Reading Rainbow Connection: when work writing is also fun.

After a recent rainstorm here in the Bay Area, many people shared photos of a double rainbow across the San Francisco skyline. And also, in rainbow news, the classic kids' Reading Rainbow show is getting some attention. Of course it was a classic on public television with actor LeVar Burton as the host, but the new host, Mychal Threets, is also engaging.

And of course, the rainbow connection will make you think of the Muppets, particularly Kermit the frog. Frogs have been in the headlines with anti-ICE protests. Armed thugs are being confronted by the witty and hilarious inflatable costumes of frogs and other creatures in Portland, and those protests are spreading the other cities. It's a truly unique way to confront fascism.

But I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to share the reason why I haven't been writing fiction or even blogging here for several months. It's because I've been writing so much for work with the Bay Area Reporter. Here are several of the stories that I recently self-assigned.

A toast!
This year is the 50th anniversary of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the classic film about sexual liberties. If you read my blog or stories, you know that I've included fictional versions of my time briefly is part of a shadow cast for Rocky Horror at Kent State University in 1979, in one of my novels as well as a short story. 

So I decided to do several stories, including a feature interview with the Strange Journey film director Linus O'Brien. He is the son of Richard O'Brien, the creator of The Rocky Horror Show, which became the basis for the subsequent film that became a cult classic.

In our interview, Linus talked about the fans, the shadow casts, and how he managed to snag interviews with pretty much every living actor and several of the creative & production crew for the film version of Rocky Horror.

I also did a roundup of upcoming Rocky Horror events, including Nell Campbell, who's coming to San Francisco for a screening of the film with a shadow cast and Q&A.

Tim Curry, in a case of good timing, released his memoir Vagabond and I did a short review of that. It doesn't "tell all," but what he shares about his career in film, theater, and of course Rocky Horror, is fascinating.

Another treat for Rocky Horror fans is the posthumously published book of photos by Mick Rock, who had the great idea to hang around on the set back in 1974 and document the behind the scenes looks of the actors and crew. 

Also in books, I devoured the new oral history Q&A with painter Don Bachardy, who was of course the decades-long partner of author Christopher Isherwood. A lot of fascinating celebrity stories are documented and transcribed by Michael Schreiber.

And two older favorites include a review of the Lady Gaga concert in July at the Chase Center. It was an absolutely fantastic concert. If you missed it, there are several bootleg videos of her complete concerts on YouTube.

Gail Ann Dorsey

Music marvels 
June included two very enjoyable interviews with two music greats. Gail Ann Dorsey, known for her solo music, but also being the bassist for David Bowie for several years, was a gracious and fascinating interview subject. I got to see her as part of the Blackstar concert at Davies Symphony Hall, and afterward got to hang out with her and the brilliant John Cameron Mitchell, whom I interviewed a few years back.

And since he was performing an array of Queen covers at Feinstein's at the Nikko, I simply had to interview Reeve Carney. He's been in multiple Broadway shows, including debuting the lead role in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. His TV roles include Penny Dreadful. But his concert of Queen covers was pretty amazing. He played multiple instruments at the same time while singing brilliantly. 

Laura Benanti

Also Feinstein's at the Nikko, in May, formal local favorite and now turned international superstar Justin Vivian Bond had a concert and our little advanced interview was cute. The show was hilarious and sweet.

In September, I got to interview the very funny and sweet Laura Benanti for the second time. She had a show at Berkeley Repertory that she's touring in a few cities. It's a very deft examination of her life and the travails of motherhood and show business.

It's the arts!
I also wrote some expansive fall arts preview features on art galleries and museums as well as live music events throughout the season in the Bay Area. 

Luigi the Musical

Speaking of art, while he’s only been in San Francisco for almost five years, painter Luis Felipe Chávez has already exhibited at several local galleries with his impressive array of work, ranging from personal portraits to architectural symbolism. His recent exhibit, “INTERmedio,” opened at Jonathan Carver Moore Studios in August. We had a nice chat.

One of my most controversial articles was a review and short advance on Luigi the Musical. The satirical extended one-act includes songs lightly parodizing the jailing of alleged CEO killer Luigi Mangione. I even ended up being a guest on a CBC podcast to discuss it. 

