'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 9

(Silver) Sapphic Pride!

As a queer of a particular age and hair-colour (what hair remains, that is), one of the things you can’t help but notice as you age is how people your age just sort of… vanish. That’s a problem far from solely found within the queer community (though my experience is the queer community often has an even harder time with accepting aging, gracefully or otherwise).

I once wrote a short story, “Here Be Dragons.” It gained the dubious honour of being my most rejected submission ever. I sent it to romance anthology after romance anthology, and while many times the editors replied that they enjoyed the story, it wasn’t accepted. Some were candid enough to admit it wasn’t about hot young gay men, which their audience would expect (ouch), but others said things about it being bittersweet or having the wrong tone or fit for the anthology (which I can totally understand). But the one thing that came up over and over again was the reality of it being about two older men, and thus… no thank you. So when I was putting together my own collection, I decided “Here Be Dragons” was going to finally see print, and that was that. (It’s included in Of Echoes Born.)

So, today for my Pride Month trek through some books I’ve loved, I thought I’d bring up two wonderful sapphic books I adored that have characters who aren’t twenty- (or even thirty-) somethings, but rather people much further on in their lives.

And, y’know, still queer.

You know when you read a book and love it and wish you could immediately read it again for the first time (even though that’s impossible) and just sit there with that dazed that was magic derpy look on your face? Carol Rosenfeld’s The One That Got Away did that to me b/ack in 2016. So many adjectives for this book: charming, sly, moving, clever, honest-to-gods-witty, funny. All of those. More.

If the blurb sounds too simple, don’t worry – it’s not. Rosenfeld puts so much character into the players on this stage that you’ll be as smitten as I was with nearly everyone (and also ruthlessly enjoy not being smitten with those you dislike). I cheered for B.D. from almost the first page, and more than that, you want B.D., who has come out later in life, to realize just how freaking awesome she is.

Rosenfeld has mastery of the turn of a phrase to evoke a sly, almost unassuming humour that sneaks up on you when you least expect it. It’s not quite a dry humour, and it’s not quite a sarcastic humour – it’s wonderfully unique. The One that Got Away is not a long novel, and yet it packs a complete punch. I can only assume Rosenfeld draws on her gift of poetry to say so much with fewer words than most would use.

The One That Got Away takes readers on a humorous and heartfelt journey of later-­in-­life sexual self-­discovery in bustling New York City. A bridal consultant learns that when you peel off the glossy veneer of romantic perfection, what’s left is your own true-­to-­life happy ending. Bambi Devine, known to her friends as B.D., is a middle-­aged bridal consultant who has recently come out to her friends after years of kidding herself about her sexuality—only to find out her friends knew all along and were just too polite to say anything to her.

Then B.D. meets Bridget McKnight, the woman of her dreams. Unfortunately for her, Bridget is in a relationship with Natalie Lamont. But Natalie’s intense friendship with Maxine Huff has New York City’s lesbian community buzzing with speculation. Are they really just friends? Could these two members of the Park Slope Clitocybes—a mycological society—share a passion for more than morels? And more importantly for B.D., does this mean she stands a chance with Bridget? After years of hand-­holding demanding brides, B.D. knows what love can do to sane people. Fortified by doses of drag queen wisdom from her boss, Eduardo, B.D. tackles unrequited love and lust, dyke drama, and being in a relationship without having a date for New Year’s Eve in this romp about queer life in New York City.

Now, let’s go from heartbreak and coming-out later in life to a pair of lesbians who’ve hit retirement age and… can’t. Financially, they’ve hit roadblocks in part due to the lived reality of queerness, but also because of familial issues, life, and the reality is they’re looking at financial insecurity at a time in their life where options are limited.

So, what are you going to do?

Well, if you’re a former military lesbian maybe you start a new career as an assassin.

Yep. That’s what I said. What I love about Martha Miller’s Retirement Plan is how deftly the story is written. At no point was I doing anything but nodding along, thinking, yes, this makes sense, when quite literally we’ve got a senior woman deciding that the solution here is to become a killer for hire. It helps they decide pretty early that they’re going to do this with some sort of ethical guidelines (I mean, as much as one can in this situation) and that another plot walks alongside with those investigating the murders she’s been hired to undertake. I listened to this one as an audiobook, too, which was a nice added bonus.

What do you do when you fall through the loopholes in the system and all you have to rely on are your own wits?

Lois and Sophie have scrambled and saved for years, planning for their retirement in Florida. But now they’ve lost it all, and Lois’s sniper training from her long-ago service as an Army nurse leads to a desperate career choice.

When Detective Morgan Holiday is assigned to investigate a spate of sniper killings, it’s just one more stress point in her already overburdened life. But as she grows increasingly solitary—coping with an Alzheimer’s-plagued mother who refuses to be confined to a nursing home, and a police partner counting the days to retirement—she comes to realize that these murders may cut close to home.

A modern morality tale of justice, retribution, and women who refuse to be politely invisible.

Hit me with your silver sapphics in the comments below! Or older queer characters of from any part of the queer umbrella! (I feel like once Pride Month is over I should totally do a post on just older-characters-in-fiction, because I’ve got a few I’ve really loved with characters that aren’t queer).

Tabletop Tuesday — Gaming Group Pride (Part Two)!

Last week, I offered up jazz hands for two of my players from my two Star Trek Adventures gaming groups, and given both my groups are made up almost entirely of authors, I can do this again (and again, even!) for Pride Month, so I’m gonna.

