'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 83

Queer Spaces

The Bold Strokes Books retreat has begun, and the first morning has passed. I ended up trying a last-minute pitch at Pitchapalooza (where I was totally—and rightfully—the loser to Barbara Ann Wright‘s wizard with an exploding problem), absorbed some awesome knowledge from Cindy about POV, and then got caught up on the state of things before an awesome lunch at Faraday‘s.

That’s right, I’m in England right now. Nottingham, specifically, and I’m surrounded by awesome Bold Strokes Books authors and editors and the rest of the people who make the magic happen. If you didn’t know about that, but you’re nearby, a head’s up: this weekend, there’s a two day festival happening at Waterstone’s and the Mercure. Come by. It’ll be awesome. And, hey, anyone who comes to the bookfair will be able to get their hands on copies of Of Echoes Born before anyone else!

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That’s me and Jeffrey Ricker on the train to Nottingham. We’d been awake roughly thirty-two hours at this point, and had to troubleshoot some late-flight fallout.

So, apart from now having a new plot pitch in my notebook, I’ve also already found myself relaxing and recharging on an inherently queer level. Being around other writers always feels good, don’t get me wrong, but being around other queer writers?

It’s revitalizing.

Bold Strokes is amazing at creating an author-family vibe, and in no time at all, I can feel the difference. We’re all bouncing ideas off each other, offering huzzahs and congratulations over the current GCLS finalists, and catching up and gushing over the books we’ve read.

Also? Proper English breakfast was had, and will continue to be had, and I am a very, very happy man.

Over the next couple of days, I’ll get more insights into the editing process, some awesome advice on events/readings/cons and event planning, work on character and conflict, and even take a run at the often-dreaded blurb. All the while surrounded by awesome fellow authors.

Last time, I left the retreat so recharged I outlined my Pitchapalooza blurb and over the next two years it turned into Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks (out this December). This time? I’m hoping to leave with a clear grasp on making Triad Magic a reality.

Oh, and probably some good proper English candy, too.

F/F and Romancelandia

Ever wonder why I read so many ladies-loving-ladies books? Well, honestly, it’s because they’re really good. But it’s also this: because making noise is something I want to do, to try and fight some of the imbalance this blog puts forth so clearly.

Cats and Paperbacks

Last year in June, I made a post titled Does YA Hate f/f romance. That got a lot more attention that I could’ve ever hoped for and I’m so thankful for that. Since then, I’ve gotten much more into romance and honestly? I need to address how this is also a problem in Romancelandia.

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Friday Flash Fics — Burning

Today’s Friday Flash Fic picture struck me as ultimately triumphant. Something in the expression on the young man’s face here struck me the most, and it reminded me of more than a few fellow queerlings I’ve met on similar paths, with similar histories.

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Image from Pixabay.

Burning

It wasn’t the smartest way out of town, or even remotely convenient, but Bradley started across the rail bridge, stepping carefully from tie to tie. His hands shook, his fingers colder than the light breeze should have left them.

All in all, it was a nice day, really. He remembered an English class from a year or two back, and struggled for a term.

Pathetic fallacy. If it were a real thing, it should be raining right now. Or maybe a thunderstorm on the horizon.

Or maybe there should be clear skies ahead, and the clouds should stay behind him.

Or maybe…

He swallowed, and a breath exploded out of his chest. How long had he been holding his breath?

Tie to tie, keeping his balance. Some of them were numbered with faded white paint. He tracked that without actually reading them.

At the half-way point, someone in the receding town beeped a car horn. It almost made him stumble, almost missing a step, as he twisted to look behind him just in case.

Bradley stopped, heart hammering in his chest. If he’d fallen, he could have really hurt himself, and then… God. He counted to five, gathering his wits.

The English class came back to the surface again. Gathering wits. Was that a metaphor? He wasn’t sure. As the cool air wafted past him and he got his breathing back under control, he glanced back at the town behind him.

We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, he thought. Not a metaphor. An… what was it called?

Aphorism.

They weren’t supposed to be literal. Though he’d crossed quite a few bridges today already.

Emptying his bank account hadn’t been difficult. Neither had selling his car, though making sure the buyer wouldn’t come get it until Friday had been a minor quibble. Still, once he’d handed over the papers and the keys, it was a done deal. He had what he was pretty sure was enough cash to be okay. To find somewhere to start again.

He’d even managed to get his ID, though not much else.

By the time he’d walked his way to the first station on the other side of the bridge and bought a ticket, he’d be—he hoped—someone no one would really remember.

