Larry Benjamin's Blog: Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life, page 13

Houston, We Have a Cover

With just a month to go until the release of Unbroken, we have a cover.

After a few versions and much discussion we think this really captures the spirit of the book. I love it. What about you?

Leave a comment telling me what you think, and you’ll automatically be entered into a drawing to win one of three copies of Unbroken (either eBook or autographed paperback, your choice). The drawing will be open now through Sunday at Midnight. Winners will be announced next Tuesday, August 26.

Review the cover and cover blurb here.

Unbroken: The Courage to Write, The Courage to Remember

My newest book, Unbroken will be released on the last day of summer, September 20, 2013. I am excited. I am terrified. I am excited to share a story of one courageous boy and the boy he loved.

And I am terrified. I am terrified the book is terrible. I am terrified the book is brilliant. I am terrified that no one will read it. And also that everyone will read it and…see…me. Unbroken is my most personal work to date. In the story, which is fictional, as well as in life, the line between the real and the imagined often blurs. I am terrified the boy I fell in love with at twelve, a man now, will read it and know finally that I loved him at twelve, that, at twelve, I dreamed of a life with him.

Read the rest.

#RoyalBaby

I’m a Libra. I try for balance in all areas of my life. But I’m a Libra—the scales often tip more one way than another.

Anyone who knows me knows that I sometimes become obsessed by random things. This week it appears it was the birth of the #RoyalBaby. To me, no matter what they name him, he will always be #RoyalBaby. This is, after all, the age of Twitter. From the moment I booted up my computer and saw the MSN breaking news was Kate was in labor, I was hooked.

Read the rest.

Words, You See, Are the Thing

I am reading George Durrells’, "My Family and other Animals.” His writing, his words, causes my breath to catch in my throat, my pulse to quicken for I love words― words strung together to not only tell a story but to paint a picture, words that are beautiful in and of themselves:

“The Turk, when he arrived turned out to be a tall, young man , with meticulously waved hair and a flashy smile that managed to convey the minimum of humour with the maximum of condescension. He had all the smug self-possession of a cat in season.”

“…and then Margo, trailing yards of muslin and scent. Mother looking like a tiny, harassed missionary in an uprising…”

Thus, I’ve decided to dedicate this blog to quotes from some of my favorite books by some of my favorite authors.

Erastes, author of gay historical fiction, writes prose that is clean and spare yet full of depth as with “Warmth generated between them everywhere they touched, skin and cloth…a center of heat between them…”
―from Muffled Drum

Read the rest.

On Mondays, Dentists and Cleavage Before Lunch

Generally I don’t mind Mondays. On Mondays I am rested, hopeful. By Wednesday, hope has died and I am left to drag its corpse behind me until Friday when, exhausted, I drop it and fall into the bottomless sleep of the failed, mourning another week passed during which I achieved neither “Powerball winner” nor “New York Times Bestseller” status.

As I’ve said, I’m usually good with Mondays. This Monday was different though; I had a dentist appointment. Going to the dentist is among my dislikes, along with being wet, wet food (think soup) and men who wear shoes without socks.

Read the rest.

In Praise of Editors—Part 2

Last week, in Part 1 of this blog post, I covered my introduction to working with an editor and the edit process with the publication of my first two books.

This week, as promised, I take a look at the process for the forthcoming Unbroken. This particular venture into editing was both whimsical and edifying—I’d known the brilliant and sarcastic Debbie McGowan as a friend before she became my editor. This post details some of our most entertaining exchanges.

Our first editor/writer exchange occurred when Beaten Track acquired the print rights to my short story collection, Damaged Angels. One story, “A Working Boy,” is the tale of a hustler who falls in love with a former trick. He comes to understand the difference between sex for cash and sex as an expression of love. In error I had used both “cum” and “come” when describing male ejaculation which prompted the following comment:

[DMG]: There is a hysterical conversation taking place about this and the distinction of 'to ejaculate' and 'to arrive' …Anyway, I digress... OK - a couple of thoughts on this. Given the character AND the change from working sex to making love, we could make the shift from cum (porny - suits a hustler) to come (still slang, obviously, but more literary) in the last part. This is an issue we will return to in Unbroken!
[LB]: Okay, I like your approach of using the two spelling.

