Saints & Sinners Literary Festival online March 11-14; including my panel and reading

 

Literature online is now nothing new, but with an entire literary festival, from readings to panels, all online, the 18th annual Saints & Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival, usually held in New Orleans, returns with a robust roster on March 11-14, and most events are free to the public. I’ll be participating with a panel on Memoir & Fiction, and as part of the reading line-up.

The virtual SASFest will include literary discussions, writing workshops, readings, and special events, all via Zoom or YouTube. While the convivial gatherings at previous SASfests at New Orleans restaurants and bars will be missed, the online version packs the talent with literary legends and acclaimed new writers. Literary panels and discussion topics include a wide array of genres: mystery, romance, young adult, poetry, memoir vs. fiction, and short fiction.

Since 2003, Saints + Sinners Literary Festival brings together the who’s who of the LGBTQ literary world. The Festival features panel discussions and writing workshops by authors, editors, and publishers for emerging writers and LGBTQ literature fans. 

Among the highlights are a discussion with the Literary Luminaries of the Violet Quill —Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, and Edmund White­–  and a discussion of Jewish Lesbian Literature and Activism with Elana Dykewomon, Judith Katz, Irena Klepfisz, and Michele Karlsberg. 

The Reading Series includes new voices and literary icons sharing their work including Meredith Doench, Cheryl Head, Michael Lowenthal, Daniel W.K. Lee, David S. Pederson, JD Scott, Tammy Lynne Stoner, and Sassafras Lowrey.

Also reading: the winners from the festival’s first annual poetry contest —Danielle Bero, Ezra Adamo, and Steven Riel and three contributors to the festival’s 12th annual short fiction contest: Colby Byrne, Lisa Hines, and Laura Price Steele. 

(from upper left) Farzana Doctor, Colby Byrne, Dorothy Allison, Bryan Washington (from lower left) Phil Gambone, Regie Cabico and Judy Grahn are just seven of the many authors participating in SASfest 2021.

A new addition to the Festival lineup is a Conversation Series featuring authors interviewing authors. Bryan Washington will discuss his acclaimed first novel Memorial, a New York Times Noteable Book of 2020, with author Matthew Griffin. 

Scholar & Poet Julie R. Enszer will host a talk with literary icon Judy Grahn regarding her new book, Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender and Erotic Power.

Founder of the Son of Baldwin media community, Robert Jones, Jr. discusses his groundbreaking new novel The Prophets, recently featured in the New York Times, with The Reading Life’s Susan Larson.

 

Journalist Merryn Johns will discuss sex and censorship and the modern gay rights movement with author and political activist Naomi Wolf; and Jenn Shapland and Carlos Dews discuss their passion for the work of Carson McCullers.

 

Special Events

SASfest this year will be more than books. Bay Area favorite Fauxnique (Monique Jenkinson) will perform excerpts from her provocative cabaret works and will read passages from her forthcoming drag memoir Faux Queen.

The New Orleans-based band The Slick Skillet Serenaders play a set of their 1920s and ‘30s-era Ragtime, Blues, and Jazz music stylings.

Jewelle Gomez

Members and donors to the festival can also view a partial screening and discussion of the Project Legacies documentary, In Her Words: 20th Century Lesbian Fiction. 

SASFest also offers established and emerging LGBTQ authors, as well as students and readers, an opportunity to network via Padlet, a free community building app, and nurture their craft with a diverse array of artistic and educational offerings.

 

The Writing Workshop Series will feature Dorothy Allison, Michael Nava, Matthew Clark Davison, and Radclyffe. Acclaimed writer Jewelle Gomez will lead a poetry workshop, and also included is an instructional workshop from Kindle Direct Publishing to familiarize authors with their services and self-publishing options. Workshops will have a fee.

 

Tubby & Coo’s Mid-City Book Shop is the official bookstore of Saints and Sinners. Buy authors’ books from the shop via BookShop and the store will donate a portion of sales back to the Festival. All events are free this year with the exception of the Writing Workshops. Tickets on sale at

www.sasfest.org. (Reprinted from my article in the Bay Area Reporter.)

Finding Tulsa - book release event Sept. 22 at Dog Eared Books with Baruch Porras-Hernandez

Join me in a chat with author Baruch Porras-Hernandez on Sept. 22 at 8pm PST as we discuss my seventh novel Finding Tulsa. Hollywood, the 1990s, gay sexuality and musical theatre are among the topics in my new novel, which is available now (pre-order until Sept. 22) through online retailers and by ordering through your favorite independent bookstore.

 While I will be at Dog Eared Bookstore, it will be closed by that time. But if you're in San Francisco, you'll soon be able to buy my new and previously published books there. Yes, Dog Eared and many other bookstores are cautiously open to the public. Mask up, squirt some sanitizer on your hands, and shop on!

RSVP on the Facebook event page, or directly on the EventBrite invite. You'll get a link to the Zoom chat, where, after talking with Baruch, I'll take questions from attendees. Once again, Tuesday, Sept. 22 (which is also the Autumnal Equinox) at 8pm Pacific Time, 11pm East Coast, so you can show up in your pajamas, considering you may have spent all day in them anyway.

Yes, the West Coast is burning, the East Coast is flooding, political turmoil is daily -heck, more than daily- inducing nausea and outrage in millions nationwide, and a global pandemic is killing thousands a day. So why and how do authors and other artists continue to promote their works? We'll discuss that as well.

It's often a struggle to get fans to show up at readings. I dislike relying on social media platforms that have been proven to be complicit in corruption and disinformation. But most of us, the smart ones, at least, can weed through the political lies to share good news. I hope you can do the same.

 

 

And, on Wednesday, Sept. 30 at 7pm PST, I'll be online again, reading a short except from Finding Tulsa with three other gay male writers; Richard May, Wayne Goodman and Rob Rosen. Visit the Perfectly Queer Readings Facebook page for info and a Zoom link.

For links to my previously recorded talks, visit my events page.

Also, my first advance review has been shared on GoodReads:

"'Finding Tulsa' belongs in company with 'The Lost Language of Cranes' by David Leavitt and 'The Mysteries of Pittsburgh' by Michael Chabon. If I had not known going in that this novel was a work of fiction, I would have assumed it to be an autobiography. The narrator is focused on himself alone and makes no assumptions about the other cast of characters around him. In the first chapter, narrator Stan gives a clear indication of what to expect: "This story goes back and forth, but loops around itself. My life/career/whatever, misguided as they come, is based purely on the loss and discovery of men."

 

And check out my first (online) published review on Joyfully Jay! Reviewer Camille really got the intent of Finding Tulsa and offers insight and some apt critique.

 

Keep up with events and reviews on my Facebook author page and website, www.jimprovenzano.com.

And follow me on the other things!

https://twitter.com/jim_provenzano

https://www.instagram.com/jimprovenzano/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/620500.Jim_Provenzano

http://www.amazon.com/author/jimprovenzano

https://www.youtube.com/user/Cyclizen

Finding Tulsa's on Broadway! ... World, that is.

 

I'm on Broadway! ... World, that is.

Finding Tulsa got a nice advance mention on Broadway World.

The notice includes a story summary and link to my IndieGogo campaign, which is still accepting backers. $25 gets an online thank you and ebook (your choice of format).

$50 gets you a signed first edition paperback, and a bonus ebook of any one of my books.

Donate more and get more books, including paperback, ebooks and audiobooks.

Just want a book? Pre-order now online (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo) or at your favorite independent bookstore to help my rankings when it's released. That gets the book seen by more potential readers.

I recently got my galley print copy, and after fixing a few bits, it's been submitted to be published. 

Also, Erie Gay News is hosting a few giveaways for both a signed paperback of Finding Tulsa and five copies of my June-released audiobook adaptations of my fourth and fifth novels, the Lambda Literary Award-winning romance, Every Time I Think of You and its Lammy Finalist sequel, Message of Love, narration by Michael Wetherbee.

Get in on these freebies, support indie authors and stay safe out there, or in there.

Finding Tulsa, my seventh novel and advance fundraiser

My seventh novel, Finding Tulsa, will be published in September 2020 with Palm Drive Publishing.  Check out the rave advance quotes from some of my favorite authors and filmmakers, and check out the IndieGogo fundraiser!

