Sunday, October 21, 2018

An Important Cause - And A Touching Review


Amos Lassen is more than a tremendously skilled reviewer - who I am truly blessed that has enjoyed my work - but one of the sweetest, kindest people I have ever known ... and he needs your help.

Please follow this link to his GoFundMe page and give as much as you can so that this truly special person can live the life he deserves.

Here is the information on his situation:

My dear friend Amos Lassen, a powerful supporter of authors and filmmakers for years, needs our help. 
Over many years, Amos has been engaged in an act of love—that is, love of the art of writing and filmmaking, and love of those who produce it. 
Without compensation of any kind, he has published more than 15,000 reviews of books and films in support of civil and human rights for the LGBTQ+ community, proving himself to be a powerful advocate for these individuals and for the art that portrays their lives in a realistic and empathetic way. 
Now, he needs us to help him keep this act of love alive.Amos is in serious financial trouble. 
After being forced to give up his cherished dog by a mercenary landlord, Amos was priced out of his Brookline apartment in December of 2017 by rent increases. Since then he has been essentially homeless, his personal possessions packed away in storage. Air B&B's and the YMCA are not the best places to call home, and yet this is the choice Amos has had to make. 
Those of us who don't struggle financially don't always realize everything that means. For Amos, it means he can't maintain his website, where he has posted insightful book reviews for many years. It means he can't replace the computer he needs in order to keep helping others. It means he is living in a room at the YMCA and struggles to pay for storing the possessions he had to remove from his apartment a year ago. 
We can fix this. We can help Amos keep helping others. Here are some ways: 
1. If you can contribute financially, please do. Any amount is appreciated. 
2. If you have a working computer you think he could use, please email therobinreardon@gmail.com. 
3. If you have ideas regarding living arrangements better than the YMCA, or about other ways we might help Amos, please email therobinreardon@gmail. 
And if you know Amos, please don't contact him directly about this effort; he doesn't know I'm doing it. 
Thank you for anything you can do to improve Amos' circumstances. 
— Lisa Stephani

And here is his touching review of my new book, Hard Drive: The Best Sci-Fi Erotica Of M.Christian ... you're the best, Amos!

Our Sexuality Makes Us Human

Amos Lassen

I have been reading and reviewing M. Christian for about twelve years now and regard him as one of our finest erotica writers today. His importance is in how he sees our sexuality as that which as far as they go and he does this once again in his new collection of cyberpunk adventure, “Hard Drive”. His sexual stories are outrageous and therefore great fun. This collection contains a story that M.Christian selected these stories from other erotica collections and not only are they celebrations of sexually explicit cyberpunk science fiction, they are also examples of what good writing is. We go to the “outer reaches of BDSM, gay, lesbian, and straight sexuality in the near and far future: worlds of brilliant imagination, relentless passion, and supernova heat!” It is really exciting to have the stories that he considers his best all on one volume. Now I go through the volume and say something about each story but that takes away from the element of surprise you get when you read.

Christian is very frank in his descriptions of intimacy and he has the ability to draw characters with whom we can easily associate because they are like us—they are searching for what they do not have sexually.

Physical and sexual pleasures are part of our lives even though they are transitory and perhaps that is why some of the stories here may indeed shock you. I am not sure why we are shocked when we are daily being bombarded by new technologies. The anthology is made up of seventeen stories and I can honestly say that I do not know when last I had such a good time reading before this. A word of warning—- I became so engrossed in what I read that I made the mistake of starting in the afternoon and then staying up all night reading.