Lee Lynch’s The Amazon Trail

Sexual Language

I didn’t like living with my father growing up and can’t imagine sharing a home with someone so essentially different from myself as an adult. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with guys, and I feel much more akin to gay male friends than to non-gay male friends. We’re just not compatible. The energy, for me, is akin to two magnets turned the wrong way – they very forcefully repel rather than attract.

Living with a woman feels much more natural to me. There are no assumptions about roles. There are no Mars-Venus issues.

I like traveling with a woman. I like shopping with a woman.  I like sleeping next to a woman, socializing with women in person or virtually. I love writing about women and having a woman publisher. I understand, mostly, our relationships with one another. I’ve always said, as a symbol of my partiality to female company, that men’s feet are too big. I trip over them. They take up my space. I have no conversation for guys outside of work, for example, or perhaps shared missions.

There are some words and phrases used regularly in gay culture that disturb me. The worst is “sexual preference.” It’s so limiting!

Is this the best message to describe ourselves and to give to outsiders? In my experience, I have a gender preference as well as a sexual preference. Simply put, and although I enjoy male friends and relatives, I prefer the company of women. No matter what we’re doing together, whether it’s affectional, sexual or conversational.

Heterosexuals are viewed as whole people. They don’t walk around with labels like lesbian or queer or gay. No one meets a non-gay person and immediately thinks of what they do in bed or with whom. At least I hope not. Yet when I meet a straight for the first time, I know I’m sometimes being viewed one-dimensionally. I’m tipped off by their questions, by their references to gay people they know, by their excited – or grossed-out – expressions. This may never change, but I don’t have to perpetuate that tunnel vision with my own speech.

Usage of the word gay gets my goat too. Since when is gay applied only to men? I’ve been gay since I was 15. And, frankly, it was a little easier to think of myself as gay than as homosexual or lesbian when I first came out. Both of those words were fraught with centuries of negative baggage. Today, I’d rather be a dyke or queer than a lesbian, but I always want to be gay. I’m so happy gay, I’d rather have been born a gay man than a straight woman. How to stop the journalists from using the phrase “lesbians and gay men”? Can we say “gay people”? Or “gay women and men”? It is nice when they lead with the female words; we’ve come a long way since women weren’t even newsworthy. Now even gay women are included in mainstream stories now and then.

While it’s true that, as a writer, I may be oversensitive to words, language has always been a powerful tool used for good and bad, to oppress or to free, to imprison in stereotypes and to declare independence from them. One of the best known objectionable words is “boy,” used to strip adulthood from black men. Slang is often a weapon, as when bullies toss around words like “fag” and “sissy.” The gay way of life is frequently called “unhealthy.” What the heck does that mean? Unhealthy for whom?

We can be lazy with language, using shortcuts that become code words to signal disapproval.   It’s hard to watch what we say. The brilliant and brave Mary Daly was a revolutionary of words, revealing their clout in our speech by dissecting them. The very title of her bookGyn/Ecology (1988) plays with a deeper meaning.  Daly’s presentation of such words as “a-maz-ing” opened my eyes to what I am really talking about. I think of the term “stag-nation,” as she explains it in Wickedary (1987).

It may sound like I am griping and need to quit sweating the small stuff. In actuality, I am protesting the misconstruction of our words, misconstruing of our lives and the surrender of queers to labeling by outsiders and insiders. We take back the night, we take up our cause. Now we need to take back our words, because they are still being used against us.

Copyright Lee Lynch 2012

January 2012

To Resolve or Not Resolve

Hmmm…. it’s that time of year again…

Time for that age-old tradition of making those promises to ourselves that we promise to break – New Year’s Resolutions

So, what should mine be?

Less Mania?

More Money?

Seriously?
Resolutions set you up to be a failure every year. Who’s idea was it to make those things anyway? Probably my parents – still trying to prove to me I’ll fail at everything I try. (Actually, it is widely believed that the Babylonians were the first to make New Year’s resolutions, and people all over the world have been breaking them ever since. The early Christians believed the first day of the new year should be spent reflecting on past mistakes and resolving to improve oneself in the new year.)

Who really keeps their New Year’s Resolutions? I found this on Wikipedia (so it must be the Gospel) “Recent research shows that while 52% of participants in a resolution study were confident of success with their goals, only 12% actually achieved their goals. A separate study in 2007 by Richard Wisemen from the University of Bristol showed that 78% of those who set New Year resolutions fail.”

Would I like to give more money to charity? Sure. Can I pay my bills now? Barely.
Do I need to lose weight? Have you SEEN me? LOL
Do I need to spend more time at the gym? Sure – and I plan to. I mean – I see some distinct advantages to that.

But seriously, people sit down this time every year and make a list of things they say they’re going to do. Ease up on drinking. Stop smoking.  Lose weight. Work harder. Spend more time with their families. (And yeah – sometimes it’s the same people listing both of those…. DUH!) Finally landscape the yard. Write a novel. OK, OK… so now, we’re talking.

Yeah – I can get behind that last one… but then does that count as a New Year’s Resolution? What exactly does? Writing books is something I should do anyway, right? Just like losing weight, working out, etc. I plan to have at least two novels completed by the end of 2012. I don’t consider that a resolution. I consider that like saying, “My New Year’s resolution is to go to work everyday.” It’s what I do. (And yes – I give thanks to all powers that be for both my jobs AND my awesome publisher who lets me make money writing!)

Now where was I?

Oh yeah – more focus – that’s a good one. But that will depend on aforementioned mania and/or depression.

So, here I am, at the tail end of another year. And 2011 was not a good one. It’s ok to admit that right? So does making 2012 a better year count as a resolution?

What about selling lots of copies of ”Initiation by Desire” http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com/products.php?product=Initiation-by-Desire-%252d-by-MJ-Williamz that is out in January? Is that a resolution?

Again – where was I?

So, here I am, oh yeah… I said that already… sitting at my computer as a new year looms, asking myself whether or not I should make any New Year’s Resolutions.

And, while not normally one to go along with the crowd, I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon and make a couple. Yes – literally two.

In the year 2012, I promise to laugh more and love more.

I figure if I can do those two things, everything else will fall into place.

Thank you again for all your support in years gone by and here’s to many more years together.

Happy New Year!

Speaking Out Against Bullying

by Jennifer Lavoie

Jennifer Lavoie lives in Connecticut in the same city she grew up in. While growing up, she always wanted to be a writer or a teacher and briefly debated a career in marine biology. The only problem with that was she’s deathly afraid of deep water. Starting during a holiday season as temporary help, she worked in a bookstore for six years and made it all the way up to assistant manager before she left to take a job teaching. Jennifer has her bachelor’s degree in secondary English education and found a job in her town teaching middle school students. Along with another teacher and a handful of students, Jennifer started the first Gay-Straight Alliance at the school. She is also active in other student clubs and enjoys pairing students with books that make them love to read.
Andy Squared is her first novel.

Andy Squared – Coming in 2012
Seventeen-year-old twins, Andrew and Andrea Morris, have always been close. They share everything—from their friends to a room—and they both enjoy star positions on their high school’s soccer teams.  All’s right with the twins…or is it?

When new student Ryder Coltrane moves from Texas to their small New York town, he spins Andrew’s world upside down. All of Andrew’s past relationship troubles begin to make sense and his true feelings start to click into place after Ryder comes out to him. His friendship with Ryder turns secretively romantic, but secrets, they soon find out, are hard to keep. Once rumors start to fly, so-called friends turn on them, and the boys’ relationship turns into a bomb about to explode.  But Andrew never expected it would be his own twin, Andrea, holding a lighter to ignite it.

***

I am writing this post as a teacher.

I am also writing this post as the victim of bullying.

Once again my television is telling me that another teenager has taken her life because she was bullied. It doesn’t matter whether she is a lesbian or not. What matters is how senseless this tragedy is, and how preventable it can be. According to the news, as she lay in critical condition in the hospital, the bullying continued on her Facebook page. How can people be so cruel?

I’ve heard some adults say that “bullying is a right of passage” or that “kids will be kids.” But it’s wrong. No matter what way it is looked at, making another person feel inferior for ANY reason – be it their sexuality, gender, religion, ethnic background, clothing, hair color, whatever – is wrong. So very, very wrong.

My bullying started when I was in the eighth grade. In homeroom, every single morning, one of the guys who sat next to me spit on me. I don’t know what I did. It could have been my glasses. Maybe even my jeans (my family didn’t have much, and I wore KMart or Caldor’s brand clothing instead of Abercrombie, which was cult-like at the time). Could it have been my hair? I wondered if maybe I even smelled bad, though they never said that. I don’t remember one of my bullies’ names. And I don’t even remember the name of the teacher who watched, day by day, as this happened, and not once said a single word. My mother now asks me why I never told her. My response? “Because the teacher didn’t stop it, so I figured no one would help.”

