Cardeno C.'s Blog, page 136

What's in a Name? by Tinnean, Guest Author

Let’s talk about names.
You’d think as the author, I’d have the final say in what to call my characters. After all, they are mine, and it was my idea to begin with.
Well, think again. Back in ’03 I was writing a story where one of the characters, Red, was supposed to be sympathetic to the main character. Of course he disagreed, and the story came to a screeching halt. I’d open the file, read up to that point, and have to give up once again in defeat.
And then it occurred to me: Of course Red wouldn’t do this, but Jimmycould, and so another character, who suited the story very well, was created.
But originally? He wasn’t even supposed to be there!
Then there’s the problem of characters with similar names. What do you do when with them? In a novella that will be out in October, the main character is Emma, and her love interest is Elle. Too similar, with the possibility of confusion too great. I found another name I liked, but this one had a problem with pronunciation, and I wasn’t going to go there.  So I plugged “she” into Google Translate and found Cailín. It’s pretty, isn’t it? And the name I’d toyed with? That should come in handy when I need to name another planet.
Sometimes you don’t have a choice, though. In To Love Through Space and Time, a character was named Hank and his son was Hal. Both are nicknames for Henry, and since Hal was a junior, it couldn’t be changed.
What do you do when you’ve got two characters with the same first name but are in two totally different stories? One will be out in December, while the other is still a WiP, but each character is saying, “That’s my name!” Do you hope no one notices? Do you hope the two aren’t confused? (Wait a second, in Always, Ben he was involved with a guy, but now in Come by Night he’s a dad?)  Or do you bite the bullet and make the change?
But it’s my name!
Back when I was a kid, we used to play games were we’d be Davy Crockett or Pat Garrett or Billy the Kid or any of the characters from the TV westerns we’d watch. (This was back in the 60s, and they were still wildly popular.) It was no big deal.  We knew we were really Tinn and Mike and Den.
But maybe it is a big deal.
So what’s in a name?
Shakespeare said that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Well, all I know is if I was a rose, I’d hate like hell being called a stinkweed.
You can find Tinnean's books at Dreamspinner Press: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/index.php?cPath=55_386

And the newest release, Call Me Church, here: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=3186.

Under my rock... (T.C. Blue thinks stuff)

So I'm home from Dragon*Con, where I was fortunate enough to spend time on panels and such with Kiernan Kelly, Kage Alan, Shae Connor, and many other truly remarkable people. The incredible thing is that I survived! (There's a story -- or twelve -- here, but we'll save that for another day. Haha!)

As everyone knows, this week has been crazy in the world. The DNC (Democratic National Convention) has been twitted about, Facebooked, discussed and argued over... and will likely continue to be twitted, facebooked, etc.

I could sit here and give my opinions on everything going on, just as I could have for the opposing party's convention, but let's face it. I'm here. I'm female. I write gay romance. We already KNOW what my opinions are. (Nutshell? The GOP is full of fucking lunatics who want to decide who's 'allowed' to be equal, and as far as I can tell, that would be only men. Specifically, heterosexual men who can control their wimmin-folk and keep them from having stupid ideas like control of their own bodies and possibly voting. Because we women are too stupid to decide anything for ourselves. And those devil-gays are almost as bad, right? Those sinners can have the same rights in life as the rest of the hetero-men, though. All they have to do is deny their own nature and pretend to be straight. They want to get married? Let 'em marry women! Because that's a super idea! *rolls eyes*)

So since we already know my feelings on the subject of politics, at least as they relate to me and my friends, I'm not going to say anything else about that. Instead, I'm posting some links here, just in case anyone's missed these parts of the DNC.

Michelle Obama is amazing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a6URcprapk

Julian Castro is very well spoken and enthusiastic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSvEOEB7UW0

Former President Bill Clinton kicked serious ass. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv7bFW23poA

There have been a lot of speakers thus far, but these three struck a chord with me. If you've missed their speeches, I hope you'll use the links. Or even if you've seen and heard them already but want to see/hear again. :)

Until next time,

~Tis

Welcome to Spicy Wednesday withScotty Cade at Café Risque...

Welcome to Spicy Wednesday withScotty Cade at Café Risque!

