Paul Alan Fahey's Blog, page 2

Highs and Lows

Hi, Everyone, I just wrote quite a long post and then somehow lost it. I think someone was trying to tell me something, eh?

Just wanted to check in with you and let ya know I am still alive and kicking. Well, maybe not kicking. But alive. 2016 has been a year of ups and downs and highs and lows for me. I published one writing book I'm quite proud of, The Short and Long Of It and a few short pieces, one in a satirical anthology of short stories of life under President Donald J. Trump titled We've Been Trumped and another short story in the LGBT charity collection, Love is Proud, dedicated to the victims of the Orlando shooting tragedy at Pulse nightclub.
I also received the green light from publisher Jessica Bell at Vine Leaves Press who will publish my own anthology, Equality: What Do You Think About When You Think of Equality, due for release on MLK Day January, 16, 2017. Given our current socio-political climate, this book means more to me than ever and I was determined to find a home for my 24 top drawer contributors. I hope you'll check Equality out when January draws near. (More information will be forthcoming on my blog.)

In August I got some pretty scary health news and I've been weathering that storm day to day. Not looking for sympathy here but wanted you to know why I've not been as active on the blog as I used to be. That said, I hope all of you are well and looking forward to the upcoming holidays. I plan to be here to celebrate them with you.

Going up to Stanford for a medical eval tomorrow. Wish me luck.

The best is yet to come,

Paul

Free Short Story

Hi, Everyone, I felt motivated due to this week's annual Central Coast Writer's conference in California. Wanted to share a short story I wrote when I taught and lived back east. Hope you find something to enjoy here.

https://medium.com/@paulfahey12/in-ho...

Hopefully, the best is yet to come.

My best,

Paul

The FABULOUS CENTRAL COAST WRITERS CONTEST

Hi, Everyone, it's been a while. I've been under the weather, but I'm coming back like gangbusters and ready to roll.

Hope you'll take a look at my new website inspired by my new writing book. But wait, there's plenty for readers to enjoy in this little volume, too. In fact The Short and Long Of It includes some great 55 Fiction and Flash Fiction from the best writers around. Plus plenty of exercises to get those creativity juices flowing.

Here's the link to my new website look. What do you think?

http://paulalanfahey.com
One interesting thing about this book--that I think sets it apart from other books on the topic-- is I wanted to SHOW how one can expand stories from tiny, teeny bits to much longer, more satisfying reads. I hope you'll give it a try. Again it's a little book with a lot going on inside it.

Now for even better news: I'm getting ready for our annual California Central Coast Writers' Conference in San Luis Obispo at Cuesta College. Sept 30-Oct1. So much to see and do and the price is right with most meals included. A great deal. If you live on the California Central Coast and if you love to read and write, it should be number one on your list. Take a look at the offerings and the price and see if you don't agree with me.

http://cuesta.edu/communityprograms/w...

I'll be there and if I'm strong enough, I'll be teaching my class, that unfortunately has been cancelled at present but am told it's capable of being reopened, and I'll be using my new book as a guide to stretching your fiction. Hope you'll come join me. I promise tons of fun along the way.

Hugs to you all.

And always remember, the best is yet to come,

Paul

On Tuesday July 12 ONLY Too Long Among the Dead is 99cents!

July 12, 2016

Hi, Everyone,

In my writing book The Short and Long of It: Expand, Adapt, and Publish Your Short Fiction , I devoted a chapter to character development and backstory. Many writers of short fiction--55 fiction, flash fiction, and short stories under 1500 words--have difficulty stretching their writing to longer forms like novellas, and novels.

One way to enhance, enrich, and deepen those longer works, is to use characters or character traits from those short fiction pieces and their backstories. In other words, build on what you already know about the characters in your short fiction and use this information to expand your new, longer stories.

Over the years, I've used this technique many times but never more so than in my novel Too Long Among The Dead

Here's what my novel is about: Two psychiatrists and their secretary accompany six of their most fragile female patients for a weekend of relaxation and experimental therapy in the high Sierras.

The novel is a homage of sorts to one of my favorite writers, Shirley Jackson. I’m sure you remember her classic short story The Lottery .

Many a high schooler read this terrifying tale in English class. Ms. Jackson’s most famous novel The Haunting of Hill House is a masterpiece in the literary-horror genre. My novel has a similar theme: What happens when mental illness and the paranormal collide?

