Ryan Field's Blog, page 526
October 19, 2011
The Virgin Billionaire's Hot Amish Escapade
I'll post more later this week about THE VIRGIN BILLIONAIRE'S HOT AMISH ESCAPADE. But here's the basic info, both the publisher's back cover description and the one I submitted to them.
Publisher's Blurb:
The Virgin Billionaire's Hot Amish Escapade — Synopsis
Jase and Luis planned the perfect family Thanksgiving- and a little getaway in Amish country the week before, just for the two of them. They weren't expecting the company of a couple of hot college men, or for Jase to suddenly get amnesia and forget his own name!
With unseen danger lurking, will they make it home for Thanksgiving? Or will they ever make it home at all?
Find out in The Virgin Billionaire's Hot Amish Escapade!
My Blurb, raw:
It's the week before Thanksgiving at Cider Mill Farm and Luis and Jase are winding down from three hectic months. Luis has planned a glorious Thanksgiving dinner, with a twenty-eight pound turkey and wet bottom shoe fly pie, and he's invited all their friends and family, including Jase's ninety-something year old grandmother, Isabelle.
And Jase, being the thoughtful husband, has planned a romantic get-away the week before Thanksgiving so he and Luis can spend a few nights alone making love in a remote cabin in the woods in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. But Jase didn't plan on sharing the cabin with two good looking college guys. And Jase didn't plan on getting amnesia and losing his memory just when he needs it the most.
The dreary little town in Pennsylvania Dutch Country turns out to be nothing like the charmed touristy Amish towns Luis has read about. And the people are nothing like the cute Amish guys who work at Luis's favorite Pennsylvania Dutch Market. Most of all, Luis never thought he'd see the day when Jase couldn't even remember his own name. And when they all wind up trapped there because of the weather, Luis begins to panic.
Luis isn't sure he can depend on Jase anymore because Jase can't remember anything. So Luis places his trust in a handsome young medical student named, Matthias, and hopes he'll get back to Cider Mill Farm in time for Thanksgiving Day.
But there's an odd twist that neither Luis nor Jase could have planned in their wildest dreams. And what should have been a quiet, romantic trip to Amish Country turns out to be one of the most dangerous situations Luis and Jase have ever encountered.
Freedom To Marry...The Minnesota Catholic Conference
For those of you who are not on the Freedom To Marry mailing list, I'm posting an e-mail I just received from them.
Ryan,
We've known from the beginning that the fight to defeat the proposed anti-gay amendment in Minnesota would be intense, but we didn't expect this:
The Minnesota Catholic Conference has announced they will put "extraordinary resources toward making sure this marriage amendment gets passed."
From the Minnesota Star Tribune:
Minnesota's Roman Catholic bishops are taking the unusual step of urging parish priests across the state to form committees to help get the proposed marriage amendment passed by voters in 2012.
This unholy alliance between the Catholic hierarchy in Minnesota and the anti-gay "National Organization for Marriage" (NOM) is unconscionable, and it's going to take everything we have to stave off their attack campaign.
Can you pitch in to support Freedom to Marry's work in Minnesota?
http://freedomtomarry.org/StoptheHate
Gallup and other polls show that 63% of Catholics support the freedom to marry -- yet this isn't the first time we've faced a multimillion-dollar campaign funded by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to ban the freedom to marry and it won't be the last. But this time we're prepared.
Freedom to Marry helped found Minnesotans United for All Families, the campaign to defeat the attack amendment. We've already committed more than $200,000 to Minnesota this year, and have sent senior staff to help the campaign get up-and-running. We've even started the Freedom to Marry Minnesota PAC to channel your dollars to the battle.
We can win in Minnesota by building the largest grassroots campaign the state has ever seen. But, we need your help.
Donate today to help us defeat the anti-gay amendment in Minnesota:
http://freedomtomarry.org/StoptheHate
Thanks for all you do,
Marc Solomon
National Campaign Director, Freedom to Marry
© 2003-2011 Freedom to Marry | http://freedomtomarry.org/unsubscribe
October 18, 2011
Books, Agents, Amazon, and Self-publishing
I thought this article was interesting for several reasons. It definitely shows that times are changing. The people at Amazon, like them or not, clearly know what they are doing.
