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We have a wiener!

I wonder what how Germans accidentally on purpose make a reference to cocks?

Anyway, I have chosen a winner for my new tagline, and it’s a line I actually wrote years ago for an early incarnation of First Impressions: ‘Don’t compare me to Oscar Wilde. Both our reputations will suffer.’ Like most of what I say, it’s layered, so rather than gloss it for you, I’ll leave it to you to figure out.

Since it occurred to me through a conversation with Amy Lane, she’s the lucky winner of a copy of First Impressions or something else of her choice. For those of you who’re wondering, yes, all m/m authors know each other. Actually we don’t, even though it seems like it some days, but Amy and I live about thirty miles from each other and so get together for lunch once in a while when we need to get out of our own heads.

Anyway, I’ve already tweaked the blog to reflect it and will get to work on swag for Gay Rom Lit in the next week or so. There are all kinds of interesting things out there.

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May 6, 2012 | Categories: Contest, Promotion | Leave A Comment »

Help me choose a new tagline! Win swag!

I’m having a contest and you can win stuff!

So what’s the deal? The deal is that I need a tagline, something sums up and marks off my brand, because like it or not, writing’s a business as much as it’s an artistic and creative pursuit.

I’ve got one, but it’s a little too close to ZA Maxfield’s, for one thing, and she really doesn’t deserve that. (Full disclosure: she’s a dear friend and all kinds of awesome, so there’s really no need to go tearing off in high dudgeon and email her, because all that’s likely to happen is that she’ll email me and we’ll both have a good laugh.) For another, it doesn’t really speak to my writing in particular.

Of all the elements of my writing, the dialogue in particular seems to be It, one of the things that people consistently like about my writing. Reviewers mention it, readers mention it. Even my husband’s noticed it. While I like to think I pour a great deal of effort—the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears—into all aspects of my writing, the dialogue jumps off the page.

I see my dialogue crisp, snappy, true-to-life, and above all witty. It’s what my friends sound like when we’re on fire, and it’s what my son, whom I refer to online as The Kid Himself, is coming to sound like, even thought he’s still several months shy of his ninth birthday. Yeah, there’s an almost-nine year old clone of me running around. The first time I heard him snark I must confess it brought a tear to my eye.

I’ll save how I write dialogue for various guest blog spots as I promote my work, in large part because I’ve never actually sat down to think about the nuts and bolts of it. I make sure my dialogue sounds to my own mind’s ear what people “really sound like,” because let’s not fool ourselves—we’ve all read stories that make us sit up and, with varying degrees of disgust, snap, “That is not what people sound like, certainly not when they’re talking about that.”

I try to raise a more lofty standard. I like to think I succeed, and I like to think many of you agree with me.

So with that in mind, my lovelies, I need you to help me come up with a tagline that keeps that knack for dialogue in mind. It’ll be use on my promo items like all the swag I’m going to have made up for Gay Rom Lit, my email signature, the subheading on this blog, things like that.

Guidelines:

It needs to emphasize the crisp, witty dialogue we all know and love in my writing.

It needs to be succinct, snappy, and short. Think advertising slogan rather than explanation.

Examples:

“Romance is funny, so you might as well laugh at it.” My current one. 1) it doesn’t play off my crisp dialogue. 2) It’s too close to ZAM’s.

“Words of affection wielded with wit.” I can’t say I’m a fan of this due to the alliteration, but this is one example that DSP’s publicity maven and I came up with.

What’s in it for you?

If I choose yours, or if yours inspires me to come up with one I like better, you’ll win a copy of First Impressions or something from my backlist. Or if you’re willing to wait, a copy of Burning It Down (CalPac #3) when it’s released in December.

Or a swag bag full of GayRomLit goodies. I can’t tell you what’ll be in it, because I haven’t ordered anything yet since I’m waiting for my new tag line.

Deadline:

I don’t suppose I have a hard and fast date in mind. As soon as I have one I like, I’ll post it here, tweet it, etc. I don’t want to wait too long, as I’d like to get to ordering all that swag, even though Gay Rom Lit isn’t until October.

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April 24, 2012 | Categories: Contest, Promotion, Writing | 7 Comments »

Cover art!

I got the final cover art for First Impressions last night, and I have to say, Paul Richmond’s done it again. I hope you like it as much as I do.

cover, First Impressions

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March 1, 2012 | Categories: Promotion, Writing | 2 Comments »

Quick update

I’m just about done with the outline for CalPac #3, Burning It Down. For some reason, I’d envisioned that this one would be the penultimate story, with Philip and Stuart’s story being the last full-length novel. Perhaps later on I’d write a story about Nick and Morgan because I miss them, but that would more or less be it for the world of the rowers of California Pacific College.

Uh…no.

