A Passage To Now

Book Review: Gordan The Giraffe by Bruce Brown, Illustrated by A. Shelton

2012-01-27T16:40:00.001-08:00

Book Review: Gordan The Giraffe by Bruce Brown, Illustrated by A. Shelton

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Aarcana
Pages: 49

Gordan is a young giraffe living in the secret kingdom known as Ugladunga. His playmates all shun him until one day Gary invites him to play the game of Mulunga Doo. The other Giraffes laugh at them, because Mulunga Doo is a game a male giraffe can only play with a female giraffe. When Gordon cries to his mother, she tells him not to worry, he has a big heart and can play the game with anyone he chooses. But when the others try to trick Gordan and Gary into a dangerous situation, their plan backfires putting the perpetrators in peril, and only Gordan can rescue them. Is his heart big enough to forgive and save them? Of course, this is after all a children’s tale.

One of the wonderful benefits of reviewing books is being exposed to a wide variety of genres and writing styles, and every once in a blue moon getting the opportunity to read a children’s book with an LGBTQ theme. I’ve had the privilege of reading several and I have found them all delightful. Gordan the Giraffe was no exception.

It is a simple storyline with equally simple words, yet with an underlying message of acceptance of people who are different, because even people who are different can be brave and selfless. A wonderful message for kids. One of the things that sets this book well above the norm is the colorful and beautiful artwork. Like many kids books, there are plenty of pictures to tell the story, and is one I would be proud to hang on my walls as art.

The child inside me found this book to be an enchanting read—both mentally and visually—and I highly recommend it to all kids, and the kids inside of other adults.

This books is not released yet.

State Of The Union Address

2012-01-25T08:30:00.000-08:00

Admittedly, I don’t watch much TV. I occasionally watch Rachel Maddow because I think she’s a sharp woman and presents politics with a fresh perspective. And I do love to watch tennis matches (right now the Aussie Open is playing the quarterfinal rounds). I seldom watch any of these political debates because they make me mad at our entire, broken, system of government.

But last night I had a choice of watching the Aussie Open Quarterfinal matches or watching Obama give his State Of The Union Address. In a rare mood of patriotism, I opted for Obama.

I made that choice because I think the Republicans have been getting tons of press time lately in all these debates, and I was curious to hear how Obama would respond, more in tone than in words. I was not disappointed.

The thing that had the most impact on me was Obama ragging on Congress for being dysfunctional. This split between parties is killing our democratic system of government, and nothing—NOTHING—is getting accomplished in Washington because of it. At one point Obama called the congressional fight over the budget a fiasco. Frankly, I can’t think of a better word for it, for what has been happening in the House and Senate for years.

Okay, I’ll step off my soapbox and get back to the SOTUA….

I thought Obama came off sounding strong, forceful, and perhaps even hopeful. He sounded presidential, which I feel is something totally lacking in the GOP debates. I’ve always enjoyed hearing Obama. He is a master at speaking, with great timing in his words and phrases. He is the one person in Washington that I think can match Bill Clinton in speaking ability.

In short, I very much enjoyed the address, and thought our president did his usual superb job of delivering his message, once again, that Congress needs to get its shit together and work for the country instead of working for their party. I don’t want to get too negative here, so I won’t delve into my impression of the GOP response to the address.

And of course, as soon as the GOP response had completed, I quickly switch to ESPN to watch the last of the quarterfinal tennis match between Andy Murray and Kei Nishikori, and there I was disappointed. I cheered for Nishikori, who lost badly. :(

Gung Hay Fat Choy

2012-01-23T08:10:00.000-08:00

Today starts the Year of the Dragon. Dragons are very lucky in Chinese culture, so I'm hoping this will be a great year for everyone.

Book Review: The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov by Paul Russell

2012-01-19T20:35:00.000-08:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Cleis Press
Pages: 374

Sergey Nabokov was born into a wealthy family in pre-communists Russia. His father was a respected member of the government. His older brother would grow to become the brilliant writer, Vladimir Nabokov. While enjoying a luxurious lifestyle in Russia, Sergey grew up in the shadow of his older brother. As Sergey matured into puberty, it became apparent that he was gay and a bit of a dandy, which, as far as his family was concerned, pushed him deeper into the shadow cast by Vladimir.

Both brothers were forced to flee their mother Russia when the Bolshevik revolution brought the communists to power. They traveled to England where they received an education at Cambridge University, and then settled in Paris. Sergey became known to the artist crowd of pre-war Europe, hobnobbing with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Picasso, Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Magnaus Hirschfield, and Nijinsky. But as his finances dwindled, Sergey became more and more desperate, turning to opium for a bit of comfort and living off the generosity of men. As war with Germany loomed, Vladimir fled to the United States while Sergey ended up in isolation in war-torn Berlin. Sergey died after spending two years in a Nazi concentration camp for the crime of being gay and for speaking out against the Nazi regime.

This is a meticulously researched novel, which recreates the rich and changing world of pre-WWII Europe with exquisite detail. The novel starts in Berlin during the decline of Nazi Germany, with most of the novel seen through flashbacks. Russell takes the sparse details of Sergey’s life and weaves it into a fictional memoir that is both convincing and inspiring.

What struck me most about this work was the lavish, beautiful prose. I’ve read few modern novels that can compare. The voice Paul Russell captures is both lush and believable. The detail in the scenes he paints is remarkable.

I did have one issue with this novel. Russell committed the one sin that a novelist should never allow—he often bored me. There was simply so much detail to wade through that, however beautiful, slowed the action down to a crawl. Vast quantities of detail, in my opinion, added little to the storyline. The emotional highs weren’t very high, the lows not so low. Through vast sections of the story I found myself wanting to skip ahead to the next chapter, or the one after that.

This is a riches to rags story, contrasting the two brothers’ lives. It is ultimately a novel about a vulnerable boy who, through adversity and a few bad choices, grew into a courageous man. It is a remarkable work.

New Cover for The Lonely War (the Chinese release)

2012-01-18T12:16:00.001-08:00

A year ago I signed a contract with a Chinese publisher to release a Chinese translation of my novel, The Lonely War. They will release the book this month, starting in Taiwan. I wanted to show off my new cover art for this new book.

Happiness

2012-01-16T14:56:00.001-08:00

Are you happy? I mean genuinely happy on a consistent basis. Do you whistle or sing when you walk down the street? Do you enjoy interacting with your fellow workers? Do you wake up excited to face the day?
If not, when will you be happy?   Many people tell themselves, "I’ll be happy when...

• My health improves
• My relationship improves
• The economy improves
• I get a new this or that
• I get my career on track
• I move to a better location
• I get a raise
• I lose 30 pounds
• I retire

Many people seem to have a list, which ends up being a wall between them and happiness. The truth is that none of these things will make you happy. They can certainly put you in a better position to find happiness, but happiness is a feeling that comes from the experiences in life and our attitude about them. Happiness comes from within, and has little to do with all those things happening outside of you. The old saying is that happiness is a state of mind, and that saying has been around a long time simply because it’s true. Sometimes we feel content, sometimes not, but happiness is around you every day — it’s just that sometimes we have to look closer for it. It won’t come from the things you seek, but rather from the attitude you have about this journey called life.

Happiness is up to you, here and now. You can choose to wait for better days, or you can decide to look for the joy, the opportunities, the smiles, and the good in every day. You get to choose.

Book Review: Simple Treasures by Alan Chin

2012-01-09T11:00:00.000-08:00

Reviewer: Edward C. Patterson
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Pages: 136

When I want to curl up with a beautifully written, heartfelt tale of redemption, I come to Alan Chin -- he's the ticket. And again, with Simple Treasures, he has authored a stylish work of depth. I'm Native American, so I was fascinated with his treatment of tribal mysticism, especially in regard to the afterlife. He hit it right on the head. Life and death are leaves fallen from the same tree. If hope is what we sow, our lives are redeemed. It quite took my breath away.

Simple is not a simple man. He has a past, which he records into journals because of his amnesia, which resets his memory banks each day. Like his mind, he's a drifter, but we soon learn that although he copes with daily existence, he has heaps of hope nestled within his self-doubts. Simple is cast into an almost untenable employment situation where he must interact with other damaged souls -- Jude, Emmett and Lance, all in need of Simple's brand of healing -- a course of growth as old as the hills. All the emotions dance through this tale -- love, self-doubt, rage, greed and pride. Simple is the tie that binds them all. I wished the tale was longer, so I could linger at that dusty haven of a ranch where these souls intermingle.

Alan Chin's strength is character development, although it goes beyond that. Each character is set on a rolling tide, which hooks into an aspect of the main theme. The tone recalls Casteñeda with a hint of King's The Gunslinger, although Mr. Chin's style is uniquely warm -- his story telling subtly tugging at the heartstrings. I really came to care for all the characters -- even the chief bum of the story. I love the way the characters developed, overlapping each other, heading for the same point, but then hurtling to different destinations. Simple Treasures is superbly written. I highly recommended it.

Buy Link: http://tinyurl.com/7bde4f4

Life Changes

2012-01-07T09:21:00.000-08:00

In the past several months I’ve been caught up in some significant life changes. Starting as far back as September, my husband, Herman, and I began to prepare our San Rafael house to sell while looking for a new home in Palm Springs.

Over the past few months we have held a dozen open houses in San Rafael, walked through three dozen homes in Palm Springs, found a beautiful new house as well as sold our old one, moved into our new home on Christmas Eve, and began to settle into a new life here in PS.

What seemed so easy to type out in a single paragraph actually was a very high stress, often painful experience of letting go and flinging ourselves off a cliff and into a sea of unknown. It has been a scary path, but one that once we started down we could not turn back.

I’m sitting in my new office overlooking our front yard. Classic Japanese landscaping in San Rafael have been replaced with cactus and palms; gentle, green rolling hills have turned to rugged brown mountains; and our cozy, open Eichler is now a sprawling, midcentury ranch style home. In short: everything is different, everything is new. I feel somewhat disoriented, with only Herman and my writing as constants that I can latch on to.

I know that for some people this kind of move is no big deal. They’ve done it several times and, for them, it’s fun and exciting. But I’m a person who lived in the same house for almost thirty years. That house was my life raft to cling to in a changing world. For me this is an extremely big deal.

I’m sitting here wondering how many times in my life I’ve leaped into the unknown, and been the better for it. Certainly the time I left home to join the Navy. And the time I came home from the navy with a husband instead of a wife. There was the time I walked away from a seventeen-year relationship, only to jump into my current relationship a few years later. And the time I ran from a lucrative corporate career to be a little-known writer of gay literature.

Yes, I’ve experienced times of big letting go, but what I’m realizing here (a lesson I keep learning over and over) is that every day is a time of letting go, of leaping into the unknown. That is what life is, what makes it worth living. The trick is not clinging to yesterday, but embracing now. Okay, it’s a cliché, so shoot me. Lol

Yes, it is a cliché, but it’s also THE KEY to being happy and content in life.
And the truth is, Herman and I are loving our new home, our new city, our new friends that we’ve already made. The last two weeks have seemed like being blown along on hurricane force winds, and we are carried along, smiling, and taking each moment as it comes.

For the moment—and in truth that’s all we have—as I sit here, I can say without hesitation that we are happy and loving this new environment, and I am so grateful that we made that leap. The unknown is an exciting place to explore. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes: "When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be." - Lao Tzu

A new novel by Carey Parrish

2012-01-02T18:05:00.000-08:00

I’m thrilled to announce that my good friend and colleague, Carey Parrish, has release a sequel to his wonderful novel, Marengo. This new novel, Big Business, brings back the delightful residents of Number 56 Kensington Street, Holland Park, London. I can't wait to read it.

Synopsis:
Busybody landlady Mrs. Shugart, with her ally Mr. Humbolt at her side, has an empty flat for rent, but her tenant, upwardly mobile attorney Ms. Sandra Leverock, is anything but what she was hoping for. Especially when she discovers that Ms. Leverock is the niece of her oldest nemesis, Margaret Armstrong.

American journalists Rob Brent and Jeff Schrader are contemplating a life changing opportunity that promises them more angst than joy, and upstairs neighbor DJ Pack finds himself attracted to Ms. Leverock in spite of the fact that she's engaged to billionaire Edgar Allardice.

As the neighbors settle into their new circumstances, Mrs. Shugart finds herself grappling with a past that she thought was settled long ago. Ms. Leverock and DJ grow closer, while Margaret becomes embroiled in the mystery of who is trying to buy out her shares in her late husband's corporation, and she enlists Rob and Jeff to assist her in the quest. And Allardice, determined to see his empire expand by any mean necessary, is pulling the strings like a puppet master.

Murder, intrigue, and corporate ruthlessness combine to teach the residents of Number 56 Kensington Street just how dangerous the world of big business can be.

The sequel to Marengo, Big Business is Carey Parrish at his best.

A quote from the author:
"I was very pleased that the characters in Marengo struck such a chord with readers that even almost two years later I was still receiving emails asking for more of them. Whenever I write, my only goal is to tell a good story that I hope readers will remember. So Big Business is the answer to all those requests I got for a continuation of the characters from Marengo. I hope the new novel is as satisfying as the first."

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Big-Business-Carey-Parrish/

Barnes & Noble Link: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/big-business-carey-parrish/

The Best of the Best for 2011

2012-01-01T12:48:00.000-08:00

During the span of days we now call 2011, I reviewed forty glbt themed books, and also partially read (but did not finish) another sixteen books. There was a nice blend of temporary fiction, historical fiction and nonfiction. Of these fifty six books, I’ve listed the five I most enjoyed, along with two honorable mentions.

This is not to say that these books are the best written or most interesting books of my year. My selection was based purely on my enjoyment factor, and are presented here in random order. So here are my favorites for last year:

Five Most Enjoyable Books:

True Stories by Felice Picano
This charming collection of memoirs by author Felice Picano is written in fifteen vignettes. The author recounts tales of his childhood, his experiences as a GLBT publisher, his co-founding the now-famous Violet Quill Club, his early years as a journalist, and his encounters with the rich and famous—including Bette Midler, Tennessee Williams, W.H. Auden, Charles Henri Ford, and the queen of Twentieth-Century fashion, Diana Vreeland. For the most part, the author tells his story via his relationships with an array of fascinating people that helped guide his destiny.

Moffie by Andree Carl van der Merwe
Like every gay boy in 1970s South Africa, Nicholas van der Swart must hide that part of himself that is different from other boys, especially from his father. Nicholas grew up fearing his tyrannical father, an abusive Afrikaner devoted to apartheid and all things manly. And Nick grew up being ashamed of himself, thinking he was an abomination against God.

Nick is conscripted into two years of mandatory army life when he turns nineteen years old. The military goes against everything Nick feels at his core. He is a pacifist, but the lure of freeing himself from an oppressive home life helps him cope with the reality of becoming a soldier fighting for a cause he doesn’t believe in.

But Nick finds that the nightmare of living at home is nothing compared to the hell of boot camp. Within his company, he is labeled a Moffie (a queer), and his superiors stop at nothing to destroy him. At the same time, he makes three close friendships, and even falls in love. Nick finds that the one thing that is more terrible than the physical abuse he endures every day, is the mental torcher of not being able to tell his close buddies and the person he loves what he really feels for them. He must keep that secret locked deep in his heart, or risk being shipped off to a mental hospital for shock, drug and hormone treatments.

After boot camp, Nick and his friends are shipped to the boarder where South Africa is at war with Angolan terrorist. On the battlefield, Nick learns a valuable lesson: to not ask God to help him, but merely to put his life in God’s hands, become an instrument of the Almighty, and accept God’s will. Within the depths of this military torture, bloodshed and his new religious faith, Nick is able to acknowledge his homosexuality and come out to the men he cares for. His coming out somehow helps him find the strength to survive.

The Abode of Bliss by Alex Jeffers

In a series of ten remarkable short stories, Ziya explains his erotic journey into manhood to Adam, the man Ziya loves. Raised in cosmopolitan Istanbul, Ziya is immersed in his Muslim family and traditions, yet he harbors a secret that goes against everything he knows. He is gay. His mother understands, and arranges for Ziya to attend college in the United States, where he will enjoy an easier time of being accepted and be free to live his life without pressure from family or religion.

Ziya’s journey takes him from Istanbul, through Europe, and finally to Boston where he tries to assimilate a new lifestyle, yet, he keeps being drawn back into his culture. This is a long and beautiful journey. Along the way Ziya encounters old friends, surprises from family members, one-night stands, rape, weddings and bashings and deaths, and in the end a chance meeting.

These ten stories are told in chronological order and build on each other, making this book read like a novel. This is nearly a perfect read.

First Person Plural by Andrew W. M. Beierle
Owen and Porter Jamison are conjoined twins—one body, two heads, two functioning brains, and definitely two very dissimilar hearts. Growing up, they see themselves as a single entity, but as they near adulthood they metamorphose into completely opposite personalities. Porter is pure jock, outgoing, and charismatic. He compensates for his abnormality by being the best red-blooded, all-American football hero in the town. Owen is cerebral, artistic, and a romantic. He compensates by withdrawing into his own world.

As Porter begins dating a high school cheerleader, Owen becomes painfully aware that he has no interest in girls. As Owen explores his feelings, he admits to himself, and then to Porter, that he is gay, which causes a riff between the brothers, but of course, sharing one body, they can’t very well ignore one another. At first Owen is content to settle for unrequited crushes, but soon finds himself exploring his desires with other gay guys. This, naturally, widens the riff between the brothers and expands Porter’s fear that people will assume he is also gay. To survive, they must somehow learn to give and take, to be supportive as well as take what they need. But when it comes to something as personal as sex, can they do that?

Yu by Joy Shayne Laughter
Ross Lamos has built a successful career in dealing with Asian art and antiquities. His specialty is jade carvings, and his astonishing gift is his psychic touch, that is, whenever he holds jade, the stone’s yu (its internal chi power) reveals its history to Lamos. He sees visions of what the stones have witnessed.

The story begins when a mysterious woman enters the antique shop where Lamos works, asking him to appraise three carved jade stones. The stones are all from the same period, Han Dynasty, and worth millions on the black market. Lamos has never worked with such exquisitely crafted carvings before. They are the work of a master craftsman. But more than the stones’ value, Lamos is intrigued by their history.

One by one, he holds the stones, and they tell three connecting stories of a forbidden love in China’s Imperial Court during the Han Dynasty. Within this unfolding tale, Lamos comes to realize that both he and this mysterious woman, in their former lives, played a part in this unfolding drama.

Each stone presents a piece of the puzzle that tells of a love between a prince and his father’s concubine, and the poet caught up in the middle of a deadly game of intrigue. But which former life did Lamos play? He will do anything to find out.

Two Honorable Mentions:

For The Ferryman by Charles Silverstein

Charles Silverstein is not a name that I’ve heard pop up in discussions about the Gay Rights Movement, yet he quite possibly may have had more impact on securing equal rights for the lgbt community than Harvey Milk and others more famous. In this fascinating memoir, Silverstein uses the first half of the book to recount his career of fighting for gay rights, particularly in the psychiatric community, and he uses the second half of the book to narrate his twenty-five-year relationship with his life-partner, William Bory.

Silverstein’s most important contribution to the gay community was his historic 1973 presentation before the “Nomenclature Committee” of the American Psychiatric Association which led to the removal of homosexuality as a mental illness from the diagnostic manual, which eventually was responsible for decriminalizing gay sex between consenting adults. He went on to establish two gay and lesbian counseling centers in New York, and also was the founding editor of the Journal of Homosexuality, now in its fifty-seventh volume.

Silverstein is best known for co-authoring the groundbreaking 1977 The Joy of Gay Sex with Edmund White, and co-authoring the sequal 1992 The New Joy of Gay Sex with Felice Picano, which brought the original book up to date with regards to the AIDS crisis. Silverstein also authored a book geared to the parents of gay youth: A Family Matter: A Parents’ Guide to Homosexuality, 1977. So as you can see, the author is no lightweight. He has had a tremendous impact on gay rights, and the personal accounts of his activism are both fascinating and inspiring.

Bob The Book by David Pratt

Bob is a book about pre-nineties gay porn, complete with many hot pictures. He is delivered to a Greenwich Village bookstore, where he goes on sale beside another book, Moishe, whose title is Beneath the Tallis: The Hidden Lives of Gay and Bisexual Orthodox Jewish Men. Bob and Moishe fall in love, but are separated by an unlikely buyer.

As Bob journeys through sales tables, used book bins, different owners, and lecture halls, he meets a variety of other books and people, but he’s always hunting for Moishe.

Bob finds himself in a peculiar position; both he and his owner are searching for love. Both seem to find something, but it’s not ideal for either of them. Can Bob, being at the mercy of people, somehow find fulfillment? Can his owner find the same contentment? All I can say is, it’s not easy being a book in love.

Book Review: Our Time: Breaking The Silence of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” by Josh Seefried

2011-12-30T11:38:00.000-08:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: The Penguin Press
Pages: 191

Our Time is an interesting, sometimes fascinating, often emotional compilation of first-person essays from gay and lesbian military personnel who had to hide their sexuality while serving in the US Armed Forces. It marks the end of nearly two decades of silence, and finally gives voice to the queer men and women who put their lives on the line in service to America under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Each story is only two to four pages long, a snapshot of the internal and external struggle that these service people had to live each hour of every day. Almost all branches of the service are represented, and these stories come from officers as well as enlisted personnel. These accounts detail the abuse—physical and mental—endured at the hands of their fellow soldiers and superiors, as well as the hardships suffered by the family members and partners of lgbt soldiers.

Now that these divisive policies are a thing of the past, gay and lesbian service people no longer need to live under the conditions outlined in these personal stories, but this book stands as a significant historical account of what was a legal injustice in this country, told by the people who suffered under the discrimination.

Each personal account records the unique experience of that service person, yet common themes weave through each of these stories:

Lieutenant Colonel Tim Walker writes, “I could not list my partner as a dependent on any forms. What were my rights—what were his rights—if I was hurt or incapacitated or killed? He would not even get notification if the worst happened. He was not eligible for my pension, benefits, visitation rights, counseling, or even the flag from my coffin if I died.”

Petty Officer Second Class Alex Johnson writes, “Part of my preparations for deployment included establishing guidelines for communicating with my significant other. We had to devise a way to hide the true nature of our relationship. So we created Yahoo e-mail addresses under fake names, and we developed a code to mask sensitive language. While I was deployed, if I wished to tell him I loved him, I would say, ‘One four three.’ We put other similar expressions in code so we could speak “freely” to each other.”

Warrant Officer Tania Dunbar writes: “For the past eleven years I have had to conceal my family from my friends. Soldiers, with whom I sweat, bleed, and cry, can’t ever meet the woman I love. Soldiers who depend on me for sound judgment and advice can never know who I myself go to when I need advice or solace. Friends who would die for me can’t ever meet the person who makes me want to live. Don’t get me wrong—there are a few soldiers who know I am gay, but it takes a long time to learn if you can trust someone with a secret that can ruin your career. So I don’t make friends easy, I don’t go to military functions very often. For me, home life cannot mix with work life.”

My one minor complaint about this book is the repetitiveness. There are over forty stories, and many parrot similar experiences. Still, throughout these many accounts the thing that shines through is the bravery and selflessness of these soldiers who defend our liberties while their own freedom was denied.

This is a significant book, both personally and politically. Josh Seefried, an Air Force officer and codirector of OutServe, has done a splendid job of presenting these voices of anguish and struggle and hope.

Rudyard Kipling poem for the season

2011-12-20T17:16:00.000-08:00

My friend and fellow writer, Victor Banis, passed around a seasonal poem that I thought everyone would enjoy, so I posted it below for your enjoyment.

Eddi’s Service _ Rudyard Kipling

Eddi, priest of St. Wilfrid
In his chapel at Manhood End,
Ordered a midnight service
For such as cared to attend.

But the Saxons were keeping Christmas,
And the night was stormy as well.
Nobody came to service,
Though Eddi rang the bell.

"'Wicked weather for walking,"
Said Eddi of Manhood End.
"But I must go on with the service
For such as care to attend."

The altar-lamps were lighted, --
An old marsh-donkey came,
Bold as a guest invited,
And stared at the guttering flame.

The storm beat on at the windows,
The water splashed on the floor,
And a wet, yoke-weary bullock
Pushed in through the open door.

"How do I know what is greatest,
How do I know what is least?
That is My Father's business,"
Said Eddi, Wilfrid's priest.

"But -- three are gathered together --
Listen to me and attend.
I bring good news, my brethren!"
Said Eddi of Manhood End.

And he told the Ox of a Manger
And a Stall in Bethlehem,
And he spoke to the Ass of a Rider,
That rode to Jerusalem.

They steamed and dripped in the chancel,
They listened and never stirred,
While, just as though they were Bishops,
Eddi preached them The Word,

Till the gale blew off on the marshes
And the windows showed the day,
And the Ox and the Ass together
Wheeled and clattered away.

And when the Saxons mocked him,
Said Eddi of Manhood End,
"I dare not shut His chapel
On such as care to attend."
.

The Anatomy of Stress

2011-12-15T16:11:00.000-08:00

I’ve had an epiphany today: Stress is a condition caused by not knowing. An example would be struggling to meet a deadline and not knowing if you will get the job done in time. Or struggling to pay all your bills and not knowing if there will be anything left over for food.

It seems that once you know one way or another, stress is reduced and transforms into some kind of action. If you can’t make the project dates, you take action to push out the timelines. If you don’t have enough money for all the bills, then you decide which bills won’t get paid this month. But one way or another, once a thing is known, the stress levels are reduced and you move on.

I realized this today because I’m trying to sell my house so that I can purchase a house in Palm Springs, California. A buyer has made a generous offer and I have accepted his offer. The problem, the buyer is having trouble securing a loan. Not too surprising in the current financial environment.

But the thing that has my stress levels going through the roof is that we are supposed to sign all the ownership transfer papers tomorrow, both to sell my current house and to buy my new house in PS, and less that twenty-four hours to signing I still don’t know if said buyer has the money available to buy my house.

One would think that with a day to go, they would have let us know if they had not secured the loan. These folks, however, have not been the best at communications. Meanwhile, my husband and I have been snapping at each other for two days, both keyed up over not knowing if this deal is going through. We have seen other real state deal fall apart at the last moments, so it is not inconceivable.

The funny thing is, knowing that stress is caused by not knowing does nothing to minimize the stress. So I suppose we have another day to swipe at each other before we know, and can move one way or another.

Book Review: For the Ferryman by Charles Silverstein

2011-12-13T11:01:00.000-08:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions
Pages: 336

Charles Silverstein is not a name that I’ve heard pop up in discussions about the Gay Rights Movement, yet he quite possibly may have had more impact on securing equal rights for the lgbt community than Harvey Milk and others more famous. In this fascinating memoir, Silverstein uses the first half of the book to recount his career of fighting for gay rights, particularly in the psychiatric community, and he uses the second half of the book to narrate his twenty-five-year relationship with his life-partner, William Bory.

Silverstein’s most important contribution to the gay community was his historic 1973 presentation before the “Nomenclature Committee” of the American Psychiatric Association which led to the removal of homosexuality as a mental illness from the diagnostic manual, which eventually was responsible for decriminalizing gay sex between consenting adults. He went on to establish two gay and lesbian counseling centers in New York, and also was the founding editor of the Journal of Homosexuality, now in its fifty-seventh volume.

Silverstein is best known for co-authoring the groundbreaking 1977 The Joy of Gay Sex with Edmund White, and co-authoring the sequal 1992 The New Joy of Gay Sex with Felice Picano, which brought the original book up to date with regards to the AIDS crisis. Silverstein also authored a book geared to the parents of gay youth: A Family Matter: A Parents’ Guide to Homosexuality, 1977. So as you can see, the author is no lightweight. He has had a tremendous impact on gay rights, and the personal accounts of his activism are both fascinating and inspiring.

The author’s relationship with William Bory was both touching and riveting. Silverstein speaks candidly of their relationship, their travels to many exotic locations, William’s plunge into drug addiction that included crack cocaine and heroin, and William’s battle with AIDS. The author paints Bory as an eccentric genius that Silverstein loved deeply despite titanic flaws. Their relationship was loving, yet vexing, and the reader is never sure what will happen next.

I’d like to include a passage that shows the author’s personal and humorous style of writing:
When God gave out physical attributes, he did not do it equitably. For all-around attractiveness, the Germans cannot be beat (“God’s little joke,” William mused.) The Scots were given the most perfect asses (not that they knew what to do with them the year William and I were in Scotland.) To the Dominicans he gave large, beautiful penises that hung snugly over their testicles like those drawings of male genitalia in anatomy textbooks that make one wonder whether they are the sexual fantasies of the artists. I did not know about this physical attribute until I arrived at the Hotel Victoria.

So as you can see, this book is not some dry recount of someone’s career, but rather a fun and interesting account of two fascinating people during a time when equal rights for the lgbt community was exploding.

This is a book that is mandatory reading for anyone who has an interest in the Gay Rights Movement, politics during the AIDS crises of the ‘80s and ‘90s, or for anyone who simply wants to read an enthralling love story that happens to be true. For The Ferryman is a bold self-portrait of a distinguished and astounding life.

Will and Jay Christmas stories

2011-12-09T21:18:00.000-08:00

My friend from across the Atlantic, Alan Barker, has been busy writing more Will and Jay mini-stories. Here are the wonderful two getting to grips with Christmas. Enjoy.

Jingle Bash

"I'm really looking forward to Rae's Jungle Bash,Will," called an excited Jay struggling to put on his Scrooge's costume, "but why are you all dressed up in wrapping paper, couldn't you find any Dickens character left in the agency?"

"No Will, Rae's party caused a rush on them again," complained Will, "so I've improvised, can't you guess what I am...no...no...I'm Christmas Present!"

Christmas Greetings

"I hate climbing that ladder, the lights are hurting my eyes and now I've found pine needles where pine needles shouldn't be," moaned Jay to his partner Will, "alright, we needed the money, but at this height I think I should be paid danger money or be given a parachute!"

"Ho, ho, ho, Jay, down here in the Grotto being Father Christmas is awesome," chuckled Will, "but I think a wobbling Fairy wearing shades and scratching her backside with her wand on top of the Christmas tree is very uncool mate."

All about Eve

"That was brilliant of you last night Willo, waking me up with that welcome Christmas kiss under the mistletoe and sharing the wine and mince pies we aways leave for Santa," said Jay to his partner, "and then leaving all those presents under our tree, I was so sleepy I hardly recognised you in that costume."

"Wasn't me Jay," laughed Will, "I left Stefano's restaurant a long time after you, crept into the flat, well after midnight and crashed out on the sofa, so just who was this visitor matey?"

More of Will & Jay in 2012.

They Like Me, They Really Like Me

2011-12-07T15:27:00.001-08:00

I’m having a Sally Fields moment. Last year, my novel The Lonely War took top honors at the Rainbow Literary Awards, taking first place for Best Gay Fiction, Best Historical, Best Characters and Best Setting.

At this year’s Rainbow Literary Awards, my novel Match Maker was awarded first place in Contemporary General Fiction. http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/1461194.html

This is what one judge had to say: ““Match Maker” by Alan Chin is one of the best books I have ever read. The story was fascinating from page 1 to the end. And the characters were so realistic and intriguing. Once I started reading I couldn’t stop until I had finished it. Mr. Chin’s writing style is superb. –Verena”

So far, my first three novels have all earned awards. It is a fantastic feeling knowing that readers appreciate my work.

Hillary Clinton's LGBT rights speech

2011-12-06T14:04:00.000-08:00

Full VIDEO from Hillary Clinton's groundbreaking LGBT rights speech http://tinyurl.com/6nnrqlz

It's long, but oh so worth viewing. Please, please listen.

alan chin

Book Review: Junction X by Erastes

2011-12-04T17:11:00.000-08:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Cheyenne Publishing
Pages: 198

On the outside, Edward Johnson seems to have a perfect pin-striped life—wife, couple of kids, white-picket fence in one of the better suburbs, country club membership, and works as a stockbroker. He even gets an occasional blowjob from his buddy, Phil, on the morning train into work. Could life get any sweeter?

But then a new family moves in next door, and they have a beautiful seventeen-year-old son, Alex. A slow but powerful attraction grows between Ed and Alex. Ed has never considered himself a pedophile, so he fights the urge to flirt with Alex, but each time they are together, try as he might, Ed can’t control his growing desire for the boy. He stalks the boy until they have a sexual encounter while driving.

Ed is filled with gilt and remorse, and knows he’s going down an immoral path, but at the same time he lures Alex into a steamy affair. But how long can Ed juggle the responsibilities of family, office, and a teenaged boyfriend? And can Alex, being so young and inexperienced, control the volcanic feelings churning in his heart.

The first half of this story reads rather slowly, skillfully building in tension, and seems like a typical romance novel, albeit one with a middle-aged man falling for an underage boy. But shortly past the halfway mark, I realized two things: first, Ed was not the protagonist but rather, the antagonist; and two, this wasn’t a romance novel that would have a happily-ever-after ending. I was right on both counts.

This is a story about how unbridled obsession can ruin lives. Ed begins as a morally upright person with only a few skeletons in the closet. But his passion for Alex slowly leads him into being a pathetic, cheating scoundrel. And of course, he drags everyone connected with him into that same train wreck.

The plot is a simple one, without any subplots to cloud the water. But there is something to be said for a simple story told well, and this story is told extremely well. Erastes has obviously worked hard to improve her writing style and voice, and it shines here.

It is not often I come across a novel written in first person where the narrator is the antagonist. It gives the reader a rare glimpse into an unstable character, giving Edward tremendous depth as the author peals away his layers. He becomes a fascinating character, even as he disgusts. Yes, he’s a train wreck, but the reader can’t look away.

I did have one issue with this story. I felt that in the first ten pages, the author gave away too much, to the point where I knew most everything that would happen in the first 90% of the book. At midpoint, she broadcasted the other 10%. I would have been happier had she given away less and surprised me more.

That said, this is a passionate, emotional story. The characters pull the reader in and keep building the tension until the very last page.

If you are searching for a typical romance that will steam your glasses and make you feel good in the end, keep looking. If you enjoy a serious story of how mistakes cause pain, how passion can injure as well as please, then by all means, give Junction X a read.

Introducing Queerteen Press :: a GLBT YA imprint of JMS Books LLC

2011-12-02T12:27:00.000-08:00

I recently saw a news release from JMS books announcing a new imprint for lgbt YA stories. I was excited by the idea and wanted to share it. Please read the following:

JMS Books LLC is pleased to announce its GLBT Young Adult imprint, Queerteen Press.

Queerteen Press publishes YA titles appealing to queer teens as well as their parents, teachers, and librarians. Books are available in electronic and print formats. A handful of titles are already available through QT Press, with several more scheduled for release in the early part of 2012.

We accept short stories, collections, and novel-length books in all genres of queer, literary, and genre fiction suitable for a young adult audience. This means books whose main characters are between the ages of 12 and 21.

Submission Policy:

* Electronic unsolicited submissions are accepted at any time.
* We do not accept multiple or simultaneous submissions.
* Submissions should include a QUERY LETTER, full SYNOPSIS, and 2,000 word EXCERPT in RTF format.
* Submissions are acknowledged within 2 business days.
* If we like your submission, we will request a copy of the full manuscript for review. Manuscripts must be in electronic format only. The review time is between 1-3 weeks.

Contract terms:

* Authors earn 50% net royalties on all sales (e-book and paperback)
from all distributors.
* Contracts are for a period of 2 years and auto-renew annually.
* We require exclusive electronic and print rights, but can
negotiate if the story has been published in an anthology or
collection.
Full submission guidelines are available on our website at
http://www.queerteen-press.com/index.php?main_page=page_2
.

J.M. Snyder
Queerteen Press
YA Imprint of JMS Books LLC
http://queerteen-press.com

A New Story by Alan Chin

2011-11-30T16:25:00.000-08:00

I finished a novella today that has been knocking about in my head for the last two years. I’m super excited about it. It started out as a short story to give away on my website, but it grew in both depth and length, and now is a novella that I think is good enough to publish.

It’s the story of a dysfunctional gay couple who travel to Thailand and pay to live as monks for a month. That is a real program that was offered in one of the temples in Chiang Mai, Thailand (I considered doing it myself at one point). There is a killer on the loose roaming the town; at the same time another monk comes between the couple. Both events have disastrous effect on everybody’s karma.

I am giving this story out as a freebie. If you would like to read my work, go to http://alanchin.net and click on the FREE STORY button.

Enjoy,
Alan Chin

Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-28T16:16:00.000-08:00

I try to stay clear of politics, mostly because I get so angry at it. But I was recently cornered by a guy discounting the Occupy Wall Street Movement as the lunatic left that don’t know what they are doing, or even what they stand for. They simply want to protest. This guy, IMHO, was a conservative shill (read: GOP and/or the nitwits supporting them), bought and paid for by corporate interests spinning a viewpoint that has a tiny kernel of truth upon which to divide public opinion.

He zeroed in on students complaining of having to pay back student loans, building a spiel around this specific group upon which to label, demean and discount the whole of those participating in OWS. He tried to convince me that the whole OWS protesters are ungrateful brats unable to fend for themselves. He's broadly painting the protesters as an entitled generation with discretionary income, expensive high tech toys, lolling around sipping their upscale coffees, all the while complaining and whining.

But there is another, much larger face to the protesters, those working class people struggling to build a career or who have already retired. He didn’t acknowledge that many of those protesters are the laborers employed, or laid off, by the corporations. He didn’t acknowledge that there are people protesting the foreclosure on their homes by the banks (like my sister), nor those angry that their retirement funds have been ripped off by the investment bankers.

There are many, like me, who are angry over the bailouts for Wall Street's fraud and deceit, and Congress's kowtowing to corporate power. The whole truth of the OWS protest is they all feel fear, frustration and anger about the corporate malfeasance and political corruption that has plundered the country's wealth and saddled it with debt.

The corporate interests will say and do all they can to dilute the power of the 99%. I commend the protesters for their courage and it saddens me that our country does not practice what it preaches and chooses to resort to force to stifle dissent.

I pray that this movement grows and grows in power and influence, and leads this country back to a more just way of dealing with the middle class, which is what made this country great in the first place.

Black Friday Madness

2011-11-25T21:25:00.000-08:00

There is no explaining this.... WATCH a near riot breakout over $2 waffle makers http://huff.to/uLejgN

Book Review: CAREGIVER by Rick R. Reed

2011-11-22T16:22:00.000-08:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Pages: 205

Dan and Mark have their difficulties. Neither are working and Mark seems not to be sexually interested in Dan. The honeymoon is definitely over for this couple. The problem? Cocaine. They had recently moved from Chicago to South Florida in a failed attempt to pull Mark away from his drug addiction.

While Dan beats the bushes for a job, he also finds plenty of time on his hands, so being a giving person, he volunteers at the Tampa AIDS Alliance to be a buddy to people suffering from AIDS. This story takes place in 1991, before the cocktails that prolonged AIDS-suffer’s lives, so there are plenty of buddies to choose from.

Dan’s HIV buddy, Adam, turns out to be light years beyond all expectations. Adam is flamboyant, witty, wise, giving and charming. He is the type of friend one finds only once or twice in a lifetime. The two quickly bond (non-sexually) and become friends for life. In their short time together, Adam teaches Dan several life lessons, including how to be strong and stand up for himself, something at Adam is a pro at.

Dan also befriends Adam’s lover, Sullivan, who is easy on the eyes but a bit standoffish. Dan is attracted to Sullivan, but is too much the gentleman to go after Adam’s man.

All seems well for Dan until Mark falls off the wagon and plunges the couple into an unknown landscape, while at the same time Adam lands himself in prison. The problems (as often happens in Rick Reed’s novels) seem insurmountable. But while this author leads his characters into hell, he always leaves them a trail of breadcrumbs to follow back. But will they?

Having lived my young adult life in an epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, and having lost my share of friends and loved ones to the disease, it is clear to me that the author draws from personal experience in writing this gripping story. I found that, although this story is set in the height of the AIDS epidemic, it is a story about friendship, love and finding courage. It is a sad, often humorous, and inspirational journey.

This is a story that resonates with me. I enjoyed the characters and their undertaking, and I can recommend it to all who enjoy a dark and complicated tale.

Living a Life of Gratitude

2011-11-20T08:27:00.000-08:00

It’s rather cold and raining on this Sunday morning. Still, I’m sitting at my desk, looking out over the grey gloom, and brimming with gratitude. I’ve recently been thinking about how lucky I am, being an openly gay man, living in this time in American history where gay rights is front and center in our political landscape. This entire gay-rights movement started at a time when I was discovering that I was gay, and has been a part of my life, my struggle, for forty years.

I’ve seldom marched in picket lines and I’ve never been bashed in the head with billy-clubs, but I’ve always been part of the fight. It was impossible to avoid it while living in San Francisco. I’ve worked with AIDS organizations and marched in countless Gay-Pride parades, but the thing I’ve done constantly through out my life to advance the rights of gay and lesbian people is to live openly, to get in everybody’s face and say “This is who I am and I’m not about to change, so deal with it!”

I must confess, I’m very proud of the fact that Herman and I were the first male couple legally wed in Marin County, California. We did that solely to make a political statement. We had already lived together for fifteen years and certainly didn’t feel the need for a piece of paper from the state to legitimize our relationship, but that was our way to advance this equality movement. It was this same idea that led me in 1999 to legally change my last name to “Chin” so that Herman and I would have the same family name. We wanted everyone to realize, even back then, that we were a wedded couple.

I never in my younger life dreamed that I would actually be married in the eyes of the state, or that gays and lesbians would be allowed to openly serve in the military. The strides we have all made are tremendous, even though the fight continues. And I welcome the opportunity to do more.

For the first time in my life, I’m actually beginning to think that I will see the end of discrimination toward my queer brothers and sisters in this country, and I’m feeling immensely grateful that I’ve played a small but important part in making that happen. Yes, it is a fantastic time to be gay, or even gay friendly.

A sexy new book by Jamie Fessenden

2011-11-18T13:50:00.000-08:00

A fellow writer and friend, Jamie Fessenden, has just published a new book that I'd like to call everyone's attention to -- The Dogs of Cyberwar.

It's published by Dreamspinner Press, which is also my publisher. If you enjoy the excerpt below, the buy link is: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=2644

Blurb: Connor is a netrunner: a hacker who ventures into cyberspace to steal data from corporate computers. As he hides out in the slums of Seattle, he’s attacked by a street gang and, incredibly, rescued by one of the members. His rescuer is a man named Luis, who has decided Connor needs his protection.
But instead of providing safety, Luis’s presence wreaks havoc with Connor’s online identity, and they find themselves hunted by a lethal security force. While they attempt to escape the city, Connor finds himself struggling to survive with the most lethal killer ever pitted against the corporations that control the FreeCorp—and he risks losing his heart to the same man.

EXCERPT -- Rated PG -- M/M --

The gym had sleep capsules in a room off to one side of the locker room. These were “rooms” just big enough for a person to crawl into and sleep. But
they were comfortable enough and provided access to the Net, which Connor would need in order to finish the job he’d contracted for.

But when he swiped his wrist across the reader and the door swung open, he discovered a new drawback to having Luis for his bodyguard.

“Is that big enough for both of us?” the Latino asked, peering into the capsule.

This took Connor aback. “What? No, not really. Can’t you get your own?”

“I don’t have any money,” Luis reminded him.

Jesus. Just how much was this deal going to end up costing him on a regular basis?

“I suppose I could rent you a capsule,” Connor said, not bothering to hide his annoyance. The capsules were pretty pricey.

“That’s all right,” Luis replied. “I’ll just keep watch out here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You have to sleep.”

“If I’m locked in another capsule, I might not hear if somebody comes after you.”

“It’s not like I get attacked every time I try to sleep,” Connor protested. But he could see from the look in Luis’s eyes that this argument wouldn’t get him anywhere. Luis had decided that Connor needed to be protected. And that meant not leaving his side, apparently. “So your idea of being my bodyguard is pretty much what other people would call a ‘stalker’?”

“Don’t you think your bodyguard should be nearby whenever you need him?”

“If I have to take a shit, are you going to come into the stall with me?” Connor asked him, irritated. “No, don’t answer that. We’ll save it for a surprise. In the meantime, if you’re going to be like this, you might as well just get in the goddamned capsule with me. They’re big enough for two, if
you don’t mind being snug. But leave everything you don’t need in the locker.”

Following his own advice, Connor stripped to his underwear. There certainly wasn’t going to be room in there to undress if Luis was inside with him. The one thing he brought in was his cyber deck.

Luis followed his example and stripped to his underwear, though he insisted on bringing his gun with him into the capsule. Connor prayed neither of them rolled over on it in the night.

It was pretty cramped when they were both inside and the door was locked, but thankfully the capsule had air conditioning. Not that Luis smelled bad. In fact, once he was stretched out beside Connor, his chest at the level of
Connor’s face, Connor found that he liked the faint masculine musk Luis seemed to radiate. The scent was clean and held a trace of the generic liquid soap available in the gym shower, but it was unmistakably manly.

It was impossible for their skin not to touch in this close space, but Luis didn’t seem to care. When Connor glanced up at his face, he found Luis looking at him thoughtfully with those beautiful dark eyes. Not for the first time, Connor wondered whether Luis was gay or straight. So far, he hadn’t given much indication—unless the fact that he had a strong desire to make himself subservient to another man was a sign.

“Um… just so we’re clear about this,” Connor began, uncertain how exactly to phrase the question, “Are you…expecting sex out of this arrangement?”

Luis shook his head, smiling at his discomfort. “No. Although I did my time giving hand jobs for money, so if you want me to get you off….”

“No,” Connor answered quickly. Luis was certainly not the first guy he’d known who’d resorted to prostitution to get by, so he didn’t fault him for it. But he didn’t want some guy helping him “get off” if the guy wasn’t enjoying it himself. “So you don’t like guys, then?”

Luis shrugged. “I guess I don’t really care one way or another. If I like someone, I’ll fuck them. It doesn’t matter if they’re male or female.”

“All right. That’s cool. I generally just like guys, myself.”

“Muy bien.”

That seemed to end the discussion. Connor wasn’t certain if he liked the fact that Luis had left the possibility of sex open. This guy was already complicating his life. If they started fucking around, it would get even more complicated.

* * *

Luis smiled at Connor and lowered his head to the pillow they’d be sharing. “I already have a job as a bodyguard.”

“I can’t pay.”

“Just feed me. That’s all I need.”

“And a ‘purpose’?”

“I want someone to protect,” Luis said, his voice beginning to sound sleepy. “I don’t like being the bad guy. Is that wrong?”

Connor sighed. “No, it’s not wrong. But you realize you’re protecting someone who steals and destroys data, don’t you? I’m not exactly a ‘good guy,’ myself.”

There was no response, and Connor glanced up to see that Luis had drifted off. Asleep, there was something innocent and childlike in his beautiful face. Of course, Connor had to remind himself, this was the man he’d just seen cut two men into tiny pieces.

When Telling Is Too Much

2011-11-17T16:26:00.001-08:00

I’ve just put down a book after being 130 pages into it. It was a marginally good story with lots of emotions I could identify with. The problem? The damned author was telling me every last detail, every nuance of emotion each character was feeling. He left nothing for me to discover, nothing to engage my brain. He spoon-fed me everything. He must think I’m a moron. What I think is, the story was boring because of the way it was told.

Unfortunately, the last two books I’ve read, by authors I respect, have shared this identical problem. It’s maddening. It’s sloppy writing and laziness on the part of the author. Yes, it takes more effort and creativity to show what characters are feeling, rather than simply telling the reader. If they want easy, then they should find something else to do other than writing. There is already enough bad writing on the market without them adding to the heap.

Give me actions!!! Don’t tell me the protagonist is mad. Show him punching his fist through the wall. Show me what they are doing, and let me figure out what the characters are feeling.

I feel like these writers should be made to write a screenplay because there is no telling, at all, in scripts. They would be forced to think about how to show what the characters are feeling. They would be forced to expand their creativity to find ways to express feelings through actions. That is the mark of a good writer.

The frustrating part for me is, I know both these writers can do so much better. I’ve seen them do it. They can both write rings around me when they are on…but not this time. It feels like they rushed to get these stories to market without spending the time to polish them. Sad.

Okay, I’ll step off my soapbox for now. I’m not mad, merely disappointed.

Ranting About Injustice

2011-11-14T16:27:00.001-08:00

I could be premature about all this, but I’m very pissed at a situation that happened yesterday. Herman and I have put our lovely home up for sale and yesterday, Sunday, was another of the many open houses that we have had over the last six weeks.

While we were gone and our agent was riding herd over a multitude of browsers, one couple came through the house and let their little boy run wild. The boy thought the sliding glass door was open (which it wasn’t) and ran into it head first, shattering the glass.

Luckily, the boy only received a small cut on his nose and no other obvious injuries. His father, a lawyer, left his card before taking his family on to the next house on their list.

Herman called for estimates this morning. Cheapest was $300 if we bring the glass door to them, with only a four-day wait. The most expensive was $575, but they come onsite and fix it here, with only a three-day wait.

The problem: Who Pays???

We called our insurance company, you know, those guys who take huge sums of money each month and give nothing in return. Their advice is for us to pay for it ourselves. EXCUSE ME? How is this our fault?

Their logic is, if we file an insurance claim just before moving, it will effect us getting insurance at our new home in Palm Springs, and will certainly drive the policy price up.

But now the interesting part comes in. They advise us not to try and make the parents of the kid pay because that might piss them off and they could sue us. Let me see if I got this straight, some jackoff brings his Tasmanian Devil into our home and lets him run wild, and because the boy gets a bloody nose, they can sue us?

Back in the day (fifty years ago) when children were seen and not heard, this would never have happened in the first place, because parents would have controlled their damned kids. But if the unthinkable did happen and the kid caused $300 of damage to a strangers house, the parents (at least MY parents) would have whipped out their checkbooks in a heart beat and covered the cost, then taken me to the car and given me a $300 spanking.

IMHO, that’s what a gentleman should do—cover the repair costs, apologize, and send a bottle of pricy wine to make up for any inconvenience to the home owners. Yet, everyone—Herman, the insurance company, the realtor—are all walking on eggshells worried that this lawyer will sue our pants off.

What has this society come to?

JMS Books LLC GLBTQ Short Story Call for Submissions

2011-11-12T14:57:00.000-08:00

JMS Books LLC <http://www.jms-books.com/> is a small queer press specializing in GLBT erotic romance. They release 3 e-books a week and 3 print titles a month. Authors receive 50% net on royalties from all sales.

There're currently looking for GLBT short stories in all subgenres. Stories must be at least 5,000 words and no more than 20,000 words in length.

Full submission guidelines can be found on their site at http://www.jms-books.com. If you're
responding to this particular submissions call, please send us the FULL MANUSCRIPT and don't worry about including a synopsis.

What are you waiting for? Show us your shorts!

J.M. Snyder

JMS Books LLC
A Queer Small Press
http://jms-books.com

Book Review: Deadly Kind of Love by Victor J. Banis

2011-11-10T08:21:00.000-08:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Pages: 215

When Chris Rafferty returns to his room at a posh Palm Springs resort, he finds a naked man in his bed. This is not so unusual considering this gay resort is known for satisfying their clientele’s needs with young hustlers, but this hustler is a little too stiff for Chris’s liking. This hustler is dead. Even before calling the police, Chris calls his good friends, Stanley Korski and Tom Danzel, a gay couple who are San Francisco private detectives.

Once Tom and Stanley take the case, they drive to Palm Springs and meet with PS homicide detective Dick Hammond. The three men confirm that the deceased was a hustler who worked the resort, and that he was murdered and dumped in Chris’s room.

Tom and Stanley check into the resort, and are given the royal treatment while they investigate clues. They have a hunch that the killer was one of the well-to-do gay clients, and that he is watching their every move. The closer they get to identifying the killer, the more bodies pile up until the killer decides to target the detectives. The boys soon find themselves in a deadly game and in over their heads.

Deadly Kind of Love is the fifth novel in the Deadly Series, and the third one I’ve read. It is told with the same delightful voice and quick pacing that Mr. Banis captures with each of these Deadly books. Fans of this series will no doubt enjoy this latest offering, as I did, to follow these sexy investigators through plot twists and turns.

Banis has created something special with this detective duo, and the mystery and motives fall second to the interplay between these characters. Still, I felt something lacking in their chemistry in this 5th book. The magic that I’ve seen in other Deadly books was there, but not with the same wit and intensity. I also felt the author rushed to reveal the killer and wrap up the ending, which I must say was, none the less, exciting.

Followers of the Deadly Series as well as mystery lovers in general will no doubt enjoy this latest outing from master author Victor Banis.

Exerpt: Haji’s Exile, a short story by Alan Chin

2011-11-07T07:45:00.000-08:00

This is a bittersweet coming out tale that follows a young rancher training his new horse for a handicap race. Like many of my stories, it is a yarn of two different cultures coming together, teaching each other, supporting each other, and eventually loving each other. Dreamspinner Press published it, and you can download the entire story, thirty-three pages, at: http://tinyurl.com/3okkmlj

Blurb:
Nathan has cared for horses all his life, but Haji is the first he’ll train on his own. When the Arabian stallion arrives at the Bitter Coffee ranch, Nathan thinks he is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. And then he lays eyes on Haji’s handler, Yousef. Nathan has much to learn about horses, about pride, and about love, but with the ranch’s hopes riding on Haji, he’ll also learn that all things have their price.

Excerpt:
To an owl or an eagle or even the lark, man must seem a rather pitiful and forlorn creature; he is condemned to crawl the earth alongside only two friends. The dog and the horse are the only exceptions to man’s universal unpopularity. Man points with pride at these two contrarians and naively believes that both are equally proud to call him friend. “Look at my two companions,” says man, “they are dumb, yet loyal.” I have always maintained that they are tolerant at best, and if man didn’t feed them, they would quickly join ranks with the majority.

I have nevertheless depended on the tolerance of horses and dogs since my childhood. I believe with all my fiber that until a man has loved an animal, a large part of his soul remains unawakened. Even now at my advanced age if I were deprived of the gratification of caring for either dog or horse, I would lose all that I hold dear. I should feel as adrift as a Muslim who had lost touch with Allah.

Horses in particular have been as much a part of my history as breathing. I define every phase of my life by which horse I owned then, or ones my father owned. Some were intelligent, some valiant, while others were rogues. None were alike. Some won the big handicap races and some won the smaller unimportant races. My family’s red and blue colors have swept past grandstands from Santa Anita to Bay Meadows. Some horses my father brought from the Eastern Seaboard, where old money and long bloodlines defined the sport. But one horse my father brought all the way from North Africa.

That stallion’s name was Haji.

When he came to the Bitter Coffee ranch, I was a straw-haired boy who had recently graduated high school, with a lanky body and wide, blue eyes. He was an Arabian stallion, part royalty and part desert whirlwind. I was awed by his self-possession, and I couldn’t help wondering what he thought of me.