I’ve told this story to my students, and I remind them whenever a bullying issue comes up. I will not tolerate any form of bullying in my classroom. I cannot stand by and watch one of my students being harassed by another student because I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to be made to feel inferior. And no one has the right to do that to another person. I truly feel my students pain when they tell me how they feel when it happens.

I’m proud to say I’ve seen changes. But it’s not enough. More adults need to take this stand as well. If you see kids harassing another kid who is visibly upset, please, step in and help them. Be the responsible person and get help for them. If someone you know is being bullied or you fear they might be, talk to them. Do something about it.

Kids look to adults for guidance. They look to us as role models. Maybe if we really push and take a stand against bullying, they will finally realize that it’s wrong and has serious, harmful side effects.

Write What You Don’t Know

by David-Matthew Barnes

I sat in on a workshop at a writing conference in Las Vegas recently. The very accomplished instructor offered sage advice to his starry-eyed attendees, as many teachers do: “Write what you know.”

As I watched each student scribble this pearl of wisdom down in their comp books and on their notepads, I felt compelled to disagree.

Writers should write about characters and places and issues they want to write about, regardless if the plot, storyline, and universe of their novel don’t reflect their own personal experiences. Passion should overrule knowledge every time.

One of the writers at the conference later asked me to clarify my objection to the teacher’s advice. I responded with, “Tell the story you feel has to be told, not a story you’re comfortable telling just because it’s familiar to you.”

All three of my novels were a tremendous challenge to write. But, I prefer it that way. I live for the research process of a book. I love writing about cultures and ethnicities that are not my own. Creating characters that are polar opposites of me is thrilling. It keeps me on my toes. It keeps me from becoming a lazy writer.

Mesmerized, my first novel, was written from the first-person perspective of a seventeen-year-old woman coping with the murder of her older gay brother. Accidents Never Happen, my second novel, tells the story of a love-starved Puerto Rican boxer. Swimming to Chicago, my most recent novel, explores the life of a gay Armenian-American teenage boy growing up in a small town in the South.

These novels couldn’t be more different from each other. And, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Writing a novel becomes a journey for me, taking me into unfamiliar territory. I never know what I’ll discover through research or the actual writing process (characters can be unpredictable and very determined). But, in the end, the experience of writing a novel leaves me enlightened – and not just creatively.

When I started writing Swimming to Chicago, I knew I wanted to explore a culture and society that hadn’t received the attention and focus it deserved, especially where gay teenagers are concerned.

I considered making the main character of Alex an Iranian-American teen, mostly due to my emotional response to the execution of Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari .  But, I felt their story was told beautifully by Jay Paul Deratany in his stage play Haram Iran.

I continued researching and soon discovered articles about gay rights (or the lack of) in Armenia. While working on the novel, I found and read an article . This motivated and inspired me to write Alex’s story. The more I read, the more I became certain that Alex was Armenian-American. To my knowledge, a young adult novel written by an American author has never featured a gay Armenian teen character as its protagonist. Therefore, I knew this was a story that had to be told. I knew that not only Armenian-Americans would identify with Alex, but other young people from conservative cultures would as well.

Sure, it was a risk. But if you’re not writing fearlessly, why write at all?

KK is Getting Published!

by Kathleen Knowles

It began with a photograph I saw in a museum in the mid 1990s. The photograph was dated 1900 or so and captioned, “Anita McGee with the first members of the Army Nurse Corps.” I remembered thinking, “There’s a story there.” Many years and many romance novel readings later, I started conceptualize the story.

I love San Francisco history so it was natural for me to want to tell a story with the backdrop of my hometown. There was a lot I didn’t know so I spent a lot of time in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area archives looking for information about the Presidio, the Spanish American war, and nurses. I read with books with titles like “The History of Nursing.” There is one thing an historic novelist does NOT want to do is get the details wrong. I am a bit obsessive and one of my long time obsessions is the Palace Hotel.  That gave me the idea to place my other character as a cook in the hotel.

My spouse Jeanette loves the fact that I am writer and I love San Francisco. She gave me books with old pictures of San Francisco, I found the visuals very helpful. One even gave me an idea for a pivotal location in the story- the Cobweb Palace. Yep, sometimes you don’t have to make stuff up; it’s already there.