Bob Mizer Foundation

And while Luigi got the clicks, my extensively researched feature on the Bob Mizer Foundation is a favorite. Here in San Francisco in the Tenderloin, at the former home of The Magazine, the archives hold thousands upon thousands of prints, negatives, films and even props from Mizer's physique fims and photo shoots. I was invited on a tour to see how the volunteer staff is preserving Mizer's archives. It's a pretty amazing project. I hope you'll read that in particular cause I spent a lot of time on it.

And last but not least, on Oct. 16, I will moderate a panel at Manny's with Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell, the co-authors of Loving II: More Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850s-1950s.” It's a beautiful book with hundreds of photos of men being affectionate. If you're looking for a perfect gift for a friend or loved one, this is it.

Okay, that's my roundup. I hope you buy my books and read these articles and have a good autumn. It will probably be several months before I do another blog.

Writing as an excuse for not 'Writing'

While I'm very lucky to have been employed through the past year, the additional writing and editing assignments for my day job have somewhat overtaken my fiction writing. But here's why that's okay.

While following a lot of author blogs and advice posts on social media, I've had to come to terms with the timing of my seventh novel Finding Tulsa being released during a pandemic and the most contention presidential election in twenty years. The mild critical acclaim and lack of sales were predictable. People have been distracted by the pandemic and it's understandable. 

Like many authors I adjusted and did online chats and readings all of which you can find on my YouTube channel. The views, subscriptions and likes are always appreciated.

But it's also disappointing to have completed and published one of my better works so far and have it be either ignored or just get the occasional virtual pat on the back on social media posts promoting it. 

The important thing is that, like me, many of us have endured. Perhaps we've written about our situation amid the pandemic or even taken a dive into escapist forms of not writing about it.

Fortunately for me, the obligation of editing and writing many stories a week for my day job –yes, while mostly working from home– has kept my creative juices flowing. It's also improved my skills, not just writing, but editing for our website; deciding on photos and videos to use, and promoting hundreds of LGBTQ artists in visual media, film, comedy, theater and nightlife.

Possibly the most momentous aspect this year is the 50th anniversary of the Bay Area Reporter. I got to assign almost a dozen lengthy feature articles in different media in the arts and nightlife in the B.A.R.'s history that recounted the decades of journalistic accomplishments in the newspaper I've worked with on and off for 30 years. I even created a short video promoting the anniversary, and will produce monthly video chats with our writers, photographers and special guests, all viewable on the B.A.R.'s new YouTube channel.

My own personal essay is excerpted here, and you can read the full version on www.ebar.com. I talk about my early employment and changes in my duties from an assistant editor to a freelance sports columnist and, in the past year, due to some unfortunate staff cuts, being promoted to the Arts Editor as well as doing nightlife coverage.

It's been an amazing three decades, particularly when I think about that career day in junior high school where I said I wanted to be a writer (meaning books) and my misinformed English teacher said there were no novelists in my small town. So I ended up following a photojournalist that day and learned that it was a good entryway into learning how to write. That's proven to be a good recipe; having daily and weekly deadlines improves one's writing and is highly recommended. 

So here's an excerpt from my essay honoring the 50th anniversary of the Bay Area Reporter. Read more on the website, along with the many other anniversary features I assigned, plus News history articles.

Go West: How the B.A.R. brought me to California and halfway around the world, twice

With more than 900 articles penned for the Bay Area Reporter, I feel a strong connection as the newspaper celebrates its 50th anniversary this week. I've written columns, listings and reviews since 1992. Having assigned and edited the expansive features in this section, I thought to share some behind the scenes tales as well.

My career in journalism started in 1989 in New York City with OutWeek, the revolutionary weekly publication that emerged from ACT UP, Queer Nation, but didn't last long.

After a 1990 visit for the OutWrite literary festival, my second working visit to San Francisco was in early 1992, on a freelance assignment for Frontiers magazine to cover Ggreg Taylor's Lavender Tortoise bus trip to Reno. I got to witness the 'marriage' of 'Elvis Herselvis' Leigh Crow and Justin (not then Vivian) Bond.

Along my immersion course on wheels into the Bay Area's cleverest nightlife folks, I'd also brought a few resumes. While a Guardian editor offered me an internship (as if!), the B.A.R.'s publisher Bob Ross offered me a trial run to replace Mike Yamashita, who was compiling event listings and had a month's vacation planned. While my start as a San Francisco resident and B.A.R. reporter was initially tentative, my residence and the fill-in job became a permanent one.