He arrived at daybreak, descending the ramp from a two-horse trailer with the slow and dignified steps of Bonaparte in exile. With his head held high and nostrils flaring, he breathed the thin air of the Nevada high desert for the first time. Like me, he was a bit slender in the chest, but unlike me, he had strong legs as clean as limestone.

Sword Bearer, out of Cairo, had sired him, and noble blood flowed through his arrogant veins.

He was a sorrel, and his reddish coat gave off a golden sheen in the strong morning sunlight. Once his hooves stood on solid earth, his body shivered and his lungs let out a rush of air, as if letting me know he craved the freedom of open space again after being cramped in a ship’s hold and then in that trailer for so many thousands of miles. I heard a ring of certain gratitude in his undulant murmur.

Then I laid eyes on Haji’s handler. He had made the long voyage with the horse. The dawn’s rays lent his flowing white robes and tarboosh a shimmering orange-yellow hue, and I found myself momentarily stunned with a frozen gaze. Was it the splendor of the light reflecting off his flowing gown that dazzled me, or simply that this young man would wear a dress in broad daylight? Or could it have been his face, that porcelain-smooth skin the warm color of creamed coffee, accented by pitch-black eyebrows? His coloring was similar to the Mexican ranch hands who worked for my father and yet somehow softer. Whatever the cause, my compulsively chattering mind gave pause, and I was mentally whisked into a space of pure silence, broken only by the pulse beating at my temples.

My father walked to the thoroughbred and held the animal’s head steady, gazing into those large moist eyes. It was clear to me that the horse knew men. In his three short years, he had probably been around more men than his own kind, and from the bold stare he gave my father, I sensed that Haji understood that men were there to serve him, that we were his servants.

A tremor ran through the stallion, and he grew impatient. He shook his head free of my father’s grasp, bent the sleek bow of his neck, and kicked at the ground with a hoof. I instinctively knew that it was not that my father was a stranger but that Haji didn’t trust a man who did not smell of the earth. Even though my father owned a seven thousand acre ranch, he was a businessman and spent his time in his office or traveling.

My father stepped to the handler and laid a hand on his shoulder. “You must be Yousef. Welcome to the Bitter Coffee. Nathan will show you to your quarters. Come up to the house for breakfast after you’re settled.”

“Yousef,” I repeated in my head several times as I moved forward and grasped Haji’s halter. I felt foolishly happy at how the sound of it tumbled through my head. The stallion did not flinch at my touch, and as he took in my smell, he blew a snort into my straw-colored hair to warn me he felt nervous. I laughed, a low gentle sound which seemed to set him at ease.

The handler pulled a carpetbag from the horse trailer and stood beside me. As I glanced into Yousef’s cautious eyes, I inhaled his spicy fragrance, a mixture of horse and something else I could not identify, something vaguely like toasted sugar.

I tugged at the halter and both Haji and Yousef followed, flanking me all the way to the stables where I had already prepared the stallion’s stall. Haji stared straight ahead, glancing neither to one side or the other as if he were walking alone, like abdicated royalty, and we were merely servants trailing in his wake. He must have felt forlorn in this country of different sights and smells. It would be my job to manage him, and that included making him comfortable in this new environment. I felt much pride in that. Haji was my first horse to train. All my life I had cared for horses, learning their needs and habits, but always under the guidance of the foreman until now. Because of financial hardships, my father had let the foreman go. Haji was my responsibility, and Yousef would answer to me.

I could tell the stallion found the stall to his liking. The stable harbored a dozen other horses in a long row of stalls, but Haji’s quarters were separate from the others and twice as large.

Yousef seemed equally pleased with his own quarters next to the tack room, and though he didn’t say a word, he seemed surprised that he was given a room to himself. When he slid the tarboosh from his head, I realized he was much younger than I had first thought. I now guessed he was only a few years older than me, perhaps twenty, twenty-one at the most. And right then, he looked far more beautiful than moments before and seemed in desperate need of a friend.

I told him my name: Nathan. He repeated it twice and told me his name in broken English: Yousef Ruta. I knew then that it would be my job to teach him how to speak my language, which would be no small task. With hands waving and pointing to my own pants and shirt, I indicated he should change into more suitable work clothes and join me for breakfast at the house. It took several attempts, but he finally smiled and began to pull the white robe over his head. Much as I wanted to stay and see if the rest of his skin had the same warm coloring as his face, I turned and hurried out, giving him his privacy.

Later, after Yousef had changed into working clothes which included a shirt with flaps that hung to his knees and we had feasted on flapjacks, Yousef and I returned to Haji’s stall. While Yousef separated the good straw on the floor from the straw already soiled with urine and manure, I began to brush the stallion with clean, even strokes from mane to tail. As I worked, I felt anger rising within Haji, but I was not prepared when he bent his neck around and gripped my arm above the elbow with his teeth, biting down with enough force to make me yelp before flinging me against the wall.

I crumpled to the ground and lay in the trampled bedding for a moment, looking up into Yousef’s dark eyes. A wave of shame washed through me. I scrambled to my feet and marched to the tack room, selecting a riding crop that I had never needed before now.

I approached the stallion with a brush in one hand, the crop in the other. I spoke to him in soothing tones, telling him that he might have Sword Bearer’s blood, but I had a whip and I knew how to use it.

I began to brush him again while continuing to use soothing tones. But once more, I felt his anger swell. His hooves stomped, and his head turned with teeth bared. This time, however, I was expecting him. I struck his muzzle with the whip, hard and without mercy. I think he was more startled by the act than by the pain. The alchemy of his pride transformed the pain to rage that must have blinded him. He tried to bite again, and I struck his soft muzzle with all the force I could muster. He tried to whirl away from me but Yousef jumped to help and we held him firm. He reared upward, cutting the air with his hooves. Plunging, he felt my crop bite his muzzle again and again.

At that point, Yousef pushed me back toward the far wall and began to sooth the horse with caressing hands. The stallion slowly calmed under his touch.

When Haji became composed, Yousef lifted my brush from where it had fallen and began to brush Haji’s withers with a kind of intimate knowledge of how this horse wanted to be treated: that is, without any sense of possession.

I felt the sting of resentment, but then, more slowly, comprehension took its place.

Yousef waved me over. With he on one side of Haji and me on the other, I mimicked his strokes with my bare hands. The horse now accepted the soothing touch of my hands. Across the horse’s back, Yousef smiled at me in a way that made my stomach do a slow somersault.

Book Review: True Stories – Portraits from My Past by Felice Picano

2011-11-02T17:31:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin

Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions
Pages: 220

This charming collection of memoirs by author Felice Picano is written in fifteen vignettes. The author recounts tales of his childhood, his experiences as a GLBT publisher, his co-founding the now-famous Violet Quill Club, his early years as a journalist, and his encounters with the rich and famous—including Bette Midler, Tennessee Williams, W.H. Auden, Charles Henri Ford, and the queen of Twentieth-Century fashion, Diana Vreeland. For the most part, the author tells his story via his relationships with an array of fascinating people that helped guide his destiny.

I found this read to be compelling and deliciously entertaining. Many of these stories span the gulf between the post-stonewall flowering of gay culture to the harsh years of AIDS. Picano writes with wit, sensitivity and vivid detail. It is still hard for me to imagine that one person could cross paths with so many interesting people in only one lifetime, but the truly remarkable aspect is that he was able to capture those experiences in such a delightful collection of anecdotes and portraits.

Each vignette is equally entertaining as the others. Whether he’s talking about partying down with Bette Midler at the Continental Baths, or a not-so-simple road trip with his father, or caring for a dying business partner, or lunching with the dragon-lady of New York high fashion, I could not put it down. This is a book I will read over and over.

Halloween is my least favorite Holiday

2011-10-31T14:37:00.000-07:00

Easter, Mother’s Day, Groundhog Day, any of the special days, for me, are preferable to Halloween. I am always glad when October is over and they stop playing all the slasher movies on TV and the theaters. I’ve never cared for horror stories, books or movies, which is mainly why I don’t like this holiday. There are some exceptions:

1) The Birds
2) The first two Alien movies
3) The Shining

But all the rest, the monster, gore and slasher movies, you can shitcan for all I care. I’ve never understood why people enjoy them. But then, I suppose that’s why there is chocolate as well as vanilla. People have different tastes.

The only good thing about his day is seeing the very creative costumes people come up with. That I like, not for myself, as I’ve seldom liked going in costume, but I’ve seen others get incredibly creative, which is always fun.

So starting tomorrow, hopefully we will all have had our fill of ghosts and goblins and monsters and Freddy Crueger, and we’ll all settle into looking forward to Thanksgiving with more wholesome movie selections.

Feeling Grateful this Weekend

2011-10-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

Herman and I are leaving our house in the hands of our Realtor today while we go to a lunchon with some new friends in Northern California. The day is sunny and warm, indian summer is still upon us, and I'm feeling grateful.

We are having our fourth Sunday Open House today, and we're hopeful that we find a buyer so we can complete our purchase of a house in Palm Springs. Still, I keep looking around this wonderful home that I've lived in for the past thirty years and I can help feeling grateful for the time I've spent here. Life is good, and has been that way for some time.

The future is wide open, but I'm taken time now to love this present moment. Something I should do more often, I'm thinking.

Hope everyone reading this is also in a great space today. My best wishes go out to you all.

alan

Writing Tip #32 - Building Readership

2011-10-26T17:02:00.000-07:00

I belong to several online writing groups where topics about writing/publishing are bantered around endlessly. Most of it is both entertaining and interesting. Yesterday a writer posted his frustrations about not being able to grow his readership. He explained that he writes in a variety of genres—contemporary romance, historical, steampunk, paranormal, etc.—and his readers who like one genre drop him like a stone when they read another genre by him that they don’t like. He posed the question whether he should focus on one or two genres while he builds his readership.

He received an avalanche of advice—everything from narrowing his focus, to publishing many more books faster, to writing a series where the same characters are featured in several novels. I didn’t offer my $0.02 because I’ve not done that great a job of expanding my readership. But the question has been percolating in the back of my head so I thought I would blog about it as a way to clarify my thoughts.

It seemed to me he is focused on the wrong issue. His focus is on how to get more readers. It seems to me his focus should be on writing high quality stories, something that will knock the socks off readers, regardless of what genre it follows.

Admittedly, you can gather what I know about readers into a thimble and you’d still have plenty of room for other things, but I think what readers (at least this reader) enjoys most is: a great hook, fascinating character development, impeccable prose, a captivating plot, and an unexpected yet satisfying ending. Easy peasy, right? (grin)

My point is, in my view most readers don’t care if it’s contemporary vs. historical vs. paranormal. What they crave is a gripping, emotional story with quality writing. They want their emotional buttons pushed, and they want to enjoy the prose while that’s happening. If you can deliver that every time, in my humble opinion, then your readers will not only stick by you, they will clamor for more and tell their friends in the process.

My advice: write the stories you feel compelled to write, but focus on quality. If it takes you three years to deliver a quality product, then take three years. One of my favorite writers, Alex Jeffers, has only written three or four books in the last ten years, and each one is impeccable. I don’t care what genre he writes in, I will read anything he publishes because I know it will be great work. He never releases anything until it is entirely thought out and polished to a dazzling sheen. I have no idea if he has a large following, but I do know that all of the readers I’ve talked to who know him are as devoted as I am to his work.

Please don’t misunderstand; I’m not suggesting that my stories are in the same league as Alex Jeffers and Felice Picano and others of that caliber. What I’m saying is my focus is on improving my craft so that one day, hopefully, I will publish the kind of superior stories of those writers I so admire.

Build a quality mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door, or so the saying goes.

Simple Treasure Excerpt

2011-10-23T11:04:00.001-07:00

This story started as a screenplay that has yet to find a producer. I’ve turned it into a novella, and I think the story is stronger in prose format. Simple Treasure was released in all ebook formats on Aug. 31st of this year at Dreamspinner Press.

Here’s what Victor Banis had to say about Simple Treasures: “I just finished reading this - what a thrill I got from it. This is the  mega-talented Alan Chin at the peak of his form, one of those miraculous occasions when he surpasses mere writing and enters the realm of art. If  your spirit is hungry, here is manna.”

Buy Link: http://tinyurl.com/3hfajkf

Blurb:

Newly released from a mental institution, Simple’s first job is caring for Emmett, a crusty drunkard dying of cancer on a ranch in Utah. Simple’s first fragile friendship is with Emmett’s grandson Jude, a gay youth in Gothic drag who gets nothing but grief from his grandfather. In an attempt to help both men, Simple, a Shoshone Indian, decides to perform a ceremony that will save Emmett by transferring his spirit into the body of a falcon.  

Working to capture a falcon will bring Emmett and Jude closer as Jude and Simple’s growing love for each other blossoms, but all is not well. When the ranch, Jude’s future, and Simple’s happiness are threatened, more than Emmett’s spirit faces a bleak future.

Excerpt:

In the faint flush of predawn, a Kenworth sixteen-wheeler topped a ridge, forty miles east of Saint George, Utah. With only a half load to hinder it, the rig barreled along the interstate at twenty miles an hour over the speed limit. The driver hoped to make Las Vegas in time for breakfast. The truck rumbled on, unrelenting.

Simple rode shotgun, staring at a dusting of lights that looked like a pocketful of stars cast across a vast and lonely mesa. The iridescent specks reminded him of flickering candles at a funeral, although he had no memory of ever attending one, and he wondered if that metaphor was some ominous sign of what lay waiting for him in Saint George.

He had stayed awake all night, too excited to sleep. His eyes burned, and his mouth felt parched. He wanted a drink, but his water bottle was stashed deep in the backpack that rested on the floorboard, between his feet. Outside, the crowns of cottonwoods, tinged pink with the coming dawn, appeared to be pasted upon a gunmetal-gray landscape. With his peripheral vision, he saw the rearview mirror reflect beams of pale orange light that now chased him across the mesa.

The driver, Dale McNally, a high-school dropout with rough manners and rougher speech, couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. His eyelids drifted toward his cheeks at about the same rate as the Kenworth swerved off the highway. When the right front tire gouged into the skim of gravel on the highway shoulder, Simple grabbed McNally’s thigh and shook it. McNally’s eyes popped open, blinked. He eased the rig back onto the blacktop.

McNally had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, showing the thick, ropy muscles of his forearms. He wore a cowboy hat with a rattlesnake-skin band. The dashboard's lights cast an eerie glimmer across his face, and a thatch of dark hair spread out below his hat, covering his ears and hanging over his frayed collar.

“Christ sakes,” McNally barked, “I picked you up so’s you could keep me awake. Help me out here, boy.”

That happened often. Simple was twenty-five years old—a stoic ranch-hand life had made him look closer to thirty—but even men his own age, like McNally, called him boy, son, or kid.

“How?” Simple asked, suspiciously.

“I didn’t mean that. You made yourself perfectly clear about that.”

Simple relaxed.

“Talk to me. Do somersaults on the hood if you have to; just keep me awake.”

Simple cracked his passenger window an inch, enough for a frosty breeze to whistle through the cab. He stared out the windshield, silent as a stone, trying to think of something to say.

“Someone should invent an electrical device for drivers to wear under their hats,” Simple said, “to zap their balls whenever they get drowsy. It could trigger from the change in blood pressure at the temples when the eyelids start to fall.”

Dale snarled, “Don’t be talkin’ about my balls if you ain’t goin’ to do anything ’bout ’em.”

Simple changed the subject, babbling on about the city lights mirroring the stars on the horizon. The hypnotic cadence of his voice made McNally yawn, a mouth-stretched-wide-open yawn, that pulled his eyes off the road for a dangerously long time. His eyelids became heavy again, drifted to half-mast, then closed altogether. His head leaned forward, and the Kenworth wandered into the oncoming lane.

Headlights from a tour bus illuminated the cab like a prolonged flash of lightning. The light triggered a memory in Simple’s head. Blinding light, someone grabs a handful of Simple’s hair and yanks his head back while four men wearing white scrubs hold his arms and legs. He fights with all his will, but they overpower him. A voice bellows in his head, “Get his pants down.” Clothes are ripped away. The orderly holding his hair positions himself between Simple’s naked legs. Simple hears the echo of harsh laughter.

Simple shook the image from his head. He grabbed McNally’s thigh again and barked, not really a word, but rather a harsh warning.

McNally’s eyes flew open and he jerked the wheel to the right. The Kenworth swerved back into its lane, and McNally struggled to keep it from careening out of control. “I’m telling you, boy, you got to help me. Talk to me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me what an Indian boy like you is runnin’ from.”

“I ain’t running from; I’m running to.” One of Simple’s clearest childhood memories was constantly sneaking away from home with a library book under his arm. He felt the need to read alone, so that his family and the other kids wouldn’t tease him. Reading was not what boys did on the reservation. But he did. He had a favorite hideaway, in the cool shade of cottonwoods near the creek, where he would read the days away in the company of Twain, Hemingway, London, and Melville. But late in the afternoons, he would hear a door slam, and his mother’s voice calling the family to dinner. Then he would run, lickety-split, back to the house. All too often, by the time Simple had rushed to the kitchen, his grandfather was slathering the last ear of corn with butter, saying, “Too late, bookworm.” Simple would stare forlornly at the empty serving dish. Although Simple had few memories left, he suspected that he had been running all his life, that he was still running, as fast as possible, trying to claim that last ear of sweet corn.

“Shit,” Dale spat. “Even a knuckle scraper like me can see that you’re fresh out of prison. All your clothes still have the K-Mart tags.”

Simple lifted his arm and saw a price tag dangling from his cuff. He ripped it away and searched for a place to trash it.

Dale said, “Toss it out the window.”

Simple stuffed the tag in his shirt pocket. “I don’t remember much, only that they had me locked up. Not prison, some kind of clinic, but I have a job waiting for me in Saint George—” Simple pulled a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolded it, and read by the light of the dashboard, “—working for Lance Bishop.”

“Why do they call you Simple?”

“My grandfather named me that to always remind me that a warrior’s life is filled with simple treasures.”

“Could be worse,” Dale scoffed. “Be thankful he didn’t name you after Buttface Canyon, Nevada.”

“Sing me a song,” Simple said. “That will keep you awake.”

“I only know hymns, from when my mama took me to church.”

“Works for me.”

Nodding, McNally cleared his throat and bellowed, “‘Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me’.”

Dale’s whiskey-tenor voice soared over the engine’s growl. The tune was uncomplicated, with trilling and mournful notes, resembling both music and a sorrowful cry. It reminded Simple of a Shoshone death chant that his grandfather sang the day Simple’s parents died. He loved the way the long, flowing vowels tumbled from McNally’s lips, like a river meandering through a forest. Simple heard each tone and also the slices of silence separating the notes. It sounded stark and sometimes discordant, yet staggeringly beautiful.

In the gritty bedroom of a rundown trailer house, an alarm clock buzzed. Jude Elder’s head swiveled on a pillow, his body folded into a fetal position. He came awake and looked around the room, confused. He cleared his congested throat and banged the alarm off.

He flipped on a bedside lamp, squinted. Rings adorned his lower lip, nose, eyebrow, and a half-dozen crawled up one ear. His mascara was ghoulishly smudged. He rolled off the bed, stepped over a pile of laundry, and staggered to the doorway. As he opened the door, light from the hallway lamp revealed dozens of angry red scars crisscrossing Jude’s torso and belly.

His head hurt too much to think. He focused all his attention on not falling over.

He tottered to the shower and turned on the water. As steam rose, he stepped in, grabbed his dick, and began to masturbate—eyes closed, mouth ajar. Soon his hips bucked and his mouth twisted into a look of quasi-sexual pain. He opened his eyes and they rolled back. He groaned.

Moments later, with both his hands covering his face, he began to sob.

He lifted a razor blade from the soap dish and sliced two lines across his chest. Blood trickled over his pasty torso as tears streamed down his cheeks.

A few minutes later, Jude ambled down the hallway into his choky little kitchen. He had wrapped a towel around his waist, bandages covering his fresh wounds. He opened the refrigerator and snatched a Budweiser longneck, twisting the cap off and downing half. He seized a prescription bottle and shook the few remaining pills into his palm, knocking them back and washing them down with more beer. He tossed the two empty bottles into a sink filled with dirty dishes.

Jude grabbed another Bud from the fridge and cracked it open.

In the bedroom, Jude sifted through the pile of soiled clothes. He stepped into a pair of boxer shorts, his only pair of jeans, socks, and cowboy boots. He lifted a white shirt from the pile, sniffed the underarms, and tossed it aside. He picked up another, sniffed, tossed it. The third and last he didn’t bother to sniff. He laced his arms into the sleeves and buttoned it up.

He jerked a roach from an ashtray beside the bed, fired it up, inhaled, and downed more beer. He took another hit, then strolled back to the bathroom to reapply his eye makeup. In the mirror, he only looked at his eyes as he painted his mask. He couldn’t bear to see the rest of his face or the scars at the base of his neck.

On his way to the front door, Jude lifted a ring of keys off a plate on the kitchen table, then he stopped in front of a mynah bird chained to a perch beside the door. He snatched a food carton and shoveled seeds into the bird’s bowl.

“Loser! Loser!” the bird cawed.

“Now you sound like my dad, shithead,” Jude said.

“Loser!”

Other work by Alan Chin
Novels: Island Song, The Lonely War, Match Maker, Butterfly’s Child
Screenplays: Daddy’s Money, Simple Treasures, Flying Solo

http://AlanChin.net
http://tinyurl.com/d54rtd (Examiner.com articles)
http://AlanChinWriter.blogspot.com

Book Review: August Farewell by David G. Hallman

2011-10-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: iUniverse, Inc.
Pages: 167

In August of 2009, Bill Conklin was diagnosed with stage-four, pancreatic cancer. Only sixteen days later, Bill died. Bill’s partner of thirty-three years, David Hallman, narrates this sixteen-day journey interspersed with vignettes drawn from their rich and varied life together.

For the most part Bill was unconscious during his last weeks, so this memoir is more of David Hallman’s experience of caring for and letting go of his lover after a long and beautiful relationship. This book started as a personal account for David, as he wanted to document the details of those last weeks together before his memory began to fade, and much of it does seem like a personal diary.

I found the book well written with good pacing except for one issue. It is written in present tense. The author states up front that all these events happened in 2009, and then voices his story as if it were happening as he tells it. I found this very jarring, something that bothered me from first page to last.

One thing I found fascinating is that, one week after Bill’s diagnoses, he was bedridden, in much pain, couldn’t eat, couldn’t talk, didn’t even have the strength to suck water through a straw, yet they continued to keep him alive for as long as possible—another nine days of pain. If he were a horse, they would have mercifully shot him. Why, in this day and age, can’t we find the compassion for humans that we have already found for animals?

This is not a pleasant story. It is told with poignancy, humor, affection, and a good deal of tears. But be aware, I found this to be a depressing read. A bright spot is that the author delves into their life together: their commitment to environmental justice, love of the arts, love of traveling, and their deeply felt Christian beliefs.

This is a tale of letting go, a journey through the past to gain the strength to endure the separation. This is not a book I can recommend to all readers. Perhaps to readers who have made similar journeys, or people preparing for their own loss.

Reading John Cheever

2011-10-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

I’ve recently been trying to buy a house in Palm Springs, so I’ve been on the road what seems most of the time between San Francisco and PS. It is a nine-hour drive along some of the most boring farmland in Central California. The good news is that Herman and I have found the perfect house for us. We’ve put in an offer and it has been accepted. Now all we have to do is sell our home in Northern California, which has been on the market for three weeks. (No takers yet)

I’ve not been getting a lot of writing done on those long drives. This last trip I took along a collection of John Cheever short stories. I confess I knew zilch about Cheever before I began to read his elegant prose. But after the first story, I fell in love with this writer. He writes rather dark, poignant stories about upper-class families, who always seem to fall from grace. His copyrights range from 1946 to 1972. I’ve read six of his stories so far—loving each one—and there is not a happy ending in sight. He deals with real human dramas, that leave the reader hanging a bit, because that is the way life is.

One of his stories, The Swimmer, was made into a movie some decades ago and stared Burt Lancaster. I had a bit of a crush on Bert so that movie has always haunted me, and reading it today has rekindled that feeling. It’s a brilliant story of a man who uncovers his past by swimming in all his former neighbors swimming pools on his way to what he thinks is his home.

I’ve always loved short stories, but in the hands of a master like Cheever, I am reduced to worship. The short story, to me, is the hardest medium to write. One has to totally capture a turning point in a characters life, with little backstory and the mere hint of what the future holds. To do it well takes brilliance.

It’s sad and also funny for me. When I read authors I admire, like Alex Jeffers and Victor Banis, I realize how far I still need to travel down this literary path before I’ll consider myself an accomplished writer. But when I read writers like Cheever and Steinbeck and Capote and so many others, I begin to think that I don’t have enough time left in my life to travel that far.

But as Homer points out in The Odyssey, it is not the destination but the journey. So I trod on.

Book Review: Bob the Book by David Pratt

2011-10-15T16:03:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions
Pages: 184

Bob is a book about pre-nineties gay porn, complete with many hot pictures. He is delivered to a Greenwich Village bookstore, where he goes on sale beside another book, Moishe, whose title is Beneath the Tallis: The Hidden Lives of Gay and Bisexual Orthodox Jewish Men. Bob and Moishe fall in love, but are separated by an unlikely buyer.

As Bob journeys through sales tables, used book bins, different owners, and lecture halls, he meets a variety of other books and people, but he’s always hunting for Moishe.

Bob finds himself in a peculiar position; both he and his owner are searching for love. Both seem to find something, but it’s not ideal for either of them. Can Bob, being at the mercy of people, somehow find fulfillment? Can his owner find the same contentment? All I can say is, it’s not easy being a book in love.

This is one of the most delightful stores I’ve read all year, and the fact that it is a debut novel only adds to the pleasure. On the surface it seems like a whimsical love story, both for Bob and his human owner, as well as several other book couples. But under that simplicity, there are some important life lessons to be examined. There is much Zen-like wisdom woven into this enchanting tale, lessons on taking one’s self too seriously, and of striving for things that are not important, just to name a few.

The pace and tone never drags. This story carries the reader along with many funny twists regarding the literature industry. Of course it’s not at all believable, but it is an extremely well constructed love story, both for the books and human characters.

What amazed me most was in the examining these books’ personalities. By giving them human characteristics, the reader clearly sees where humans spin their wheels dealing with unimportant life issues.

Readers who are familiar with the publishing industry will especially appreciate this novel, but all readers can enjoy this wonderfully smart and touching book. Because the main characters are books, it transcends every boundary of gender and sexual orientation, making it an entertaining read for men and women, boys and girls, gay and straight. That’s its genius.

Book Launch Party and Triple Author Reading.

2011-10-13T09:01:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, October 25th at 7:30pm
Location: Books Inc. at 2275 Market Street in San Francisco

Book Launch party for Rob Rosen's new book, Southern Fried. With guest authors from the neighborhood, Alan Chin reading Butterfly's Child and Simple Treasures, and Mark Abramson reading Wedding Season as well as from his soon to be released new book.

If you’re in the SF Bay Area, come out to the Castro and join the fun.

National Coming Out Day

2011-10-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

Today (October 11th) is National Coming Out Day. I’ve been out of the closet for the past thirty-five years. But I still remember the painful fallout that occurred when my family and some friends failed to understand and support me. Thankfully that is no longer an issue with me, but I know many young (and not so young) people today are faced with the same discrimination I felt, or they are firmly locked in their closets fearing that discrimination.

