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