So, allow me to beam up two new books right onto your shelf.

Operations Officers For Everyone!

As I mentioned last week, one of my player groups made characters for an almost entirely Trill ship, the USS Curzon. For Hudson Lin, that character is the chief of operations, Ensign Miari Grix. Ensign Grix is a joined Trill who completed the Initiate training with excellent marks in early everything—except maybe some of the social stuff—and is a computer expert, an absolute whiz when it comes to transporters, and the first to exit a room the moment things get social. Or diplomatic. Or involve feelings.

Grix’s joining has a similar flavour to it—her host and symbiont are joined, but Miari’s access to Grix’s memories are… factual. She doesn’t connect to them in the deep, emotional way that other hosts seem to, and it’s caused some consternation among the Symbiosis Commission. Some of the best role-playing moments have involved Grix and Xon talking over their different ways of “being Joined” and as a fun little side-note, Ensign Grix’s previous host was the Chief Engineer’s grandmother, and that can be a bit awkward at times…

Given we’re talking anti-social grumpy types, I can’t help but want to suggest Hudson Lin’s Coffee House short, “Take Me Home.” Total grumpy/sunshine vibes, crafting, and the adorableness is off the scale.

Melvin is old and tired and all he wants is to enjoy his weekly Sunday morning coffee at the local cafe. Most weeks he can ignore Lee and his cheerfully friendly comments. But when Lee sits down at his table one day with a pile of blue yarn and a twinkle in his eye, Melvin wonders whether his fossil of a heart can love again.

Take Me Home is a 3,300 word m/m meet cute with a grumpy grandpa, a meddling cafe owner, sweet touches, and side-by-side knitting.

Over on the USS Bellerophon, the chief operations officer is Ensign Talus Reon, a Bajoran man who recently graduated Starfleet Academy and has crossed a great deal of Federation and Klingon space to get to the Shackleton Expanse and go exploring—in part because he’s pretty sure the Prophets told him this is where some great fate awaits him.

Almost immediately upon joining the crew of the Bellerophon, that seems to indeed be the case: he’s bumped into words he saw in his Orb experience, as well as glimpses of things that seem eerily familiar. Now all he needs to do is face down the unknown and understand the things he’s seen—hopefully before more planets vanish, implode, or explode.

Yeah, that’s happened. A couple of times.

Anthony Cardno is the author behind Ensign Talus, and I know I’ve spoken of his wonderful holiday short novel The Firflake before, but I’m going to do it again because it’s a holiday tradition for me to re-read it every year. It’s a lovely story (that reads like smaller stories) and does this tale-within-a-tale thing of explaining some of the magic of the holidays from one generation to another. It’s delightful.

“But what if I’m looking near the field and the Firflake falls by the old stream?”

Engleberta Ruprecht is this year’s Watcher, and she takes her job seriously. The Watcher is tasked with waiting for the first snowflake of winter and leading Papa Knecht, the head of the family, to where the Firflake will fall. While the parents prepare for the special day, Papa Knecht and Mama Alvarie gather the grandchildren and tell stories.

They tell the legend of the Firflake, a story of cold northern plains and whipping winds. They also tell how Papa, when he was just a young man, went out to explore the wide world. How on a cold winter’s night in a small town, Papa was attacked by a group of young men, and then rescued by a tall stranger named Nicholas. And how Papa and Nicholas’ friendship became the foundation for the family’s long Christmas tradition.Told in the best winter campfire storytelling tradition, The A Christmas Story is a tale full of familiar Christmas stories told in a new light.

THE FIRFLAKE: A CHRISTMAS STORY is an all-ages, illustrated short novel about the Ruprecht family and the stories they tell waiting for the First Snowflake of winter to arrive. They tell the legend of where the First Snowflake comes from, and also the story of how Papa Knecht came to help a man named Nicholas on his Christmas Eve mission.

Next week we’ll return to the USS Bellerophon one more time during this trek through Pride Month nerdery and recommendations.

Literary Pride!

I’m not Mr. Literary in general. Some of this comes down to my days at the bookstore, where I had zero choice but to keep up to date with “important” books and while I appreciate the Literary genre, I often find it relentlessly depressing, and when it comes down to it, I tend to read for enjoyment, and I’ve never quite made that jump to cathartic reading based on suffering, pain, or loss (this is also why my horror reading is pretty slight, to be honest). I used to trust wider-read people to nudge me in the direction of literary works that were built mostly on hope. Often, I found I enjoyed the literary fictions that would honestly have been just at home on genre shelves: Timothy Findley’s “Headhunter,” say, or pretty much every one of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novels—magical realism was my jam.

When I look over everything I’ve written the idea of literary fiction falls even further out of reach. Maybe, if I squint just right, Of Echoes Born might kinda/sorta slide in there in places? I don’t know. Honestly, I think it’s on the spec-fic shelf where it belongs.

All that to say—and maybe attempt to explain or excuse—often not being able to say much more than “this was amazing” or “I loved it” when I read literary fiction. Much like poetry, it’s a category that I feel so far from clever enough to comment upon that I get imposter syndrome the moment I try to review a title.

But, it’s Pride Month, and when I wandered over to my bookshelves to look at the titles there I realized I had two right there on the shelf I wanted to talk about that were absolutely some of the finest, most literary writing I’ve ever read, even if you couldn’t drag an actual definition out of me as to what counts as “literary” in the first place.