It's still too soon to tell how all this will turn out. I wouldn't even begin to predict the future in this sense. But I do find it interesting that the very people who were laughing at e-books and self-publishing are now starting to embrace it...with the mindset that they are going to control the industry, continue to be the gatekeepers, and dictate what they think should be published instead of what the readers think should be published.
If I were a self-published author, I'd be forming a group of some kind and reminding everyone that I was one of the people who paved the way for Amazon, e-books, and digital publishing. I'd be looking for ways to empower myself through a larger organization. Because without these brave self-published writers none of this would be happening right now. The same goes for all the hard-working start up e-publishers who've been working their tails off, while large publishers and some (not all) literary agents have been sitting with their thumbs up their behinds waiting for e-books to disappear.
Here's some copy from the article, below, and here's a link. There's also an interesting disclaimer at the bottom I didn't publish in this post. It's worth reading the entire piece.
Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of DealBy DAVID STREITFELD
SEATTLE — Amazon.com has taught readers that they do not need bookstores. Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their publishers.
Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times
Laurel Saville's memoir about her mother was self-published at first. It is scheduled to be published by Amazon next month.
Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form. It is a striking acceleration of the retailer's fledging publishing program that will place Amazon squarely in competition with the New York houses that are also its most prominent suppliers.
It has set up a flagship line run by a publishing veteran, Laurence Kirshbaum, to bring out brand-name fiction and nonfiction. It signed its first deal with the self-help author Tim Ferriss. Last week it announced a memoir by the actress and director Penny Marshall, for which it paid $800,000, a person with direct knowledge of the deal said.
Publishers say Amazon is aggressively wooing some of their top authors. And the company is gnawing away at the services that publishers, critics and agents used to provide.
Several large publishers declined to speak on the record about Amazon's efforts. "Publishers are terrified and don't know what to do," said Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House, who is known for speaking his mind.
"Everyone's afraid of Amazon," said Richard Curtis, a longtime agent who is also an e-book publisher. "If you're a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you're a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you too. And if you're an agent, Amazon may be stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out.
"It's an old strategy: divide and conquer," Mr. Curtis said.
Amazon executives, interviewed at the company's headquarters here, declined to say how many editors the company employed, or how many books it had under contract. But they played down Amazon's power and said publishers were in love with their own demise.
"It's always the end of the world," said Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon's top executives. "You could set your watch on it arriving."
He pointed out, though, that the landscape was in some ways changing for the first time since Gutenberg invented the modern book nearly 600 years ago. "The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader," he said. "Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity."
Amazon has started giving all authors, whether it publishes them or not, direct access to highly coveted Nielsen BookScan sales data, which records how many physical books they are selling in individual markets like Milwaukee or New Orleans. It is introducing the sort of one-on-one communication between authors and their fans that used to happen only on book tours. It made an obscure German historical novel a runaway best seller without a single professional reviewer weighing in.
Publishers caught a glimpse of a future they fear has no role for them late last month when Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire, a tablet for books and other media sold by Amazon. Jeffrey P. Bezos, the company's chief executive, referred several times to Kindle as "an end-to-end service," conjuring up a world in which Amazon develops, promotes and delivers the product.
For a sense of how rattled publishers are by Amazon's foray into their business, consider the case of Kiana Davenport, a Hawaiian writer whose career abruptly derailed last month.
In 2010 Ms. Davenport signed with Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin, for "The Chinese Soldier's Daughter," a Civil War love story. She received a $20,000 advance for the book, which was supposed to come out next summer.
If writers have one message drilled into them these days, it is this: hustle yourself. So Ms. Davenport took off the shelf several award-winning short stories she had written 20 years ago and packaged them in an e-book, "Cannibal Nights," available on Amazon.
When Penguin found out, it went "ballistic," Ms. Davenport wrote on her blog, accusing her of breaking her contractual promise to avoid competing with it. It wanted "Cannibal Nights" removed from sale and all mentions of it deleted from the Internet.
Ms. Davenport refused, so Penguin canceled her novel and has said it will pursue legal action if she does not return the advance.
It's still too soon to tell how all this will turn out. I wouldn't even begin to predict the future in this sense. But I do find it interesting that the very people who were laughing at e-books and self-publishing are now starting to embrace it...with the mindset that they are going to control the industry, continue to be the gatekeepers, and dictate what they think should be published instead of what the readers think should be published.