A top of the morning to you this fine Wednesday. I hope everyone has their latte and is ready for a great introduction. I promised you some new authors along the way on Spicy Wednesday and boy and I’m delivering. This morning I’m very proud to bring to the Café Risque boards, S.A. McAuley, aka Sam. Sam’s here to talk about her first release, “The Maker Jock,” published by Silver Publishing.  Check out her bio, cover and blurb:
Bio:  Sam sleeps little, reads a lot. Happiest in a foreign country. Twitchy when not mentally in motion. Send her a picture and a song and she’s bound to write a story about it. And yes, that’s an invitation.


Blurb:  In thirty-four days, Alex Maddox will present his invention to the world. He's spent his life working for this moment. He won't accept anything less than perfection, but to do that he's going to need help. Christian Lawson is a marketing god, self-assured, intelligent, decisive, and nothing like Alex thought he would be. With Team Maker Jock backing him up, Alex may be able to deliver the impossible--if he can keep a broken air conditioner, a flaky twin brother, a thirtieth birthday, and falling for the Norse god of advertising from derailing him first.
Nothing can prepare Alex for how big his invention really is. Success will be more complicated than failure ever could be.
CONTENT ADVISORY: This title contains a HFN ending.



Sounds intriguing doesn’t it? What is this Maker Jock? Sam, you’ve succeeded in adding another book to my never-ending list. J
Ok folks, here’s your excerpt. “The Maker Jock,” by S.A. McAuley.
June
Alex pushed his glasses back up his nose and then pointed a finger at his brother. "If you even think the word 'bazinga' I'm going to slap you."
Micah started to open his mouth and Alex whipped a gray Lego at Micah's head in a preemptive strike.
Micah jumped out of the way, but barely avoided toppling a stack of boxes. "Dude! That one had sharp edges."
"They're Legos, dumbass. They all have sharp edges!" Alex shook his head in disgust and went back to work painstakingly stacking the blocks in a pattern that would continue to be unstable until it was buttressed at the top. It had taken him ten days to build the scale model of the Notre Dame Cathedral to this point, and he wasn't going to let his kid brother mess it up this close to the Summit.
"You realize we're almost thirty, right?"
"Fuck you, Micah."
"Why so angry, Alex?" He taunted and danced around the garage like a demented elf. "Is it because you'll turn thirty before I do?"
Alex rolled his shoulders and looked up at Micah over his glasses. "Yeah, 'cause that ten minutes is really going to age me faster than you."
"I'm fine with turning the big three-oh. My twenties were rad--epically rad. And this," he slid his hand down his chest and arched his eyebrow, "only gets better with age."
Alex couldn't help but laugh. He'd been living with Micah for almost four months now, much longer than he had originally planned. But when planning for the Maker Summit kicked into high gear and his job took on three new clients at the same time, Alex couldn't find the time to search for a new place to live. Plus, he had to admit, despite his identical brother's annoying qualities, it was nice to spend time with him again.
Alex and Micah were five feet eight inches tall on a good day with black hair and dark brown eyes. They were thin and had skin that tanned to a burnished gold in the summer. Their Thai mother and Welsh father had both been born of immigrant parents. They were identical in appearance but exact opposites in personality. Micah was the party boy, the fun one who bounced from guy to guy even in high school when it wasn't cool to be gay. Alex was the thinker, reserved, and preferred commitment to the never-ending orgasm race.
Alex tried to refocus on the cathedral. He decided to change the subject, hoping a distracted Micah would leave his project alone. "You going out with JT tonight?"
"Sushi, dancing, and drinks with the steady. It will be a Friday to remember." Micah came up to the model and stood as close as he could without touching it; he didn't stop until he saw Alex wince with frustration. He waved his hands in circles over the statue, barely missing a tower. "And I assume you will be doing this?"
Alex didn't answer him.
"Whatevs, maker jock. I'll bring you back some miso soup." Micah threw out a peace sign that he accentuated with a kiss, walked out the door and then slammed it just enough to shake the foundations of the model church, but no pieces fell; Alex would allow him to live for at least one more night.
"Maker jock," Alex mumbled under his breath. It was Micah's pet name for his brother. In truth, the scale model of Notre Dame wasn't the focus of his project. It was going to be systematically demolished by the intricate claws of the robot stowed in a closet away from Micah's prying eyes. That was what he would be working on tonight, not the Lego church Micah thought; the robot was the real focal point of four years of work.
Alex unlocked the closet he kept his robot in and moved it to his work-space. The maker movement took everything he loved the most--technology, hacking, metalworking, robotics, engineering--and paired it with a subculture that thrived on sharing knowledge, resources, and space in order to build everything from crazy, useless contraptions to innovative problem solvers. He was pretty sure Micah still didn't quite get what he did on his nights and weekends. The one time Alex had tried to explain the maker movement Micah had asked if it was possible to be that gay and that geeky at the same time. Alex had pointed to the R2D2 tattoo on his own shoulder and did a pirouette to which Micah mumbled something about Alex's drag name being Juanita Leia, and they ended up in a pseudo rap battle, which ended when Alex rhymed "feet" with "teat" and Micah pretended to gag before bear-hugging his brother. Alex knew then that Micah at least kind of got it.
I hope you enjoyed this little tease. Below you’ll find links to Stacy and “The Maker Jock.”
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/authorsamcauleyTwitter – @AuthorSAMcAuleyEmail – authorsamcauley@gmail.comKindlegraph - http://www.kindlegraph.com/authors/AuthorSAMcAuleyGoodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/authorsamcauleyAmazon - https://www.amazon.com/author/samcauleyThe Maker Jock link - https://spsilverpublishing.com/product_book_info/new-release-c-1/products_id/1171/?zenid=4a924d3c106489059b8e53fc5119e307

