This is the debut novel from Kirby Quinlan. To find out more about Kirby’s work, visit kirbyquinlan.com
REVIEW
From the moment Brayzen Mapleridge is belayed down from his private helicoptor to his first day of community service, I was hooked.
Briefly, Tailor Sway is the host of a TV programme that declutters peoples’ houses and (hopefully) changes their lives. He is struggling to cope with his husband, Grant, a veteran of the Iraq War who is suffering from PTSD. Brayzen Mapleridge is the ultra-famous pop star who is avoiding jail by doing hard labour in front of the cameras. A publicity stunt went wrong and he is paying the price. There is an instant attraction between him and Tailor, but of course, Tailor is married, and does not want to hurt his husband, even though he knows their marriage is on borrowed time.
So there is quite a lot in that paragraph alone for me to say, “hang on, how is this going to work?” But it does. In turn funny, if not downright hysterical, and moving, the serious subjects are dealt with deftly and with great sensitivity, whilst not compromising on the humour. THis book has to be read to be believed. Quinlan has thrown a lot at this but it works. Against the odds, it really does.
I loved Tailor’s humility, and the way he deals with Grant. I can’t say too much for fear of giving a spoiler, but I can tell you the ending is worth while.
Brayzen is created brilliantly as well. At first you think “what an asshole” but he grows on you. He really does. I wanted to give him a hug by the end and I’m not easily swayed by glamour, money and good looks. He has everything that could make him a really unsympathetic character. The fact that I was rooting for him is testiment to the skillful way he was drawn.
And Grant was a real surprise. I wasn’t expecting what happened in the end. Did he deserve it? Vote is still out on that one. Again, no spoilers.
I loved the unpredictability of this book. It wasn’t like any other I have read recently. And the sex is HOT. There’s a lot of it, and it scorches the page. I thought I would have a problem with some of the moral dilemmas, but no. This is massively entertaining and I would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t insist on romance following the same old tired tropes. Nice work for a debut novel!
Stephen has visited us a couple of times on the show. To hear his latest interview and get links to his work, Click here!
REVIEW
Another lush Floridian saga from Stephen del Mar. I love this writer’s stories because they are so varied. In Dark Love, there was paranormal activity aplenty, and in this book, the main theme is family.
Aiden Quinn returns home to the arms of his loving American-Irish family after ten years away. Nursing a broken heart, he feels at odds with everyone there but gradually, the town of Bennett Bay and his loving relatives wrap their arms around him and he becomes enmeshed in love, complicated friendships, drama and murder, as well as suddenly becoming the protector of two orphaned boys.
Del Mar writes his characters incredibly well. The book is mostly about family dynamics, rather than the gruesome murders and accidents that occur at points throughout the book. They are dealt with as an aside, yet everyone is inextricably linked. He explores what it is like to be gay in a tight-knit community. There is a dash of intrigue, like pepper sauce, and a lot of affection between the two main characters, Aiden and JJ as they fumble their way though a minefield of expectation and ghosts from the past, whilst dealing with Aiden’s close and disfunctional family.
All the Bennett Bay books are woven together by the characters, and some are longer than others. This is a lot of book, with a lot of characters with their own stories to tell. Their stories are told in other books, tantalisingly giving clues to lure one into another of del Mar’s cunningly woven tales.
I’ve always said these are great stories to read on the beach, but this one is like a warm duvet on a cold day. Wrap yourself up in it and enjoy!
It gives us great pleasure to announce Matthew Cheney as the guest on episode 064: Stop Making Sense!
Join us as we discuss his writing journey, pulling inspiration from the backwaters of New Hampshire, why short stories, alt-history and queering up historical figures/icons.
Matthew Cheney’s debut collection, Blood: Stories, won the Hudson Prize and was published by Black Lawrence Press in January 2016.