If I were a self-published author, I'd be forming a group of some kind and reminding everyone that I was one of the people who paved the way for Amazon, e-books, and digital publishing. I'd be looking for ways to empower myself through a larger organization. Because without these brave self-published writers none of this would be happening right now. The same goes for all the hard-working start up e-publishers who've been working their tails off, while large publishers and some (not all) literary agents have been sitting with their thumbs up their behinds waiting for e-books to disappear.
Here's some copy from the article, below, and here's a link. There's also an interesting disclaimer at the bottom I didn't publish in this post. It's worth reading the entire piece.
Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of DealBy DAVID STREITFELD
SEATTLE — Amazon.com has taught readers that they do not need bookstores. Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their publishers.
Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times
Laurel Saville's memoir about her mother was self-published at first. It is scheduled to be published by Amazon next month.
Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form. It is a striking acceleration of the retailer's fledging publishing program that will place Amazon squarely in competition with the New York houses that are also its most prominent suppliers.
It has set up a flagship line run by a publishing veteran, Laurence Kirshbaum, to bring out brand-name fiction and nonfiction. It signed its first deal with the self-help author Tim Ferriss. Last week it announced a memoir by the actress and director Penny Marshall, for which it paid $800,000, a person with direct knowledge of the deal said.
Publishers say Amazon is aggressively wooing some of their top authors. And the company is gnawing away at the services that publishers, critics and agents used to provide.
Several large publishers declined to speak on the record about Amazon's efforts. "Publishers are terrified and don't know what to do," said Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House, who is known for speaking his mind.
"Everyone's afraid of Amazon," said Richard Curtis, a longtime agent who is also an e-book publisher. "If you're a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you're a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you too. And if you're an agent, Amazon may be stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out.
"It's an old strategy: divide and conquer," Mr. Curtis said.
Amazon executives, interviewed at the company's headquarters here, declined to say how many editors the company employed, or how many books it had under contract. But they played down Amazon's power and said publishers were in love with their own demise.
"It's always the end of the world," said Russell Grandinetti, one of Amazon's top executives. "You could set your watch on it arriving."
He pointed out, though, that the landscape was in some ways changing for the first time since Gutenberg invented the modern book nearly 600 years ago. "The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader," he said. "Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity."
Amazon has started giving all authors, whether it publishes them or not, direct access to highly coveted Nielsen BookScan sales data, which records how many physical books they are selling in individual markets like Milwaukee or New Orleans. It is introducing the sort of one-on-one communication between authors and their fans that used to happen only on book tours. It made an obscure German historical novel a runaway best seller without a single professional reviewer weighing in.
Publishers caught a glimpse of a future they fear has no role for them late last month when Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire, a tablet for books and other media sold by Amazon. Jeffrey P. Bezos, the company's chief executive, referred several times to Kindle as "an end-to-end service," conjuring up a world in which Amazon develops, promotes and delivers the product.
For a sense of how rattled publishers are by Amazon's foray into their business, consider the case of Kiana Davenport, a Hawaiian writer whose career abruptly derailed last month.
In 2010 Ms. Davenport signed with Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin, for "The Chinese Soldier's Daughter," a Civil War love story. She received a $20,000 advance for the book, which was supposed to come out next summer.
If writers have one message drilled into them these days, it is this: hustle yourself. So Ms. Davenport took off the shelf several award-winning short stories she had written 20 years ago and packaged them in an e-book, "Cannibal Nights," available on Amazon.
When Penguin found out, it went "ballistic," Ms. Davenport wrote on her blog, accusing her of breaking her contractual promise to avoid competing with it. It wanted "Cannibal Nights" removed from sale and all mentions of it deleted from the Internet.
Ms. Davenport refused, so Penguin canceled her novel and has said it will pursue legal action if she does not return the advance.