I’m not even done with the outline of the macroplot of Burning It Down and two minor characters have already jumped out as another couple with a story just begging to be told. Of course, with each iteration the connection to rowing becomes more and more tangential, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

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February 29, 2012 | Categories: damnit, Promotion, Writing | 2 Comments »

CalPac Crew #3 teaser

So even as I wait for the second round of edits on First Impressions from Dreamspinner, I’m ramping up work on future CalPac books. I have tentatively titled the third installment of the CalPac books Burning It Down, and it tells the story of Owen Douglas, the fire captain (if that title even exists…it may not, and I

How I usually write

have to research it), and Dr. Alexander Lennox-Johansson, DVM. Owen has been injured in the line of duty and Alex has escaped an abusive relationship. For some reason, I feel like writing about wounded people. They seem more interesting. Maturation as a writer, or an emergent mean streak, you choose.

I also thought it might be interesting to pull back the curtain on the writing process, assuming–perhaps erroneously–that any of you cares about how the stories are written, only that they are written. There are still a few macro-level plot points to resolve, so who knows, maybe crowd sourcing will come up with some ideas.

I think the first thing to mention is that I generally follow a W-shaped plot structure, with the five points of the W representing the highs and lows of dramatic action (called barriers below).

First Barrier: The protagonist begins work toward his objective and encounters the first barrier. [They recognize the attraction, but after their hook-up, Alex is too embarrassed, Owen dejected by Alex’s perceived rejection since he post-injury he feels old and useless]
First Barrier Reversal: Things don’t look good, but the protagonist manages to overcome the first barrier [They decided to give it a go—what does this look like? Two people pining for each other, have to show them going about life and missing each other, but what else?]
Second Barrier: At the high point of the action, just when it looks like the protagonist has it made and his objective is within reach, the rug is suddenly pulled out from under him in the unexpected second reversal. [Things are going great between Alex and Owen, but then Jordan the abusive ex shows back up, stalking Alex and threatening Owen]
Second Barrier Reversal: At the low point of the action, when things look very grim, the protagonist still has an opportunity to overcome this catastrophe and achieve his objective. [Alex breaks it off, allegedly to protect Owen but also his own fear. But Owen won't go quietly, and they realize they can’t let Jordan control them, so they renew their relationship. Jordan locks them in the boathouse—while they’re having sex?—and sets it on fire]
Resolution: The protagonist either does or does not pull out of the catastrophe, resolving the plot either tragically or triumphantly. [aftermath—Jordan’s trial, Owen regains his self-confidence as a man, Alex realizes fear can’t rule his life, they move in together?]

Usually, I more or less end a novel with the protagonists getting together, but Burning It Down will be a bit different. Alex and Brad will be together fairly early on in the story (at least compared to the way I usually tell stories), unlike Nick and Morgan and Drew and Brad were, to an extent, threatened more by their own perceptions and beliefs. Owen and Alex, however, will face a very real and existential threat in the person of Alex’s psycho ex.

So…what do you think?

Crowd-sourcing plot points

Oh yeah, on Friday I’m doing a citizen’s ride-along with my local fire department. For research. Get your minds out of the gutter. I think it’s a pretty cool opportunity.

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February 15, 2012 | Categories: Anxious little monkey, Promotion, Writing | 3 Comments »

Coming distractions.

I’m afraid to check the last time I updated my blog, but I’m here now. That’s the important part. It’s been a busy few months, that’s for sure. I tend to disappear into a cave–metaphorically, if not literally–when I’m deep into writing. It’s not the easiest place to be, as my tendency would be to focus entirely on my writing if only my son and husband didn’t want attention. Instead, their voices just become whistles and clicks and it takes a while for them to get my attention. I even avoid my usual social-media wastes of time. So my blog got short shrift. It’s as if I can only write so much, and if I’m deep into a novel, I write nothing else. So I apologize to my fans, both of you.

The Bermuda Triangle of Productivity

Anyway, I finished writing First Impressions, a new novel, after Turkey Day and then farmed it out to my beloved and trusty beta readers, all of whom returned me edits before Christmas. After a brief hiatus while I recovered from influenza (you can always tell when someone’s had genuine influenza because he calls it influenza to distinguish it from whatever generic virus has received a promotion…trust me, they’re different), I got to work on edits and submitted it for publication a few weeks ago. What makes this different from my usual experience with submission (not that, you perv) is that not only did I hear back in a relative hurry, but Dreamspinner offered me the chance to bring First Impressions to print in a definite hurry. The publisher told me that another writing had “indefinitely postponed” his/her book and there was now a hole in her publication schedule. I hate to think what brought this on for one of my colleagues, but is it too terrible of me to say that I’m willing to take advantage of it if it meant the difference between publication in April vs August?

First Impressions isn’t related to the world of the CalPac Crew, even thought it, too, is set in a somewhat fictionalized version of Sacramento, and I hope you’ll forgive me for that. I needed a break from CalPac books, and this provided the perfect one as I’m now in the research and outlining stages of not one but two CalPac novels. More on them later. So, First Impressions. It’s a gay riff on Pride and Prejudice. I don’t even remember when I started First Impressions, sometime last summer, I suppose. Actually, I first started working on this story more than a decade ago, when I realized that my social milieu bore a marked resemblance to Jane Austen’s. In Sacramento’s gay community and Regency England both, life was a series of parties and balls all designed to find a husband, we all knew far too much about each other’s business (and mating habits), and one wrong move or poorly chosen outfit could lead to social ruination. The story didn’t work very well then, but I’ve learned a lot about story telling in the mean time.

