  in the next few weeks. Neither of them has been available at a major leather event before and both come from my new publisher, MLR Press.

    My 9th book, LEATHER DAYS will be literally hot off the press and was written "by public demand" as the sequel to the highly successful LEATHER NIGHTS. The same two heroes -- Mark and Dan, LAPD homicide detectives, will be wrestling with the murderous businessmen of Group7 again.

    A gay body builder is found dead, naked, roped and raped in his Los Angeles apartment. Is it an accident, suicide or murder?  In the fast world of gay television stars, high-priced criminal lawyers, and sadistic wealthy businessmen, the two LAPD detectives try to solve the vicious sex mystery, while facing challenges in their own evolving leather relationship. But their efforts are checked at every stage by an unknown killer, while a leather-sex weekend in New York comes at a high price.  Can Mark and Dan track down the murderous kingpin? What price must they pay to find answers to their case and their own desires?

     RED KNIGHT RISING is very different, although the testosterone level of BDSM sex is just as high.  I’ve always enjoyed reading about the Middle Ages and watching television shows and movies about this adventurous time. Life must have been hard, short, dirty, yet the writers of the period produced the dramatic romances of King Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot, the Knights of the Round Table, castles and Crusades. So I decided I'd try my hand at a BDSM story of two young knights, tournaments, Crusades, and love, both “courtly” and crude. But I could find very little written about gay life and almost nothing about BDSM in the Medieval world. Sodomy laws had been introduced and then seemed to slip away, lapsing over time. The Catholic Church was always vehemently against homosexuality, because the religious authorities believe in "procreation". But monastic life wasn’t always celibate, and surely some of the monks must’ve been queer.

    Of course, all this made it more intriguing for a writer. I could almost let my imagination run riot with my two hunky young knightly heroes in their lust/love for one another. But how did their sex life fit within the confines of society -- and the nobility -- of the time? What would their families think of sons who didn’t want to get married, settle down and continue the family line?

   In armies across the centuries. men at war had to find sexual release one way or another, and why not with one another when fighting on a Crusade, besieging a castle, even in the mock battles of a tournament? So my heroes wouldn't be alone with their pleasures and kinks.  Then I unearthed the real story of King Richard the Lionheart. I was weaned on the films of Robert Hood, the Crusades, where Richard came back and saved the day. He was indeed the warrior king, the heroic knight, a writer of poetry and music.

    But there was another very different side to the Lionheart. He seems to have been queer or best bisexual. Yes he did finally marry, but it was a political alliance. And even the Chronicles hint at "abominations" and "unnatural behavior". Plus he definitely had a strong sadistic streak. For example, after the siege of Acre in the Holy Land, he marched 800 Muslim prisoners out beyond the walls and had them all killed within sight and sound of their fellow soldiers. Did this savagery also spill over into his private life?

    He was true grist to the author, and a strong antagonist for my two heroes, who signed up for his army on the adventure of the "Crusade of Kings" in the 1190s. While writing the book, I worked my way through a dozen or so reference books -- interestingly "The Idiots Guide to the Crusades" is one of the most helpful. Through the Internet I plotted the path of the Third Crusade across Europe and the Mediterranean. I researched clothing, armor and underwear. One expert offered advice on broad swords and another on "war machines”.

    "Two years in the making", "a cast of thousands” are standard Hollywood publicity, but they're also true of my BDSM novel and the challenges of bringing to life the world of a “RED KNIGHT RISING."