Author of Contemporary Gay Romance
I’m over on Shira Anthony’s blog talking about The Power of Music and how it relates to my new novel, Summer Symphony.
We all have a story about a particular piece of music, or a memory which is triggered when we hear that song. Stop by and share your thoughts.
Summer Symphony is available for pre-order from Amazon, iTunes and Smashwords.
According to people smarter than me, there are five stages of writing. Actually, I think there are eight, but that’s just me.
The muse whispers in your ear… “I have an idea!”
And the muse is suddenly on vacation…
I can finally happily say that the ARCs are going out and Summer Symphony is available for pre-order from Amazon, iTunes and Smashwords. (Other sites are coming soon.)
Readers are already asking me to describe this book beyond the blurb. That’s hard. It’s a very different story and doesn’t really fall into any specific genre.
In short, a bisexual father grieves over the loss of his daughter to stillbirth and cannot find a way out of the grief until…
It’s an lgbt romance, and a story about a father’s love, and explores how society treats male grief. Oh, and music, and Europe, and orchestral politics… See what I mean?
Like I said, different. But having to explain all that it encompasses within just a few sentences leaves so much unsaid.
I guess I’m going to leave it to you now. Hope you enjoy it.
~B.
Welcome Rainbow Award Winner Lewis DeSimone to the blog. I’ve been wanting to get him here since 2012, but our schedules have conflicted. He’s here today to give us a little of the story behind his novel, The Heart’s History.
Writing is a lot like love: it’s all about your degree of commitment.
For me, poems are basically one-night stands—capturing a moment in time. Short stories, requiring a longer gestation period, are more like boyfriends. But a novel is a husband. A novel is a ball-and-chain. A novel takes years off your life.
And as with a man, sometimes you fall in love with your book at first sight.
That’s what happened with The Heart’s History. It was the late 80s, and I was fresh out of the closet. I was working at a publishing company, and one of my colleagues was a gay man in his thirties. I didn’t know him well. I wasn’t even sure he was gay until I learned he had a lover, and that his lover had died of AIDS. Several of us from the office went to the memorial service. It was the first time I’d ever attended a service for someone who wasn’t a relative, let alone someone I’d never met. [Read more…] about The Old Ball and Chain
There’s a stigma in many cultures about how men are supposed to grieve. This stigma is no more conspicuous than when it comes to a father’s grief over a child lost to miscarriage or stillbirth.
Common sentiments concerning male grief are age-old and deeply ingrained across many societies: Public tears are not condoned, and if they are permitted, it is only in the quietest moments of solitude, and then, only in the short-term. Grief should not interfere with work, with family, with supporting the spouse in her grief. Public displays of grief are unmanly.
Too often these outdated sentiments are based on the assumption that a father’s grief cannot be compared to the mother’s. The emotional attachment created through pregnancy with a mother and her child cannot be disputed. There is a physical bond which occurs prior to a child entering the world and only a mother can know what that feels like. [Read more…] about A Father’s Grief
Welcome Todd Young to the blog with an excerpt from his latest, Naked.
Todd Young’s first book, Corrupted, was released in 2010. Since then he has published five other titles, most recently, Angel, a companion to the “beautifully psychotic” Subject 19. His work sits on the borderline between gay erotica and m/m romance.
Essentially, I’m writing erotica, but I want it to be as engaging as any other type of fiction. I don’t see any reason why a book should lack in terms of storyline, characters, theme or any other aspect merely because it contains sex, as though this in itself were some reason to deem the book unworthy.
While my stories are sexual fantasies, rich in absurdism, I work hard to imbue them with a deeper meaning and a quality of unexpectedness. I’d like the reader to close the book with the sense of having read something worthwhile.
Naked, my shortest book, is my current favorite. I’m pleased with it’s complexity and the way the plot is revealed. As one reviewer put it, it’s “creepy and deeply unsettling.
In this scene, Leigh has broken into a strange house.
The staircase creaked. Leigh slid along the drywall, his head turned toward the light spilling onto the staircase from the window on the landing. As he neared the second floor he squatted, and then climbed a little further, spread-eagled on his hands and feet.
He lifted his head and peered through the banisters.
No one — on this side of the hall at least. The staircase rising above his head blocked anything that might be lurking at the foot of it.
But the music sounded as though it was coming from the attic. Definitely from the attic, Leigh decided, as he stepped onto the landing and stood with his back against the window. [Read more…] about It’s Erotica, so it’s … Badly Written?
