In which J. Scott Coatsworth asks me about notebooks. Poor soul.

In the dark days of March, J. Scott Coatsworth was nice enough to give me an author spotlight interview on his blog. These questions were the most fun I'd been asked to answer, the perfect remedie for the not quite spring yet/still of that month.
 The interview is up here:Author Spotlight , on his blog. Which you should totally check out. I used to think that Ian McShane was the hardest working man in show business, but I've changed my mind. J. Scott has a lot of things going on. Not the least of which is his new novel, Skythane, which is a great sci fi read (seriously).

At the End of Things.

I am dangerously close to finishing a short story that has been on the back burner for a while. I write slowly. And that's also dangerous. Last year when Black Light, my novel, was published, it was the end of three decades of work. It's a rare thing when I come to an end. It's hard, I find to let go.
This story, as it turns out, is a prequel to Black Light. It's about Albrecht Christian as a young man, far, far before he meets Trace. It's set between WWI and WWII, when Albrecht is still adjusting to his new life as a psychic vampire, feeding off the misery and decay of Europe of the time.
I should have finished it months ago, but something has been holding me back.
After the election I could barely concentrate. I was lucky to get six paragraphs a day. I didn't expect that. I didn't expect to feel so afraid.
Awhile before all that a friend said to me, "I don't think your writing is holding you back. I just think that your characters are gay."
I know how that sounds, but she wasn't criticizing my choices, she was commenting on a fact.  Queer stories have a smaller audience than straight. I knew that, but, last year when Black Light came out, I thought the gap was closing. I mean, I read books about straight people, right? And I met a bunch of the people who bought the book.They seemed to be everybody.
But then November came, and you all know that story. So, I spent a while thinking about why I write, and who I write. Because suddenly I became afraid. Afraid that even less people would read my stories.  Afraid that it exposed me in a way that felt new to me. And I forgot that the best fiction is about what scares you. And that good words are dangerous.
So soon I will have completed a story about Albrecht Christian,gay  psychic vampire and his first true love, a powerful black magician and the Loch Ness monster. Yep, you read that right. It turns out that I like the story. iIt might find a home, it might now. But that doesn't matter, really. the finishing of it reminded me to write the story that I have. No matter what.
I think I've got my faith back now.

Without You I'm Nothing

I've been working on non fiction for the last few weeks, which is strange for me. I'm not sure how to do it. One the things I depend on when I'm writing fiction is music. Lots of music. There are soundtracks for all the stories I write. Sometimes I make them, sometimes I use actual soundtracks. The neo-Victorian novel I'm working on now is in turns Pan's Labyrinth and Cowboy Bebop. Yes, jarring, I know. But it works for me. Black Light was full of David Bowie music, especially live recordings, but also it boiled down to two of his songs in particular: The Bewlay Brothers, from the Hunky Dory album, and Lady Stardust--not the version on the album, but a demo that I heard much later.

Many writers I know don't work well with other peoples words in their ears, in fact, I think I'm in the minority. Writing is lonely, and I do better with voices around me.

Which leads me to my point. I just finished a novella called, "Speak My Name." It's the story of a demon, who tends bar. He falls in love one night with a man who can see him in all his aspects. It's out in the world, looking for a home now, so it's been on my mind. This morning, in my facebook feed someone shared a video of Frank's(demon) and Mica's(not demon) song.

What music do you need to finish your stories? Does the music you listen to shape what you write in any way?

What is goin' on?

One the the weird/cool things that has happened since the book came out is that people have asked me a whole bunch of questions that I don't usually get. Okay, I'll be honest, nobody's ever asked me anything about what  write before. I did, over the last month, a series of interviews about  Black Light, and about writing in general.  I thought I'd put the links in below.

Shels Walter asked me about nail polish, and music. Coreena McBurnie wanted to know, pants or plot. I bet you know which one I chose, right?  Fiona McVie let me talk about religious experiences. And Terrie Leigh asked me about the nature of writing. 

Also I was interviewed by the Flushing View, which is my home town newspaper. This, out of anything else I've done in my life would have made my mother proud. 

Oh, hey, and my writing group, Flint Area Writers, has a swank new website, created by the amazing Melodie Bolt. You should totally go look at it and find out what the rest o FAW is up to.

So that was my June. July started with the signing, which I may have mentioned, at my B&N, and it's going to end with a trip to Gilchrist with my oldest best friend, Loren Rhoads, for writing and wine an lots and lots of quiet. I can't wait for that. 

My First Signing!

This has been weird. I have been to signings before, sat next to my friends while they signed their books for people. I've even signed my name to an anthology or two that I've had short stories published in. Today was different. Today I got to sit at the table at the Barnes and Noble put Black Light into other people's hands, all day. It was great. But weird. But great!

With me are Kacey Vanderkarr, Brian Thomas, and AJ Tupps. What great company to be in.  I saw a couple of old friends, which was amazing, and make a whole bunch of new ones, and even recruit a few for Flint Area Writers! And!! You guys! I even got to sell the book to people who were complete strangers! How much fun is that!

So, in celebration of my first signing, I'm doing a Goodreads Giveaway, starting at midnight tonight. ( July 9th). You can enter to win one of three paperback copies of Black Light from now until July 31.

Y'know what? This is another first for me!!. Wow......

Anyway, just click on the link over to the right of this blog, okay? And go enter!

Black Light: Repeating Themes, Nail Polish and an excerpt

Asia looked away.  He didn’t answer, because as much as he wanted to believe everything Trace said, he knew it wouldn’t do any good in three weeks when they got evicted.  Still, when Trace was so close to him, he couldn’t concentrate on that.  He found himself leaning in, letting their arms almost brush before he pulled himself back.  He stared at the chunks of nail polish Trace had flicked onto the sidewalk at his feet.  As Asia watched, an army of ants converged on them, bickering over them, picking them up, carrying them off.  Trace continued talking, not even noticing.  He had no idea that he was the god in their world, casting pieces of sky down to them.

It’s been mentioned that I have a fascination for blue nail polish (the color of Trace’s polish here) that could be evident in this book. That might be true. In high school nail polish at the drugstore wasn’t a reality for me yet. My mother didn’t approve of the colors I saw boys wearing on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. Iggy Pop wore black nail polish—that was certainly not in the approved pallet. I wore Avon, in colors of Blush and Pinkly. Yes, that was back in the day of the Avon Lady that came to the house. 

Black, though, was elusive, even after I started driving. At least is was in my small home town.  The color I remember wearing most, was that metallic light blue that Wet and Wild made. It was .99 cents a bottle, and it flaked off as soon as you put it on, no matter how many coats you gave the job.

What does that have to do with Trace? Because things repeat themselves. Trace wears that same blue nail polish, and then later, Asia notices, after Trace, that Mica is wearing it too. It connects what was to what will be for Asia.

 And fiction echoes life, even if that reflection is sometimes distorted. This little excerpt above is actually an echo of my childhood. I have a clear memory of sitting with my best friend on her parent’s front porch, in the cool of a Michigan evening. I don’t know what we were talking about, but I remember watching her chip off that sky blue polish, and the ants racing from the sidewalk cracks to drag it away. It is also the only clear memory I have of thinking, “I’m in love with her.”  As the ants stole the polish I thought, “I can never ever say that out loud.”

The scene wasn’t in the first draft of Black Light. Somehow it re-surface when I was writing the end. It’s memory that comes to Asia as he regrets his silence and dreams about what he should have said.  

Black Light: Loren Rhoads, David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust.

I didn’t begin this story alone. In 1983, Loren Rhoads was my best friend. She still is, though we’re separated now by the width of the country. But back then our world was MTV. It was Adam Ant and the Police. It was used records from Saturday trips to Ann Arbor. And most of all it was David Bowie. It was the year of “Let’s Dance.”

With his bleached white hair, asymmetrical smile and deceptively bouncy pop music, this was a vastly different Bowie than I’d met years before in the middle of the night. That shrill and jagged Bowie that had been there no one else was. Still, since I was aspiring punk rocker, I might have given Let’s Dance a pass. But it was inescapable, spilling out of every car window that passed my open bedroom window that summer. And what it did for both Loren and I was lead us to the past. I remember that Loren bought albums. She bought all the Bowie she could.  We listened to Diamond Dogs on her stereo in her bedroom, puzzled over the lyrics, let the imagery color our imaginations. For Loren, Diamond Dogs was a starting point for short stories. For me, it was farther back. For me it was Ziggy. “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”. Trace, Asia, Weird and Tommy were all born from that album. But the story, Trace and Asia’s story, began with one song.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UQvBzo_rJA

In the words of “Lady Stardust," I saw Asia, standing in that sweaty, hungry crowd, listening. I watched him feel what he could never say aloud, and I felt him lose the chance to ever speak up. Asia became the unnamed character in Bowie’s story for me. And then it became a different story. The membes of Black Light are from Michigan, because we were from Michigan, they are from the ‘80’s because so were we. Asia became a place to hold all my feelings of Midwestern repression. Ziggy became Trace; beautiful, and human, but completely unattainable. Even now when I listen to the Ziggy Stardust album it's full of energy and bravado, still a candle against the night.

Eventually, Loren's writing and mine took different paths. She has gone on to write more than anyone I know, and you can check out her blog here: httpp//:lorenrhoads.com/  

In fact, go look at her newest novel, Lost Angels, co-written with Brian Thomas: http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Angels-Above-Below-Book/dp/0963679422  It's an amazing book, and you need a copy, believe me. 

She's still the only person in the world who I can spend five hour in the same room with, just writing....with occasional tea breaks. And I don't think I'll ever be able to thank her enough for that first copy of Ziggy..... 

I have a book coming out!!! It's called Black Light)

I don't know if you have noticed or not, but..... I have a book coming out!! Black Light is coming out in May, which is terrifyingly close. To say I'm excited is just a huge understatement. I'm in shock, that the day is almost here.  I have lived with these characters for so long in my head that they've seeped into my bones. Once the book was finished, I missed not spending every waking second with them, but now they're front in center again. And the best part is that I can share them with you. I can't wait for you to meet Trace and Asia, and the rest of the members of the band.

Here the link to add it to your Goodreads list!

Cover Reveal:Black Light!

Hey look! Here is the beautiful cover for my book, coming in May, from Automatism press. I can't wait till I can hold it in my hands-and get it into all of your hands too! re
Isn'tit beautiful and mysterious? Bioblossom Creative did the art. And below is the blurb, so you can be even more intrigued.

I

It’s 1983, Los Angles, and Trace Dellon, lead singer, knows exactly what he wants; the white heat of the spotlight. When his band, Black Light is offered a record deal, Trace grabs for it, eager to move up from their club gigs. He will do anything it takes to make it.

Asia Heyes, bass player knows what he wants too. It’s not the fame or the adoration of fans and groupies. It’s Trace. It’s always been Trace.  Though it’s been unspoken between them- his other lovers-his audience-push Asia aside. 

With the contract, comes Albrecht Christian into their lives. He is a man with everything but what he needs to live: the energy that runs just under Trace’s skin. But even Trace isn’t enough, and Albrecht finds himself starving.

When everything crashes with a bullet, they all learn the truth. Rock and roll, like magic requires both love and sacrifice. Then Black Light’s fragile trajectory to greatness really begins.