Then we moved onto Unbroken, which Beaten Track will publish this summer.

“He squinted in the watery blue light, laughed. “
[DMG]: You do this quite often - grammatically it requires an ‘and’.
[LB]: I Inserted and; we can look at case by case but the absence of “and” is a stylistic thing for me.

“Being reminded of Tony, of his absence, hearing him referred to in that way, caused something inside me to tear; fear, reason, unmoored, Miss Doolollie uncaged: I told you one day we would strike back. Today is that day.”
[DMG]: Writing in prose? Assuming you are, this is beautiful and it stays - this stylistic issue also relates back to prior comments regarding ‘lack of and’ - we just really need to make a decision one way or the other.
[LB]: Thank you and per my previous comment I’d rather not use “and” in these instances. Think of it this way, in 20 years when college students are writing papers on my works, this will give them a point to ponder…I shall be sure to mention “any missing “ands” are wholly the fault of the author” in my Acknowledgements.

[DMG]: Going to watching out for overuse of ‘serious’ - could be your ‘word of the novel’!

[DMG]: OXFORD COMMA ALERT (consistency check)
[LB]: What the hay is an OXFORD COMMA? But okay
[DMG]: Used in lists before an 'and'.

“He kissed me; I tasted the iron taste of blood, the salt of tears, though whether mine or his, I could not say.”
[DMG]: Could probably lose this (second “taste”)
[LB]: Good point. Okay.

"She chattered the whole way about Madame Billaud and her flight to Germany where she would change to a flight bound for Paris."
[DMG]: Why on to Germany to go to Paris. when Germany is past France when travelling from the US? It should be a city anyway - would imagine Dublin, but might be London or Manchester.
[LB]: Good catch. Geography is so not my thing; also except for Canada, I haven’t been out of US. London sounds good. Changed

“His fingers parted the tangle of curls that covered my head, and he pressed his lips against the spot he’d cleared. I fell asleep with his lips pressed against my skull like the promise of a new day.”
[DMG]: No edit - just WOW! Felt it needed to be said.
[LB]: Thanks. I love this scene.

“Upstairs, Thibodeaux pushed Jose to the front of the crowd directly in front of the stage. The go-go boy dancing center stage noticed him, flashed a smile, and shimmied over. He stepped to the edge of the stage and started to gyrate.”
[DMG]: Too many mentions of stage. Maybe try “The go-go boy dancing center stage notice him, flashed a smile and shimmied over, gyrating right in front of him. “
[LB]: Ok changed

Walking away from his mother and catching my hand in his, he said, “Come on. Let’s go.” His anger seemed to squeeze all the breathable air out of the room.
[DMG]: You use this structure quite a lot and it’s fine, but sometimes I think a change of order would be refreshing. Try instead (maybe): He walked away from his mother and caught my hand in his. “Come on. Let’s go,” he said. His anger seemed to squeeze all the breathable air out of the room.
[LB]: Let’s not change.

“When my mother came in with the turkey, she stopped short seeing Jose sitting next to me.”
[DMG]: Suggest rewrite: My mother came in with the turkey and stopped short when she saw Jose sitting next to me.
[LB]: Ok, change made. I actually lie your rewrite better than original.

“His mother, Marisol, and his nieces gathered and packed clothes, a box of Pampers, milk and whatever else they had on hand.”
[DMG]: Do you need to name-brand this? Would diapers not suffice?
[LB]: Changed. I used Pampers her as many people use “Kleenex” when they mean “tissue;” so the brand name comes to refer to the item itself, an advertisers dream.

[DMG]: NOTE: I will tackle the layout once we’re done editing - no point worrying about overflowing singular lines at this point! Thought I’d mention it now, as this is the one ‘chapter’ where it particularly stands out.
[LB]: Overflowing singular lines? Um yeah okay whatever you say.

