Happy Halloween All! It’s all about the Weres today…

That be WERES in them thar hills! (And that’s a very good thing!)

I am ready and rarin’ to go with my gay werewolf story set in a fictitious town of Sparrow’s Hollow, West VA. It sort of came to me (as most of my stories do) as I signed up for the Nanowrimo event. Gay weres are not a new thing in the M/M (gay lit fic) genre. There are literally TONS of them out there. But I wanted to play with it a bit myself. I love being spooked. I love the thrill of not knowing but fearing it beyond all measure of what’s right around that next corner! EEEKS!

I am totally pantsing it…

What the hell is pantsing, you ask?

It means while I know the characters, the arc and the general setting, I don’t have a planned outline. I don’t have everything mapped out to the nth degree. I have a feel for what I am going to do and I am just gonna sit down and hammer it all out. One. Word. At. A. Time. I am literally and physically flying by the “seat of my pants…”

Pantsing it…

I think it’ll be scary writing it from that perspective alone.

Am feelin’ the love of the lycan sort today! HOWL y’all!

And I’ve got something that is really quite different in my world of weres… I wanted something new to write about if I was going to take it on. I think it’s rather exciting and could reset the genre if I can do it right.  We’ll see. Don’t want to write too much about it until it starts tomorrow.

BUT, what I will say, is that while I am gonna be writing this I will be blogging about the experience too. I don’t know what I’ve bitten into, but it is gonna be epic in its own way, I can just tell. And weres are all about the biting, and the rutting, and the feeding, right?

So on this All Hallows Eve, I’ll just cross my fingers (after I’ve completed the werewolf makeup on the granddaughter for trick or treating) and plunge in at midnight tonight!

It’s gonna be EPIC!

Thar be wolves in them thar hills!  (and that’s a VERY good thing!)

Tags: 1956 | Appalachia Dialects | Cavanagh High | Gay Weres | Gay Werewolves | Hank O'Malley | HOMO | Penny Dreadful | Pulp Fiction Horror | Riley Raintree | Sparrow's Hollow | Werewolves | Werewolves and Shifters | West Virginia

Our Dirty Little Secret –

A discussion with Savannah Smythe on the release of her new work – Dirty Little Secret and a few other topics that cropped up…

Dirty Little Secret – by Savannah Smythe

SA Collins: So when do you think you can recall when you found yourself bit by the whole writing bug? Was there some impetus that got you into writing?

Savvy Smythe: I’ve always loved weaving stories, even from a very young age, probably to get me out of some kind of trouble, I guess.  But I never thought of writing anything down until after my first child was born.  I think it was boredom more than anything else.  I was hitting the treadmill at the gym and my daughter was in daycare, and my first character just kind of popped into my head and said “Hello.”

Actually, that’s a lie.  He said something like “Hey, bitch, I want a woman and a decent story. Get to it.”  He can be rude like that…

SA Collins: Yeah, that’s usually a hallmark of a writer: our characters really sort of control us – dictate when things need to get done.

Savvy Smythe: Absolutely.  I think all writers with fiction should identify with this, and sometimes you need to go with the flow and see what comes out.  It can surprise you.  It sure as hell surprised me!

SA Collins: Did your writing always have the erotic slant it has now? If so, why do you think that is? If not, how did it evolve into that?

Savvy Smythe: It certainly didn’t start out as erotica, although I’ve never shied away from portraying sexual scenes between my characters.  How the erotica thing started was simple.  I couldn’t get the damned book published so I sliced, diced and spiced it as an experiment, because sex sells, right?  I knew I had a juicy story, but it needed a lot more juice to interest the erotica market.

To answer your other question, I guess I’ve always been interested in, not the ins and outs of sex per se, but the interplay between characters, the growing intensity of feelings and setting moods where sensual happenings can take place

A little man on man action never hurts…unless its done right.

SA Collins: So, given that, did you find that your sales changed when your writing did? Or was it a slow evolving process? Do you still see your work as erotica? Because, here’s my take on it: I really don’t think that sexual situations make it erotica. Sex is a part of the human condition. I think what erotica is is a piece written to titillate and inflame, sometimes at the expense of a real story, but when woven into a real bona fide tale, then I think it crosses back over to adult fiction. I think you can have a sexually active and sex positive character without it being erotica. Do you know what I am getting at here?

Savvy Smythe: Yes, I do, and I agree on the whole.  There are different levels of erotica though.  In my mainstream contemporary fiction books, the sex is used as a potent way of luring two characters together and making them want each other, and when they do, it’s fireworks.  But in my role as an erotica writer, the sex is definitely the most important thing.  I wrote straight erotica for Virgin Books for five years, and sales were good enough that they kept renewing my contract, which was great.  But after a while it became slightly boring to be honest because the sex was the main event (as it has to be in an erotica book, obviously.)  The challenge was to make it interesting.  Actually, I nearly got my editor fired because my attempt at making it interesting contravened several decency laws – oops!

