Author of Contemporary Gay Romance
As many of you know I help raise awareness and funds for two LGBT charities. 10% of the proceeds from the sales of my books go to them. Lost n Found, one of the charities, posted a video about what they find during outreach to homeless LGBT Youth.
This is how 500,000 homeless gay kids live on the street every single day. You can help by donating to either of the groups below, or by finding a local lgbt charity in your area that does the same type of outreach.
GLBTAYS
Because of the tremendous response to Afflicted we are hoping to get Afflicted II to you by December of 2012.
The book was a work in progress before the release of Afflicted and, depending on circumstances outside of our control, our goal is to get the next installment of the relationship between Hunter and Dillon to you for the holiday season. (They are celebrating together too!)
You can leave your comments here about what you would like to see happen, or ask questions about their relationship, OR you can join the discussion on Goodreads as their story develops.
Lastly, I would like to thank each of you for your support, your comments, and the generosity you have shown towards the two nonprofit organizations I aid.
I want to welcome Lanice London to the blog today. Watch for her name, it is fast growing in the hip-hop music scene and, from what I’ve seen (and heard) she’s not taking any prisoners.
I know, most of you are looking at this on my blog and say Whaaat? I don’t listen to that! Grow up, please. Music is a cultural revolution more than any other form of art and the one last bastions of homophobia in music is hip-hop. (Though this is rapidly changing.) The simple fact is that LGBTQ kids aren’t listening to Evita anymore people; they’re looking for music that represents how they feel right now, in this time period, and reflects what they are going through on a day-to-day basis. Hip-hop does that, poetically, sometimes harshly; but always with an understanding that the artist has lived the rhymes and can express a shared reality in their beats. That is why it is such a popular music genre.
B: Lanice, you’re from Philly, that’s a hard city. How has that influenced your music, particularly as a lesbian woman? [Read more…] about LGBT Hip Hop Artist Lanice London
I’m talking with Don Brown today, past President of Blind LGBT Pride International an organization geared specifically toward helping blind LGBT connect, communicate, and dispel myths about gay blind people around the world. Don was also my point man when I had questions while writing Afflicted and provided valuable insight and criticism about the development of the manuscript.
B: Welcome Don. First, thanks so much for stopping by, and thank you very much for your input on Afflicted. Do you think the book accurately reflects some of the issues that are faced by blind LGBT people when dealing with the sighted LGBT community?
D.B. Brandon, thank you very much for inviting me. It was an awesome experience to be part of the manuscript development process for Afflicted and I appreciate this opportunity to get the word out about Blind LGBT Pride International and issues facing people who are vision impaired and LGBT. [Read more…] about Interview with Don Brown from Blind LGBT Pride International
There are quite a few days when I wake up and wonder what the hell I’m doing putting my books out. I have no inspiration to be an “author,” for me it’s just scribbling words on paper and crafting a story that reflects on some of the harshness, and the beauty, of life.
And then there are days when you wake up, open your email, and find that your expectations of humanity are, once again, reaffirmed because of the generosity of strangers. This morning was one of those mornings and here’s why:
Fans started a Goodreads Fan Group about my books.
Afflicted jumped up to #18 on the Amazon Gay & Lesbian Romance Bestsellers list
Someone from my new Fan Group made a donation on my behalf to one of the charities I work with.
I want to thank all those anonymous people out there who are reading the books, and I especially want to thank the person(s) that took the time, and the money from their pocket, to make a difference. Your actions have moved me greatly.
GLBTAYS is one of the organizations that I help raise funds and awareness for. We need your vote to help them secure a grant from Chase Bank. This is one of the only organizations in the Northern Alabama area serving LGBT youth and is right smack in the middle of hostile central as far as anything LGBT goes.
All it takes is one click to change the lives of many LGBT Youth. Vote by Sept 19th.
See the video message from founder James L Robinson below.
It’s always been my practice to have music playing while I write, but then again, there is always music playing in my home so that shouldn’t seem odd. For me, the written word, like a musical score, has a certain syncopation to it, a vibratory tone that underscores what you read as you read it.
Often my writing is described as lyrical, and this is something I (unknowingly) have striven for over the years as I put words down. The writing always had to not only sound right, but feel right too, and that feeling wasn’t just from word choice but from sentence & paragraph structure which lent itself to a vibratory undertone. [Read more…] about Music in the Writing Process
Today I’m talking with author, musician and NYC marathon runner David-Paul Erhart. Mr. Erhart taught at the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, authored Sound & Symbol (The Rudiments of Music Complete in Two Volumes), and ran in and completed three NYC marathons. His latest project is InnerBouquet, a website devoted to celebrating the lives and accomplishments of LGBT artists, activists and athletes.
B: I read from a piece you had written in 2007 that in a meeting about finding out who your biological parents were, you saw your adoptive mother show a burst of emotion and it made you change how perceive people. Is that reflected in what you’re trying to do now with InnerBouquet? [Read more…] about Interview with Author David-Paul Erhart
4.5 Star Book Review“I have to congratulate the author for such beautiful writing. Every emotion – lust, loneliness, anger, insecurity- was so magnificently written that I felt each and every one of them. Especially Hunter’s. The author managed to describe these in a way that really let me relate to him. The sex scenes described from Hunter’s POV were splendid. At first, I had to really pay attention since it was so very different from what you read everyday with a sighted MC. The author described every single detail using the other senses – how it felt, smelled, tasted and sounded…” Read the whole review at LeAnn’s Book Reviews
Consider this.
My book, Afflicted came out in September. It is an HEA M/M novel that deals with a blind man and male prostitute who was thrown from the house as a young boy because he was gay. When I passed it on to my beta readers they loved the story, its eroticism, and its passion, but some of the comments I got back dismayed me:
Gay kid thrown from the house and becomes a hustler is a bit passe.
500,000 homeless gay kids on the street right now, more than a few of them selling their bodies for $10 for a warm bed (for one night) and the concept is passe? Is this where we have come to? That we can scream about a chicken sandwich but step over a 15 yr old kid whose parents didn’t think him worthy of being called human? What does that say about how homophobia has really affected us when we can, as a community, accept homeless kids as normal or passe? Even in a fictional story the idea insults my heart. [Read more…] about Assumption and prejudice – from beta readers