From 1992 to 1994, along with assembling events with multi-colored fliers from Josie's Juice Joint and Theatre Rhino, I also typed up the BARtalk personals ads, a duty that revealed the varied desires of multiple anonymous San Francisco men. I revamped the listings to be more visual, assisting production guys Robert Dietz and Robert Hold in the drafty downstairs back room that sometimes smelled of Photostat chemicals and the burning waxer machine, still used for assembling printed-out 'boards' of the newspaper's pages. I'd also retrieve computer floppy discs and print-outs from visiting freelancers like Michael Botkin and Kate Bornstein.

I also had the more serious task of writing up handwritten obituaries, some of them of men I knew who had died of AIDS. I'd often have to call back surviving partners who'd omitted their own names.

Daily staff lunches were gossipy and fun, particularly with assistant editor Patrick Hochtel, advertising's David McBrayer, and assistant news editor Dennis Conkin. But the shining inspiration to me —for many others at the time, and years later— was the late Mike Salinas, the B.A.R. News Editor from 1992 to 1999.

Mike Salinas had been creator of Theater Week back in New York. He and I shared a love of Stephen Sondheim and other musical theater. His deft ability to create what he called 'the triple-entendre headline' was an inspiration, as was his focus on celebrating the community as well as critiquing it where deserved. He took no prisoners in his sassy responses to Letters to the Editor, a standard response being: "If you are dissatisfied with our publication, you may return it for a full refund."

Read more on www.ebar.com

Cabin Fervor: a new short story about hunky Broadway dancers who escape to the woods

Wild animals in cities, Broadway dancers, OnlyFans and the pandemic might seem like unlikely story ideas, together at least. But these four topics blended together in an inspired writing spell, so I cranked out a fun tale called "Cabin Fervor."

Here's the story line: 

Ernie and Jase, two unemployed Broadway dancer boyfriends, escape pandemic-ridden Manhattan for a friend’s upstate cabin. After a few months of interactions with wild animals and eccentric townsfolk, they impulsively decide to make a series of sexy videos with musical theater themes that become a surprise hit online. Combining humor, current events, and erotic exhibitionism, "Cabin Fervor" captures a strange moment in time with wry wit and affection. 

While there are some serious issues taking place now, some are able to see a hint of, yes, humor in it. The very cute cover art is by illustrator and author David Cantero.

First; the COVID-19 pandemic is not funny. The heinous mismanagement of the pandemic by the inept and corrupt previous administration is obvious. Yet somehow, people have been able to find hope and a bit of dark humor to get through it. And as in the story, I do have some old New York City pals who've decided to temporarily leave the city. Reuters reports that it's effected NYC's economy to more than a billion dollars in losses.

Second; wild animals roaming through cities. Long before the pandemic, I longed to write a story about what I wrongly termed "bioconvergence." 

This PopSci article explores the phenomenon. Animal wildlife's habitats have long been decimated by human populations. What happens when they in turn, invade, or –more accurately– reclaim human spaces? Treehugger explores the days when animals roamed urban streets while humans huddled indoors. 

"Animals are not dramatically rebounding in the absence of humans, but they are timidly pushing their boundaries, with sika deer showing up outside their normal habitat in the park in Nara, Japan, wild turkeys showing up in a park in Oakland, California, and orcas venturing farther up Vancouver's Burrell Inlet than they typically do."

So when a common occurrence we've seen in countless YouTube videos temporarily becomes a 12 Monkeys norm, we take notice. When a fiction idea becomes a greater reality, it's time to get writing.

Alessio Vega & Taylor Collins

Striportunities

But wait (third and fourth); what about Broadway dancers and OnlyFans? Let's just say that I may follow a few hunky Broadway male dancer-actor-singers on social media. Being trained exhibitionists, they're performed a few times in Broadway Bares fundraisers. But under lockdown, they miss work, of course, but also their inner exhibitionism's quite inhibited!

Let's also assume that I may have visited a few gay adult websites that revealed a few racy photos and videos of a few male performers who, facing a complete shutdown of their performing opportunities, chose to 'pivot' into personalized adult entertainment (NSFW!).  Some celebs are using it in less adult ways, too.

"I'm somebody who stresses about a lot of things," says David Pevsner in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. 

The actor who has appeared on Silicon Valley and Modern Family. Thanks in large part to OnlyFans, where he's been posting X-rated content for his subscribers since 2018, he says, "Right now money is not stressing me out." 

