In Christopher Rice’s fifth novel, The Moonlit Earth, Megan reluctantly moves back home
with her mom in an affluent part of San Diego after a failed attempt to better mankind in San Francisco. At a surprise party in her honor her beloved brother unexpectedly appears to wish her well before rushing off to work a flight from LAX to Hong Kong. The next day all over the news is coverage of a suspected terrorist bombing at a Hong Kong hotel along with security camera images of her brother being led away from the carnage by a Middle Eastern man. With the FBI searching for her missing brother and the media now swarming all around Megan and her family, a mysterious text message motivates Megan to slip past the frenzy and fly to Hong Kong to find him. This fast-paced mystery thriller is a real page-turner that’ll leave you shocked, surprised and with a lump in your throat. Christopher Rice spoke with The Rage Monthly about his latest novel, the changing world of publishing and how his sexuality influ- ences his work. Chris will be signing his book at the Obelisk in Hillcrest on Wednesday, April 21 at 7:00p.m. and also in West Hollywood at Book Soup on April 6.
The Rage Monthly: I love books that start out with a bang and this one literally did. Tell me how this story came about.
Christopher Rice: I knew that I wanted to write a book that centered on a re-
lationship between a straight female and her gay sibling. I’d also heard a rumor about a certain Middle Eastern king being gay and it inspired a vague general story about some sort of hot young gay guy from the U.S. who goes over to the Middle East and gets involved in some weirdness from which his siblings have to extract him. As I began researching the specifics of it I found the story along the way. I trav-
elled to Thailand and Hong Kong because I knew that’s where I wanted the bulk of the story to be. I knew that this gay Middle East character was actually leaving the Middle East to misbehave in another part of the world and it made sense for the story. I also researched planes and the life of flight attendants and what they do. I’ve always been kind of a plane geek so that was fun for me.
Rage: And all the action starts out in San Diego!
Chris: I made up a fictional alternate La Jolla called Cathedral Beach, which I
used in the second half of my previous book Blind Fall and much more extensively in this novel.
Rage: This book reads like you’re watching a movie. Being that you live in L.A. is there any- thing going on in that department?
Chris: The response I usually get from Hollywood is that my books are too gay
and too expensive to film, and this one involves international locations and ter- rorist bombings. It wouldn’t be the same if you took all that out and made a small gay movie out of it.
Rage: As you know the gay bookstore is mostly gone and the book industry is changing, but thankfully people still read, and now more on Kindles and soon on iPads.
Chris: Well, we’re in the midst of a profound change. We’re not at the third act
yet, more like in the middle of the second act. Lots of people are losing their jobs, authors are getting dropped by their publishers and the dramatic market transi- tions can seem like the end of the world for a lot of people. I can’t tell how it’s all going to turn out but I’m very excited about the eBook
revolution. Reading them on devices that format all books the same has a “de- mocratization effect” that takes away from the small press, self-published stigma. The introduction of the iPad also brings some much-needed competition and
hopefully a better price-point that benefits authors in particular. But the loss of the gay bookstore is personally traumatic for me which serve as community centers and gathering places with people meeting other people in a sort of face- to-face and honest way, and I thought they very much fulfilled that need.
Rage: I managed the Obelisk Bookstore in Hillcrest for a decade and my partner and I thought a lot about the life of the gay bookstore and concluded that the survivors were the ones which brought other things into the store, creating a more full-featured community store. You have to adapt with the times. Likewise, how has being a “gay author” changed for you?
Chris: Well, with the publication of my first book, everyone saw Anne Rice’s
son first and gay author second. With each subsequent book, being Anne Rice’s son became less of a big deal and being a gay author became a bigger deal. It became more important to me personally not to hide my sexuality or shun that label and try and make it clear to people that I didn’t want my work being limited to a certain shelf. I’ve always been intrigued by stories involving a relationship or a bridge between the gay and straight world. I may have gay romance in me that documents my experiences in the gay
world, but I haven’t written it yet. The closest I ever came was in my third novel Light Before Day and that was my poorest performing book, to be absolutely frank, but it also lacked a sympathetic female character. My previous book, Blind Fall was was about what sexual identity meant to this
straight marine who discovered that the man who saved his life in Iraq was gay. And it was a different type of book, and that approach continued on with The Moonlit Earth, which is really focused on the corrosive power of wealth. Sexuality is just a part of the story and there’s a great freedom in that without losing your gay or straight audiences.
Mark: What’s coming up next for you?
Chris: I have part of another book written but I’ve taken time off to do promo-
tion for this book. And I’m on the board of the West Hollywood Library here where I live where we’re building a new multi-million dollar library. It’s very exciting to me because I absolutely believe in what libraries can do for a community. And because one of the main characters in this book is a flight attendant, I’m
researching ways to market the book directly to flight attendants because a lot of them are gay and huge readers with a lot of down time. One fun thing I’ve done is set up my first ever book signing in an airport and I’ll be doing that after I return from this tour.
APRIL 2010 | RAGE monthly 27
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