It will likely surprise exactly zero of you who’ve been around here any length of time were I to state my first choice here is a collection of linked stories, but guess what? My first choice here is a collection of linked stories. (In fact, I reviewed them one by one during my Short Stories 365 project a few years back).

Lot by Bryan Washington is freaking amazing. I know I’ve mostly tried to avoid cheering on books this month that have a massive readership, and I also know that Barack freaking Obama suggested people check out this book, but look: it’s incredible. And as a collection of short fiction (and/or a mosaic novel), it was an experience I savoured a tale at a time, even as I wanted to keep going. That the character was also a Black and Latino queer boy-becoming-a-man narrative? About a third (or more?) of the stories have the boy-to-man’s voice, and the rest shift for the characters around him, giving you angled perspectives that paint this incredible whole by the time you close the cover.

Look, just go read it, if you haven’t already.

In the city of Houston – a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America – the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He’s working at his family’s restaurant, weathering his brother’s blows, resenting his older sister’s absence. And discovering he likes boys.

Around him, others live and thrive and die in Houston’s myriad neighborhoods: a young woman whose affair detonates across an apartment complex, a ragtag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, hurricane survivors, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, a reluctant chupacabra.

Bryan Washington’s brilliant, viscerally drawn world vibrates with energy, wit, raw power, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot explores trust and love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms.

Next up, I’m going to go back quite a few years, and to when I was a young bookseller back in 2001, and Jamie O’Neill came into the store and offered to sign our copies of At Swim, Two Boys, and I basically had a complete nervous meltdown trying to speak to him like a human being. Amusingly, years later, I’d bump into him at another literary event, and he said—incredibly graciously, given the stammering and awkwardness of our first encounter—”Oh, I remember you. I think I sensed you were also queer at the time.”

To be clear, At Swim, Two Boys is one of those literary books I mentioned where the end result is bittersweet at best, but the journey, and the language, and the relationship between said two boys is gorgeous and so beautifully written even as I knew where I was careening, I couldn’t look away.

‘Weren’t you never out for an easy dip?’ he asked . . . ‘I don’t mean the baths, I mean with a pal. For a lark like.’

Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of Dublin rock where gentlemen bathe in the scandalous nude, two boys meet day after day. There they make a pact: that Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, they will swim the bay to the distant beacon of the Muglins rock, to raise the Green and claim it for themselves. As a turbulent year drives inexorably towards the Easter Rising of 1916 and Ireland sets forth on a path to uncertain glory, a tender, secret love story unfolds.

Written with verve and mastery in a modern Irish tradition descended from James Joyce and Flann O’Brien, At Swim, Two Boys is a shimmering novel of unforgettable ambition, intensity and humanity.

Do you have a queer literary favourite? I know I tend to be pretty genre-fic around here, but drop them in the comments, as I’m always on the lookout.

Cheeky Pride!

One of the things I adore about writing whatever has my muse’s attention is how I can end up with a completely unplaceable product. Wait. No, the opposite of that. I mean, I’m kidding, but also a little not, and case in point for this for me would be Rear Admiral. Rear Admiral started as an idea for a call for an erotica collection, but—and yes, I’m aware of the irony of this next phrase—it got too big. It ended up being a novelette. You know what’s basically impossible to place in magazines, anthologies, or pretty much anywhere? Novelettes.

Let alone funny queer erotica novelettes, which is what I wrote. I love the story, don’t get me wrong, but if I hadn’t self-published Rear Admiral, no one would have met Russ the nurse, watched him bump into a former porn star/current-crush, nor ever seen him try to explain the life-size model of said porn star’s uh… asset.

The thing about cheeky, queer, over-the-top—and also sexy—tales though? They’re freaking fun.

So let’s get cheeky…

Fun, Funny, Frolicky

Okay, first up I’m going to also point out that both of these titles also completely fit the bill of being mysteries, 100% within the conventions of the genre, but also get sexy. That’s a strength, by the way. A feature, as it were, not a bug.

And to start with, we even go a wee bit historical with James Lear’s The Back Passage. And, listen, that title alone is just air-kiss magic, no? The best books tell you what you’re in for using their covers, back cover text, and cover art and, well, just look.

I read this one years and years ago now—and followed it up with the rest of the series—and while I don’t believe in guilt when it comes to reading, nor the notion of “a guilty pleasure” when it comes to books, this one fits the bill entirely for those who do, if you get my meaning. It’s cheeky in all the best ways, the main character fumbles his way through a mystery (at roughly the same speed he’s not-so-fumbling his way into the trousers of the men around him) and it’s all just great fun.

Also, I love how it was marketed as a “hard-core mystery” because I truly hope people didn’t understand what exactly was meant by hard-core because I can be spiteful sometimes, too.

Agatha Christie, move over! Hard-core sex and scandal meet in this brilliantly funny whodunit. A seaside village, an English country house, a family of wealthy eccentrics and their equally peculiar servants, a determined detective — all the ingredients are here for a cozy Agatha Christie-style whodunit. But wait — Edward “Mitch” Mitchell is no Hercule Poirot, and The Back Passage is no Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Mitch is a handsome, insatiable 22-year-old hunk who never lets a clue stand in the way of a steamy encounter, whether it’s with the local constabulary, the house secretary, or his school chum and fellow athlete Boy Morgan, who becomes his Watson when they’re not busy boffing each other. When Reg Walworth is found dead in a cabinet, Sir James Eagle has his servant Weeks immediately arrested as the killer. But Mitch’s observant eye pegs more plausible possibilities: polysexual chauffeur Hibbert, queenly pervert Leonard Eagle, missing scion Rex, sadistic copper Kennington, even Sir James Eagle himself. Blackmail, police corruption, a dizzying network of spyholes and secret passages, watersports, and a nonstop queer orgy backstairs and everyplace else mark this hilariously hard-core mystery by a major new talent.