With that in mind, meet Henry and Cameron:

On the cusp of thirty, Cameron is struggling to find his way in life. He’s realized his insistence on doing it his way has only led to frustration, and his goals seem further away than ever. How can Cameron share his life with someone else when he doesn’t even know what his life’s about?

A man of varied business interests, Henry is desperate to escape his past. His last boyfriend used him for his money, and he doubts the love was ever really there. Burdened by his secrets and burned out on relationships, can Henry find last happiness in a relationship if he’s lying to himself about being happy in the first place?

When the two meet, fur—not sparks—flies, but as circumstances and coincidence throw them together, can each man admit he was wrong and move past his disastrous first impression to realize that sometimes, love bears no resemblance to what’s expected?

(note on pictures: these are pictures I found on the internet that captured how I envisioned each character. I do not own the rights to these photos, and for all I know there are “real” people who might not appreciate starring in my novel. If either of these men is you, or if you own the rights, please email me using the contact form at the top of the page, and I’ll remove them.)

So there we are. I’ll post updates on publication dates as I get them, as well as cover art when it’s appropriate. In addition, there’ll be excerpts here from time to time. But the next post will be about the CalPac novels, I swear.

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January 22, 2012 | Categories: Promotion, Timesucks, Writing | 2 Comments »

“The Advent Calendar” is out!

MRL Press released “The Advent Calendar,” which introduces Toby and Derek and their conflict about whether or not to have children, today. The story started this summer as part of a challenge by MRL Press editor Kris Jacen to “make mud sexy.” I’m still not sure how that screamed Christmas! to me, but it did. Or maybe it was just that Z.A. Maxfield had been badgering me to write a short story for a while. I prefer to write novels and was actually surprised the story came out as well as it did. Or maybe I shouldn’t say that…

Funny story: I actually got Kris’s attention with a synopsis for the story, but had only written maybe a quarter of it when she told me she wanted to see the entire story. Naturally, at the very moment I read that email on my phone, I was sitting at Apple’s Genius Bar while one of the genii pronounced last rites for my laptop’s logic board. So I bought a wireless keyboard and banged out the entire story on my iPad (my fingers are really too big to use the touch screen for any kind of serious typing).

And voila! The first draft of “The Advent Calendar” was born.

The excerpt below captures of the undercurrent of humor to what is otherwise a serious, even sober, story:

Up on the ladder, Derek cringed. He should’ve seen this coming. It happened whenever his nieces and nephews came by for an afternoon or an overnight. Toby enjoyed those times so much that he went through withdrawal when the kids left. Meanwhile, Derek usually had to lay down with a cold compress over his eyes to recover. But not Toby. He knew he had to head this off. “Hand me that string of lights, will you? No, not those, the colored ones.”

Toby dutifully complied, handing them up to his husband, who proceeded to work over part of a tree. “Remember the year we had the animatronic reindeer? Oh my God, was that ever hideous. Remember?”

“Yeah, one fell over, as I recall.”

“Worse, the one that fell over developed some kind of tick in its circuitry and its hind legs kicked helplessly at the air like it’d been shot, like in a cartoon.”

Toby smiled at the recollection. “You didn’t really help matters. You had to go and put up Santa aiming a shotgun at it.”

“Not just put up, Toby,” he said smugly, and really, it was some of his finest work. “I had plywood cut and then painted it myself.”

“All the neighborhood kids screamed at the sight, at least the young ones did. We had angry parents banging on our door for weeks.”

“You have to look on the bright side, Toby. We didn’t have any carolers, either. Total peace and quiet the entire holiday season.”

“You’re absolutely incorrigible, you know that?”

“And you should know by now that your mock disapproval only encourages me. I’m not satisfied with an eye roll anymore. No, it’s a facepalm or nothing for me. Otherwise I know I haven’t tried hard enough.”

“So in other words, you’re saying that debacle was my fault?”

Derek held out a hand for more lights. “You’re an enabler, Toby. Face it.”

Anyway, there it is. I hope you like the story.

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November 27, 2011 | Categories: Anxious little monkey, Promotion, Writing | Leave A Comment »

The Dead Bird Derby! (or, why I hate Thanksgiving)

Well, here we are, boys and girls and whatevers, another Thanksgiving is upon us. I’ve come to the conclusion that I dislike Thanksgiving and almost all it stands for.

For starters, why do we have to have a special day to be grateful for our blessings? Is that not artificial? OK, cool, here we are, fat, rich, and happy. Let’s drop a box of mac & cheese off at the homeless shelter to feel good about ourselves and re-enforce our position in life. Then we’ll go spend money at the mall the next day. No, gratitude is like New Year’s resolutions. If it’s that important, you shouldn’t wait.

The holiday might commemorate something the Pilgrims did to and with the Wampanoags, but its modern observation is laughably young when compared to the not quite 400 year old incident it commemorates. Lincoln instituted a day of thanksgiving in 1863 while the United States was trying to snuff itself, and wasn’t a federal holiday until 1941. So much for the Pilgrims. But then, I suppose all holidays are pretty much schmoozed together, like Christmas magically coinciding with the Saturnalia.