At the very least, he hoped that seeing his car still in the town, still in the same parking spot, and none of his stuff gone—except for his ID, but really, would they check the filing cabinet right away?—would throw them off long enough.

They’d waste a lot of time checking in with his “friends.”

“Is Bradley with you?”

He could almost imagine his father’s voice, at first annoyed. Then, after a few calls, perhaps angry.

Would he ever be worried?

Bradley started walking again. Tie to tie.

He knew they’d find him eventually. But he only had to make it a few more months first. There were ways to hide. Being the son of a sheriff had taught him some of them without him even knowing.

Bradley made it to the other side of the bridge. Stepping off the ties to the dirt beside the rails felt like an accomplishment. He turned around.

He should keep walking. He had more than enough time to get to the station, but it wouldn’t do to waste time. Still.

He eyed the bridge.

Maybe he should have brought a lighter. A small smile played out on his face, there and gone again in a moment, but a chuckle followed it.

Nah.

Metaphors weren’t supposed to be literal.

 

Ian

The dedication for Of Echoes Born is to all the editors I’ve ever worked with, especially in short fiction, and two people in specific: Becky Cochrane and Timothy J. Lambert. They’re wonderful authors (and also one-half of a wonderful quartet of authors who write under the pseudonym Timothy James Beck), and they gave me my first real shot at professional writing.

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That guy there? That’s Ian.

The result of that shot was “Heart” in the collection Fool for Love: New Gay Fiction. And in that story there is a single scene where Aiden, the narrative voice of the story, has a split-second meeting with his boyfriend’s boss, Ian. He notices in passing that Ian has mismatched eyes, they speak a line or two to each other, and that’s it for Ian.

I included “Heart” as a reprint in Of Echoes Born because it’s still one of my favourite pieces, and also—since it was the first—it’s been quite a while since it had a fresh glance. But I also included “Heart” because all the stories in Of Echoes Born interconnect, and Ian is a big piece of that.

Ian is a character I’ve been writing since that first story, but it’s not until now that he’s found a home. Partly that was due to length: my first attempt at a major piece with Ian was a novel that just wouldn’t work, titled Silver & Blue, and I realized it never would work as a novel because it’s a novella. It got tucked aside, and I wrote Light as my debut novel instead.

But Ian hung around. I wrote a few more stories set in the my fictionalized (and slightly magic) version of my local gay village, and even if Ian’s bookstore—The Second Page—wasn’t mentioned, I knew it was there. He was part of the world-building even if he never popped into the story. I have notes about all the businesses in the Village, who rents which apartment and where (there are apartments over the storefronts).

I’ve already taken a few trips to the Village in other stories. I visited the chocolatier/candy shop, Sweet Temptations, in the story “Vanilla” from Threesome: Him, Him & Me; the consignment/dress shop, Urbane Myth, in the novella Saving the Date; and the coffee shop gets a lot of mentions (that would be Bittersweets, which is practically a character in and of itself in Handmade Holidays, given how much Ru loves his coffee). The other stores get mentioned here and there, too. The gallery, FunkArt; the tea-shop, NiceTeas; the gym/spa, Body Positive… I could go on and on.

And I probably will over the next week as the release date for the collection approaches.

But back to Ian. Ian is the fellow on the cover, and in the two tales we visit him first at sixteen, when his gift first begins to show and he starts to see things: auras around people and visions of things that happened before and even things that are yet to happen; and then again at thirty-six, when he’s lived two decades of his life with that gift, and made mistakes, and yet his life balances on the edge of a new potential.

I feel like I lucked out. I first wrote Ian ten years ago. Sharing two of his stories this June? It’s like finally introducing a long-lost best friend to everyone I know, and then stepping back and watching as everyone realizes they’ve already heard so much about each other.

He’s where the Village began. He’s just one character, yes, but he’s the first one that occurred to me in the intersection where I find myself most comfortable: queer, and slightly magic or psychic or “other.” The whole Village sprang up around the idea of him, and characters like him. Working on the new stories for Of Echoes Born reminded me why I wrote him in the first place.

I think, once I’m done Triad Soul, I’ll be pulling Silver & Blue out of the cabinet. And I’ll be nudging up my other Village stories to the top of the pile, too. Because this collection made me realize I’m not done with the Village.

I’m only getting started.

Friday Flash Fics — Treading Water

Today’s Friday Flash Fics image came from desperately wanting the snow and ice to go away. It snowed again yesterday. But, at least we can travel somewhere warm in our heads, no?

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Treading Water

After the weeks of snow, and ice—not to mention his only view of those being from a hospital bed—the glory of the heat, the brightness of the sun, and the beautiful blue-green of the ocean made Yves feel alive again.

And he was. Alive. Again.

Not that he’d been dead. Just… well. It had come close. And what did you do after something like that?

The responsible thing would have been to get back to work. Ease into it, of course, since he was still technically still recovering, but…

But when he’d ridden the wheelchair out of the hospital, and then stepped into a whirl of snow and ice and cold, he’d called an uber, and gone straight to the travel agency in the mall.

Now, here he was.

He lay on the beach, only opening his eyes now and then, feeling the heat of the air sink into him and finally—finally—feeling warm.

Then something smacked the side of his head, hard enough to sting.

Yves yelped, and sat up, putting his hand against his temple and blinking away tears. More shocked then hurt, he glanced down.

A frisbee lay beside him. Or, he supposed, a disc. Some of his friends payed Ultimate. They got annoyed when he called it a frisbee.

A second later, shade fell over him, and he looked up to see two very attractive men.

Dark haired, dark eyed, skin a lovely bronze, and both sporting what had to be daily maintained short beards, they looked local, and the string of words that came out of their mouth was certainly accented and in a language Yves didn’t know. He’d brought a book with him, but they were going so fast he didn’t catch a single one.

“It’s okay,” Yves said. “I’m fine. It was just a surprise.” He picked up the disc and held it out.

The two men glanced at each other.

“American?” the first said.

“Canadian,” Yves said.

“Oh Canada!” the second said, and if he was off-key, the giant smile made up for it. Also the chest and arms and abs.

“Toronto?” the first said.

“Ottawa,” Yves said.

They both blinked, still smiling, but shaking their heads. They didn’t know it.

“It’s just the capital,” Yves said, smiling back.

One of the men turned and called over his shoulder, another rapid string of language, and then there were more of them.

They weren’t identical, but honestly, it was a close thing. It was like one of those charity calendars he bought had come to life. The ones with the beautiful shirtless men holding dogs for charity. Or was it cats this year? Whatever. Five beautiful men, all of them sporting athletic builds and shorts and friendly smiles.

They shot rapid language back and forth again, and Yves started to feel kind of silly sitting there while they all stood, so he rose.

One of them helped him up, grinning.

“Uh,” one of the three new guys said. “You are vacation?” His English was heavily accented. He pointed at the green band on Yves’s wrist.

“Yes,” Yves nodded, pointing back at the hotel behind them.

He bobbed his head. His hair was curlier than the rest, and his beard was more a goatee. He had a lovely smile.

“Sorry about…” he gestured to the disc. Then he looked around. “You are vacation alone?”

“It was last minute,” Yves said.

The guy shook his head. The others were still chatting around him, asking him questions. He laughed and snapped something back. The tone was clear: shut up, guys, I’m doing the best I can.

“I just got on a plane,” Yves said. Then, finally remembering his book, he held up a finger, and dug into his backpack. He pulled it out, and looked up the word for ‘unplanned.’ It took a while, but he got it and said it—probably in a horrid accent.

Goatee grinned at him. “Is good!”

“It’s great,” Yves agreed.

The guy paused, and pointed at Yves’s bag. “Is…pride?”

Yves glanced down. The patch on his backpack. The rainbow.

He’d specifically asked the travel agent to make sure he wasn’t going somewhere hostile, but…

He nodded. “Pride.”

That was rewarded with a very large grin. “You swim?” The guy asked.

“Not yet,” Yves said, and unbidden, his hand went to the white cotton shirt he was wearing.

“You must!” One of the others said something to the goateed guy, and that set off another string of questions and answers. The others all turned to Yves grinning and laughing.

“Swim,” another agreed.

Yves took a deep breath, and opened the little book. It took him a while to find the words, but something about the way the five men asked seemed so earnest. They wanted him to join them in the water, to share the ocean with him, and…

He was pretty sure he mangled the accent, but hospital, recovery, operation and cancer seemed to do the trick. The five men paused.

“You cannot?” The man with the goatee said now, more subdued.

“No,” Yves said. “I can, but…” He flushed. Finally, he undid a couple of the buttons on the white shirt and opened it. The scar across his abdomen was still vividly bright. His fingers shook, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to look up at the five, beautiful—and completely unmarred—men.

There was silence for a moment, then the rapid-fire language ricocheted around him.

The man with the goatee touched his shoulder. “We swim,” he said again.

