Chris and his longtime partner Jeff moved from St. Louis, Missouri to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 2007, after the restaurant they’d run together failed financially. Chris took that failure as an opportunity to reboot his creative writing side, and in February of 2009, started the magazine, M-Brane SF.

As one of the very first people to join The Outer Alliance, Chris has been an active Outer Alliance blogger and advocate from the start. In addition to M-Brane SF, he also recently edited an anthology of queer speculative fiction called Things We Are Not, which contains several stories by other Outer Alliance members. On the horizon, slated for a June 2010 release is another anthology to be published by Hadley Rille Books called The Aether Age, which Chris is co-editing with Outer Alliance member, Brandon Bell.

Chris keeps a personal blog at mbranesf.livejournal.com and is active on Twitter as mbranesf. He has two cats names Maus and Jack.

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Would you tell us a bit about Things We Are Not? How many of the contributors are Outer Alliance members, and what kinds of LGBTQI themes are included in the collection?

I am very pleased with this book. It is my first such project, and I am really proud of the great work that the writers did for it. Nearly all of the writers in it ended up joining the Outer Alliance either early on or a bit later, including the straight allies, which I found very gratifying. I was pleased that some straight-identifying writers wanted to contribute to my queer book, and then even more so when they all supported the Alliance (which was founded right around the time that I was finalizing content and starting to promote the book).

The project formed when I decided that I wanted to read and publish some queer science fiction and realized that none of was showing up in the normal M-Brane slush. Though the zine is not queer-focused, I would have been happy to publish more queer material if I ever received any. So one day I decided to see if I could manage to do a stand-alone book. I put out a call for submissions and was amazed at the number of stories that showed up.

I decided from the beginning that I wanted the collection represent a lot of points of views and orientations. In particular, I didn’t want it to be too gay male-oriented or too focused on sexual matters or erotica. As it turned out, however, I didn’t need to think about it too much, nor apply any kind of quotas to my selections. It just happened to work out that the stories that I liked best also represented a lot of diversity. Several items are gay male stories, but just as many are about lesbian characters. Some of the other stories feature variations that are probably only possible in science fiction (a young man’s love affair with a giant sentient machine, for example). Some of them deal with other issues, such as reproduction and marriage, in a quite subversive way. One disappointment that I had with the selection of stories is that I did not end up with anything that I can point to as a “real” trans or intersex story. There are certainly some items in the book that get away from the gender binary, but which might do it in too science fictional a way to really satisfy someone looking for transgender content. It’s just the way it ended up this time, but if I ever do another queer anthology, I may make a more deliberate effort to find more stories that fit under the “T” in LGBT. I was a bit surprised that I didn’t see more of it when submissions were coming in.

You’ve been an active Outer Alliance member since the beginning. What has your experience with that been like? Do you have any goals or wishes for the future of the group?

I think I might have been the first or second person that joined it, literally moments after Natania Barron announced on Twitter that she wanted to start this organization. It just seemed like it was the right time for something like the Outer Alliance. As members recall, it started in part as a mobilization against the homophobic attitudes expressed by John C. Wright in his psychotic screed about the Syfy channel. But even if there had not been something really outrageous like that to stand against, I think it was still time to gather together queer and queer-allied writers and publishers into an association like this. A number of queer sf/fantasy groups exist that one can join—in fact, I belong to a couple of them—but they are mostly focused on visual media fandom and not so much on reading and writing. I don’t mean to knock movies or TV or fandom in general, but it’s really nice to have a group that is focused on the written genres, has a lot of creators in its membership, and which also has a pro-queer stance.

Since the group is still very new, it’s hard to know how it will grow or what it will be like in the future. We’ve already demonstrated that we can put together a respectable group action, such as the Pride Day on 9/1, and also our very measured and reasonable handling of the Flash Fiction Online controversy. The latter was really quite remarkable since no one was formally “in charge” of the situation and it could so easily have spiraled into a loud, ugly “fail” thing. So we’re already pretty good at things like that when they come up, and I expect we’ll have more chances to face bad situations or put together positive events as a group. Also, I see the Alliance potentially being a terrific networking resource for its members. I’ve already made contact with so many cool people that I did not know before, and I’ve enjoyed that a lot.