For one day only, July 12, 2016, the ebook of "Too Long Among the Dead" is available from my publisher JMS Books at 80% off the regular price. Yep, it's just 99 cents. But only on this date. I hope you'll check out the link below. You'll find a longer blurb here and an excerpt to help you make up your mind.

http://www.jms-books.com

I'll be talking with you again soon. Coming up is news about my new nonfiction anthology of essays, Equality: What Do You Think About When You Think of Equality? If we ever needed a book that spoke to this subject, we sure do today. Twenty-five distinguished writers participated in this project, and I know you'll be impressed with the excellent list of contributors I've assembled.

The best is yet to come.

All my best,

Paul

Why I Wrote The Short and Long Of It

Hi, Everyone, just in case you missed this post on my publisher--JMS Books'--blog, I'd like to tell you a bit about why I wrote my new writing reference, The Short and Long Of It.

Here's the post:

Today Paul Alan Fahey stopped by to talk a bit about his new writing guide, The Short and Long of It: Expand, Adapt, and Publish Your Short Fiction, published by JMS Books and exclusively available on Kindle Select!
The Short and Long of It :

In January this year, I was asked to teach a workshop at our annual Central Coast Conference in September. After much hair pulling — my own — and thought, I came up with a topic, something I’d struggled with for years: How to expand shorter pieces like 55 Fiction, flash fiction, and short, short stories into longer publishable work — mainly as separate ebooks.

I wrote the workshop description first and then the book in February. I’ve never written anything so fast. It felt like the book was writing itself. Something I had to write and I hoped would be useful to other writers who had similar issues. ( The book is packed with examples of short fiction and should interest readers as well.)

It’s been my experience that many books on writing don’t actually delve too deeply into the writing process — warts and all. Authors don’t normally show all their messy and unruly notes, outlines, first paragraphs, or sections of first drafts with the reader. Well, maybe Hemingway, but he had to die first before this happened and his publisher released his notes and drafts.) In The Short and Long of It,, I also provide samples of my own work along with strategies and examples on how to make this transition — from short to long.

Blurb:

Do you write short fiction but long to s-t-r-e-t-c-h those tight little 55ers, flash pieces, and short stories into longer, publishable work?

Do you have binders full of short pieces with characters you’d love to flesh out? Are you dying to tell the rest of these stories?

If so, The Short and Long of It is for you!

Award-winning short fiction writer Paul Alan Fahey shows you how to expand and adapt your brief creations into longer, more satisfying stories, plays, novellas, and novels pitch perfect for publication in the e-age.

This book will help you practice expanding your short fiction. Through detailed examples and hands-on exercises, you’ll learn how to:

Adapt 55 fiction into flash fiction;
Adapt flash fiction into short stories and plays;
Adapt flash memoir into personal essays;
Write a tight logline;
Develop a story theme;
Build three-act structure; and
Develop characters and enhance backstory.

So grab a copy today and start writing longer stories tomorrow!

https://www.amazon.com/Short-Long-Exp...

Until later,

The best is yet to come.

Paul

The Short and Long Of It is FREE on KINDLE ONLY THIS SATURDAY AND SUNDAY

Hi, Everyone, just a quick note to let you know that my new writer's reference The Short and Long Of It: Expand, Adapt, & Publish Your Short Fiction is free this Memorial Day Weekend exclusively on Amazon. The book is for writers of short fiction who yearn to write longer work like short stories, plays, novellas, and even novels. That said, readers will have plenty to enjoy as I've included, along with my own pieces of 55 word fiction, flash fiction, and short shorts, many prize-winning works of other writers. So hope you'll take advantage of this great deal on Amazon, but remember it only lasts through Sunday, May 29th.
GO HERE to get your copy Sat or Sun:
https://www.amazon.com/Short-Long-Exp...

Along the same lines, a wonderful writing book by a writer friend, Fast Fiction: Creating Fiction in Five Minutes by Roberta Allen, and the inspiration for my new book, is being reprinted. You can read the terrific reviews of Roberta's book on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Fiction-Cr...


The best is yet to come. And it's FREE this weekend only!

Paul

Happy Thanksgiving

Hi, Everyone, just a quick note to all of you. Wanted to wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving with your families and loved ones. We'll be seven in Nipomo, California, or ten if you count three lively dogs. No, I'm not cooking. Bob is. I'm a terrible cook.

