So I know it’s been a while.

Life inserted itself fully. There was work to be done. There was more writing and editing. Honestly, I don’t know what I am doing most of the time. I know what I like and I write to that. It’s a contemplative and fairly lonely existence. It is not something I talk freely about. Not that I am ashamed of what I do. I’m not. Let’s be clear about that.

I think that I needed some distance from my last long winded entry. Turning 50 was much bigger than I wanted it to be. Not in the celebrations or in the thick of the moment – they were all well and good. They are what made me what I am today – a collection of experiences and moments that have molded (for better or worse) into the man I am today.

There’s the hubby, our girls, the two cats – all the hallmarks of domesticity. Yet I burn with other thoughts and ideas. I have men coming up to me (in my mind – head out of the gutter now) who have their stories to tell. They burn with it too. I try to put passion into what I do. Tweaking it here, imbuing it there.

*sigh*

So I heard back from a publisher yesterday (one that I had to ping several times to get ANYTHING from them – something the hubby kept asking “Do you really want to work with a group of people that you constantly have to chase down?”) The hubby has a point. I write fiction that is predominantly gay in nature – it’s what I know. It’s what I am passionate about because in a sea of how we are not like everyone else out there (the heterosexual norm) I think our voices are important enough that I can’t help but write from that perspective.

Anyway, the publisher didn’t get what I was doing. They took a pass on the material. They didn’t get that it was more of a character study than a standard cookie cutter narrative. They’re obviously looking only at the profile margin. I am not there. I never want it to be about the money. The comments back weren’t even that helpful. They were conflicted (rushed and fantastical vs. prose that broke momentum – I mean, what the fuck do you do with absurd commentary like that?). It was very evident that they didn’t even really read the material or try to understand what I was doing. It is not your standard cookie cutter formulaic m/m romantic fair. It was never intended to be that. I know it’s different – THAT’S WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO! Jesus, it was evident to me that publishers don’t have a fucking clue what the market will bear.

I have given the book to people I’ve just met – who don’t know me well enough to know what I am fully about or about what voice I am trying to put out there. In each and every case thus far I have heard how they have emotively connected with my protagonist. How his inner monologue was what pulled them in. They got it. THAT’S the audience I am after. Not some housewife who wants to be swept cursorily away on some cookie cutter adventure for a few hours on some vapid inane storyline that will be instantly forgotten the moment the last page is flipped.

I have two beta readers who have read it and both are not avid readers. Both have said that my characters stayed with them. They loved that they knew so much about them that they wrote back and said that they felt real to them. They both said that this was the first book they’ve gotten through that they actually read like a fiend to finish it. One of which hasn’t read a book in 20 years. But he read through mine like a bullet train with no signs of stopping – almost in one sitting. So there is something there. I can feel it.

Another one is a young man in Britain who I met through a LGBT support site. He’s smart, bright and funny. He’s also hard on himself. My heart goes out to him in so many ways. He embodies my main character (Elliot) in so many ways. He told me that he identified with him and that the voice is very much where his head is at and it rang true for him. He’s in his early twenties (just beyond where my main character is).  But the publisher doesn’t consider the market really. They look at statistics, they look at data. And I get it that its supposed to be the business of selling. I get that it’s supposed to be about the bottom line.

My work is epically long for the standard M/M fair. I know it’s not an easy work to market. For god sake you’re inside my main characters head listening to how he processes all of the information that keeps coming his way. And he has issues – it’s what drives the drama forward. But they didn’t get that. I know they didn’t. They just aren’t seeing the work for what it is.

“And it’s only one opinion.”  They said. Yeah, it is – and it’s fairly clear that they aren’t invested in finding new talent as they profess to be. They just are struggling to survive selling the same cookie cutter formula (sorry guys/gals I have bought close to 700 books from the genre – as research on what types of stories are out there) and 98.9% of it is pure schlock. It’s absolute rubbish. But they sell what sold yesterday because it’s just GOTTA sell today too. Well, guess what, eventually they will get tired of the same bland Cheerios that you’ve been spoon feeding them. And no, changing the protag from your last best seller from a fireman to a police man doesn’t count as being creative. It’s the same formula. Shake it the FUCK up, will ya? Or the genre will tank.

