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: Bibliography

Since I've got a few great group readings with other authors coming up, the next one being in a library, I thought I'd share a list of the nonfiction books that were basically my homework while writing Message of Love, the sequel to Every Time I Think of You.

In the interest of variety, I'll link as many books as I can to Alibris, which features all my books, and is a nice alternative to Amazon.com. Just don't buy the overpriced listed editions. I got most of these books used online, and had fun finding them.


Out & About
For scenery and setting, I enjoyed perusing several travel and nature books.

The Peterson Field Guides for Wildflowers (Roger Tory Peterson, Margaret McKenny, editors) and Eastern Trees (George A. Petrides, Janet Wehr, editors) gave me accurate information about the flora of the area. Living in California makes for a little distance from knowing which kinds of trees and plants Reid would work with in his classes, his job, and elsewhere. They're also the sort of books Reid would use a lot.

Message of Love: Spring Break, 1982; chapter excerpt

One of the great pleasures of writing a novel set decades ago is resurrecting long gone places. I decided to let the main characters in my latest novel, Message of Love, go on an impulsive Spring Break trip at about this time of year, back in 1982. 

While most of this novel is set in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, I thought, why not let the boys get away?

The gay beach scene in Fort Lauderdale was surprisingly active, and after some research through old gay travel guides and magazines, I found a few tantalizingly retro posts about a specific place, The Marlin Beach Hotel, written about by famous gay blogger Joe Jervis, on his site JoeMyGod.

Jervis' personal recollections are mixed in with some wonderful historic visuals, which also link to some other resources. 

The vacation is completely fictional for me, but serves as a shifting point in their lives, being in the company of many older gay men. While a crash course in gay life, for Reid and Everett, some other things - and one person in particular- prove to test their love and trust. 

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: