The Lonely War is out in print and ebook!!!

Just in time for you last-minute Holiday shoppers, I am very pleased and proud to announce my new novel, The Lonely War, has been released by Zumaya Publishing in both print and ebook format.

The key issue keeping the U.S. armed forces from going beyond Don't Ask Don't Tell to give gay servicemen equal rights is a blind fear of love relationships forming, not between enlisted soldiers but between officers and soldiers, which would undermine the chain of command. The Lonely War tackles this topic head on. Set in WWII, it tells the story of an enlisted sailor who falls in love with his executive officer. When the crew of the USS Pilgrim become POWs in Changi, a notoriously brutal prison camp, this sailor is elevated though hardship and love to discover his inner resources and extraordinary courage, allowing him to sacrifice himself to save the life of his beloved.

Like most war novels, The Lonely War envelops all that is unique to war, the horror of battle, overcoming fear, the cruelty of soldiers, the loyalty and camaraderie of men caught in a desperate situation. Yet, it stands alone in two important ways. First, it is a passionate story written about a tender love developing between an officer and an enlisted man, revealing a rare and dignified portrait of a couple struggling to satisfy desire within the confines of the military code of conduct. Even more importantly however, it describes the heart-wrenching measures of how much one man will sacrifice to save the life and reputation of the man he loves.

Please take a few minutes to enjoy the opening chapter of The Lonely War here:
http://tinyurl.com/yhlrrwv

You can find more about and purchase The Lonely War here:
Ebook - http://tinyurl.com/yb3uh3r
Print - http://tinyurl.com/yzqu3fv (Amazon) & http://tinyurl.com/ydrlbg3 (B&N)
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I'm back from the land of no internet

Hi and happy Thanksgiving to everyone back home.

I've been MIA for the past three weeks, two of which Herman and I were traveling through south China, visiting the Chin Family village. It was an awesome experience but we couldn't find internet access. On the few times we did get access, we were blocked from FB, Twitter and our blogs. All we could access was email. Not sure that the Chinese government thinks they can accomplish by that.

I enjoyed every place we visited, about 5 destinations, with the exception of Hong Kong. That city is very western, with all of the problems of a huge, crowded city, but with none of the charm of China. It was also the only place in our China travels where I found the people to be pushy and rude. I love China, but have no interest in returning to Hong Kong.

While on the road I managed to get a lot of reading done, and will be posting reviews of books over the next several days. I did post two reviews so far. The reviews and links are:

1) Aaron's Wait by Dorien Grey http://tinyurl.com/yambtkv

2) Subsurdity by Eric Arvin http://tinyurl.com/ygm3927

Hope you enjoy the review. I'll try to post some pics of the China trip in the next few days.

cheers!

Palm Springs Pride Book Signing

Had a wonderful weekend in Palm Springs. My husband, Herman, and I drove down for the Pride parade and festival in the desert city. The weather was hot, which meant the men were wearing as little as possible. The gays and lesbians had virtually taken over the town, and the place was jumping.

I spent two days sitting at a long table with several other gay authors, all of us signing books while watching the colorful crowd stroll by. I had the opportunity to meet several charming people and even sold a few books.

The signing was organized by Rick, the owner of The Q Trading Co., the local gay bookstore in Palm Springs. Rick was utterly delightful, as were all the other authors. Most of the authors were local men, but one, Kage Alan, flew in from Detroit.

Kage and I have the same publisher and he and I have exchanged many emails over the past year, but this was our first face to face. Kage writes gay comedy, and true to form, he had me laughing all day on Saturday. We sat together and talked up a storm. It was too much fun. In fact, the next day we had to sit apart so that we paid more attention to selling books rather than having a good time.

On Sunday I sat next to Aiden Shaw, a porn star turned writer. He was outselling everyone else put together and had a line of people waiting. He not only signed books, I watched him sign a woman’s breast, and also an adoring fan’s butt. At one point he told me that he wasn’t much of a writer, but he had a big dick, so that made him popular with the older gay crowd.

I also got a chance to talk with Patricia Nell Warren, author of The Front Runner, who approached me to see how my book was selling. She is a grandmotherly sweetheart who you would expect to be handing out cookies to the children. I asked her if she would consider doing an interview for my Examiner.com LGBT Literature column, and she instantly agreed without batting an eye. So be sure to look for that in the coming weeks.

All in all, the PS Pride is an event I hope to return to year after year.

Book Review: The Golden Age of Gay Fiction Edited by Drewey Wayne Gunn

I recently had the huge pleasure of reading the book, The Golden Age of Gay Fiction Edited by Drewey Wayne Gunn. It's a compilation of 22 essays written by 19 different writers, recounting the early days of gay literature, from as early as the 1940s to the beginning of the AIDS crises in the 1980s.

I enjoyed these informative essays and feel that anyone who is interested in gay literature will enjoy them as well.

You can read my review at: http://tinyurl.com/yecldf8

Enjoy

Interview: Thomas Glave, author of The Torturer’s Wife

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege to read and review a collection of short stories by noted author, Thomas Glave, called The Torturer’s Wife. I was so enthralled by the depth and poetry of these remarkable, dark, stories that I tracked down the author and asked him to do an interview with me. He graciously agreed. You can read the entire interview by this truly remarkable writer at: http://tinyurl.com/ylfq4uj

Enjoy

I'm MIA While Proofing My Galley

If you've been check my blog the last week you will have noticed a decided lack of activity. I've been MIA. That's because I finally received the galley for my second novel, The Lonely War, and it's my job to crawl through it and proof-edit it one last time before it goes to publication.

That's what I've been doing -- reading, very carefully, my novel. Hopefully, I will be done tomorrow, and that means that the book could show up on Amazon within the next two weeks, depending on how long my publisher takes to incorporate the edits.

So this holiday season, I'm given everyone a chance to give a gift that has never been given to anyone before, a great read called, The Lonely War. This is a complicated love story that is set within a WWII Japanese POW camp. The POW camp was real, as were many of the situations that occur in the novel. Can't wait to have people read this one.