Tag Archives: fiction

02May/25

Del Blackwater

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May 2, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 15: Del Blackwater!

Del Blackwater shares her novel: Dead Egyptians. Her lifelong love & pursuit of Egyptology has lead her to writing about Egypt in 1902, and a gay British Egyptologist who was there when the Egyptians began to take back their country, plus mysticism, reincarnation, and porch time!

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Bio:
Del Blackwater is a novelist and travel writer based in Wisconsin.

Her life vacillates wildly between a quiet existence in the country and a feverish, risk-centric existence when on the road. Her travels have taken her to four continents, and she makes questionable decisions in all of them.

While Egypt is inevitably the high-water mark of both her travels and her writing, she tries to spend time in other places as well.

Del is the author of Dead Egyptians, a historical fantasy series set in the Edwardian era. She is also published many times over as a board game and tarot deck designer, notably as the creator of Playlist Wars, a music game.

When not keeping busy, she unwinds by taking care of a menagerie of critters and enjoying something she calls porch time.

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25Apr/25

Scott Terry

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April 25, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 14: Scott Terry!

Scott Terry shares his novel: The Gift. We discuss fiction exploring the intersection of racism and homophobia under the certainty of religious superiority.

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Scott Terry (also writing under Scott M. Terry) was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, and spent his childhood praying for God and Armageddon to heal him of his homosexual thoughts. At the age of sixteen, he escaped from home and was riding bulls in the rodeo as a gay cowboy.

Scott’s memoir, (Cowboys, Armageddon, and The Truth) was named one of the Top 20 Must Read Books of 2013 by Advocate magazine. It was named one of the best LGBT releases of 2012 by Out In Print and Band of Thebes book lists, and was a double-award winner of the Rainbow Book Awards (Best Gay Debut, and Best LGBT Non-Fiction, 2013). Scott’s new novel, The Gift, is a work of fiction and released in Spring 2025. Scott has written often for the San Francisco Chronicle, and his essays has been featured in the Huffington Post and Alternet Magazine, amongst others.

Scott’s rodeo gear, clothing, and championship buckles are in the permanent collection of the Autry Museum of the American West (Los Angeles), and are currently on display in the museum’s Imagined Wests exhibit. He and his husband operate an organic farm in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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18Apr/25

Jim Provenzano

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April 18, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 13: Jim Provenzano!

Jim Provenzano shares the audio revival of his novel: Now I’m Here. We discuss writing love story arcs and perspectives, and the art of producing an audiobook.

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Jim Provenzano is the author of the novels Finding Tulsa, Now I’m Here, PINS, Monkey Suits, Cyclizen, the 2012 Lambda Literary Award winner Every Time I Think of You, its sequel Message of Love (a Lammy finalist), the stage adaptation of PINS, and a short fiction collection, Forty Wild Crushes. He edited and published his late uncle John Rigney Jr.’s 1950s novel, The Lost of New York, in 2022. His latest work is the YA novella, Lessons in Teenage Biology, out June 1, 2024.

Degrees include a BFA in dance from Ohio State University and an MA in English from San Francisco State University. Born in New York City and raised in Ohio, he lives in San Francisco.

A journalist in LGBT media for three decades, and the guest curator of Sporting Life, the world’s first gay athletics exhibit, he also wrote the award-winning syndicated Sports Complex column for ten years. He is the Arts Editor with the Bay Area Reporter.

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14Mar/25

Donna Minkowitz

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March 14, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 9: Donna Minkowitz!

Donna Minkowitz joins us to share her first fiction novel: Donnaville. We discuss backdrops of the mind, growth of the self through the parts of self, character struggles, and yes… there are authoritarians who are trying to bring about a stricter society.

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Donna Minkowitz is a writer of fantasy, memoir, and journalism lauded by Lilith Magazine for her “fierce imagination and compelling prose.” Science fiction great Terry Bisson called her writing “rich and wild, dark and funny, as fearless as her legendary journalism and as scary as a fairy tale.” And she’s proud that Kirkus has praised the “defiant and playful energy” of her work.

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28Feb/25

Robert Bruegmann

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February 28, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 8: Robert Bruegmann!

Robert Bruegmann joins us to share his first fiction book: Roman Ivory – A Novel. We discuss men loving men in the 19th century. It leads to a discussion of coded signals, generational discover, the author’s expertise in art & architecture, and the backdrop of murder.

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Robert Bruegmann is an historian of architecture, landscape and the built environment. He received his BA from Principia College in 1970 and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976. In 1977 he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art History, Architecture and Urban Planning. He has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia College of the Arts, MIT and Columbia University. He is author or editor of numerous award-winning non-fiction books and articles and a novel, Roman Ivory.

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03Jan/25

J.M. Frey

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January 3, 2025

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 10, Episode 1: J.M. Frey!

J.M. Frey helps us ring in the New Year by sharing her recent novel: Time & Tide. We discuss time travel and time slip stories, the Regency/Georgian era, and lesbian/bi romances, all while keeping an eye on causality of changing the first lesbian kiss in literature.

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J.M. is an author, screenwriter, and lapsed academic. With an MA in Communications and Culture, she’s appeared in podcasts, documentaries, and on radio and television to discuss all things geeky through the lens of academia. She also has an addiction to scarves, Doctor Who, and tea, which may or may not all be related. Her life’s ambition is to have stepped foot on every continent (only 3 left!)

