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Today over at Joyfully Jay Reviews there is an exclusive excerpt of Cold.
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Taking Risks in Lesbian Fiction
Welcome friend and fellow author, Deanna DiLorenzo, to the blog with this special guest post about writing lesbian fiction.
When I first wrote my novel, Tell Me, I knew it took some risks. There is a certain formula that’s followed in lesbian fiction and it goes something like this:
- Girl meets girl
- Girl struggles briefly with inner turmoil
- Girl two patiently waits
- Life-changing sex scene happens by page 40
- Happily ever after is achieved by page 50
My numbers may be off a little but anyone who has read enough lesbian fiction knows this is the basic formula we’ve come to expect, whether we actively seek it out or not.
But what happens when someone shakes up the formula a little? What happens when characters don’t fall into line and do what’s expected of them? Well, that’s when you end up with a book like Tell Me. [Read more…] about Taking Risks in Lesbian Fiction
Playing Superhero by LGBT Author Hans Hirschi
As a young boy, my brother and I would play super heroes. I’d be the Flash, he’d be Batman. We’d save the world with our combined imaginations. That imagination also helped me write stories from a very young age. I had all but forgotten about it until I recently discovered some old writing from my preteen and teen years.
I also kept diaries. I lost those, however, to a “gay purging” fire after my first coming out at the age of seventeen, a few months before I headed west, to America, as an exchange student. There, encouraged by my English teacher, I took up writing again, a journal filled with teen angst and stories about saving the world, centaurs and other mythical creatures.
In 1991, inspired by hopeless love (he was straight), I wrote poetry and published my first book “Moments.” After that, it would take me nine years before I’d write again, and by that time I had gone nonfiction, publishing a book on e-learning in Swedish and in 2010, a management book, “Common Sense” in English. Oddly, majoring in literature had turned me away from reading and writing fiction, and traveling the globe on business for many years, didn’t help either. [Read more…] about Playing Superhero by LGBT Author Hans Hirschi
National Give OUT Day
Today is National Give OUT day.
This is a national campaign designed to raise awareness and funds for local and national LGBT Organizations. As you know, here around the Shire we raise funds by donating 10% of the proceeds from our books to two organizations that work tirelessly to get homeless LGBT youth off the streets.
Both of these organizations are taking part in today’s event and you can donate to them at the links below. I would like to particularly emphasize that you take note of the Lost-n-Found page. On the right they have a donation list and it tells you exactly what just a few dollars can do and how much it can mean to a homeless kid.
Both organizations work toward the same goal, if you can, please give equally.
GLBT Advocacy & Youth and Lost-n-Found
Interview with Filmmaker Michael Morgenstern
Welcome Michael Morgenstern, Writer and Director of Shabbat Dinner, a short film about gay youth. You can see the film online. It is a pay-what-you-want with 10% of the profits going to the Ali Forney Center which combats LGBT youth homelessness. (See the trailer below.)
Brandon: I really liked your film. Tell us what motivated you to create it.
Michael: Well, I’d been working on a TV pilot for years about growing up gay in Los Angeles at age sixteen. In the nineties, it wasn’t what it’s like now. There wasn’t a world for us–everyone who was out was older. As I worked on it, I was continually re-motivated to work on the script by all the articles in 2011 newspapers about gay teen bullying and suicide. Every time I read one I was powerfully affected to do something to reach these kids.
Brandon: How hard was it to make?
Michael: Every part of making a film, even a short one, is a challenge, and we set out diligently to find actors, locations, and a crew. I looked for theater actors, reasoning it would be easier to find an established and talented actor who was successful on stage and looking to get into film than it would to find an already established film actor. I sat down with my friend Matt, who listened to the character descriptions I gave him and came up with ten actors for each character. Then I looked up all their agents and called them. About sixty to 100 calls later…no joke…we had most of our actors. [Read more…] about Interview with Filmmaker Michael Morgenstern
Interview with LGBT Author Dick O’Connor
Welcome author Dick O’Connnor to the blog.
Brandon: Poking around your social sites I noted that you’re gritty and raw, just like real life. I like that. Tell us a little something about yourself that we won’t find online.
Dick: I am a former model (I got too old and the binge drinking was hell on my abs) and a wannabe socialite. I’m originally from a desert cow town in Southern California and got into the gay club scene when I was eighteen once my best friend spotted my innocence in a club and took me under his wing, boozed me up, and taught me how to detach emotion from sex. Overall I’m a neo-Libertine.
B: Where did Stiff come from and what motivated you to write it?
D: STIFF: Memoirs of a Dick is my attempt to recount the stories to the best of my blacked-out memories in college; unfortunately, alcohol can make things a little hazy. If it didn’t happen the way I remember then it damn well should have.