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Chatting with Christopher Koehler
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What made you pick the world of rowing for your novel?
What's next is that Christopher wants a nap, but that's not happening. ;-)So Tipping the Balance is in the hands of my beta readers, and I'm working on the macroplot for Settling the Score and beginning preliminary work on the as yet unnamed fourth novel. I'd always envisioned the CalPac stories as a set of three, almost a triptych if you will, so I'm not really sure how this fourth book will fit in, or if it'll be it's on its own or part of a new series. But a character sort of created himself in Tipping the Balance, and despite the fact that he only appeared in about 9 pages or so, I find him interesting enough to develop further.
Hopefully no one'll find anything too epically wrong with TTB so I can submit it by the end of May, although on the advice of the publisher, I already sent her a synopsis. Then I'd like to get STS out by the end of the year, but that's just a rough projection.
Aaaand since you asked so nicely, I'll post an excerpt from TTB in a few minutes.
S.A. wrote: "Phoenix wrote: "I dunno. Pride, Prejudice and Godzilla. Has a kinda...ring to it."Darcy vs. Dagon
Jane Austen meets H.P Lovecraft. Tentacles, true tentacles."
Darcy vs Dagon? Please tell me you're kidding.
aww thank ya. I feel so spoiled! I can't wait for Tipping the Balance. Patience isn't one of my virtues.
Elizabeth wrote: "What made you pick the world of rowing for your novel?"A variety of things, really. They say write about what you know, and I've been rowing for a decade or so. I had a brief and inglorious collegiate rowing career that ended with a second-degree sprain in a ligament in my left leg. It's pretty hard to maim yourself while rowing (here's the exception http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XfSr2... at about 0:17 into it...I've rowed this course many times, by the way), but land workouts? Oh yeah.
And write about what you're passionate about, and for a lot of years I ate, breathed, slept, and crapped rowing. It can be an all-consuming sport, at least if you're going to be any good at it. So I spent a lot of years learning to row.
And then, have you seen collegiate rowers? They're hot. I love my sport. The eye candy's unbeatable.
Stacia wrote: "aww thank ya. I feel so spoiled! I can't wait for Tipping the Balance. Patience isn't one of my virtues."It's not one of mine, either. I hate waiting for the latest installment in something, but at least the turn-around time is faster with electronic publishing.
Christopher wrote: "S.A. wrote: "Phoenix wrote: "I dunno. Pride, Prejudice and Godzilla. Has a kinda...ring to it."Darcy vs. Dagon
Jane Austen meets H.P Lovecraft. Tentacles, true tentacles."
Darcy vs Dagon? Ple..."
I bet someone is writing it as I type.
Unedited excerpt, Tipping the Balance.Brad spent the drive home flying on an adrenaline high. Drew was the shit. That man was sick, there was no two ways about it. He hadn’t felt this jazzed since his 8 had won the PCRCs. Drew'd been there for that, too, Brad remembered.
He laughed out loud. He hadn’t made too big a fool of himself, not since he’d picked up the phone and called Drew in the first place. At first, he’d been so nervous he could barely speak. But he’d planned ahead and he’d stuck to his script, pages arrayed before him on the desk. It was probably a little stilted, but it helped put his mind at ease.
And then Drew had asked him a question he hadn’t planned on, and Brad panicked. He’d never been a one of those people who thought fast on his feet, and as nervous as he’d been, Brad froze.
Then he’d frantically rifled through his papers, trying to find something he could modify on the fly.
“Are you reading from a script?” Drew had laughed.
“No,” Brad had said, letting his pages of scribbled conversation scatter as he dropped them on his desk. “No, what gives you that idea? Just busy…with paperwork.”
At the time, he’d been petrified, but there in the car, Brad thought it was pretty damned funny. Making a script to call someone, then getting caught at it and playing it off. He still wasn’t sure if he’d gotten away with it, only that Drew had let it go.