To these people and others, I continue the fight to support equal rights for every man, woman and child, regardless of race, sex, religion, or sexuality. I fight bigotry in my writing, in my actions, and in my attitude towards others.

I am no saint. I am nobody special. I am no better or worse than any other person. I simply see the truth that we are all equal. We are all human. We all have our differences, our fears, our joys and our contributions to the whole. We all have the right to live a life free of discrimination for who we are. We all have the right to share our life with the person(s) that we choose to love.

Voltaire said: “We should be tolerant of everything except intolerance.”

But my favorite quote on this subject comes from Dr. Seuss: “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

Book Review: Butterfly Dreaming by Dave Lara & Bud Gundy

2011-10-09T17:26:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: CreateSpace (Nov. 14th, 2010)
Pages: 334

Banat Frantz is a Jewish boy growing toward manhood in Germany when Adolf Hitler comes to power. At an early age, Banat already feels the animosity directed toward his family. He experiences shame and fear, but doesn’t understand what it is that makes him different from those who hate. His upper-class family is stripped of almost everything before fleeing to Holland, where they think they have escaped Hitler’s grasp. But within a few years the Nazis invade Holland and they are made prisoners and shipped to work camps.

Banat grows into puberty while living in a concentration camp, and what he discovers is that his growing lust is directed at other boys, not girls. By now he knows to hide his feelings of being different than others. But when he meets Dovid, (yes, Dovid with an ‘o’), he falls in love. What starts as an adolescent crush deepens into a consuming love that will sustain Banat through the horrors that await him.

Soon the family is split up, and Banat and his father are shipped to a different camp. Over time they are shipped to several work camps, all the time moving closer to Auschwitz. Banat and Dovid are separated as well. By cunning and trickery, Banat does manage to survive the end of the war, and he goes about trying to track down his splintered family and bring them together again. There are joys and tragedies to be endured, and then the search for Dovid begins. Can Dovid have survived as well? Can the lovers reunite?

This is not an easy story to read, due to the shocking way the Jewish characters are treated by other Europeans. The horrors described both before and in the concentration camps is heartbreaking. But there are joys as well. Even in these brutal conditions and knowing what awaits them, they find love and tenderness, not just with Banat and Dovid, but other characters as well. This story is a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit, and also of the power of love.

Banat is a perfect character, exhibiting both qualities and faults, as he comes of age and maturity within the most brutal conditions. He must fight for survival, yet with his being gay, he can’t confide in his own family. With death and anguish a constant, he must somehow explore the depths of love, need and joy. And he does so with virtue and morality.

But this story goes far beyond the concentration camps. Once the war is over, Banat must continue to strive in order to reunite his family. This brings both joy and sadness, and in the end grows bitter because he finally comes out to his family. Banat turns away from his parents and continues his search for Dovid. He becomes involved with the emerging gay scene in Paris, and begins to explore his sexuality. But the despair of not finding Dovid eventually drives him across the Atlantic, hoping for a new life in America, and a chance to forget. He finds that new life, but in a most unexpected and beautiful way.

This story is a fascinating inner journey from adolescence to manhood, from innocence to love. As I said, it is a hard story to read, but well worth the time and emotional turmoil. WWII history buffs will especially appreciate this tale, but this is a story everyone can appreciate and grow from.

Smack Dab open mic guest co-host Wonder Dave

2011-10-07T17:26:00.000-07:00

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

Wayne Hoffman joins us as featured performer.

Wednesday, October 19, 8pm, open mic signup starts at 7:30 At Magnet, your neighborhood queer health center, 4122 18th Street between Castro and Collingwood.
http://www.magnetsf.org

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

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

Featured performer bio:
Wayne Hoffman’s cultural reporting has appeared in the Washington Post, Village Voice, The Nation, Tablet magazine, The Forward, and The Advocate.
He's the author of Hard and the new book Sweet Like Sugar, which is about a young man wrestling with his faith, a man of faith wrestling with his youth. An unexpected friendship lies at the center of Sweet Like Sugar (Kensington Books), Wayne's new novel about fate, identity, and getting past our personal prejudices. But it’s also about Kurt Cobain, class stratification in the DC suburbs, Space Mountain, the Book of Esther, the war in Iraq, Israeli dance, Jewish summer camp, Barack Obama, Miami's bar scene, the Holocaust, interfaith relationships, immigrant communities in Jersey City, Will & Grace, crystal meth, kashrut, Sammy Davis Jr., and much more.

Buying a New House

2011-10-05T17:02:00.000-07:00

Today, for the first time in over thirty years, I made an offer on a house. Herman and I found a sweet little home in central Palm Springs that is a perfect living space for us. We love everything about it. We've been back four times to check it out, and with each viewing, we loved it more. So today we scrawled out signatures on a offer. We bid 75K less than the owners were asking, so there is no guarantee they will accept. However, our agent is very optimistic.

So if all goes well, Herman and I could be in a new home and a new city for the holidays.

Taking More Than You Need

2011-10-03T17:16:00.000-07:00

I’m visiting some friends today, who happen to live in a three-story house on seven acres of land in the mountains east of Bakersfield. I visit here several times a year, and every time I do they put me to work. Today I pulled weeds and stacked three cords of firewood. On the inside, I scrubbed the kitchen down--sinks, walls, counters, and appliances.

Why all the work? As I said, these guys live in a gigantic house on seven acres. Pile on top of that the fact that they both work fulltime jobs, and you begin to understand that they never have enough time to keep their place up. There is always a ton of things that needs doing. Normally, they need to hire help to get things done, which is not cheap.

So whenever I’m here I try to help out. I don’t mind. I like to help in any way I can. I feel sorry when I see their garden go to pot, or their house fill with dog hair.

But each time I come down to work, I can’t help thinking that these guys have bitten off more than they can chew. The result seems to be that they are constantly working their weekends away to stay abreast of the upkeep, and there is a constant flow of their money into hired help when they fall short. At times it seems to me that this place is a prison for them, keeping them pinned here doing hard labor and keeping them behind the eight-ball financially.

Before they moved here, they rented a two-bedroom condo in town with a yard just big enough for one dog. Honestly, I think they were much happier then. They had lots of free time and plenty of cash for those weekend getaways.

To me this is a lesson in not taking too much. The more you have, the more time, money and energy it takes to care for it. This week I will be house hunting for a home for my husband and I, a place we hope to grow old in, perhaps the last place we’ll ever live. And our guiding principle will be "do not go after more house than we need." We want quality, but we also want to downsize. We’re looking for something easy to maintain as we age, only large enough to be comfortable.

The older I get, the more I realize the old adage 'less is more' can be very true.

Book Review: Captain Harding’s Six-Day War by Elliott Mackle

2011-09-29T18:47:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Lethe Press
Pages: 248

In 1967, Captain Harding is working his way up the promotion ladder within the U.S. Air Force. He’s a go-getter with a head on his shoulders and a talent for fixing problems. He is also gay.

The story begins with Captain Harding arriving at his new assignment, the post of executive officer for Wheelus Air Base in Libya. It’s a bit of a disappointment for Harding, who knows that he needs a tour in Viet Nam on his record before his next promotion will be approved. His mood takes a nosedive when he realizes his real assignment is baby-sitting the base wing commander, a loose-cannon named Colonel Adger. Harding is stuck taking care of administrative details while Adger constantly flies off to play golf with the bigwigs.

Captain Harding is on base for less than a week before he is bedding and enlisted medic and a rather studly major. Harding makes it clear that he likes to play the field, and is not the type of man to fall in love and be monogamous. And play the field he does, including going to a private party that turns into an all male orgy where he is the center of everyone’s attentions.

During his sexual adventures, he also strikes up a friendship with the American ambassador’s sixteen-year-old son. The two form an instant crush on each other, and Harding must wrestle with the ethical aspects of forming a relationship with a minor. The more his strong moral sense fights the idea, the deeper he falls for this lovely, precocious kid.

While dealing with a series of misadventures—including the murder of a gay serviceman, a flight-surgeon’s drug abuse, the death of his former lover in Viet Nam, and trying to protect a woman accused of being a lesbian because she refused to have sex with her superior officers—Harding must constantly protect himself from being exposed as a gay man. Three officers suspect him, and they attempt to out him at every turn.

In the run-up to Israel’s Six-Day War, a mob attacks the embassy in Tripoli, which takes Harding’s boss, Colonel Adger, over the edge and into madness. He steals a fighter jet and sets out to attack an Arab warship in order to force America into the war. To bring the colonel back safely and keep America out of the war, Harding must out himself while talking the colonel back to base. But can he do that? Can he throw his career away in order to save a man he loathes?

This is a rather compelling book that I have mixed feelings about. It is extremely well written, perfectly structured, and moves at a fast, exciting pace. Mackle captures a brusque voice that suits this military setting perfectly. There is conflict at every turn, and also tender moments.

Yet, I more than once felt I was being set up for something that the story failed to deliver. For instance: the opening pages describe the brutal murder of a young airman who was suspected of being gay. This seemed the perfect hook for a murder mystery, right? But then the story moves on and nothing else is said about the murder until the last twenty pages. I found it rather strange that a book that starts in such a way, simply drops that topic. There is no mention of an investigation, the resolution, nothing.

Then Harding’s last commanding officer, which Harding had some sort of sexual three-way relationship with, sends Harding a note threatening to expose the Captain. However, after the note, it also was dropped and nothing was done to deliver on the promise.

Lastly, the setting itself promised something grand, the Middle East leading up to the Six-Day War. I expected a rather smart, political thriller. Yet, the story focused on Harding’s sexual exploits and his efforts to keep them secret, along with his realization of deeper feelings for that special someone. I felt a bit disappointed that there were only a dozen or so pages that really delved into the war tensions.

Still, this is a compelling read. It is a very sexy story of finding love in the most unusual of places, and also a tale of battling bigotry to save yourself. The author does a brilliant job of defining the protagonists/antagonists. This is definitely a them-verses-us type story, and no matter how little or how much the reader likes Harding’s character, s/he cannot help but pull for him all the way to the last page.

The ending is a bit open ended, and very satisfying. This is a story that I can highly recommend.

The Lonely War

2011-09-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

I was editing my second novel today, preparing it for republication with Dreamspinner Press. I was moved by the following passage and wanted to share. The following, then, is an excerpt from my novel, The Lonely War.

December 24th, 1944 - 1000 hours
Each day the number of POWs diminished. The prisoners conducted their morning ritual of checking their comrades who were unable to rise from their bunks. A man who could stand with help had five days to live; if he sat up but couldn’t stand, he had three days; if he couldn’t rise at all, he'd be gone by the next sunrise.

Andrew worked the burial detail, hauling the bodies onto carts for the long march out the gates, digging new graves beside the old ones, listening to the soulful words of Chaplain Moyer. He buried them all the same, captains and corporals, foot soldiers and orderlies, undistinguishable and anonymous. Mass graves were the final humiliation. Emaciated limbs became confused and tangled, fleshless faces pressed cheek to cheek, bodies huddled together as if seeking warmth, and the black dirt to absorb their souls, transforming their lost youth into fertile earth. That became the crude face of war. Not the stratagem of politics manipulated by leaders of nations or the chess game of generals played miles from the battlefields, war is the tragic and anonymous deaths of human beings whose seeds are lost forever.

The astonishment of being a survivor pressed on Andrew. Beriberi, dysentery, malaria, starvation, and suicide had swallowed a weighty toll over two and a half years. With each burial detail Andrew's sense of guilt deepened. Guilt was by far his most cumbrous burden. The miraculous events that shepherded him under Tottori's care were all that had kept him alive to bury the less fortunate. While handling the bodies, he felt utterly grateful for his good fortune, and at the same time, outraged.

The bodies had begun to whisper to him as he stacked them in the pits. Hideous, mournful, accusing rasps called to him. Even when he piled on the dirt—covering those gaping mouths, staring eyes, frozen facial expressions—the sound still filtered through, drumming in his ears. He threw himself into the digging and soon his exhaustion numbed his mind. It was the only way to silence the dead.

After a brief service, Andrew shuffled to Hut Twenty-nine to wait. Prison was waiting—for sunrise when you could not sleep, for chow when your stomach ached, for the hot part of the day to pass, for your hands to stop trembling from the horror of handling the dead, for a bath to wash away death's stench, for Tottori's sensuous caresses.

Andrew never thought beyond the next goal he waited for. The passing years had become an orderless jumble. The notion of time no longer existed. His only measure of time's passing was the accumulation of whispering corpses in the black dirt.

The sky opened up with a late morning shower. Water dripped from thatch roofs and gathered in storm ditches. Dust turned to slippery goop, but that didn’t stop Andrew from rushing to his bunk. He dropped his shoulder bag and removed his sarong before dashing out the doorway to have his nakedness enveloped by the rain's fleeting coolness. His body welcomed the stinging drops as he performed the fastidious movements of tai chi.

The reek of death seeped away. His mind soared beyond the voices in his head, lifting, lifting, until he floated above the clouds as his earth-bound body achieved one elegant position after another.

By the time the sun had brushed away the clouds, painting the sky blue, his mood had turned serene. The voices retreated. Returning to his bunk he took up Jah-Jai and played a soulful tune.

Only a few men were in the hut. John Allard was giving Kelso a haircut. Nash and Banks sat at a wooden table playing acey-deucy. Cord and Smitty played the food game. It had become a popular pastime where prisoners tried to out-torture one another.

Cord closed his eyes and his voice carried a note of rapture. “Pastrami and Swiss cheese on toasted rye bread with plenty of mustard and an icy beer to wash it down.”

Smitty groaned. “Mama's ravioli with three kinds of cheese and a bottle of Chianti.” He smacked his lips while Cord twisted in agony.

“Cold sliced peaches with gobs of whipped cream on top.”

Kelso shouted down the hut, “Shut the fuck up until after lunch, for God sakes.”

Book Review: Kaleidoscope by Anel Viz

2011-09-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

Publisher: Silver Publishing: ISBN: 9781920501037
Reviewer: Victor J. Banis
4.75 stars out of 5.

Blurb: In these seven stories, the author explores people's shifting views of each other, of the images they project, and of themselves. Individuals fragment, the pieces fall into ever-changing patterns like bright confetti in the base of a kaleidoscope, and our ideas about sexuality color what we see.

My review:
This is an utterly unique – I can say without hesitation “fascinating”-- collection of stories and anecdotes, like nothing I’ve ever encountered before. It is certainly beautifully written and on the surface, at least, written with a great deal of insight into human behavior – but with a disclaimer in the author’s preface, in which he states that “We never truly know another person; we do not truly understand ourselves.” What the author presents here, then, is a never entirely reliable and often changing look at various situations in which various people find themselves, but, he warns us, “None of them are omniscient.” So, this collection is not about some vague “truth,” but rather about perceptions, and these changing perceptions are the kaleidoscope of his title. And the insights may not be insights at all, but erroneous perceptions.

It is both an intriguing conceit and at the same time somewhat distancing. When George, in Polygon, says, “No man would ever talk about the intimate details of his marriage bed with his buddies” which is patently untrue, since men do this all the time, is the author wrong? Or George? Or, maybe just this perception? Nothing, here, is necessarily what it seems – or, if I understand correctly, necessarily not what it seems either.

Well, there are worse sins for an author than ambiguity – Hamlet, anyone? Certainly the stories are thought provoking. And libido provoking as well. There is nothing, really, in the way of raw sexuality and yet sex permeates everything, either in its presence, or in its absence – although we’re not always quite sure if it is present—or absent. Still, these tales are, I should say, as much about sex in its various permutations, as they are about anything. But, sex in many different lights.

It’s worth mentioning that the author covers a lot of ground age-wise, too—teens and high school grads and seniors, and pretty much everything in between. Same with gender and (at least perceived) sexual orientation. It seems, when one has finished, that there must be more than the seven stories the volume includes, but no, only seven, just with much to say.

Proteus is about a gay college professor in his late sixties, and a handsome young student who, we realize gradually, likes older men and is trying very hard to come on to him—but the prof insistently rebuffs the young man’s advances—he doesn’t like younger men and he’s not interested. He says. But, what to make of this passage, which hardly exemplifies disinterest: With Bramson sitting almost directly in front of him, Edmund had a ringside view of the boy and his assets. His legs were a definite asset, muscular and shapely, his thighs big enough so the gym shorts dug into them when he bent his knees. They were looser around his hips, so his endowment did not fill them, but Edmund guessed it was fairly generous. The tank top hugged his upper body, outlining his pecs and nipples, and sometimes it rode up so you could see his navel. The muscles in his arms were very hard, and the hair in his armpits and what little he had on his arms and legs as blond as the hair on his head.
I found this story perhaps the most erotically charged of the collection.

In Roomies (this one more a collection of anecdotes than a story), two of the three young men who share a condo, Marty the swish and Denny the butch, go camping together:
Both felt that they shouldn't have sex; both wanted to. Marty was mostly concerned that if they did it would put a strain on their easy relationship back at the condo, not that there was much chance of them becoming lovers and Art ending up left out. Denny was too promiscuous for that. Anyway, Art had a boyfriend. Denny, on the other hand, was afraid that it would leave him feeling unsatisfied since he would want to flip-flop and Marty, a committed bottom, wouldn't.

Which seems straightforward enough—except that the author has already told us that this narrator, like all the others in the book, isn’t omniscient—this is just his take on things. Which is to say, maybe the boys did, and maybe they didn’t. How would he know? Just as in the real world, what happens and what someone tells you happened may not be the same thing.

In Photographic Memories, Tanner was seen leaving a bar with the man who supposedly murdered him. With his photographic memory, Kyle, who saw them leave together, would seem to be the perfect witness—except he isn’t sure if he saw the accused, or someone he knew from his own past. Those perceptions again.

Facing the Music offers us Joe and Max, who more or less stumble into a sexual relationship which quickly gets them in trouble with their homophobic church, and they are sent to a reindoctrination camp intended to make heterosexuals of them. It maybe works. Or maybe it doesn’t.

In Kevvy, we get, Rashomon style, three different versions of the same story about a trio of teens, mostly leading up to gay Kevin giving straight Arthur a blow job, seemingly at Arthur’s insistence. As the author puts it in his preface, “None of the versions of "Kevvy" is entirely accurate however, (Kevin's may have been, but we hear it from Cole, who editorializes heavily)”
Robbie, in Since the Reunion, is perceived by some as straight, by others as bi – and his own perception of himself varies—but, as the author points out, he may be as reluctant to reveal his true sexuality to the reader as he is to the two friends in the story.

So, what on earth is one to make of this? Comic Brother Dave Gardner was wont to say, “don’t tell me your doubts, I have enough doubts of my own, tell me something you believe.” There isn’t much here to believe, it seems. What is there to grab hold of, to anchor one to these people, their adventures? Maybe nothing. Which of course is entirely true to life.

The author is right in his premise that the ambiguity in these pieces reflects real life – it is true, we never really know ourselves, let alone one another. But the best writing—the best in any art—doesn’t merely mimic life, but illuminates it. Art is a mirror that we hold up to ourselves, in the hope that we will see ourselves in a different light—as when walking down a street, we catch a glimpse of ourselves in a store window, and both recognize ourselves, and see ourselves differently. Good writing, the best writing, functions as that store window.

Do I see myself in these windows? I see a lot of questions (is that really me?) mostly without answers, or where there seem to be answers, they quickly morph into another question.
Or maybe, the author is suggesting, the question is the answer?

Still, I found this collection intriguing and intelligent, and savored it mightily. Like everything else I’ve read from this author, it’s refreshingly different and I came away from it after two readings (and I suspect there will be many more) with much food for thought and with my sense of how things are somewhat roiled—which may have been exactly what the author intended. This is not—nor do I suppose it was intended to be—for everyone, but for the reader of a certain discernment, it affords considerable pleasure, if mostly of a reflective kind.

One thing cannot be disputed, however: the author’s prose is elegant beyond reproach, as clear and dry—and as bracing—as a good martini – which, perhaps, is the apt metaphor with which to end this review—I found myself shaken, not stirred.

My $0.02 on book reviews

2011-09-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

I am a member of several online groups for writers. In the last few months I’ve noticed many published writers obsessing over what they perceived as bad reviews of their books. Invariably, most of these reviews are posted on Goodreads.com, a site where anybody with a keyboard can voice their opinions.

Being both a published writer and a reviewer, I have mixed feelings. Like most writers, I hate some reviewer saying anything negative about my books, simply because my work is a reflection of my inner self, and I’ve never been one who enjoys criticism. But I also understand that when I do put my work out there, it becomes something larger than ‘my work’. The story, the words, the message all do a dance with the reader, and depending upon the reader’s life experiences, that dance will be different from anything I ever imagined. That is the beauty of literature. Unlike movies (where you are spoon fed everything) a book is unique for each reader because each reader will interpret the words differently, depending on their own life experiences. And that is wonderful. The reader makes the story his/her own.

That said, there are many people in the world who focus on what they perceive as negative and overlook the positive, they read something that touches a raw nerve and they attack. There are also readers, perhaps most, who have no clue about what constitutes well-structured literature. They don’t know a three-act structure from a character arc. And that is fine; they don’t need to know. The point I’m inching toward is, there are tons of uninformed readers who are happy to spout their uneducated opinions, not only on Goodreads.com but online review sites, and they are free to do that. But why get upset when they do?

In my four years of being published, I’ve come across only a handful of writers and reviewers whose opinions I respect, because they have demonstrated a depth of knowledge in the field of literature. When they criticize my work, which they have, I pay attention. I learn from them, and I am grateful for their feedback. All these other reviewers don’t affect me. I know that my work will not please everyone, and I’m cool with that.

I’ve come to think that what’s important is not trying to impress readers or reviewers, even the reviewers I respect. When a writer does that, the work ends up being insincere. I believe it is far more important, at least for me, to please myself. If I can be true to me and accurately express my inner vision, then at least one person will be happy with my work.

As for the idea that a few negative reviews will chase buyers away from my books, evidence supports the opposite. Even bad reviews will spur a reader to purchase a book. According to articles I’ve read, it is not so much what the reviews had to say, but more a factor of how many times the reader sees a mention of the book. The magic number seems to be seven. A book pops up on a reader’s radar seven times, no matter what was said, and that reader is likely to buy that book. Go figure. I suppose that’s why TV advertisers flood the airwaves with the same damn commercials hour after hour, day after day.

So my advice to writers is be happy readers feel strongly enough to write anything about your work. Then go back to your desk and focus on the business of writing your next story in the best way you know how. Make it so damned good that you, at least, will know it’s the finest work you can do.

Book Review: The Third Buddha by Jameson Currier

2011-09-19T18:39:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions
Pages: 322

Ted Bridges, a twenty-something law student, drops out of school and moves to New York to look for his brother, Phillip (“Pup”) who disappeared the day the World Trade Center towers fell. Ted moves into Pup’s Chelsea apartment and tries to piece together his dead brother’s life. Both brothers are gay, but very different. Pup was out and loved to socialize, loved being gay. Ted is closeted and has had little to no sexual experience with other men. Through the process of living in his brother’s shadow, what starts as a search for his brother turns into a search for his own sexual identity. Learning about his sibling and what it means to be gay through Pup’s friends and ex-lovers, Ted, over a period of several months, becomes his own man living a gay lifestyle.

Half a world away in a different decade, two international journalists, Ari and Jim, travel in Afghanistan. They are separated after their vehicle explodes from a roadside bomb. Ari awakes with no memory. He is taken in by hill-tribe Muslims and, for a time, becomes one of them. Jim recovers in an army hospital, and later pulls strings in order to travel back into dangerous Taliban controlled Afghanistan to find his lover, Ari.

These are two very dissimilar stories, both about searching for a loved one, but still very different in character and nature. Ted’s story is told in first person, Ari and Jim’s story is told in third person. These tales are very loosely linked by a few minor characters who live in New York, friends of Pup.

Many stories I’ve read that swing between two or more different plots has one story that intrigues me, and the other doesn’t. The Third Buddha was no exception to this rule. I found Ted’s search to be poignant and fascinating. I felt his pain and confusion, and was pulling for him all the way through his wonderfully convincing character arc.

Jim and Ari’s story I found flat, overly predictable, and often tedious. Currier did a marvelous job of creating a realistic environment of war-torn Afghanistan, and the writing was certainly accomplished, but the author keeps the reader from getting too close to his characters in this part of the book. Currier constantly switches between Jim’s adventures, to Ari’s hardships, to flashbacks of their relationship before being separated (way too many flashbacks for my tastes). This constant fractured storytelling became frustrating. It felt to me like I was following the story from an altitude of ten-thousand feet when I wanted to be right there on the ground. It simply didn’t have the same intensity as Ted’s search for Pup. And the fact that it took no guesswork to figure out exactly what would happen didn’t help.

The title, “The third Buddha” refers to an archeological site in Afghanistan where scientists search for a giant statue of the Buddha. It is near this site where tribe’s people take in Ari. This search for the statue is used as a symbol of the ongoing pursuit for something bigger than ourselves. And, of course, that is what both these stories are about.

Jameson Currier is a talented writer who has created an important and thought-provoking book. These are credible characters who experience gut-twisting emotional hardships and victories. It is a book I can highly recommend, even if it doesn’t find a place on my “favorite’s” shelf.

Book Review: Woke up in a Strange Place by Eric Arvin

2011-09-15T18:12:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Victor J. Banis
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
ISBN 978-1-61581-795-5

Joe wakes up in a barley field with no clothes, no memory, and no idea how he got there. Before he knows it he’s off on the last great journey of his life. With his soul guide, Baker, and a charge to have courage from a mysterious, alluring and somehow familiar Stranger, Joe sets off through a fantastical changing landscape to confront his past.

The quest is not without challenges. Joe’s past is not always an easy thing to relive, but if he wants to find peace—and reunite with the Stranger he is so strongly drawn to—he must continue on until the end, no matter how tempted he is to stop along the way.

I confess that I found myself of two minds while reading this book, part of me quite enchanted and part of me – the writing coach part – perturbed by some bad writing habits, particularly in the first 20 or 30 pages. Indeed, I nearly stopped reading and tossed the book into my “No, thanks” pile.

Let me quickly say I’m glad I did not, because once we got past a slow start, the book turned out to be a magical and often highly original interpretation of the mythical journey for the truth, the hero quest.

So let me start by waxing eloquent on what is good—make that very good-- about the book. First, as I said already, it’s a fresh and original take on an oft used theme (though not so often in gay or m/m fiction). Joe, the protagonist, wakes up in what he thereafter insists on thinking of as Heaven, although his spirit guide, Baker, keeps insisting that this isn’t that, at least not in the sense that he perceives it.

And like all seekers after truth, Joe sets out on a journey, without really understanding where it is he’s headed. At the onset, Joe’s memory seems mostly to have vanished, but as he journeys, memories come back to him, he meets people from his past, some of them changed, some of them not, and he sees scenes from his life in a different light.

I can’t get into all of Joe’s adventures here, and I wouldn’t want to anyway. Following them for yourself, taking your own journey, is way more fun, and more instructive, too, but the author displays a vivid imagination, sometimes humorous, sometimes profound, and nearly always charming. It would be very difficult, for example, not to be enchanted by The City of Thought, where people fish in the clouds with crystal poles for dreams and ideas. I’d book a vacation there any day. What gay male wouldn’t enjoy a stopover with “the brethren,” a sort of Heavenly fraternity house peopled with all the drop-dead gorgeous men of one’s dreams, all super endowed, all there for nothing more than the joys of endless sex? Hey, it may not be what they sing about in Sunday school, but it sound pretty heavenly to me. You can have the golden slippers.

Not everything is brightness and light, of course, in this journey any more than in your own life. There are some dark patches, some genuinely scary interludes, and some painful lessons to be learned.

