My fellow Fool for Love anthology contributor David Puterbaugh sent me a link to this blogger who has really enjoyed Fool for Love: New Gay Fiction (which, as the three people who consistently read this blog know, contains my debut fiction publication, “At the End of the Leash”). Over the next few days she’s going to be posting her favorite lines from each of the stories. Although I’m completely biased, I think it’s a great collection too. Thanks, Hilicia!
February 3, 2010
“From now on, you keep your Slayer friends out of my dreams”
Apparently, drinking coffee before bedtime will either give you insomnia or really enhance your dreams. In my case, last night, it was the latter. Without further ado, a possible insight into my psyche:
I dreamed I was having new air conditioning installed in my boss’s house. It was Halloween, and I was watching the old vampire movie Nosferatu on DVD. Apparently, I was also planning to go out in drag for Halloween. I was also getting Dakota groomed while I was waiting for the A/C installers to finish.
Oh, did I mention they had a new pet lion? The funny thing was, sometimes the lion had a mane, sometimes it didn’t.
Anyway, once the installers were done and Dakota was all groomed, we left, but somehow Dakota got off his leash. Naturally, when I chased after him he thought it was a game, and he proceeded to go to an apartment complex nearby and jump in the pool, which was full of kids. So I (in drag, remember) have to wade into the pool and get him out, effectively ruining his new ‘do (and my drag) and requiring me to get out the hair dryer (I don’t own one, but apparently in the dream I did) and give him a brush-out.
And then I woke up.
So, perhaps coffee is (or is not) the best thing to drink before bedtime.
At least you all didn’t dream about that guy with the cheese. I don’t know where the hell that came from….
January 29, 2010
“Borne back ceaselessly into the past”
"So many books, so little time."
That’s the thing I say every time I stand in front of the bookshelf (or rather, one of the bookshelves) and try to decide what to read next. In a good year, I read about two dozen novels. In a great year, maybe thirty. (In a bad year, you do not want to know me.) I’m not a fan of rereading books. I don’t do it very often. I can only think of two, actually: Mrs. Dalloway, because I was distracted the first time and kept losing the thread; and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, because the first time I read it I was sixteen and I loathed it. (The second time, in my thirties, it was gorgeous.) Usually, I want to move on to something new.
Then there’s The Great Gatsby.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve read this book. Maybe it’s the stock answer to the question, "What’s your favorite novel?" but this was the one where reading it was like opening a hidden door for the first time. I first read it when I was fifteen (thank you, Angela Accardo, for assigning this in sophomore honors English) and it felt like the first truly adult novel I read. (We later watched the movie with Mia Farrow and Robert Redford, which was just awful.) I had written stories before that—juvenile things, mostly—and reading Fitzgerald was the first time I thought, "I want to do that." So, you can credit or blame him (among many others) for my being a writer.
The novel was again assigned in college, and that was really the start of my long-term relationship with Jay Gatsby and East and West Egg. It’s amazing how much Fitzgerald packs into this slim volume—less than 50,000 words, which would be a feat for most writers these days, to tell a story so fully in such a small space. I think it’s a beautifully told precisely because of that economy. And its cautionary tale about the folly of the American Dream and the worship of wealth has, sadly, endured in relevance 85 years later, though it hasn’t been heeded.
So, let’s hear it. What’s the book you keep returning to?
January 25, 2010
Theme song
Remember that episode of Ally McBeal where Tracey Ullman (don’t you love Tracey Ullman?) played Ally’s therapist and told her she needed a theme song? As I was working on chapter eight last week (work that continues this week), I was listening to a dance mix compiled by my friend Max, who finds some of the oddest things, like a disco remix of Stevie Nicks’ "Stand Back." As I was typing away and tapping my foot, the lines, "One man did not fall/well he asked me for my love that was all" made me think, "That kind of describes Joel’s relationship with—" Well, I won’t say with whom, as that might give things away, but it was enough of a thought to make me create a playlist in iTunes and start dragging songs over to it. Before long, I had a rough soundtrack for my book.