Drew was a class act, Brad could tell, a man more sophisticated and suave, if that was the word, than he’d ever be. He was a big lug and he knew it. You could put him in a fancy suit and teach him to tie a Windsor knot and curl his pinky while drinking tea, and he’d still be a big lug yanking on his collar because it felt like it was strangling the life out of him.
Just the thought of himself all dressed up like that made him snicker. Brad, with his neck like a tree trunk and thighs to match. In a suit. Drinking tea.
But Drew…Brad stopped laughing. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Drew the entire lunch. Every time he felt uncomfortable or even scared and started glancing around, the sight of Drew pulled him back.
“Fuck, he’s handsome,” Brad whispered. Drew was just average height, but Brad liked that better. He’d been around tall and rangy rowers for five years, and not one of them had ever caught his eye.
Drew’s brown hair sparkled in the sunlight when they stood in the parking lot to say goodbye. That was the word, sparkled. Maybe it was some gay super hair product or good genes or something. Brad had brown hair, at least what was left of it from where it was noticeably thinning on top. He just clipped it super short every other week and left it at that. But even when he’d had enough hair to style, it had never looked like Drew’s.
Blue eyes that danced when he smiled. That was just weird. Blue eyes usually bugged him. There was something off about them, the way they were different colors from ice blue to flat-out gray, but all still blue. His dad had blue eyes, and they’d never held a hint of warmth. But Drew’s…they looked so friendly, so inviting.
Muscles that showed, even through his business-casual clothes. Brad wasn’t cultured or sophisticated, which he imagined meant things like knowing about art or fancy food or…something. He didn’t know. That was him. But he knew muscles. He knew what time in the gym felt like, and what it looked like later, after you’d recovered and built the muscle. Drew had muscles.
Drew had earned his muscles the hard way, too. Brad had never juiced. He knew people who had, people who’d done Deca and then Clomid to keep their balls from shrinking. He could always tells. The thought made him curl his lip in contempt. Juicing was cheating. That was for pussies, pussies and…
Gays?
Brad had forgotten that Drew was a homo, that it was another man whose appearances he was so hung up on. But damn, those pecs alone, hidden behind Drew’s dress shirt, they’d taken a lot of time to sculpt like that. A lot of guys just did the bench press for their pecs and left it that, but it took a lot more than that. It took time with the incline press, the dumbbell flies, pull-ups…No, those muscles made Drew look like a man, not just someone who was male. Maybe that was it. There was something manly about Drew.
Was it gay to appreciate another man’s masculinity? Brad shook his head. It couldn’t be. It was just acknowledging all Drew’s hard work in the gym, that was all.
But even if that was the case, that he just appreciated Drew’s efforts in the one area he happened to know something about, Brad was forced to admit that there was more to it than that.
Brad shifted uncomfortably as he drove. He’d bonered right up as soon as Drew got out of his car. He was just glad Drew had gone into the restaurant ahead of him so he couldn’t see the wood Brad had been pushing. But he’d been hard for the entire lunch, balls so tight they ached.
That was totally gay, and Brad knew it. That pissed him off. It scared him. That’s not who he was.
Was it?
That’s not who he wanted to be.
But what if he secretly did?
“Damnit it!” Brad yelled, bellowed, as he pounded the steering wheel in frustration. “I’m not gay!”
Then he noticed the dashboard clock.
“Shit!” he screamed, well and truly pisssed.
It was 4:00 PM. Lunch had lasted hours, and he’d never noticed. He’d been gone from the office all afternoon.
Brad gunned the engine. He had to get back to work.
Great excerpt. Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. heh heh.
Phoenix wrote: "Great excerpt. Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. heh heh."Well...yeah. Or there wouldn't be a story. ;-) But thanks! I really got to like Brad a lot while I was writing this.
Oh I love that! LOL he's got it so bad poor Brad. I can't wait.
Love the excerpts. As Phoenix said, he's definitely protesting too much. Stopping in to wave and say hi but sadly can't stay too long. Time zones, and work today.
Stacia wrote: "Oh I love that! LOL he's got it so bad poor Brad. I can't wait."Yeah, Brad crushes pretty (ahem) hard on Drew for a while. Manages to make a fool out of himself in the process, too.
Anne wrote: "Love the excerpts. As Phoenix said, he's definitely protesting too much. Stopping in to wave and say hi but sadly can't stay too long. Time zones, and work today."
Thanks! I'm glad you liked the snippets and I'm glad you could stop by, work and all.
So my funniest/strangest moment as a writer? Sitting in my favorite Starbucks writing a sex scene. What made it so funny is that the occupant of the next table was the Lutheran (ELCA) bishop for this region. I know the guy, too, since he was my parents' minister before being elected bishop. I think he'd have found it hilarious. I think it's funny...now. At the time? Kind of weirded me out.
Oh he probably secretly reads the stuff..LOL That's one of the things keeping me from writing a book. (No not the Lutheran Pastor)I tried writing a sex scene. It made me laugh.
Christopher wrote: "So my funniest/strangest moment as a writer? Sitting in my favorite Starbucks writing a sex scene. What made it so funny is that the occupant of the next table was the Lutheran (ELCA) bishop for th..."One of those 'if only they knew' moments.
Stacia wrote: "Oh he probably secretly reads the stuff..LOL That's one of the things keeping me from writing a book. (No not the Lutheran Pastor)I tried writing a sex scene. It made me laugh."I sometimes got a vibe off him. That he's married with children means nothing, of course, in this day and age. If he does, he can contact me and I'll shoot him a free copy. Really nice guy.
What other type of stories do you want to write after the Rowing series? Any ideas?
Stacia wrote: "What other type of stories do you want to write after the Rowing series? Any ideas?"Well, like I'd mentioned, I've got that 4th story--the CalPac Rowmances: The New Crew? I dunno. I don't want to be one of those authors who keeps cranking stories in a series out long after the magic is gone. I mean, I've got no problems selling out, but even I have my standards. They're low, but they're there. ;-)
I have a number of ideas and things I'd planned to write, particularly in the steampunk arena. My goal had been to find an agent in the next year or three, but publishing's changed so much since I started writing after grad school, that I may need to reconsider that. The one I'm working on now could easily be turned into an erotic romance, since there's an element of that in it to begin with.
And many of the manners comedies I've written can and should likewise be re-written. One thing I want to state up front is that I've learned a tremendous amount as a writer from reading m/m romances. The most important thing being the handling and depiction of emotion. The lack of emotion was a criticism common to my earlier writing across genres. So I think these romantic comedies might make some good stories when I rework them. I'd start over from the ground up, because trying to edit something like that just produces Frankenstein's monster--none of the bits and pieces add up to a pleasing whole.
But whatever I end up writing and publishing in this genre, it's going to include a healthy dose of feel-good boy-meets-boy, because as a reader I really love that.
So I think what I'll do with the next hour is spend some time continuing to interact with you all, followed by another excerpt (RTB or TTB, I'm not sure), and then a contest as we head towards 5:00 PM for a free e-copy of Rocking the Boat.
>>But whatever I end up writing and publishing in this genre, it's going to include a healthy dose of feel-good boy-meets-boy, because as a reader I really love that.<<Ditto!
Elizabeth wrote: "Another great excerpt, thank you!"Thanks! I really like Tipping the Balance. I hope other people do, too.
I read the comment about writing what you enjoy reading and thought Yes! That's what I do and one of the reasons I started writing. I think that's an important one - writing what you would want to read yourself.
Christopher wrote: "Stacia wrote: "What other type of stories do you want to write after the Rowing series? Any ideas?"Well, like I'd mentioned, I've got that 4th story--the CalPac Rowmances: The New Crew? I dunno. ..."