M-Brane SF has been going for several months now, and you’ve just put an anthology out. How hard was it to start these things? Do you have any advice for other individuals who might like to venture into the world of indie publishing?

It’s certainly been a lot of work in that it consumes a great deal of the time that I am not at my day job. But it gets easier with time, too. The monthly issues of the zine get easier each month because I learn new things about how to work better and more efficiently with each issue. If it were still as hard now to complete my tenth issue as it was to do the first one, then I probably would not have taken on the anthology. But I’ve found ways to work smarter and I now feel that I have the ability to do other projects like that anthology and still manage everything else. I can see it coming to a point where I will need help if I want to grow as a little indie publisher, but we’ll see how it goes. Right now, it doesn’t generate real income, and so it remains more-or-less a one-man show until I find a way to make some money from it.

I don’t know that my advice to anyone else that wants to venture into something like this would be any good. I am no expert. I just do what seems right and what seems to work, and then keep trying to learn from my mistakes and build on my successes. Most people who want to publish zines are basically out of their minds. It’s like some kind of chronic illness that can only be treated by publishing stuff. Fortunately, effective treatments are now within the easy reach of people who have computers and internet access. It’s become quite easy and inexpensive to launch a blog or a webzine or a publication like M-Brane SF where I am able to do electronic and print editions with no real up-front cost other than buying fiction. Even publishing a book using the new tools is not that difficult or costly. The biggest challenge seems to be getting the word out about what you are doing and convincing other people that it is good and worthwhile and that they ought to care about it. So you have to have a lot of patience and perseverance because people will probably not respond in great numbers right away. I am only just now starting to feel the beginnings of some progress toward the next level, so I am glad that I didn’t quit after a couple months.

You took a break from writing for several years in order to pursue a culinary career. Do you ever think about going back into the restaurant business? What are some of your favorite foods?

During the good years of my culinary career, I always did a little bit of writing but never in a way that yielded any finished manuscripts. I also toyed around with an early version of M-Brane that never got launched. During the last couple of years, where my day jobs are much less demanding, I’ve had the time and motivation to get more serious about it. Though I am in no way making any money off of writing or publishing yet, I have committed myself to the idea that I am publisher and a writer, and that’s what I do now as my real profession whether it pays the bills yet or not. I have no interest in returning to high-end restaurant work. I love cooking and still do it everyday at home, but I feel that I accomplished professionally everything that I could accomplish in that business and it no longer holds the appeal. My partner is also a fine cook (and gardener), and we enjoy doing that together at home nowadays. It’s hard for me to specify favorite foods because I am very curious about all cuisines and I move with great enthusiasm from one to the other. When I’ve had chances to travel abroad, I am the guy eating one of everything from the street vendors and the shabbiest dives so that I can learn something new. I’m sometimes mistaken for a food snob because I reject chain restaurants for various reasons, not all of them food-related. I’m not a snob at all, but I tend to be impatient with people who claim that they don’t like stuff that they have either never tried or not tried when properly prepared. Our everyday casual food around the house is currently pretty heavy on Mexican dishes, Asian-style items, curries, stews and pastas. These all have the virtue of being very economical yet delicious.

What’s next? Can we look forward to reading more anthologies in the future, or seeing you at any cons?

In addition to continuing the zine, I have a number of other book projects in the works. I recently announced The Aether Age, which will be an anthology of short fiction set in an alternate historical universe. Alliance member and writer Brandon Bell originally suggested the idea, and we are pretty excited about it. The shared universe will be a Creative Commons-licensed project that we hope will inspire some other projects as well. Hadley Rille Books has partnered with me as the publisher, and this should be a big benefit as far as getting the book distributed. We are aiming for June 2010 for this. I am also planning a couple of single-author short fiction collections. I can’t reveal details on these right now, though by the time this appears, I may have made an announcement or two. And there may be a second queer anthology, but a decision on that is at least several months away.

I definitely hope to make it to a con or two next year. I couldn’t fit any travel into the budget this year, but hopefully that will change, and hopefully I’ll be able to meet some Outer Alliance members in person!

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Thanks, Chris! Join us next week for another Spotlight, and in the meantime, check out M-Brane SF and Things We Are Not, or consider submitting to The Aether Age.