Dragon Con 2012: Hot Men In Tights

Ah, Dragon Con. One of the few places and times when people are free to don capes and tights and run amuck over the streets of Atlanta without fear of being carted off to a nice padded room with all the Prozac cocktails you can swallow.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Dragon Con is the third largest Fantasy/Sci-Fi convention in the United States, outgunned only by Comic Con and GenCon. Every Labor Day weekend, tens of thousands of people swarm into Atlanta, Georgia for a weekend of gaming, costuming, fan gurl/boying, and overall drunken debauchery. No matter what your chosen fandom, be it comics, manga, yaoi, television shows, movies, or books,  there's a track for you at Dragon Con. There's a parade on Saturday in which hundreds of people march, all dressed as their favorite characters. I'm telling you, you haven't lived until you've seen a hundred Stormtroopers march by, followed by a plethora of Elves, Wizards, Hobbits, Pikachus, zombies, Spartans, and Avengers.

I spent this year's Dragon Con running from panel to panel. I sat on the WriteSex/Tantric Tentacle panel, the Kirk's Communicator (Where Do I Submit) panel, the Down and Dirty Marketing panel, and the Into the Future panel for the Electronic Frontier Track, and two GLBT romance panels for the Writer's Track. All of them, I believe, were extremely successful, and I had a ball sitting on each and every one of them.




My fellow panelists (and big, huge, wet kisses go to Kage Alan, TcBlue, Sascha Illyvitch, Kayelle Allen, Cynarra Tregarth, Adrienne Wilder, Gail Martin, Stella Price, Shea Connor, and I know I'm forgetting people and for that I apologize!) were all amazing, and offered great advice and information on the business of writing and publishing.

I also participated in the M/M Author Meet and Greet, which was held for the second year in a row at the Marriott Hotel. I loved seeing every one again! 

I did manage to jog through the Walk of Fame in between the panels, and saw John Rhys Davies (who played Gimli in Lord of the Rings among many, many  other roles), John Barrowman, Burt Ward (the original Robin in the 1960's version of Batman and Robin), and several other celebrities.

I was also asked to help host the Lord of the Rings Fanfic panel, which was fun. It was after this panel that I was approached by a woman who was...let's say, a wee bit inebriated. She proceeded to regale us with her fanfic in which Ronald McDonald (whose hair was the color of a billion fiery suns) got drunk, decided to rob a bank, and ended up having wild monkey sex with the Hamburglar in the bank.

I cannot get the image of the clown and the burglar rolling around in the lobby of the local Bank of America out of my head. Brillo and bleach probably won't help. It's stuck there forever now, God help me.

In any case, I had an absolute blast at Dragon Con, and definitely hope to be there again next year!

Two Sentence Movie Reviews by Cardeno C. (Part Four)

Some of these movies are incredible, some are blah, some are somewhere in between. There are movies on the list that could be the topic of a multi-hour coffee house hang session, some that could be the topic of a rambling post-drinking night, and some that might just get a shrug and a smile. What they all have in common is a gay theme. I’m going to do my best to narrow my thoughts about each movie to two sentences. Here’s part four of my two sentence movie reviews (in no particular order).

1.      The Conrad Boys:  The young lead wrote, directed, and starred in this movie about family obligations and loyalty. That alone is reason enough to watch it.
2.      Breakfast with Scot: Are they sure they’re gay? Because they don’t touch each other the entire movie.
3.      Amnesia: This one is okay, not great, but not bad. It’s told in varying time points and is a bit confusing and very different.
4.      Friends and Family: I like this one. It’s cute, a little sweet, and funny.
5.      The Wedding Banquet: A bit dated now, but it’s Ang Lee so still good. So long as you can suspend knowledge of really basic biology.

6.      CRAZY: Very well made and interesting. This is a coming of age film, a father/son film, a family dynamics film, but it isn’t a romance.

7.      3-Day Weekend. I don’t remember much about this other than that I didn’t like most of the characters and didn’t enjoy the movie. None of those things (the lack of much memory or the memories themselves) bode well.

8.      Love!Valour!Compassion!: It’s the better, more thought-provoking version of 3-Day Weekend. But I still didn’t like the characters and I hated those years when a gay film couldn’t be made without the characters imploding or dying, as if happy, healthy, well-adjusted, and gay just weren’t an optional combo.

9.      Mambo Italiano: Cute, fun, good laughs. Has a bit of a My Big Fat Greek Wedding vibe.
10.   Mulligans: Like Charlie David, liked The Graduate, feel so-so about this movie. And are we really supposed to believe his roommate had no idea he was gay (hint: No straight man would wear that shirt)?
11.   A Four Letter Word: Maybe I’m too old for this movie. Every character bugged the shit out of me.
12.   The Broken Hearts Club: This movie feels real, like you’re right there with them. Good story, great acting, worth watching.
13.   Cachorro (Bear Cub): Unique, good potential, but fell short in the execution. Probably still worth a watch.

www.cardenoc.com

Oh, the humanity? T.C. Blue's Con-life.

As many of you likely know, this weekend is Dracon*Con in Atlanta, GA. This is my 10th year and as such, I'm excited to experience still more craziness. *hee*

In honor of the event, I thought I'd share some of the unique experiences I've had in that time. Just a few. :P (Next week I'll be talking about politics, Gods help us all!)

My first year: It was my friend Jen who talked me into my first Dragon*Con, and while I did attend, she was the only person I knew there. I can't say I was particularly nervous, but I did wonder whether I would get along with her other friends or just piss them off. (This was a 50-50 shot, really.) So she met me when I got to the hotel and took me to a spot where about 10 people were gathered. As we approached, one of the guys in the group was saying "Well, Weebles wobble but they don't fall down." My response: "They do if you smash them with a hammer." (You guessed it. I fit right in.) I was amazed, amused, and disturbed, by turns, at some of the costuming choices many of the attendees made, and the costume parade through the streets of downtown Atlanta (they block the streets off for this every year and there's usually some footage shown on several national news programs).

Thus began my affair with Dragon*Con. This affair has included meeting the Firefly cast (without knowing it because I hadn't watched the show when it was on the air), causing myself and my friends to start having giant parties, and becoming familiar with the idea of a convention that takes over a good 8 hotels and most of downtown.

Other firsts for me that occurred at Dragon*Con: I had never before been vomited on from a hundred feet up. That wasn't fun, but how many people can actually say it's happened to them? Had a man in a quasi Dr. Horrible costume ask to take a picture of my (fully clothed) tits. Spent an hour debating the merits of Robert Heinlein vs Frank Herbert (hard to say who won that one because they're very different authors) with a rather well known writer. Spent over an hour trying to figure out where one of my friends had lost her glasses while drunky-drunk. Run into people from my past and discovering that I didn't miss them at all (this one was an eye-opener for me).

Last year, the Hyatt bar was different. Changed. I suppose someone thought it was a good idea, but they ruined it. Sadly, it still has more seating than the Marriott bar, so we're kind of stuck. With a group the size of ours, seating is necessary.