Next up, let’s head to New Orleans for Greg Herren’s Bourbon Street Blues. This one is definitely more serious in that the mystery is far more central to the plot, but Herren delivers a completely out-and-proud, not-gay-as-in-happy-but-queer-as-in-fuck-you with Scotty Bradley (who maybe has a few other names, too) in this start to a queer mystery series that gets more tangled (and also more sexy) as it goes forward one gogo boy dance at a time.

Again, this one spawns a series I’ve read and loved, and again, this was a book I bumped into back in… I want to say 2003 or 2004? Right when I was looking for books that overflowed with in-your-face queer existence and unapologetic joy (even when bodies were hitting the floor), and Bourbon Street Blues delivered exactly that.

From the drug-fueled dance floors of New Orleans’s hottest bars, to the body-worship of its packed gyms and the slow, hungry crawl through streets where danger lurks behind every beautiful smile, “Bourbon Street blues” takes readers on a dizzying tour of gay life in the French Quarter and introduces an unlikely investigator whose ironic, lusty, tell-it-like-it-is take on things is as cool as the city he loves.

During New Orleans’ biggest gay celebration, personal trainer and exotic dancer Scotty finds his life taking a deadly turn when one of his best clients is murdered, an old friend returns with a desperate request, and a mysterious FBI agent shadows his every move.

There are so many more books out there I could talk about as well with this vibe, but if you’ve got a favourite, hit me with it!

Humour Pride!

When I was a young queerling, I had a life-changing moment thanks to a funny queer book. I say life-changing—and I mean it—because it was the first story I found that included people like me that wasn’t relentlessly depressing, full of doom, or fraught with hate or violence. Now, before someone comes at me, I want to be clear that I one-hundred percent believe in the value of all kinds of stories about queerness, and that 100% includes the realities of our past, which is often hard, harsh, depressing, full of doom, and/or fraught with hate and violence.

And sometimes we just need to laugh.

When I wrote Village Fool, I was taking on a bit of a target—I loathe April Fools’ Day—but also I was trying to set up a cringe-cute/oh-no/laugh-because-it’s-just-so-awful moment, and be chirpy and uplifting and funny when it all came due.

So, today for #PrideMonth, let’s laugh…

Funny as in Ha-Ha

That book I read that changed my life was The Night We Met by Rob Byrnes, and you should totally read it, but I’m going to talk about a different Rob Byrnes book today: Straight Lies. Now, it’s important to note that Straight Lies is just the first of the Grant and Chase series, but believe me when I say you want to read these books. (The others are Holy Rollers and Strange Bedfellows and I live in hope for more). Grant and Chase are con-men. They’re not good people, but they target really bad people, so you totally root for this lovers-in-crime caper heist, and when they end up in possession of proof that a “really brave, out gay actor” is actually faking it—he’s straight, and just used his coming out story to boost a failing career, figuring infamy and a queer audience would be better than going unnoticed—you are really there hoping they’ll take him down.

Gay capers, heists, more calamitous change-of-plans and replanning on the fly than I can count, and just gut-busting moments of laughing-out-loud and honestly? I truly wish these books would be made into a Netflix series. In the meanwhile, I’ll just keep pining away for more from Byrnes.

From award-winning author Rob Byrnes comes a wickedly entertaining caper involving red-hot men, cold hard cash, and deliciously dirty deeds. . .

Two Partners In Crime

Grant and Chase are a fun-loving pair of small-time hustlers with no money, little patience, and lots of get-rich-quick schemes. If only they could pull off the perfect crime–“The Big One,” as Grant calls it–Chase could finally quit his job at the supermarket and the two could retire in style.

One Star In The Closet

Romeo Romero is the world’s hottest openly gay celebrity. He’s got the face, the abs, the fame, the fortune–and the sex video that could destroy his career. If this naughty little tape should fall into the wrong hands, Romeo’s adoring fans would be in for one big surprise: He’s straight.

No Lie

When Grant and Chase hear about the video (thanks to a notorious Hamptons’ gossip), it’s a no-brainer. All they have to do is steal the tape, blackmail the star, and collect the cash. But then, when they stupidly leave the video in a New York cab, the would-be crooks have to wheel and deal with a sleazy tabloid editor, a lesbian real estate agent, a kinky Internet stalker, and an alluring boy toy to finally get to the truth. . .behind not-so-straight lies.

This next book I listened to on a plane flight in audiobook format, and I’m pretty sure I annoyed the heck out of the person in the seat beside me because I kept giggling. Marshall Thornton’s The Ghost Slept Over has a supernatural hook to its humour, and starts with a death, and while it’s not always dashing from one giggle to the next guffaw, it’s seriously—or, I guess, not seriously—one of the funniest books I’ve listened to.

Cal, an actor just shy of being of quality enough to make a go of it, is doing his best with his one-man show (though his best isn’t enough to stop living out of his truck) so when he gets a call from a lawyer and it’s something to do with his ex, he’s not exactly over-the-moon. But it turns out his ex has died, and he left Cal everything. Unfortunately, the ex is still around. As a ghost. And would like Cal to join him there… Jason Frazier’s performance was above-and-beyond, and his characterization of voice had me wishing I could reach into my phone and strangle the ghost (seriously, the dripping contempt and haughty arrogance was so pitch-perfect).