There’s also something about the food that disturbs me. Let’s start with the main course, the turkey. There’s nothing natural about it. Those poor birds are pumped full of chemicals, and are so overbred they can’t even reproduce without human intervention. My son’s godmother’s grandfather helped develop the technique. I don’t know why poultry that can’t fuck bothers me, but it does.

I’m not sure whether or not it was the time I walked into the kitchen to see my mother fisting the turkey, or watching Dad carve the thing up with some hedge-trimmer of an electric knife and seeing all the bits of meat scatter into the air. I’d resumed carnivory by this time I witnessed this, so the fact that it was a dead bird surrounded by a cloud of meat wasn’t it.

Maybe I just don’t like turkey, a sauce made of innards, and stuffing, which I pray isn’t cooked inside the bird because it won’t get hot enough to kill whatever lurks in the eggs used to bind it together. Hmmm, now that I think about it, perhaps this is the way the chickens strike a blow for their cousins, the turkeys. You want a piece of us? they say. Fine. But the eggs? Those’ll kill you.

Really? This is what the richest society on earth has been reduced to eating? We don’t live the way the Plymouth Colony Puritans did, so why must we eat like them?

I suppose the real reason I dislike Thanksgiving is because it’s one of the few family gatherings I’ve not managed to avoid. It can be very dispiriting to see just how polluted my gene pool really is. Nature or nurture, can there be anything more damning than seeing everyone at one time? There’s the grandparents, who think a jar of “pickled buns” (a jar of full of tiny butts made of panty hose and cotton balls) is the acme of humor. There’re the dead-behind-the-eyes second cousins who, in the amount of time one has earned a BA, an MA, a PhD, and started a family, can’t quite manage to graduate from community college. Or what of the mysterious relatives—no one’s really sure how exactly they’re related—who always manage to find their way to the buffet table, but can’t seem to figure out how to prepare anything to contribute?

Or there’s the utter mind-numbing tedium of a day spent waiting for a meal one doesn’t wish to eat in the first place. Football, you say. If I’m going to watch TV all day, football is not what I’d choose. Puzzles? Cards? Board—or is that bored—games? Save them for the retirement home. It call comes down to the people, and Mom and Dad, if you’d wanted me to spend time with these, we should’ve seen them more than once or twice a year while I was growing up, because now that I’m in my forties? Good luck with that. No, Grandma, I won’t pull your finger. It wasn’t funny last year, or the year before, or the year before that…

I suppose it could be worse. It could be the time a much older relative of my husband hit on him at Thanksgiving dinner. Or maybe that was Christmas. Whatever, it was just creepy.

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November 24, 2011 | Categories: Cranky cultural mandarinism, damnit | Leave A Comment »

Have you read “Amor Prohibido”?

This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Book Reviews

Amor Prohibido

Why the heck not? This is a fun, fresh read from another new author on the m/m scene. I never know what the boundaries are between a really long short story and short novella, but AP is in there somewhere. It has chapters, so you can plan to spend some time with appealing characters and a world that I, at least, have never encountered before and I’m betting most readers won’t have, either.

Plot summary:

Jacob Freehan has no job, no man, and no motivation. In pain both from ending a long-term abusive relationship and a severe back injury, he escapes to the sunny seaside town of Puerto Morelos, Mexico for a little yoga, a little R&R, and possibly a place to quietly end his own life.

Pakal is a centuries-old immortal Mayan spirit guide who has been charged with getting Jacob on the path toward healing. Romantic involvement with a spirit charge is strictly forbidden, and it has never been a problem…until now. Pakal sees something special in Jacob, but failure to keep a rapidly growing attraction at bay could result in Jacob losing his life and Pakal being condemned to the Underworld forever…

Excerpt:

Their interactions were so comfortable and easy that Pakal had to remind himself repeatedly that Jacob was his spirit charge, not a friend. Not a lover. Every now and then Jacob’s warm, chocolatey gaze found Pakal’s, and it was as if he were a better man just for having borne witness to that soulful stare. Gods, what he wouldn’t give for them to be just two ordinary mortals. Pakal shoved the foolish longing aside, but it was insistent, like a hungry stray dog.

Eleven hundred years was a long time to be alone.

The gentle breeze playfully ruffled Jacob’s hair while he chatted about his favorite music (techno), his feelings about animal cruelty (con), his feelings about American football (pro), and his favorite foods (Chinese pork buns, and Swiss cheese fondue). Pakal, in turn, discussed the local culture, the history, and the cave formations. Many times he caught himself assisting Jacob in a far too friendly manner, and each time their bodies touched Pakal was overcome by the sensation of their being so…in tune, with each other. He would almost swear their pulses beat in the same rhythm. Yet through it all, Jacob’s posture was still overly controlled. Tight.

They were plodding carefully through a large corridor of stalactites and stalagmites that gave the appearance of a giant shark’s mouth, when Jacob stepped absently and slipped. Pakal grabbed Jacob from behind, just narrowly preventing him from being impaled on the business end of a sharp, vertically jutting piece of rock. Many a tourist had landed at the nearby clinic for such accidents.