 

 

Put them all together, and you've got an oddly funny, sometimes sad, very sexy, and very contemporary tale.

Enjoy "Cabin Fervor." You can get it on (the evil, but whaddaya gonna do?) Amazon.

Wear your mask, make your own entertainment, as I did, and stay safe.

Epiphanies and Epigrams; when you're too distracted to promote your own book, don't be surprised if no one buys it.

I understand, dear reader, fan or accidental visitor to my blog who was actually looking for celebrity nude photos; you haven't had time to read my seventh novel, Finding Tulsa, because it's been such a crazy time, and by 'crazy' I don't mean to disparage those struggling with mental health issues by reducing it to a Kathy comic ("Bleah!"), but actually, seriously insane times, what with a hundred-plus seditious GOP politicians still madly clinging to the baloney conspiracy of election fraud as they prop up their completely deranged outgoing president (and plan a heinous 'revolt' on Jan. 6, Epiphany Day, if you're Catholic), to the screeching store-invading anti-mask MAGAts threatening the lives of cashiers and barristas, to the billionaires hoarding their profits during a global plague as millions of vaccines lay dormant in freezers and COVID-19 victims' corpses lay stacked in bags inside refrigerator trucks.

So, yeah; buy my books, right? 

Or listen to my audiobooks; kind of a tough sell right now (I've actually tried to give away free copies, to little interest), which makes no sense to me, because you don't event have to touch a book if you're virus-wary.

But why not self-promote? Other books are being promoted, and have been, right through the pandemic and elections, the holidays ("The holidays; bleah" insert another Kathy comic), but for the most part, I've felt like this is all a case of bad timing; my best, most mature novel, published by a respected small press, has been largely ignored (again), while most media continues to lap up praise for corporate-published books, which I know because, as an arts editor, I know how persistent the well-paid publicists for conglomo publishers can be. 

Sydney Gay Games 2002. photo: Jim Provenzano

But except for said day-job's duties, and jotting down events in a journal (the 202o edition just PDFed, saved and archived), including dreams, like last night's which involved a dream variation of a real event, frolicking in an Olympic pool facility in Sydney, Australia with a dozen gay water polo players -yes, that happened, why don't I write a story about that? Wait, I did, in 2002, but you don't remember), I have not been promoting my book!

Having grown tired to #writerslist threads on Twitter, because having more followers doesn't do anything if they won't read your books, despite thee fact that book sales are very much a popularity contest. Gaining followers on Twitter doesn't amount to a hill of beans if the five of them who followed you on Monday unfollow you on Tuesday, or whenever you post something slightly political (gasp!) or too gay (double-gasp!). And what's with all the Amazon links? You do know they've made 2.6 billion during the pandemic as independent bookstores cling to life? This is why I prefer that you buy from indies via Bookshop.org, and then use the corporate sites to share reviews.

But no, most authors blindly bow to Amazon, which mistreats their workers, and Facebook, which obscures your posts unless you pay to boost them, and yes, I'm on all the 'evil' social media sites even though it all has minimal effect on sales, because, well, you know, 'things are crazy.'

Which they are. I'd love to just go back to bed and dream of frisky water polo players, since I'm writing this early in the morning, but I've already slurped down a cup of leftover coffee, which still has a bit of a zing to it, as you can tell, and I might even bathe before noon and put on clothes, and perhaps even write something else, in spite of it all.

And if you want a few hours of joyful literary distraction, go for it.

Naming; the Seeds of Character-Building

As Halloween celebrants set about carving up pumpkins in creative ways for the holiday, consider extracting the many seeds from the gloppy guts of your purchased or homegrown gourds. Yes, they're tasty when baked and salted. But for me, those seeds represent another form of organic growth, related to the very important artistic process of writing, particularly the naming of characters.

In the early drafts of my sixth novel, Now I'm Here, at first I used names of actual people to solidify my initial inspiration. A few find/replaces later, I found a somewhat biblical theme under-riding that work-in-progress. Thus the name Joshua for my main character. The piano-playing teenager becomes somewhat zealous in his devotion to music, particularly the rock band Queen.

In these thematic essays, I've focused on the marvelous Freddie Mercury, and the music aspects of the work. With Halloween only a few days away, let's turn to Joshua's love interest, David Koenig.