So yes, there is a big difference between the role that sex plays in erotica and “mainstream” fiction.  And this goes back to what I was saying about different forms of erotica.  There are the one-handed reads, and books with characters that people can actually get involved with.  Three dimensional characters with stories that don’t insult the intelligence of the person reading them.  And that’s what I tried to do.

SA Collins: Fair enough. The reason I bring it up is that when I started I first listed myself as an erotic writer but after Angels fully took form it was clear that while sex was present, the sexual situations psychologically advanced the characters (more than just bringing them together) in that my shy boy became increasingly more assertive in his life – every facet of his life – which said to me that the sex, while erotic in nature, really was a different device altogether. I get the whole differing degrees of erotica writing – and I am not disparaging it as a whole genre, but I often wonder if we’re too motivated to label it as such when maybe we aren’t seeing the greys in those erotic levels as something else altogether. You know?

Savvy Smythe: Yes, and a lot of it comes down to marketing and being honest about the genre the book is for.  And that isn’t necessarily the market you assume it is for when you write it, if you assume anything at all.  Black Lace (Virgin Books) was obviously erotica, aimed at women, and that was easy because I knew my genre.  Since then, I haven’t written any erotica until this year, when I began What You Wish For, which eventually turned into Dirty Little Secret.  I wrote the book, knowing I was writing erotica, but I hadn’t given any thought about who it was aimed at, I was just writing the story.  Because once you start getting hung up on markets, etc., your creativity can go out the window.  In a way, this is what happened with What You Wish For, which is why it eventually became DLS.

And sex is obviously a great selling point, but just because there is a lot of it in a book, doesn’t make it erotica, necessarily.  I’m saying that sometimes, erotica isn’t always there to give a thrill, but to engender all kinds of emotions in the reader. As well as giving a thrill!

A little 411 on the DLS low-down.

SA Collins: So you mentioned Dirty Little Secret, which is your recent release, right? How did that happen – it started out as a straight erotica piece, right?

Savvy Smythe: It did, and I guess it was aimed at women because that’s the erotica market I’ve always written for.  Straight men on the whole don’t read a lot of erotica.  They like to see the T and A before their eyes.

SA Collins: True enough – men are very visual.

Savvy Smythe: But then a strange thing happened.  My two male characters fell in love before my eyes.  It was a natural process and I can honestly say I didn’t force the issue.  It just came about.  So I went with it, again not thinking about the marketing issue, although I wanted to publish the story in three parts.  But when I had finished the story and had three parts, one of straight erotica and two of gay erotica, I immediately saw I had a problem. Maybe this is an assumption here, but I guessed that gay men wouldn’t be interested in straight erotica featuring women, but I wasn’t so sure about women wanting to read gay erotica.  So I did some digging and began to read gay erotica. Actually, I had been reading gay erotica as soon as I knew I was going to write it, to find out what I was up against.

SA Collins: Is it something you find interesting to write about? Or was this a one off “walk in a different park” sort of thing?

Savvy Smythe: I feel very comfortable writing about men, either in sexual situations or in burgeoning relationships, but I’m aware that I have a lot to learn.  I didn’t want to insult people by just swapping women for men and writing “dick lit” because men and women’s motivations are totally different.

SA Collins: Now you’ve hit upon one of the things that sticks in my craw about the M/M genre as it stands now. As a gay man/author I have collected a number of these writings and what truly astounds me is how very little it has to do with what our lives are like. I mean, I am all for the fantasy of a good yarn, but some of the emotive qualities are completely off the mark of how men feel – and often gay men at that. I think it stems from women not really getting that as a gay man you always, whether you can play off the straight male thing in society or not, are looking over your shoulder, sometimes swapping pronouns to make people around you comfortable. Yet the works in the genre never really reflect that. So while it’s “gay” it really is with air quotes completely implied. Do you think that the genre needs some evolving in that manner? Or do you think it is what it is…? I know it’s one of the reasons why I refuse to ally myself with that sort of market as my main market. Because my work will not follow those sort of entrenched guidelines..

Savvy Smythe: I think that every genre is evolving, mostly thanks to the ebook market.  People have access (should they choose to accept it) to almost any fiction they please.  But yes, to answer your last question, the gay erotica I read, written by women is very different to that written by men.  It seems to be either fantasy (wolf/biker/shapeshifter) or the other stereotypes (soldier, cop, mechanic) and I think that says a lot more about what the writer finds erotic than what her audience will.  Not that there is anything wrong with that but don’t mistake it for bona fide erotica aimed at gay men.

The erotica I’ve read by men is a lot more meaty, with more of their senses being used – which is surprising to me but very enlightening.  Also, every book I’ve read reflects the “over the shoulder” situation you described, where as a lot of women tend to write about being gay and proud of it, or being completely and happily segregated from “normal” society. So in order to write erotica for the gay market, I want to learn to write more like a man, and that is something which I find really exciting.  I’m not degenerating women’s writing AT ALL.  There are some really gritty women writers out there.  I want to be one of them.  Dirty Little Secret is a bit of fun, a toe in the water, but I’ve learned a lot since then.