There is that slow start, however, and the problems I mentioned earlier, and while I can’t exactly do a blow by blow (and what would be the point, since the book is already published?) it would be unfair to the writer to mention them and not provide a few examples of what I mean. Anyway, they are the sort of thing that a diligent writer can and should correct, which is to say it will benefit him in the longer run.

First, though, it will help if I explain that good fiction, short or long, is like a dream shared by the author and the reader. The author wants the reader to forget that he’s reading a book, and sink into the dream, experiencing it for himself. So, the cardinal sin for the author is anything that jars the reader out of the dream, reminding him this isn’t real, it’s only a book.

That is why, however clever it makes the author feel, this is not the time to show off one’s impressive vocabulary. The reader may be impressed, but he will also be jarred out of the dream. Even if he doesn’t jump up and rush to the dictionary, it will still give him pause to come across a word that makes him puzzle. Anyway, if he has no clue what “aureate grass” is, you’ve wasted your description. When given a choice between fancy, scholarly words or phrases, or the common language of everyday, choose the everyday. Most of your readers will be everyday people, and they will stay entranced, as you want them.

Victorian writers were fond of addressing the reader directly: “Little did she know, dear reader, when she climbed the stairs…” The author doesn’t do a lot of this, but phrases like “he could remember nothing of before, our hero…” smack of Victoriana. Remember the dream – when you are addressing your reader directly, you are reminding him this is only a book, a story you’re telling him, and not something he’s living as he reads it.

And there’s a lot of just plain old-fashioned overwriting. When Baker extends his hand to Joe, “…it secured a tight grip around Joe’s own…” It would be much simpler and clearer if he just took Joe’s hand in a tight grip, wouldn’t it? Or, when Baker “took a bite from his apple, first remembering to remove the cigarette that still hung from his lip…” I suspect most readers wouldn’t imagine him chomping on cigarette and apple together, but if the cigarette must be dispensed with, couldn’t the horse go before the cart?

Also, the book goes on a bit too long after the real story –which would be Joe’s journey—is ended. There’s an art in knowing when to bring down the curtain. No matter how clever what you add in after that point, it’s doing handstands just to show the reader you can do them. Save that for the lawn party when the book comes out.

Okay, yes, nitpicking, and I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t think the author had a genuine talent – but talent alone is not enough. If a writer wants to get better, he must work at his craft as well. The real problem with these problems is that they are first-book mistakes, and this is not a first book—which raises the question, is the author learning? Or content to slide along? Now, I do know that not every writer wants to get better at it. There are those who really aren’t interested in getting good, just in getting successful – they are two different goals, and don’t always go together. This author is good enough, however, that I can’t help thinking he will want to do better. I hope so.

Still, this is a delightful book, one that I think most readers will enjoy aplenty. And, yes, you will probably guess before he gets there where it is Joe is journeying to. Or perhaps not even journeying to, since the author is offering an alternate universe in which all the logical rules needn’t apply—which is to say, maybe he’s already there, maybe always was, just not conscious of it. I am reminded of Stephen Levine’s description of the desired state of being: “Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to be.” Which, maybe, is what Heaven means.

Amazon giving away eBooks???

2011-09-14T17:29:00.000-07:00

I read an article yesterday which disclosed that Amazon has approached several large publishers with the idea that they want to charge a flat yearly rate to their privileged customers, and for that fee, the customers would get unlimited free downloads of eBooks. It is the same concept that Netflix uses for streaming films.

It is not clear at this point how the publishers and authors would be compensated, so the author blogs are buzzing today, and not in a good way. I think much of the problem stems from nobody trusting Amazon to treat the authors fairly. But there is a valid concern, and I'm confident that publishers will be looking out for the interests of their stable of writers. After all, Netflix pays billions in licensing fees to the movie studios.

While I hear many writers proclaiming that the sky is falling, I welcome the change. I for one love Netflix. I watch one movie per night, and this has allowed me to give up watching all network, and even cable TV. The idea of paying a monthly service charge and having unlimited access to thousands of films has changed my life. Not only have I given up watching TV, but I rarely go to movie houses to see first run movies. I am content to wait until Netflix lists them.

So how would my life change if I could get the same type of service for books? First off, as a reader, there are a number of books that I haven’t read because they are expensive. Now I could read them under the same low yearly fee.

As an author, I believe that I would actually sell more books under Amazon’s new plan. More people will read books if they can get dozens of books for one low yearly fee, and there is no reason to think that my books would not be included in that mix. I’m convinced my readership would grow.

I think my only fear, shared by many, is that Amazon would become even more influential in the world of book retailing. It is already a monster that is at the core of changing the entire book industry. This will give them even longer teeth. But then, no doubt B&N and others will follow in the path they blaze.

It is clearly too soon to tell, but I think this is a great idea. After all, isn’t this the same idea of libraries? Time will tell if the authors end up getting screwed, but you can bet your boots, if anyone does get screwed, it will be the very people who created the stories in the first place.

Book Review: Simple Treasures by Alan Chin

2011-09-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Victor Banis
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Pages: 136

Only the mediocre artist is always at his best – this is why we rightly judge an artist on the body of his work rather than on a single sample – we may just have gotten the wrong sample, that particular book when the writer’s aim surpassed his reach. It happens, but only to the true artist.

I’m happy to say that this time the goal was not beyond the artist’s reach. Simple Treasures couldn’t be a more fitting title for this offering from one of the best writers in the arena today, Alan Chin – because this is indeed a treasure, though writing this good is never really as simple as it looks. Here, as in his best work (but no, of course, not every time) the author goes beyond the confines of writing and enters the realm of art, and his genre is made the richer for it. As both a writer and a reader, I came away from this tale feeling that my experience—of life, of literature - had been greatly enhanced.

The title character, Simple, is a Shoshone. He has just been released from a mental hospital, where he has been abused essentially for the crime of being different. He is offered a job by Lance Bishop in the town of Saint George, Utah. Bishop’s father, Emmett, is an irascible drunk who has driven away every other caregiver – but in fact, Lance wants his father kept drunk. He plans to have his father committed and take control of the ranch, which he means to sell to developers. At first, Emmett rejects Simple’s overtures as well, but he soon recognizes a kindred spirit. There is a romance, too, between Simple and Emmett’s gothic-gay grandson, Jude.

Emmett is dying of cancer, and the ever present vultures roosting atop the barn provide a Greek-chorus reminder of imminent death. It was his wife’s death that sent Emmett into this long, downward spiral of grief and self-pity. Simple’s memory is dead, too—or as he himself explains it, his memory gets flushed clean each night. And Lance is dead to the pleasures of life or the soul. Even Jude is infected, convinced that for him there is no Life for him here, in this town--that Life exists elsewhere, in San Francisco to which he plans to escape.

But that is only the story as told by the words. The real story is written between the lines, and it is about nothing less than the encroachment of death, and the reaffirming of life, through love, through dignity, and the oneness of all existence. A man becomes a memory, a falcon becomes a man, and love bridges the illusory abyss that separates us one from the other. And how magically the author weaves his story, painting indelible pictures from nothing more, it seems, than mere wisps of smoke.
Deep in the human body—yours, mine, everybody’s—there is just one soul that we all share, as if we’re just tiny pieces of the same puzzle…That’s why we’re here in the first place, to make our sliver of the soul shine like the sun.
Chin doesn’t write erotica, but it would be a colder heart than mine that wouldn’t melt sharing Jude and Simple’s “first date” – fishing in Bitter Creek.

Simple’s pole jerked toward the water. “Jesus, I’ve got one.” He hauled the pole back to set the hook.
“Give him line,” Jude said. “Play him.”
Simple leaned out over the water, retrieving line.
With a wicked giggle, Jude shoved Simple, who tumbled into the water and was swept downstream, still holding the rod high over the water. Laughing, Jude ripped off his hat and boots and flung himself into the water. He was swept along, fighting his way toward Simple.
They met in the swirling water and pumped their legs until they stood in the shallows. They shared a sensual hug and kiss. When they broke apart, Simple held up a trout…

Simple sets out to help Emmett transcend his looming death by restoring his dignity and by transferring his spirit into the body of a falcon, and the story climaxes in a stunning ceremony in which man and falcon battle for supremacy while Simple dances and chants himself into an exhausted stupor.

Simple began to dance again. His feet stomped the ground with the same rhythm that Emmett had pounded out with his cane. He chanted and his voice grew in volume…the wind died. Everything went silent—even the crickets hushed—as if the universe were holding its breath. A minute later, the bird shrieked. In the distance, the sound of the wind drifting through the trees grew into a steady pulse, like the slow beating of a heart.

The author occasionally slips into the habit of repeating words where a different word would work better—and although I’m not generally in favor of censorship, I think the writing world would be better for having the word “then” banned from usage by all penmen. And he has developed a tendency to slide into melodrama, which is simply not his forte. Happily, that is minimal here.

Never mind. This is a stunningly beautiful literary effort. In the end, I cannot tell you if the story is a good or a bad one – those are intellectual considerations, but this is not a story told from or to the intellect, it is told from the heart. As Simple tells the old man, Some things can’t be talked about. Words only confuse it.

Book Review: Young Love, Too Soon Gone By Nowell Briscoe

2011-09-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Victor J. Banis
Publisher: MLR Press
Buy: www.mlrbooks.com

A bittersweet tale of, yes, young love, from a refreshing new voice in the genre of gay fiction.

Jack, the narrator, picks his story up more or less in the middle, when young Max sends him a note asking to see him. They meet at a pizza parlor, and as they chat, the story gradually unfolds of the young lovers, Max and Zach – how they met as boys, how friendship became passion and ultimately love – but a star crossed love that ends in a tragedy.
The story does not end with the tragedy, however, as the author cleverly carries us not only backward in time, but forward as well, and gives us, if not a happy ending, one with the promise of happiness to come.

I don’t want to spoil the story by giving too much away, and since the plot is a fairly uncomplicated one, there’s not much I can say about how the early story develops. Suffice to say that the tragedy springs from a family’s blindness to a son’s sexual reality and their insistence on some kind of “normalcy.”

Interestingly, the author manages to create a lot of sexual tension without a lot of sexual activity. To be sure, he and Max share with one another memories of some explicit experiences in the past, but the real sexual tension comes from the attraction that Jack feels for Max and which it appears is reciprocal, and this tension mounts when the pair go from the restaurant to Jack’s apartment to finish their conversation. Neither of them, however, seem to know quite what to do about their attraction—if it is even mutual, and like Jack, we’re never entirely sure of that--and the reader comes away from the scene thinking that after all maybe it was better that they let the moment pass.

What makes this story enjoyable beyond its barebones is the sincerity with which it’s told. One gets a sense that this is something more than a work of fiction, a feeling that the author is simply sharing with his readers his own touching experience. The characters are true to life, and one almost imagines he is in the room with them listening to them talk. I think most of us, like the narrator, have been in those situations where we thought there was a mutual attraction, but we weren’t entirely sure, or weren’t sure how to make anything happen. What makes this work so well is that, just as in real life, we aren’t entirely certain if the other person is feeling the same or if we are just misreading the signals. Make a move, or not? Will I only end up making a fool of myself? Surely we’ve all been there a time or two.

This author also writes a series of columns for his hometown (Monroe, Georgia) newspaper, a series of reminiscences of growing up there, which I have been fortunate enough to read, and the writing in this story is in very much the same voice, more a conversational one than a literary one.

Which only adds to the sense of verity, as if you were catching a glimpse, through a window, of real life. Whatever flaws this story has, it has the great virtue of believability. It rings true, and that is not an easy thing for any writer to accomplish. Hats off to Nowell Briscoe for this, his debut story.

EquaLITy Romance is here

2011-09-07T18:08:00.000-07:00

Are you an author who writes GLBT romance? EquaLITy Romance is here. A bi-monthly publication for those who write stories of romance and adventure through the prism. This print publication will have a distribution of several thousand to events, conferences, bookstores, coffee shops as well as subscriptions.

EquaLITy Romance can help you increase your audience through:
· New Releases. Free new release listings

· Writer’s Cave. Participate in this fun romp into the writer’s world, your world, and get your name and website noticed.

· Short Stories. Give readers a taste of your talent by submitting a short story. We’d like to include one M/M romance and one F/F romance in each issue. We offer advertising as payment.

· Articles. We’re open to ideas. Do you have something to share such as the history of a sub-genre? What do you think readers would love to know more about?

· Advertise. Lots of ad sizes with affordable rates. Free website links on our website for advertisers. See Ad Rates on the website for more info.

· Authors Who Imagine More. Do you have a charity close to your heart? Do you believe we can make a difference? Enter the contest to win free ad space for you and your charity.

Be a part of the premier issue!
DEADLINE IS SEPTEMBER 9TH
For more information please visit our website at: www.equalityromance.com

If you know of an event you’d like to see EquaLITy Romance attend, give us a shout at: equalityromance@hotmail.com

Donna Keihle
Editor

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 7 of 7

2011-09-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #7:

Written by Alan Chin

With three novels published, I spent four or more hours per day promoting my books, all the time thinking there must be an easier way. Then a fellow writer told me I should become a screenwriter if I didn’t like promoting. Screenwriters write movie scripts, sell them to studios, and the studios do the promotion. That sounded great to me. And how difficult could it be writing movie scripts? I mean, I’ve sat through volumes of movies thinking: I can do better than this….

I started by taking a college-level screenwriting class, which gave me the basics on formatting and structure of screenplays. I then joined a group of screenwriters who met once per week to critique each other’s work and help each other through the process of writing and polishing their screenplays. It was a fun group of talented writers, and with their help and encouragement I began to learn at Concord speed. At first I found it difficult to write screenplays. One has to strip away everything except what is shown on the screen. No long descriptions, no internal dialog, no telling what the characters are feeling. Only showing, mixed with dialog. You have to strip away all the flesh of a story until there is nothing left but bones.

I found that I loved that process, because it drove me to analyze the heart of the story, and also of each subplot. Then came the hardest part, making sure that specific turns in the story happen on specific pages. Movie scripts are incredibly structured, and industry professionals expect certain plot points on certain pages. It’s maddening, yet I began to relish the challenge of it.

In a little over a year I produced two screenplays, Daddy’s Money and Simple Treasures. Now came the time to sell my scripts to a studio. I now believe that for an unknown writer, it is perhaps a million times harder to get a movie professional to read your script than it is to get a publisher to publish your book. Nobody wanted to read my scripts. I spent a year before I finally managed to convince an indie producer/director to read Daddy’s Money. He loved it, even wanted to make the movie. The problem? He had no extra money to do the project. It takes millions to make a movie, and few people are willing to gamble that kind of money on an unknown scriptwriter.

I’ve spent a few years banging my head against producer’s doors with no result. During that time I wrote another screenplay, Flying Solo, and published another novel, Butterfly’s Child. I am now in the process of rewriting my screenplays into novels because I have lost confidence that I will ever see them made into movies.

I keep writing both screenplays and novels, and I keep promoting my books on the internet each day. I occasionally ask myself how much longer I will keep working to produce my stories, and more importantly, why I produce them. With all these many hours of work, it seems there must be more to it than the gratifying pleasure that a well-written story brings, both in the reading and the writing.

I know the answer, but to explain it I’d like to share a letter from a reader I received back in April of this year. I’ve gotten to the point where I regularly receive emails from readers telling me how much they enjoyed my stories, and although I love reading them, I no longer get too excited over them. But every once in a while one pops up in my inbox that is special. I’d like to share one with you that came shortly after the tsunami hit Japan earlier this year. She is talking about my novel, The Lonely War, and my offer to send all profits during the months of April and May to the Red Cross Japanese Relief Fund.

Dear Alan,

So beautifully written, and so very bittersweet. Thanks for what you did with it. I got it at the beginning of the month so that the funds could go to Japan. I should have had two boxes of facial tissues handy before I started reading though...I went through one and had to resort to drastic measures (papertowels, lol). Bravo.

For myself I'm declaring this week Alan Chin week. Because right now you're my own personal newly minted hero. Thank you for helping me remember that each person can make a difference.

May You Be Well,

And I responded to her with a heartfelt, thank you back, for helping me remember why I write. Because it’s true, whether it’s donating money, lending a neighbor a hand, or simply capturing with words the truth you find in your heart and sharing that, one person can make a difference in the world.

This seven-part series tries to chronicle how I became a published writer with a reputable publisher. It’s actually the path I took to make a dream come true. Reaching a new goal often means letting go of something you cherish. I gave up a seventeen-year corporate career with a highly esteemed company. How did I do it? I simply took the first step, then followed my heart. I’ve learned my craft as best I can, and I keep leaning each new day. Most importantly, I didn’t let any setback stop me.

What I hope you glean from my experience is that it is possible to follow your passion. And when you do, good things happen. Don’t wait for time to become right. Face your fears, make a plan, and take the first step.

You can find out more about Alan Chin and his books at http://alanchin.net

My new novella: Simple Treasures

2011-09-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

I’m very proud to announce the release of my new novella, Simple Treasures. This story started as a free giveaway on my website, but then I expanded and polished the story, and Dreamspinner Press has published it in all ebook formats. Please take a moment to read the first chapter below.

Simple Treasures
By: Alan Chin | Other books by Alan Chin
Published By: Dreamspinner Press
ISBN # 9781615819362
Word Count: 33,853 Heat Index=Mild
Available in: Mobipocket (.prc), Epub, Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Reader, PDF

Buy Link

About the book
Newly released from a mental institution, Simple’s first job is caring for Emmett, a crusty drunkard dying of cancer on a ranch in Utah. Simple’s first fragile friendship is with Emmett’s grandson Jude, a gay youth in Gothic drag who gets nothing but grief from his grandfather. In an attempt to help both men, Simple, a Shoshone Indian, decides to perform a ceremony that will save Emmett by transferring his spirit into the body of a falcon.

Working to capture a falcon will bring Emmett and Jude closer as Jude and Simple’s growing love for each other blossoms, but all is not well. When the ranch, Jude’s future, and Simple’s happiness are threatened, more than Emmett’s spirit faces a bleak future.

An excerpt from the book
Chapter One

IN THE faint flush of predawn, a Kenworth sixteen-wheeler topped a ridge, forty miles east of Saint George, Utah. With only a half load to hinder it, the rig barreled along the interstate at twenty miles an hour over the speed limit. The driver hoped to make Las Vegas in time for breakfast. The truck rumbled on, unrelenting.

Simple rode shotgun, staring at a dusting of lights that looked like a pocketful of stars cast across a vast and lonely mesa. The iridescent specks reminded him of flickering candles at a funeral, although he had no memory of ever attending one, and he wondered if that metaphor was some ominous sign of what lay waiting for him in Saint George.

He had stayed awake all night, too excited to sleep. His eyes burned, and his mouth felt parched. He wanted a drink, but his water bottle was stashed deep in the backpack that rested on the floorboard, between his feet. Outside, the crowns of cottonwoods, tinged pink with the coming dawn, appeared to be pasted upon a gunmetal-gray landscape. With his peripheral vision, he saw the rearview mirror reflect beams of pale orange light that now chased him across the mesa.

The driver, Dale McNally, a high-school dropout with rough manners and rougher speech, couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. His eyelids drifted toward his cheeks at about the same rate as the Kenworth swerved off the highway. When the right front tire gouged into the skim of gravel on the highway shoulder, Simple grabbed McNally’s thigh and shook it. McNally’s eyes popped open, blinked. He eased the rig back onto the blacktop.

McNally had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, showing the thick, ropy muscles of his forearms. He wore a cowboy hat with a rattlesnake-skin band. The dashboard’s lights cast an eerie glimmer across his face, and a thatch of dark hair spread out below his hat, covering his ears and hanging over his frayed collar.

“Christ sakes,” McNally barked, “I picked you up so’s you could keep me awake. Help me out here, boy.”

That happened often. Simple was twenty-five years old—a stoic ranch-hand life had made him look closer to thirty—but even men his own age, like McNally, called him boy, son, or kid.

“How?” Simple asked, suspiciously.

“I didn’t mean that. You made yourself perfectly clear about that.”

Simple relaxed.

“Talk to me. Do somersaults on the hood if you have to; just keep me awake.”

Simple cracked his passenger window an inch, enough for a frosty breeze to whistle through the cab. He stared out the windshield, silent as a stone, trying to think of something to say.

“Someone should invent an electrical device for drivers to wear under their hats,” Simple said, “to zap their balls whenever they get drowsy. It could trigger from the change in blood pressure at the temples when the eyelids start to fall.”

Dale snarled, “Don’t be talkin’ about my balls if you ain’t goin’ to do anything ’bout ’em.”

Simple changed the subject, babbling on about the city lights mirroring the stars on the horizon. The hypnotic cadence of his voice made McNally yawn, a mouth-stretched-wide-open yawn, that pulled his eyes off the road for a dangerously long time. His eyelids became heavy again, drifted to half-mast, then closed altogether. His head leaned forward, and the Kenworth wandered into the oncoming lane.

Headlights from a tour bus illuminated the cab like a prolonged flash of lightning. The light triggered a memory in Simple’s head. Blinding light, someone grabs a handful of Simple’s hair and yanks his head back while four men wearing white scrubs hold his arms and legs. He fights with all his will, but they overpower him. A voice bellows in his head, “Get his pants down.” Clothes are ripped away. The orderly holding his hair positions himself between Simple’s naked legs. Simple hears the echo of harsh laughter.

Simple shook the image from his head. He grabbed McNally’s thigh again and barked, not really a word, but rather a harsh warning.

McNally’s eyes flew open and he jerked the wheel to the right. The Kenworth swerved back into its lane, and McNally struggled to keep it from careening out of control. “I’m telling you, boy, you got to help me. Talk to me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me what an Indian boy like you is runnin’ from.”

“I ain’t running from; I’m running to.” One of Simple’s clearest childhood memories was constantly sneaking away from home with a library book under his arm. He felt the need to read alone, so that his family and the other kids wouldn’t tease him. Reading was not what boys did on the reservation. But he did. He had a favorite hideaway, in the cool shade of cottonwoods near the creek, where he would read the days away in the company of Twain, Hemingway, London, and Melville. But late in the afternoons, he would hear a door slam, and his mother’s voice calling the family to dinner. Then he would run, lickety-split, back to the house. All too often, by the time Simple had rushed to the kitchen, his grandfather was slathering the last ear of corn with butter, saying, “Too late, bookworm.” Simple would stare forlornly at the empty serving dish. Although Simple had few memories left, he suspected that he had been running all his life, that he was still running, as fast as possible, trying to claim that last ear of sweet corn.

“Shit,” Dale spat. “Even a knuckle scraper like me can see that you’re fresh out of prison. All your clothes still have the K-Mart tags.”

Simple lifted his arm and saw a price tag dangling from his cuff. He ripped it away and searched for a place to trash it.

Dale said, “Toss it out the window.”

Simple stuffed the tag in his shirt pocket. “I don’t remember much, only that they had me locked up. Not prison, some kind of clinic, but I have a job waiting for me in Saint George—” Simple pulled a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolded it, and read by the light of the dashboard, “—working for Lance Bishop.”

“Why do they call you Simple?”

“My grandfather named me that to always remind me that a warrior’s life is filled with simple treasures.”

“Could be worse,” Dale scoffed. “Be thankful he didn’t name you after Buttface Canyon, Nevada.”

“Sing me a song,” Simple said. “That will keep you awake.”

“I only know hymns, from when my mama took me to church.”

“Works for me.”

Nodding, McNally cleared his throat and bellowed, “‘Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me.’”

Dale’s whiskey-tenor voice soared over the engine’s growl. The tune was uncomplicated, with trilling and mournful notes, resembling both music and a sorrowful cry. It reminded Simple of a Shoshone death chant that his grandfather sang the day Simple’s parents died. He loved the way the long, flowing vowels tumbled from McNally’s lips, like a river meandering through a forest. Simple heard each tone and also the slices of silence separating the notes. It sounded stark and sometimes discordant, yet staggeringly beautiful.

IN THE gritty bedroom of a rundown trailer house, an alarm clock buzzed. Jude Elder’s head swiveled on a pillow, his body folded into a fetal position. He came awake and looked around the room, confused. He cleared his congested throat and banged the alarm off.

He flipped on a bedside lamp, squinted. Rings adorned his lower lip, nose, eyebrow, and a half-dozen crawled up one ear. His mascara was ghoulishly smudged. He rolled off the bed, stepped over a pile of laundry, and staggered to the doorway. As he opened the door, light from the hallway lamp revealed dozens of angry red scars crisscrossing Jude’s torso and belly.

His head hurt too much to think. He focused all his attention on not falling over.

He tottered to the shower and turned on the water. As steam rose, he stepped in, grabbed his dick, and began to masturbate—eyes closed, mouth ajar. Soon his hips bucked and his mouth twisted into a look of quasi-sexual pain. He opened his eyes and they rolled back. He groaned.

Moments later, with both his hands covering his face, he began to sob.

He lifted a razor blade from the soap dish and sliced two lines across his chest. Blood trickled over his pasty torso as tears streamed down his cheeks.

A few minutes later, Jude ambled down the hallway into his choky little kitchen. He had wrapped a towel around his waist, bandages covering his fresh wounds. He opened the refrigerator and snatched a Budweiser longneck, twisting the cap off and downing half. He seized a prescription bottle and shook the few remaining pills into his palm, knocking them back and washing them down with more beer. He tossed the two empty bottles into a sink filled with dirty dishes.

Jude grabbed another Bud from the fridge and cracked it open.

In the bedroom, Jude sifted through the pile of soiled clothes. He stepped into a pair of boxer shorts, his only pair of jeans, socks, and cowboy boots. He lifted a white shirt from the pile, sniffed the underarms, and tossed it aside. He picked up another, sniffed, tossed it. The third and last he didn’t bother to sniff. He laced his arms into the sleeves and buttoned it up.

He jerked a roach from an ashtray beside the bed, fired it up, inhaled, and downed more beer. He took another hit, then strolled back to the bathroom to reapply his eye makeup. In the mirror, he only looked at his eyes as he painted his mask. He couldn’t bear to see the rest of his face or the scars at the base of his neck.

On his way to the front door, Jude lifted a ring of keys off a plate on the kitchen table, then he stopped in front of a mynah bird chained to a perch beside the door. He snatched a food carton and shoveled seeds into the bird’s bowl.

“Loser! Loser!” the bird cawed.

“Now you sound like my dad, shithead,” Jude said.

“Loser!”

Book Review: A Hundred Little Lies by Jon Wilson

2011-08-31T17:28:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Cheyenne Publishing
Pages: 211

Jack Tulle owns and runs the general store in the sleepy town of Bodey, Colorado. He and his eight-year-old daughter live above the store. For years he has played the doting father, honest businessman, member of the town council, and pillar of the community. He is respected and admired by all.

But then the local saloon announces plans to hold a professional poker tournament that boasts an impressive grand prize. It is sure to draw the West’s elite card players, which could cause Jack Tulle to loose everything he cares about. You see, for eight years Jack has been living a lie, and lies are like termites, where there is one, there is a whole nest. Lies multiply and build on themselves until you’re standing on a rickety platform that could collapse at the slightest gust of wind. And this poker tournament could prove to be a hurricane for Jack.

The author very cleverly reveals Jack’s hundred little lies one or two at a time. The first reveal comes in the form of Tom Jude, a card shark that Jack used to run with. When Tom shows up a few days before the tournament, the two are reunited and the reader realizes they were more than friends, they were—and still are—in love with each other. After some fairly hot sex, the reader finds they were more than lovers, they were partners-in-crime. Both men were card cheats, con men, and always available for an opportune swindle. They were hard drinking, hard fighting scoundrels.