When failed actor Cal Parsons travels to rural New York to claim the estate of his famous and estranged ex-partner he discovers something he wasn’t expecting…the ghost of his ex! And, worse, his ex invites Cal to join him for all eternity. Now.

As Cal attempts to rid himself of the ghost by any means he begins to fall for the attractive attorney representing the estate.

Will Cal be able to begin a new relationship or will he be seduced into the ever after?

What’s the last queer book that made you laugh out loud? Hit me with it.

Bridgerton, Bisexuality, and “Allies.”

Bridgerton talk, so if you’ve not watched yet, move along, and this is also about queerphobia, and “allies.”

Hey, so you know what’s not a great look (especially during Pride Month, but to be clear it’s shit all the time)? Shouting how a show based on a book series has been “ruined” because they made a character bisexual.

And no, it’s not “understandable” if the character weren’t bisexual in the original book series—a book series started almost a quarter of a century ago, to be clear.

You definitely don’t get to say, “I’m an ally but…”

I should be used to Romancelandia living down to expectations. I mean, they got upset the characters weren’t all white like in the books, so I sure as hell can’t be surprised they’re flipping out over queerness.

In the first twenty episodes, there were, like, maybe three blink-and-you’ll-miss-it queer side-character scenes, which in fairness did have decent dialog, but other than those two characters getting a couple of lines, everything else in the whole show for those first twenty episodes? Every other character? Nothing outwardly queer.

So, in the last three episodes, we have one character who has his first attraction to another person of the same gender (and has a threesome—something we’ve already seen with the love interest of this same season, by the way, though he of course slept with two women), and the dialog around his awareness is handled really, really well. Heck, he even goes on to help his sister with the phrase, “Love isn’t finite.”

Honestly, I freaking loved it. Meant the world to me.

The second queer moment in those four episodes is even less than this. Truly. It’s barely a moment (though I’m loving it, too).

So, to be clear: Assuming the television show makes it the full length of the books, and eight of the eight alphabetically named characters get their own season, there will be eight love stories. Three of them have already been straight love stories. It looks like they’re adding a straight love story in for the mother, too.

Oh, and there was an extra series with the straight love story of Queen Charlotte (which ended on a positive note even though it’s bittersweet) and the straight love story of Lady Danbury (which didn’t end well, alas, though she’s content in her life in the present)—and yes, the Queen Charlotte series did include a love story with two gay men in it, too! Great—though I’ll note we have no idea what happened ultimately between those men—it ends with a scene the most optimistic reading of which reads as bittersweet at best.

So. To reiterate: It’s possible we’re going to get two queer romances out of the original eight characters; and if we add in the Queen Charlotte series and the extra romance for the mother that seems to be in the cards, that’s three queer stories out of twelve.

That “ruins” it, huh?

Got it.

Demon Pride!

I’ve talked about my Triad series before this month already, but let’s take inspiration from book two today—that’d be Triad Soul—and the second main character, Anders, the lust demon. Anders the demon became something of a favourite (even for me, doing the writing) and I think mostly that comes down to the big lug being a walking Id.

Also, he’s basically filterless, and wow is that freeing to write.

Now, if you can’t spell Pride Month without “de Mon” (get it?) and so today I thought I’d shine a light on some queer books exploring demons. Sometimes we fight our demons. Sometimes we cuddle. But I think the supernatural and monstrous beings align so easily with queer culture because so very often they’re considered wrong just because they’re different.

I mean, it’s not a tough analogy to unravel, no?

Pride Month, Demon Style

I don’t often read darker-fiction, and I rarely stray near horror, but as I’ve mentioned before, I make exceptions when it comes to Christian Baines, and Skin was one such exception. Opening with Kyle, a young man coming to New Orleans without much of a net (or a plan), we watch as Kyle loses the first person who makes the city remotely welcoming for him. That death sets everything in motion. We also follow Marc, a hustler in the quarter who dances for singles and shares a room with a dangerously tempered fellow dancer, and with whom he shares a love/hate/lust/obsession tangle of dark emotion.

The intersection of the two men goes down as one of my favourite moments in prose in years, and even as I dared to hope, I knew to expect the worst of the human psyche to be explored in Baines’s writing, and Skin delivers exactly that. After all, in the hands of Baines, you know what will come of a character’s best intentions.

Give it to all your friends who want to read something shadowy and twisted and vengeful.

Kyle, a young newcomer to New Orleans, is haunted by the memory of his first lover, brutally murdered just outside the French Quarter. 

Marc, a young Quarter hustler, is haunted by an eccentric spirit that shares his dreams, and by the handsome but vicious lover who shares his bed. 

When the barrier between these men comes down, it will prove thinner than the veil between the living and the dead…or between justice and revenge.

Years ago, I got to be on a panel with a group of urban fantasy authors at Saints & Sinners Literary Festival, and that included Christian Baines above there, but also Marie Castle. When I’m on a panel, I try to make sure I’ve read something by all the other authors ahead of time, and as such I nabbed a copy of Hell’s Belle and… was sucked in so immediately I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning when I should have been sleeping.