Who doesn’t need a little hug now and then?

SA Collins: I sort of liken it to me writing about a young black woman – I might be able to imagine it, I might even be in the midst of the community, but there is something intrinsically truthful about the work when it comes from the source. I don’t blame women writing M/M erotica for their own pleasure but what I find sort of bewildering is all of the rainbow cons that really don’t seem to have very much to do with what we are working towards. To me its more about women who love the hell out of men (as do gay men) but write about them in gay situations as they would like to fantasize about men but the ‘gayness’ of them really isn’t much in play here other than its homosexual in nature.  I think the genre as a whole needs to do a little soul searching and more gay male voices need to rise to the top and write about us as we really are. Only then will the genre as a whole evolve. Otherwise I think it will just be women fantasizing about men as they want to see them rather than what we truly are… does that make sense?

Savvy Smythe: Yeah, it does, although I would say that it isn’t the role of erotica to reflect the angst going on in real life.  One of the big no-nos in straight erotica are characters with kids.  No-one wants to read about child-care arrangements before the fucking starts.  They don’t want to hear about women with problems juggling their lives, or non-consensual sex (another rule I broke – I’m all about breaking rules) or any of the other issues that people in “normal” life experience.  It is a fantasy after all.

But, this also begs the question about what motivates women to write gay erotica.  Yes, a lot of it is a fantasy about what gay men are like in bed. And I think some women do it because they feel SAFER writing about gay men.

SA Collins: Why? Because they think gay men aren’t reading it to say – hey, wait a minute there —where am I in all of this? What do you mean by safer?

Savvy Smythe: Because they can have their kicks writing and reading about it without feeling they have to compete.  In erotica books, the heroine is mostly beautiful, or has some quality that makes her irresistible to the hero.  Some women feel threatened by that and think, “I would never be like that.  I don’t want to hear about some bitch with perfect tits getting banged by Mr. Hardjaw.” But put Mr. Hardjaw with Mr. Sexyabs and hell, yes!

SA Collins: That sort of seems rather simplistic in a way. I mean you’ve read a bit of my book… right?

Savvy Smythe: I’m reading it now, but as you said, your book isn’t erotica, it’s a character study.  Erotica is there mainly for one purpose, and that is to get off, right?  DLS is erotica.  I want to make it intelligent but to be honest, I wanted to turn people on first.  And THAT is the prime purpose of erotica

SA Collins: True enough but let’s talk character for a second. I think that in erotica (or hell, even mainstream lit fic) women make a very interesting mistake in my mind when writing male characters. I think because in their own lives they hear the brevity of how we communicate and make an assumption that things go on like that in our heads. That we think in bits and bytes and not strung together long trained thoughts. In Angels almost 70 percent of it is Elliot’s (my protag) inner monologue. Men do think quite intensely and prolonged as we analyze our world around us – the difference is we don’t talk a lot about it. Gay men more than our hetero counterparts to a degree, but even so – gay men have short hand talking that does the same brevity communication that our straight brothers do. Most female writers miss the boat on that. I found that to be rather telling. It was one of the reasons why Elliot’s part of my series is so inside his head. It was far more interesting for me to express him internally (thus, the character study) yet, walk you through what he feels and thinks while he’s having hot man-on-man action…

Savvy Smythe: Men are from Mars, women are from Venus?

The whole Men and Women thing – sorta lost on me, but Savvy seems to know quite a bit about it…

SA Collins: The inner monologue men go through isn’t as developed as I think it can be. I think it is simplistic for most (definitely not all) female writers to assume that how the men in their world act are how we really are. I think the inner monologues are not as complex as we sometimes can be.

Savvy Smythe: Yeah, I get that.

SA Collins: Sure. I mean I turned you onto John Rechy’s work… you said that you found his voice to be very powerful and you were getting some of that from him, right? Did it surprise you to read his take on male sexuality?

Savvy Smythe: I think we women make the assumption that men are simple souls, because to be honest, men have told us that for long enough.  Perhaps to stop us over-thinking things we have no hope of understanding? It wasn’t a surprise to read John Rechy’s take but it was enlightening, because I, like a lot of women have always thought that men are more visual than anything else.

The Sexual Outlaw as I saw it in 1979.

SA Collins: True enough. I mean my daughter is on match.com looking for potential boyfriend material and one guy got playful with her and started to talk about the big trucks and tractors he drives around at work (like a big boy would). She got all over analytical about it and I stopped her in her tracks and said – “Sweetie, sometimes a tractor or a truck is just that. He’s being playfui, don’t make it a political statement.”

So I get we can be forthright in our statements and they get over-analyzed to the point of absurdity (in most men’s opinions).

Savvy Smythe: I think women are always looking for the hidden message.  It’s a defense mechanism to stop them from getting hurt.  It doesn’t work though.