Sometimes (most of the time) I need near absolute silence in order to be able to write anything requiring more attention and concentration than a grocery list. This does not make me an easy person to be around when I’m writing. Every once in a while, though, when I’m lucky enough to fall into a particular groove in my writing, a certain song will come up, either by happenstance or design, that sets the rhythm for my writing. When that does happen, it’s almost worse than the need for silence: It feels like I have to play that song over and over in order to keep my train of thought moving along the tracks. (Heaven help anyone in earshot.)
Does your writing have a soundtrack?
January 18, 2010
The last page
I’m not sure which part of reading I prefer, the anticipation that comes at the first page of a book, or the satisfaction that hopefully comes at reaching the last page. When I got to the last page of Shadow of the Wind, I wished it would go on for another hundred pages, even though it was a perfectly satisfying and totally appropriate conclusion. Sometimes, when a book draws you into its world, you (or at least I) long to linger a while longer. It seems wrong to close its cover, set it down, and pick up the next one immediately.
In any case, the "to be read" stack is so tall it’s been split in two (to prevent it from crashing down from the night stand and crushing me in my sleep). That, of course, hasn’t stopped me from making more purchases: This weekend three more books arrived, including two by my friend Greg Herren, Murder in the Rue Ursulines and Murder in the Garden District, though before I read those I must pick up the previous books in the series, Murder in the Rue Chartres and Murder in the Rue St. Ann, and make sure I read them in order. I completely forgot that the other book, Best Gay Romance 2010, contains a story by my fellow anthology writer David Puterbaugh. (You know how people get called "one to watch"? He’s one of them.) I’ll get to them in due course, though I still have a stack of books that have been loaned to me that I should read first. Hopefully the next one will leave me as reluctant to reach the end as Shadow of the Wind did.
What was the last book you read that you didn’t want to end?
January 15, 2010
Time Crunch
Lacking anything of substance to say at the moment, I figured I’d show you the belated Chanukah gift I received from Mike’s brother Neil. For some reason it made him think of me. I can’t imagine why….
January 9, 2010
“Lifeblood” finds a home
Finally, I can deliver some good news for a change. My short story “Lifeblood” is going to be published in the anthology Blood Sacraments coming out in October 2010 from Bold Strokes Books. The anthology, edited by Todd Gregory, is a collection of gay erotic vampire short stories. (I know; I didn’t know I had it in me either.) I originally wrote this story back in 2003, and the version that will see publication bears scant resemblance to the story’s original form. That’s a good thing. I workshopped the story back in 2005, and even as I submitted it, I cringed, knowing it was too wordy and too flat and too everything. I loved the two main characters but clearly didn’t know them well enough. Late last summer, they finally started speaking to me again, and Mike as well as my friend ‘Nathan had some good feedback and insights.
I’ll post links to the book and to the other writers included in the anthology as they become available. No resting on my laurels, though. Chapter 10 awaits, and I’ve got two stories that I’m working on as well.
Gay erotic vampire anthology… hmm, I guess this is one that I can’t send to my mother.
January 5, 2010
Compass
With a drink in hand and a smile on his face and a campy t-shirt. I like to remember him like that.
The first time I met Brad Graham was, appropriately, in a drinking establishment.
This must have been around 2001 or 2002. (I could go back into my journal archives and check, but that would take so long and I would inevitably get sidetracked by reading other entries and I don’t have time for that particular memory lane at the moment.) His friend Mike, whose blog I read, was in town visiting, and we arranged to meet for drinks and dinner at Dressel’s. Actually, I think they were already planning to eat there, and Mike just said, “Come along!” Not one to pass up an opportunity to eat homemade chips, I went.
OK, so I actually opened up my old journal files and looked. For some reason, I didn’t write down anything about that first meeting, which is odd because that was a time when I was a pretty consistent journaler. In a way it makes sense, though. Meeting him for the first time is more like catching up with an old friend you haven’t seen in a while. He instantly made you feel welcome, at ease, essential, even. I, of course, had read Brad’s blog—who hadn’t? (He invented the word “blogosphere,” didn’t he?) I was writing one at the time as well, with a total readership of about three at the time, for which I am now thankful. (It was awful stuff of the “I’m eating soup” variety.) We discovered we worked literally across the street from each other and soon became friends. He shared my love of Star Trek, cute boys, good beers, and darts, and he became a supporter of my writing pursuit.