Around the time I started to research and then to write Awake Unto Me, a couple of things happened in Jeanette’s and my life that greatly aided my writing. First, due to budget cuts, my employer, the state of California began furloughing employees. I was handed eighteen extra days off from 2009-2010. I didn’t have a choice: I had to take the pay cut and the days off. Therefore, those were my writing days. The second thing that happened was we decided to remodel our condo and ended up in a six month legal battle with the homeowners’ association. Writing was an excellent distraction from that mess. I could sit with my laptop in an arm chair in the tiny living room of the apartment where we lived, scatter my research materials around me, turn on classical music and just write for hours while Jeanette was at work. I found classical music a better background for writing than my more typical listening pleasure, rock and roll.

A challenge I found in writing an historical novel was trying to get into the characters’ heads and think as they would, i.e., in a nineteenth century fashion. You can say what you want about the universality of love and human emotions but how that would play out for two women in 1898 San Francisco would just not be the same. They are not hooking up online or even being introduced by mutual friends. They are not going to be going out on dates.  So finding the way to get my two characters in proximity was a puzzle.  I think my solution was simple but effective.

Writing is such a leap of faith, somewhat like falling in love.  You can do the footwork and then you have to just let it go forward in whatever fashion it’s going to go.  Sometimes the results are better than you ever imagined.

What Would Shakespeare Do?

By Julie Smith

If you read books on writing that are actually written by writers (as opposed to writing teachers), you’ll probably end up being amazed that anything ever gets written at all. There’s something about fiction writers when they decide to dissect their craft—first they tell you they know nothing about writing, it’s really just a very mysterious process and they couldn’t possibly tell you how to do it. And then in the next chapter they turn into Prose Nazis with nasty whips in their hands. All of a sudden, they know exactly how to do it, and they’re going to bloody well insist that you follow directions or else.

Listen to Stephen King—“stories are found things, like fossils in the ground.  Plot is…the writer’s jackhammer, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice…”

Kind of resonates, doesn’t it? Bet he had fun writing that. He then goes on to tell you how Misery came to him pretty much in a dream. Now that’s an amazing fossil to find. King doesn’t even write mysteries as a rule, and Misery’s a classic, in my opinion one of the best mysteries ever written. And it came to him in a dream! We should all be so lucky.

King goes on to tell you that his process involves “excavating the fossil.., beginning with the situation and moving on to  the characters.” Which I think is a really good way to go, but  it’s not Anne Lamott’s way.

Listen to Lamott: “You sit down at the same time every day.  You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. Then you begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child….you squint at an image that  is forming in your mind—a scene, a locale, a character, whatever—and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear

what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind. The other voices are like banshees and drunken monkeys.”

She goes on like that for pages and pages, many of them hilarious, but it all seems so hopeless you wonder why she isn’t hospitalized. And at some point she tells you there really is no other way. Though it’s not Stephen King’s way.

The question I always ask myself when I read writers growing impassioned about their methods is “What would Shakespeare do?”  Would he sit at his computer and squint at an image? Would he say, hey, I’m gonna create some real art here, and not just some crap for the rabble in the pit, like Othello or Hamlet. Maybe I’ll have a dream and -–I know—I’ll call it “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

And then I imagine him looking at his calendar, and thinking, oh no, the rent’s due, and so is the mortgage on that cottage at Stratford, and I don’t have any ideas. (By the way, some writers tell you writing absolutely doesn’t come from ideas. That that’s the last thing you want to have.) But remember, Will’s got a mortgage. So I see him grabbing a pint of ale with one hand and pulling out his well-worn copy of Plutarch’s Lives  with the other and saying to himself, “Hey, guy, time to re-tell another one. Here’s one about Julius Caesar—maybe there’s a play in that.”

And then I get calm again.

Because in the end everybody’s got to do it their own way. The truth is, there are morning writers and  night writers. There are outliners and free-formers. Some people even work backwards–John Irving is famous for writing his last chapter first and I can’t even conceive of that.

But I do think that all these advice-givers have one thing in common—and it has to do with what Robert Olen Butler calls “the zone.” There really is a place of the imagination where writers go, and where the subconscious—or the imagination– takes over, and the good news is, there are methods for getting there. You just have to experiment until you find yours.

