LGBT

Deaf, Gay, and Left Homeless By His Parents

June 13, 2013 By Brandon Leave a Comment

From the Hotline for Homeless LGBT Youth:

We hear a lot of youths’ stories on the HOTLINE and most would simply wretch your heart. This cry for help started out that way, but quickly turned to a positive.

We got a call from a gentleman that had run into a young man that he thought we could help. We asked that he give the youth our number and to have him contact us so that we could verify his story.

The youth could not call but could text because he is deaf. His mother had him declared mentally unstable and got him onto disability, so she could control the money. [Read more…] about Deaf, Gay, and Left Homeless By His Parents

Cold Virtual Book Tour – Day 4

May 23, 2013 By Brandon Leave a Comment

Day 4 of the Cold Book Tour and we’re over at the Purple Rose Tea House getting a little serious with a talk about incarcerated LGBT youth. Did you know LGBT youth have a pipeline right into the prison system built especially for them? Cold is a fictional story about two men in prison, but the reality, which you’ll see in this post is much, much different for lgbt youth. (Trigger Warning)

Purple Rose Tea House

Cold Blog Hop Starts Today

May 20, 2013 By Brandon Leave a Comment

To celebrate the release of Cold we have a blog hop going on this week that’s a little different from your average online book tour. I have carefully selected our tours stops and worked with each blog owner to give you more character information, more back story, and a chance to win a FREE copy of Cold on every blog. Some of the posts may raise more questions. Some of the posts will give you hints about what’s coming next. And, for those of you who have already fallen for Lem… Well, you definitely won’t want to miss this event.

I’ll be blogging every day during this book tour so you don’t miss a single post, or a chance to win.

Online Book Tour Schedule:

(Links will become active as the posts go live.)

May 21^st – Smoocher’s Voice – Author Interview (Giveaway)

May 22^nd – LeAnn’s Reviews – In-depth Back-story Questions (Giveaway)

May 23^rd – Purple Rose Tea House – LGBT Youth in Prison (tie-in post)

May 24^th – Attention Is Arbitrary – Character Interview w/ Lem (Giveaway)

As a special bonus, you can find an interview with me today over at

The Novel Approach.

Hop Against Homophobia

May 17, 2013 By Brandon 28 Comments

International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia

Welcome, today is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, and to celebrate hundreds of authors, publishers, and individuals have an extraordinary blog hop going on. There are prizes, information, and many personal stories about what homophobia is and what it does. All of this is a concerted effort to bring awareness to the plague of homophobia and hopefully, to one day bring it to an end. You will find links at the bottom of this post to direct you to other posts from blogs around the world. Enjoy, and help us spread the word. Don’t forget to leave a comment for a chance to win an e-book copy of my JUST released new gay romance novel, Cold.

The Hidden Aspect of Homophobia – A Personal Experience

I remember a young man I was dating from a conservative Christian family who lived in a small town in Alabama. Both his mother and sister knew he was gay. They loved him dearly but… [Read more…] about Hop Against Homophobia

Taking Risks in Lesbian Fiction

May 13, 2013 By Brandon 4 Comments

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

May 10, 2013 By Brandon Leave a Comment

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