When I was feeling the worst I ever felt, in 2003 when I herniated a disc in my back and got my heart a little stomped (looking back, it seems foolishly minor now, but at the time the depression was crushing), Brad was the guy who propped me up. Given the number of times I cried on his shoulder, I should have covered his dry cleaning bill for a month. (Fortunately, Brad was a wash-and-wear kind of guy.) I have never felt as lost as I did that year, and Brad, bless his heart, helped me find my way: He gave me a compass. “Keep your eye on the next good thing, Jeff,” he wrote to me. “A dream, a dance, a destination, whatever it is. And if you need to, go somewhere quiet and hold on to that compass. It’s the closest I can come this week to putting my hand in yours.”
I still have that compass, even though it went through the wash once and eventually became waterlogged. It still works.
I didn’t see him much in the past year, which is sadder to me now because we live only a few blocks from each other. Life intervened—new job, third draft, and if you know him at all, he is constantly working. We couldn’t make it to his birthday (dba the feast of Bradvent) or his holiday party this past year. Would have, could have, clearly should have. I’m sure that if we had, he would have made Mike and me feel as if we’d just seen him a few days earlier, he would have given us both a kiss, a “Hello, darlin’!” and pressed a drink into our hands.
OK, I really need to stop thinking about that, because though laughter through tears is my favorite emotion, it gets the keyboard damp.
There are so many good things to remember about him, and many of them take the form of stories. At heart, he was a storyteller, I think. My favorite was the one he told me (which he also blogged) about what he said at his father’s funeral when people came up to him and said “I’m so sorry:”
“Don’t be sorry,” I’d say. “After all, you didn’t kill him.”
Pretending not to see the somewhat stricken look that invariably followed, I’d pause for a beat or two, then lean in and inquire with an air of dark conspiracy, “Did you?”
Among many things, I’ll remember that sense of humor best.
Find condolences and remembrances of him here:
January 2, 2010
Happy New Year, or Good Riddance, 2009
I can’t say that 2009 was especially or uniformly awful for me, but it had the overall tone and quality of an annus horribilis in so many ways for so many people that I feel well rid of it. On the bright side, we got to see so many wonderful people and make a lot of new friends, including the splendiforous Jodi, whom we saw not once, not twice, but three times. Truly, you can barely hear a thing over the sound of how awesome she is. Our trip to New Orleans for the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival was not only the first time we got to meet Timothy Lambert, Becky Cochrane, Greg Herren, and Rob Byrnes in person. We also had the pleasure of meeting ‘Nathan and his husband, Dan, who make me want us to move to Canada and change our citizenship. We also met David Puterbaugh and his BF, Lindsey and her wife Rhonda, Marika, and Lisa, all of whom made my face hurt from laughing and smiling constantly. And I saw, for the first time in ten years, my friend Mary Margaret from college.
On top of that, I saw my first and second short stories published, and made considerable headway on the novel. Next year will, I hope, be even more productive.
Apart from that, and some spectacular traveling that I’ve already chronicled here, 2009 was about as much fun as a raging case of syphilis. Ignoring all of the financial crap that went down like a cheap whore on a family-values Republican, last year wound down with all the joy of a funeral. Our last cat, Boris, died in the fall, relatives died, and my brother’s beautiful dog, Daisy (pictured above with my brother, in a photo taken by my niece), suddenly and unexpectedly died on New Year’s Eve, breaking his heart and many others’. It was sort of like the year’s bitch-slap, and if I could, I’d shank 2009.
So, fuck you, last year. We are through.
December 24, 2009
What I’m working on
Last week, I sent off a story to another magazine. This is its eighth trip out of the nest. On one previous trip, it was a finalist in a contest (always the bridesmaid, you know), so I continue to have hope for it. Meanwhile, the long-suffering third draft (whether it’s me or the draft that is suffering is open to debate) is in need of a kick start. I began a story with the idea of finishing it before year’s end for a contest, but that’s not going to happen. I also had a brain storm (or an aneurysm–oh wait, I’m still breathing; guess it was a brain storm) that gave me the idea for the third book.
And now we’re waiting to board a flight to New York. One carry-on and a personal item? Here’s a rule I live by: the personal item is always a large coffee.
