issue 1 author interview: TT madden
What screams NYGEL more than an erotic tale about boinking a slime sex worker? That’s exactly what TT Madden brings to the table with “Shore Leave,” the first story in NYGEL’s first issue! Check out their author interview below!
NYGEL: What piece of media was your gateway into monsterfuckery?
TT: Beauty and the Beast knocked on the door, but the 1992 Dracula really was the one that showed up and just absolutely fuckin kicked it off its hinges. I saw that on cable in my basement way too early and being just absolutely gobsmacked at not just the amount of stuff they showed on TV, but how deeply strange that movie is on every single level, monsterfuckery notwithstanding. I remember I had to sneakily check the TV guide to see when it was coming on again so I could watch the entire thing. There was no way my parents were gonna let me rent that one from Blockbuster.
NYGEL: What creature or character is your biggest 'hear me out'?
TT: Tentacles may seem kinda basic, but it's also a way to hype up Amat Escalante's 2016 film The Untamed. It's an underseen movie with a fantastic creature that seems tailor-made for the NYGEL crowd.
NYGEL: Did anything in particular inspire you to write this story?
TT: The inspiration for this was totally the mishandling of "pansexual Lando Calrissian" in Solo: A Star Wars Story, hence the quote at the beginning. As a queer person, that was the only time I ever had even the slightest window into something as mainstream as Star Wars, the only time I felt like I could be part of that world, the only time I found it really interesting, and they beefed it pretty hard. Donald Glover's right; in a space opera world, sexuality wouldn't stop with the combination of human + different-colored human-looking alien.
NYGEL: If you could add a monster romance to any existing story, what would you choose and why?
TT: I'd fix the Lando/L3 "romance" in Solo, but if we're talking pure addition, I'd probably have to say The Thing. All the different planets it's been to and shapes it could become? Are you kidding me? Plus, I think that would be a fun way to explore the fluidity of sexuality in that all-male space, like sailors on a ship. What does it mean if you're straight, but there's no women around, so you turn to the men surrounding you for comfort? And what does that mean if one of those men is an alien? I think that would be very interesting to explore with those characters.
NYGEL: What would you like to see more of when it comes to weird and spicy fiction?
TT: In general I'd like to see more spicy fiction as antifascist tool. I think it's great we have spaces like NYGEL and other mags that are purely dedicated to spice, but I'd also like to see sex of any kind pop up in more mainstream work. It doesn't have to be monsterfuckery, even, but sex (or the absence of it) is such a large and important part of so many peoples' lives and so much fiction is still so reluctant to touch even the most chaste, hetero versions of it.
Check out TT’s story “Shore Leave to experience exquisite human/slime fuckery of the hottest degree, only in NYGEL Issue 1 (on sale until the end of 2025!)
TT Madden (they/them) is a genderfluid, mixed-race author of the novellas The Familialists, The Cosmic Color, and Student Bodies, who refuses to keep "politics" out of their writing. Their work in scifi, fantasy, and horror often deals with the intersections of their various identities. They have upcoming books with Mad Axe Media, Timber Ghost Press, Game Over Books, Slashic Horror Press, and Speculation Publications. They can be found at ttmaddenwrites.carrd.co
