C T Madrigal

Christian Madrigal's surprising social media is at www.instagram.com/c.t.madrigal. His well-stocked author site (which includes a blog with reviews of his book reviews!) is www.ctmadrigal.com. And his demi-goth band, Werewuss, is available on iTunes. C.T. Madrigal's second memoir, SAN FRANSICKO, may not be the story that fans of his first memoir hoped to read. The kid in OKLAHOMO had a rough go of it, it would have been nice to know that his life got easier this time around; it didn't. That doesn't mean this memoir isn't a fun read. It's cleverly campy at times, and it's seriously sad at times. And it's surprising, always. Set against the fabled backdrop of San Francisco in the 1990s, the book beautifully illustrates a nail-biting, nail-polishing year in a buckled life that's trying hard to smooth itself out. Before SAN FRANSICKO, he wrote two supernatural horror novels, and a humorously horrific memoir of his Oklahoma youth (“I was a runaway gay, a dive bar drag queen, a rhinestone on the nation’s bible belt. I had a gun.”) For some writers, he explains, horror novels and gay memoirs are nearly the same genre. Madrigal's childhood memoir OKLAHOMO "isn't a knee slapper," he insists, "wisecrackery doesn't tell the story." But the book is well witted, flat-out funny even, for those who find humor hiding amid the mortifying ("a schtick in the mud," as he describes it). Its stories are unique, layered, and full of belated insight; their resonance is universal. "It's not the saddest story either, I haven't ratcheted-up how ratchet a memoirist's childhood can be," (but let's be honest, it's pretty ratchet), "and though my memoir is often gay, I didn't put a torso model's shirtless abs on the cover...I have my limits." Madrigal's horror novels (the genre is referenced loosely, they're not about slashers) are, in fact, metaphors for some of the people and some of the situations that he's written about in his memoirs. His dark supernatural/horror books (HUNGRY WOMAN and THE LOVING DEAD) are driven, recklessly, by flawed characters. Some of their motives are murky, their circumstances are often claustrophobic (as befits a man who didn't leave his apartment for four years.) The writing style is a bit of a throwback to horror of the 1970s when only eventually did devils reveal themselves. "I don't write Horror in the manner of rag-tag troops shootin'-up zombies,” he explains. “Mine is a slower burn, having the weight of complex characters with the emotional gravity to sadden the sinks into their demise." Madrigal's website, www.ctmadrigal.com, has news and press (including a feature in VOGUE magazine, and an interview with Dita Von Teese), music from his demi-goth band Werewuss (with a cover of Siouxsie and the Banshees "Spellbound"), as well as his fine art photographs of some well-dressed demons, and other photos of dubious delicacies that you’d never want to eat. Like all writers, C.T. Madrigal is ever-appreciative of those who buy books new, ensuring that authors get their bits of royalty. He’s shown that appreciation by writing uncommon books in an original voice, they hit from a variety of angles, bobbing and weaving stories that entertain without a cache of cliché.