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Christopher Leeson's Bio

Please send your comments to Chrisopher Leeson at cdl25@usa.net

I'm a male in my late forties and that's fine with me, except that I'd rather be in my twenties. I'm hetero and my only experience with wearing girl's clothing was in an elementary school play performed by an all-boys class -- definitely not the high point of my life.

I've puttered with the writing hobby since my teens and won first prize in a high school competition. I actually have submitted work, off and on, to professional agents (those are the people who never sell anything) and professional editors (those are the people who never buy anything). Doubtless I will try again, but I'm too old and disillusioned to have much hope. My favorite authors are R.E. Howard, C.A. Smith, E.R. Burroughs, and John Norman (his first 8 books). My own writing -- mostly adventure, fantasy, horror, and, lately, erotic -- have been colored by my familiarity with these craftsmen and others.

I became interested in TG stories from my first exposure to the concept in the late 50's. The earliest examples which I remember are "Siren of Baghdad," and an episode of "Dobie Gillis." For whatever reason, the theme of a masculine man changed into a beautiful (and anatomically-correct) woman is an engaging and intriguing plot, bar none -- especially if the change is not a voluntary one. (Or, if it is voluntary, it is done to achieve an important non-sexual end, as offered in NOEL).

Over the years, I have collected every quality sex-change story I could find, and watched all the TG movies I came across. (In 1965 I saw "Goodbye Charlie," which made a big impression on my own ideas for TG writing, but even more for what it bungled or left out than by what it presented.) I best like TG stories which develop their themes fully and use sympathetic, believable characters -- and avoid cliches.

The cliches are many and various. Too many TG stories center on men in conflict with their girlfriends or wives, usually in terms unflattering (and unfair) to the man. I think American males are a pretty fine group over all (certain politicians excluded) and so have little patience when they are calumniated with derogatory generalities. I address (in a playful way) the problem of anti- male prejudice in "Prisoners of Tiresias." Fem-dom stories tend to be categorically anti-male (usually in a mean-spirited approach) and so, as a group, they appeal to me very little. (That not to say that might not try to write one later on, since I think there is unexplored possibility here.) And also, though I have written "Bobbie McGee," my preference is for TG stories which escape the mundane world of Middle America. Given time, I'd like to do TG in various genres, such as an Arabian Nights fantasy, a hardboiled detective fantasy, a sword-and-sorcery story, and a Western, just to name a few.

But cliches are not the only problem. Most of us find it frustrating when a writer begins an extremely good work, publishes his fragment, but then never writes the rest of it. I myself avoid posting any part of a TG story unless I have entire story done in rough draft form. This allows publication section by section as it is gradually polished. I'm also down on any story which is well-written, but which the author brings to an end just when it's just getting to the point. I wrote my original version of "The Crusader and the Slave Girl" before I was on-line. It ended when the knight was dragged off to the slave market, a resolution was personally unsatisfying. It never occurred to me to post it until I had explored the premise more fully. During the expansion, the length doubled, but now the story examines the equally-dramatic subject of knight's fate after enslavement.

Another kind of story that turns me off is one which comes across as too negative. If a writer so dislikes his lead character that he starts out by establishing what an unsympathetic creep he is, and all he wants to do is kick his star around, the story may easily suffer. I've heard it said that villains are regarded as the most interesting characters, but I prefer observing the inner change and growth of a sympathetic protagonist. A good story can be written without any mean cuss in it, at all, like I attempt to present in "Under the Moons of Eden." Too many TG heros in amateur fiction are weaklings and crybabies; it's more satisfying to have heros meeting their fate with courage and stubborn pride (and pride, remember, has nothing to do with brittle, insecure, ranting machismo). If a TG character breaks into tears, it should be out of a type of sorrow which involves the great issues of the human spirit, that is, high-concepts which we all can identify with, not out of any craven fear of being punished or humiliated. Also, I am against stories where a writer is in too much of a hurry to femininize his hero, and\or does it in too silly a way. For example, I never let my heros "giggle."

I did very little TG plotting before discovering alt.sex.stories.tg. Here, at last, was a world-wide audience for the outside-the-mainstream ideas which I had been letting languish. There was no money in internet posting, of course, but I hadn't made any money writing up to that point, and didn't foresee that I ever would. I wrote my first 5 TG stories in the course of a year of under-employment, though notes and fragments of "McGee" and "Crusader" already existed. I want to write more, but have been very busy for more than a year. Maybe it will be better after Christmas '98, maybe not. Even so, I've been tinkering, as time allows, with TG humor, contributing captioned images to www.fictionmania.com's "title images." I am also (very slowly) producing graphic images to illustrate my stories at fictionmania, which is a graphics-heavy archive. (Publishers/Sapphire's Note: When Chris finishes his illustrations they will be here at Sapphire's Place Also!) As of this writing (Sept. 14, 1998), an illustrated versions of "The Crusader and the Slave Girl" is available both with Fictionmania and Sapphire. I am currently compiling a series of captioned graphic images for a light-hearted series which I call "The Adventures of Billie Brown," about a mother who has her teenaged son magically transformed into a high school beauty, with the end of making him a better student!

In closing I'd like to offer my reading recommendations regarding works that have especially impressed me.