SA Collins: When I read Rechy’s work as a gay teen (this was the late 70’s mind you) it was truly enlightening that all of the things I was questioning about myself as a man (let alone a gay one) were right there in his pages.

Savvy Smythe: A comparative work for women would be The Women’s Room, by Marilyn French.

The Women’s Room – Marilyn French

SA Collins: All of the textures and the senses that we as men go through. This is what I often find missing in M/M erotica… the assumptions are never analyzed by the author – simply taken as hard cold fact about us and not inquired or asked about. I know some men won’t cough up the goods or admit to what really goes on in our heads. In fact, I spend more time talking to my straight friends about their emotional shit that would truly astound their wives and girlfriends. I often laugh that straight women and straight men don’t really get what a great ally gay men are to them. They assume that our sex is so perverse that they can’t possibly be of any help to them. But I know I’ve helped my straight co-workers on a number of occasions because I gave them some insight on why their ladies might be feeling the way they were or expressing themselves how they were.  The dialog is changing but I always sort of laugh on how much of our POV on their own relationships go unasked. I always tell my daughter – I may be gay, but honey, I know my sex…

Savvy Smythe: I think straight women get the gay ally thing.  Most women yearn for a GBF. (Sex and the City, anyone?)  BUT, I think it’s become a bit like a status symbol, rather like a designer handbag. I’d be willing to bet that the women wanting a GBF want him so they can give some insight into men and make them feel good about themselves. Actually, if you examine that dynamic, it looks a bit one-sided. Are the women with GBFs any wiser about how gay men think, feel, function day to day? This is a genuine question because I haven’t a clue! Would be interesting to find out though.

It seems as if we are all shouting at each other over a divide the size of the Grand Canyon. Can women ever really understand what is going on in men’s heads, whether they are gay or not?

More on this discussion coming soon – in the interim I highly suggest you check out Savannah’s brilliant and provocative works via the following channels:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Google+

Tags: Author Discussions | Character Development | Craftwork | Dirty Little Secret | Gay and Straight | M/M Romance | M/M Sex | Savannah Smythe | Women and Men | Words about the Work

The Color In Your Characters

I’m talking about secondary characters. The minor roles that give your world texture, give it context. I’ve always sort of gravitated to secondary characters in stories. Why? Pretty damned simple to sort out. Given the heterosexist world we live in, as a gayboy I had to often look for subtle clues if a secondary character was gay or not. Then it would be – ooh, what’s he doing? What’s he about?

It was always the secondary characters in stories that held my interest – almost more than the main characters. Actually, it’s the ensemble work that usually draws me in. I love great ensemble casts.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer it was Xander and Spike that kept me going in that show. Willow too. Far more than Buffy (who always seemed one note in comparison to the other characters in her world). Don’t get me wrong I am a HUGE Buffy fan. Hell, put me down as a Joss Whedon fan, period.

The cast of one of my all time favorite shows – Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

There are many such shows that garnered my attention in great part because of the ensemble of secondary characters that fleshed out the world the main character had to play in.

In Downton, Cousin Violet (Dame Maggie Smith) of course provides just about as much color a human being can in a character.

Maggie Smith as Lettice in the brilliant play Lettice and Lovage.

I had the pleasure of watching Dame Maggie in Lettice and Lovage on Broadway when she was in the title role of Lettice Duffey. It was written for her and man oh man did it show. I was fifth row center (literally) and the air was electric – it tingled along my skin whenever she was on stage – and okay, she was the main character, but what it did do was give me a real sense of the subtleties of character development.

The brilliant and crisp play written for Maggie Smith – Lettice and Lovage.

Lettice Duffey was a broad character – one that would rival another monolithic strong woman character – Auntie Mame (Dennis). Yet, in both cases (Rosalind Russell and Maggie Smith’s turn as Mame and Lettice), they knew just the right amount of hubris to ground the character to make them infinitely accessible.

So yes, main characters can be just as colorful, just as compelling (they are main characters, after all) but for me, those actors who portray these iconic characters, when they get their teeth into a secondary role, you get such nuance and flavor from their portrayal that I can’t help but be drawn in.

Lois Smith (center) with Ryan Kwantan and and Anna Pacquin from True Blood.

It was that way with True Blood, too – I was all about Pam and Eric. Sookie and Bill were beside the point, say nothing of the brilliant, brilliant turn of Ryan Kwantan as Jason. But my first love in True Blood was always Lois Smith as Sookie’s grandmother. I just LOVE Lois Smith. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in something I didn’t like her performance. She was never big and brassy. But lord does she permeate each scene she’s in. Her portrayal as Sookie Stackhouses beloved grandmother was carefully measured but incredibly believable. She was the grounding that Sookie needed to make her accessible. Without her in the beginning of the True Blood world, it would have not had the same balance. It would have been too fantastic. Gran kept us sane and safe (to a degree).