As more old “business acquaintances” come into town for the tournament, Jack finds himself scrambling to maintain his deception by piling on more lies to the town’s folk. But of course the more lies that accumulate, the more truths that are uncovered. And the reader discovers that at the bottom of the heap are some truths that are much worse than cheating at cards and the odd swindle. Jack is hiding something that could send him to prison, perhaps even the hanging tree. He knows he should simply leave town until everything blows over, but he can’t abide leaving Tom Jude again.

And of course Tom Jude has his own secrets, and Jack feels compelled to get to the bottom of them before it’s too late.

This is a funny, moving, delightful romance. What struck me most is the enchanting voice the narrator takes on, reminiscent of Mark Twain, which adds so much pleasure to the experience. The story is skillfully crafted, and because it takes place over just a few days time, the author goes into delicious detail with each scene.

Because of that detail, the reader is able to drill down into the many layers of the main characters and also the secondary characters. As the layers are pealed away, the tensions rise, making Jack and Tom arc, that is, develop as characters, making this a well-rounded and very satisfying story.

In poker terms, this book is an ace-high straight flush; only it’s anything but straight. It is an exceptional debut novel by a writer everyone should keep on their radar screen. I highly recommend this story to all readers.

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 6 of 7

2011-08-29T16:23:00.001-07:00

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #6:

Written by Alan Chin

In October, 2008, a seed I had planted and nurtured and worked toward for several years had finally flowered. My first book, Island Song, was published. As I held a copy in my hands, I said to myself, “You’re now published, and what you’ve written will have an effect on readers. Who knows how many people will read this?”

My euphoria wore off in only a few days, and reality settled in—if I really wanted many readers to be effected by my novel, then I needed to let them know about it. Up until that point I had thought the whole writing/editing/publishing effort had been hard work, but now I needed to market my book, and I had no idea of where to start.

I read a study that claimed over 80%—over 80%!!!—of all books published in 2006 sold less than one-hundred copies. They attributed this sad statistic to the fact that most publishers do nothing to promote books unless well-known authors write them. Add to that, most writers are dismal at marketing. They sell a few dozen books to friends and family, and give up due to lack of confidence or lack of effort. I became determined to sell several hundred copies, perhaps even thousands. But how?

I knew that many authors spend hordes of money traveling to book expos and bookstore signings to peddle their books, but I didn’t have the confidence that sinking that much money into promotion would pay off in the long run. It seemed to me that spending time on the Internet—direct mailings, writing blogs, literary group discussions, chat rooms, review sites, Facebook and Twitter—was a cheap way to get my name out there. It could also be the most effective way, my publisher informed me, if I was willing to put in the time and effort. Luckily, being retired, I had plenty of both to spare.

So I began to split my time between two tasks. I spent mornings, generally 8am to noon, working on my third novel, Match Maker, a story of gay tennis players battling homophobia on the pro tennis circuit. I would break for lunch and a few hours with my husband, be back at the computer by 3pm, and would work the Internet in whatever way presented itself until dinner at 7pm. That became, and still is, my pattern—four hours of writing in the mornings, four hours of marketing in the afternoons. It’s been a fulltime job since 2008. So much for retirement….

It didn’t take long before my hours upon hours of working the Internet felt like screaming into a black hole. Nothing came back, and the sales figures for my first two books confirmed that my efforts produced little results. The thing that effectively boosted sales was book reviews, and I was fortunate to gather a number of five-star reviews from prominent reviewers. But there were only a handful of sites that reviewed lgbt themed books. So in 2009, I began reviewing lgbt themed books and posting them on my writer’s blog. That led to creating two other review sites, including managing an LGBT literature column for Examiner.com here in San Francisco. I quickly found that I enjoyed reading/reviewing other writer’s works, and I felt I was offering other writers new outlets to promote their books. It became a win/win situation not only for me, but also for the writers I admire. It also put me in contact with dozens of writers and publishers whom I never would have met otherwise.

Today I review thirty to forty books per year, and my reviews are read on six different literary sites, including Lambda’s literary blog. Even though more readers were seeing my name here and there, sales were still sluggish. When I published my third novel, Match Maker, with a different publisher, Dreamspinner Press, my sales took a very satisfying jump. I believe this happened for two reasons. First, the book was very well received by readers and reviewers. Second, Dreamspinner Press helps its authors promote their books. Since switching publishers, my books sales have been steadily rising, and I’m pretty thrilled about it.

But still I spent four or more hours per day promoting my books, all the time thinking there must be an easier way. Then a fellow writer told me I should become a screenwriter if I didn’t like promoting. Screenwriters write movie scripts, sell them to studios, and the studios do the promotion. That sounded great to me. And how difficult could it be writing movie scripts? I mean, I’ve sat through volumes of movies thinking: I can do better than this….

Let me say, I couldn’t have been more wrong. But more about my journey down the screenwriting path in the next installment.

Happy Birthday My Darling

2011-08-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

Today is my husband’s birthday. Yes, I said husband. Herman and I were married the day after it became legal to wed same-sex couples in California. We are both the same age, 58, both the same build and coloring, and both still in love with each other after being together for seventeen years.

Tonight I am treating Herman to a romantic dinner (yes, even at our advanced age we still enjoy a little romance) at a tapas restaurant that sits only a block from the spot overlooking San Francisco Bay where we first pledged our love for each other.

Book Review: Like Lovers Do by Lori L. Lake

2011-08-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Yellow Rose Books
Pages: 194

Kennie McClain is a security guard/handy person at a Portland apartment complex. Unbeknownst to her tenants at the Allen Arms, she also owns the building. She is still in recovery mode from the loss of her lover three years prior, but she also has eyes for the sexy artist, Lily Gordon, who rents the entire top floor for an art studio.

Lily is beautiful, stylish, and a nationally-acclaimed painter. She also has a hard-as-nails, detective girlfriend who will stop at nothing to protect her relationship with Lily.

A series of events lead Kennie into Lily’s bed for a night of blissful lovemaking, which opens Kennie’s heart for the first time in years. Kennie’s emotions begin to bud, but then Lily’s girlfriend steps back onto the scene to nip that relationship before it can blossom. Kennie is thrown back into her protective shell and struggles to deal with her disappointment.

When things look bleakest for Kennie, Max, an abused teen, comes into Kennie’s life, and she finds herself in a nurturing role. Within this new role, Kennie shows both the reader and Lily the goodness of her soul. But will it be enough to win back Lily?

I don’t often get a chance to read f/f fiction, so this was a treat for me. Like Lovers Do is a well written, detailed study of loneliness and longing, and a potent lesson in the Karmic message that good things eventually rain down on good people, but only if they maintain their goodness through a period of drought. This story is heart-warming and uplifting, and what makes it so is the multi-layered depths of the characters Lori Lake has skillfully crafted. The author made me care about the characters, compelled me to pull for the protagonists and despise the antagonists.

There were several questions I had about the story that were never answered to my satisfaction. For instance, I never understood why Kennie kept the fact that she owned the building a secret from her tenants. It made no sense to me, and if it was explained, then I missed it. None of these types of questions kept me from enjoying the story, however.

Although there is a lot of story packed into these pages, the author does not hurry. The story moves at a leisurely, measured pace and offers enough detail to paint vivid pictures of each scene.

This is a story that will appeal not only to fans of f/f, but also to all readers who enjoy a heart-warming romance. I can highly recommend Like Lovers Do.

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 5 of 7

2011-08-23T19:24:00.000-07:00

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #5:

Written by Alan Chin

I had confidently thought that once my debut novel, Island Song, had been signed with a publisher, even a small independent publisher like Zumaya Publications, I could relax and not worry about being the unknown quantity any more. I mean, I had a contract, and a soon-to-be a published book. Didn’t that raise me above the hordes of faceless, nameless writers who keep beating their heads against the wall? Shouldn’t that open doors previously closed to me? Shouldn’t that make people sit up and take notice? Ha! That should tell you how naive I was, not to mention full of myself. The term green as grass is no mere cliché.

I started my second novel, The Lonely War, before the ink had dried on that Zumaya Publications contract for my first novel. It took me roughly two years to write, edit and polish; yet it was finished long before Island Song was published. You see, Zumaya is a very small shop trying to publish twenty-five or more books per year. There were a few dozen books in the queue ahead of mine, and only one person to slog through the backlog of editing, preparing, organizing cover art, publishing, marketing, attracting new talent and writing checks. One of the hardest lessons to learn in indie publishing is that nothing happens quickly. Nothing.

My second manuscript, a gay love story that spans WWII, starts on a US Destroyer, moves to a Japanese POW camp (Changi), and ends in Japan after the war. I was aware at the time of writing that many readers are not interested in war historicals. But I felt compelled to make a statement about gays in the military, and this particular setting and time frame gave me exactly the set of circumstances I needed for my premise.

So armed with my two-year-old contract and a new manuscript, I began sending out query letters—about forty of them—to all the larger publishers, believing that they would take me seriously this time. As with my first novel, most of them merely ignored my letters. Some were kind enough to send a standard rejection note. As the rejection notices piled up, my confidence nosedived. Keep in mind I am an openly gay man writing uplifting stories about gay protagonists for a gay audience. That dramatically limited the number publishers and literary agents interested in handling my work.

In the end, I sent the manuscript to Zumaya Publications, knowing that it would be years before being published. They accepted the manuscript and sent a second contract.

Now I had two novels to be published. The first in mid 2008, the second in late 2009. Of course I would have preferred a larger, more prestigious publisher, but regardless I was thrilled about publishing two books and starting on a third—Match Maker.

At about the same time Zumaya began editing my Island Song manuscript, they also contracted with an artist to create the cover art. I sent some ideas to the artist, including a mockup of a cover my husband, Herman, had produced. As far as I was concerned, Herman’s mockup was a perfect cover. However what came back turned out to be, in my humble opinion, hideously ugly. I put my foot down, and I went back and forth for two weeks with the publisher trying to forge a better cover. At one point, the publisher told me they were cutting me out of the conversation. They had full rights to design whatever cover they deemed suitable, and I would make due with what they produced.

I can tell you with no hint of exaggeration that I simply loathed that original cover. It drove a wedge between me and my publisher that never really repaired itself. If I had not already signed that second contract, I would have not taken a chance on Zumaya again. I felt that strongly about it.

But soon after, I held my first published book in my hands. It was an amazing feeling that literally moved me to tears. A seed planted in 2001 finally gave fruit in late 2008. Even with that hideous cover, I loved it. And for the next year, I learned, not too successfully, the other side of the publishing coin—marketing.

But more about marketing in the next installment. For now, let me say that for I year I struggled to get my name out there so people would buy my book. When it came time for Zumaya Publications to produce my second novel, to my great surprise, they gave me a cover that I loved. Loved it then, and still do. I’m very proud of The Lonely War—both the story and the cover—and very grateful to Zumaya Publications for the superior job they did in publishing it.

Writing Tip # 31 – Secrets

2011-08-21T17:15:00.000-07:00

Secrets are at the heart of many plots. In fact, if you study nearly any romantic comedy, you’ll fine that all the comic situations are built on secrets or lies, usually both.

I have long believed that a good writer will allow his characters to keep secrets, and the secrets must be revealed before the end. But the question is when and why to reveal them.

Something that I learned in a screenwriting class is, the best way to disclose a secret is when disclosing is the lesser of two evils. That is: if a character reveals a secret, s/he will lose respect or love or something worse. But, if s/he doesn’t reveal the secret, then something far more devastating will happen.

So characters reveal secrets only when forced, to prevent something horrible from happening. A writer will do this to heighten the drama.

Also, by having secrets, the reader knows that the truth will eventually be found out. So by introducing these secrets early on, it keeps the reader in suspense of when the truth will be revealed, and what the fallout will be when that eventually happens.

Once a character withholds information, then the plot should twist the story so that the longer the character holds his/her secret, the more devastating the results will be when the information is finally exposed. It’s like a harmless little white lie that begins to build on itself, taking on bigger meaning and more damaging consequences until it will have a huge dramatic effect over everyone’s lives.

Like any literary device, characters keeping secrets is a powerful tool in the writer’s hands.

Book Review: Moffie by Andre Carl van der Merwe

2011-08-18T18:16:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Europa Editions
Pages: 364

Like every gay boy in 1970s South Africa, Nicholas van der Swart must hide that part of himself that is different from other boys, especially from his father. Nicholas grew up fearing his tyrannical father, an abusive Afrikaner devoted to apartheid and all things manly. And Nick grew up being ashamed of himself, thinking he was an abomination against God.

Nick is conscripted into two years of mandatory army life when he turns nineteen years old. The military goes against everything Nick feels at his core. He is a pacifist, but the lure of freeing himself from an oppressive home life helps him cope with the reality of becoming a soldier fighting for a cause he doesn’t believe in.

But Nick finds that the nightmare of living at home is nothing compared to the hell of boot camp. Within his company, he is labeled a Moffie (a queer), and his superiors stop at nothing to destroy him. At the same time, he makes three close friendships, and even falls in love. Nick finds that the one thing that is more terrible than the physical abuse he endures every day, is the mental torcher of not being able to tell his close buddies and the person he loves what he really feels for them. He must keep that secret locked deep in his heart, or risk being shipped off to a mental hospital for shock, drug and hormone treatments.

After boot camp, Nick and his friends are shipped to the boarder where South Africa is at war with Angolan terrorist. On the battlefield, Nick learns a valuable lesson: to not ask God to help him, but merely to put his life in God’s hands, become an instrument of the Almighty, and accept God’s will. Within the depths of this military torture, bloodshed and his new religious faith, Nick is able to acknowledge his homosexuality and come out to the men he cares for. His coming out somehow helps him find the strength to survive.

I found it hard to believe that Moffie is Andre Carl van der Merwe’s debut novel. This is a powerful, emotional, well-written gem. This author writes with all the polish of a seasoned professional.

The story grabbed my gut on page one and didn’t let go. It starts with the protagonist fighting a hopeless and heartbreaking home situation, then the reader watches Nick’s life disintegrate from there as he free-falls deeper and deeper into hell. The reader shares his anguish, and craves revenge against an unjust world. And just when it seems that Nick has reached the lowest level of purgatory, the reader realizes there are deeper regions yet to discover.

I did have two minor issues with this story. First, I felt the author relied too heavily on clichés. It starts with a rather cliché battle between a gay teenaged son and the hard stoic father who wants his boy to go into the service so they will make a man of him. The mother, of course, is overly protective—more cliché—followed by the company Sergeant who takes a disliking to the hero and tries to break him. It’s all been done so many times before.

My second issue is that sprinkled throughout the storyline are numerous flashbacks to the protagonist’s childhood to demonstrate the battles and hardships of his development. I felt most of these flashbacks added little or nothing to the story, and were a distraction to the main storyline.

Both of these issues are easily overlooked. This is a tale of survival, of love, and of finding the light of courage when the world is pitch black. The story is not for the faint of heart. If you are looking for a pleasant beach read, then keep looking. Moffie is a gritty, brutal, poignant, gut-twisting read, and the reader will surely feel a euphoric sense of accomplishment upon completing that last chapter as the writer skillfully lifts the reader back into the light.

This is a somber drama that I thoroughly enjoyed, and can highly recommend to serious readers.

Will & Jay shorts by Alan Barker

2011-08-17T17:12:00.000-07:00

I have posted anything from my friend Alan Barker in quite some time. He's been rather busy. Yesterday, however, I received three more Will and Jay short/short stories. So, for your amusement, here are three more Will & Jay shorts. Chill and enjoy for a moment or three.

Easy Rider

"Gives me a real buzz racing on this new Grand Prix circuit," boasted Will to his partner Jay anxiously waiting at the finishing line, "and I didn't leave the track once."

"Well done you, considering last week you left the final bend at top speed, collided with the table leg, disappeared under the plasma screen and only stopped after you scattered by entire CD collection," teased Jay, "and mate that is no way to treat my Scalextric racers."

A Tall Story

"It's so cool Will, at this height you can see a bride and groom being photographed on the church steps, crowds of passengers waiting for the steam drawn special just entering the station and even Police diverting the traffic from a serious accident on that roundabout," said Jay excitedly pointing in all directions.

"Careful where you walk Jay the Giant," teased Will, " you always start acting your trainer size whenever we visit this model village."

and finally...

FIRE!

"The enemy man o'war is approaching on the starboard side, so men prepare to fire on the count of 3, 1...2...3...Fire!" commanded Captain Jay as he felt his whole body shudder from the intensity of the close action.

"Wake up Captain Dreamboat," shouted Will to his partner having been pushed out of bed, "I don't know which part of my body you grabbed hold off to repel the enemy, but if it happens again shipmate, you'll not only get a right broadside from me, I'll order bunk beds!"

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 4 of 7

2011-08-15T18:42:00.001-07:00

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #4:

Written by Alan Chin

In 2001, having retired from the corporate world with a little nest egg to keep me from starving, I now had the time, the energy, the ambition, and an idea for a story. How hard could it be? I mean, I had an advanced degree in writing from a prestigious university for Pete’s sake. It was solely a matter of making myself sit at the computer for three hours each day and type until my fingers bled, pounding out words to form sentences, then paragraphs, then pages, then chapters until I typed “The End”. How simple can it get? At least that’s how my husband sees it.

I first sketched out a high-level outline, mostly to get my head around the whole story. I made notes about where the main plot points would take place, and then began forming impressions of the main characters. As I said in an earlier post, Island Song was a story about homophobia, gay bashing, and fighting back. But it had to be more. It had to have a subtext of Buddhist ideals, which of course means passivism. That became the trick, to write about hate and vicious beatings, yet have an underlying message of passivism. And to do that, I knew up front I needed a special blend of characters, so I created four detailed character sketches for the main characters to insure they had the attributes the story needed from them.

Once I had the high-level outline and the character sketches in hand, I started the manuscript. From the outline, I knew all the drama would come to a head in a barroom brawl between the protagonist and several homophobic bashers. So I started the manuscript by writing a line of dialog in that climax scene:

Garrett said, “When you tell your friends about this, be sure to let them know it was Tinkerbell, a fairy, a fucking faggot, that kicked your ass and had you sucking up your own puke.”

In the years of rewriting and editing, this one line never changed. It was a stake in the ground of where the story was headed, a lighthouse beacon guiding me to the safe harbor. Once I had that one line, I went back to the beginning and wrote the first draft chronologically. It took me about a year.

That first draft took so long because once the characters were put on the page, they began to flower, to expand, to change, and finally to have a will of their own. I experienced a remarkable process where the characters, all of them, came to life in my mind. At first I simply thought they were interesting vehicles to tell my story. But then I began to relate to them as actual people and had ongoing dialogs with them. Then I slowly fell in love with them. As my knowledge of their personalities deepened, so did my love for them. So as these characters changed in my mind, I was forced to go back to the beginning and change the story to better fit my characters. And the funny thing was, that as I fell in love with Garrett and Song and Grandfather and Hap, the focus of the story changed from gay bashing to love, and I’m talking more than m/m romance. I mean love of family, love of place, love of culture, even the simple love of waking in the morning and being excited about the day. It turned into a collage of love on every level.

But at long last I did complete the story. I was so excited by the final product that I rushed through two rounds of edits, had a few friends proof read it, and then I sent out query letters to every publisher and literary agent who handled LGBT themed books. Now came the tough part: one rejection letter after another. Six months of rejections deflates the ego to a pancake. I knew the story was a good one. I really believed in it, so I assumed I had written it poorly. I went back to work, editing.

I rewrote the whole manuscript, focusing on language and voice. Again, I had friends proofread it, and sent out another round of query letters, only to get another six months of rejections. I thought about giving up or self publishing, but as I say, I really believed in the story.

In desperation, I purchased a book called, The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman. Lukeman described how most publishers and people in the business only read the first few pages looking for style and a good hook. If you don’t impress them by page five, your manuscript goes in the trash. Lukeman went on to tell what publishers are looking for, and what turns them off—things like passive voice, over reliance on adverbs and adjectives, showing verses telling, tone, and style. Lukeman recommended that you go through the first five pages and clean them up using his writing tips. I edited all three hundred pages using his tips as a guide. That book, more than any other, taught me the kind of writing techniques that get your foot in the door of a publisher.

After completing a third major rewrite over a period of three years, I sent out a dozen query letters to some of the smaller publishers I had already approached. Again, the rejections came flowing back. I finally gave up on Island Song, but I didn’t give up on writing. I started a new novel, a WWII historical novel entitled The Lonely War.

A few months later, I was visiting some friends in Southern California. There was a small party going on and we were all crammed into the kitchen drinking coffee and eating cookies. I pulled out my laptop and checked my email. There was a note from Zumaya Publications, a small publisher in Texas, telling me that if the Island Song manuscript was still available, they were willing to publish it. They attached a signed contract to the email. I let out a scream as I leaped off my chair. It scared the hell out of everybody in the house. They were all mad and thrilled for me at the same time. That was a turning point for me, but the battle was far from over.

More to come.

Writing Tip #30 – Active vs. Passive Voice

2011-08-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

With active voice, the subject performs the action expressed in the verb; a direct action. Sentences with active verbs are generally clearer, more direct, and more concise.

With passive voice, the subject is acted upon. Who performs the action may appear in a “by the...” phrase or may be omitted. Passive voice always includes a form of to be, such as am, is, was, were, are, been, or of course, to be in the verb construction. Overuse of passive verbs is often overly wordy, flat, and slows the pacing.

Active voice: The dog bit the girl.
Passive: The girl was bitten by the dog.

Active: Alan will submit his manuscript to the publisher.
Passive: The manuscript will be submitted to the publisher by Alan.

Active: Scientists have conducted experiments to test the theory.
Passive: Experiments were conducted by scientists to test the theory.

Rules of thumb
To avoid overuse of passive voice, I do a search on the word ‘was’ if writing in past tense and ‘is’ when writing in present tense. I try to limit the number of times I use these passive voice words to three per page.

What is really confusing is when a writer starts a sentence I in active voice, then changes to passive, as in: Many regular customers found the coffee too weak to enjoy, but it was still ordered frequently. Edited: Many customers found the coffee too weak to enjoy, but they still ordered it frequently.

Changing passive voice to active voice
To change voice from passive to active, consider who or what is performing the action. Make that who or what the subject of the sentence and change the verb accordingly.

Passive: The movie is being reviewed by every reviewer.
Active voice: Every reviewer is reviewing the movie.

Using passive voice effectively
The passive voice is effective when the subject performing the action is obvious, unimportant, or unknown or when a writer wishes to postpone mentioning the subject until the last part of the sentence or to avoid mentioning the subject at all, thus highlighting the action rather than who performs it.

Active: “Authorities make rules to be broken,” he said defiantly.
Passive: “Rules are made to be broken,” he said defiantly.

Is That The Best The GOP Can Do?

2011-08-13T15:50:00.000-07:00

I don’t often write about politics on this blog, but the other night I watched the first 2011 GOP debate to get a feel for the Republican field, and I was sorely unimpressed.

Not that I would vote Republican no matter who they nominate, that will never happen again. After George W., Dick Cheney and the Republican party bent this country over and screwed us from behind with the rough end of a pineapple for eight long years, they have lost my vote forever.

But I must admit I was hoping that they would present one or two candidates that would say something more than the same, unenlightened sound bites geared to the rightwing bigots. I kept thinking: is this the best the GOP can offer up?

I am reminded that in The Republic, Plato makes a sound argument that democracy is not the best form of government for the simple reason that people tend to vote for people like themselves. And that is a huge problem that we are seeing played out on our national stage. The vast majority of Americans get by with a minimum level of intelligence. Most seldom read, many don’t read another book after they bail out of high school. So these intellectually handicapped individuals end up supporting intellectually handicapped politicians. In this last decade alone, millions of Americans supported George W. and Dick C. twice! TWICE! And 25% still support Sara Palin. I rest my case.

The point is, we need a system that promotes the most intelligent people in our society to step up and guide the rest of us, rather than the mediocre masses electing mediocre candidates. I’m a simple man without an answer to this issue, but I am bright enough to know we can produce better leaders than what I witnessed the other night. The question is, will we before it is too late to turn this country around?

Book Review: Rite of Passage by Bryl R. Tyne

2011-08-10T18:22:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Pages: 80

John Ashley Price is a celebrity author who has gone into hiding to escape the constant hounding from paparazzi and fans. He wants to become an island unto himself where he can write in peace and not have a soul in the world who knows who or what he is. His publisher, Carol, finds him the perfect getaway within the forested mountains of Colorado—a hick town named Divide.

Alone at his mountain retreat, John finds that his constant companion, extreme anxiety, refuses to leave him in peace. He must still take a regiment of pills to control his mood swings, and he finds he has a merciless case of writer’s block. On top of all that, he finds his cabin is not as remote as he anticipated. There is a neighbor within a stone’s throw, and the neighbor turns out to be just the kind of man that twirls John’s skirt—Mid-twenties, handsome, muscular, a silent cowboy type.

To pass the time and to do research for his next novel, John volunteers his time to help out at the local wild animal clinic. He does odd jobs but his real purpose is to research wolves and their habitat. What he finds instead is that he is being studied by the clinic foreman, Pat Smith. Then a series of strange coincidences unravel John’s new world, beginning with John discovering that Pat is in fact his sexy neighbor. John soon realizes there is some kind of plot afoot, but what could it be?

This story is a fun, romantic romp that had me smiling throughout and often laughing out loud. Neither the story nor the characters are overly complex, but it doesn’t matter. This is a fast paced, delightfully sexy tale.

What I loved most was the voice the author was able to capture and maintain. It has a Western twang, rough around the edges, yet reads smooth as silk. It described even mundane things in the most humorous ways. This is a funny story, without being slapstick or stupid, and yes, there is enough romance to warm your heart and enough sex to get your blood pumping.

Admittedly, there is no mystery here. The plot was pretty clear early on, but again it doesn’t matter. It is the delivery that makes this a fun and sexy read. Bryl R. Tyne is a huge talent. I can highly recommend this novella to all readers.

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 3 of 7

2011-08-08T18:10:00.001-07:00

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #3:

Written by Alan Chin

It took a span of ten years after I received my Masters in Writing diploma before I started working on what would become my first published novel. You see, by the time I earned my degree, I had been promoted again to a much more taxing position. I worked a high pay, high stress, long-hour management job. My department was responsible for some of the most complex, big-budget computer projects in our brokerage firm. At the end of the day, at the end of the week, I had nothing left to give to my craft of writing. My job was all consuming, a black hole for my time, energy, and one sixteen-year relationship.

But by the end of the decade, I had accumulated enough company stock to live a frugal life without the overcaffeinated, sixty-hour-week career. So on April 1st of 1999, I happily skipped out of Charles Schwab & Co. for the last time. I will forever be grateful to Chuck Schwab, the company, and the people who work there, but I never want to see them again.

My partner, Herman, and I spent two years traveling the globe, visiting over forty-five destinations. We scuba dived the Great Barrier Reef and the Red Sea, tracked black rhino in the Serengeti, hiked over mountain trails in Nepal and Tibet, and dined in most of the capitals of Asia and Europe. It was during these travels that I began to write again, keeping a journal, which led to dreaming of completing a novel. I struggled to find a topic I cared about. I was not content to simply write some cliché romance story. It had to be good and it had to say something about me, about my view of the world. But nothing substantial came to mind.

Then, while enjoying a few weeks on a beach in southern Thailand, I read a book that changed my life—Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian. For the first time, I read a brilliant book of fiction where the author intricately wove Buddhist philosophy into the storyline (did I mention that I am a Buddhist?). The book presented everything I felt in my core, but did so seamlessly with the actions and dialog of his characters. Beneath the characters and plot, lay a subtext with a very profound message. At some point toward the end of that book a switch clicked on in my head, and I knew I wanted to write, had to write, my own novel with a similar subtext.