His work has been published by English Journal, One Story, Unstuck, Weird Tales, Web Conjunctions, Strange Horizons, Failbetter.com, Ideomancer, Pindeldyboz, Weird Fiction Review, Rain Taxi, Locus, and SF Site, among other places. He is the former series editor for Best American Fantasy and the co-editor, with Eric Schaller, of the occasional online magazine The Revelator.
He has taught English, Women’s Studies, and Communications & Media Studies at Plymouth State University, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Literature at the University of New Hampshire.
To listen to our interview with Dena, and get links to her work, click here!
REVIEW
This book was a revelation. At once a murder mystery and an intensely erotic romance, Hankin’s writing is as rich and fragrant as the Hawaiin setting in which the book is based. Sometimes there can be too much earnestness or preaching in books that have an eco message, but not this one. She gets her point across without self-righteousness, and without compromising on the likeability of her characters.
Kerala is described in the synopsis as a butch dyke, which might scare some people off, but she is a strong woman with a tender side that hasn’t quite been able to bury. Ravi is the genderqueer CEO who takes the handsome millionaire businessman trope and turns it upside down. Every character is colourful and complex, yet despite the dramatic subject, there is no showboating or unrealistic plot twists.
It’s clear that Hankins loves Hawaii and knows it well. Her writing perfectly captures the vivid colours and culture of the indigenous people. I want to go there. It reads far better than any tourist brochure, without the trite or manipulative descriptions.
At it’s heart is a romance, pure and simple, yet the two protagonists, Kerala and Ravi, are anything but. Cultures clash, gender issues have to be dealt with and are done so convincingly, woven so seemlessly into the story that it barely seems an “issue” at all. I totally bought into these two people falling in love despite the difficulties they face, both in their professional and personal lives. Oh, and the sex is HOT. There is a lot of it, yet it doesn’t feel gratuitous. It’s handled with an assured and confident touch.
No spoilers here, but I found the ending to be incredibly satisfying. Not too neat or schmaltzy. This book is a big chunk, and expensive for a Kindle book (down to the publishers, I think, not the writer) but it is worth every penny. There is not one wasted word. A stunningly written and riveting read.
It gives us great pleasure to announce B.G. Thomas, J. Scott Coatsworth, Jamie Fessenden, and Michael Murphy as the guest panel on episode 062: Celebrating Perfect Unions!
Join us as we discuss the one-year anniversary of marriage equality, what it feels like to have equal rights, the joy of celebrating love, and the anthology these four authors have written to commemorate the historic moment.
You can buy this anthology from one of these vendors:
** Note: this title releases on June 26, but all vendors are taking pre-orders now! **
Bios:
B.G. Thomas lives in Kansas City with his husband of more than a decade. They’ve been married twice. First in 2005—although it wasn’t legal. They jumped the broom (as well as the sword) and were married in heart in front of their friends and loved ones. Then in 2014, they flew to Baltimore and made it legal (and couldn’t have without the help of B.G.’s fans who practically funded the entire weekend!). He can’t get enough of seeing that gold wedding band on his hand, even two years later.
B.G. loves romance, comedies, fantasy, science fiction, and even horror—as far as he is concerned, as long as the stories are character driven and entertaining, it doesn’t matter the genre. He has gone to conventions his entire adult life where he’s been lucky enough to meet many of his favorite writers. He has made up stories since he was a child; it is where he finds his joy.
Excited about the growing male/male romance market, he submitted a story and was thrilled when it was accepted in four days. Since then the stories have poured out of him. “It’s like I’m somehow making up for a lifetime’s worth of stories!”