And they did. Yves left the white shirt by his bag and book and towel, and though every step of the way to the water he imagined the eyes of the others on the beach on him, the laughter and noise of the five men around him seemed to hold it at bay.

In the water, they took turns throwing each other high into the air. Yves treaded water near them, enjoying their laughter and play and feeling something inside him uncoil.

“You next?” The goateed guy said.

Yves’s eyes widened, but seeing those five faces grinning his way there was only one answer.

 

Disability Tropes 101: Karmically Disabled

I’m loving this new series of posts from the Spoonie Author’s Network.

Spoonie Authors Network

I recently finished watching Season 2 of Dirk Gently and have been reflecting on the huge number of problematic disability tropes in the show, particularly around the invented disability “Pararibulitis,” but for this post, I want to focus on one particular trope that frequently appears in representations of disability, what I call the Karmically Disabled Trope. In the Dirk Gently TV show, the character Todd fakes having a disease called Pararibulitis, an invented nerve disease where the affected person experiences hallucinations that feel completely real to him/her/them. Todd pretended to have the disease throughout his childhood to gain sympathy and money from his parents, but later his sister Amanda actually developed the disability and couldn’t get access to all of the supports she needed because Todd had used up all of his parents’ resources. At the end of the first season of Dirk Gently, Todd gets the disease as…

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First Echo

Yesterday, I was having a kind of off day. It was snowing (still, again, relentlessly) and I realized just how many books I needed to finish reading, and soon. I’m lucky enough to get ARCs for a lot of titles, but I’m falling behind, and it makes me feel guilty when I’ve agreed to read these books so I can review them and help generate noise, and I haven’t done so yet.

So I went to our library, sipped tea, and started reading. A while later, the doorbell went off (and the dog gave one of his rare barks) and I went downstairs and found…

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This never, ever gets old. And if you’d like one of your very own? Hit up Bold Strokes Books.

Needless to say, I perked up. I opened the box, did my “the book is here” dance around the kitchen (and bribed Coach not to every let anyone know what that looks like via some milkbones) and then proceeded to flip my way through the book with joy.

It looks beautiful. The cover, done by Inkspiral Book & Cover Design is perfect, the interior layout, which had a few quirks I wasn’t sure how to do properly is also perfect (bless you, Stacia!) and this honestly feels like the best thing I’ve ever made (thank you, Jerry!).

My husband picked up a copy when he got home, and when he started to read it, I actually got nervous. That never happens. I was jittery and jumpy and really wanted him to like the first story (with collections and anthologies, that first story has to do so much work), but when he was done the first piece, he put it down and said, “That’s a great start.”

Anyway. The collection is real. It’s here. It’s in my hands.

Now to wait for June, when everyone else can have it…

Sewing Short Magics by Nathan Burgoine

I’m over at the Bold Strokes Books UK blog today, talking about the magic that is short stories, found families, and the upcoming Of Echoes Born.

Bold Strokes Books, UK

In one of the stories in my upcoming collection of short fiction, I have a man, Martin, sewing squares for a quilt. The cloth for those squares comes from various pieces of fashion he designed over his career; he’s putting together a blanket that he can take with him to a care home and feel like he brought something tangible from his past with him.

The theme of the past, of making things from the past, and of looking forward with those pieces of the past in hand is all throughout Of Echoes Born, and even in the format of the book itself.

I love short stories. They’re my first, best, and favourite way to write. That I can release a collection is a huge moment for me, and I’m so excited to be able to open up a copy and read from it at the upcoming festival.

When I…

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Friday Flash Fics — Guilts

For Friday Flash Fics this week, given the date in question—Friday the 13th—I found an image that was a bit darker than usual. And while I pondered it throughout the week, it struck me as another chance to visit André from “Negative Space” (a short story that’ll appear in the upcoming Of Echoes Born). There are mild spoilers here, but I don’t think they’d ruin the story before the reading. This takes place both after “Negative Space” and the previous visit with André in “Surviving, Thriving.”

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Guilts

André came to with a start, gasping in a deep breath like he hadn’t remembered to breathe in a few minutes.

It might have been true.

It was no different than a hundred other nights, a hundred other nightmares, a hundred other gasps, right up until a gentle voice said, “You’re okay.”

André turned, forcing his breathing back under control.

In the middle of the night, he could barely make out Jaylen in the bed beside him.

Of all the nights to dream that dream…

“Sorry,” André said.

“Hey,” Jaylen said, sitting up and resting his hand on the small of André’s back. “It’s me. I get it. Besides, it’ll probably be my turn soon enough.”

André leaned against Jaylen’s shoulder. “You still get nightmares?”