“Good that’s settled, then,” Robert said, slapping his hand on the table, which seemed to be his wont.”
[DMG]: I know you acknowledge the repeat of this with ‘seemed to be his wont’, but I’m still not sure.
[LB]: Be sure. It stays. It will play nicely in the movie version ;-)

[DMG]: Blond or blonde? Which would you like? I think prior to this you’ve only used blond.
[LB]: I don’t care as long as it’s consistent.

[DMG]: Emdashes vs ellispes. It’s up to you, but I use emdashes for change of direction or where brackets could be used, and ellipses for thought processes and interruptions. I’m not bothered especially, so whichever you want to do (beauty of independence – we can cater for author preference in most cases), but you are a bit emdash-happy!
[LB]: Note please, I am taking the high road and ignoring you calling me emdash happy!

[DMG]: I know you think I'm obsessed, but do you realise you use 'invited' 4 times in this paragraph?
[LB]: *(massive) sigh* I rewrote. Can you live with the word used twice?

[DMG]: Dairy Queen and ice cream (scene)...letting it go...
[LB]: That sound you hear? The train leaving the station…

“Jose turned to the boys and Sam who stood just behind us and a little to the side.”
[DMG]: Do you need to give exact coordinates for Sam’s location?
[LB]: Fine. I rewrote--“Jose turned to the boys and Sam.”-- but when the movie director places them in the wrong spot for this scene it will be your fault!
[DMG]: I'll be sure to be getting in his/her face and DEMANDING that Sam is precisely 45.2 degrees NNW of Lincoln!

Once edits were completed, I mentioned her in the book's Acknowledgements:

Debbie McGowan, my friend, my editor―You believed in me from the beginning: You’re brilliant and exasperating. Your exacting standards and persistence were essential in making this book the best it could be.

Debbie wrote back “…and I’m sorry that I am exasperating, well, sort of sorry. If it pushes you to keep polishing, then it’s worth it.”

And that, my friends, I believe, sums up the best writer/editor relationship.

www.larrybenjamin.com

Don’t forget to like my Facebook page and connect with me on Twitter, too.

In Praise of Editors – Part 1

It seems like I’ve been reading a lot of posts about editors and the editing process lately. Having just wrapped up edits on my new book, Unbroken, I thought I’d share my thoughts on the editorial process and share some of my more memorable exchanges with my editors. To date I’ve worked with three, make of that what you will.

I don’t submit a book until it is complete and as good as I can make it. Once I finish a book I go back and read it though twice to check for consistency, sequencing, character development, etc. then I do a final read through for proofing purposes. This is the part I hate the most, mostly because I’m not a very good proofreader and I’m not a detail person. Still it must be done. Because I don’t use a beta reader, my editor is the first person to read the book and my first opportunity to hear feedback.

I particularly value an editor’s input and expertise because I’ve read affair amount of self-published books and I can generally tell when a professional editor wasn’t involved. A good editor can make a great book sparkle. I try, always to listen to mine—which doesn’t mean I will agree with everything said, but I do listen—because unlike a reviewer, an editor has no axe to grind; he or she is simply there to make sure your book is professionally written and is the best it can be. Your editor is your book’s advocate if not necessarily your best friend and most adoring fan.

That said, let me share with you some actual exchanges with my editors.

What Binds Us

I was lucky enough to work with the stellar Rhonda Helms as my editor for my first book. I was terrified because I’d never worked with an editor. She was knowledgeable and patient but firm.

[RH]: Watch overuse of “look” and its forms. Go through and change at least half.
[RH]: You say “would” a lot. Watch overuse.
[RH]: Watch overuse of exclamation points. I’ve removed some. Recommend you do the same.
[RH]: Watch for this. If you’re continuing dialogue that has an interjected dialogue tag, use a comma and keep the first word in lower case. If you’re starting new dialogue, use a period and cap the first word.
[Me]: An interjected dialogue tag? You see why I need you?