October 17, 2011
From: Libba Bray's Livejournal...About: Shine Being Pulled From National Book Award
If you read the post below about the National Book Award pulling a YA, LGBTQ book out of the finalists, check out this link. The author of this article says if far better than I could:
http://libba-bray.livejournal.com/62266.html
http://libba-bray.livejournal.com/62266.html
LGBTQ YA Book, SHINE, Removed from National Book Awards
I read this on Janet Reid's blog and had to share.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/10/lauren-myracle-asked-to-withdraw-from-national-book-award-finalists.html
This is from the article:
That perspective has clearly been revised. "The National Book Foundation regrets that an error was made in the original announcement of the Finalists for the 2011 National Book Award in Young People's Literature and apologizes for any confusion and hurt it may have caused Lauren Myracle," it said in a statement. "At her suggestion we will be pleased to make a $5,000 donation to the Matthew Shepard Foundation in her name."
That's because of the book's subject matter, explained in our review:
Myracle's latest, "Shine," continues to trade in the forbidden. It just does so in literary prose, following a 16-year-old girl as she attempts to solve an antigay hate crime in a small North Carolina town where methamphetamine use is rampant and illiteracy and unemployment rates run even higher.
"Shine" is dramatic in both content and presentation. Its end pages are jet black, a not-so-subliminal indication of the novel's dark subject matter. Before Chapter 1 has even begun, that subject is revealed with a newspaper clipping. Seventeen-year-old Patrick Truman has been beaten and bound to a guardrail outside a convenience store with an antigay slur written in blood across his chest. Patrick was well known in his hometown of 743 residents for being "light in his loafers" or "swishy," as some of the townspeople called him. The question at the center of "Shine" is, who would beat him bloody with a baseball bat and leave him for dead?
Myracle's books, which include "ttyl" and "ttfn," have often appeared on the most-challenged and most-banned lists released by the American Library Assn. "I was over the moon last week after receiving the call telling me that 'Shine' was a finalist for the award," Myracle said in her statement.
I truly hope this book was entered in the 2011 Rainbow Awards, where they don't do this sort of thing.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/10/lauren-myracle-asked-to-withdraw-from-national-book-award-finalists.html
This is from the article:
That perspective has clearly been revised. "The National Book Foundation regrets that an error was made in the original announcement of the Finalists for the 2011 National Book Award in Young People's Literature and apologizes for any confusion and hurt it may have caused Lauren Myracle," it said in a statement. "At her suggestion we will be pleased to make a $5,000 donation to the Matthew Shepard Foundation in her name."
That's because of the book's subject matter, explained in our review:
Myracle's latest, "Shine," continues to trade in the forbidden. It just does so in literary prose, following a 16-year-old girl as she attempts to solve an antigay hate crime in a small North Carolina town where methamphetamine use is rampant and illiteracy and unemployment rates run even higher.
"Shine" is dramatic in both content and presentation. Its end pages are jet black, a not-so-subliminal indication of the novel's dark subject matter. Before Chapter 1 has even begun, that subject is revealed with a newspaper clipping. Seventeen-year-old Patrick Truman has been beaten and bound to a guardrail outside a convenience store with an antigay slur written in blood across his chest. Patrick was well known in his hometown of 743 residents for being "light in his loafers" or "swishy," as some of the townspeople called him. The question at the center of "Shine" is, who would beat him bloody with a baseball bat and leave him for dead?
Myracle's books, which include "ttyl" and "ttfn," have often appeared on the most-challenged and most-banned lists released by the American Library Assn. "I was over the moon last week after receiving the call telling me that 'Shine' was a finalist for the award," Myracle said in her statement.
I truly hope this book was entered in the 2011 Rainbow Awards, where they don't do this sort of thing.
Review for He's Bewitched by Gerry Burnie
I was looking through old blog posts last night and I noticed that I never posted this review for HE'S BEWITCHED. This book has already sold many copies and I haven't promoted it in a long time. But I'm doing it now, and mainly because Gerry Burnie "got" what I was trying to do with this book. And when that happens, I can't tell you how good it makes any author feel.
Here's one quote I love: A campy little story not really intended to be taken seriously, and if read in this context it's a fun read
I don't believe all fiction should be deep and serious, especially not a m/m romance where readers are looking for something fun and something that will help them escape all their own problems. And if someone is buying an erotic romance I find it almost unethical not to add plenty of sex scenes. Readers are buying the book partly because of the sex scenes, and nothing bothers me more than an erotic romance without enough sex. That's what I tried to do with this book. AMERICAN STAR is another example of a campy, satirical look at the pop culture TV show, American Idol. And if you read People Magazine...or just glance through last week's section about Ashton Kutcher's escapades...you'll see how absolutely ridiculous pop culture can sometimes be.