In short it was a waste of a very long period of time that they could’ve just piped up and owned their fuckedupness in not managing their time well (at one point they actually used deadlines looming as a reason for the delay). They are a small publishing house. If they can’t manage the deadlines they have now and I got added to the mix… see where I am going with that?

So I realized that I’ll either have to keep looking or self-pub it myself. I have author friends who self-pub. It’s not an easy path because the type of stuff I write (while it is deeply rooted in a M/M (sometimes more) relationship slant and thus carries a bit of erotic undercurrent as all relationships do) isn’t mainstream. It isn’t what I think will sell millions and millions of copies.

But is that the type of success I am looking for? I don’t know. I think I’d much rather be successful at putting out something I think is of quality but may fall by and large completely unnoticed by the masses.

I was contemplating all of this when I came upon this little posting on HuffPo Gay Voices on gay men reading 50 Shades of Grey and commenting on it. Gay boys reviewing straight porn/erotica. I thought it was something that would get me to smile a bit. Gay boys have such an aversion to anything lady part wise… so I certainly expected some giggles over that. I got it.

Now here’s the deal – what I didn’t expect was the actual lines from this world-wide bestseller to actually be as badly written as they were. It seemed very amateurish or slightly – awkward when it came to the sex that was portrayed in the book. I am sure that the context helps but the actual inner monologue that they were reading was like some fourteen year old girl was trying to describe a sexual situation.

I was stunned…

See for yourself –

[embedplusvideo height=”255″ width=”400″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1uFqFTx” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/zZTSxQIxsiA?fs=1&vq=hd720″ vars=”ytid=zZTSxQIxsiA&width=400&height=255&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=1&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep6159″ /]

I like Neil McNeil’s stuff on YouTube. He’s clever and he’s certainly crafty in telling his amusing slices of life (from a gay man’s perspective) and it’s light, it’s funny but there’s also a thread of really bright and innovative moments where he’s pulling back the curtain on how gay men survive in this hetero-normative world we’re immersed in. I think he’s pretty fucking brilliant and I love that he’s unabashedly gay in a big way. I admire his courage and his fortitude to get his stuff out there. He believes in what he does, he’s passionate about it, he doesn’t accept that someone else may not – or rather, he is unfazed by it all.

Then I think about my musical muse for Angels of Mercy (Jay Brannan) and how he doesn’t have a big record company backing him up. He doesn’t have a marketing department or a promotional touring company to do all of his stuff. It’s just him cranking out what he does because he’s passionate about it. And his passion is infectious. It permeates wherever he is.

I need to take a page out these men’s book. They strive forward. They press when the world presses back. So I will continue to develop Angels because I believe in what I am doing. I believe in the nature of the work. I take heart that the people who have read it want to read more (it ends on a cliff hanger – which by the way I was told by a publisher that series of that nature are not really what’s selling). Yeah, that’s why sequels in film and serialized television doesn’t work. That’s why the Potter series languished in obscurity.

Elliot and Marco will see the light. Even if I have to figure it all out on my own. I may not command a huge audience from it all, but in the end they will be unabashedly mine. They will be my boys/men – telling their own stories. Why? Because they come to me in dreams – both waking and in sleep. They have things to say. They have surprises even for me.

The hubby commented that Thomas Wolfe (who wrote the hubby’s favorite book – Look Homeward Angel amongst other things) that he had to shop his masterpiece around and really didn’t understand what he wrote in its entirety until he sat down with the editor who he would continue to work with during his writing career and they discovered the absolute breadth of what he’d assembled. Even he didn’t know what was in there. He just struck a creative vein and went with it.