I adored this book. It’s fun. It’s fast paced. It’s got strong world-building and a Southern charm (I capitalize the S as it seems appropriate) all rolled into one sassy, supernaturally tangled heroine who handles cases – off the books – about the things that go bump in the night. Cate is a flipping joy to read – a Guardian, she might have the ability to open the gates between worlds, a power that’s as frightening as it sounds in its potential danger, as well as a little “something extra” in her power repertoire that isn’t quite normal for a witchy gal like herself. That alone would be enough on her plate, but added to it is her ex-husband (their marriage annulled in a week) who is also a possessive werewolf type, girls going missing, and a simple job that turned into a very un-simple encounter with a demonically possessed corpse.

And that’s not even the worst of it…

Cate Delacy is glad she’s a witch—and you can take that any ol’ way you like.

As a very mortal woman she has a target on her back, so she has no intention of following in her mother’s footsteps as an enforcer for the Council of Supernatural Beings. She didn’t ask to be a Guardian and she has to pay her bills. Opening the Darkmirror Agency is her solution. Her clients are mostly human and they pay on time.

But one day it all goes to Hell, figuratively. Then literally.

Because that’s the day the Council’s detective Jacqueline Slone slinks her way into Cate’s life. Jacq. So alluring. So powerful. So immortal. And up to her sexy neck in a secret that will unleash Hell’s Belle.

So what about you? Got a favourite queer demon in your pocket? (Uh, phrasing. But you know what I mean.)

Audio Pride!

As Pride Month continues, I realized I’ve been chatting about books I’ve read and loved and often in passing note I listened to them as audiobooks, and given I freaking love audiobooks—walking the dog is a time I mostly devote to listening to audiobooks, but also when doing household chores—I thought I’d make sure to specifically stop and talk audio.

I’ve been lucky enough to scrape together the coins to make three of my stories available in audio: In Memoriam, Handmade Holidays, and Faux Ho Ho, and I absolutely plan for more (though with trad published works, that’s up to the publisher, not me, alas).

Audiobooks are such a wonderful experience (aside from also being an accessibility win) and narrowing it down to two favourites to chat about today was pretty much impossible, so I kinda/sorta cheated.

As you’ll see…

Audiobook Pride!

I’m not sure I can properly express how freaking magical the combination of Cari Hunter and Nicola Victoria Vincent is. First off, Cari Hunter’s northern-British set thrillers are phenomenal, including a solid romantic subplot throughout but definitely coming down hard on the side of thriller. Then—I need a moment—then you add in the performance skills of Nicola Victoria Vincent and… Listen.

No, I mean it. Go listen. It’s like teleportation into northern Britain, it’s so immersive. Hunter’s prose with Vincent’s voice is like the world’s greatest Yorkshire pudding. And I know; I’ve had exactly that most perfect of Yorkshire puddings, in a pub, up North, with Cari Hunter. SHE KNOWS.

My most recent phenomenal experience was A Calculated Risk, but if you jump into Cari Hunter audiobooks anywhere Nicola Victoria Vincent is performing, you’re going to have a brilliant time, so just dive in. Trust me. (See? That’s my cheat. I’m suggesting, like, a dozen audiobooks as one suggestion.)

Detective Jo Shaw has it all worked out. She’s good at her job, she has loads of mates, and she likes being single. She doesn’t need complications, but an emergency call to the stabbing of a young woman brings plenty of those. Jo has to risk her career to save the woman’s life, and a bad night gets worse when the trauma surgeon turns out to be Isla Munro, Jo’s only real love, who walked out on her 15 years ago and never came back.

With the victim’s children missing and the husband the prime suspect, Jo’s investigation is stonewalled by a community living in fear. As one dead end leads to another, she and Isla are forced to put their differences aside and work together. But the case is far more dangerous than Jo realizes, and her determination to sort the truth from the lies may put her own life on the line.

Edit to add: Turns out I’m not the only one who thinks this book was awesome. Cari Hunter just won the Lammy for A Calculated Risk! Congratulations!

Okay, next up is a shorter, sharper little novella-length audiobook that is freaking adorable (also adorkable, in places), and has two fantastic performers doing the two POV characters in a phenomenal little duet of frustration and rivals-to-lovers that’s just long enough for a few days worth of walking the doggo, chores, or other listening time.

Jack Harbon’s Crimes of Passion puts two True Crime podcasters with very different approaches (and very different personalities) who end up realizing they’ve got an opportunity to hit the next level—or at least gain some solid crossover reach—by working together. Only problem is? They can’t stand each other.

Except, of course, the longer they work together, the more they maybe, y’know, can.

Again, this is another audiobook where the performers nail it. A queer Black audiobook love story that hits all the right notes.

Press play on this funny, sexy short story about rival true-crime podcast hosts forced to play nice and work together when, in reality, all they want to do is kill each other.

Emery Thompson hates Calvin Chamberlain. From the way he acts like he’s better than everyone to the way he moves through the world thinking his podcast is the cream of the crop, every little thing about the man gets to him. Even that dashing, oh-so-confident smile. He’d rather be caught dead than be around the man any longer than necessary—or admit that last part out loud.

Calvin Chamberlain hates admitting defeat. It’s hard enough losing sponsors for his historical crime podcast while obnoxious pop culture ones like Emery’s only gain more, so it’s a particularly cruel twist of fate when a late fan’s request for a collaboration with Emery lands in his lap. He’s in no position to turn down the plea, and with no way out, Calvin reluctantly agrees.

But keeping things purely professional turns out to be a challenge when these two make it to the studio. Their chemistry crackles through their microphones, and soon, their numbers begin to skyrocket. Can these two make a killing off what they once thought was a death sentence—and more importantly, will Calvin and Emery give into the heat of passion?

