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October is Gay History Month

Wilde City Press is celebrating Gay History Month with authors offering a series of posts. Here’s mine…

I celebrated enthusiastically with the rest of those who love equality when veteran basketball player Jason Collins came out in April of this year. It was a brave thing to do, even if Collins was in the twilight of his career with no contract for the following season. (And I’m not aware of any contract interest in Collins for the coming season.) His coming out was billed as the first for an active major league athlete, but that isn’t strictly true.

From 1976 to 1978 Glenn Burke played for the LA Dodgers, and came out to his teammates and the club owners while an active player. Everybody knew. When asked, team captain Davey Lopes said nobody cared. In 1978 Burke was traded to the Oakland A’s, where he sustained a knee injury before …

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Late last week I submitted my latest novel, The Companion, to Toby Johnson at Lethe Press. He’d said earlier this year that he wanted to see the full when it was ready, so off it went. I can attend GayRomLit in Atlanta next week with my desk clear (figuratively speaking only!)

Jim Frey, whose workshops I’ve attended for several years, is adamant about having a clear premise for a novel. I’m a believer. Somehow, having a one-sentence cause and effect statement describing the story keeps me on track while I’m writing. It’s my litmus test as to whether a scene is superfluous or relevant to the story: does it support the premise? If yes, then it belongs. If no, then I need to cut it out.

For The Companion, which is a metaphysical mystery/romance (how’s that for an obscure niche?! It seems to be the one I’m wired to occupy) …

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Hi, folks. Joe Stalwart here. I’m a PI, a well-motivated character who overcomes obstacles in pursuit of a goal. My old buddy Lloyd Meeker asked me to come by and talk about writing conflict because he’s sulking and doesn’t want to deal with it.

Nah, that’s not really fair. The truth is he doesn’t mind conflict as long as it’s an authentic part of the story. It’s when it just gets manufactured for its own sake and shoved into a story that he gets pissed off.

But I’d better start at the beginning. Like I said, I’m a well-motivated character overcoming obstacles in pursuit of the goal. That’s the essence of a story, and I make a great protagonist, even if I do say so myself.

It used to be enough that one of my stories would start when a gorgeous dame walked into my dingy office while a solo …

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Some Dance to Remember

Besides doing a monthly review at Jessewave, I’m also doing one a month for Out in Print. My most recent, for Jack Fritscher’s Some Dance to Remember, is up today here.
It’s a novel about post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS San Francisco. It’s not a particularly well-written book, but it carries an intense emotional wallop — a turbulent, personal story set in the decade when gay culture exploded out of the closet and began to invent itself in the open. That evolution was not always tidy, or even beautiful, but always powerful.

The Next Big Thing

My author friend Rick Reed tagged me as the next author to post in a series in which each of us shares answers to a a set of questions about our current writing project. So here are mine… hope you find the ideas intriguing!

What is the working title of your book?

The Companion

 

What genre does your book fall under?

I wish I knew. It’s a metaphysical gay mystery about death and love. What shelf does that belong on? New Age? Romance? Mystery? I have no idea. Here’s the story idea—you decide:

Shepherd Bucknam inherited more money than he’ll ever spend, so he doesn’t need a job. He’s handsome, smart, educated and polished. He’s also a sex worker. He takes his profession seriously, as a kind of mystical performing art, coaching repressed men into a more profound experience of their sexual selves. Violence terrifies him, and he’s haunted …

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Happy New 26,000 Year Cycle!

Happy new 26,000 year cycle, everyone!

And in case you haven’t noticed, the world didn’t come to an end yesterday! The Mayan calendar never said this would be the end of the world. It said this would be the end of one cycle and the beginning of another.

The solstice is my big holiday during this season, and this year it was an especially powerful one for me. I can’t remember the last time I moved into the new year feeling so enthusiastic.

I feel the new year’s promise pushing to be realized, in spite of the violence and madness around us, the avarice and aggression — the venal arrogance that seems rampant. I say there’s something else, something beautiful, on the move as well, and while these may be unstable times, they can also be creative times.

Ultimately, I believe we are responsible for our own behavior, and that …

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Kokopelli

Found this stone art depiction of Kokopelli, and will add it to my list of post graphics. I love the power of it — the music, the joyful dancing, the unabashed creativity.

And a warm welcome to my new blog and website to you! Please take a look around, enjoy the free reads, and the updates that will come once or twice a week.

I’m just in transition headed back to Florida with a stop next week in Seattle for Story Masters, a writers’ workshop put on by Christopher Vogler, Jay Bell and Donald Maass. I haven’t heard any of them present in person before, so I’m really looking forward to it.

Crossing the River

In 2006, I wrote this short short story as my entry in a contest called “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words”. The story had to turn around this photo. It’s odd, I felt awkward writing to a visual prompt, but the story took no more than a couple of days to write. I still like it, so I’ve dusted it off for your reading entertainment.

 

Crossing the River

By spring the pain had dulled. It was no longer the unrelenting ripping sensation in Jake’s chest, as if he were a phone book being torn in half for a meaningless party stunt. Although he still was ambushed by grief occasionally, and wept helplessly then, he mostly now had calm. At first that calm had been the vague sweetness of Prozac, but Jake was done with that.

The counselors at the hospice had helped. They had gently prepared him last …

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A man’s character is his fate.

This is the epigraph in Traveling Light, and has become an essential part of the way I see and experience the world. Sometimes this quote is translated as, “A man’s character is his doom.” I believe that’s technically more accurate, but the word “doom” in English has implications that aren’t so inescapably negative in Greek.

A Hero’s Journey

I wrote this piece seven years ago, as a piece of blog content when my first novel came out. To my amazement, it was the most visited page for as long as I had it up. I’ve dusted it off, made a few tweaks and offer it now as my first article here on my re-vamped site. It feels good to do that. I hope you enjoy it! — LM

A Hero’s Journey

I was probably thirteen when I first read that some of the great Renaissance artists dissected cadavers to get the anatomy right in their figures. Forced to imagine someone so driven to depict the human form accurately that he would willingly break serious contemporary laws and risk disease to examine dead bodies, I was disgusted as only a pimply teenager uncomfortable with what was happening in his own body could be.  But over time, I have come …

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