I picked through the short stories I had written in college a decade earlier and found a story I had written about gay bashing, and about fighting back. It was a story of outrage that I wrote after hearing of a murder trial in Phoenix, Arizona. You see, four high school students had pled guilty to beating a fellow student to death, simply because he was gay. All four bashers were on the school football team, and the judge let the boys off with six years probation, because he felt they were fine, upstanding athletes.

The rage I still felt ten years later drove me to pick up this short story and begin crafting a longer work about homophobia, gay bashing, and fighting back. I wanted desperately for my gay characters to pitilessly kick some basher’s ass. But it had to be more. It had to have a subtext of Buddhist ideals, which of course means passivism. That became the trick, to write about hate, vicious beatings, yet have an underlying message of passivism.

I believe I accomplished my goal, but you will need to read my first published novel, Island Song, in order to find out how. The novel took me two years to write, and another year to rewrite after fifty literary agents and publishers had turned the book down. But more about that in my next installment.

Book Review: The Abode of Bliss by Alex Jeffers

2011-08-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Lethe Press
Pages: 265

In a series of ten remarkable short stories, Ziya explains his erotic journey into manhood to Adam, the man Ziya loves. Raised in cosmopolitan Istanbul, Ziya is immersed in his Muslim family and traditions, yet he harbors a secret that goes against everything he knows. He is gay. His mother understands, and arranges for Ziya to attend college in the United States, where he will enjoy an easier time of being accepted and be free to live his life without pressure from family or religion.

Ziya’s journey takes him from Istanbul, through Europe, and finally to Boston where he tries to assimilate a new lifestyle, yet, he keeps being drawn back into his culture. This is a long and beautiful journey. Along the way Ziya encounters old friends, surprises from family members, one-night stands, rape, weddings and bashings and deaths, and in the end a chance meeting.

These ten stories are told in chronological order and build on each other, making this book read like a novel. This is nearly a perfect read. What struck me most was the intricate detail of a young, Muslim man’s life in Turkey, and how cultural pressures make it difficult to assimilate to life in the U.S. But this is more than a story of culture clash. It is an in-depth study of a young man’s sexual education, which delves deeply into his being. Alex Jeffers lavishes exhaustive detail onto the page, uncovering layer after layer of both the characters and the culture, yet with such beautifully crafted prose that it is a pleasure—an exquisite dream you don’t want to wake from—rather than being tedious.

The pace of Ziya’s introspective excursion toward his sexuality is slow and concise. As Ziya ponders his attitudes, so does the reader. This is a book that makes the reader examine his/her own values as Ziya examines his. It makes you think, scrutinize, weigh. This is not a light romp for lazy readers who merely want to be entertained. It is not a book for everyone. It is a detailed study of an inner journey of one man that spans multiple countries and cultures. I suspect readers will either love it or be bored to tears. As you can tell, I loved it.

I’ve long believed that Alex Jeffers is a remarkable talent. I regard The Abode of Bliss as his most impressive work to date. This is a book I will read, savor, again and again. I highly recommend this book to everyone who loves finely crafted prose, lush descriptions and gratifyingly deep characters.

JMS Books LLC Call for Submissions

2011-08-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

JMS Books LLC is a small queer press specializing in GLBT erotica, romance, and young adult fiction.

We release 3 e-books a week and 4 print titles a month. All books are available electronically, and any title over 30,000 words goes into print. While we don't pay advances, we do pay authors 50% net on royalties from all sales. We sell through our own website as well as a wide distribution network to ensure we reach the largest audience possible.

Full submission guidelines are available on our website <http://www.jms-books.com/index.php?main_page=page_2> .

We are seeking queer, genre, and literary stories at least 5k and no longer than 100k in length. Reprints are accepted. We are particularly interested in GAY, LESBIAN, and TRANSGENDER stories in the following genres:

* Action/Adventure
* Contemporary
* Fantasy
* Futuristic
* Historical
* Horror
* Humor/Parody
* Interracial
* Military/War
* Mystery/Detective
* Paranormal
* Science Fiction
* Western/Cowboy
* Young Adult – stories aimed at readers aged 14 and up

We do not accept submissions of extreme BDSM, incest, or heterosexual, bisexual, or intergender menage erotica.

Submission Policy:

* Electronic unsolicited submissions are accepted at any time.
* We do not accept multiple or simultaneous submissions.
* Submissions should include a QUERY LETTER, full SYNOPSIS, and 2,000 word EXCERPT in RTF format.
* Submissions are acknowledged within 2 business days.
* If we like your submission, we will request a copy of the full manuscript for review. Manuscripts must be in electronic format only.
The review time is between 1-3 weeks.

Contract terms:

* Authors earn 50% net royalties on all sales (e-book and paperback) from all distributors.
* Contracts are for a period of 2 years and auto-renew annually.
* We require exclusive electronic and print rights, but can negotiate if the story has been published in an anthology or collection.

Full submission guidelines are available on our website.

J.M. Snyder

JMS Books LLC
A Queer Small Press
http://jms-books.com

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 2 of 7

2011-08-02T09:48:00.000-07:00

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #2:

Written by Alan Chin

My years attending the University of San Francisco, working toward a Masters in Writing degree were both amazing and frustrating.

The frustration came in two flavors. The first was that I was struggling with a fulltime management job that often stretched into sixty-hour weeks. Heap on another thirty hours of classroom and homework, and there was no time for any social activities. Yes, I went almost two years without any kind of social life outside of work and classroom. For a man in the prime of life, that was a difficult sacrifice.

The second frustration was that I attended each class with the same group of students—about twenty of us as I recall—and I was the only gay student. All my writing for classwork was focused on my experiences as a gay man, highlighting issues with family and my job from a gay perspective. The other students were not openly hostile, but none were supportive. Other students would present their work, and the class would gush out praise no matter how mediocre the writing. I would present my work to a wall of silence. Often, there would be not a single comment (keep in mind this was back in the early nineties.) The only encouragement I received came from the instructors, who focused on structure and writing and flow, rather than content.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but being snubbed by my fellow students actually helped my writing. I was so intent on rattling their cages, that I struggled to become one of the better writers in the class. I was out to impress them all as a way to rub their bigotry in their faces. I freely admit now that my attitude was infantile, but I believe it did help me to take my writing more seriously.

Fortunately, there were amazing rewards as well. Writing gave me a creative outlet to dig deep into my being and analyze my life’s issues, then present them in a fictitious environment and with made-up characters. I fell in love with that process, which is a form of self-discovery. At that time in my life I held a great deal of rage inside, tying my gut in knots. For me, writing turned into a vehicle to both recognize and work through what I believed to be the injustices in my life.

You see, even today, every character I write about is an extension of me, and each character in my stories deal with problems that I struggle with myself. I believe all art is a form of self-discovery, and having tread down this path for so many years, I’ve come to feel that self-discovery is the most important thing a person can do in life.

A good novel, like life, is a journey for the writer and the reader, not to a destination, but of transformation. As the characters in the novel transform, so do the reader and writer.

So yes my college years were challenging, often overwhelming, but it was also a time of wonder as I delved into that grey matter between my ears and listened to the chaotic sounds my being sang. It was like learning to meditate for the first time, to open myself up to the universe and begin to understand my role in this incredible thing we call life.

Feeling Old This Weekend

2011-07-31T17:41:00.000-07:00

My husband, Herman, and I spent three days in Palm Springs looking for our dream house. We found it, but learned that the owners had accepted another bid. We’re now hoping that that bid falls through. We saw over a dozen houses in three days, but only that one was perfect. We found two others where we could see ourselves living. One needed a new kitchen and the other was out of our price range.

When we began discussing buying something that wasn’t perfect, something we would need to put lots of work and money into, the discussion to a slightly different turn. We talked about how this house we buy will hopefully be the last house we buy, the house we grow old in, the house we die in. So we don’t want to settle for second best. We want something we can happily spend our golden years in.

Herman and I are in agreement on this approach, but I find myself feeling very old while discussing golden years and the place where we will die. It’s great to plan ahead and insure our comfort and happiness, but this idea of dying in this house has me slightly depressed.

Herman and my mortality is not something I’ve often considered. Like most people, I like to secretly believe we will be the first couple that will live forever. There is a great deal of comfort, however, knowing will we spend our last years together, in comfort, and facing death together.

So this coming week we will put our current house on the market, and then go back to Palm Springs to search for another perfect dream house. I can’t wait to see it.

MISSING IN ACTION: A Will and Jay Extended Short Story

2011-07-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

If you have been following the Will and Jay stories I've been posting from my friend and fellow writer, Alan Barker, then you are in for a treat. Alan has written an extended story with a DADT theme. Hope you enjoy!

MISSING IN ACTION
A Will and Jay Extended Short Story by Alan Barker

Will and his partner Jay, both in their twenties, had read about the dangers faced by American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and admired the soldiers’ bravery whenever they saw reports on t v newscasts. They did not expect the war to involve them personally.

“I come home from the studio early and what do I see,” said a very surprised Will to his partner Jay, “you on the sofa with your arms wrapped around an Army guy!”

“Ssshhh…. Don’t you remember Ben, Tim’s partner? I can’t forget how anxious Tim was at Rae’s barbecue just before he went to Afghanistan,” whispered Jay between Ben’s sobs. “…and like an idiot, what did I say to him then? Will says you’ve just come back from a tour in Germany, like the stage outfit, wild nights in Berlin, fans screaming front of stage and then you’re off again, Japan or here?”

“But it must be said Jay. Tim is a special guy and I know Ben misses him loads, but surely his tour of duty ends soon and he’ll be home.

“No Will, you don’t understand. At the barbecue he asked me to give him a special hug because as he said, ‘this really brave soldier-boy is feeling nervous as my next tour is in…Afghanistan. I might not come back.’ Now I wish I had never let go of him.”

Ben raised his head from Jay’s dampened T-shirt. “I’ve just heard from the lads over there that…”

Jay continued, “Tim volunteered to go on a mission this week and has been reported ‘Missing in Action’.”

* * * * * * * *

Tim smiled as his partner Ben pointed out the ‘Welcome Home Hero’ banner which was draped across the doorway to Will and Jay’s apartment, “And I thought we were going to have a quiet weekend together, just the two of us, for the first time in months.”

Tim imagined themselves as a new married couple and wondered who would carry who over the threshold. Ben was thinking the same and as their eyes met, he gave Tim a hug.

“We will be alone. When Will and Jay heard that Zac and Alex, from your platoon, were home on leave as well, they asked if they could stay with them to give us some space, but I’m worried,” said Ben, “I remember that time in hospital when you wanted us to split up. I still feel there’s something wrong.”

“I know, Ben. I know.” said Tim remembering Ben’s visit. There was a cloud hanging over their relationship. “I’m a trained soldier, ready to tackle any situation, but allowing Ben to see my amputation, was one situation I was never prepared for.” he thought.

“You turned your head towards the wall. I knew you were crying and then you said, “I think we should part, because…man this is difficult…because…because…I can’t…”

Ben wondered at the time what Tim couldn’t or wouldn’t do: drive a car, go swimming or mountain climbing. They were both very physical men. “Oh Tim,” he thought, “is it because you can’t make love?”

Tim did not want a recurrence of those emotions. “Just sit down Ben. I don’t want us to split up, alright. But, even after all those months in rehab I still can’t…Oh Ben man …how can I tell you?”

“Tim, I’ve been your partner for three loving years and I know we’ve had problems, not to mention getting accepted as a couple by the Army, but they are there for you and for us,” said Ben trying to speak calmly, “and your C.O. is going to recommend you for promotion.”
“Ben, I know you’d do anything for me, true…. “

He paused, took a deep breath, he went over to the fridge and grabbed a few beers.
“Alright, I want to move on,” said Tim. ”I can’t forget the past, but you’re my future. We’ve got the place to ourselves. Let’s have a drink or two or three to celebrate and then have an early night.

“Sharing barracks with lots of brave lonely guys wanting their wives, girlfriends and loved ones was frustrating, I was lonely too and a little jealous of Zac and Alex being there together. On the front line, in a ditch or behind a mud wall, waiting for some action from the insurgents, I often thought of you.

Zac and Alex were so professional and yet so discreet. The men respected them for what they were; tough, brave and part of their team. Our C.O. was really cool about it. He wants to meet you. I only wish you had not been posted to another platoon who stayed here.”

As they sat on the sofa, all their emotions came into play. That physical electricity, missing for so long returned. Hands met, eyes met, lips met. Ben turned to Tim and led him to the bedroom. They laughed as they entered, for Will and Jay had tied one banner across the headboard which read ‘Lay down your arms’ and another across the full length mirror which read, ‘Soldier, do your duty’.

“Who is going to shower first? Me, you or together like we used to? Race you! Remember the first time we did in that little hotel just after we met. We got in the cubicle and couldn’t move. You couldn’t even adjust the controls. You were pressed so tightly against the tiles, that when I thought I’d reached them you said, ‘Hey man, you’re turning me on not the controls!’ That night was awesome.”

Ben moved towards Tim and as they stood staring at each other, as if it was their first time, Ben slowly took off his T-shirt. Tim looked at Ben and removed his. On their right arms, both had eagle tattoos below which were each other‘s names and their platoon colours spreading across their chest. These were part of being a soldier.

Tim found his mind buzzing with doubts. It would only take minutes to undress and reveal his wounded leg. During these minutes their relationship could end. Tim tried to look relaxed, but inside his heart was full of anxieties.

“Come on my little cub, let’s go to the bathroom and finish undressing there,” said Tim as he placed his arm around a rather surprised Ben before guiding him to the shower.

“Alright, if that’s what you want Daddy Bear!” replied Ben, grinning from ear to ear.

They reached the shower room and Ben undressed. Tim stared at him. Naked and innocent, how could he possibly tell Ben what he was really feeling?”

“Hold me Ben, just hold me.”

Together at last, in Ben’s arms he felt as if the past had never happened. The clock had turned back to when they were both complete men.

They kissed and breathed as one. Neither had shaved that day, so the friction caused by their stubble as their faces met, gave Ben a strange tingling feeling, a feeling he had missed for many months.

“Hold me tighter Ben, tighter. As I lay there wounded in that painful half-light, I thought I would never see you again.”

Tim relaxed his grip, kissed Ben’s forehead and stood there open-armed. ” Now is the time,” thought Tim, “I must do this. Oh Ben, trust me.”

Ben moved forward and undid Tim’s belt, kissing his chest and the scar from a wound he received a year earlier when he volunteered to lead his team into a supposed abandoned village.

“You go in and sort out the controls,” Tim laughed, “you can adjust mine later.”

Ben felt so happy. Life was good. Whenever they showered, water from the shower head was directed at the last one to enter the cubical. Turning to face Tim, Ben’s well directed aim fell on the empty tiles. He stood there alone.

“Come out from where you’re hiding soldier boy,” chuckled Ben, “you are back to your old self. Now let’s see, where did you used to hide? I know behind the sofa or under the table.”

This game was something that became more and more sophisticated using all sorts of locations around their own apartment. Two muscular soldiers running around naked and hiding from each other was something even Will and Jay got used to when the pair stayed with them. It was escapism at its best. The burst of passion, which always followed, was reward enough for the effort.

Ben returned to the bedroom. The door was locked.

“I know you’re in there Tim. Let me in.”

Silence.

“Tim, if this is part of the game, please let me in. I’m getting cold.”

Ben found one of Will’s bathrobes and returned to the bedroom door wondering what he had done wrong. The feelings Tim had in that hospital ward returned.

“I’m sorry, Ben. I’m not the same guy you fell in love with three years ago,” came the sorrowful reply.

“But, Tim…?” Ben knew that in his heart Tim was the same guy, but deep down was concerned by the changes in his behaviour. He feared the explosion and the amputation had taken too much of a toll?

“I can’t explain, Ben. Just leave me alone. It won’t work. I want it to. I want it to, but it won’t.”
Ben sank to the floor upset and confused, but in control enough to know what he had to do. Tim was his life, the Army was their life and he decided to call on friends who might be wise to the situation. The Army had taught him not to give up in a fight and this was one, using whatever strategies possible, he vowed to win.

* * * * * * * *

Will and Jay, Zac and Ben, were enjoying a DVD when Zac’s cell-phone trembled.

“It’s Ben,” said Zac. “He wants us over to your place a.s.a.p. Tim has shut himself in the bedroom and turned the light off.”

“Tell Zac, the four of us are coming over right now,” whispered Will.

“I should have guessed,” said Zac,”being an Army medic, I’ve seen this situation occur so often in the rehab units. I’ll explain it all to you when we meet Ben. It’s something he has to learn and obviously Tim can’t face telling him.”

* * * * * * * *

“Thanks for coming over so quickly. I didn’t know who to turn to. Being away myself, I was only able to visit Tim in rehab once, so I was never involved with the process.”

“Let’s sit down. Will, Jay, make us all a coffee before we get Ben sorted out. Get him some clothes as well. He’s about your size Jay, I think. Tim is still in the bedroom?”
“Yes. He won’t speak. He wants me to go away.”

“Well,” said Alex, “that’s a no go area.”

Over coffee Zac recounted how Tim received the injury.

“Tim had volunteered to drive a special patrol vehicle into Taliban territory under cover of darkness. Radio contact was lost just before dawn, so our C.O. asked if there was anyone willing to go on a search and recover mission to find them. Tim was so popular, everyone wanted to go, even though there was the threat of snipers and i.e.d.’s, but Ben and I were chosen with three others.

“After about an hour, we found the vehicle on its side, the other guys dead and Tim in a ditch, in need of urgent medical attention. Even then we knew he would lose his foot and possibly his leg below the knee. He has made a remarkable recovery, but he needs you now more than ever.”
“But he tells me to go away. What can I do?”

“Love him, like you always have.” said Alex. “Now is not the time to turn away. Tim is angry with himself, with his helplessness and will suffer depressions. He needs stability. You must try to give him that.”

“He has lost a limb,” added Zac. “He does not feel like a whole man, the man you fell in love with, the guy so respected by his platoon mates. He will need a lot of care and support, and you must be involved.”

“Can I ask one serious question Ben?” asked Jay, “Have you …?”

“…made love you mean? I think he wanted to, but just pulled away.”

“No, Ben. That might also be a problem at the moment, but have you seen his wound?”

“No, I only saw him in rehab once and there was a cage over his leg. When I met him today, he tried to walk normally. I was very impressed, but seeing his wound does not worry me.”

“Does he know that?” asked Zac.

“I haven’t had the chance. I think he tried, but when we went to shower, I’m sure he felt ashamed. We acted as if nothing had happened, but deep down, we both knew it had.”

“Why was I so insensitive?” Ben thought, “Stood naked in front of Tim must have been agonising for him. Stripped to the waist, muscular through training, we were equal, but to see me standing on two legs ready to chase him to the shower. What was I thinking?”

“Which door is it Jay? This cannot go on.” said Zac firmly.

“Tim, those guys in our platoon risked their lives to save you and they are so worried about your relationship with Ben. In the hospital ward were other soldiers who had lost their sight, limbs and quality of life. They had no-one close to support them. You have Ben. “

Silence.

“Alright, I know when you first tried to walk you fell back on the bed. So what, man? You’ve succeeded. After our leave ends do Alex and I go back and tell the guys you shut yourself in a bedroom and rejected Ben? He has not rejected you. All the guys are rooting for you man. They’ve missed your energy, leadership and honesty especially when you explained to them about Alex and me. That helped one or two others to come out. There’s no DADT in our platoon now.

The door opened and Tim appeared. “Ben, when you visited me in hospital, I hadn’t been fitted with my prosthetic foot yet. I kept my wound hidden under that frame. I was angry with you because you were a whole man. I was jealous, and ashamed. I tried to pretend it had never happened. Come into the bedroom, please just you.”

Ben was so relieved. All his doubts were swept away as he entered the bedroom. Tim lay on the bed covered by one of Will’s extravagant silk sheets. “Sit beside me Ben and hold my hand. I’m so sorry I said those things,” whispered Tim, “but you are free to go if you must.”

“Never mate!”

“We’ll see.”

“I said, ‘Never mate! I’ll prove it.”

“Tim, stand by for a surprise”, thought Ben, “although ‘stand-by’ was not quite the right word to use.”

He pulled back the sheet to reveal Tim’s lower leg. He felt Tim tighten his grip on his hand. Ben did not feel fear or disgust, only love. He slid in beside Tim, placed one finger over his lips and asked Tim to close his eyes. As he did so, Tim released his hand which allowed Ben to kneel beside the bed.

With a gentle, circular motion Ben’s finger tips began to move down every inch of Tim’s body. There was a pause at Tim’s scar which he kissed and then his fingers wandered on through the jungle of soft black hair towards the pit of Tim’s stomach. “You’re still my Daddy-bear,” thought Ben. Just below the knee, he placed both thumbs and forefingers on to the shaved pale skin, bent forward and kissed what remained of the lower limb. He felt Tim’s body relax and looking up he saw him smiling. “Thank you Ben, thank you,” said Tim, “I’m trying so hard not to cry mate.”

“There’s one more part of you I want to see, a certain prosthetic limb,” said Ben, “but that can wait until morning. You’ve so much to teach me, Tim, but we’ll get there. The lads in the platoon will be so proud of you.”

“Thank Will and Jay for the use of their apartment,” said Tim, “and give Alex and Zac a big hug from me. They saved me from hell in that awful ditch and now they’ve saved us from an even worse fate, a life without each other.”

Ben rose from the bed and gave everyone that big hug. As Will and Jay were about to leave Ben said, “I’m sure things will work out now we’ve got your support. Thank you. See you tomorrow at Rae’s.”

When Ben returned to the bedroom, Tim smiled and said, as he watched Ben undress, “The banner s says…’Soldier do your duty!’ “…and Ben did!

* * * * * * * *

Dawn broke violently. Ben felt he was being choked. As he opened his eyes, Tim’s eyes met his. They were wild, staring and empty. Army training had made them both strong, but this was an intense strength, an uncontrolled strength brought about by trauma.

“Ssshhhh, Tim. It’s Ben. It’s me.”

Ben felt that if Tim gripped his shoulder blades any harder his nails would draw blood.
“Ssshhhh … Daddy-bear Tim, chill man, chill.”

Zac had told him to use familiar terms and Tim was already in familiar surroundings. When they first met, Tim being bigger built, called Ben his ‘Cub’. In well-padded combats Ben would often snuggle up to him and say, “Hi Daddy-bear.”

Tim lay on his back staring at the ceiling. “You can still go if you want to.”

“Hey man, we’re a couple.”

“I lay there in the ditch in terrible pain, and as dawn broke I could see the bodies of the guys scattered around. I felt so weak I could hardly move. I thought of you, of us. In that bleary haze I heard voices in the distance. I was still armed. Was I to use a bullet on me or the Taliban? No, not me! You know I’m a total professional. I began to recognise the voices and then, Alex and Zac slid into the ditch. I tried so hard to cry, but I just couldn’t.

Two things you will have to get used to; the effects of trauma and the fitting of my prosthetic limb. The pain is gradually easing mate, but it’s not easy after being so active.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“No, you can’t. I want you to hop to the door.”

“Are you serious, man?”

“Just try it.”

Ben stood on one leg, hopped as far as the end of the bed, felt he was falling and put the other foot down.”

“See what I mean, I haven’t got another foot to steady me. Same as in the shower, Will and Jay have bought a special stool for me to sit on and had a bar fitted to the wall. Come on little cub, if we’re ever going to get to Rae’s barbecue, we’d better have that shower. Bet you I get there first.”…and Tim did.

* * * * * * *

Jay and Will answered the door when they arrived at Rae’s.

“Ben told me we had to wear combats, but I haven’t a clue why,” said Tim,”but why are you two in combats as well?”

“You’ll see when we go through to the garden,” chuckled Will, secretly squeezing Ben’s hand. “Thanks for the loan of your spares, we wanted to look right. Rae’s going to help us join the Reserves.”

There was a cheer as Tim stepped onto the patio. There, stood a semi-circle of the guys from his old platoon. Rae, proudly wearing his Reserves uniform, stepped forward.

“Tim, so many of these guys wanted to see you again, especially your C.O., so they asked Zac and Alex to help me organise this little reunion. How could I refuse, me being in the Reserve as well? All of you are brave soldiers. You’ve put your lives on the line every day and will be going back soon, just to make our lives safer.”

“Pleased to see you again Tim,” said his C.O., giving him a surprising hug,” you’ve always had my support in more ways than one. In my mind ‘DADT’ should stand for something else…’Do Ask…Do Tell.’ A few more of the lads in the platoon have come out since you were wounded and we have been pioneering our new slogan. We had a little trouble from some of the lads, mainly through ignorance, but all are now happy and we have become a flagship platoon, despite derisory comments from others.”

After Tim had had a time to meet and greet all his mates, a British Army captain approached him.

“I’m Paul. I was badly wounded below one knee in Afghanistan. Your C.O., Daniel, has been my strength and support for five years. He is someone special in my life. Although we don’t see each other often, I can’t imagine my life without him. You see, we married last year.“

Tim’s surprise was interrupted by Daniel’s command.

“Platoon. Attention. What is our own slogan, ladies and gents? “

“DO ASK…DO TELL…WE ARE PROUD…AND PROFESSIONAL.”

“Didn’t hear that, Platoon. Louder please!”

“DO ASK…DO TELL…WE ARE PROUD…AND PROESSIONAL.”

Will and Jay, who had never ever thought of being in the military, stood straight backed, eyes front and saluted the soldiers who stood in front of them, two very proud Americans.

Based on a series of Will and Jay short stories that my friend, Alan Chin, encouraged me to develop.

Haji’s Exile gets Excellent Reviews

2011-07-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

Haji’s Exile, my short short recently released from Dreamspinner Press, has garnished a few excellent reviews in the past week.

The most insightful review was posted at Reviews by Jessewave, http://tinyurl.com/3dav2n7 where Cole gave the story a 4.75 star rating. He said in part:

The best part of this story is the beautiful prose. Alan Chin has a way of matching the prose to the story and here I often found the prose very musical, with a tempo that matched whatever action the horse is making at that time in the story — a rolling gait, or the ferocious pounding beats of stampeding horses.

Alan Chin does a wonderful job with this story in portraying the shift between the idealistic adolescent and the reasoning adult. At the same time, the story is beautifully written and offers much more than the ending of a love affair. Definitely recommended.

It also had a very nice review at Brief Encounters, http://tinyurl.com/3ttxvnz They said in part:

Instead of a conventional romance, I got a story about love… There were pleasing touches in Nathan’s feelings for Yousef which burn hot and strong, like all young men… The way things work out was a still a shock. It comes during the time of a huge climactic action scene where our emotions are switched suddenly, just as that of Nathan in the story. It was powerful and affecting… There’s a lyricism in the writing, which pleased me greatly, as well as a sympathetic hero.

There were several other five star reviews on Goodreads.com. I would like to thank all the people who have taken the time to review Haji’s Exile. I’m very grateful for your kind words about my work.

Readers can download a copy of Haji’s Exile from Dreamspinner Press http://tinyurl.com/3zctka9

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 1 of 7

2011-07-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

An online magazine asked me to create a seven-part history of how I became a published writer. I decided to post them here first, one per week. Here is installment #1:

How I Became a Published Writer – Part 1 of 7
Written by Alan Chin

I often hear published authors tell how they became interested in writing at a young age, and have written stories all their lives. That is not the case with me. Until my mid-thirties, I not only had no interest in writing, but I was inept at crafting English. The only thing worse than my spelling skills was my lack of knowledge regarding punctuation. In fact, it was my poor English skills that first propelled me down the road to writing novels.