Omitting the real name of the cute high school acquaintance on whom I had a crush since grade school, let's bump to the second name I gave the character; David. One day, as I stopped at a local small grocery store, I saw bags of edible seeds on display. As kids and as an adult, I had enjoyed home-baked pumpkin seeds, but seeing that bright red, yellow and green bag so clearly displaying the name, I chose the new and final name for my farm boy.

I thought of the biblical couple Jonathan and David, but that felt too obvious. In search of a last name, I pored over my favorite source, Egerton Sykes' Who's Who: Non-Classical Mythology. 

It was in that book that I found perfect names for major characters in my first novel, PINS. Donald Khors' last name, while a known contemporary name, also represents the Slavonic god of health and hunting, and takes the image of a stallion. Many of the names in PINS reflect the equine metaphors and the actual wrestling team name, the Colts. Each of the several cars in the novel also bring horse breeds into the story: Bronco, Mustang, Pinto.

The fun in finding such correlations serves to narrow the symbology of a story while revealing a sort of true nature to a character. While in the writing process, when trying to figure out how a character should or could behave, I found a point of focus by recalling the symbolic/real name.

For David, however, I couldn't find a name in Sykes' book that fit him. I knew I wanted a Germanic or Norwegian name, since many of the southern Ohio farming families of the era had ancestors from those countries. This brings up a character's family history, an essential part of thorough development. Even if it's not included in the published story, an author should know his or her background, at least for a few generations (orphans and supernatural creatures excused, perhaps).

This is why I find so many pop-oriented books, gay romances in particular, to be lacking. It's all set in the 'now,' with little sense of history (unless of course it is historical). When you can't feel a sense of the grounded nature of a character, they seem flimsy and less believable.

Koenig sounded right when I discovered it from poring over a phone book from Ohio that I'd saved for decades in a box of other research materials for Now I'm Here. An online search confirmed it.

König is the German word for king. While David is by no means royal –he's humble, shy, even reclusive– he does 'rule' the fields where his father's pumpkin and corn fields are annually harvested. It seemed organic, true, ethnically logical, and a little bit sexy.

Now I'm Here cover photo shoot

I've humble-bragged here and elsewhere about having worked on a pumpkin farm for a few months in between colleges in 1981. The exhausted, overworked 20-year-old me at the time had no idea those grueling yet satisfying experiences would gestate into parts of what would be my sixth novel. That younger me was still dreaming of the idea of a first novel, in between all the labors.

That's just one story of one name, with a few tangents. I could go on about the nature themes in my two previous novels, Every Time I Think of You and Message of Love, but the two main characters' names, Reid Conniff and Everett Forrester, are pretty obvious.

My second novel, Monkey Suits, refers to Egyptian ruling class versus slave culture (the first and near-final scenes are set in New York City's Metropolitan Museum's Temple of Dendur; pretty obvious!), and when you read it, you can figure out how the four main character's names and natures match the four elements.

For Cyclizen, it's not only about a bike messenger and AIDS activist, but the name puns refer to mythical centaurs, Hercules, and a few other creatures.

This isn't done just to be clever, but to provide me a guide to focusing the story, and keeping the process fun.

But back to pumpkins! Have you saved the seeds? Rinse them, soak them in salt water, or sweeten them with cinnamon or pumpkin spice if you like.

You may not notice the pumpkins on the book cover, but since we shot it in May 2018, I'd saved a few small and big ones from October 2017! One can't just go out and buy pumpkins in Northern California in Spring.

And when you reach the last chapters of my latest, Now I'm Here, I hope you'll enjoy a bittersweet pumpkin and Halloween-related moment in the novel.

And please, do post reviews on Amazon, GoodReads and elsewhere. It's a way of sharing, but also helping get the word out on independent authors' stories.

Happy Halloween!

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.

Meeting Sam Shepard in a Dream; lofty ambitions and gutted fish

   I met Sam Shepard in a dream last night, my last one before waking, on an open cement flat construction site with poles sticking up. It had been turned into a movie set where I was working on as Assistant to Something. 
   A crew man drilled a hinge on a doorway and it fell over.

   ‘One door, two people,” I muttered as if it were a common safety saying. 
   Oddly, actors rehearsed while hammers were banged on set pieces. 
    The director, finished arguing with someone, huffed off the construction site. Someone called ‘Break,’ and people sat where they were, took food out of lunch boxes.