“Mrs. Whyte was…different, a riddle without an answer. We didn’t see much of her. She appeared everyday at four o’clock, like a miracle. And at every meal, like an overly busy choreographer, to orchestrate our elaborate repasts. She seemed distracted, one casual eye on us, the other, more scrupulous, on other things.”
[RH]: This doesn’t quite work for me, actually…I tried tweaking it, but you can’t literally have your eyes on two different things. I’d reword. Maybe say attention half on them, half on…what else?
[Me]: I love that sentence but I’ve rewritten but I warn you, one day, somewhere, this sentence will reappear.
"Mrs. Whyte was…different, a riddle without an answer. We didn’t see much of her. She appeared everyday at four o’clock, like a miracle. And at every meal to orchestrate our elaborate repasts, like an overly busy choreographer. She always seemed distracted, as if whatever the three of us were up to didn’t warrant her full attention."

“Around his mother, Dondi was different. His voice grew deep. His manner of speech changed, was completely without artifice. If he spoke in italics to his friends, to his mother, he spoke lower case Times New Roman.”
[RH]: Italics isn’t a font, to be technical. It’s a tweaking of a font…change this to match up. Also, you can’t speak a font type.
[Me]: I tried & tried to rewrite this but couldn’t make it work so I just deleted.

“We got bikes out of the garage and rode them into the quaint Victorian village that was a gingerbread fantasy. We stopped at the old-fashioned ice-cream parlor, where we’d taken Geo and shared a banana split. After, pushing the bikes ahead of us, we walked along the wharf. His father’s mental illness and Dondi’s whoring seemed very far away.”
[RH]: Show a little more connection between the two of them here. A sentence or two about how they didn’t speak much, but they didn’t need to. They took comfort in each other’s presence. Or something like that. Let these little moments of them finding comfort and solace in each other show through in your prose.
[Me]: I added the following sentence.
“Matt didn’t say much, and neither did I. We didn’t need words; we had each other.”

“He did not possess the savage musculature of Michelangelo’s David, was more the David of Donatello’s imagination: slim, narrow-hipped, almost girlish. He was a beautiful white cat, lean and graceful. He had hair on his legs, long silky strands like climbing vines that only accentuated his nakedness. I thought of all those nights at Aurora when he’d lain on the other side of a door and might as well have been on the other side of the world. I thought of all those orgasms puddled on my stomach, damning as spilled milk, induced by just this image.”
[RH]: GREAT paragraph. This is so well done.

One of the best unexpected bonuses to working with an editor: actual praise and validation.

Damaged Angels

Damaged Angels didn’t require much in the way of developmental edits, but it did reveal apparent weakness in my grasp on correct grammar. Editor Cindy C. was firm and crisp and never having met her, I imagined her poring over my manuscript by candlelight, while wearing a starched black habit and slapping a rule r against her palm in dismay at the discovery of yet another present participle phrase.

[CC]: I noticed you have a tendency to use what are called present participle phrases. They are usually found at the beginning of a sentence with a word that ends in -ing. Many of them are grammatically incorrect. But even when they aren’t grammatically incorrect, you should minimize the usage. I’ve marked them and have inserted a comment explaining the issue. It’s not a huge problem, but it shows up enough times that I felt it would be easier to include these longer notes to explain the issue.

“I try to focus swollen, red eyes on the bedside clock.”
[CC]: This violates your POV. Your narrator has no way of knowing his eyes are red, only that they are swollen or tired or scratchy, etc.

“Eventually, the expensive booze silences my body’s screaming need for him. I plunge headlong into sleep, while he cries helplessly into the soft suede of the sofa.”
[CC]: This violates your POV. Aaron is narrating this story, so we can only know what he knows. If he’s asleep, then how does he know his lover is crying helplessly into the sofa?
[Me]:Good point. I rewrote.
I listen to him crying softly in the next room before I plunge headlong into sleep.

“Eddying at his feet is a sea of broken, blackened glass like shattered dreams. A thousand thousand jigsaw pieces reflecting the hopelessness and despair of a city lost.”
[CC]: Query: intentional repeat of thousand?
[Me]: Yes; that’s a deliberate repetition; it’s a stylistic thing for me.