Listened to any awesome queer audiobooks lately? Hit me with your favourites—or your favourite performers!

Biographical Pride!

I’m the first to admit I’m terrible at reading a lot of nonfiction. Back when I worked at the bookstore, I used to make sure I tucked in audiobooks of whatever nonfiction titles were leading the charge at the time in various categories so I could speak of them with some education, but when one spends an hour and a half—one way—traveling to work on OC Transpo, you get a lot of audiobook listening done. These days, with both myself and my husband working from home, I get the solo dog-walks to listen to audiobooks (about three-quarters of an hour a day, maybe?), and we listen to audiobooks together if we’re driving anywhere (which is rare).

All that to totally try to note that not only do I only rarely write nonfiction (see, most recently, pieces in Sad Happens and—amusingly—Chicken Soup for the Soul) but I’ve gotten truly terrible at reading it. Luckily, I have some awesome curators out there, especially editors I’ve worked with, who give me nudges when queer nonfiction books come out, and I do my best to listen to those wiser than myself and dive into what they suggest.

I’m going to say that thing I say way too often, so brace yourself: queerlings don’t often get to inherit a continuance of culture. We’re not necessarily born to people like us. Most queers don’t have queer grandparents, queer parents, and queer aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings capable of telling them “this is what it was like when I was a queer your age.”

So our culture is harder to find, harder to learn about, and doesn’t have that built-in continuance that so many cultures have. So finding our stories becomes paramount.

Which is why I’m glad I found two queer biographies I’m going to talk about today.

Queer History, Queer Lives

I am so freaking glad I read Judge Me, Judge Me Not: A Memoir of Sexual Discovery by James Merrick.

On the surface, Jim Merrick’s memoir as a gay man who fought—and won—against academic discrimination in the 90’s is already a worthy story, and I don’t want to downplay the importance of his victory in any way. The longer I read this memoir, however, the more I couldn’t help but feel every other aspect of his life should be given equal weight, for it’s everything else, everything that came before, that resonated so very clearly with me.

Growing up queer, feeling the isolation, the journey to finding language and identity and those incandescent first moments of finding others-like-me are brilliant reminders of where we queer folk came from, as well as where we’re going. Merrick’s memoirs describe these life-changing moments through the people who played central parts, and it’s this lens—alongside the chorus of voices who took up residence in his thought processes—that give this memoir such an indelible charm.

When James was a kid, church folk used the word homosexual with disgust. They crushed the word against their front teeth with the tongue, then spat it out as if bitter bile. It put the fear of God in him.

Judge Me, Judge Me Not is James’s story of religion-induced shame, a hidden journey of sexual discovery, and closeted living as a husband and father that seemed like it might never end. But in October 1998, the heinous murder of Matthew Shepard gave James the courage to act, and he stood proud to face public persecution in a nationally televised legal battle with the education system that sought to silence him and all gay teachers.

In a memoir spanning nearly nine decades, each chapter reveals one of nine essential people inextricably linked to his journey. James’s memoir also features “The Voices,” five discordant, invisible advisors residing in the board room of his mind, who added fuel to the fire of James’s struggle to live authentically.

Judge Me, Judge Me Not is one man’s battle against the world and himself, and it shows us that even in a sea of persecution, it’s never too late to find, and use, your voice.

There’s a made-up word—a portmanteau, really—I often use when I describe stories I read about childhoods with supportive parents: agnostalgia. I believe such childhoods existed, but I just don’t have a frame of reference of my own, and the best I can often manage is a sort of reserved judgement about how that might have been. So I feel like I need to truly underscore just how much Simon Smalley, in his biography That Boy of Yours Wants Looking At, managed to pen such an incredible glimpse of a life of a young queer boy who grew up almost where I was born, albeit thirteen years earlier, and transported me in so many ways into a family experience I never had but truly felt on a visceral level.

It’s magical. On that basis alone, I could hand this to anyone interested in queer biography, but Smalley’s journey isn’t just his sequinned youth at home. The outside world is decidedly itself in 1970’s England, and Smalley’s armor of Punk, Protest, and Unapologetic Queerness sees plenty of use—and isn’t always up to the immediate challenge. His school life is a misery with little reprieve from those who should have looked out for him, the disdain and hate of others lands hits to his physical and mental health—there is a doctor I should like to punch someday—yet somehow Smalley manages to tell these pieces of his childhood with a never dimming light, verve, and spark that seeps into even the darkest moments of his life.

That Boy of Yours Wants Looking At is about love, loss, adversity, and acceptance. At its core is a child with a wild imagination and a desire for glamour trying to survive being gay and disabled on a Nottingham council estate in the sixties and seventies.

Simon Smalley takes us on a humorous, riotously colourful, and heart-rending journey through cataclysmic bereavement and being raised by an RAF dad who encouraged his boy to be his true self. Simon’s tale of self-expression through music and his battle with his body, self-esteem, and paranoia is also a poignant account of what it takes to live authentically.

From Simon’s disastrous experiment with polystyrene platforms to his unerring love of punk; from his daily battles with school bullies to making peacock-colour eyeshadow with his dad, this memoir will take you on a journey that will leave you breathless, teary-eyed, and desperate to meet Simon and his uniquely brave father.

How about you—what queer biographies have you read and loved? Drop me a note with a favourite.

Tabletop Tuesday — Gaming Group Pride!

Okay, on my trek through Pride Month this month, can I possibly manage another geeky-nerdy-RPG/TTRPG post that intersects between Pride Month and said nerdery?