As a side note, I have a Christmas release, a very light gay romance coming out from JMS Books on December 7th titled, "All I Want for Christmas."

http://www.jms-books.com/index.php?ma...

JMS Books is having a great 35% off sale on Friday, Nov. 27 thru Monday, Nov. 30 for all e books. My Christmas e book, along with many others in the Stocking Stuffers series--including my pal, William Holden's release, "Silver and Gold," will be on sale and available for pre-order. Hope you'll give this fun and very romantic series a try.

If anything, it will get you in the mood for the holidays.

The best is yet to come.

Warmly,

Paul

What I discovered About Myself Today

People often ask, "What are you reading?"

Well, today I just started a wonderful book by Larry Duplechan titled Blackbird.

I've only read the first few pages but I know I'm going to love it. Do you ever feel that way about a book? It doesn't happen very often but when it does, it's wonderful.

Blackbird has an amazing introduction by lawyer, mystery writer, and multi-Lambda Lit Award winner, Michael Nava that really spoke to me.

This weekend I'm presenting the first Intro to LGBT Lit class at the Central Coast Writer's Conference in California. No pressure, right?

I've been trying like crazy to figure out how to cram such a huge subject area into a one hour workshop. I have a pretty comprehensive handout that covers most of what I want to say but still, I worry and wonder if I have enough resources within me to do a good enough job with such an important and landmark class. Again, no pressure. :)

Reading Mr. Nava's intro to Blackbird solved that issue for me. Of the many subjects he covered, in just a few pages, Nava talked about the differences in the perspectives and attitudes about homosexuality of gay writers born in the 1940s from those born in the mid-'50s and mid-'60s. (I would certainly be in the former group. B. 1944. Yep, I'm that old.)

Nava also wrote about survivor's guilt and a kind of PTSD or shell shock many older gay men carry with them after having lived through the worst of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and well into the '90s.

I've often used those same terms about myself: PTSD, survivor's guilt, trauma. It's no wonder for my gay romance series, Lovers and Liars, I'd pick a main character living through the worst of the London Blitz, someone with battle fatigue and layers of psychological trauma from childhood. Someone with whom I have a lot in common.

I recently did a radio interview about the upcoming conference with two other writing colleagues, Teri Bayus and Justin Schwartzenberger. Afterwards, and before I left the broadcasting studio, I told the radio host, Fred Munroe, how nervous and anxious I was. He followed me out into the lobby and said, "That's your authenticity. It's what makes you YOU." (Thank you, Fred.)

Whodathunk a character flaw I tried so hard most of my life to overcome could be something good, something I should embrace?

Not me.

Maybe after all I am enough. I just have to be me.

What a concept!

Until next time,

the best is yet to come,

Paul

Writing is a Personal Journey

Welcome,

The decision to end my Lovers and Liars gay wartime romance series with the novella Kindred Spirit was pretty much an easy choice to make. By the time I’d finished writing the previous book, A Deadly Game of Malice, I felt the character arcs were almost complete. But I also realized I still had some work to do, especially with Leslie. I knew I had to dig a little deeper to get at the root of Leslie Atwater’s psychological issues. I wrote Kindred Spirit with that goal in mind.

In Kindred Spirit, in order to solve a brutal murder, Leslie Atwater must take an emotional journey back to his childhood at St. Andrews--a boy's orphanage in central London. With his lover and partner, Edward Bridger, at his side, Leslie confronts the demons of his past and learns to accept himself as he is in order to move on with his life.

In a way, Leslie’s journey parallels my own life. Raised by a single mother in the late 1940s and ‘50s, I spent many months—possibly years—in foster homes with strangers that mother called our extended family. As a result of this childhood instability and what I would learn later about myself, I carried feelings of inferiority, insecurity, and self-doubt, through most of my life. I knew I was different from others, yet I didn’t quite grasp what that difference really was until I entered my teens.

I remember one night in the early1960s watching a film on television. Advise and Consent is about a Senate investigation into the past of a presidential nominee for Secretary of State. When the committee discovers a romantic “discretion” in the man’s past—he had an affair with another man—the nomination is quashed and true to Hollywood form during those times, the nominee commits suicide. I learned quite a lot watching this film. I learned there was a word that described who I was, and the word was homosexual. I also learned from Advise and Consent and other films of that era like The Children’s Hour, and The Fox, that there were no decent role models for me onscreen. Either I was destined to slit my throat, hang myself, or in the event I lived near a forest, have a tree plop on my head in the final reel.