“As he lay on the sandy beach, his paprika skin darkening to cinnamon, surreptitiously eyeing the half-naked native boys frolicking at the water’s edge, restless with a vague, nascent longing, his mother would accuse him of not concentrating, or worse, of not trying, as he gave wrong answer after wrong answer.”
[CC]: You want to be very careful about adding multiple phrases on top of each other as you do here. They can create unclear modifiers, as you’ve done twice. When you add multiple modifying descriptions offset by commas, you create confusing modifiers. We don’t know whether the phrase after the comma is supposed to modify the noun that immediately precedes it, or the one before that (or the one before that one)
[Me]: (wondering) Is she still speaking English?

“It’s not crooked,” she bristled. “It’s European!”
[CC]: Bristled isn’t a dialogue tag – it’s not a way of speaking. She can bristle without it being a tag, but not as a tag.
[Me]: I rewrote. Better? If not feel free to delete “She bristled” and leave as straight dialogue.
She bristled. “It’s not crooked. It’s European!”

“Then, refilling his glass from a pitcher on the counter, he wandered off in search of less alarming sights.”
[CC]: Improper participle here. He’s not simultaneously refilling his glass and wandering off.
[Me]: (thinking) present participle phrases? Confusing modifiers? Improper participles? Yikes! Maybe I should become a painter…
[Me]: Okay I think I corrected all of these.
"He refilled his glass from a pitcher on the counter, before wandering off in search of less alarming sights."

“Billy! William Thurston Howell! You come back here! Right! Now!”
[CC]: Is this an unintentional reference to the Gilligan’s Island character?
[Me]: Yikes! Thanks for catching that. I’ve renamed him.

Each of my editors has taught me a lot and helped me become a better writer. I try to use everything I learn in the next book I write so hopefully each editor has made the job of her successor easier.

Next week I’ll blog about edits to my newest book, Unbroken, scheduled for a Summer 2013 release from Beaten Track Publishing. You won’t want to miss the details on a conversation with my editor about how to refer to...ummm…male ejaculate. In the meantime, leave a comment telling me about your experiences working with an editor.

www.larrybenjamin.com

Don’t forget to like my Facebook page and connect with me on Twitter, too.

Writing About Sex

I didn’t sleep around much when I was young and single and this puzzled my friends. We were young and gay, after all, during a time when the prevailing wisdom suggested that once one had slept with all the available men on the East Coast, one simply moved to the West coast and started over.

For me desire has always come about as a result of something else; desire, for me, was an outgrowth of emotional attachment or personal attraction. Some friends pitied me for I clearly wasn’t good looking enough to join the party. Others, kinder perhaps, saw my refusal to join the fun as a confirmation of the fact that I did not understand the point of being gay. It was an unmooring from society, a freeing from responsibility, a denial of obligation, of fidelity to anyone or anything beyond the moment, beyond desire; it was a celebration of the absence of the need to build a lasting relationship, of the absence of the desire to commit.

I dared not tell them that I believed love and sex required us to be accountable—to ourselves, to those we loved and those who loved us. I dared not tell them that I had always dreamed of settling down with one person, that I had always dreamed of getting married, that when, at age twelve, I realized I was gay, that dream did not die.

Instead, I waited and I dreamed. And I read. A lot. Mostly the classics: The Brontes, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dickens. When I got to college, I discovered the gay writers: Edmund White, Felice Picano, Gore Vidal.

I still read a lot of gay fiction. One thing that burns me about a lot of gay contemporary fiction is the amount of sex they include. I tend to get bored with prolonged sex scenes; unless a sex scene is short, I skip over it. I recently finished reading a book which left me disappointed because while it had a promising premise it became quickly apparent that the “plot” was merely a device to weave a series of sex acts into a book.

When I read a book whose characters have lots of non-stop sex, I’m left wondering do these people ever sleep? go to work? do laundry? Most galling is descriptions of anonymous sex and numerous hook ups with virtual strangers. More than forty years into the LGBT battle for equality, more than twenty-five years into the AIDS epidemic, I’m left to wonder: have we come no further than this? Do people still believe being gay is only about sex?