But I like Will’s. Nothing focuses the mind like overdue bills.

[This is an excerpt from WRITING YOUR WAY: THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL TRACK. Julie’s  the author of BSB’s CURSEBUSTERS!]

The Amazon Trail: All I Want For Christmas

When I was a kid, there was a popular holidaysong called “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.” So what does agrown up dyke wish for at Christmas, Kwanzaa or Hanukah? After all these yearsof accumulating Stuff, I can think of more I’d rather lose than gain. Startingwith pounds. So no sweet potato pie, chocolate coins or marzipan rugelach andcertainly no stealing Santa Claus’ cookies and milk.

This time of year is supposed to be all about peace. I wouldn’t mind a little of that. No, make that a lot. Put a one-wayticket home in every soldier’s stocking. Take all the military funds and purchase ploughshares, not stock market shares. Plough under all the failed strip malls,strip mines and clear-cuts. Reforest our land. The returning troops and the unemployedcould rebuild the United States from potholes to playgrounds to honest politicians.

It’s not that I don’t want a MacBookAir, an iPhone and a sled full of other cool gizmos, but Verizon just sent me afree android phone whose wonders I’ve barely begun to plumb. It’s not that Idon’t want a hand truck or the coffee table book Vivian Maier: StreetPhotographer. On any given day I could add something new to my stuff lust.

The truth is, I have everything Ineed, including a sled full of electronic gizmos. I have my sweetheart and ourcomfy home and our beloved pets. We are healthy and have jobs. We have caringfamily and friends. I have a new mess of books from the library.

I’ll settle for folding down the seats in my car, covering them with the old army blanket and trundling off to get ourtree. We have the worst luck with trees, but we keep trying. This is our fifthholiday season together. We’re kind of a comedy act around the tree though.

The first year went fine. Except it wasn’t Christmas yet. I flew from Oregon to Florida early in December and mysweetheart met me at the airport wearing a Santa hat. That was the zaniest,most festive gesture she could have made. Immediately, it really was theholiday season. We went to an outdoor stand all lit up with colored lights and gota beautiful, fresh tree. We loaded it with a bountiful supply of decorations.

By the second year, we had u-hauled mecross country and were still unpacking.  Wedidn’t have time, energy or space for a tree.

So for our third Christmas together, wewent to a PTA fund raiser and found the most perfect tree I’ve ever seen.Should I mention my sticker shock at the cost of trees? I remember paying $15.00;now you can spend $85.00 on a tree. Yet, while my sweetheart was content with amere six footer, I knew she’d always wanted a big one. She couldn’t stopsmiling at the nine-footer I chose, not knowing what lurked within.

But, okay, my sweetheart is an oldfashioned girl and likes her trees so we brought home this perfect tree, luggedit into the dining room and stood it up. A clump of mud fell to the floor.Except, was that mud? What was that? A cry went up from my ferocious femme. “It’sa mouse!”

It was indeed a mouse. A dead mousethat fell out of our perfect tree. What else were those branches hiding? Yuk! I removed the poor critter, but we were skeeved out. It was like finding a cockroach in your entrée; you lose your appetite.

Then, of course, it didn’t fit in the tree stand.  We bought it a big sturdy stand. Somehow, we managed to control our gag reactions long enough to get itupright. Nevertheless, we had no desire to decorate it. So it stood in the dining room bereft and when the holiday cards arrived we used them as garland until we took it to the recycling center.

In our fourth year we were exhausted from a major surgery and marriage planning. We would be out of town for the holiday. We were a bit leery of the whole live tree experience, but artificia lwouldn’t do. No tree.

This year, I found a Groupon. Forty dollars for an $80.00 Douglas fir. How could we resist? Sure, we’d have to trek forty-five minutes north to get it, but hey, this is the land of Mickey Mouse.The mouse lives, right? We are over the dead mouse.

Last Sunday we trekked.  We scoped out the web site, Google-mapped, GPSed,called ahead. We got up there and couldn’t find the darned place. Turns out, it was so tiny we passed right by. Some u-turning went on and we pulled up to it. Theplace was locked up, shut down, closed despite its Sunday hours.

We called them, left a message, gaveup. We came home determined. My sweetheart went up into the crawl space andslid tote after tote of decorations down the ladder to me. Our home is adornedwith many-hued totes. Will we get to empty them this year?

All I want for Christmas is to see my sweetheart smile when we light up our tree.

Copyright Lee Lynch 2011

Drawn to Disaster

by Kim Baldwin

I’ve always been interested in real life stories of endurance, survival, and resourcefulness, especially when that struggle is tied to nature. My home library contains several hundred volumes of nonfiction shipwreck and lost-at-sea stories, mountain climbing mishaps, polar exploration, plane crashes, epic journeys and quests, held in captivity autobiographies; you get the idea. No surprise I like movies like Castaway, 127 hours, The Edge, Touching the Void, Vertical Limit.

Most of my solo novels reflect these tastes: Hunter’s Pursuit opens during a blizzard, Force of Nature with a tornado, Whitewater Rendezvous had a bear attack, rapids, and other perils, Flight Risk had an air bombing, to name a few. High Impact, my new release, (available now on the BSB Website), has a plane crash, and survival and endurance are major themes explored on several levels. It’s my third book set in Alaska, a majestic canvas that I love for its beauty and broad scope of adventure possibilities. From the email I get, I’d say it’s a milieu that resonates with readers as well.

While I love writing about brushes with death and other calamities, I now approach each new writing project with some measure of caution. The reason? From almost the time I started writing, I’ve had a number of uncanny coincidences where my real life imitated my fiction, and not usually in welcome ways.

Many of you know about the most notorious of these ‘coincidences’, because I’ve blogged and posted pictures of it. In Force of Nature, Erin’s cabin in the Michigan woods (which was based on my own home) is destroyed by a tornado.  After the book had been sent to the printer, just before its release, I had my own tornado—the first ever registered in my county. It only affected my property, downing 200 trees and taking out my power line, propane tank, and denting my metal roof.

There have been many other coincidences as well, too numerous to count. So many, that when I started relaying them to friends, a few suggested I write a book where a character wins the lottery or something, and maybe that would come true, too! Well, I took that suggestion to heart in a way when I wrote Focus of Desire. The main character, Isabel Sterling, wins a trip around the world, money, a makeover, and other great things. Did any of them happen? Nope. What coincidence DID happen after I wrote Focus?  I made Isabel clumsy, so of course as soon as the book came out I started tripping and walking into things in a way I never did before. I’m not joking here—I’ve broken my toes several times and even walked into a plate glass a couple of years ago.

So what effect has writing High Impact had on my real life, you might be wondering about now? I’m blaming my ongoing airline problems with my tendency to write about flying mishaps (Flight Risk, then Breaking the Ice, now High Impact). Ever since Flight Risk came out, I’ve rarely escaped some major drama when I fly, which is a few times a year. Some rare mechanical problem will surface to delay the flight several hours (the exit light won’t turn on, they don’t have the right tool to change the tire, the airport’s only de-icing truck just broke down), or some freak weather problem will happen. I was booked on a flight to Europe to write one of the Elite Operatives books with Xenia (Alexiou) the very same day the volcano in Iceland first erupted, stranding me in Detroit. On another occasion when I was in Europe to write an EOO book, I came home on the very same Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight the ‘underwear bomber’ had flown a week earlier. Security screenings that day took five hours, delaying the departure so long everyone on board missed their connecting flights.

The last few flights I’ve taken as High Impact was written and edited have had fairly monumental issues, forcing rebookings on other airlines, long delays, searches for lost baggage, and similar problems. My most recent mishap was one of the most harried and unusual. I arrived at the airport in Grand Rapids in late October in plenty of time for my late afternoon flight to Detroit, where I had a two-and-a-half-hour layover before my connecting flight to Paris. My traveling companion and I had been planning this two week European trip for many months—the first real vacation I’d had in a very long time. I’d been working all year on two books simultaneously (High Impact and Demons are Forever, out in March) and was finally taking a break from writing.

Things went smoothly until we got to the gate. Not long after we sat down, the board departure time slipped by twenty minutes, then thirty. An announcement was made that our plane hadn’t yet left its previous stop because of weather. I had already kiddingly warned my companion that she risked air woes by traveling with me.

The departure time slipped further, until we now began to worry we wouldn’t make our connection. When the plane finally got in and people began to get off, I overheard one gate agent tell another ‘the crew has timed out’, and my heart sank. Knowing what was coming, we ran back through the terminal to ticketing as they officially cancelled our flight over the loudspeaker and were first to be rebooked.

There were no more planes to Detroit until the next day, which left only one way to get us to Paris as scheduled. (We had prepaid for our stay in a rented apartment.)

We ran to the taxi cab stand in front of the airport with a ticket agent, who handed the driver a voucher and told him to take us to Detroit metro ASAP. I never thought we’d make it—there was a thunderstorm raging, it was already dark, and if you Google the distance, it says it’s a two and a half hour drive, and we had just about exactly that much time before the last Delta flight departed for Europe (heading to Amsterdam, we’d get to our final destination five hours later than expected).

But our Pakistani cabdriver gladly accepted the challenge, and covered the 150 miles at an average 80 miles an hour, often straddling both lanes of traffic as the rain poured down in torrents and lightning flashed all around us. In the back, we murmured ‘we’re going to die’ under our breaths, wondering what kind of omen this was for our trip. He got us there in time, I’ll give him that, and fortunately it was so late there were no lines at either ticketing or security and we made our rebooked flight.

My next trip will be to Palm Springs for the BSB Book Festival next March, an event I always look forward to. If I’m late, I’m probably stranded in some airport somewhere. On the upside, I’ve gotten quite a lot of frequent flier miles added to my account to apologize for all the problems – 5,000 alone for the taxicab-deathtrap diversion.

The eerie coincidences won’t deter me from writing about natural disasters and the like in future books, but they do give me pause sometimes when I thrust my characters into peril.

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Squelching the Sophomore Slump

Jerry L. Wheeler

This year has been quite heady for me, but it all really started in September 2010 when my first anthology of erotica, Tented: Gay Erotic Tales from under the Big Top, was published by Lethe Press. It got some great reviews, but gay circus erotica is—to say the least—a niche market, and I was ecstatic to simply get my firstborn out into the world.

And then it became a Lambda Literary Award finalist.

I had put it into nomination with faint hope and $35.00, and I don’t think anyone was more surprised than I was when I checked the website the morning the finalists were announced to find that Tented was among them. Coincidentally, I had been contacted by the judging coordinator of the Lammys to judge another category, so the Lammys loomed large for me. I made reservations and plans to go to NYC.

I lost. Or as my friends say, I didn’t win.

And I was okay with that. As the losers (or not winners) on all awards telecasts say when the cameras are on, “It’s just an honor to be nominated.” And it was—especially for my first book out. My powers of rationalization then took over, and I considered how difficult it would have been for my next project to measure up had I actually tripped my way to the stage and took home an award. Losing (or not winning) never looked better. But Tented had achieved some measure of success, and I had to make sure the next book was up to snuff.

As my introduction to Riding the Rails suggests, a personal experience with sex on trains led me to want to do a whole anthology with that theme. There’s such a wonderful connection to the past with trains, not to mention so many opportunities for sex, that I  knew authors would be intrigued by the concept. And if my authors are intrigued, so are my readers.

With all my anthologies, I strive for themes not normally explored in erotica. Whenever I encounter a list of Calls for Submissions, I’m chagrined by the lack of variety in those calls—it’s all daddies and college boys and twinks. I like something new and different—like circus sex (and yes, there were clowns in that book). And train sex. And restaurant sex (that’s the book after Riding the Rails, called The Dirty Diner, due out July 2012 from the wonderful people at Bold Strokes Books).

And, apparently, authors enjoy writing for those calls. I received some amazing stories for Riding the Rails—historical stories, time travel stories, interplanetary stories, psychological stories, even a story about a sex angel. Of course, it helps if you have a core group of authors to work with. I usually put a closed call for submissions out simply because I like knowing the people I work with. It seriously cuts down on the drama. But again, you have to keep things fresh, so I’m always adding and subtracting names from that list.

And Riding the Rails has some of the best and brightest names working in erotica today, featuring established favorites (Jeff Mann, Dale Chase, William Holden, Gavin Atlas, ‘Nathan Burgoine, Rob Rosen, Hank Edwards, Rick R. Reed, Erastes), up and comers (Joseph Baneth Allen, Jeffrey Ricker, Daniel M. Jaffe, Jay Neal, Dusty Taylor) and first publications (J.D. Barton) with an incredible array of stories—some hilarious, some bittersweet, some romantic, some creepy and some flat-out weird. But all of them have the hottest sex you’ll ever see on trains.