J.M.’s also a professionally trained actor who takes absolute delight in weird stories, over the top performances, and quirky characters. She’s played everything from Marmee to the Red Queen, Jane Eyre to Annie, and dozens of strange creatures and earnest heroines as a voice actor.

Her debut novel Triptych was nominated for two Lambda Literary Awards, won the San Francisco Book Festival award for SF/F, was nominated for a 2011 CBC Bookie, was named one of The Advocate’s Best Overlooked Books of 2011, and garnered both a starred review and a place among the Best Books of 2011 from Publishers Weekly.

Her sophomore novel, an epic-length feminist meta-fantasy titled The Untold Tale, (book one of the Accidental Turn Series), debuted December 2015, and was followed up by The Forgotten Tale in 2016 and The Silenced Tale in December 2017. The Skylark’s Song, book one of The Skylark’s Saga, a steampunk action novel about a girl vigilante and her mysterious rocketpack, soared into bookstores in 2018, and was followed up by The Skylark’s Sacrifice in September 2019. The Skylark’s Saga was signed to a shopping agreement for an animation series in 2018. All six of these novels were reprinted under Frey’s personal backlist imprint Here There Be in late 2023.

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27Dec/24

Davis Summers

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December 27, 2024

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 9, Episode 50: Davis Summers!

Davis Summers joins us to share his debut novel: Eating & Praying. Our discussion covers seeing the world through a millennial lens, growth and grief, being young and queer trying making sense of the narcissistic internet age, and all the biting comedy that ensues.

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Davis Summers is an author and artist living in Los Angeles, California. He was born and raised in Poplar Bluff, Missouri (the homeland of both Gone Girl and Designing Women, fittingly). Davis pursued acting and journalism at New York University where he obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2019. After moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the film industry, Davis made the pivot to the tech industry where he still works to this day in addition to his writing. Eating & Praying is his debut novel which has been described as “endlessly relatable” by New York Times Bestselling Author Casey Wilson as well as “a beautiful debut novel” by Emmy-nominated actor Michael Urie.

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06Dec/24

Gerard Cabrera

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December 6, 2024

It gives us great pleasure to present Season 9, Episode 47: Gerard Cabrera!

Gerard Cabrera joins us to share his novel: Homo Novus. We discuss Latinx characters, HIV/AIDS, religion, the complexities of abuse, and what characters have to face to move forward. We also touch on the importance of community as a writer, and The Publishing Triangle as a resource.

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Gerard Cabrera earned a degree in English and American Literature at Brandeis University, his Masters’s Degree in Public Health from Hunter College, and his law degree from Northeastern University School of Law. He served on the board of Gay Community News, was a member of the theater troupe United Fruit Company, and competed in the 1994 Gay Games.

Over the years, Gerard has worked in non-profits, universities, and in government. Active in New York’s queer communities, he has practiced public interest law his entire legal career. Gerard is a Massarican from Springfield, Massachusetts, the birthplace of Dr. Seuss, basketball, and the first American dictionary. He lives and works in New York City.

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27Sep/24

Paul Lamb

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September 27, 2024

It gives us great pleasure to present a Season 9, Episode 38 Interview: Paul Lamb

Paul Lamb joins us to share his contemporary, generational novels: One-Match Fire and Parent Imperfect. It leads to discussions of generations of fathers and sons (including two gay dads), different types of coming of age, and a cabin in the woods as the safe place to be one’s self.

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Paul Lamb has a cabin in Missouri, at the edge of the Ozark Mountains. The cabin waits most of two hours away from his home in suburban Kansas City. The irony is that he doesn’t write there. The setting seems ideal, doesn’t it? A one-room cabin with a shady porch overlooking a sparkling lake, at the end of a road no one needs to come down, deep in a trackless forest. The only sounds that intrude are the occasional lowing of cattle from the ranch to the east or maybe a distant chainsaw. Paul has a chair and a table and pencils and notebooks there. He has uninterrupted solitude. He has everything a writer needs, and yet Paul cannot write at his cabin.

All he feels is a desire to go outside, into the forest, down to the lake, along the paths. He wants to see what bird is calling, whose shadow is floating across the ground, or what he heard scampering through the leaf litter. Paul wants to feel the sun on his skin or listen to the rain on the roof, to stare into the orange flames of a campfire, to throw a line in the water or watch for a beaver emerging from the lodge across the lake.

In short, when he’s there he wants to do all these things that keep him from entering the fictional universe where his characters go about their lives. So instead, he writes at home. Paul’s been doing this for a long time, so he calls it a win. He’s retired now from being a wage slave in the vulgar business world where he had worked to pay bills but had never sought a career. His children are grown and flown, leading fulfilling lives. Which leaves Paul free to pursue writing his stories as much as he wants.

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06Sep/24

Mark Salzwedel

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September 6, 2024

It gives us great pleasure to present a Season 9, Episode 35 Interview – Mark Salzwedel!

Mark Salzwedel joins us to share his latest novel The Miraculous Life of Rupert Rocket! We discuss blend of magical realism vs urban fantasy, fairy curses and blessings, and the effects that can have on generations of family.

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Mark Salzwedel is a gay performer, writer, and composer living in Brooklyn, NY, with his husband, fashion designer Jesus Soto. His science fiction and fantasy short stories have appeared in a variety of publications, and he has two novels published through the Queer Space imprint of Rebel Satori Press — THE LEVER, an LGBT sci-fi thriller published in 2022, and THE MIRACULOUS LIFE OF RUPERT ROCKET is epic LGBT urban fantasy published in April 2024.

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