The story

Stan Grozniak, director of a ’90s cult action trilogy and gay art films, almost self-sabotages a prestigious directing gig with his writer-producer ex-boyfriend, after casting his rediscovered teenage summer stock crush. His tale of cinematic success and failure captures the passion and heartache of making love, making movies, and the occasional riot.

Read the first four chapters free at
http://palmdrivepublishing.com/Finding_Tulsa/FindingTulsa.html

Advance praise for Finding Tulsa

“Everything’s coming up roses in Finding Tulsa, Jim Provenzano’s intoxicating portrait of an artist as young to middle-aged man, from a high school musical techie in torn shorts to a semi jaded independent gay filmmaker. It’s a well-told yarn, full of humor and panache about a Hollywood player torn between his boyhood crush and a porn star. Spin the bottle, ride the Rolodex, and fasten your seat belt for Provenzano’s sweet roller coaster ride.”

– Marc Huestis, film director (Sex Is …) and author of Impresario of Castro Street: an Intimate Showbiz Memoir

“Finding Tulsa reminds you what a good friend a novel can be.  It’s about friendship, about “losing men and then finding them,” about brotherly love and conflict, and the possibility of resolution.  It’s sexy, funny, astute, panoramic – it knows about suburban Ohio basement rec rooms and glam parties in the Hollywood hills.  I felt like I had met a charming guy at a cocktail party who seemed to get me, understood my past, confided his own, and then disappeared to another better party before I was ready for him to leave.  And it’s wrapped around a fearless, wrenching narrative about facing your childhood demons, raising the question of whether or not one of the demons might have been you. There’s so much to savor, to argue with, reflect upon, learn from, enjoy.”­

– John Weir, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket

“Jim Provenzano must have been spying on me from my adolescence (making short films with my brother) to my adulthood (making gay movies and TV series). I identified with every twist, turn, and blow by blow of this sexy show biz saga!” 

– Sam Irvin, Director of Dante’s Cove; Co-Producer of Gods And Monsters and The Broken Hearts Club

“Finding Tulsa is sexy, romantic, witty, engaging, both cleverly current yet sweetly retrospective. It's Jim Provenzano's most complex and accomplished novel. He gets so much right and so evocatively about show business, from those school plays we all remember to Hollywood made-for-television movies, with delicious stops at boyhood Super-8 movies and out of town gay porn shoots.”
– Felice Picano, author of Justify My Sins: A Hollywood Novel in Three Acts,
and the New York Times best-seller Like People in History

“Jim Provenzano's sexy, funny and soulful new novel Finding Tulsa is a beautiful deep-end dive into the memory of desire, the thumping bass note that drives life and art. The novel gorgeously explores how our hearts and cocks are woven with our theatre and films as we figure out how to be the star of our own queer story.” 
– Tim Miller, Performer and author of A Body in the O 

“Lights! Camera! Action! Finding Tulsa is a show-biz comedy told by a witty industry insider divulging how plays and movies and characters like “Tulsa” help gay boys survive adolescence, create identity, and worship beauty. What better icons could Provenzano have picked than Sondheim and Gypsy on which to fly his vivid characters, backstage intrigues, and dialogue sure to thrill the theater and movie queen in all of us. Writing at the top of his powers, with his striped tie and hopes high, he’s got rhythm. All he needs is you to go with ’im. A splendid romp! Let him entertain you!”

– Jack Fritscher, author of Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera and the Lammy Finalist, Some Dance to Remember: A Memoir-Novel of San Francisco 1970-1982

“Jim Provenzano always keeps in mind what the original ‘Tulsa’ said in Gypsy: ‘This step is good for the costume.’ Provenzano never misses a step as he suavely combines aesthetics and homoerotics in a work that is throughout deeply touching.”

– David Ehrenstein, author of Open Secret: Gay Hollywood–1928-2000

 Donate to get your copy, ebook or paperback. Donate more and get copies of my previous books in paperback, ebook, and audiobook!

https://igg.me/at/findingtulsa/x/7012313#/

ACT UP on 'Pose' - revisiting a pivotal day

As one of the 111 ACT UP members arrested in the Stop the Church action of December 1989, it was wonderful to see the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power included in the Season 2 premiere episode of the FX series Pose. The groundbreaking series focuses on the New York City ball communities of color, and transgender women struggling to make ends meet by building  chosen families.

I particularly loved seeing nurse Judy Kubrak (Sandra Bernhard) almost dragging a reluctant Pray Tell (Billy Porter) to his first meeting. Bernhard discusses ACT UP, and many other contemporary topics, in an expansive wonderful new interview for The Daily Beast.

The depiction of the group meeting was a bit simplistic, but served its purpose. It would be impossible to share the months of preparation that went into the Stop the Church protest, and the divisions within our ranks at the time over the action.

Other critiques and comments on the episode are included in a deft account by writer/editor Mathew Rodriguez for TheBody.com.

"Northrop did have some slight criticisms of the short depiction of the action in Pose -- mainly that it didn't capture just how big the demonstration really was. While there were hundreds of protesters inside, there were thousands outside protesting quite loudly. The protest included some of ACT UP's most well-known iconography, including artist and ACT UP member Ray Navarro dressed as Jesus and the poster of John Cardinal O'Connor next to an unrolled condom that said, "Know Your Scumbags."

Anachronisms aside (it took place on December 10, 1989, not in 1990). The episode is set in winter, a few weeks or months later, so that's a small quibble. I saw it as a choreographic version of Pray Tell’s participation and empowerment.

ACT UP meeting in 'Pose'

Laying down in the aisles was just one of many aspects of the protest, and I was among those, in an affinity group called The Order of the Carmelites, who reenacted laying prostrate in the aisle as the historic nuns did. A larger affinity group called The Marys did the same. Unlike the Pose version, it was not an inspired spontaneous action, but a carefully orchestrated series of movements.

Of course the most 'scandalous' moment in the action (not included in the TV show), and covered by media as 'an outrage,' was that of former altar boy Tom Keane breaking a sacrament wafer at the altar.

The other shots in the Pose episode portrayed the screaming and arrests, which were not as lengthy inside as shown, except for the then-irascible Michael Petrelis, who instead of following the silent die-in theme, chose to stand atop a pew seat and repeatedly shout "Stop Killing Us!"

But these critiques are minor when one considers the gift of including this momentous event through an artistic lens in a hit TV show.

My own fictionalized account in my 2007 third novel, Cyclizen, included all that, but most specifically, being carried off on a stretcher by NYPD (in basic caps; the riot gear and helmets were worn by police outside, not as depicted in Pose). Like the show, my own depiction is personalized and literary, not documentary-style.

One overhead shot of Pray Tell being carried out with others on a stretcher echoed my own experience, a sort of epiphany, that what we were doing was not only right, but a Christian thing to do, like Jesus chasing the money-changers out of the temple.

The episode could have included a few shots of historic news footage of the thousands outside the cathedral, which ended up having a larger impact over time. ACT UP leader Maxine Wolfe says as much in a documentary about the action. But the Pose script took on a more personal version, that of Billy Porter's and others' characters finding a way to fight back.

Disagreeing on Disagreement: the Upside Down of 'Them'

Three examples of online arguments vexed me enough to further explore them. The first was being scolded for calling Starbucks coffee drinkers dumb, the second for getting rightwing hatred in a rock music group, the third being outright rabid hatred for ads with my new book trailer. They're each strangely connected, and worth comparing.

First off, reviews are good, so it's not about my books, although they could certainly use some new ones! That's one thing I can take, a critical book review that focuses on the storytelling. 

Of course, if more people were buying it, I wouldn't feel compelled to spend a few bucks to promote the very nice trailer for my book. I'd uploaded it to YouTube and Instagram, hoping to promote them both, but had to re-upload it on Facebook to try to get it on Instagram, which failed. So I simply paid about $30 to get the trailer show up as a sponsored ad on Facebook. I chose three categories; people in the U.S., who like the band Queen and, when searching for Gay Interest, chose "Gay Life." Okay.

A day later, I got a notification about two comments on the shorter book trailer. Yay!