Here's a link to the entire review for HE'S BEWITCHED. I'm not going to say anything else because the review says it best.
It's definitely not a Pulitzer Prize contender, and from that perspective I wasn't at all disappointed.
October 16, 2011
The Perfect Example of Subjective...And an Idiot
In the post before this, I talked about how writing is so subjective. And this afternoon while I was lurking around the Interwebs I saw something classic.
I went to a blog I don't usually frequent, for reasons you'll understand by the time this post is finished. The author was ranting about other poorly written author blogs...in a general sense...and how the authors who maintain these blogs confuse people with too much information and clutter. I'm not joking either. This was a full fledged rant and my jaw was on the keyboard.
This is something I would never do, and most bloggers I know wouldn't do it either. I got to know a lot of bloggers when I worked for bestgayblogs.com and I grew to respect them all. Blogs are personal online publications that, in a sense, reflect our individual personalities. And they are free!! When I go to a blog, it's almost like being invited into someone's home; I'm a guest. This is how personal the experience is...for me. And no one with any amount of decency would criticize someone's home.
I won't go into detail about the rant. But what I found interesting while reading the author's extremely negative post is that while this author/blogger was criticizing and ranting about everyone else's blog, HER blog is published in beige on beige. The photo above is a good example. The background is beige, the print is beige, the post titles are beige, and I have a feeling this author's life in general is pretty beige. The words blend into the background and all that beige is so difficult to read you can't look at it for too long without blinking.
I'm really not dissing the author's blog. I'm dissing the rant and calling attention to the irony. While this author is ranting about other blogs being too confusing and filled with clutter, HER blog is so beige it's virtually impossible to read.
I'm also pointing out an example of subjectivity. I'm sure there are some people who love beige on beige blogs and they have no trouble reading them. I'm also sure there are just as many people who love loaded blogs, filled with all kinds of information that isn't necessarly in detailed order (I do), and they become loyal followers. Blogging is a means of expression, not just a way to promote something. And I've always found the most successful bloggers are the people who know this and follow their hearts.
Something I Believe...
I read and hear a lot about "good" writing. But the problem is that no one has ever come up with a set definition for good writing. And that's because it's all subjective. And it becomes even more subjective when you cross genres. Some people like cats, others like dogs. I love both.
I do believe you can spot inexperienced writing...too much dialogue, too many said bookisms, etc...but I wouldn't necessarily call that bad writing. And I've never seen a writer yet you didn't improve with time. Writing is like any other art form: the more you do the better it gets.
So the next time you hear someone tell you it's all about "good" writing, stand back and smile. Because you know you're listening to an idiot.
October 14, 2011
What Was It Like To Be "Gay" In the l960's?
I'm writing this post because I'm working on a book right now that's set in the l960's. I have many older gay friends who've been helping me out with research. And articles like this have been insightful.
But I have to admit that it's hard...damned hard...to fully understand what it must have been like back then. I can only imagine and hope I do it justice.
Gay in the 1960s — the time was ripe for revolution
By Warren Allen Smith
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
Gay life in the 1960s was, for sure, an entirely different time, a time in which falling in love monthly, or even weekly, was neither impossible nor improbable.
It was a dangerous time, however, to be openly gay. Physicians who cured our venereal diseases scolded us for having done what we did to get sick. Psychiatrists ruled that we were mentally sick. Neighbors maliciously gossiped about who was visiting late last night. Landlords asked gay couples, hoping to rent, if they were related. Monotheists called us sinners, threatening that if we didn't choose to be heterosexual we would not get to Heaven (making that theological invention all the more undesirable). If we were slightly on the fey side, we could get a black eye, a bloody lip or worse. Sometimes, in self-defense, we related antigay jokes to throw people off.
Even if we carefully stayed in the closet, it was difficult to play The Majority's game. When I was an acting first sergeant in charge of a company that landed on Omaha Beach in 1944, I did play the game, difficult as it was. Although I preferred music, art, poetry and ballet to sports, I guarded against expressing myself. Whenever I got a leave during the time I was in the Army, I chose to travel alone. Who better than gays to understand Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"!