That’s what Elliot and Marco are to me. Life’s blood in writing. They feed me in ways I had never imagined. I have to finish their tale; I have no choice.

Will it ultimately find an audience (of any kind)? I don’t know. I may never know (hell, I’m 50 – it could take several years or decades before it finds people who get me and what I am on about). I may get recognized long after I’ve expired from this world. I may never see the success. Or it could languish for all time. But ultimately, does it matter?

I need to tell their story no matter what. That’s what matters. It’s the only thing that matters.

Elliot is a sea of conflicting emotions. He’s an out gay kid who is shy and sticks to the shadows to survive the hell that is high school. It isn’t until the brightest light from that hellish world sees him and says – you’re mine – that he has to deal what a life in the light means. It isn’t easy for him – for them both.

But then again, isn’t the work we have to strive for it worth it? Doesn’t it make the attaining and the having all the more sweeter because of it?

So I’ll press on – navigating waters I am not sure I know how to do. But I’ll press forward and figure it out. I have a brain, I have friends and family for support. What more do I need to make a go of it?

Not a damned thing…

Tags: Angels of Mercy | Drive | Elliot Donahey | Jay Brannan | Marco Sforza | Motivation | Neil McNeil | Novel Writing | Positive Thinking | Publishing | Self-Publishing | Storytelling | Success By What Means | Traditional Publishing

Okay, so I have been pondering backstory quite a bit as of late. The reason? I am writing a series of books told by three young men’s perspective over the course of the same events. Each of them has their part of the tale to tell. That’s nothing new in and of itself, right? Yeah, well, not by me. So I’ve had to seriously contemplate the first novel told by that book’s protagonist. I am still in editing mode with that one – beta readers are taking a look at it and providing feedback. So that’s good.

But then the hubby said to me, “You know that what Elliot (my MC in the first novel) sees as important and memorable isn’t necessarily what Marco (his jock quarterback boyfriend) thinks is important, right?”

In some strange part of my psyche, I knew I knew this. Only I hadn’t really given it its due. Marco, the unwavering boyfriend, is his own person. I know this because I created him. But somehow as I was retelling the same story from his perspective, trying like hell to give him a platform to tell his part of the tale, I was somehow shortchanging his experiences and not giving a real look at how he looked at the exact same circumstances but from his life experience.

This should be automatic, right? Yeah, well, it was. Just not to the extent that he deserved. Good thing I am only two chapters into his book that I can regroup and massage it into a better narrative for him. He deserves it. For fuck’s sake he’s the rock in this relationship. His artsy geeky boyfriend is the one who keeps waffling all over the damned place. Not Marco. He’s as fucking solid as they come.

Which brings me to another point – in fiction (esp. queer fiction) I take a rather hard line that cum is different than come. Sure you say I am coming when the guy is getting off. But I would actually like the more porn iteration of the word (and all it’s implied variants) cum, cumming, came (okay, that one sorta breaks the mold). But CUM vs. COME is definitely on my target list. I prefer to use C-U-M as it is a bit raunchier and as a guy, that’s where I am. I like big ol’ messy man on man action. Boys like messy sex. It drives our passions. Cumming is the best fucking thing in the world for us (yeah, yeah, I am sure it is for the ladies when they can get it too. But I don’t write straight erotica so that’s off my radar here).

I am not a piggy sort of guy but I can certainly appreciate when guys get that way. I get it. I truly do. Marco and Elliot (in Angels of Mercy) are very into their form of rutting, cum soaked sex. They like it down and dirty. It’s what grounds them, keeps them bound to each other.

And ladies, don’t let any guy tell you he hasn’t tried to taste his spooge. He’s a fat fucking liar if he does. Every dude has tried it at least once. We’re boys, we can’t help ourselves. The gay dudes that are into it, fuck me, they can’t get enough. Cum dumpster high on the shit like its the best fucking crack around – which, I guess it is. I get that too. Doesn’t mean I wallow in it myself, but I get it. So do my boys.