But they were abrupt virulently bible-hatred of 'the gay.' A day later, another one 'Heck no' was less offensive. Each of these people happened upon my ad, whose thumbnail shows the two cover models in the back of a truck being affectionate.
  These are Diane Mcallister Nichols' comments. I could show you her anti-Muslim, anti-everything not her posts, but I'll spare you.

Now We're Here - celebrating Queen's music and my novel Now I'm Here

Why would an author like me produce a concert of acoustic Queen music in a beautiful Alamo Square Victorian with a rich LGBT history? Because I can! Also, I won a book award.

Yes, for months, shortly after the publication of my sixth novel, Now I'm Here, I decided to add live music to my reading events. Musicians Peter Fogel and Dudley Saunders offered their guitar and singing skills at my San Francisco and West Hollywood readings in September and October.

But I wanted more music, so when I shot the interior piano-playing scenes for my book trailer at The F'Inn, a lovely historic home run by Mike Finn, I realized that it would be a perfect setting for an intimate salon-style concert.

On Thursday, December 6, you can get a copy of my book, enjoy champagne and food, and hear new live versions of more than a dozen Queen songs performed by some luminary talents:  Peter Fogel, Suzanne Ramsey, Diogo Zavadski, Coleton Schmitto, Adam Dragland and special guests Leigh Crow, Ruby Vixen and Jason Brock.

Now I'm Here, new novel, new website

Now I’m Here

a novel by Jim Provenzano

Beautiful Dreamer Press

ISBN-13: 978-0998126265

Release date: September 19, 2018

“Here is a novel of such sweep and breadth that to call it simply a love story is inadequate, even while the love of David and Joshua at the heart of the book resonates so deeply that I could not stop reading their tale. Provenzano is one of our masters; like his character Joshua he is a kind of musician. The instrument he plays on is the heart, and the story of these men rings true for all of us who lived through these years.”  
– Jim Grimsley, author of Dream Boy and Winter Birds

​

"Jim Provenzano has again created characters that a reader can’t help but fall in love with. This is an epic story, a tale as captivating as a favorite piece of music.”  
– Mark Abramson, author of Minnesota Boy

​

“A haunting page turner;  Provenzano fearlessly navigates, with wit, unflinching candor and a detective’s tenacity, that deepest mystery: first love, with all its euphoria, madness and wreckage. Gorgeously written, Now I’m Here stands alongside the best of Edmund White and Andrew Holleran. I could spend a year with each sentence.” 
– Adam Tendler, concert pianist, author of 88x50: A Memoir of Sexual Discovery, Modern Music and The United States of America

So, yes! My sixth novel is available for pre-order on Amazon.com in ebook and paperback editions. It will be in bookstores in September.

And to jazz up this little celebration, I got a new website: https://www.jimprovenzano.com/
Visit, scroll around and let me know what you think.

And the Theatre Kids shall lead them; exposing NRA-whore politicians with Truth

Defying the latest round of rightwing-fed 'crisis actor' accusations, teenage survivors of the latest school shooting have proven defiant to the hypocritical inaction of GOP politicians who, instead of enacting swift gun control efforts, veer to the reverse, all the while enacting inept antiquated Band-aids by slapping up In God We Trust on school walls, and in Iowa, banning LGBT books in school libraries.

With the chilling 'conversation' and Q & As with weasels like Trump, Rubio and Florida Governor Scott offering nothing in the way of change, it's going to be a hard road. But the outspoken kids of these town halls may have finally found a breaking point.

Literary Voices: an appreciation of Mark Merlis and William M Hoffman

Have you ever read a novel only to have the effect of it come back to you like a boomerang that knocks you in the back of the head until the tears spring out?

Such is the case with Mark Merlis' An Arrow's Flight. When I read it almost 20 years ago, I thought it was smart and brilliant. Since the author's death on August 15, I decided to reread it and find copies of his other three novels.

William Johnson wrote this remembrance for Lambda Literary Review. "Merlis’ writing cannily explored the emotional and sexual lives of gay men, in all of their messy, nuanced, and wondrous splendor."

In writing for The Advocate, author Christopher Bram wrote, "His books share a family resemblance: fine literary texture, a keen sense of gay history, a moral complexity worthy of Henry James, and strong sexuality."