Pretty sure I can, and this time I’m going to beam up said recommendations, because I’m going to recommend titles today from people I game with in my Star Trek Adventures gaming groups.

That’s right, I said groups. Plural. Around two years ago, I floated the idea on Facebook asking if anyone I knew would be interested in playing Star Trek Adventures (from Modiphius) and something incredibly happened: eleven people said yes. Or, I guess, they said “aye.” You get what I mean. It struck me that since this was during the pandemic and isolation and I’d be using Zoom, I could just… accept everyone. So I asked them to make characters, and something pretty awesome happened: there were enough people who wanted to play Trill characters that I ended up making one of the groups the crew of the USS Curzon, the first officially majority-Trill starship in Starfleet, circa mid-2371. The other group were a more mixed group, and I had the Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide to work with, and they chose to be on board the USS Bellerophon, an Intrepid-class starship exploring a new frontier.

You know what happens when you grab two groups of (almost entirely) authors and put together a gaming group?

Magic. Magic happens. Or, well, in Star Trek, it’s science that happens, but we all know that riff about any sufficiently advanced technology yadda, yadda…

From My Gaming Group to Your Reading List

First, let’s start with Jeffrey Ricker, who is a name you’ve definitely heard around here before if you’ve been here long. On the USS Bellerophon, Jeffrey plays Lieutenant Andal Stadi, a Betazoid security officer (and yes, that surname does mean his sister vanished on board USS Voyager). He’s not your touchy-feely Betazoid so much as he’s a “radical honesty” Betazoid who is already tired of putting up with other people’s self-delusions, let alone outright lies, and he’s one heck of a crack shot with a phaser.

(Seriously, this one time in-game he took down so many Romulans with one area-effect stun. Truly magical.)

Since we’re talking a character who is so very done, let’s talk The Final Decree. I suggest this title because (a) the main character is also of the so very done mentality, and in this case, it’s because he needs his husband to freaking sign the divorce papers already (because he’s planning to re-marry); and also (b) this is a space adventure to go get those divorce papers signed. Ricker’s humour is set on stunning here, and I love this novella so very much.

Bill’s impending marriage to Nelson Wolff could unite two of the most powerful industrial families on Terra Beta. The only problem: Bill’s already married. In his rebellious youth, he took up with Travis, a smuggler and all-around scoundrel, and wound up tying the knot. When he walked away from that life, though, he left some loose ends. Like a marriage certificate.

Now, to get his estranged husband to sign off on the divorce decree, he’ll have to travel to a backwater world hundreds of light years away. When he gets there, he encounters a planetary blockade, instigated by one of his family’s unscrupulous business rivals, as part of an interstellar power play over an unprecedented energy source.

Bill will need all the help he can get to make it to the altar in one piece.

Next up, I’m going to go back to actual TTRPG writing with the phenomenal Steve Kenson. On the USS Curzon, Steve plays Lieutenant Evet Xon, a joined Trill who didn’t want to be joined. See, Evet Xon used to be Evet Toller, and he didn’t even grow up on Trill, but on Risa, where his hippy(-ish) Trill parents ran an inn and he… didn’t much want to run an inn. He joined Starfleet as a science officer, and his background on Risa did shape him into an up and coming A&A Officer of note, albeit one who didn’t often take a lot of chances. Then an accident happened on a small mining ship owned by a joined Trill named Kuthon Xon, Evet was the only choice when the Xon symbiont needed saving and… now Evet Xon is learning what it’s like to have multiple lifetimes of memories and feelings at hand.

At least he got promoted. He’s the chief science officer of the USS Curzon, and currently he’s learning how being the boss doesn’t often mean smooth sailing.

Now, if you know TTRPG gaming well, you’ve likely come across Steve Kenson’s name any number of times before, but today I’m going to point you in the direction of Green Ronin, and in specific the setting book for Freedom City, in the Mutants & Masterminds TTRPG setting. I’ve made it no secret how much I’ve loved Mutants & Masterminds—and I have a third author group who’ve been playing an M&M game—but I can’t tell you how incredibly welcomed I felt reading through M&M books and the incidental queerness just existing throughout the pages of the books.

The reason I choose Freedom City in particular is because it built on the years and years of Mutants & Masterminds lore, advancing the clock from the 1st and 2nd editions and shifting to the here-and-now (well, it came out in 2018, so maybe now it’s safer to say the there-and-then?) and updating so many beloved characters, or passing legacies forward—trans heroines, openly gay members of the main superhero group, mentions of the local queer village, queer villains—it was a comic book world, sure, but it was one that inherently included folk like me. And huzzah for that.

With the Mutants & Masterminds RPG you have the power to become a hero. Freedom City gives you the world’s most renowned city of heroes to rescue from the forces of evil! Called “the greatest superhero setting ever,” the award-winning Freedom City is a fully realized and detailed metropolis that can serve as a home base for your heroes or just one of the many places they visit while saving the world of Earth-Prime from disaster. Your heroes can fight the forces of SHADOW, puzzle out the schemes of the Labyrinth, and defeat the alien invaders Syzygy and the Meta-Grue.

With dozens of foes and hundreds of locations, Freedom City gives you everything you need to run an exciting Mutants & Masterminds campaign. Use it on its own or in conjunction with Emerald City and the Atlas of Earth-Prime for world-spanning action!

And there you have it. A second Tuesday I managed to keep things geeky as heck for Pride Month. How about you—got gaming queerness you want to share with me? Please do!