Smack Dab open mic

Smack Dab open mic hosted by Larry-bob Roberts and Kirk Read

March 2012 feature: Remembering Sean O'Driscoll

Wednesday, March 21, 8pm, open mic signup starts at 7:30 At Magnet, your neighborhood queer health center, 4122 18th Street between Castro and Collingwood in the heart of San Francisco.
http://www.magnetsf.org

Smack Dab is all ages, all genders, all the time.

Sean O'Driscoll, one of our most frequent readers at Smack Dab, was found dead in his home after a fall on February 25, 2012. He was 67.

Sean grew up in Madison, South Dakota and had a degree in music from Mount Marty College in Yankton, South Dakota and then went to college in New York. He taught school in Buffalo, NY and Kitchener, Ontario before moving to San Francisco. Sean had studied writing as part of George Birimisa's writing workshops as well as studying drawing.

Sean attended almost every installment of Smack Dab at Magnet, with the exception of some times in the past year or so when health concerns made that impossible. His original stories touched the heart with his frequent technique of taking a new vantage on contemporary events and culture. He also guest-co-hosted at one point when Kirk Read was out of town.

He will be dearly missed by the community of attendees of Smack Dab. To honor his memory, we will be featuring Sean's writing at the March 21 Smack Dab. His writing will be read by friends, and we will have an opportunity to share and reminisce about Sean's life.

If you'd like to perform at the open mic, please bring five minutes of whatever you want to share. Musicians, one song. Prose writers: that's about two and a half double spaced pages of prose. We’re the friendliest open mic you’ll find but we pay attention to time so that nobody accumulates further open mic-related PTSD.

Presented by Army of Lovers, a project of the Queer Cultural Center with support from the San Francisco Arts Commission, Zellerbach Family Foundation, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Horizons Foundation, TheatreBayArea and the California Arts Council.

New Review Policy

To the writers who have sent me books to review, the writers who are thinking of sending me books, and to the readers who enjoy my reviews, I’d like to fill you in on a few changes that I believe will be ongoing.

To give you some background, I should explain how I used to work. I normally write from 7am to noon. After lunch and spending a few hours with my husband, I read lgbtq-themed novels for two to three hours, spend a few hours writing blogs, socializing on FB and Twitter, and generally promoting my books. At night before sleep, I normally read another twenty pages. That schedule has allowed me to read/review three to four books per month. (Yes, I read at a glacial pace.)

But that was last year’s routine, and this year I seem to have developed a new schedule. You see, I’ve recently moved to a new city, and I’m finding that my husband and I now have an active social life. We have a host of new friends and old that we are spending time playing tennis, hiking, biking, dining, and bee-bopping round town. That’s great for us, but it cuts my reading time by half or more.

The other issue that is effecting my review output is how many non-lgbtq-themed books I read. For the last two years the books I’ve read have almost exclusively been lgbtq books that I review. But I’m now feeling the need to inject more non-lgbt books into my reading. I’m thinking every other book with be non-lgbt.

Bottom line: I expect my output this year to be under twenty books, rather than the forty to fifty of previous years. If you have sent me a book, please be patient. I will get to it.

New Cover for The Lonely War

It's offical, The Lonely War as a new cover for publication under a new publisher, Dreamspinner Press. I'm thrilled to finally be with a publisher who give me lots of input into the cover design. Thank you Dreamspinner.

Bushido

In an effort to create characters for my next novel, I’m reading a book on Bushido, the Japanese code of chivalry. The book is: Bushido: The Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitode. It’s a fascinating read, going into great detail about such topics of courage, benevolence, politeness, sincerity, honor, loyalty and self-control. It was the code of conduct adopted by the samurai in feudal Japan, and still influences Japanese society today.

I’m not planning to make my characters Japanese, yet I want my protagonist to live by a rigid moral code of honor. This book has helped me greatly to determine exactly which attributes to give my lead characters, and why they are so important.

I found it interesting that the author notes, “What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of the nation, but its root as well. All the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their example.”

This is exactly the sort of thing I’m looking to do—have my protagonist lead by example, and in so doing, make the people around him want to be more moral themselves. I did this in my novel, The Lonely War, which was a study in what happens when one sets such a high standard that they can’t live it. I’m looking to work more with that same theme.