 The Washington Post obituary covered his life, and includes this quote:

“I am, of course, a gay man whose... novels are swarming with gay characters,” he once told an interviewer with the website EchoNYC.  “And I have allowed myself to be marketed as a practitioner of a genre called gay fiction. But this is a commercial category, not an artistic one. I write, like anybody else, about how it is to be human.”

Flirting With History, Browsers and Other Kinds

What is the legacy you want to leave behind? As a person, you can hope your family will remember you. As an artist, you usually hope for a little more. If you're ambitious, you crave a lot more.

I began to reconsider this question as I walked from The Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco this week. I was among several hundred lucky people who got to see the first open dress rehearsal of the mega-hit musical Hamilton. We didn't have to pay, because the production wanted an audience to warm them up for their extensive run.

Before the show began, Director Thomas Kail introduced himself, and asked us not to Tweet or Facebook or Instagram our experiences. Because offering opinions about a show before it opens is just bad form.

But Kail also expressed that the experience of seeing this live production (a beautiful one, by the way, but don't mistake that for a review) was a shared experience that cannot be recreated through social media.

Call and Irresponsibility: Online Censorship and Attacks on Gay Authors

As we dive butt-first into a new year, I was going to repost one of the lovely retro New Year's Eve scenes from my past two books, Every Time I Think of You and Message of Love. 

But you'll have to check my older posts, or read the books themselves, to enjoy those. It's not that I'm being cautious, but more justifiably outraged by the level of Orwellian idiocy now taking place when authors dare to share their political views.

The simple act of publishing one's thoughts and opinions these days has taken on an absurd level of what I term 'call and irresponsibility.'

Author Kevin Sessums achieved headline news when his post critiquing Trump supporters was only hours later deleted, and his use of Facebook withheld by the bot-like underlings of the social media behemoth.

An excerpt of Sessums comments:
“Matthew Dowd who holds Trump and his followers to the standards of any other politician and hers. But as those who do hold Trump to the standards of any other person have found out on Twitter and other social media outlets these Trump followers are a nasty fascistic lot. Dowd is lucky he didn’t get death threats like Kurt Eichenwald. Or maybe he did and refuses to acknowledge them. If you voted for Trump and continue to support him and you think you are better than these bigoted virulent trolls, you’re not. Your silence enables them just as it did in the racist campaign that Trump and Bannon ran. In fact, hiding behind a civilized veneer in your support of fascism I consider more dangerous. We’re past describing you as collaborators at this point. That lets you off the hook. You’re Russo-American oligarchical theocratic fascists.”

Perfectly Queer: July Lit Event, Summer Reading and Serious Themes

Another reading, another bookstore! July 11, I will be part of a reading and panel discussion with two other authors at the new home for LGBT events with Books Inc, at Opera Plaza on 601 Van Ness Avenue. The Market Street/Castro district store closed, as you may know.

Here's the link to Books Inc's listing for my reading with Michael Aleynikov, author of Ivan and Misha: Stories, and Na’amen Gobert Tilahun, author of The Root: A Novel of the Wrath & Athenaeum.

Aleynikov's connected stories share the intimate lives of two brother immigrants trying to survive in Brooklyn with their own family troubles and strife.

Saying Goodbye - and Hello - to Bookstores

Tom Schmidt discusses his photos.

This week I attended and read at two of the last three events at Books Inc. in the Castro. The store has hosted hundreds of readings, many of which I attended. It will close next week, and it's a sad day. 

But while that store is closing because of the exorbitant renewed lease costs, Books Inc, itself is thriving, with several other branches throughout the Bay Area. It remains one of the most successful California independent bookstores. 

The gay events and stock will move to the Books Inc, Opera Plaza on Van Ness Avenue. It's often the location for high profile celebrity signings. With its larger size, it can accommodate signings by the likes of Christopher Rice and other big publisher authors.

Tree Time: Limbs and Loving for the Holidays

Delancey tree lot in SF

Delancey Street, the multi-state nonprofit known for Christmas tree sales, set up one of their lots near my home over Thanksgiving weekend, and naturally, I got nostalgic for big tree holidays with my family. 