This got me thinking about how I approach sex in my writing. I tend to write about romantic love which presents a challenge. I mean how do you write about two people in love and without writing about their sex life? When I write about sex, I try hard not to trivialize it. I try hard not to reduce it to some simple biological imperative requiring no more thought―and carrying no more meaning― than blowing one’s nose or scratching one’s ass.

In my first book, What Binds Us, I struggled with the problem of sex because it was important as it allowed the characters to connect with each other on a physical level which was a connection they craved.

In the book, it takes a long time for Thomas-Edward and Matthew to connect which irritated some readers and a few reviewers but I got an email from one reader who described herself as “a straight, white woman;” she wrote, in part, “By reading your story, I learned that real love does not have to be physical to be real…Reading this earlier could have changed everything for me…”

The first time Thomas sees Matthew naked he is stunned by how beautiful he is. He can’t help remembering how, longing for Matthew who slept in an adjoining room, he had been compelled to masturbate. He writes:

He did not possess the savage musculature of Michelangelo’s David, was more the David of Donatello’s imagination: slim, narrow-hipped, almost girlish. He was a beautiful white cat, lean and graceful. He had hair on his legs, long silky strands like climbing vines that only accentuated his nakedness. I thought of all those nights at Aurora when he’d lain on the other side of a door and might as well have been on the other side of the world. I thought of all those orgasms puddled on my stomach, damning as spilled milk, induced by just this image.

The story or Thomas-Edward and Matthew is mostly about the surprise they feel in discovering each other. When they finally come together, each is sure there is no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as the other. I imagined their sex would be romantic, almost poetic. I thought detailing the mechanics of their sex (i.e. who did what to whom) would interrupt the magic, so I wrote:

Flesh touched flesh. Limbs entwined: black, white, black; lips and tongue and teeth tasted flesh too long hungered for. We did everything. Nothing about either of us was forbidden the other. “No” was not in the vocabulary of our sex. I looked at his face through the V of my legs. I looked at his face above me and below me. I found I liked saying his name, said it over and over again. He said nothing, only smiled in the light and held me close.

Always before, sex had been a negating experience. With ejaculation came an end to desire, to intimacy. With Matthew, sex was an affirmation, a shouted yes. Afterwards, we stood on the threshold of something. Always before, the threshold had been behind me. And I’d stood alone.

Avoiding the description of sex in Damaged Angels, my collection of short stories, was considerably more difficult as several of the stories were about young men who worked in the sex industry. One story, “A Working Boy,” is told from the point of view of Pitch, a rent boy who takes us on a journey through a regular “work day.” He is on the cusp of committing to his quasi boyfriend, an older man he refers to as Loverman. While working one day he has an epiphany:

“I start thinking about quitting again. I guess I first started thinking about quitting after I met Loverman. Once, in bed with him, it occurred to me that we weren’t having sex, which is what I have all the time. It was something else. I mean, the moves were the same, but there was all this feeling. I remember thinking that maybe what we were doing was making love…

He goes on to explain:

When I first met him, I sold him my body, which didn’t surprise him. What I did that night was make him a present of my heart. Which surprised us both.”

In “Precious Cargo,” one of my favorite stories in the collection, the protagonist, yearning for his absent lover masturbates in the shower. I wanted to capture not so much the act of self-pleasure but the emotional vaunt of his need, the emptiness he feels in his lover’s absence:

“…I feel it pucker against my intruding finger. Open. Sucking. Greedy. Full of need. Quicksilver seed scatters. Sown on white tile. Fruitless. Sliding down the drain.”

Later when he and his lover come together briefly:

“He steps forward. Holds my head between his thighs. A pulse beats against my temple. The masculine scent of him fills my nostrils. My open mouth. Welcoming. The triumvirate of his manhood.”

For me, Damaged Angels was in many ways experimental—in use of language, subject matter and sexual portrayal. Coming between What Binds Us and the forthcoming Unbroken, both romances, with Damaged Angels, I wanted to step away and stretch myself in a different direction as a writer. I wanted to tell a grittier story to explore “dirtier” sex.

In Unbroken the sex is more complex because I needed to render a few different kinds of sex—first time sex, sex-for-its-own-sake, make up sex, sex within the context of a deep and abiding love and rougher sex within the context of that same love. The sex scenes were harder here because they needed to be described in detail but also needed to describe more than the mechanical aspect of sex, each act needed to reveal something about the characters’ emotions and state of mind. As a result, much of the sex in Unbroken left me breathless. I can only hope it does it same for my readers.

While all the stories I’ve written so far are about love and desire, not all explore the sex act. And that I think is as it should be. For me it’s always about the love, the characters and the nature and context of desire.

www.larrybenjamin.com

The Hunt for... Damaged Angels

It was my friend, Shirley, who gave me the idea. When my second book, Damaged Angels, was recently released in paperback by Beaten Track, she asked, “Can I just go into Barnes & Noble and buy it?”

“I guess,” I said.

“Let’s go look for it.”

“What?”

“Let’s go see if they have it. If they do, we’ll pick it up and talk real loud about what a wonderful book it is and how brilliant the author is.”

I’d, of course, seen the new cover and the book in “layout” via PDF but I was still anxious to hold it in my hand. I will never forget the day my author’s copies arrived (duly documented on my Facebook page). I was even more excited when Stanley asked if he could have one and if I would sign it for him. Looking back, that’s when I got bitten, I think.
I was possessed by an uncontrollable urge to see my book on a shelf in a bookstore. I had jury duty the week the book released and as soon as they dismissed us for lunch, I rocketed down to Giovanni’s Room—the oldest continuously operating gay book store in the U.S. I searched the new book displays and the shelves. Alas, no book. I inquired at the counter (guilt induced me to buy two other books I had no interest in reading.) The guy behind the counter said they could order the book and sent me upstairs. The guy upstairs said he could order it after looking it up on his computer. He immediately launched into a long, incomprehensible soliloquy about the discount offered by the supplier. Evidently the 5% discount meant the store wouldn’t make any money on the sale of the book. I felt bad so I ordered two copies (more royalties for me, right?) He asked for my name and phone number so they could call when the book came in. Too embarrassed to give my own, I gave them Stanley’s name.

Glancing at the book’s description on his computer, he said, “I’ve never heard of Larry Benjamin. May I ask how you know about him?”

Crap. Busted. “Um…well…I’m him. That is… it’s my book. I mean I’m Larry Benjamin.”

He stared at me for a minute. “Why didn’t you say so? We get authors in here all the time and they never tell us who they are.”

We chatted a few more minutes during which I tried to sound articulate and writerly and also plugged the hell out of Unbroken due out this summer.

Next, I went to Barnes and Noble where a surly dishwater blonde listlessly looked up my book. She showed me her computer monitor.

“Yep that’s it,” I said.

“We’ll have to order it,” she said.

“Okay, that’s fine.”

“You’ll need to pay in advance.”

“That’s fine. I’d like two copies, please.”

“Two copies, Damaged Angels by Larry Benjamin,” she repeated as she typed. “Your name please?”

“Er…Larry Benjamin.” I paused, waiting for the inevitable question.

“Benjamin. How do you spell that?”

Was she freakin’ kidding me?

At the checkout, the clerk reviewed the order, read it back to me “Two copies, Damaged Angels by Larry Benjamin.”

I handed and her my credit card. She glanced at it, ran it through and handed it back. “Have a nice day,” she said handing me my receipt.

Really that was it?

I‘m not sure what I expected, but a marching band and an offer of champagne and hordes of people pleading with me to sign their copy of my book wouldn’t have surprised me.

I picked up my books two weeks later. A different surly dishwater blond, this one with dark roots, searched behind the counter and handed me a plain brown parcel which had my name highlighted in yellow and presumably containing my book. “Have a nice day,” she said without making eye contact.

