 Let me tell you about myself so you can understand who I am, why I create the works that I do, and how all this relates to my creating the wild science fiction time travel adventure Baja Clavius: Moon Men Deep Inside. About My Creative WorksI create three-dimensional (3D) images of masculine men in peril. I am a gay man and I work as a artist exclusively in the 21st century digital realm from Las Vegas. I choose to use contemporary computer hardware and software as my artistic tools instead of pencils or paintbrushes that you hold in your hands. The majority of artists and illustrators depict females. This is a well-known truth. I choose to depict masculine men in peril within what is known as the bara genre of underground art. See a large collection of my creative works within the bara genre of underground art by visiting my page on Deviant Art. My storytelling and illustrations are intended to appeal to gay adult men who are attracted to masculine and muscular men in peril in particular versus those who are attracted to men who speak and behave in feminine ways as women do. See one page that shows links to all my works online. Download Baja Clavius: Moon Men Deep Inside. –> Now only $11.99!
 That’s me in the photograph about to be killed by the Predator who appeared suddenly one day in Las Vegas, Nevada for no apparent reason.  That’s also me in the photograph taken in 1891 or 1991 in historic Deadwood, South Dakota. You can see clearly that I posed for this photograph holding a shotgun. Why did I choose a shotgun for this photograph? My mother’s father brought deep, enduring shame upon our family through a murder/suicide when I was only a year old. That man I never knew used a shotgun to kill his wife (my mother’s mother) and then he turned the gun on himself. That violent family tragedy influenced my emotional sensibilities as a storyteller in adulthood. I am quite certain of that. Not for a Mass AudienceI accept that my creative works—and the bara underground art genre—will not appeal to a “mass audience” in the gay worldwide community. Some gay men have said that they especially like how I depict men so realistically. Others not so much. I get emails and other messages from guys who obviously “get” what I’m trying to do. One comment explains what I mean. The guy wrote this: “Never have I been so aroused. I always feared to delve into my darkest fantasies but with you, I feel supported and understood. Your stories are a perfect blend of light and shadow, to put it in very simplistic terms. I confess that what also arouses me is a detail that most would find insignificant but which holds tremendous eroticism. Curled toes. That’s a soft spot of mine. I associate it with violent orgasms, when pleasure wracks the body, makes it convulse and twist right down to its toes. Thank you for your amazing work and your willingness to share it with us. I do hope to see more and more of it and praise you for your lack of fear regarding a subject most would not dare to broach.” Science Fiction Time Travel AdventuresProvoking readers is a very different process compared to provoking viewers with visual works. I chose the science fiction time travel adventures genre deliberately so that my novel would turn out to be emotionally challenging and not at all “safe” in the intellectual or visceral sense. I did not attempt to create something that would make money for me or for others. But, I did attempt to create something that would make readers/viewers think about issues that they otherwise might not think about while enjoying spending time with masculine and muscular male characters. What I’ve created is a science fiction time travel adventure, but it is also true to the bara underground art genre. This is because I depict gay male same-sex feelings and sexual identity with masculine, muscular males that sometimes are violent and exploitative. Read more about the bara underground art genre. What does my work in that genre say about me? Most writers will admit what I admit here: We do not like violence and exploitation in everyday living. We write about violence and exploitation. It’s fiction. It’s only pretend. It’s only art or make-believe. As such, I do not advocate for violence and exploitation in real life. My target audience is gay males, but straight females also are known to enjoy the bara genre. I suspect that what I’ve created probably will not be made into a traditional Hollywood movie because the story and characters do not fit into the framework of major motion pictures that tell science fiction stories. Yet, I definitely can imagine this would make show business sense as a series of episodes for streaming on Amazon or Hulu or Netflix. Based on a Real-Life EventMy writing Baja Clavius: Moon Men Deep Inside dates back to when I began writing the story in 1990. That year I was driving westward by myself on my way to the Grand Canyon very early in the morning through the vast Navajo Nation, a Native American reservation spanning portions of the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. I saw a young man hitchhiking on the side of the road standing next to an old pickup truck. He wore tattered cowboy attire that suggested he had just survived a particularly rough journey. His cowboy hat caught the soft yellow light of sunrise in an eerie way that made him look otherworldly. I set aside all suspicions and common sense regarding the risks of picking up a stranger in a very isolated area. I made the choice to stop driving and pick him up. I talked with him, one-on-one. I noticed that he spoke with what was to me an unusual accent. He said that he lived there on the Navajo Reservation and explained that he was out there alone so early in the morning because his cousin’s pickup truck ran out of gas. I concluded that this young man was not what he claimed to be and that he had chosen to wait there by Highway 160 at sunrise for some much larger purpose. Was he a time traveler like I thought? What if I was on his agenda that morning? Dig deeper into this real-life experience of mine from 1990 which was the basis for my writing Baja Clavius: Moon Men Deep Inside. Pen NameI’m a citizen of the United States, born in California. My heritage is Portuguese from both my parents Edward and Evelyn Goulart. The word madeira is Portuguese for wood. The surname Desouza is a variation of the surname Souza from my old country grandfather on my mother’s side. When I was a boy, I had an irrational fear that I would turn out to be merely an ordinary man. During journalism school, I grew to admire writers who distinguished themselves through their professional works. But, I also must confess that I developed a very strong attraction to the well-known practice of writers who use a pseudonym. I discovered in those days that Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Filtered through the perceptions of a teenage boy, that was the coolest thing I had ever come to know about the writing profession. No surprise that Mark Twain has remained my favorite American writer of all time. Not that I think I am as good as he was or ever will be. But, I seek to be humorous like him, to tell vivid and imaginative stories like he told, and, yes, to have a memorable nom de plume like his. I created a pseudonym for myself that would sound considerably more Old World ethnic compared to my own birth name while being a name that everyone should recognize no ordinary person would ever have. It does not really matter whether someone with a pseudonym is prominent and globally identifiable like Mark Twain or Stephen King or J.K. Rowling or Jay Z. The simple reality is that having a pseudonym is a timeworn way of differentiating yourself from everyone else. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Read the Smashwords interview with Madeira Desouza. |