“Shit.”

“I warned you to be careful of where you stepped. It’s slippery in here.” Pakal’s breath was heavy, and he was panting right in Jacob’s ear. His heart thudded against the thinner man’s back. Their bodies vibrated together as if they shared the same skin. They were dangling over a great precipice just then, and for the life of him Pakal was too caught up in the thrill to truly care about the consequences. He tightened his grip around Jacob’s naked waist and his light slipped from his fingers into the water. It was stupid. It was dangerous.

It was too late.

The thought was interesting, but fleeting, as Pakal’s hand dipped inside of Jacob’s loose, surfer-style swim shorts.

“Holy, Jesus. What are you doing?” The words held a note of obligatory protest, but even as he said them Jacob’s ass pushed into Pakal’s crotch, and his forearm and head came to rest against the curve of the cave wall. Both men breathed heavily, totally in sync.

“Keep it down,” Pakal whispered. Gods, Jacob’s cock was smooth. Deliciously soft and hard at the same time. “You’re so tense. I’m helping you to loosen up.”

Jacob’s breath hitched. “Someone could come by here any minute.” Yet even as he said it, Jacob’s hard length fucked faster into Pakal’s wet fist. His dick was perfect against Pakal’s skin; it was long and thin, with only a small amount of soft hair at the base. Pakal’s fingers strayed for a moment to roll Jacob’s weighty sac in his hand, and he longed to feel it inside of his mouth.

“Better be fast, then,” Pakal breathed.

Review:

Two things impressed me about AP, the setting and a unique plot twist that I can’t say anything about without giving the whole thing away.

The setting alone is worth reading AP for. A lot of books in a lot of genres have handled mythological themes and elements, like the Percy Jackson books currently burning up the YA magical adventure market. Those books, like most, seem to deal with various Western mythologies. Likewise, I’ve read (or read of) a few that deal with aspects of Chinese or Japanese culture. AP depends on Mesoamerican mythology, and in my opinion it provided a wonderful backdrop against which to tell the story of forbidden love between a mortal man and an immortal spirit guide. In a genre where ‘paranormal’ too often means vampires or werewolves, that Carrington headed in a completely differently direction heralds good things for subsequent publications.

There were a few minor editorial issues, but those aren’t the writer’s fault. This is Carrington’s first m/m publication, and I can tell she’s one to watch for in the future, especially if you like paranormal romances.

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November 15, 2011 | Categories: Book Reviews, Promotion | 2 Comments »

Updates

Since I managed not to sleep much last night, effectively making writing or any other endeavor more complicated than feeding my pie difficult, I thought I’d post a few updates.

My short story, “The Advent Calendar,” will be released by MLR Press on November 27, 2011. By happy coincidence, this is the first Sunday in Advent.

Blurb:

Toby wants children, Derek doesn’t, and this just might end their ten-year relationship. But will a near-brush with death help them set aside their differences to focus on what matters most?

Excerpt:

Toby wanted children more than anything, and it bothered Derek to see the man he’d fallen in love with so down, but it also made him feel defensive, as if he, Derek, were personally responsible for the other man’s unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Whenever the subject came up, Derek felt torn between comforting Toby and rolling his eyes. Lately, it seemed like rolling his eyes won, and didn’t that just make him feel like a prime, Grade-A jerk?

But every time Toby started mooning on about the pitter-patter of little feet, all he could do was wonder just when it was Toby had been infected with the baby rabies. Symptoms included feelings of vague yearning, elevated levels of sentimentality, and otherwise inexplicable trips to Baby Gap.

The real danger of baby rabies, Derek thought darkly as he climbed down the ladder, was its communicability to those closest to the primary victim. The entire subject made him feel like dirt. He loved Toby more than anything. Was what they had not enough? Was he not meeting Toby’s needs? The idea hurt to think about, and made him feel worse than he already did these days.

Later that night, after perfunctory lovemaking, Derek lay awake, Toby snoring softly beside him. The rest of their evening had been pleasant enough, both of them backing away from the subject, an intricate dance of avoidance and unvoiced recriminations, neither saying what he really wanted or meant.

They were together, alone.

Cover:

The Advent Calendar

I’ll be making a round of blog tours in late November and December to promote the story, so look for links and cross postings to come.

On other fronts, Rocking the Boat and Tipping the Balance seem to be selling well, and that’s always nice.

Work continues well on The Answer To His Prayers, my current work in progress. I may re-title it, First Impressions since that’s a closer reflection of the story. Putting it briefly, it’s a gay riff on Pride and Prejudice. Since I seem to be getting a reputation for telling sweet stories with hot sex, hopefully it’ll be more of the same. Once I’ve got the first draft completed, I’ll post an excerpt here and there to tantalize.

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November 15, 2011 | Categories: Gratitude, Promotion, Writing | Leave A Comment »

Come out and play

Today’s National Coming Out Day. Tonight, twenty-one years ago, more than half my life ago, I came out to my mother. The entire experience was paradoxical, something I thought would be a mere formality turned out to be a Very Big Deal, something I’d feared doing for years became one of the best things I ever did.

