Out of the Mouths of the Butt Pirates: Shae Connor

Posted on April 29, 2013

Happy Monday to you! Kris here and VERY much looking forward to an exciting week. Why? Because not only is my bum still completely flawless and a sight to behold…and, you know, actually hold, but the Butt Pirates in Space anthology was released! I am one of five authors contained in this classic, gay, campy romp through the Science Fiction universe and I thought it might be fun to ask the contributors if they’d like to offer up a little behind-the-scenes scoop on how their story came to be. First up, the lovely, adorably Heavenly Shae Connor about her story, “What to Expect When Your Boyfriend Is Expecting.”

Butt Pirates Shae Connor: I come from a long tradition of what we’ll refer to as “transformational creativity,” though most of you will know it much better as “fandom.”

In layman’s terms, I used to write fanfiction. And a hell of a lot of it.

My first fandom was “The X-Files,” which exploded right along with the internet and got carried along on a tidal wave of bits and bytes. “The X-Files” was the perfect show at the perfect time in a lot of ways, drawing in geeky types who naturally were early adopters of technology and thus used their l33t skillz to discuss their fannish fervor on fledgling newsgroups and mailing lists. Everyone who was anyone in the XF fandom had a GeoCities website, man. For once, the nerds were the cool kids!

Being in a paranormal-based fandom, of course, gave fanfic writers nearly unlimited creative avenues to work with. Sure, there was the basic monster-of-the-week guideline, and the ever-changing mythology underlying the show—not to mention the scorching chemistry between the brooding and wacky-hot Mulder and skeptically sexy Scully. (And okay, okay, Skinner and Krycek were pretty damn fun to play with, too.)

But the universe of “The X-Files” wasn’t as mundane as our own from the start, so the fanes weren’t by any means hemmed in by what the show actually, well, showed. That led to plenty of crazy (and mostly erotic) storylines—“sex pollen, “gender-switching, post-apocalyptica—but one of the more puzzling to many was the proliferation of male pregnancy fics, also known as MPREG.

I’ll confess: I had a weird fascination with these stories. The XF universe made the concept of Mulder (and it was always Mulder) being implanted with some alien technology that allowed him to carry a baby completely plausible. And reading about a man going through the hormonal shifts, body changes, and other trials and tribulations of pregnancy was strangely satisfying. Even though I’ve never been pregnant (and likely never will be), I’ll admit feeling a touch of schadenfreude at the idea of putting a man through all that. Take that, Mr. Testosterone!

But that’s not the case with “What to Expect When Your Boyfriend Is Expecting.” No, really. While I could have tortured the snot out of the babydaddy, the story itself delves only shallowly into the experiences of a pregnant man, in part because the titular boyfriend isn’t actually human. Pregnancy is a given for anyone in his species, even though all of them have the general outward appearance of human men. Sure, our protagonist has a bit of adjustment to do when he realizes he’s gotten his boyfriend pregnant. It’s not usually something a gay man has to worry about. But as it turns out, they have bigger things to worry about—like not getting themselves kidnapped and held for ransom by a bands of privateer.

The intial idea for “What to Expect” came from two things: the title, which randomly popped into my head, and a comment from the head of one publishing company about things she’d “never” publish. Of the three she listed, MPREG is the only one she still hasn’t done. While this anthology went to a different publisher, don’t think I’ve given up on convincing her!

On the other hand, maybe I don’t want to be typecast as “that weirdo who writes MPREG.”

Riiiiiight. Like being typecast as a weirdo has ever stopped me before.

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Shae Connor lives in Atlanta, where she’s a lackadaisical government worker for a living and writes porn… er, erotica under the cover of night. She’s been making up stories for as long as she can remember, but it took her a long time to figure out that maybe she should try writing them down. She’s conned several companies into publishing her work and adds a new notch on her bedpost each time another one is unleashed onto an unsuspecting universe. Her last novella, En Fuego, featured a smokin’ firefighter, a hot veterinarian, and the slightly singed cat that brought them together. You can find her hanging out on Twitter most any time @shaeconnor, but for the direct route, you can visit her website at shaeconnorwrites.com or email her at shaeconnorwrites@gmail.com.

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Kristoffer Gair (who formerly wrote under the pseudonym Kage Alan) is the Detroit-based author of Honor Unbound, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Sexual Orientation, Andy Stevenson Vs. The Lord Of The Loins, Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell, several short stories featured in anthologies (to be combined in a forthcoming book), the recently re-published novella Falling Awake, its sequel, Falling Awake II: Revenant and Falling Awake III: Requiem.

5 Responses to “Out of the Mouths of the Butt Pirates: Shae Connor”

Dorien says:
April 29, 2013 at 7:58 am
Fun concept, Shae…though I had difficulty starting to read it after Kris’s comment about holding his flawless butt. I’m very fond of Kris, but I do draw the line…..

Dorien

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Kris says:
April 29, 2013 at 8:16 am
You draw the line? What? Are we in Geometry class? No line drawing!

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Shae Connor says:
April 29, 2013 at 12:07 pm
I will be sure to get a good handful of that butt this weekend. 😉

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LuvWarrior says:
April 30, 2013 at 1:10 am
Shae, I would pay you (if I could) if you had random people come up to him and do that! ROFLMAO

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Kris says:
April 30, 2013 at 3:45 pm
Depends entirely on who the hands are attached to.