author interview

HoT Blog Tour Day 2

November 15, 2013 By Brandon Leave a Comment

Welcome to the blog tour for Heart of Timber, Book 2 of the Cold gay romance series!

It’s Release Day!

Today we’re celebrating over at Jesse Wave with an exclusive and in-depth interview of me, Brandon Shire. I know, crazy right? Most of my readers already know how much I deplore interviews, but Wave got gritty with her questions and asked what you wanted to know most.

If you want to hear about the behind-the-scenes of the Cold Series, what’s coming up in the future, or what has motivated me with my previous books, then this is definitely the interview for you.

Read the review of HoT on Wave!

Heart of Timber is now available from all online retailers.

Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, Kobo, or ARe

Talking Southern Gothic Fiction with Michael Russell

October 18, 2013 By Brandon Leave a Comment

When it comes to the genre of Southern Gothic, readers think of Falkner, O’Connor, and Williams. But Southern Gothic fiction has come a long way since the dawn of Modernism. New List Salon Press wanted to bring the genre and the readers out of the past and into the future. Southern Gothic: New Tales of the South features over a dozen fresh stories by established and up-and-coming authors (gay and straight) who turn the genre on its head. Here’s an interview with one such author, Michael Russell. His frank portrayal of homosexuality and religion in the south will not only remind you of why Southern Gothic fiction is so revered, but also why true love conquers all.

photo credit - S.A.F.K. Photography — photo credit – S.A.F.K. Photography

Michael, your story “Long Finger from the Sky” focuses on “forbidden love.” Can you discuss how that fits into the Southern Gothic genre, and how, as a gay writer, that theme is important, or prevalent to you?

It’s a standard theme in the genre. It probably shows up in every Tennessee Williams play. Being gay, our love is automatically forbidden, and if you look through literary history, forbidden love is a compelling theme regardless of sexual orientation. My novel First Floor on Fire has a subplot in which one character is in love with his older brother, which is about as taboo as you can get. Southern Gothic stories are full of the human heart divided against itself. I sometimes think of the genre as being about people messing up their lives in ways we can understand.

You grew up in Arkansas, which is also the setting of your story. How does this reflect your experience of being gay and southern?

Unfortunately, I never made love in a cave during a tornado, but the story does [Read more…] about Talking Southern Gothic Fiction with Michael Russell

Situational crossdressing and the LGBTQ audience

September 20, 2013 By Brandon Leave a Comment

Welcome author Shira Glassman as she discusses situational crossdressing by cisgender heterosexual characters, as viewed critically by an LGBTQ+ audience.

rivka and sword-isolated — credit: Rachel Matz and Jane Dominguez

I’m bisexual; I lean gay. Whenever there was ever any hint of same-sex romance in the fiction I was exposed to while growing up, I eagerly fixated upon it. Books, movies, live theater–I vividly remember the moment in high school when I was so inspired by the idea that one could think about Holmes and Watson as a couple that I stayed up all night writing songs about them. (And this was way before the internet made slash easily accessible to young people!)

However, sometimes heterosexual fiction likes to play with us, and evoke us to titillate without ever actually giving us representation. Specifically, I’d like to address the trope of situational crossdressing.

By situational crossdressing, I mean the plot device in which a cisgender, heterosexual character is crossdressing not for the sake of their own gender expression or even for fun, but because of something like “if I dress as a man, I will be able to find employment in a traditionally male field” (which is probably the most common.) Examples of this trope are Mulan from Disney (and Chinese legend), Eowyn from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Yentl from Singer’s Yentl the Yeshiva Boy. Cisgender heterosexual women can also crossdress for other non-gender-expressive reasons, as does Leonore in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. Her disguise gets her a job in the prison where her husband is being unjustly held for political reasons, and she winds up saving his life. [Read more…] about Situational crossdressing and the LGBTQ audience

Body Shapes and Stereotypes

August 23, 2013 By Brandon 1 Comment

Welcome author Richard Pearson with an excellent post about our detrimental habit of stereotyping the bodies of gay men. ~ B.

So when you hear these words: “You should meet my friend Richard, he’s in his early 30s, an attorney, an actor, and an author, oh, and he’s gay,” what mental image do you have?

Something like this?

What if I told you he actually looked like this?

Not what you were expecting? Why is that?

For the record, the first one is Djordje Bogdanovic, a runway model, the second one, is me. Yet when I am described to people, they usually expect the model and not the adorable guy in the vest, and a big reason why is that I don’t look like a typical gay man. [Read more…] about Body Shapes and Stereotypes

Fandom in LGBT Literature

July 19, 2013 By Brandon 2 Comments

I’ve never been able to understand fandom. To me it seems like a lot of valuing another person over yourself – almost idolizing them to the point of your own detriment. So I asked J.C. Lillis to come by and talk to us about her book How To Repair A Mechanical Heart since the plot revolves around fandom.

Brandon: Thanks for coming by J.C. Can you explain your perspective on fandom? After reading several of your other interviews I think it differs considerably from mine.

J.C.: Absolutely. I’ve been involved in fandoms since I was a teenager—sometimes as a lurker, sometimes as an active participant—and for me it’s never been about hero worship or an impulse to erase myself and become someone else. I mean, I tend to love antiheroes and villains, characters whose flaws are impossible to ignore and dangerous to emulate. I don’t think I could ever love a character or a fictional relationship that I put up on a pedestal. [Read more…] about Fandom in LGBT Literature

The First Cut Is the Deepest: My favorite story?

June 14, 2013 By Brandon 1 Comment

Welcome to the blog my friend and fellow author, Jack A. Urquhart. After a little pleading Jack agreed to come by and talk to us about his favorite book, and I’m glad he did.

Asking a writer to identify a favorite story from their “literary” portfolio is to my mind akin to asking a parent to name their favorite child—which is why, I expect, so many authors respond by saying: “It’s whatever I’m working on.” I confess that when Brandon Shire suggested I pen a guest post to answer that query, my initial response was the same. However, a perusal of personal archives dating back decades pointed toward a different conclusion. From that enterprise I learned that I had revised one story more often than any other—some twenty-three times, in fact, over the years following its initial 1992 publication. The story is Irises, Purple Irises. [Read more…] about The First Cut Is the Deepest: My favorite story?