Okay, so you’re probably saying ‘yeah, but your just talking about acting and not story telling.’ The obvious retort is that plays and screenplays are just one more way to tell a story. Books acted out sort of thing. I come from theater so I tend to gravitate to that world whenever I think of storytelling. So the whole reason I am using performance storytelling as opposed to literary works is that I wanted to put as many people as possible on the same page in their minds. Much easier.

Freeman and Cumberbatch hamming it up – the modern take on Watson and Holmes.

But that’s not to say I can’t use some classic characters in literary circles that I can put out there to make my point – Dr. Watson to Sherlock? Though to be honest, it could be argued that John Watson was more of an elevated secondary character but he’ll do as an example. A story without John Watson just wouldn’t be right. Watson is our accessibility to the heady brilliance of Sherlock.

In Dorian Gray it is the secondary characters that give us our main characters color. They provide Dorian with the allure and the brutal sensuality – it is through their eyes, their voice that we get a flavor of Dorian before he ever hits the page himself.

Reeve Carney as Dorian Gray in the brilliant show “Penny Dreadful”

In my own story, Angels of Mercy, I tried to sort this out with my boys. Marco has his cousin Francesca, a wild but über hot cousin that as much as she is beguiling she is also the most loyal companion to Marco. It was important for me to have someone like her in Marco’s world to give him something to play against in his family life. In book one of the series, we don’t really get any real sense of Marco’s mother or father. It’s all about Frankie (Francesca) that we get a sense of Marco’s home life. I really love her for so many reasons. She’s a goddess on steroids but with a heart of gold underneath that Venus allure.

For Elliot, the main POV character of the first book, it’s his mother and his best friend Greg that give us a peek into Elliot’s world. Where Marco’s world is big and bright and full of adoration from the masses, Elliot’s is the exact opposite. All he has in his small world is Greg and his mother, and then Marco himself.

That was the question I had burning inside of me as Marco and Elliot began to form – I wanted to know what would happen if the geeky artsy shy out gay kid became boyfriend to the highest profile jock on campus. In book one, we sort of get that answer.

Yet, it isn’t just the characters that I’ve mentioned that are what provide texture to Marco and Elliot’s world. There’s Beau Hopkins. Caramel colored, massively beautiful and completely black of heart. Beau is the danger in this world. He’s a dark horse in a growing dark world for my boys. Beau is a user. He’s a manipulator. He comes from a very confining world of Football and religion. His father is a preacher in town and quite hard on his son. Beau, while formulaic in that he’s the atypical Preacher’s son, he also has a couple of surprises that Elliot gets him to admit something that only proves to tighten the screws on the horrific end to the first book.

If that weren’t enough, we have a very opportunistic cheerleader – Cindy Markham. She’s trouble in a pretty package with all the charm of a man-eating piranha. She’s a manipulator in a massively whacked out way – emphasis on MANipulate. She and Beau are the boys worst possible nightmare.

The final cover artwork. Blood included.

Then there’s the boy’s greatest asset – Elliot’s mother and best friend – Kayla Donahey and Greg Lettau. These are the boy’s home base. They are the rock that allow the boys to rise and dream beyond their existence in Mercy High. Then when the world seems full, the ensemble is set, I bring Danny Jericho into the mix. Danny’s the wild card. Danny’s the boy who will put all of the characters into a tailspin. He’s the great unknown. He’s also the boys secret weapon. Though he makes his appearance late in the book, he soon becomes the boy they can’t do without.

While the story is about the geeky gay kid and the über hot and popular jock and their reach for the stars, I wanted my secondary cast to be just as rich, just as textured – maybe even more so. I mean, I didn’t want termites in costume (which is what we call scenery chewers on stage). You know, characters that pull focus. Hopefully, if I’ve done my job, my characters embolden the story, they give it its legs.

And it only gets better with the second book (told from Marco’s perspective) in that the two secondary characters that I had in the background in book one come to the fore – Angus Carr and Nick Donahey. I LOVE THESE MEN! Oh, gods, how I fell in love with Elliot’s dad and Marco’s new found friend at his future school (Stanford University). These men are beyond brilliant. Angus just has his heart on his sleeve, he’s so amazing I get giddy like a school girl whenever he comes into the scene. I’ve already peppered the story I am telling with a secondary tale that I can always spin off in this world with Danny and Angus (yeah, that was a minor spoiler).

I am always thinking about my secondary cast. It’s how my main characters shine – at least to my way of thinking.

So whether it’s Kayla, Greg or Danny – Beau, Cindy or Francesca. It’s all about the textures in the background to my world that make everything just a bit more dense, a deeper flavor to the tale I am telling.

The stars of the show can only shine if they’ve got others behind them as the backdrop – the colors and textures that make them who they are.  And I make it my business to know EVERY facet of their lives before they ever step onto the novel stage. They are fully fleshed out in my head before they utter their first words. It’s just how it goes with me.

I just can’t think of any other way to do it.