I only recently found out the extent of goodwill Delancey does for housing, rehabilitation and other social services, and that it's located in several states, not just a few empty lots in San Francisco.

But I also remembered the funny chapters from my fifth novel Message of Love, where Reid gripes about the massive consumption and subsequent destruction of evergreen and spruce trees.

I no longer buy a tree, in fact, like Reid, my fictional alter ego, I refrain from purchasing trees, but do splurge on a small wreath for my apartment door.

Delancey tree lot near Market St. Safeway, SF

Seeing one of many "Charlie Brown" tiny trees does make me nostalgic for the small apartment trees I bought years ago. It also reminds me of the tiny evergreen sprout that becomes an important and metaphoric part of the growing love between Reid and Everett, the main characters in my fourth novel, Every Time I Think of You.

Message of Love: On the Road

Some upcoming events will be a lot of fun. I'll be doing a radio interview with Out in the Bay's Eric Jansen, a group reading in Philadelphia May 31, and I'll be attending the annual Lambda Literary Awards in New York City!

Out in the Bay recently celebrated its tenth anniversary at Oasis nightclub in San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle covered the event, and writer Tony Bravo quoted me about the show's longevity. Photographer Carlos Avila Gonzalez even got a shot of me, cohost Marilyn Pittman, and fellow author Mark Abramson sharing a group selfie.

Message of Love, a Lambda Literary Award finalist!

Whoo-hoo! Message of Love is among the finalists for a Lambda Literary Award in this year's Gay Romance category! My boys Reid and Everett have a few new fans.

I look forward to reading the other books in this and many other categories. 

Now, to decide if I can make the time to go back to New York City for the awards ceremony on June 1. 

Here's the full list of Gay Romance finalists for 2015:

• The Companion, Lloyd A. Meeker, Dreamspinner Press
• Everything's Coming Up Roses: Four Tales of M/M Romance, Barry Lowe, Lydian Press
• Foolish Hearts: New Gay Fiction, Timothy Lambert and R.D. Cochrane, Cleis Press
• Like They Always Been Free, Georgina Li, Queer Young Cowboys
• Message of Love, Jim Provenzano, Myrmidude Press/CreateSpace
• The Passion of Sergius & Bacchus, A Novel of Truth, David Reddish, DoorQ Publishing
• Pulling Leather, L.C. Chase, Riptide Publishing
• Salvation: A Novel of the Civil War, Jeff Mann, Bear Bones Books

The Companion, Lloyd A. Meeker, Dreamspinner Press Everything’s Coming Up Roses: Four Tales of M/M Romance, Barry Lowe, Lydian Press Foolish Hearts: New Gay Fiction, Timothy Lambert and R.D. Cochrane, Cleis Press Like They Always Been Free, Georgina Li, Queer Young Cowboys Message of Love, Jim Provenzano, Myrmidude Press/CreateSpace The Passion of Sergius & Bacchus, A Novel of Truth, David Reddish, DoorQ Publishing Pulling Leather, L.C. Chase, Riptide Publishing Salvation: A Novel of the Civil War, Jeff Mann, Bear Bones Books - See more at: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/news/03/04/the-27th-annual-lambda-literary-award-finalists/#sthash.4glSUrMv.dpuf

 

In the meantime, all the category finalists  are listed on the Lambda Lit website, with handy direct links to most of the author pages or product links.

Get reading! Whoo-hoo! Enjoy the trailer, with an acoustic version of The Pretenders' song, by Dudley Saunders, plus the full playlist of related songs and clips, on Youtube.com:

Message of Love: "an intelligent, finely-written romantic new adult story"

Woo-hoo! I got a few more thoughtful intelligent reviews of both Every Time I Think of You and its sequel Message of Love.

Here's an excerpt from Lloyd A. Meeker's take on my latest:

"Reid and Everett’s growing self-knowledge ...drives this story, written with Provenzano’s characteristic intensity, to its satisfying conclusion in a lover’s treasure hunt. When you’re next in the mood for an intelligent, finely-written romantic new adult story that never slips into sentimentality, this is the book you should pick up. Highly recommended."

Read the full review on Out in Print!