Usually I fly but this year I had to drive, due to the sheer amount of stuff I had to bring with me. I think next year I'm going to pare down the crap, or possibly try to leave a week early so I can stop to visit with several friends who live between DC and Atlanta. That might actually be fun, but we'll see what happens. LOL

It's only Thursday. Con hasn't even officially started. Things are already promising to be even more insane than last year, which was crazier than the year before, which was more nuts than the previous, and so on. LOL

Some of my friends are already here, and it looks like my time will be devoted to panels and writing stuff and the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol.

Sounds like a good time to me. :)

So what are you guys up to this Labor Day weekend?

~Tis

Welcome to Spicy Wednesday withScotty Cade at Café Risque...

Welcome to Spicy Wednesday withScotty Cade at Café Risque!

Good Morning and a very happy Wednesday to you all. August is almost over and boy am I happy about that. Normally I give you an interview with one of our genre’s great authors, but today I’m going to change direction just for this week and use this blog to do a little venting. Now before you get too excited, it’s nothing to do with writing, authors, readers, reviews, or publishers, but more to do with just well, our customers.
For those of you who know and follow me already know that Kell, my partner and I own and operate a fifteen room Inn and seventy seat restaurant on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. So here’s where the venting comes in. This business, and this is our eighth year, can just wear you out sometimes. Okay I know some of you are saying yeah, yeah, yeah, what about all those posts from the Bahamas and Charleston aboard your boat! Okay, let me say when we play, we play, but when we work, we work our butts off. So from Easter to Columbus Day, we smile and welcome people into our home and then say goodbye to treasured guests; and many of them are treasured and people we will keep in touch with the rest of our lives, but there are those that we can’t wait to get rid of and hope to NEVER come back.
My question to you is when did people become so entitled? Entitled to demand unreasonable things, entitled to tell you exactly what they think of you and your business, and finally entitled to tell you everything that they perceive to be wrong with your business? I mean really!
And that’s just the Inn, I haven’t even started on the restaurant. People come to our Inn season after season and ninety-nine percent of them are thrilled and love us and the feeling is mutual, but this time of year there are those guests that just can’t be pleased. For instance, one guest called four times before they booked a reservation to make sure breakfast was included for free. Then when they checked in, within fifteen minutes of their arrival, they weren’t happy with any of the down pillows in the room, not enough toilet paper, they needed extra towels to place on the furniture so their clothing wouldn’t touch the fabric and that there wasn’t near enough light in the room. We have a top notch highly rated inn, check it out for yourself at www.lambertscoveinn.com.
So we brought them more pillows, extra linens to cover the furniture, and extra floor lamp, and more toilet paper. So one would think that would be it. But noooooo! They next come to the front desk and demand skim milk for a afternoon snack. We use two percent instead of skim because so many people love so many types of milk it’s impossible to keep it all without it all going bad so explained that and they stood there and said “What do we do?” I finally said “well if you want skim, you can go to the grocery store and we’ll be happy to serve it to you.” Needless to say they weren’t happy with that idea and turned without a word and stormed out. Then later that night they ate in our four-star Zagat rated restaurant and complained about the portion size and demanded more scallops after they finished their entrée. And this can go on and on, but I’ll not bore you with the rest of the details.
Speaking of the restaurant, someone called me today to complain that it took twenty minutes between their intermezzo service and when they received their entrées. Twenty minutes is perfectly acceptable in a fine dining restaurant, but I listened as I always do, apologized and promised the next time they came in, I would personally wait on them top make sure their experience was perfect. They thanked me, then proceeded to ask for a free gift certificate. REALLY? All this for something free?
Furthermore, we get people who are bothered by the fact that our restaurant manager explained the menu or, and this is my favorite, they eat three quarters of their meal then send it back because it wasn’t prepared properly. When does it ever end? When did people get to complain about any and everything to get something and then demand for free?
Lastly, in this day and age, people can go to the Internet and review and post anything about your business they want, true or not, and have no consequences. They do it under the pretense of letting others know what to expect, but it’s really about hurting you or your business because they think they are getting back at you for wronging them.
Please, please, please! When you go into someone’s home or someone’s restaurant, be gracious. If you have a legitimate gripe, by all means communicate that to the manager, but please be realistic. Kell and I love people and we have many many wonderful guests both in the restaurant and the inn, but all the crazy people just seem to stick in your head and keep you awake at night making you wish you’d never bought the business.
Okay, I’m done and I feel better. I hope I didn’t bore you too much, but hopefully gave you a little food for thought.
See you next week,Scotty