As I walked to the car with my nondescript brown parcel, I remembered a trip I’d made to Washington D.C., right after graduation with my then boyfriend. He’d taken me to the White House because, he said, that’s what families do and we are a family.

We stepped over the homeless people sleeping on blankets on the sidewalk and peered through the gates.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s smaller than I imagined.

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Talk, talk, talk...

I am probably irritating. I talk. A lot. Probably too much. And I ask a lot of questions. Because I am interested; I want to know. This personality trait led to a fight with the Mister the other night. We had an argument as couples do. Or rather I had an argument. He sat across the table silent until I grabbed my glass of wine and headed upstairs to my office, more frustrated than angry. I am often frustrated with him. I think my frustration stems from his unwillingness/inability to answer me: why are you mad? Why are you so cranky? This is a trait he shares with my father. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized that it takes far more strength to hold your tongue than to unleash it; the knowledge, however, does not mean I forgive my father his silence. And so I’m reluctant to let Stanley off the hook. I am articulate—I can tell you at any given moment exactly what I’m feeling and why or why I’ve done/said what I did. Not so with him and this both frustrates and angers me.

Coco, our ailing, aging, Lhasa Apso has taken to drinking inordinate amounts of water. She drinks almost to the point of compulsion. But she won’t pee. We walk her for blocks and many, many long minutes and still nothing, not even a dribble. It frustrates me because I want to know why she is drinking so much, why she does not feel the need to pee. I pee. A lot. I pee almost as much as I talk. I cannot imagine what it is like to not pee for 12 hours at a stretch. I worry that she is in distress or in any sort of discomfort.. I’m a worrier and a fixer but I can’t fix what I don’t understand. And she can’t talk.

When I write, I almost always know my characters’ motivations for their actions. In real life, not so much. I am a lover of words but more than that I believe in words.

In the last few weeks, I’ve read over the body of my work as I was getting ready for the paperback release of Damaged Angels and doing first round edits on Unbroken. I’ve realized silence, the inability of some to articulate what they are feeling is a recurring theme in my writing; certainly it is the central theme in the forthcoming Unbroken.
In Unbroken, main character Lincoln tells us:

My parents, unable to change me, had instead, silenced me. When they’d stilled my hands, they’d taken my words, made me lower my voice to a whisper. Later, I remained silent in defense, refusing to acknowledge the hateful words: Braniac. Sissy. Faggot.

In What Binds Us, Matthew and Thomas-Edward almost miss the chance for love because each is afraid to tell the other he loves him.

The men and boys in Damaged Angels are often inarticulate, sometimes able to outrun their demons but never able to talk to them, to negotiate a truce, an end to the hostilities. This is most true in “Spam,” in which Billy’s father mirrors, uncomfortably, my own father, as I search for the source of his silence:

Sensing defeat, but unable to surrender, Billy turned to his father. “Dad?” One word, but in that one word was a plea of grand eloquence.

His father glanced at his mother. “Your father says, ‘No,’” Teresa informed her son. Then to her husband, “Isn’t it time you left for work?”

He nodded, rose, kissed the proffered cheek.

“Dad?” Again the plea, febrile desire.

His father turned to look at him. With his eyes, he asked him to understand. And then he was gone, a lone white figure fading into the whiteness of the morning.

Do not misinterpret the silence of Billy’s father. Do not think him a foolish man. Or worse, an indifferent one, for in truth, he is neither. Nor has he always been a man of silences. In fact, it was not until some months into his marriage to the girl, Teresa, with the hair of combed fire, that he lost his words.

As for the Mister and I, we are fine. I was sleeping when he left for work the next morning but he kissed the top of my head as he does every morning to wake me. As I lay there half-awake I realized we are not two characters in a romantic novel, are instead just two guys with common goals and similar sensibilities, but very different personalities who love and respect each other, who are trying to build something lasting.

I am a talker. Sometimes I need to listen. But in order to listen, I need Stanley to talk. Sometimes.

For the full story on the paperback release of Damaged Angels, see Beaten Track Publishing’s blog here: http://networkedblogs.com/JZhC2

www.larrybenjamin.com