   One man at the edge of the site/set seemed sad, without a lunch, in a red flannel shirt, rumpled jeans and boots, his craggy face looking disappointed, sitting with his back against a scaffold. I recognized him.

   “Hey, Sam,” I said, “Can I have a hug?”

   “Not a good idea,” he scowled, looked away.

   I knew he was dead, but figured he’d be bothered by my reminding him.

   “You know, thirty years ago, I directed a few of your plays.”

   He didn’t seem to care which ones.

   "I liked the monologues in ‘Action,’ I said. “They worked real good. Once the actor muffed his lines, but got around to it, made the point.”

   “I hate when that happens,” he muttered, looking around, realizing it wasn’t his set, his movie or his play. He didn't seem hungry, but glanced at someone else eating.

   “Hey, can I ask you–“

   Another crew man got up, tripping over Sam’s legs.

   “What was that?” he looked back.

   “That’s Sam. He’s dead.”

   “Right.” 
   The crew man seemed like he was trying to laugh, couldn’t see what he tripped on.

   “Well, better get,” Sam said, and leaped off the edge of the cement flooring, which had become a few floors higher above ground. He just stepped off and disappeared into the wind.

   The other crew man stopped, about the walk away, wavered. “But what did he–”

   “You saw him?” I asked.

   “Saw what?” he seemed confused by himself.

   “Never mind.”

     * * *

I think Sam would have appreciated that dream, since it felt like a scene from one of his plays. People feeling out of place, confused, stunned by the loss of their purpose, or knowing a dark secret, were part of his artistic style. 

Shepard's death has been well documented, and one of his first collaborators, Patti Smith, had some touching remembrances of the Pultizer Prize-winning playwright and understated film actor. Author Don Shewey wrote about being Shepard's biographer years ago, and how the playwright was in a way his alter-ego.

Actually, those plays I mentioned in my dream to dead Sam were preceded by my small production of poems and prose pieces from his first collection, Hawk Moon.  As a sophomore at Kent State University's Theatre Department, I enlisted some actors and musicians to join me in performing most of the collection, with live musical interludes of Rolling Stones songs and other music.

I Know Where I've Been: Finding Inspiration in Difficult Times

How do we find inspiration to make art in difficult times? What kind of art should we make when our lives are being disrupted by the most absurd and clearly corrupt election in decades? What should be our response?

It's been raining nearly every day and night here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've not gone out as much as I usually do, and turning it all off to watch a movie or read a book has become a sort of conscious avoidance.

Usually, rainy days and nights are a great inspiration to stay in and be creative. I did some of that; sorted, filed and photographed all of my visual art (yes, I do that, too), refiled manuscripts and research files, and even converted a few old VHS tapes of my dance and performance works to DVDs.

But doing administrative work is not creating work. And as the rain continues, despite the ecologic good it's doing for our drought-ridden state, the rain feeds my sense of dread.

Writing about Writing: The Muse and Music

"The muse; she speaks through me. I am but a humble servant."

Inspiration can come from the most unusual places, even on episode 2 of Better Call Saul season 2, when actor Bob Odenkirk's character Jimmy/Saul comes up with a wild excuse to shake off the police from his client with a strange concept: that he's a "Squat Cobbler."

You'll have to watch the show to find out what that means. In the meantime, here's a rumination on the volley of inspirational essays and other sources that have filled up my days and nights, days and nights that should have been filled with writing. But I have excuses, plenty of them, and none of them have anything to do with Squat Cobbling.

What I Didn't Write: Terrible Tragedies, Tempests & Teabaggers

Penn campus Ben Franklin statue

In setting a pair of novels from 1979 to 1983, I had the fortune of discovering historical events that matched the stories I wrote. But omitting several other events, while big on a local scale, weren't relevant to the stories. And recent odd controversies, gave me a bit of anachronistic relief for not including them.

Pennsylvania played a strong part in establishing the setting of Every Time I Think of You, my fourth novel. The energy crisis and the nuclear plant accident at Three Mile Island in Harrisburg are given a mention. But narrator Reid is distracted by his boyfriend Everett's situation. His mother even shows surprise at nature-loving Reid's disinterest in the environmental hazard. 