My cure for the sophomore slump? Come up with a creative concept, surround yourself with as much talent as possible, edit with scissors instead of pruning shears, find a supportive publisher and …

… maybe this year I’ll get to use that acceptance speech.

The Amazon Trail

The Amazon Trail

Choosing an Effing Cell Phone

            Hoo boy,
all I want to do is get a new cell phone. Our contract is up and our old phones
keep their battery charges about as long as a gay bartender gets to stand still.
For a week now, instead of disassembling the patriarchy or doing something
equally useful, I have spent my evenings researching this little purchase.

What I really want is to sign on with CREDO, which donates to progressive causes. I was with them for years, but when I went all-cell-all-the-time, they didn’t have coverage for my area. Now they do. It’s too late, though, as everyone I know is on Verizon, which means no charges for talk time.  Verizon is said to be the undisputed king of coverage, another factor I deem important. It’s unfortunate that for Verizon customers not in the market for a smartphone, the pickings are sparse.

Is choosing a phone this hard for everyone? In the recent olden days, I’d get a free Nokia and be thrilled. Verizon doesn’t even carry Nokias anymore, although I’ve read they are the most reliable phones. Hmmm – connection there? Last time we got the very adequate Samsung Alias. A friend has the Alias 2 and loves it. Samsung has replaced it with the Zeal.

The names they give phones are unreal. Well, except for the Samsung Reality. But, no, really, the Fascinate? Intensity? Octane? Gravity, Citrus, Flipout, Charm? Who exactly would buy a phone because it’s called Eternity? Maybe it’s got a speed dial to someone’s Galaxy?

Here’s what I want in a phone. First, no required data pak! I’d rather send the  $30.00 a month to Credo to help fight the Defense of Marriage Act. Second, a QWERTY keyboard; texting has become the communication mode of choice for enough people that I, gritting my teeth, have begun to text. Unless a phone has a cute little slide-out, touch screen or dual-hinges, texting is an onerous task.

But why pay to, essentially, e-mail someone? One answer is that not everyone is wired into a computer, smart phone or tablet 24/7. Or maybe I jst lke the txtng language, with its short-cuts and appealing, Twitter-like brevity.

I texted my niece, an enthusiast of the medium, and asked what kind of phone she has. I expected her, as a Gen Xer, to be somewhat of an expert. “I forget,” she tapped back. How could someone forget? I study major purchases like a little boy with baseball stats.  I may never forget the specs for the Kin Two “m” which started as a smart phone and has been downgraded to a feature phone – with benefits, like Wi-Fi.

I posted a friend at work, also a Gen Xer.  “I have an LG with a keyboard,” she e-mailed back. OK, maybe, I thought, her husband picked out her phone. She said she really liked it, so I was interested enough to send her a list of LG feature phones to see if any sounded familiar. “It just says LG,” she replied. Maybe I should ask a Millennial, like Wonderboi, but I’m pretty sure Millennials all have iPhones.

My third, and final, requirement for this new baby, is that it doesn’t call people from my pocket. I stash so many objects in there that the phone keys have to be covered. My sweetheart carries her phone in a back pocket or else leaves it lying around the house never to be found again, but it never calls me by mistake.

I’d be concerned about battery strength if it wasn’t a lost cause. It’d be logical that strong, clear sound would be a priority for  telecommunications manufacturers. It’s not, but you can’t get that kind of information from reading the company web sites.
You have to wade through consumer reviews that rave or rant or curse or ramble. If I’m lucky, I get a pretty rounded picture of the pros and cons of a specific phone. Sometimes the reviews warn me off, sometimes they give me both a problem and a fix, but mostly, they just confuse me. Techie reviews are even worse. There is much tossing around of undecipherable concepts like dumb phones, sim cards, removable memory, GSM and jailbreaking.

Next to an iPhone,the gadget I most admire is the Samsung Convoy, a ruggedized hone built to military specifications and oh so butch. Apparently butches don’t text as it has no usable keyboard. I’m stuck with a scrap pile of poorly reviewed devices that Verizon offers in an obvious ploy to force customers to choose smart phones and pay higher monthly fees.

Maybe it’s time to build a better mousetrap. A rugged little machine with fabulous
voice clarity and easy texting that we could dub the Gayphone. It would come in lavender or lavender camouflage and the default ringtone would, of course, be Lady GaGa’s “Born This Way.”

Prfts wd go 2 gay orgs.

 

 

Copyright Lee Lynch 2011

April 2011