“Leap, and the net will appear” is his personal philosophy and his message to all. “It is never too late,” he states. “Pursue your dreams. They will come true!” http://bthomaswriter.wordpress.com/
J. Scott Coatsworth is the admin for the Queer Sci Fi site. He has been writing since elementary school, when he and won a University of Arizona writing contest in 4th grade for his first sci fi story (with illustrations!). He finished his first novel in his mid twenties, but after seeing it rejected by ten publishers, he gave up on writing for a while. Over the ensuing years, he came back to it periodically, but it never stuck. Then one day, he was complaining to Mark, his husband, early last year about how he had been derailed yet again by the death of a family member, and Mark said to him “the only one stopping you from writing is you.” Since then, Scott has gone back to writing in a big way, selling more than a dozen stories – some new, some that he had started years before. He’s embarking on two new sci fi trilogies, and also runs Queer Sci Fi, a group of readers and writers of gay sci fi, fantasy, paranormal and horror fiction. Scott sold his first story, a magical realism short called “The Bear at the Bar”, to Dreamspinner for the “A Taste of Honey” anthology (Dreamspinner, Amazon), which came out in August 2014. He has since had a novella “Between the Lines” published by DSP, and has another coming out in June. “Flames” will be part of the marriage equality anthology “A More Perfect Union”, and is the story he is most proud of to date. http://queerscifi.com/author-j-scott-coatsworth/
Jamie Fessenden is an author of gay fiction in many genres. Most involve romance, because he believes everyone deserves to find love, but after that anything goes: contemporary, science fiction, historical, paranormal, mystery, or whatever else strikes his fantasy. Jamie Fessenden set out to be a writer in junior high school. He published a couple short pieces in his high school’s literary magazine and had another story place in the top 100 in a national contest, but it wasn’t until he met his partner, Erich, almost twenty years later, that he began writing again in earnest. With Erich alternately inspiring and goading him, Jamie wrote several screenplays and directed a few of them as micro-budget independent films. He then began writing novels and published his first novella in 2010. After nine years together, Jamie and Erich have married and purchased a house together in the wilds of Raymond, New Hampshire, where there are no street lights, turkeys and deer wander through their yard, and coyotes serenade them on a nightly basis. Jamie recently left his “day job” as a tech support analyst to be a full-time writer. https://jamiefessenden.com
Michael Murphy has been interested in everything around him his entire life – wanting to see new places, meet new people, tell new stories. Writing has been the culmination of a long term dream. For as long as he can remember he’s been writing stories. What has been different over the last five years is that he’s finally been brave enough to allow someone else to read what he’s written. When that happened he found that others liked what he’d written which made him beyond happy. In addition to writing, his other love is photography. Taking photos of some of the beautiful men of the world is his current focus. With any luck, one of those photos will grace the cover of a Dreamspinner novel in the near future. He and his husband have traveled the world, trying to see as much as possible. When not traveling, they live in Washington, DC with their best friend, a throw-away dog they adopted twelve years ago. To pay the bills, he is the Director of Information Technology for a national organization based in Washington, DC. http://gayromancewriter.com
It gives us great pleasure to announce Andrew Q. Gordon as the guest on episode 060: When a Rose Isn’t a Rose!
Join us as we discuss his writing journey, writing fantasy, language and cultural tie-ins and how we rely upon them, when exposition becomes something harder to convey, which is harder to write – Sci Fi or Fantasy – which is harder to write, and marketing to fantasy readers.
Andrew Q. Gordon wrote his first story back when yellow legal pads, ball point pens were common and a Smith Corona correctable typewriter was considered high tech. His books blend LGBTQ characters with his lifelong love of fantasy and the paranormal to produce a different voice for readers. Though most of his stories fall into the epic fantasy or contemporary paranormal molds, the occasion contemporary LGBTQ work will push its way to the front.
Andrew currently lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his husband of twenty years, their young daughter and three dogs. In addition to dodging some very self-important D.C. ‘insiders’, Andrew uses his commute to catch up on his reading. When not working or writing, he enjoys soccer, high fantasy, baseball and seeing how much coffee he can drink in a day and still fall asleep at night.
It gives us great pleasure to announce Richard Taylor Pearson as the guest on episode 059: Moments of Otherworldly Treasures!
Join us as we discuss his writing journey, writing about theater, surprises for a first time writer, balancing the triple threat, Kirkus Reviews, and offering signed ebooks.
Richard Taylor Pearson is a triple threat: author, actor, and attorney. He grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he appeared in many plays and musicals. After graduating from Rhodes College, Richard went on to obtain a law degree from Rutgers School of Law. While he works as an attorney by day, his nights and weekends are spent writing novels and performing in theatrical events all over New York City. Richard lives in Jersey City with his husband, Brian, and their daughter, Natalie.
It gives us great pleasure to announce Mischief Corner Books as the guest(s) on episode 057: Behind the Mists of Serialized Fiction!
Vance is joined by Freddy MacKay, Toni Griffin, Angel Martinez, and J. Scott Coatsworth in an awesome roundtable discussion about writing serial fiction. They define serial fiction, go over the aspects of planning, world building, and working collaboratively, and then Vance pokes at distribution possibilities. They wrap up with the benefits to serial writing, and offer advice for content creators who want to work on serialized content.
The ongoing stories discussed in this episode are:
Bio:
Mischief Corner Books is an organization of superheroes… no, it’s a platinum-album techno-fusion group…no, hold on a sec here…
Ah, yes. Mischief Corner is a diverse group of authors who met on a mountain in Tennessee and decided since we probably were too easily distracted to rule the world that we’d settle for causing a bit of mayhem instead.
In addition to making mayhem, we publish books with a diverse range of genres and topics… we live to break molds.
It gives us great pleasure to announce Mischief Corner Books as the guest on our first Publisher Spotlight Episode.
Join us as we talk with Angel, Freddy, and Toni about how the company was formed at a mountaintop retreat, what it’s like to wear multiple hats in a small company, the types of submissions MCB is looking to receive, and their current projects!.
Check out Mischief Corner Books Bookstore:
It gives us great pleasure to announce Jeff Adams as the guest on episode 056: Reserved But Sparkly!
Join us as we discuss his writing journey, romance as a trope/genre, queering it and comfort reads, working with his husband on books and the podcast, and queer representation in media.
Jeff’s written stories since he was in middle school and became a gay romance writer in 2009 when his first short stories were published. Since then he’s written several more shorts and novels, including some in the young adult genre, and he plans to keep writing as long as wonderful readers keeping picking up his books.
Jeff lives in rural Northern California with his husband of twenty years, Will. Some of his favorite things include the musicals Rent and Title of Show, the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins hockey teams, and the reality TV competition So You Think You Can Dance. If forced to pick his favorite book it would be a tie between Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and David Levithan’s Every Day.
He also co-hosts the weekly show Jeff & Will’s Big Gay Fiction Podcast with his husband.
It gives us great pleasure to welcome husbands Tim O’Leary and Robert Rice as the guests on Episode 249 – This Guy Turns Into A Demon!
Husbands Tim O’Leary and Robert Rice join us to discuss the creation, writing, producing and acting for their audio drama podcast “Uumbaji” AND their upcoming series, “Demonhuntr.” It’s a great, laugh-filled conversation to start off the New Year!
Tim O’Leary is a writer/director who began his writing career as a New York playwright, and his works have premiered in the New York International Fringe Festival and Gay Fest NYC. Following a SAG-produced reading of his pilot Wolf Island, Tim relocated to Los Angeles. He is a graduate of the UCLA Professional Program in Television Writing, and with his husband Robert Rice produced a pilot for the series Al Malone, Private Eye, starring Angela Lewis (FX’s Snowfall) and directed by Q Allan Brocka (The Eating Out series, Boy Culture.)
He was one of the co-creators of and appeared in the comedy series Moms Anonymous (Amazon Prime.) He is the creator of the upcoming audio drama podcast Uumbaji, starring J. Mallory McCree (Homeland, Good Trouble), produced by Raul Vega (Rose Drive), and recorded at famed film composer Hans Zimmer’s studio. He founded his production company Freaky Fighty Funny Films in order to create projects inspired by his love of horror, comic books, fantasy, kung fu movies, musicals, LGBT stories, mythology, and basically anything tied to geek culture from a queer perspective. He is the head writer, executive producer, and director of the first series under this banner, Demonhuntr, which is currently wrapping up principle photography.
