Author of Contemporary Gay Romance
It’s about love, and music, and grief.
It’s about a miscarriage and how a man is expected to stuff his anguish inside, as if he was never a part of the process, nor mourned for the loss.
It’s about marriage and society and how we fall into the roles we are assigned by each.
It’s about two men and a woman, and what it means to be human.
cover design: Aeternum Designs
Stay Positive from Robert-Carnilius on Vimeo.
OFFICIAL SELECTION:
Provincetown International Film Festival
Frameline International LGBT Film Festival
The Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
Fresno Reel Pride Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
Reeling Chicago LBGT International Film Festival
Cinema Mostra AIDS|Sao Paulor, Brazil
Mezipatra Queer Film Festival|Czech Republic
Torino Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
Melbourne Queer Film Festival
Readers nominated Me and Mine by Sarah Goodwin for a 2014 LGBT Book Gem. I asked her to stop by and give us some background on the story. ~B.
I wrote the first version of Me and Mine while I was in my second year of university, doing my Creative Writing degree. At the time I was only just starting to receive treatment for depression, and because I wasn’t able to focus on assignments, I began to write a lot of fanfiction. I’ve always read fanfiction, since I was about thirteen, but I’d never really written any before. This was the first time I’d read slash fiction, and writing it threw me in at the deep end.
Once the fanfiction version of Me and Mine had accumulated and I’d finished it, someone, just one person, messaged me and said that it should be a novel. I think it was just a throwaway comment, but as I’d been writing ‘novels’ since I was a teenager, I thought it would be a good project to keep me busy. So in the summer break I converted the original text into a more novel-like format, and changed the names. I also ended up adding about 40k to what I’d already written. [Read more…] about Being Gay Didn’t Mean I Was Wrong
More than a few readers nominated Jameson Currier’s The Wolf at the Door for a 2014 LGBT Book Gem. I asked him to give us readers a little of the story behind the novel.
The Wolf at the Door, my novel set in a haunted gay-owned guesthouse in the French Quarter of New Orleans, was begun in 2003, after several visits to New Orleans, including participating in the annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival and taking innumerable walking tours throughout the French Quarter, Garden District, and local cemeteries. At the time I started writing the novel I was also writing several ghost short stories, all with gay characters, gay situations or gay themes. I read more than 1,000 ghost stories to understand the craft, technique, and style of literary ghost stories and to sharpen the themes I wanted to present in my own. What I liked about New Orleans was its rich sense of history in its everyday life. I finished my final draft of the novel on Sunday, August 28, 2005, the evening before Hurricane Katrina landed ashore in Louisiana. It was apparent to me in the ensuing days that this would be a manuscript that I would have to put aside because of the unfolding tragedy and aftermath of the hurricane. I continued to work on other ghost stories set in difference locales and these stories were collected as The Haunted Heart and Other Tales. By 2010, when I launched Chelsea Station Editions, a small press devoted to gay literature, New Orleans was back on its feet and I decided the first book the new press would publish would be The Wolf at the Door. [Read more…] about The Wolf at the Door
Hi, and welcome to the Saugatuck Summer blog tour! First of all, I want to thank Brandon for hosting me again. One of my best memories of RainbowCon last month was the few minutes we got to talk when he extended the invitation. It’s been a while since I’ve appeared on his blog and I’m so happy to be back!
For those of you who have seen me talking about it on social media for the last nearly year and a half, you know that Saugatuck Summer was a labor of love far beyond what I would normally claim for one of my books. Of course I love them all, but Saugatuck Summer came from my very soul. Actually, I’m not certain it came from me at all.
Basically, here’s what happened: One day I was driving along, running errands, and Topher Carlisle whispered one line of dialogue in my ear. Just one. When I asked him what I was supposed to do with that, he promptly took over my brain for fifteen absolutely insane days and at the end I had the first draft of Saugatuck Summer.
Topher’s story of recovery, hope, making mistakes, and growing up just told itself, and the experience of being the conduit for that was at times grueling and heartbreaking, but also euphoric and wonderful. It was one of those experiences that, as a creator of some form of art, be it musical, visual, or literary, you have once or twice in a lifetime if you’re extraordinarily lucky, when you know you’re creating something magical. I’m not sure it will ever happen to me again, but I feel absolutely blessed that this book has come of it. [Read more…] about Saugatuck Summer
It is my pleasure to inform you that Listening to Dust has been nominated for a 2014 eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook Awards – Best Novella.
As many of my readers know, Dust also won a Rainbow Award for Best Gay Contemporary Fiction in 2012, and it continues to be the book I receive the most email about.
It is not an easy story. It was never meant it be. It is about love and loss. As one reviewer wrote: This ain’t Brokeback Mountain. It will rip your fu*&ing heart out without apology. I think that sums it up pretty well.
I have also made Martin Davies ‘short list’ of writers who make “gay literature and literature with homoerotic themes great.” What a honor to be listed among these writers. I urge you to check out the post and the books listed there. I assure you that you won’t be disappointed.