Tags: Angels of Mercy | Beau Hopkins | Buffy the Vampire Slayer | Elliot Donahey | Francesca Sforza | Kayla Donahey | Lois Smith | Maggie Smith | Marco Sforza | Nick Donahey | Rosalind Russell | Secondary Characters | Storytelling | Supporting Characters

The Haze and Maze of Social Media

Okay, I’m a techie. I mean, I work in the IT world and all of its variety of devices, servers, and networking security ins and outs. So you’d think that I’d understand how and why my website stats are what they are. But I don’t.

I check my stats on this site from time to time. My audience is growing – steadily. Not bot combing either. These are actual human web surfing hits – not bot or spider crawls (at least not that I can tell). If they are then they’ve got some serious smart spiders now.

I checked it today, you wanna know what I found?

Apparently, I am BIG in China.

This one surprises the hell outta me… I like it, but I don’t know what it means.

As of today (September 11th) my stats are just shy of hits for the entire month of August. So I know I am gonna surpass it in a day or so. So yeah, my audience is growing. But why China? It’s not like my stuff is in Chinese. I don’t think its Baidu doing the crawling.

But China surpassed the good ol’ US of A this week.  Here’s the rundown –

1) China

2) USA

3) France    (this one I can sort of understand because well. they’re French for Chrissake)

4) Canada   (I LOVE me my Cannucks!)

5) Some EU country   (What the fuck does THAT mean?!)

The Ukraine is next and THEN Great Britain. Sorta wacky weird how this whole thing works. It sort of reminds me when a good friend and I did a short lived podcast back in 2006. We were BIG in Scandinavia. HUGE even according to our stats. Why? I had absolutely no idea. Russia even makes the list. I like Russians. I even went to visit there (this was way before the whole let’s hunt down fags and kill/humiliate them that is going on now). I feel for my queer Russian brothers and sisters. I wish I could do something to make it all better for you. I really do. Being gay is hard enough, having to live with it in your world, I just can’t fathom it.

I’d like to think it is my writing (like my forthcoming Angels of Mercy book) that keeps them coming back (because they are repeat followers – not just drive bys). But somehow I think it is the “Inspirational” gallery that keeps them coming back. Who knows. Well, really I guess I could dig deeper and find out. The analytics are there. Just not so sure if I wanna know. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s Marco and Elliot that keep them coming back. I am gonna post another chapter and this weekend I am going to put out a novella form of my forthcoming book that can be read on any e-reader (epub and kindle formats). so keep an eye out for it.

So yeah, I’ll just keep posting like I do. Just going with my gut on this. I tweet, I post on Facebook (which is where most of my links seem to come from), and I blog here.

So, I guess I’ll give a big shout out to my followers in China!

Tags: Angels of Mercy | Elliot Donahey | Facebook | Fans | Followers | Marco Sforza | Social Media | Twitter | Website Stats

Finding Your Voice… Then Sticking To It

Today I’ve been mulling things around. I do this, as I am sure you do it too, from time to time.

But here’s my dilemma, of sorts: I’ve gotten caught up (with my mental ramblings) in a conversation going on with other gay authors and the lack of our representation within the M/M genre and what that means to our voice within our own community. By that I mean real gay men’s voices writing about our own experiences, or at the very least experiences that reflect the reality we all live in. I mean you can have gay vampires, weres or what have you and still have it rooted in what we, as gay men, have to deal with in our lives. How we feel, how we cope.

I know I’ve preached from the Rechy alter before. I just love his work, I have since I was a boy. There are others, but he was the first one I found – sentimentally clinging to his work more than any other, I suppose. The hubby actually found his website out on the net. Well, that’s sort of redundant, isn’t it? Where else would one find a website? Isn’t it funny how I’ve been such a pro-Rechy reader that I never thought to see if he had a website? That really fascinates me. The idea that I can be so vocal about something that has dominated my views on reading for so long and never once seeking him out on the web. I think I know why that is and I’ll come to it anon.

I suppose that some part of it has to do with what I’d built up in my head that was his allure. Well, I’d like to think so – he’s one helluva sexy man – Hollywood sexy. If anything, I am still that 15 year old boy who found Sexual Outlaw on a low shelf in the Gay and Lesbian Studies section of a bookstore. Believe me, I was just as surprised that there was such as section like that in 1979. But there we were…me in my shorts and t-shirt on a hot summer day, and there it was in all of its seedy and semen soaked glory:

The Sexual Outlaw as I saw it in 1979.

I know I’ve written before on how amazing this work is and how it saved me from plunging headlong into a wanton and lascivious chain of sexual exploits. Exploits and adventures that in that era (we’re talking the cusp of the HIV pandemic) might just as well have killed me. I know I’ve covered that before. What I haven’t said is that while that book “opened doors and windows I never dreamed existed…” (paraphrasing Patrick Dennis’ Auntie Mame now), it also allowed me to mentally and sensually let myself fall into the main character’s exploits. Okay, I’ll be blunt about it. I rubbed several of my own creative juices out while reading it. It was like heady, sperm filled porn to me and I was fucking hooked. The odd thing was, it wasn’t porn by any stretch of the imagination. I was titillated all right, but only because I had no other outlet to explore the sex that was contained in that book.

But it was more than that too.

When my parents found out about me, when I confirmed it to them, my dad didn’t really have a huge reaction to it. Just told me that sex with a woman was pretty damn great, but if I wasn’t into that, then maybe sex with men might be great too. And that was about it. Conversation over. It wasn’t like I couldn’t bring it up again with my dad. I didn’t have a problem with that, nor did he, it seems. My dad was pretty goddamned awesome. I’d like to think he knew that. But even with a great male figure in my house to give me guidance and unconditional love, he was right in thinking that he didn’t have much in the way of advice with what I was dealing with inside.

That’s where John came in. John Rechy became my mentor, of sorts. Not that I put any of the responsibility on him. I wouldn’t presume to think such a thing. But I needed something, mind you. I needed someone male to give me a heads up on what was out there and how it sort of worked. I needed a primer. Sexual Outlaw became that primer. He was like my kinky Mr. Rogers (wow, there’s GOT to be some therapy in that statement somewhere), and I soooo wanted to be a part of his neighborhood.

John in all of his Hollywood glamor glory… who wouldn’t idolize that?

I explored that part of my sexuality. I had anonymous sex in the park, I had encounters with nameless men. I had sex. Quite a bit of it too before I ever had my first boyfriend. No one knew about this, of course. I put on a very good face to friends at school and the new gay social friends I’d made. But I still found time to have anonymous sex. I was careful – well, insofar as I could be back then. I didn’t go off to some john’s house or somewhere I knew could literally be a dead end. Yeah, there was a degree of fear in the whole equation. But that also heightened the sexual tension. It made it come alive. That wasn’t Rechy’s fault. I’d already had those thoughts, those desires. Rechy just gave me the wherewithal to admit to them, to embrace them to some small degree and let me know that I wasn’t half crazy with the thoughts and feelings I’d been having. Somehow, I’d survived. Somehow I got very lucky. I know that, believe me I do. It’s not something that I would advise anyone else of doing either.

Women don’t get how powerful and potent testosterone can be. How intoxicating and bewildering and utterly dominating it can be within a man. I saw a documentary on men and their penises called Private Dicks. It was a somewhat humorous way to look at men and how they view their dicks. Sort of the Vagina Monologues but the men’s side of the fence. There was a trans (F to M) man in the film named Spencer. Spencer had spent part of his life as a woman. After the sexual transition, he became acquainted with testosterone very intimately. He said to any woman who was watching it that having been a woman and now was a man, he could say without a doubt, that women have no idea just how potent and powerful that hormone drives men to do what we do.

He’s right about that. It is potent. It is powerful, heady, and lusty. The need to seed is intense.

Anyway, that’s what I want to explore with my own writing. That incredible rush that men get when our sexual potency is heightened. That’s why Angels of Mercy doesn’t shy away from my boys sex lives. It permeates the book because that’s how teenaged boys are. If they could have sex they would – no questions asked. Marco and Elliot have quite a bit of sex in the book. It’s honest. It’s forthright and it is unabashedly male in all of its splendid semen laden fornication. I did quite a bit of research on the topic – mothers would be surprised just how much their teenaged gay boys are having sex – and how much of it they’re posting online. And just to be clear, there was no under-aged stuff within my research. All 18 and above, but there were several postings from these boys that it became quite clear they’d been at it (posting their sexual encounters) for years. Marco and Elliot toy with that as well – sex and social media. These are boys of the internet porn age. They act accordingly but not beyond the realm of their natural characteristics. I don’t call upon the reader to make a huge leap of faith when Marco or Elliot explore their sexual relations. The sex happens organically, as it should.

But, as my hubby keeps reminding me, it is NOT erotica in the sense that I am writing sex to titillate – because he’s quite clear that I am not. The sex Marco and Elliot is very hot and heavy, but it also drives the story forward as these two boys discover how sex becomes another character in their story. The sex they have is varied and pointed and sometimes downright angry. I didn’t want to shy away from it. It’s also why I think it will never get picked up by a traditional publisher. I think it warrants a decent publisher. I believe in the work that much, but I am also a pragmatist – there are too many cards stacked against a ‘gay’ novel already. To use cum play like I do because my boys are into it is definitely pushing the envelope too much. But again, it is a very intrinsic part of who they are – both as a couple and individually.

