Faust, Christa 1969-

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FAUST, Christa 1969-

PERSONAL:

Born June 21, 1969, in New York, NY.

ADDRESSES:

Home—2658 Griffith Park Blvd., No. 297, Los Angeles, CA 90039.

CAREER:

Writer and professional dominatrix. Formerly worked in peep booths in Times Square.

WRITINGS:

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Dreamspawn, Black Flame Publications, 1995.

Twilight Zone: Burned and One Night at Mercy, Black Flame Publications, 1995.

Control Freak, Masquerade (Northridge, CA), 1998.

Hoodtown, illustrated by Rafael Navarro, From Parts Unknown Publications (Los Angeles, CA), 2004.

(With Poppy Z. Brite) Triads, Subterranean Press (Burton, MI), 2004.

Contributor of short fiction to periodicals, including City Slab and Cemetary Dance, and to online magazines, including Gothic.net. Contributor to books, including Thomas S. Roche, editor, Noirotica, 1996; Nancy Kilpatrick and Thomas S. Roche, editors, In the Shadow of the Gargoyle, 1998; Richard Chizmar and William Schafer, editors, Subterranean Gallery, 1999; Roadkills, Chanting Monks Press, 2003; and Jeff Gelb and Michael Garret, editors, Hot Blood Volume Twelve: Strange Bedfellos, Kensington, 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

"Christa Faust is one of the new breed of writers infusing horror fiction with a sharp and delicious jolt of erotica, racking the dry husk of taboo to proffer the dark fruits therein," wrote Alex S. Johnson in Carbon 14. Faust is also a professional dominatrix with a great deal of experience in the world of sadomasochism, the backdrop for her first novel, Control Freak. The story centers on Caitlin McCulough, a hard-boiled crime writer who thinks she has seen it all. While investigating a grisly murder in New York's meat-packing district, Caitlin discovers a world of fetishists addicted to pain and blood. As she explores this world, she finds herself more and more drawn into it, and finally emerges as a dominatrix herself, while trying to find the killer who threatens everything she has come to embrace.

Faust teamed up with fellow eroticist Poppy Z. Brite to write Triads, a love story that begins when two boys escape from the Peking Opera in 1937. Unfortunately, their sheltered life of servitude has not prepared them for the challenges of living on the streets of Hong Kong, and even less so for the terrors of Japan's invasion of China. Interwoven with their adventures are the tales of a lesbian writer posing as a man in Hollywood in 1945, and a contemporary, closeted gay actor increasingly disturbed by the ghost of a Chinese man with secrets of his own. "Despite buckets of blood and the possibility of a vengeful ghost," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "the true horror lies in homophobia and anti-Asian bigotry." While noting that "it won't be to everyone's taste," a Kirkus Reviews contributor found Triads "wonderfully well told."