Anyway, just rambling about something interesting I’ve read. I highly recommend this book on Bushido to other writers. It has helped me immensely.

Book Review: The Peripheral Son by Dorien Grey

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Zumaya Publications
Pages: 235

Victor Koseva is a loner, has few friends, is the black sheep of a dysfunctional family who has nothing to do with him, and he is gay. While working as an investigative reporter, covering a story concerning doping within a professional boxing syndicate, he disappears without a trace.

Victor’s sister-in-law hires Dick Hardesty to investigate. Hardesty piles up more questions than clues until Victor’s body is found at the bottom of a ravine near a popular gay cruising area. All signs point to an accident, and the case looks closed, but Hardesty has other ideas. He keeps following a trail of clues that bring him up close and personal with a handsome gay middleweight boxer with eyes on the championship, Victor’s kleptomaniacal ex-boyfriend, and a host of suspicious and unsavory characters who were at the right place at the wrong time. Was it murder or an accident?

As will all of Dorien Grey’s mysteries, the author gives the reader plenty of opportunity to know Hardesty’s family: partner, Jonathan, and son, Joshua. And the reader gets a feel for the rich and loving life they share, which is a nice contrast from the gritty dealings of a murder case. Although it did seem to me that Dick and Jonathan’s relationship was not as intimate as in previous novels. Could the stress of raising a child be draining the romance out of their relationship?

This mystery is not the most exciting read on the shelf. As with all Dorien’s stories, he doesn’t use explicit sex, or gunplay, or bombs blowing up baby carriages in order to titillate the reader. And because he places his stories in the ‘80s, he doesn’t use familiar computer or iPhone apps to help him solve the cases. He uses solid storytelling to guide his readers to a logical conclusion. It is a puzzle that must be muddled over, worried like a dog with a bone.

Mystery purists will no doubt enjoy this 14th book in the Dick Hardesty series. But Grey’s writing style will allow all readers to enjoy this novel. I can recommend this to all readers who enjoy well-developed characters and an intricate plot.

A New Cover for The Lonely War

Very soon, Dreamspinner Press will publish the second edition of my novel, The Lonely War. I am thrilled to have switched publishers for these story, because it will present the book to a new segment of readers. It is my favorite of all the stories I've published.

Yesterday, Dreamspinner sent me several possible covers to choose from. If you have a preference, leave a comment and let me know.

Writing Tip # 33 – Get Your Facts Right

With fiction, you want to absorb the reader into the dream, which is the setting, characters, and plot of your story. You never want them to pull out of that dream, and nothing will pull them out faster than reading something that they know is not true. It not only pulls them out of the story, but it undermines their trust that the author knows what the hell they are doing.

I started reading a novel the other night, and twenty pages into the story the protagonist flies to Bangkok, Thailand, a destination I’ve been many, many times over the past dozen years. I got excited because I love Thailand, and wanted to read this author’s interpretation of that setting.

The author described the protagonist muddling through customs, and then going outside and being smacked in the face with a wall of humid heat. I chuckled because that is so true any time of year.

Then the author described the protagonist seeing a line of tuk tuks waiting at the curb to take passengers into the city. I pulled out of the story and said, “No way!” There are hoards of tuk tuks in Bangkok, but one never, never, sees them at Suvarnabhumi airport, only taxis. That’s because it is a forty-five minute drive on an elevated highway into Bangkok, and tuk tuks never go on the highways, only surface streets. I shook my head, knowing this author had never flown into Suvarnabhumi airport.

Still, I continued reading. The author described the protagonist being taken to a hotel in Silom, the gay district. Then he described the tuk tuk driver pulling the protagonist’s suitcase out of the luggage compartment behind the passenger seat. “NO WAY!” I said again. Tuk tuks don’t have a luggage compartment, or a trunk, or anything other than a bench that customers sit on. The only thing behind the passenager seat is a license plate.

At that point I knew two things: 1. This author had never been anywhere near Thailand, and 2. The author didn’t take the time to do his/her homework.

So twenty-five pages into a three hundred page story, I threw the book in the trash, where it belonged. If the author couldn’t be bothered to do research, I couldn’t be bothered to read their novel. I was not about to get pulled out of the story every other page with more untruths.

So, take the time to research. Always know more than your reader does.