I knew I was gay long before I came out. I was aware of being different from my peers “in that way” from a very early age. I didn’t have a name for it, at least not at first. Despite not remembering vast stretches of my childhood, I remember quite clearly being in the locker room at the pool at the local university. I attended a small private school at the time and the school went swimming for a field trip. I’d never seen naked adult men before, and oh my God. I didn’t want to leave the locker room. I just wanted to look. Even now, I remember the intensity of the feeling.

Another snap shot: I was maybe 7 or so and at a friend’s house. I guess her mother was one of those wacky free spirits you read about, because when she came back from a vacation with her boyfriend, she brought her children smutty magazines, Playgirl for her daughter and Playboy for her son. The Playgirl centerfold electrified me. Yep, that right there. That’s for me. I kept finding reasons to look at it.

This same friend taught me the word ‘gay.’ It meant boys who like boys, and I thought, “Oh. That’s me then.” Unfortunately, she alsop taught me that it was not a Good Thing to be gay. I don’t remember now exactly how she conveyed that information, just that it wasn’t something you were supposed to be.

Snapshot (because that’s all I have of childhood memories–flashes and images rather than concrete stretches of recollection): Around the same age at my piano lesson. The song I was assigned to learn was called “Let’s Be Gay and Play.” The accompanying illustration was of children playing or some such sentimentalized twaddle. I was terrified. If I played that song, somehow everyone would know my secret. I objected to it strenuously. My music teacher, a big ol’ earth-mother of a hippie, was, I realize now, pretty angry at my objection. I remember her scratching out the title and calling it, “Let’s Be Happy and Spend Money.” It was only a few years ago that I figured out she was actually calling me a shallow bourgeois asshole.

Snapshot: I was maybe 9 and at my dad’s place for the weekend. A friend had come over, and we found a copy of Playboy under my dad’s bed. My friend was all over it, but I remember looking at the centerfold and thinking, “Uh…no.” So there I was, nine years old, knowing I liked boys, knowing that pictures of naked women did nothing for me, and already I had The Fear. It would be another decade before I so much as kissed another guy, but only because I was too afraid and dense to realize that the guy in my church youth group on whom I had a huge crush had one right back at me and was trying in his own fumbling way to ask me out. I sometimes wonder how different things might’ve been had I realized what Mike was up to. I don’t waste a lot of time on “what if,” however.

It was in that decade that I grew more and more afraid of being found out, of disappointing my parents. I grew more and more adept at lying to protect my secret, at flying under the radar, at suppressing emotions and feelings that might betray me. That was the decade of the closet. It was a stifling, deadening place. Sure, I felt safe there, but it was the safety of a prison cell or a tomb, and when it comes down to it, I didn’t even feel that safe there. I was always afraid something would betray me, that I would say or do the wrong thing and everyone would figure me out. The safety of the closet is a mirage, and it takes a tremendous amount of energy and effort to maintain it.

But emotions are funny things, and have a way of expressing themselves whether you want them to or not. I was starving for release and for freedom. The closet led to some pretty flaky behavior. I knew I was gay, but couldn’t tell anyone. In this era before the GSA and the knowledge of the existence of homosexuality by society at large, I felt alone. I hungered for contact, any kind of contact, with other people like myself. I grew up in a college town, and had access to the college paper. There were ads in the back for the gay student group. I remember calling the number just to hear the voice of another gay man, even if I was too afraid to say anything and hung up. Those men and women were gutsy putting their number out back in the ’80s. I’m sure that man thought I was just another homophobic jackass crank calling. I actually know that guy now (hi there, Bill!).

By the time I started college, I knew I had to come out. The realization terrified me. I was a very odd combination of unworldliness (what were those holes in the bathroom stall walls for?) and textbook knowledge. By the end of my sophomore year, the strain had taken its toll. That summer, I felt like I was going to break, reading everything I could about being gay (and there are so truly dire books out there), needing and fearing to deal with this. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I felt like my personality was fragmenting. I knew I couldn’t take much more, and when school started I manned up and went to my first support group for bisexuals, gays, and lesbians. It was freeing and terrifying and it became exactly what I needed in very short order.

I realized that I would only ever be free, truly free, if I stopped letting The Fear rule me and told those I was closest to. I lived at home that year while going to college, which made things easier and harder. I also knew that without a concrete deadline, I’d never tell a soul. Enter National Coming Out Day 1990. I took my mother for a walk in the park near our house to tell her. I figured she already knew. I mean, she had to, right? She was the one who took me to all those musicals and footed the bill for my interest in fashion, after all. It’s not like glitter and rainbows gushed from my mouth when I spoke or anything, but I never displayed any characteristics of straight boys. She just thought I was hygienic, I guess.

Boy was I ever wrong. It’s a good thing I was, too, or who knows how long I might’ve carried on with this nonsense. She was shocked, she was horrified (despite having lesbian friends), basically everything I’d feared all along. She blamed herself. She blamed me. It was a rough time, and given that my teen years under her roof and under her thumb had been pretty rough, this didn’t help. Had I not been financially dependent on my parents, I’ve have walked.