Recently I participated in a radio interview with two other writer colleagues about our upcoming September writer’s conference on the Central California Coast where I’m scheduled to teach two workshops, one being the first ever offered at the Central Coast Conference on LGBT lit. After the radio show I confided in the host that I was nervous and anxious about talking over the radio, obviously part and parcel of my neurosis. Trust me, I make Woody Allen look normal. ☺

And you know what the radio host told me? “Keep the anxiety. That’s what makes you authentic.” Whodathunk something I’d been trying to rid myself for years is the one thing that makes me…well, me.

Back to Leslie Atwater.

In some ways, I'm a lot like Leslie, except he’s stuck back in a time where he must hide who he is from the outside world or suffer the consequences, most likely a prison sentence. I’m grateful to live in a time when I can finally be myself. Neuroses and all. Boy did that take a village and a hellova lot of time.

I hope you’ll enjoy Kindred Spirit. I have to admit this story’s quite a bit darker in mood and tone than the other installments in the Lovers and Liars series, but there’s definitely a shining ray of hope for Caroline’s little family by the novella’s end. And that’s what we all need to hold on to in life, isn’t it? Hope.

Q: What do you think? Is most writing autobiographical?

P.S. I apologize for this longer post, but I have one more bit of news to tell you. Kindred Spirit will be available as an e-book August 30th from JMS Books. If you’d rather read A Deadly Game of Malice and Kindred Spirit in paperback, Lovers and Liars Volume 2 will be available from JMS Books August 31.

Talk again soon.

The best is yet to come,

Paul

News From the Fahey Front

First, Happy Birthday to my husband Bob! We've been together thirty-nine years and married for two of them. Whodathunk? Love you, honey! <3

I've been busy here. Wanted to let you know what's been happening and why I haven't been blogging much.

The final installment of my "Lovers and Liars" gay historical romance series comes out end of August. "Kindred Spirit" will be published by JMS Books as an e book on August 30th. The day after, the last two installments in the series, "A Deadly Game of Malice " and "Kindred Spirit,"will appear in the paperback titled, "Lovers and Liars II."

Here's a little about "Kindred Spirit":
"When a bomb explodes near St. Andrew’s Home for Boys, it unearths a skeleton of a young adolescent. As Leslie, Edward, and Robert set about identifying the remains, the shocking discovery stirs up an old antagonism between the two brothers and brings to light a string of repressed memories for Leslie. It rests on Leslie and Edward to track down the remorseless killer of a kindred spirit."

"The Other Man" is now a play and set for workshopping July 28th at Chicago Dramatists. Playwright, Bernard Rice, has adapted three of the essays from our anthology for the stage into a funny, poignant, and lively drama. If you own the book, check out the essays by Rob Byrnes, Lewis DeSimone, and Rodney Ross. If not, "The Other Man" e- book is on sale through the end of July for 30% off at JMS Books.

I've just finished a Christmas novella, "All I Want for Christmas" that'll be out some time during the holidays from JMS Books.

Here's a short description:
"Thinking with his head and not his heart is an occupational hazard for Professor Leland Hansen. The anxiety of losing his teaching position causes a painful breakup with the one true love of his life, Cliff Emerson. When Cliff calls a few weeks before the Christmas holidays to announce he’s getting married, Leland sets out to win him back. Will the couple happily reunite at Christmas?"

I've also been working on a book proposal for a nonfiction anthology titled "Equality." I'm super excited about this project and have a great list of contributors. Here's a little about the book:

"In Equality, twenty-two award-winning and best-selling writers, including Anne Perry, Christopher Bram, Patricia Nell Warren, Michael Nava, Catherine Ryan Hyde, Anne R. Allen, Felice Picano, Barbara Abercrombie, and Victoria Zackheim, take the theme and run with it. These topical, thought-provoking, funny, smart, and thoroughly compelling essays will present equality in ways you never imagined and perhaps guide you to explore further what is professed to be the very foundation of our democracy."

So I guess you can say I've been quite busy. Just wanted to touch base and let you know what I've been up to.

Talk again soon.

The best is yet to come,

Paul (On Twitter: @paulfahey12)
paulalanfahey.com