Past Deadlines: Journalism and/or Fiction

Mark Segal, Jim Provenzano at NLGJA 2015

Don't quit your day job, the general advice goes for aspiring authors. And I've mostly taken that to heart. Because I've found that having regular deadlines for work writing helps with personal deadlines for your book writing. But since I've been more than a month in finishing this blog post, I'll err on the side on inconsistency. I've been busy doing a lot more writing!

The back story: a month ago, I moderated a panel at the National Gay & Lesbian Journalists Association's LGBT Media Summit. the organization holds annual conferences, and celebrated 25 years over Labor Day Weekend. 

While my membership and attendance have been spotty (I mostly have attended when it was local, or nearby), I did attend the first convention, held in San Francisco. Those were different times, journalistically speaking. 

From the now antiquated technical issues of sending stories (floppy discs, faxes!) to the expansion, and now reduction of LGBT media, I was lucky enough to have a variety of freelance jobs, and an evolving job with the Bay Area Reporter since I moved to San Francisco 25 years ago.

American Horror Story's Mat Fraser is not your 'inspiration porn'

Mat Fraser, one of the many disabled actors in American Horror Story: Freak Show, does not want to "inspire" you. 

I first saw Mat perform as a guest drummer for Coldplay at the London Paralympics closing ceremonies (I watched the YouTube simulcast; video embed's at the bottom of this post). 

It wasn't a great concert because he performed, or that it was the Paralympics, but that it was a great show, even better than the London Olympics ceremonies. Sure, it had a smaller budget and fewer pyrotechnical displays. But they featured Sir Ian McKellen and a dazzling array of performers in a much more deftly produced spectacle. 

Arbor and Ardor: Growing Attraction

Having not celebrated the annual Arbor Day this year, I felt I should at least share a mention of it in my new novel Message of Love. Considering that the companion novel, Every Time I Think of You, starts off with an arborous and amorous encounter between the narrator Reid and his boyfriend-to-be Everett, trees not only take on a symbolic aspect, but an oft-repeated literal role in both books.

Logrolling in My Time

Readers of a certain age (i.e. older) may recall Spy Magazine's pithy and satirical features and columns, specifically those with a focus on New York's crass 1980s cultural buffet of absurdity. Before I had even finished my first novel (which was published second), the Logrolling in our Time column stuck out for its deft exposure of cronyism in mainstream publishing. 

One author would write a praise-filled jacket blurb for a fellow author, and then, later on, that author would do the same for his/her colleague.

"See?" my frustrated twenty-something wannabe author self would mutter internally (and often externally). "That's why I'll never get a publishing deal!"

Actually, the reason was that my work at the time wasn't very good.  But it is true; logrolling, that is. One famous author offers a generous superlative, and readers and potential reviewers are then supposed to be impressed enough to like that book. 'Well, Famous Author #45 says it's good, so it must be.'

And so, books get sold, and trees get felled. At least that's what my naive self thought was the derivation of the term logrolling; the publication of books led to trees being sacrificed for authorial ambition.

Post-Title-Concert-Moon

"[Every Time I Think of You's] first encounter sets in motion all the elements of a first-rate love story – the clash of economic and cultural hierarchies; the tension of family dynamics; the dizzying swirl of falling in love." – Bud Gundy, author of Elf Gift and Butterfly Dream.

Sometimes, a colleague offers a review, and it both champions its strengths while critiquing in an informed way. 

A new friend and I were discussing the Bjork concert at Craneway Pavilion on BART. smarter folks had booked a ferry; a friend had bought scalped tickets for twice as much. Yet the train offered a new conversation, and a sense of relief when the fellow artist, a talented performer, said bluntly, that he liked that what it sounded like, but her huddled stance, away from the audience for most of the show, was offputting.

While my friend opted for the bleachers, I had stupidly stood behind the superfluous pendulums, my view even more obscured, thinking she might stand in front of it at some point, or at least face the other half of the audience.

But the real point my other performer friend made was the iPads he noticed. I thought them just a cheesy stage device, but he saw lyrics on them.

"For seventy-five dollars, plus an hour and a half train ride, I expect them to know their lines."

Winter of Our ... Content

   

Well, any "grumpy cat" feelings of resentment over my comparatively limited books sales (see previous post) have been eliminated by two things; nice reviews and snow!

Check out my GoodReads profile. Among the new reviews is one from  Mrs. Condit Reads blog.