In Elliot’s book (Volume One of the series) I never really allow Elliot to give voice to how his orgasms are. He says that he has his orgasmic release, but he never gives it any weight – you never get to experience it from his perspective. It’s always about Marco’s ejaculate that Elliot fixates on. For Elliot, it is all about Marco’s release. That’s very much a theme between them. Elliot talks a lot about every time Marco makes love to him. How much he applies himself to learning what pleases Marco as a lover. But Elliot never gives his own desires much voice. My husband says many times over (as he’s had to read it many times over) that what I have is a character study of these men’s lives. Their lives happen to coincide with the love they feel as they come together – BAM! Like a head on collision of two bullet trains – it’s hard, fast and intense – almost to the point of being violent. The hubby also says that I shouldn’t ever refer to my work as erotic. He thinks it is far more than that because of all the little things I’ve woven into Elliot’s psyche. The hubby ought to know – being a retired psychiatrist himself.

Maybe he’s right.

The hubby also did something else: he looked up Rechy’s website and sent me a bunch of blog entries he’d posted. Several of which I have opposing points of view on. I guess this is why I cringed when the links to the blog entries were in my inbox. I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to get me to see why Rechy’s work meant so much to me and how far I’d gone into left field – over thinking elements of my work when I should be just concentrating on the work itself and not the minutiae that surrounds it. He also knew the temptation to reach out to Rechy would be too great. I knew then as I stared into the iphone this morning at all of those links to Rechy’s site, why I’d never looked him up.

Fear – plain and simple. Over the years I’d built Rechy up as a monolithic mentor. He’s never been anything of the sort, just to my 15 year old eyes and in my 15 year old heart. I sort of fell in love with him through his works. He was my first (virtual) boyfriend. I know how that sounds. But I remember that feeling that Rechy was talking directly to me, because I needed it. I needed someone. Sexual Outlaw was it. Then it was City of Night, then Numbers. Yeah, I pretty much did them all. Rabid about it, I was.

So yeah, I was fearful that whatever I’d say I know I’d embarrass myself somehow. And I am not usually like that. I come from theatre and opera. Working with big names in the industry is second nature to me. But John Rechy is different. No one wants to be thought of in those epic monolithic tones. He’s human, same as the next guy. I get that, I do. But my romanticized 15 year old self, yeah, he’s not so convinced. It’s this duality when it comes to him that colors what I write. It’s that strong voice that I am constantly striving for, trying like hell to lock it down for myself. Try to make my own mark – no matter how big or small it may turn out to be.

So yeah, fear… fear that I can’t or fear that I won’t. But I know I have to try. Writing is what I want to do. Writing is what drives me each and every day now. I could lament on the years that I did nothing with that passion, but I’d much rather concentrate on the here and now, right? Rather than the shoulda, woulda, coulda’s…huh?

I hope it wouldn’t be fear of something that I’d say or write – though thinking on it now, yeah I could so gush all over Mr. Rechy and it wouldn’t be pretty. I’d go all Japanese fangirl on him, I’m sure. I wrote him a decent sized email this afternoon (and felt immensely guilty for doing so right after I sent it). He’s a busy guy, I am sure he didn’t need me to prattle on about my life to him. I know I embarrassed the fuck out of myself. I sort of liken it to being that Japanese fangirl walking up to one of those waifish boys from One Direction and just well, sort of fall apart. There might even be some tears involved. How fucking embarrassing would that be? Uh, VERY… he’s gonna think I am some sort of fucktard and will investigate the steps he’ll need to take to ensure his safety from my impending fangirl moment.

Let me lay that to rest for ya, John – I’m too damned embarrassed already. I’ll stay put under my rock if it’s all right with you.

But it’s done now. I’ve had my say to him – thanking him for the inspiration, for being a guiding light in my young gay boy life to the man I’ve become today. I suppose actually, in some strange way he’s left such an imprint upon me that some part of me that was 15 has never grown up. Like a sexually driven Peter Pan, he’s still tucked in there. I still get giddy when I open Sexual Outlaw now. That same feeling never fails to rear its head when I open that book. I immediately go back to that moment when I first found it. My skin sort of tingles, knowing what’s in those pages already – the surprise has long since worn off – only to be replaced by something far greater: my younger self. I am there, trapped and forever lost in those words. Words I can’t fully escape, nor would I ever want to. They’re what gave me the courage to seek out my own voice in this world. Outlaw gave me the balls to seek it out for myself.

So yeah, I may have just fangirl’d all over John (sorry!) in that email I sent to him (I am too afraid to even reread the copy in my sent mailbox because I know I’ll cringe). How teenaged girl can you get? Not that I am disparaging teenaged girls – on the contrary, I am commiserating with them. I’ll take the embarrassment. At the very least I can say that I’ve had my say on it. I’ve told him what his works have meant to me – let the chips fall where they may, right?

Fifty years in and I am still trying to sort out my own voice. I think I am close. Angels of Mercy is helping me get there. And when I do find it, by the gods, I will make sure I stick to it and never let it go.

Tags: Angels of Mercy | Cum Play | Elliot Donahey | Gay Sex | Imagination | Internalized Self-Hatred | Intimacy | John Rechy | Male Authors | Marco Sforza | Mentors | Sexual Outlaw | writing | XY