“Less and less, but they still happen.” Jaylen’s laugh was mirthless. “I swear they wait for good days. It’d almost make sense if they happened when I was having a bad day, but…” André felt him shrug. “Not how it works.”

“Me too,” André admitted.

“So…you’re saying this was a good day?”

André could imagine the cocky smile on Jaylen’s face. He turned, and kissed him. They sank back onto the pillows, and André found his favourite spot on Jaylen’s shoulder to rest for a few moments.

“Is it just a replay?” Jaylen asked.

“No,” André said, and had to stop and think for a moment. He needed the right words. “It’s not about me at all, actually, most of the time.”

A squeeze of Jaylen’s fingers on his arm let him know Jaylen was listening if he wanted to say more. It was one of the best parts of their…whatever this was. Relationship, he supposed. They’d definitely just crossed a line from a few coffee dates. They probably needed to talk that out, too.

“It’s other people. People who didn’t make it. They surround me, and beg me to help them.”

Jaylen took a second with that. “Survivor’s guilt?”

“In a way, I think so.” André felt a little stirring of guilt of another sort in his chest. He hadn’t told Jaylen yet. And every day he didn’t, it felt like doing so would be all the more difficult.

“I’m going to get some water,” he said, and slid out of the bed. He pulled on a t-shirt and pajama bottoms. “You stay put.”

He went to the kitchen, pouring a glass of water, and drinking two gulps. When he turned to head back to the bedroom, he paused.

It used to be André had to be somewhere someone had died, and he could sort of relive their last moments, in a detached, distant way. He’d sought out those places, watched as people suffered violent ends, and then sent drawings of the people responsible to the police.

He’d thought it was going to stop when he finally got up the courage to go to the place where he’d been killed—albeit for just a couple of minutes. And it had.

But it hadn’t.

It had changed.

There were two, outside. Their hands touched the inside of the sheer curtain, their faces indistinct behind the cloth and the glass.

André could feel the pull of them. He wasn’t sure if it would be the same—would he relive their last moments? He hadn’t tried yet. They never forced him. And if he ignored them long enough, he’d learned they’d go away.

But that was starting to make him feel guilty, too.

“Tomorrow,” he said, facing the two figures in the window. “Tomorrow night. Okay?”

Their hands lowered. Their faces faded.

“André?”

André turned. Jaylen, lit only by the pale light of the window, stood in the doorway to the bedroom. He’d tugged on a pair of boxers, and the view was wonderful.

“If I asked you to hear me out about something, and told you it would sound…impossible…would you be willing?” André said. “It’s about how I met Bao.”

“The cop?”

“Yes.”

“Of course,” Jaylen said.

André smiled, and led him back to bed.

“So. You know I was technically dead for a couple of minutes, right?”

April Flash Fiction Draw Roundup

Fourth month, fourth collection of stories! I’m so appreciative to everyone who takes part in this wee prompt/contest/what-have-you, so before anything else: a thank you to everyone who took part.

So, what is this?

Well, the Flash Fiction Draw is basically a randomized card-draw that spits out a genre, an object, and a location, after which writers have a week to come up with up to 1,000 words that fit the criteria. It’s meant to be for fun and inspiration, rather than for serious competition. I do a draw on the first Monday of every month (the next draw will be May 7th, if you want to join in) and post results the following Monday, updating the post as I find new stories writers have written.

These were the cards drawn (and what they meant):

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Given “Historical Fiction,” “Rat Poison,” and “A Dirt Road,” things could have gone pretty much anywhere (and anywhen, be it the 290 BC or the 80’s) and they did!

Here they are, alphabetically by contributor:

Jeff Baker wrote “All Roads Don’t Lead to Rome.”

‘Nathan Burgoine (that’s me) wrote “Lucky.”

Alex deMorra wrote “Come Tuesday, The Cathouse.”

Cait Gordon wrote “Ye Filthy Rat.”

E.H. Timms wrote “Exit Left, Pursued by a Glare.”

Jamieson Wolf wrote “Thorns of a Rose.”

Did I miss your entry? Let me know and I’ll add you to the list! And by all means join us next month, when I do the draw again on May 7th. And if you want to see what people came up with for previous stories? The roundup for January (which was “A Fairy Tale,” “A Tattoo Machine,” and “A Prison”) is here. The roundup for February (which was “A Crime Caper,” “A Compass,” and “A Soup Kitchen”) is here. And the roundup for March (which was “A Romance,” “A VHS Cassette” and “A Firewatch Tower”) is here.