A special welcome to John Tristan, a UK author who is becoming a rising star through his M/M novels from Loose Id and Carina Press.
I first stumbled across his work when I read his Loose Id debut Forest of Glass, then A Stranger in Skoria and A Slave in Skoria. Next came The Adorned, his first book with Carina Press. By then I knew I’d found a real treasure, a M/M author who’d obviously cut his teeth on the classics of space opera, fantasy, and sword & planet epics. And even better: the added joy of realistic, graphic, deeply emotional, and shamelessly fun M/M erotic romance (something the Big 5 and other mainstream science fiction and fantasy publishers still don’t really offer.) 
Especially with the Skoria books, I had the strangest sense I was reading an alternate-reality take of Andre Norton’s best space operas, only with her genteel filters thrown aside for a braver century.
I believe competent cross-genre authors like John are key to the most hopeful future for the M/M erotic romance field. Their works will eventually crack the barriers between M/M erotic romance and mainstream SF&F, and give the former a greater legitimacy in the larger publishing world. These authors are not only telling sexy stories – not just ‘porn’, as many detractors would say. These authors are telling stories that would be great even without the sex, but become even better when eroticism is a necessary framework for plot and character arcs.
Enough of my rambling. On with the interview!
Crane Hana: Welcome aboard, John. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
John Tristan: I’m a lifelong geek who’s just reached the wild and dangerous shores of my thirties (though I don’t feel at all “grown up”, and vaguely suspect that everyone that says they do is faking it). I’ve been writing since I was about nine, from stories about my imaginary friends to terrible teen angst poetry. Nowadays, I like to write fantasy and science fiction full of hot guys in love.
Crane Hana: Which of your characters do you connect with the most and why?
John Tristan: I think I’m probably most like Jason, the hero of the Skoria books (we’re both chubby, bespectacled bookworms with a thing for cyborgs, what can I say), but in writing I tend to feel the most connected to people who aren’t the focal point of the story. In The Adorned, for example, it was Isadel and Tallisk who I connected best with–whose motivations I felt most keenly–and in A Slave In Skoria, it was Snow/Kira. 
Crane Hana: If your novel was adapted into a movie and won an Oscar for best screenplay, what would you say in your acceptance speech?
John Tristan: I would thank my husband, my best friends, my mom, and whatever director was crazy or brave enough to try and adapt a story that’s half budget-draining spectacle and half gay sex!
Crane Hana, grinning: (I think I speak for millions of readers who Would Eat That Up.) Who or what has been the biggest influence on your writing?
John Tristan: Honestly, probably a lifetime of superhero comics, cheesy fantasy films, Dungeons & Dragons sessions and video games. The boldness and color, the larger-than-life tropes, the sense of narrative possibilities that seemed just beyond the boundaries of the medium (and sparked fan creativity, art and stories that expanded the world)–it’s that kind of energy I want to bring to my stories. Combine that with the fact that I’m a big soppy romantic, and that I too rarely saw things with the aesthetic I loved where the romance was anything beyond cursory and heteronormative…well, I felt I had to write more of what I wanted to see in the world!
There are of course also those writers who’ve left their mark on me, but I’m not sure I can claim them as influence–they feel more like idols to me, in a “matinee idol” sense; I like to moon over their stories. Clive Barker, Michael Moorcock, and Robert E. Howard are probably the big ones, but I also have to mention Susanna Clarke, because there are four copies of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in our house…you know, just in case.
Crane Hana: Tell us a little bit about your most recent release.
John Tristan: The first draft of The Peacock Prince was written faster than anything else in my life; the story almost fell out of me in its eagerness to be written. Something about it just made it a pure joy to write, in a way that I’ve rarely experienced!
What was especially interesting for me in writing it is that Alessander, the main character, kind of falls into using his feminine attributes as a source of power in the story. There’s a lot that interests me in things that get coded as feminine (even though they’re really human attributes): things like poise, domesticity, even submission to some extent. I like my male heroes to have some of that energy. Alessander is the most overt example I’ve written so far, with him actually impersonating his sister. In some sense he performs the part of the princess a lot better than she would, because it’s more intrinsic to his nature; he has more feminine-coded attributes than his sister (who’s a bit of a rebellious tomboy) does.
Crane Hana: Thank you, John, for volunteering to brave my disjointed and obscure blog. I love your work, and I hope at least a few new readers will wander over to your buy links.
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Readers can contact John at his website and on twitter as @johntwitstan!
Buy links:
Cover images courtesy of Loose Id, LLC and Carina Press.