Two Sentence Movie Reviews by Cardeno C. (Part Three)

Some of these movies are incredible, some are blah, some are somewhere in between. There are movies on the list that could be the topic of a multi-hour coffee house hang session, some that could be the topic of a rambling post-drinking night, and some that might just get a shrug and a smile. What they all have in common is a gay theme. I’m going to do my best to narrow my thoughts about each movie to two sentences. Here’s part three of my two sentence movie reviews (in no particular order).
1.      Guys and Balls: Cute movie, not too angsty, positive feel. Worth a watch.2.      Coffee Date: Low budget, not always top-notch acting, but cute concept. Would have liked it better if they’d ended up together (that’s how it would’ve gone if I’d written it).3.      Gone But Not Forgotten: Okay, so here’s the deal, it’s low budget, sometimes the acting suffers, the plot might not be realistic, and the wife is a caricature-harpy in an unfair way. But I’ve rewatched this movie so, so many times and the bottom line is that I love it.4.      Back Soon: Matthew Montgomery (from Gone But Not Forgotten) is back in another low-budget movie where realty takes a break (and sometimes the acting joins it). This one is a repeat watch for me too, though, and I feel good every time.5.      Long Term Relationship: It’s another Matthew Montgomery film, so I was sure I’d like it, but I didn’t. It’s not the questionable acting or noticeably low budget (see the above two reviews to prove that doesn’t stop me from liking a Matthew Montgomery movie), the plot just didn’t work for me.6.      Defying Gravity: There’s an odd sort of realism to this movie for me. Maybe it’s because I went to a college with a big Greek system, maybe it’s because I feel like I know those guys, or maybe it’s because I’m a sucker for a happy ending, but I like this, low-budget, questionable acting, gay bashing and all.7.      Between Love and Goodbye: This was such a good movie, it really was – interesting characters, passionate romance, a unique storyline. And then they flushed it down the over-the-top-it’s-gay-so-let’s-make-them-suffer-for-no-fucking-good-reason-at-all toilet. Skip it (yeah, it’s a third sentence, but I’m trying to save you from disappointment here.)8.      Were the World Mine: Very cute, surreal feel. Nice coming of age film, Shakespeare, and a musical – what’s not to love?9.      Urbania: This is hard because I really like Dan Futterman and I think he’s great in this well-made movie, but I can’t recommend it. Everything and everyone in this movie is miserable and I don’t like that picture of the world.10.   Just a Question of Love: This is one of my favorite films. The main characters and side characters are wonderful, there’s a sense of authenticity with the families, and the passion between the characters is palpable.11.   The Bubble: Eytan Fox makes incredible films and this one is no exception. It’s politically meaningful and heart-wrenching, but the ending seemed inevitable.12.   Mysterious Skin: Don’t expect to feel good about this, it’s a movie about adults who were sexually molested as children and are totally fucked up as a result, though in different ways. But somehow, I felt hopeful that they were on the road to healing at the end and, by the way, Joseph Gordon Levitt is a genius.

www.cardenoc.com

Jeremy Pack - Guest Author

Today we welcome Jeremy Pack to the blog. Jeremy is a relatively new and most definitely wonderful writer and an all around nice, inspiring guy. He's here to talk about his latest release, To Touch the Stars. Welcome, Jeremy! We're thrilled to have you here. And now, on with your post!
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During the writing of ToTouch the Stars, my second release from Dreamspinner Press, I was in a very hopeful, happy place. It seemed that the spirit of progress I was trying to capture in the text was everywhere I looked. From the backlash against the MillionMoms and their distasteful crusade against Ellen DeGeneres to the socialnetwork uprising that forced the Susan G. Komen Foundation to reverse a misguided decision to revoke funding for planned parenthood—society was proving out the point I was attempting to make with my story.

And then the 2012 election season got underway...