Robert Rice is an LA-based actor and singer who spent several years performing in musical theater in New York City before moving to Los Angeles. He is a frequent guest artist on the Instagram series Wait What (@waitwhatcomedy) and makes frequent appearances in sketches by Youtube comedian David Spates. He and the rest of his barbershop quartet, The Accidentals, were recently featured in the national GEICO commercial A Barbershop Quartet Plays Basketball.
He has appeared on Pink Collar Crimes on CBS and Riggle’s Picks on Fox, as well as @Midnight and Mini-mocks on Comedy Central. He also recently performed alongside Vanessa Bayer and Jeff Goldblum on the Jenny Lewis On the Line telethon. Robert plays Harold, a gay telepath, in the upcoming series Demonhuntr. Robert is a producer on the board of Freaky Fighty Funny Films, and is dedicated to fostering new inclusive works in genre film.
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
Or right here:
June 25, 2019
DEMONHUNTR Production Campaign. Be a part of the action by donating (what you can) to this worthwhile production. Who doesn’t want to see some quality #queerhorror?
From their campaign page at Seed&Spark:
ONLY ONE WEEK LEFT TO CONTRIBUTE!!!
Ever wanted to see a gay Asian Buffy? A bisexual Latinx Sabrina? A queer Professor X? DEMONHUNTR is the story of a group of queer super-powered friends who create an app in which people can hire them to kill demons. But sometimes they sleep with the demons first. I mean, it’s LA.
Inclusion Statement
Created by a gay man, cowritten by a bi man, with episodes directed by a Latinx woman, diversity is the beating heart of Demonhuntr. The cast includes a buddy duo of 2 mediums — a gay Asian man and a straight black man — a bi Latinx sorceress, a pan Middle-Eastern djinn, and a lesbian Asian PI.
About the Production
From Tim O’Leary, creator of Demonhuntr:
“Ever since I was a kid, I was a huge fan of sci-fi, horror, action films, you name it. If there were monsters or kung fu, I would watch it.
But while I would devour these films, comics, and TV shows, I never saw myself represented in them. I was gay, and though I searched and searched, I never saw the gay hero I so desperately wanted. I wanted to see a gay guy pop up in these stories and get to kick some demon butt…
It gives us great pleasure to announce Brent Hartinger and Tim O’Leary as the guests on episode 088: Cockshrubbery! They join us to talk about LGBTQ Film and Television from an insider’s perspective and the increasing need for diversity.
Tim O’Leary is a Los Angeles-based screenwriter, ghostwriter, author, and playwright. On his website, timolearyonline.com, you will find news about his latest projects, including his various webseries and the next book in his adults-only Greek myth book series, The Lusty Journey of Perseus.
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For the last twenty years, Brent Hartinger has made his living writing just about everything that involves words: novels, screenplays, plays, web content, even greeting cards. These days, he writes in lots of genres in many different mediums. His latest project is a dark and edgy gay teen book — part horror, part puzzle box thriller — called Three Truths and a Lie (published by Simon & Schuster).
It gives us great pleasure to announce Tim O’Leary as the guest on episode 055: Five Stars Are Better!
Join us as we discuss his writing, theater life in New York, transplanted writer in California, the move from playwriting to screenplay writing, being Star Struck in the Biz, and The Lusty Adventures of Theseus.You can buy Tim’s work here:
Bio:
Tim O’Leary is a Los Angeles-based screenwriter, author, playwright, and contributing writer for TheBacklot.com. On his website, timolearyonline.com, you will find news about his latest projects, including his werewolf action comedy pilot, Wolf Island, and his steamy novel, The Lusty Adventures of Theseus.
