Monday, October 24, 2011

Beyond Romance And I

Very nice!  The one-and-only Lisabet Sarai asked me to guest blog on her fun Beyond Romance site ... and the result is a little piece I wrote about being a straight guy who writes queer fiction: Funny But You Don't Look It...


Plus another excerpt from my new novel, Fingers Breadth.  Enjoy!
Before I say anything I want to toss out a hearty and well-deserved thank you to Lisabet Sarai to giving me this very nice opportunity to ... well, chat about whatever I'm going to chat about.

To be honest I'm at a bit of a loss about what that might be. I mean – hell – I'm a writer, right? So this kind of thing should, at least, be second nature. To be honest, though, I've never liked talking about myself. Part of it is privacy, sure, but a lot of it is that I've always wanted my work to stand on its own: that people should (hopefully) buy my stuff because they like it – and not just because they like me.
But Lisabet asked me a question that's been making me scratch my head – always a good thing. But first a tiny bit of background: while I write in a lot of genres – non-fiction, mysteries, romance, horror, science fiction, and a lot of smut – I also have written more than a few books and stories out there with gay or lesbian characters.

But here's the kicker: I'm straight.

Part of why all this happened is because of simple logistics. As any serious writer can tell you, you cannot really plan for a career in this business: you take what comes your way and, if you're lucky, that can lead to work and, even luckier, even more work. In my case I had a lot of great experiences selling stories and editing anthologies for various gay and lesbian publishers ... which, in turn, got me a few in-roads when it came time to write novels. Gay or lesbian novels, naturally.

One thing I have to mention before I go any further is that I never, ever lied about who and what I am when I worked with these publishers. Sure, I don't like to talk that much about myself (so you won't find me on Facebook or Twitter, by the way) but I was always clear with them about my sexual 'reality.'
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