In 1969, Vice President Spiro Agnew would have become president if Richard Nixon had died. Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand tied as best actresses for an Oscar. "1776" and "The Great White Hope" won Antoinette Perry awards. Billie Jean King was one of the top tennis players. If treated, gonorrhea, syphilis and other venereal diseases were not life threatening. It cost 20 cents to ride the subway.
Sex in New York City was readily available, night and day. The Rambles in Central Park was one place where openly gay male sex occurred and allegedly had ever since the William Cullen Bryant-inspired area first opened. All that shrubbery, all those dark places in which to hide and to meet….
Many small parks had gay meeting spots, and all large parks had cruising areas. Brooklyn's Prospect Park had several busy sites. Riverside Drive's area stretched from the Soldiers and Sailors Monument to General Grant's Tomb and on up past Harlem. Parks along the East River and areas near the Battery were places to hook up. The park at Washington Sq. was appealing, particularly the northwest corner where guys leaned suggestively on the railings. If anyone asked the time, he really was inviting you to his nearby apartment. Rendezvous were followed by an exchange of names and phone numbers — wrong numbers, of course, if either thought he might do better falling in love after a one-night stand with someone else tomorrow.
Read more here...
But I have to admit that it's hard...damned hard...to fully understand what it must have been like back then. I can only imagine and hope I do it justice.
Gay in the 1960s — the time was ripe for revolution
By Warren Allen Smith
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
Gay life in the 1960s was, for sure, an entirely different time, a time in which falling in love monthly, or even weekly, was neither impossible nor improbable.
It was a dangerous time, however, to be openly gay. Physicians who cured our venereal diseases scolded us for having done what we did to get sick. Psychiatrists ruled that we were mentally sick. Neighbors maliciously gossiped about who was visiting late last night. Landlords asked gay couples, hoping to rent, if they were related. Monotheists called us sinners, threatening that if we didn't choose to be heterosexual we would not get to Heaven (making that theological invention all the more undesirable). If we were slightly on the fey side, we could get a black eye, a bloody lip or worse. Sometimes, in self-defense, we related antigay jokes to throw people off.
Even if we carefully stayed in the closet, it was difficult to play The Majority's game. When I was an acting first sergeant in charge of a company that landed on Omaha Beach in 1944, I did play the game, difficult as it was. Although I preferred music, art, poetry and ballet to sports, I guarded against expressing myself. Whenever I got a leave during the time I was in the Army, I chose to travel alone. Who better than gays to understand Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"!
In 1969, Vice President Spiro Agnew would have become president if Richard Nixon had died. Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand tied as best actresses for an Oscar. "1776" and "The Great White Hope" won Antoinette Perry awards. Billie Jean King was one of the top tennis players. If treated, gonorrhea, syphilis and other venereal diseases were not life threatening. It cost 20 cents to ride the subway.
Sex in New York City was readily available, night and day. The Rambles in Central Park was one place where openly gay male sex occurred and allegedly had ever since the William Cullen Bryant-inspired area first opened. All that shrubbery, all those dark places in which to hide and to meet….
Many small parks had gay meeting spots, and all large parks had cruising areas. Brooklyn's Prospect Park had several busy sites. Riverside Drive's area stretched from the Soldiers and Sailors Monument to General Grant's Tomb and on up past Harlem. Parks along the East River and areas near the Battery were places to hook up. The park at Washington Sq. was appealing, particularly the northwest corner where guys leaned suggestively on the railings. If anyone asked the time, he really was inviting you to his nearby apartment. Rendezvous were followed by an exchange of names and phone numbers — wrong numbers, of course, if either thought he might do better falling in love after a one-night stand with someone else tomorrow.
Read more here...
October 13, 2011
Big News For Kobo...
As the readers of this blog know I love all things Kobo. I have two Kobo e-readers and I'm thinking about getting a third.
And now Kobo has partnered with two large book sellers, one in France and one in the UK. I'm not tech savy enough to understand the details. But I do know I'll have even more choices now when I'm shopping for books.
Here's a link to the WHSmith web site which will explain it better than I can.