I like romantic comedies :-) You'll do great! The Brad situation is a good start..LOL
Anne wrote: "I read the comment about writing what you enjoy reading and thought Yes! That's what I do and one of the reasons I started writing. I think that's an important one - writing what you would want to ..."In some ways, that's what got me into writing in this genre. I'd derived so much enjoyment from it that it just seemed natural to try it. I've read some fantastic stories, and I don't mean sex part of it, I mean the plot and the characters. I tend to invest pretty heavily in people, whether they're real or fictitious, and I like them to stick around. So yeah, write a series with amiable, hot guys and you'll basically be putting a hook through my nose.
Stacia wrote: "Christopher wrote: "Stacia wrote: "What other type of stories do you want to write after the Rowing series? Any ideas?"Well, like I'd mentioned, I've got that 4th story--the CalPac Rowmances: T..."
Thanks! I'm really glad you liked it. More to come...
Unedited excerpt, Tipping the Balance.It was passive-aggressive, even a little childish, but Drew wanted to see how long it took Brad to figure out that something about their evening upset him. It took the entire football game, a quick bite to eat, and part of the drive back to his place.
“Hey, you’re awfully quiet over there,” Brad said.
“Yes, I am,” Drew said, his tone of voice brittle.
Brad frowned in the darkness. “Uh-oh. I don’t like the sound of that.”
Drew sighed. He hated ‘discussions,’ but he’d sparked this one so he couldn’t very well run from it. “Were you aware how much you relaxed when they joined us?”
“Are you upset Nick and Morgan joined us? You told them to sit down,” Brad said.
Drew shook his head. “I didn’t say I was upset. I just observed how much you calmed down once they did. Why is that?”
Brad squirmed. “I don’t know…I didn’t think I did.”
Drew looked at him levelly, but didn’t say anything. Brad sighed. “I just know a lot of people there.”
“We didn’t run into anyone you know other than Nick and Morgan,” Drew pointed out.
“No, I guess we didn’t. Maybe my old friends aren’t that into football,” Brad said. It sounded like a question.
“Are you ashamed of me?” Drew said softly, afraid of the answer but needing it all the same.
“Oh hell, Drew. Is that what this is about?” Brad demanded. He looked at Drew, but Drew refused to meet his eyes, looking straight ahead at the road.
“Are you?”
“Of course not,” Brad snapped. “No, Drew, of course not,” he repeated more softly.
“Then what is it? Because that’s sure what it feels like,” Drew said, “and I’ve got to tell you, it sucks.”
“What do you want me from, Drew? It’s October. In August, I thought was I was straight. Now…”
“Now what? What happened?” Drew said.
“I met you,” Brad sighed, “and now I don’t know.”
This is why his friends had warned Brad, why Nick had warned him. He cared for Brad a lot. Lately, he wondered if he were starting to love him, but this hurt. Before he met Brad, he’d always thought if that a boyfriend “did him wrong,” he’d react with righteous fury, kicking said bad boyfriend to curb in a fit of indignation and self-respect. But now, faced with the very real possibility that his closeted boyfriend was embarrassed to be seen publically with him, all he wanted to do was cry.
“You’re quiet. Talk to me?” Brad said.
“It’s funny,” Drew said in a way that meant it was anything but. “I fought tooth and claw to come out in high school. My family was horrified. I got the shit kicked out of me just about every day for most of my sophomore year by big jerks like you, and now—”
“I’m not a big jerk,” Brad said quietly. “I’m just—”
“No, not intentionally, but I’m hurt anyway. It’s just kind of ironic, you know? Drew St. Charles, teenaged ambassador to baffled heterosexual high-schoolers eleven years later is dating a closet-case and getting his heart bro—trampled.”
Brad remained silent for the rest of the drive to Drew’s house.
“Are you coming in?” Drew said from the driveway when he realized Brad hadn’t gotten out of the car.