You see, my career of choice back in the ‘80s was computer programming. I had worked my way up the technical ladder in a few short years. I became fluent in six different computer languages, and could create system level programs on several kinds of mainframe, mini, and PC computers.

After a successful project where I singlehandedly created the first application for people to trade stocks over the telephone while talking directly to the computer, I was offered a momentous break—a move to management. My company put me in charge of a group of twelve software engineers. I quickly found that working with people was much more rewarding than working with machines. I took to my new management career like a baby to its mother.

Six months into my new vocation, the V.P. of my division called me into his office and told me I was doing such a great job that he wanted to promote me to the next level of management and give me more staff. But, he said he couldn’t advance me because of my poor English skills. He complained that every time I wrote a report or sent an email, my English was so bad it made me look rather stupid, and he could not promote anyone who looked stupid. He suggested I take night courses to improve my writing skills.

I was not thrilled at the prospect of taking night classes while performing a fulltime job, but I knew I was going nowhere with a management career until I did. I finally found a Masters in Writing program at the University of San Francisco that only required me to spend one night a week sitting in the class room, but expected me to spend another twenty to thirty hours per week writing at home. I jumped at it, only because it was one night of classwork per week.

I had, rather foolishly, thought the course would cover proper grammar. But I soon found that college level courses focused on the techniques of writing stories, essays and poetry, and expected that students already knew the basics of spelling and grammar.

But by the time I realized that the course was not what I expected, I was hooked. What I lacked in English skills I made up for in storytelling ability. I bought some books on grammar, and worked twice as hard to come up to speed in order to keep up with the other students. Once I began writing stories for classwork, a whole new, wondrous world opened up for me. I had found a new love.

Six months after starting my course work for a Masters in Writing, my V.P. called me into his office to congratulate me on my improved writing skills. He proudly offered me a promotion to senior manager. I accepted the new position, but I was no longer interested in a management career. All I wanted to do was write stories.

Book Review: Shattered Wings by Bryan Healey

2011-07-21T18:59:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: CreateSpace (April 29, 2011)
Pages: 249

John is confident, a bit cocky, and happy with his life. He and his lover, Charlie, are proud parents of a darling little girl. Charlie is a stay-at-home daddy while John brings home the bacon with his mid-level management position in an IT department. John is living the dream in their lovely suburban home. The only thing missing is the sheepdog.

And then an unexpected layoff shows John just how fragile a foundation his perfect life is built on. John’s search for a new job brings only emotional strain. He spirals into despair, which triggers a relapse into alcoholism, lies, and deceit. All it will take to recover his dream is a job—any job—but can he find one in this down economy before he loses everything?

I had a love/hate relationship with this novel. The story itself is simply terrific. It’s like watching a train wreck from close up, and knowing that at any moment the whole damned thing could explode, but there is nothing you can do, not even pull your eyes away. It is a gripping story, and John is a compelling character. He’s both sympathetic and pathetic at the same time, making all the wrong moves for comprehensible reasons.

This is a detailed study of a man slowly disintegrating. He keeps grasping for help, but at every turn, people turn their back on him until he is pushed beyond his endurance. It is a sad story, and bitterly real. I would love to award this tale a five-star rating, but I can’t overlook the numerous issues that annoyed me.

This story desperately needs a competent editor with a large red pen. The writing—with numerous typos, misspellings, bad punctuation, switching from past tense to present and back, and repeated phrases—make this one of the worst written books I’ve seen in print. The writing continually pulled me out of the story, and tainted an otherwise compelling read. It is the curse of self-publishing, and why I generally shy away from writers who publish their own work.

Although John’s character has significant depth, the other characters in the story have little or no depth at all. I kept wanting them to show more of themselves, but that didn’t happen. In defense of the author, this story is told by John in first person, and he is totally self absorbed through most of the story. Yet, I wanted more.

There is one other issue I’ll mention. It seems that half of the book is told in flashbacks. There is a pattern where every four or five pages the author cuts from the current storyline to give several pages of backstory. Back and forth, back and forth. My issue is that too many flashbacks kept breaking the rhythm of the current story. Normally I could overlook that, except that in this case most of these flashbacks did little or nothing to advance the storyline. They seemed to slow the story down for no reason.

My opinion is that this book is not ready for prime time. With significant editing, the rounding out of some characters and the deletion of several flashbacks, this could be a fantastic read.

Monthly mini eBooks – Call for Submissions

2011-07-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

I received the following note on a writting list I belong to. It's from an editor in the U.K., and I thought people could use this if you're looking to publish short stories.

Monthly mini eBooks – Call for Submissions
Editor: Barbara Cardy
barbara.cardy@yahoo.co.uk

I am putting together 3 mini eBooks every month for publisher Constable & Robinson. Each mini eBook will comprise four short erotic stories of around 2,500 words or one longer story of 5,000 words and two shorter ones of 2,500.

The three categories are:

Gay
Lesbian
Straight

The story should preferably be written in the 3rd person and should grab the reader's attention in the first few sentences and hit the ground running with a jolly good plot! I would prefer unpublished stories for the time being. Twosomes, threesomes, groups, spanking, BDSM etc are all welcome subjects.

I know what follows sounds a bit pernickety, but it really does help my time management if you could stick to it as closely as possible:

Please send me a maximum of two stories per genre – i.e. 2 Heterosexual, 2 Lesbian and 2 Gay would be fine, and each story must be in a separate email so I can divide them between email folders. In the email subject box please put either Hetero, Lesbian or Gay and attach your story as a Word document in an email. The title of the word document should be the title of your story.

Use a plain text such as Arial, Calibri or Times and no text boxes or special formatting etc. as it's a bugger to get rid of! Please start at the top of the page – no need to start half way down. Put your name, address and email address, plus word count. The title of your story should appear next along with your pseudonym (if you use one) underneath that, then start the story on this first page. I will put © 2011 against the story unless you specify otherwise. You don't need to worry about double-spacing between lines as I will only have to put it back into single spacing before I print it out. All speech needs to be in double quotation marks. I don't need your bio for these eBooks.

There are no deadlines as it is an on-going project, so submit stories when you are ready.

It would be really helpful as well if you could give me a two or three sentence teaser of what the story is about. This will be used to encourage a reader to download an eBook. If you could put this just under your pseudonym that would be a good place. Put a bit of humour in it. I have pasted here a couple that I wrote to give you an idea of the sort of thing I'm after, but I'm sure you could do much better!

THE MORNING AFTER by Jude Mason
Silly Nathan Steele thought it would be a good idea to masturbate over Ms Harden's desk. Not only that, he had the audacity to employ the use of her vibrator. Oblivious to the CCTV camera recording his every perverted desire, he is called to her office. Confronted with the evidence he is presented with two options: the police or being on the receiving end of a good whipping...

PARTY FAVOURS by Lynn Lake
Flower child, Saffron Miller, decides to organise a surprise party to celebrate her parents' 30th wedding anniversary. Calling in on her parent's various hippy friends, she finds them a very friendly bunch indeed! Seduced firstly by a husband and wife team, then by a two of her father's old football mates, will there will be red faces at the party...?

The fee is £25 for each 2,500 word story and £50 for a 5,000 word story. We are asking for non-exclusive world all-language rights so contributors are free to place their stories elsewhere. All successful contributors will be paid by either cheque or PayPal if in the UK or Paypal only for overseas writers. The Publisher will also need to have the option of releasing each story as an individual eBook, making each story available in audio form, both individually and as part of an anthology, and finally to include the story in a larger print anthology. It is not certain at this stage that any of these options will be taken, but by emailing a story to me you are consenting to any or all of these possibilities. It is far from clear at this stage if it will be possible to make much if any money from any of the options outlined above, but should we succeed, it ought to be possible to increase the fee for future stories.

I very much look forward to receiving your stories. Please email them to me at barbara.cardy @ yahoo.co.uk (remove spaces either side of the `@')

Many thanks again,

Barbara

Walking Away

2011-07-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

For the last week I’ve not been writing. This is the first time in seven years that I’ve gone this long without working on a work in progress. And I must say, I’m experiencing all the symptoms of withdrawal. But I can’t decide whether it’s the lack of writing or the reason behind it that has my guts tied in knots.

You see, I’ve been spending my time painting and fixing up my house in order to put it on the market. Herman and I have decided to move to a warmer climate—the Palm Springs area. I’m actually quite jazzed about living in PS, but as I fix up this old house I’ve been living in for thirty years, the memories keep flooding back.

I’m finding that it’s not easy to walk away from half a life of memories. I’ve grown comfortable here. Most of the improvements to the house Herman and I installed together. We made this place our own. I hardly have any memories of the time before I first moved here. In fact, this house spans two long-term relationships for me.

But, as with most of life, there is the other side of the coin. Now that we’ve decided to move, I’m feeling anxious. I crave the change and can’t wait to be settled into a new house that I haven’t even laid eyes on yet. The human mind is a funny and fickle thing indeed.

In a few days time I’ll finish all the painting and scrubbing and repairs, and I’ll return to writing. And I’ll look forward to the time at the end of this month when we travel to Palm Springs to search for a new dream house, and a new dream. I anticipate frequent disruptions from writing for the rest of the year as we search, find, and move to a new location.

If I were a praying man, I would be on my knees asking that we are installed in our new house, our new life, by the end of this year. Not too much to ask, I’m thinking.

Book Review: QUEER: The Ultimate LGBT Guide For Teens

2011-07-15T14:52:00.000-07:00

QUEER: The Ultimate LGBT Guide For Teens by Kathy Belge and Marke Bieschke

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Zest Books
Pages: 208

“It Gets Better” is a message that has wormed its way into mainstream media as a reaction to bullying and violence toward gay teens. And although this is a necessary message for young people who sexually identify as queer, or think they might be, there is not a lot of information out there telling them how to make it better. Until now.

This Queer 101 manual gives accessible and real-world advice, geared to teens, on a myriad of topics including:
- how to determine if you are queer, or are just curious,
- coming out to family and friends,
- navigating social situations and dating,
- standing up for your rights,
- information about safe sex,
- overcoming homophobia.

The authors, Kathy Belge and Marke Bieschke, draw from their personal experience and professional resources to present unflappable support and guidance to young people. Queer is a humorous, engaging and honest guide that can help teens understand what it means to be queer. It offers information focused on health, community, safety, political issues, and queer history. The authors back it all up with a reading resources list.

I believe this is a fabulous resource for any teen. I remember, over forty years ago, feeling that I was the only queer in my school. And if there were others, I didn’t have a clue how to find them. The feelings of loneliness, shame, and confusion often became overwhelming. I wish I could have had this little gem of compassionate intelligence to help me along that path of discovering the fabulous, perplexing, often times scary, world that is queer life.

I believe this is a must read for all teens who identify as gay/lesbian, and also for the parents of these special young people. I think this book should be taught in high schools across the country. But don’t wait for that to happen. Grab a copy or two and give them to young people and parents who can benefit.
.

Print Book Sales Continue to Plummet

2011-07-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

The information below was gathered via the Sisters in Crime listserve. I'm not so sure that the lesbian or gay publishing realm is actually represented here. I think PW tends to survey big press/NY-type publishing, but I have a hunch that the data about print books and e-books is somewhat similar. Here are the figures for the first half of 2001:
.
Sales of print books dropped 10.2%.
.
Mass market paperbacks took the biggest hit, decreasing 26.6%. Hardcovers lost 9.5%. Trade pb were down 6.8%.
.
Adult fiction overall fell 25.7%. Adult nonfiction dropped 2.7%.
.
Juvenile fiction fell 7.4% and juvenile nonfiction sunk 6.7%.
.
E-book sales have continued to rise, so it's not as if the above figures indicate people are buying and reading fewer books. PW notes that "mass market paperbacks' most popular genres -- romance, mystery, and science/fantasy -- are moving rapidly to digital," which accounts in part
for the decline in print sales.
.

Book Review: Harlan’s Race by Patricia Nell Warren

2011-07-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Wildcat Press
Pages: 325

Years after the shooting death of Billy Sive, Harlan Brown is faced with the arduous task of coming to terms with the loss of his lover. While trying to be a father to Billy’s son, Vince Matti (Billy’s best friend) drifts back into Harlan’s life, and the two struggle to form a troubled relationship. Each person in Harlan’s life—Billy’s son, Vince, Billy’s Father—keeps Harlan tied to his tragic past.

Then the unthinkable happens. Another shooting at another race, followed by a note from the shooter letting Harlan know that the shooter is stalking him. Harlan hires two gay, Rambo-like bodyguards, and their investigation reveals that the killer pursuing Harlan was also involved with Billy’s murder. Harlan goes into hiding, but finds himself constantly looking over his shoulder, waiting for the next bullet.

If all this weren’t bad enough for Harlan, it’s the late ‘70s and he finds that many of his friends are dying of a mysterious new disease that is affecting gay men. Caught between a tragic past that won’t let go of him and a future that holds only death and sorrow, Harlan Brown must find a way to survive the violence and challenges of changing times.

Harlan’s Race is Patricia Nell Warren’s long awaited sequel to The Front Runner.
The author mentions in the forward that she intends to write a third installment in the story featuring Falcon, Billy’s son, when he reaches his teens. Harlan’s Race is a dark bridge between Billy’s and Falcon’s stories.

This is a very dark and moody story. With Billy’s death haunting Harlan, and nothing to look forward to but the AIDS epidemic, there is little to feel good about here. The plot follows Harlan, Vince and others, as they all seem to self-destruct after Billy’s death.

Although the book is superbly written, I closed the book feeling disappointed. This is a murder mystery where the stalker/murderer is revealed at the end, and it is meant to be a shocking disclosure. I, however, figured out who the murderer was halfway through the story, so the ending fell flat for me. Not only was it flat, much of the plot felt too contrived to be believable. Although I must say that there were moments in the romantic bond between Harlan and Vince that were touching and rang true.

Although Harlan’s Race can be read without reading The Front Runner, I think that would be a mistake. Harlan’s character is well developed, but many of the supporting cast are not, and one needs to read TFR as background to these characters in order to fully appreciate the depth of this story.

I have enjoyed reading several Patricia Nell Warren books and think she is a terrific talent, but Harlan’s Race is not a book I can highly recommend. I am, however, looking forward to reading the third book in the series, Billy’s Boy.

My short story, Haji's Exile is now available

2011-07-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

Haji’s Exile, a short story by Alan Chin

This is a bittersweet coming out tale that follows a young rancher training his new horse for a handicap race. Like many of my stories, it is a yarn of two different cultures coming together, teaching each other, supporting each other, and eventually loving each other. I originally wrote this story to be a give-a-way on my website, but then Dreamspinner Press suggested I let them publish it, and I did. You can download the entire story, thirty-three pages, at: http://tinyurl.com/3okkmlj

Blurb:
Nathan has cared for horses all his life, but Haji is the first he’ll train on his own. When the Arabian stallion arrives at the Bitter Coffee ranch, Nathan thinks he is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. And then he lays eyes on Haji’s handler, Yousef. Nathan has much to learn about horses, about pride, and about love, but with the ranch’s hopes riding on Haji, he’ll also learn that all things have their price.

Excerpt:
To an owl or an eagle or even the lark, man must seem a rather pitiful and forlorn creature; he is condemned to crawl the earth alongside only two friends. The dog and the horse are the only exceptions to man’s universal unpopularity. Man points with pride at these two contrarians and naively believes that both are equally proud to call him friend. “Look at my two companions,” says man, “they are dumb, yet loyal.” I have always maintained that they are tolerant at best, and if man didn’t feed them, they would quickly join ranks with the majority.

I have nevertheless depended on the tolerance of horses and dogs since my childhood. I believe with all my fiber that until a man has loved an animal, a large part of his soul remains unawakened. Even now at my advanced age if I were deprived of the gratification of caring for either dog or horse, I would lose all that I hold dear. I should feel as adrift as a Muslim who had lost touch with Allah.

Horses in particular have been as much a part of my history as breathing. I define every phase of my life by which horse I owned then, or ones my father owned. Some were intelligent, some valiant, while others were rogues. None were alike. Some won the big handicap races and some won the smaller unimportant races. My family’s red and blue colors have swept past grandstands from Santa Anita to Bay Meadows. Some horses my father brought from the Eastern Seaboard, where old money and long bloodlines defined the sport. But one horse my father brought all the way from North Africa.

That stallion’s name was Haji.

When he came to the Bitter Coffee ranch, I was a straw-haired boy who had recently graduated high school, with a lanky body and wide, blue eyes. He was an Arabian stallion, part royalty and part desert whirlwind. I was awed by his self-possession, and I couldn’t help wondering what he thought of me.

He arrived at daybreak, descending the ramp from a two-horse trailer with the slow and dignified steps of Bonaparte in exile. With his head held high and nostrils flaring, he breathed the thin air of the Nevada high desert for the first time. Like me, he was a bit slender in the chest, but unlike me, he had strong legs as clean as limestone.

Sword Bearer, out of Cairo, had sired him, and noble blood flowed through his arrogant veins.

He was a sorrel, and his reddish coat gave off a golden sheen in the strong morning sunlight. Once his hooves stood on solid earth, his body shivered and his lungs let out a rush of air, as if letting me know he craved the freedom of open space again after being cramped in a ship’s hold and then in that trailer for so many thousands of miles. I heard a ring of certain gratitude in his undulant murmur.

Then I laid eyes on Haji’s handler. He had made the long voyage with the horse. The dawn’s rays lent his flowing white robes and tarboosh a shimmering orange-yellow hue, and I found myself momentarily stunned with a frozen gaze. Was it the splendor of the light reflecting off his flowing gown that dazzled me, or simply that this young man would wear a dress in broad daylight? Or could it have been his face, that porcelain-smooth skin the warm color of creamed coffee, accented by pitch-black eyebrows? His coloring was similar to the Mexican ranch hands who worked for my father and yet somehow softer. Whatever the cause, my compulsively chattering mind gave pause, and I was mentally whisked into a space of pure silence, broken only by the pulse beating at my temples.

My father walked to the thoroughbred and held the animal’s head steady, gazing into those large moist eyes. It was clear to me that the horse knew men. In his three short years, he had probably been around more men than his own kind, and from the bold stare he gave my father, I sensed that Haji understood that men were there to serve him, that we were his servants.

A tremor ran through the stallion, and he grew impatient. He shook his head free of my father’s grasp, bent the sleek bow of his neck, and kicked at the ground with a hoof. I instinctively knew that it was not that my father was a stranger but that Haji didn’t trust a man who did not smell of the earth. Even though my father owned a seven thousand acre ranch, he was a businessman and spent his time in his office or traveling.

My father stepped to the handler and laid a hand on his shoulder. “You must be Yousef. Welcome to the Bitter Coffee. Nathan will show you to your quarters. Come up to the house for breakfast after you’re settled.”

“Yousef,” I repeated in my head several times as I moved forward and grasped Haji’s halter. I felt foolishly happy at how the sound of it tumbled through my head. The stallion did not flinch at my touch, and as he took in my smell, he blew a snort into my straw-colored hair to warn me he felt nervous. I laughed, a low gentle sound which seemed to set him at ease.

The handler pulled a carpetbag from the horse trailer and stood beside me. As I glanced into Yousef’s cautious eyes, I inhaled his spicy fragrance, a mixture of horse and something else I could not identify, something vaguely like toasted sugar.

I tugged at the halter and both Haji and Yousef followed, flanking me all the way to the stables where I had already prepared the stallion’s stall. Haji stared straight ahead, glancing neither to one side or the other as if he were walking alone, like abdicated royalty, and we were merely servants trailing in his wake. He must have felt forlorn in this country of different sights and smells. It would be my job to manage him, and that included making him comfortable in this new environment. I felt much pride in that. Haji was my first horse to train. All my life I had cared for horses, learning their needs and habits, but always under the guidance of the foreman until now. Because of financial hardships, my father had let the foreman go. Haji was my responsibility, and Yousef would answer to me.

I could tell the stallion found the stall to his liking. The stable harbored a dozen other horses in a long row of stalls, but Haji’s quarters were separate from the others and twice as large.

Yousef seemed equally pleased with his own quarters next to the tack room, and though he didn’t say a word, he seemed surprised that he was given a room to himself. When he slid the tarboosh from his head, I realized he was much younger than I had first thought. I now guessed he was only a few years older than me, perhaps twenty, twenty-one at the most. And right then, he looked far more beautiful than moments before and seemed in desperate need of a friend.

I told him my name: Nathan. He repeated it twice and told me his name in broken English: Yousef Ruta. I knew then that it would be my job to teach him how to speak my language, which would be no small task. With hands waving and pointing to my own pants and shirt, I indicated he should change into more suitable work clothes and join me for breakfast at the house. It took several attempts, but he finally smiled and began to pull the white robe over his head. Much as I wanted to stay and see if the rest of his skin had the same warm coloring as his face, I turned and hurried out, giving him his privacy.

Later, after Yousef had changed into working clothes which included a shirt with flaps that hung to his knees and we had feasted on flapjacks, Yousef and I returned to Haji’s stall. While Yousef separated the good straw on the floor from the straw already soiled with urine and manure, I began to brush the stallion with clean, even strokes from mane to tail. As I worked, I felt anger rising within Haji, but I was not prepared when he bent his neck around and gripped my arm above the elbow with his teeth, biting down with enough force to make me yelp before flinging me against the wall.

I crumpled to the ground and lay in the trampled bedding for a moment, looking up into Yousef’s dark eyes. A wave of shame washed through me. I scrambled to my feet and marched to the tack room, selecting a riding crop that I had never needed before now.

I approached the stallion with a brush in one hand, the crop in the other. I spoke to him in soothing tones, telling him that he might have Sword Bearer’s blood, but I had a whip and I knew how to use it.

I began to brush him again while continuing to use soothing tones. But once more, I felt his anger swell. His hooves stomped, and his head turned with teeth bared. This time, however, I was expecting him. I struck his muzzle with the whip, hard and without mercy. I think he was more startled by the act than by the pain. The alchemy of his pride transformed the pain to rage that must have blinded him. He tried to bite again, and I struck his soft muzzle with all the force I could muster. He tried to whirl away from me but Yousef jumped to help and we held him firm. He reared upward, cutting the air with his hooves. Plunging, he felt my crop bite his muzzle again and again.

At that point, Yousef pushed me back toward the far wall and began to sooth the horse with caressing hands. The stallion slowly calmed under his touch.

When Haji became composed, Yousef lifted my brush from where it had fallen and began to brush Haji’s withers with a kind of intimate knowledge of how this horse wanted to be treated: that is, without any sense of possession.

I felt the sting of resentment, but then, more slowly, comprehension took its place.

Yousef waved me over. With he on one side of Haji and me on the other, I mimicked his strokes with my bare hands. The horse now accepted the soothing touch of my hands. Across the horse’s back, Yousef smiled at me in a way that made my stomach do a slow somersault.

Cover Art for my first novella, Simple Treasures

2011-07-06T20:23:00.000-07:00

Please help me decide which is the best cover for my novella, Simple Treasures.

Simple Treasure Blurb

Newly released from a mental institution, Simple’s first job is caring for Emmett, a crusty drunkard dying of cancer on a ranch in Utah. Simple’s first fragile friendship is with Emmett’s grandson Jude, a gay youth in Gothic drag who gets nothing but grief from his grandfather. In an attempt to help both men, Simple, a Shoshone Indian, decides to perform a ceremony that will save Emmett by transferring his spirit into the body of a falcon.  

Working to capture a falcon will bring Emmett and Jude closer as Jude and Simple’s growing love for each other blossoms, but all is not well. When the ranch, Jude’s future, and Simple’s happiness are threatened, more than Emmett’s spirit faces a bleak future.

Short Story Review: Song On The Sand by Ruth Sims

2011-07-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Pubisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Pages: 19

Tony Dalby is a wheelchair-bound man living his twilight years in a convalescent home. In his youth he had been a Broadway actor/dancer. Now he is a bitter, self-centered, irascible, old man with nothing to look forward to. He keeps his life history in a scrapbook—grainy photographs, letters, newspaper clippings, keepsakes. The staff at the home try to get him to stand, to walk, but he hasn’t the heart to even try during his therapy sessions.

But then Tony notices a sexy young man who shows up daily to visit Jesse, the victim of an accident that has left him a vegetable. After several days of admiring the young man from a distance, a chance encounter allows Tony to meet this young man, whose name is, Drew. Tony discovers that Drew and Jesse are lovers.

Driven to impress young Drew, Tony puts all his heart and soul into his therapy sessions, and over time gets to the point where he can walk with the help of only a cane. But then, for the first time in ages, he begins to think about someone other than himself. He tries to help Drew’s lover recover. As it turns out, Jesse and Tony had both acted in the musical, La Cage Aux Folles. This thin thread, they soon discover, has the power to turn tragedy into an unexpected joy.

Ruth Sims is one of my favorite writers, and once again she has managed to impress. This is a bittersweet tale of finding courage and compassion. It is beautifully written, almost flawless in its execution. The main character is completely believable, and lures the reader into his narrow view of the world, but then lets his world expand, giving both the character and the story greater depth.

Often times I can see where a story is going long before the last page, but throughout this tale I kept wondering how the author could possibly wrap up all these threads. Sim’s did so in a way that was both surprising and delightful. When I finished the last page, I sat in silence for a rather long time, not analyzing what I had read, but simply feeling the wonderful emotions that this story evoked.

Ruth Sims is a huge talent. And Song On The Sand is a little gem that I highly recommend to all readers.

For more information about this story or author, go to http://ruthsims.com

Writing Tip #29 Unlikeable Protagonists

2011-06-30T17:28:00.000-07:00

Many writers, and I’ve done this myself, spend a great deal of energy making their protagonists jump through hoops in order to make them likeable. And admittedly, many readers demand that the protagonist be sweet and charming, or at least someone they can adore.

Yet, many of literature’s most interesting and often most beloved characters are despicable rogues. One of my favorites is Hannibal Lecter in the Silence of the Lambs series of films. He’s a coldblooded killer, with no remorse at all. Yet, he fascinated me. Without Lecter, those movies would have been unbelievably boring. His dark character brought them to life. He stole the show. Look at any movie directed by Quentin Tarantino. I’ve never seen a likeable character in any of his films.

So what makes us cheer for a contemptible character? As a fellow writer, Damon Suede, put it: “Unlikeable behavior is not what makes a character unappealing, but rather the context of that behavior. We often want these characters to behave awfully, and take pleasure in the wreckage they generate. So I don’t think it’s actually likeability that’s the issue.”

What readers need is a way to interface with a character. Hannibal Lecter, for example, was in fact a ruthless killer, yet he became very protective of Clarice Starling. That protectiveness was a thread the reader could relate to. He also was a competent artist and loved classical music, two more threads. When talking to Clarice, he had impeccable manners, another thread. He was not at all likeable, yet he had elements that most viewers could relate to. The writers gave him traits that viewers found accessible.

Another great example is Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind. Selfish, conniving, ruthless. But going from riches to rags and living through the devastation of the war, we understand her perfectly. We connected, and we even sympathized.

So go ahead and make your characters all assholes. Just be sure that within the context you place them, give them traits that will be accessible to the reader. Place them in mounting conflict that explains why they behave badly. And it always helps to make the villains more despicable than the protagonists. :-)

If you find that your characters have become annoying rather than enthralling, then revisit how the context, stakes and escalating conflict affect their values and behavior, rather than trying to make them more likable.

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