I went to PFLAG meetings with her, but I felt like there was a lot of blaming me for not being as understanding of her drama as I “should” have been. There wasn’t a lot of sympathy for the fact that I had my own emotions to deal with, and that having to bear the brunt of hers was more than just the proverbial straw. It was the whole damn bail of hay. I don’t remember why she didn’t go by herself, but I refused to go back. I’d been blaming myself for this long enough, I didn’t need a bunch of do-gooders blaming me for not going belly up at my mom’s feet so she could pick out my liver at her leisure. Sorry, PFLAG, I’m told you do great work, but I never saw it.

What made the difference was my mom finally spoke to the one the ministers she knew. Fortunately, we belonged to a very liberal Protestant denomination, and gave us both useful information. To me, he said that while I’d had a lifetime to get used to the idea, she hadn’t. I should give her time. Of her, he asked a question, and it was a simple one. Did she like having a son? She affirmed that yes, she did. He then told her that if she played her cards right, she’d eventually have two, once I met someone. If she screwed this up and let her emotions get in the way, she’d have none because she’d have chased me off.

We moved through it. I wish I could say it made everything all sunshine and unicorns in my house, but it didn’t. I still had a very rocky relationship with my mother. Coming out just removed a major barrier and the issues it raised. It also set me free. I was able to be myself, to learn who I really was. I hadn’t been able to do that in the closet because I’d spent so much time protecting my deep, dark secret. It set me free to heal. It set me free to kiss a man for the first time and make dating mistakes and form misalliances with epically unsuitable men. Coming out liberated me to be a real person and not just a pretender in my life so that when I met the man I married, I was capable of forming and maintaining a healthy, loving relationship.

There are other memories, other stories to tell, like how my husband inadvertently outed me to my father, but those will keep for another time. Coming out was one of the best things I ever did for myself, maybe the best thing I ever did for myself. I’m an out and proud gay man, and this is so central to my self-identity I can’t imagine it being any other way.

So if you somehow end up reading this and aren’t out, think about it. It’s worth it. Drop me a line if you want. If you’re out, or aren’t gay, but know someone who’s struggling, pass this on if you think it’d help.

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October 11, 2011 | Categories: Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Jumping up and down on the street corner while buck naked

Huh, it hasn’t been nearly as long as I’d thought since I updated this, just late July. That means I only let one month go entirely without posting. I’m such a bad, boring blogger. I’d promise to do better but we all know that’s a lie.

I had two rounds of edits Tipping the Balance, plus galleys, in August, and that absorbed the lion’s share of my discretionary time. Despite my own proofreading, plus that of my two beta readers, one of whom is a professional editor in her own right, there were more typos and infelicities of style than I considered acceptable. So I read the entire manuscript backwards. I forget where I first happened up on this technique–a tweet from another author? Not sure. But it works very well. If the point of a novel is to create flow and catch the reader up in the story, reading a manuscript backwards deliberately circumvents this. The problem with that flow as a writer of course is that your subconscious fills in blanks and corrects errors without troubling your conscious mind. Reading backward deliberately circumvents this, forcing you to realize just how ugly your writing really is. It’s just very time consuming. I hope Tipping the Balance is the better for it.

Here’s the cover art for it. I can’t say I love it like I love the cover for Rocking the Boat, but then, we always have a special place in our hearts for our first, right?

Still, I’m not complaining. I’ve got my name on the cover of another book. Tomorrow, September 12, is the release date, so get out there and crash Dreamspinner’s servers in your frenzied demand for your very own copy.

E-book.

Paperback.

I’m not sure why this one’s different, but I’m not nearly as anxious about this release. Don’t get me wrong. I love the book and I’m proud of the story I told. I’m just not losing sleep or popping acid blockers and benzodiazepines. Maybe because Tipping the Balance isn’t my first novel. This does not, however, mean I won’t be up early downloading my own e-copy.

Currently I’m working on a gay riff on Pride and Prejudice tentatively titled The Answer to His Prayers. Years ago, before my husband and I adopted The Kid Himself, my life resembled those depicted in Miss Austen’s work insofar as life consisted of a variety of social occasions designed to find people boyfriends/husbands, we all knew each other’s business, and heaven help you if you did something gauche.

I also wrote and sold a short story to MLR Press in August. “The Advent Calendar” is a Christmas story (duh) to be released in December (even more duh). More details will follow.

On a personal front, I seem to be moving back into coaching, at least for a while. The big thing around the boathouse these days is qualifying for a seat in one of the team’s boats in the Head of the Charles in Boston, one of the biggest regattas in North America and the biggest in the US. It can be great fun. But the anxiety of it all was a bit much for me. I get anxious pretty easily. In terms of scores on the erg, I’ve got more power than anyone else on the team save for a man who’s thirteen years younger than I am. In terms of applying it on the water…well, that’s another story.