“I wasn’t sure you wanted me to,” Brad said.
Drew wanted many things, starting with a boyfriend who would, if not hold his hand in public, at least be seen with him. But he also wanted Brad. He wasn’t used to compromising. He didn’t like it.
“I want you to come in,” Drew said.
Brad sat in the car, just looking out at him, a worried look on his face.
“Please?” said Drew. He held out his hand.
That is what hooks me into a story. I need to feel invested in the characters - it's one of the reasons I love reading series.A good plot is important too, but if I don't care what happens to the characters I lose interest in the plot.
Anne wrote: "That is what hooks me into a story. I need to feel invested in the characters - it's one of the reasons I love reading series.A good plot is important too, but if I don't care what happens to t..."
I have to admit, I've not finished books when I've found the characters repellent, or worse, annoying. Then you just kind of want to poke them with a stick or something.
I like series. Different characters take turn in the front. Just seeing Nick and Morgan's names made it feel like going back home.
Okay, contest time. The first person to guess correctly wins an electronic copy of Rocking the Boat.Follow this link to an article about the San Diego Crew Classic.
http://tinyurl.com/3oz65km
The top picture features three rowers after a race. I am one of those three rowers. Guess correctly before everyone else, and you win a copy of RTB. If you've already got one...then I don't know. We'll talk to DSP's social-media expert and come up with something worth your while.
And stay off my blog for this. You're on the honor system.
Stacia wrote: "I like series. Different characters take turn in the front. Just seeing Nick and Morgan's names made it feel like going back home."I know exactly what you mean. Nick and Morgan have smaller roles in TTB, but the third book, Settling the Score returns the focus to the CalPac Crew, and that means we'll be seeing a lot more of them, even if the story is Stuart's.
I'm also trying to decide if there's a wedding in their future or not. If there is, do I include it in STS or make it a stand-alone story?
Christopher wrote: "Okay, contest time. The first person to guess correctly wins an electronic copy of Rocking the Boat.Follow this link to an article about the San Diego Crew Classic.
http://tinyurl.com/3oz65km
you're the one in the front
T..."
Stacia wrote: "Christopher wrote: "Okay, contest time. The first person to guess correctly wins an electronic copy of Rocking the Boat.Follow this link to an article about the San Diego Crew Classic.
http:..."
What do you mean by front T? Left, right, or center?
the first picture. You're in the boat to the right. I call that front..lol
Stacia wrote: "since you're all facing the same way"Yep, that's me!
Technically, since we face backwards, I was near the rear of the boat, either at 7 or 5 seat, both starboard. I honestly don't remember. Oddly enough my coach has switched me to port, now. Whatevs.
You win! :-) You've already got a copy, don't you?
yes sir I do. You can give it to someone else if you like.
Stacia wrote: "yes sir I do. You can give it to someone else if you like."You're the only one playing at this point. So why don't you send me your email addy via FB message, and I'll give to Ariel, DSP's social media expert. She'll hook you up with the DSP title of your choice.
will she wait till your next one comes out? :-)
Stacia wrote: "will she wait till your next one comes out? :-)"I can do that myself, if you'd like.
yes that is what I would like, thank you :-) Maybe if you have another one later someone will be around to play.
Stacia wrote: "yes that is what I would like, thank you :-) Maybe if you have another one later someone will be around to play."You were here. That's what matters. :-) I'll keep you posted on the editorial progress of TTB and send you the PDF when it's released.
All right, everyone. That's all for now. I really appreciate everyone who stopped by. See you in the interwebs!C
Christopher wrote: "Stacia wrote: "yes that is what I would like, thank you :-) Maybe if you have another one later someone will be around to play."You were here. That's what matters. :-) I'll keep you posted on the..."
Thought I'd keep ya company :-) Stay out of trouble
Darcy vs. Dagon
Jane Austen meets H.P Lovecraft. Tentacles, true tentacles.