"Both of the main characters of this story grab you and take you on a journey of discovery with them. What could have been a sweet, wonderful story suddenly becomes something darker and much grittier after an accident changes things in a way that neither of them expects. You want to grab them up and hold them, protecting them from the possible future they’ve lost and the potential future they now have to find, whether it be alone or together remains to be seen.

Read? Good.

So, if my books are so good, why aren't they more popular? Is it because I'm not popular? Am I the Grumpy Cat of gay publishing?

I've been wondering that recently for several reasons. The first is that I've had several friends and colleagues ask to meet up for a meal or coffee, or via phone calls and emails, to "pick my brain" about publishing. While I can imagine nothing more painful-sounding than having my brain picked, I do offer my advice, but no brain chunks.

But I'm not sure if my advice is worthy. I plow through the chores of doing it all myself, and take some small comfort when colleagues who have the advantage of prestigious publishers and agents regale me with their woes (mostly to do with a lack of control over their work), the position of being a "success" still befuddles me somewhat.

Listen Up

Did I mention there's a playlist to go with PINS?
It works with the novel and the play.

I did have some doubts about making specific references to songs in the script. But if one is going to use, say, Brahms, one doesn't simply say, "insert classical piano here." The specificity of the time the story is set, as well as the tastes of the characters and the songs referenced by name, make it seem plausible.

If a theatre company wants to produce the play, they should follow the descriptions that make it specific to a time and setting. Plus, the music's pretty cool, even if it is a bit, uh, early 90s.

Again, here's a link to the playlist, in case the embedded videos don't load properly.

The Play's the Thing

So, I finally finished this project. Here's some PR:

The commissioned stage adaptation of Jim Provenzano's acclaimed debut novel, PINS, is available in paperback.

Reviews excerpts for the stage adaptation of PINS:

“Realistic and engaging.”
– SF Weekly

“Perceptive and honest.”
– SF Bay Guardian

“A fast-paced and imaginative production.” – Bay Area Reporter

“Provenzano shows great skill with naturalistic dialogue and a healthy dose of wry humor.”
– San Francisco Examiner

"Make Good Art"

"The rules, the how-tos, the supposed-to-do-nexts are breaking down. The gatekeepers are leaving their gates. You can be as creative as you need to be to get your work seen." - Neil Giaman, bestselling author, whose commencement speech (video below) should inspire anyone who wants to create.



In my case, it's writing. I get occasional requests from would-be writers who beg for advise on "how to succeed" like I have. I sometimes have to laugh, because my "success" is purely based on failure.

Gaiman's writing included a typo of the name Caroline which led to his innovative story Coroline. He mentions this in his speech about rejection. My first book, PINS, thankfully, was rejected by 56 editors and agents. I was forced to publish it myself, and because of that, I started a small business, learned so much about publishing. The secrets were revealed, and I made a hundred times more on it than if I had received the usual advance in those days.

My latest book, Every Time I Think of You, was a dare to myself, an impulse based on a series of dreams. I didn't follow the standard advise, "write what you know." I wrote what I didn't know at all. I made stuff up. I did real research, of course. But I let the story tell me where to go.

And here I am, two weeks away from taking a cross-country trip to research the book's sequel in Philadelphia, do a reading at the historic Giovanni's Room, and attend an awards ceremony in New York City, because these adorable boys, Reid and Everett, want to continue their journey.

And while it may sound insincere to say that I don't care if I win that award (I'd love to, actually!), I know I've already won. I wrote a book purely on impulse, purely out of the love of telling a story, not second-guessing the market or double-thinking an industry.

"The old rules are crumbling," says Gaiman.

One wonderful example is ceramic artist Dewey Arsee. I doubt anyone told him it was a good idea to make erotic coffee mugs and plates with guys humping and smooching. But he went ahead and made some of the most original, witty and sexy ceramic works I've seen in a long time.

I own one of those mugs, a gift from a friend. It shows two young men in tuxedos having a wank. In a perfectly naughty world, that might be the cover of my second novel, Monkey Suits.

That's a novel a bunch of other editors said wasn't good enough. It wasn't better than PINS. But I didn't care. I wrote it before PINS, and it shows. But I had written it, I wanted to share it, and did.

Have I made good art? Certainly not on the scale of Gaiman, but enough to pay some bills, get some nice reviews, and feel, as I longed to do before I knew how, become a part of the world of literature.

So, the only advice to offer repeats Gaiman's statement. Don't fret about agents and PR and ebooks and all that, until you have made good art.