In thinking about it, I realized I have a very complex relationship with crew. It’s a major part of my life and my self-identity. I will always think of myself as a rower, and currently I’m enjoying time in my single, the one my husband bought me when we could marry legally. I wasn’t enjoying practice in the bigger boats much at all, particularly with the build-up to Head of the Charles, because crew is also one of the major foci of my anxiety issues and perfectionism. So something I enjoy very much also makes me crazier than just about anything else, and yet as an author who spends a great deal of time alone inside his head, I need to get out and see people. I get a little weird if I don’t.

Then it occurred to me there was a way to have it both ways. I told my coach that if I don’t make a boat, I’ll run practices for those who aren’t going to Boston so she can focus the majority of her efforts on the Boston-bound boats. I’ve got coaching experience, in fact I have a USRowing level 1 coaching certificate. Granted, it’s been a while, but it’ll come back. It’s just like falling off a bike, right? This way I can contribute to the Boston effort, even if I’m not supplying horsepower. Look at me being a team player. Who knew.

In and among all that, there’s parenting and being a husband. I don’t talk about those a lot here, and that’ll probably stay that way for while. They deserve their privacy, even if I’m jumping up and down on a street corner, naked as the day I was born, and hooting and hollering, which is basically what social media and writing both are all about. “Look at me! Look at me! Buy my books! Buy my books!”

Seriously. Go buy mine.

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September 11, 2011 | Categories: Anxious little monkey, Promotion, Rowing, Writing | 7 Comments »

First edits for Tipping the Balance

Last Sunday I received the first edits for Tipping the Balance. I don’t want to say I’d forgotten about it, because let’s be real. It’s my second novel and I’m shallow that way. But the email I received when it entered the editorial queue said something about 8-12 weeks, which would’ve put it during my in-laws’ upcoming visit.

I’ve been working on it ever since, essentially dropping both A2HP (My WIP), but also a short story I’m working on in response to a challenge posted on Z. A. Maxfield’s Cyber Cafe a few week backs to make mud sexy. Both are on hold for now, since the edits are due this coming Monday, July 25.

Mostly I’ve let the editor have his/her way. I figure that since Dreamspinner Press bought it, I need to pick my battles carefully. That said, parts of DSP’s house style irritate me no end, but with each manuscript I seem to pick some minor and admittedly ridiculous point about which to take a stand. I should probably grow up a little.

All of this said, I’m trying something different this go around. I forget where I first encountered this idea–DSP’s author’s group? Anyway, I read somewhere that a high effective way to edit a manuscript is to read it backwards. So I started with the last sentence, read it normally, and then moved on to the second-to-last sentence, read it, etc. I’m amazed and appalled at how many typos, dropped words, missed words, and near-miss words (forbidden instead of forbidding, for example), and repeated words and expressions I’ve found. I’m only about 50 pages into it, too. The thing is, I edited the manuscript before sending it to my betas as well as submitting, my two betas edited, and at least one person at DSP has been over it.

This works precisely because it interrupts a key component of a novel’s structure, and that’s the flow of the plot. As a writer, I want people to be caught up in the characters and situations I’ve depicted, and to that end, each sentence should flow into the next. The problem with that as I edit my work is that my brain supplies whatever’s missing or wrong to create a coherent picture. By reading each sentence in isolation, I subvert this and can see the words for what they are.

Unfortunately, it’s very time consuming. I won’t be able to finish before I have to send the edits back. Fortunately, there’ll be another round of edits before I get the galley, or at least there’s supposed to be. I’ll make note of how far I got and start up from there. I’m editing this way from now on, only I’ll do it before I submit, or maybe even before I send it to my betas.

Still no word on when exactly it’ll be published or any proofs for the cover art. I find myself far more patient than I was last time. I know what to expect now. That’s my MO. Early in grad school I’m sure I came across as a needy insecure pest to my professors, but by the time I was writing my dissertation, my advisor actually emailed me to see if I was still alive since she hadn’t heard from me in so long. I was fine, I just didn’t need anything from her and didn’t see the point in bothering her. So it is with writing novels.

So check back from time to time. Who knows, there might be an update.

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July 22, 2011 | Categories: Anxious little monkey, Promotion, Timesucks, Writing | Leave A Comment »

Newsy!

Quick update: Tipping the Balance has entered the editorial queue. Since I just received the contract three weeks ago, I’m surprised how fast this is.

On other fronts, I’m working on the storyboards for my next novel. The working title is The Answer to His Prayers (A2HP), and it’s a gay riff on Pride and Prejudice. I noticed at one point that my life resembled a Jane Austen novel insofar that it consisted of a series of social engagements among the members of a small community, the purpose of which was to find everyone husbands, and we all knew way too much about each other’s mating habits.

You may notice that this has nothing to do with rowing or the world of the CalPac Crew. This is because I’m utterly stymied by the plot for book three. So that’s on hold for the time being. It’ll happen, but not yet. I refuse to write a book just to get it written. I have to have a story to tell and I have to fall in love with my protagonists, the way I did with Nick and Morgan or Brad and Drew, or as I am with Henry and Cameron in A2HP.

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July 3, 2011 | Categories: Promotion, Uncategorized, Writing | Leave A Comment »