Now it seems that each new day brings some new horror bubbling to the surface. In a stunning win for marriage equality, my state’s legislature passed a law allowing same-sex marriage. In the next breath it was taken away by a citizen’s referendum. That fight is ongoing. Right-wing extremists renewed their crusade against women’s reproductive rights, and Republican officials began working to disenfranchise Obama-likely voters by rewriting voting rules.

Still... hope remains. With each new travesty perpetrated by those who would roll back all of the enormous strides our country has taken in the decades since the Civil Rights Act became the law of the land, since Roe v. Wade, since Loving v. Virginia, since Stonewall, the voices raised in outrage against oppression and intolerance are heartening, indeed. I have only to open Facebook or Twitter to be reminded that, for each extremist voice calling for a halt to the steady march of progress, a chorus of voices rises up in outrage to drown out the bigotry and hatred and fear.

That hope I felt so keenly—that I tried to share in every word I committed to the manuscript—is alive and well. My tribute in writing To Touch the Stars is not equal to the great courage displayed by so many who risk criticism and ostracism in defense of basic human decency by speaking out, but I hope that readers will come away with the same sense of wonder I feel every day when I bear witness to these acts of valor in the name of equality.

My statement in the acknowledgements, “Our quest to touch the metaphorical stars of acceptance and equality for all began with the single steps of a very few courageous individuals and remains impossibly long still. Looking back, however, I marvel at just how very high we have already climbed” remains as true today as it did on that happy day when I wrote it down. I hope, as we continue on our way, the ideal that we’re striving toward continues to remain in our reach.

You can find more information about me, read an excerpt of To Touch the Stars, and find purchase links for the book on my website at http://www.jeremy-pack.com. If you choose to read it, I hope you enjoy the adventure, and that the love and spirit I put into every page comes through loud and clear in my words.

***

Blurb for To Touch the Stars 
For happenstance news correspondent Tait Williams and newly minted astronaut Nicholas Sullivan, 1966 is a year of beginnings. Idealistic Tait dreams of changing the world with his pen, and Nick has his sights set on the moon. With the Apollo program in full swing, Nick is on the fast track to his dreams—even as Tait’s hopes of covering the Vietnam war are sidelined by a cause he doesn't believe in: a correspondent assignment with NASA. It is here, in the golden age of the US space program, that the hearts of two men collide, setting them on a path of discovery spanning two decades.

From war-torn Cambodia to the decadence and heartbreak of the early 1980s, Nick and Tait come together time and again only to be ripped apart by social conventions and their own ambitions. As they strive to realize dreams that remain elusively beyond their grasp, through each other and the extraordinary people that touch their lives, they will come to understand that the things that matter most—the brightest stars of all—have been within their reach all along.

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And on a personal note let me say that I know it sometimes feels like we're taking one step forward, multi-year steps back in the fight for equality, but when we look up from out of the trenches, I think we can see that change is here, it is happening. We want it to happen faster. The set-backs are demoralizing. But I know that if we keep our chins up, revel in the victories, and learn from the defeats, we will win this fight. And we'll win it soon. Thanks for all that you do, Jeremy. Keep fighting  the good fight by being you. - Cardeno C.

In Remembrance of Patric Michael

As many of you may have learned by now, Patric Michael passed away this week after a long battle with cancer.  I did not know Patric as well as many others, but I felt I did because of his stories, his sense of humor and the charming and seemingly fearless way he saw life.  He was someone I never met in person, but admired and respected nonetheless; for the many hours of joy he gave me through his beautiful and timeless stories as much as for the brief time I called him "colleague".

I have read many touching sentiments posted to his Facebook page and have also heard from many of our fellow authors at Dreamspinner Press who were lucky enough to know him for many, many years as more than just a colleague.  We all share the sadness and the frustration at such a loss, and we all send our deepest condolences and heart-felt sympathies to his family and friends.

Patric's "Timeless" has always held a special place in my heart, and even though I am a writer, I'm at a loss as to explain why.  There is something in the way Patric chose his words and coaxed them together that always left me wanting more.  As with so many other people out there, those are words that I will treasure forever.

Thank you, Patric.  I will never forget you.  In celebration of Patric, his life and what he gave of himself in his stories, I encourage one and all to share their favorite Patric story - fictitious or factual.  (By D.W. Marchwell)