So back to the backstory question I pose. Marco has quite a bit of backstory that colors his world, how he views it and why. When he (finally) finds the courage to ask Elliot out, he never wavers once he has him. Marco refuses to think of his world without Elliot now that he has him. He would literally tear the world apart to get him back if something ever came between them. Scary obsessive love, that’s the kind of love he brings to Elliot. Elliot doesn’t understand it. He can’t figure out how the hottest guy in their small Northern California town would even look his way let alone profess his everlasting love to him. It rattles his world, shakes it, turns it right-side up on him but he still doesn’t get it.

Marco tells him it ‘ain’t for you to get – it just is, and you better get used to it.’

Gayboys, especially the types who’ve been told they aren’t worthy of any kind of real love, that their perverse or monsters, often can’t handle love when its offered so willingly. Elliot waffles in the beginning because of this. Marco just overwhelms, he consumes and he is very fiery. Leaving Elliot stunned and bewildered and deeply loved. It scares him like no other.

This model has been my inspirational source for Elliot Donahey in my story.

So the first book covers that, with those exact lines from Marco’s mouth about it not being something for Elliot ‘to get.’ But what Marco has behind them is something Elliot can only guess at. Yet in volume 2 of my Angels series, we get to see why Marco tells him that his love for Elliot is weighted, it has history. For Marco, his love has gone on unrequited for two very long and scare filled years wondering if Elliot would even consider going out with him. Marco is a bonafide stud. Girls follow him around, guys try to emulate him, but Marco doesn’t really see that, doesn’t pay it much mind. All he can see is the out gay kid that nearly everyone picks on and, despite the macho air that billows in his wake, all he can feel is how frightened he is that Elliot would reject him. So he waits, he watches, he follows. Consumed by all things Elliot. Marco is right, for him, it does have history – two long years in high school where the bullied gay kid takes no notice of him – slinking from dark recess to dark recess trying to stay out of the limelight. And that is the problem. Marco is nothing but limelight. A great big shiny light.

And here’s how I sort of see Marco Sforza (if a slight bit older than in the book).

And when he thinks he finally has the courage to approach Elliot to just say ‘hey’ and see if he’ll talk to him, he over hears a brutal conversation where Elliot rails to one of his geeky friends about the jocks at school and uses Marco as the poster boy for all things terrible and wrong in his life – never knowing Marco is nearby – torn apart, shredded by the boy he loves but thinks he can now never have.

So, it’s weighted, it has history. For Marco, his backstory about this love for Elliot, how he comes back even stronger and more determined to change Elliot’s mind about what he thinks about him is what is so powerful in his story. My hope is to provide enough of that struggle, enough of his backstory from book one (told by his boyfriend) that we get a chance to see what it means for Marco to ‘man up’ and fight for the man he loves and put it all out there for Elliot to see.

Luckily for him, Elliot is swept off his feet.

Even Marco can’t believe he’s got what he’s always wanted either.

Of course, no one would read a story that was only sunshine and roses. So the boys go through some fairly terrible shit. That’s life. Happy as a clam then you’re eaten by a shark. That’s not to say they don’t get their Ever After, Happily. It’ll just take a heap load of crap to sort through to get there.

But at least my hubby gave me some things to mentally chew on. Marco’s highlights in his pursuit of Elliot are very different for him than that of his boyfriend. And even where they intersect, they have different weight for each. But I guess, as a writer, that’s where the fun comes in. Letting Marco explore what it all means for him. He’s got the boy that no one liked, but that boy was the only one he could see, the only one who mattered.

The only one who had his heart…

Love divine… (with Hottie McHottie – Anthony Romero (the smaller guy))

Backstory, it’s the colors we weave to make stories worth telling and for our readers, stories worth reading.

Tags: Angels of Mercy | Anthony Romero | Backstory | Elliot Donahey | Man Love | Marco Sforza | Messy Man Sex | Spoogefest