The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

The wonderful Charlie Cochet tagged me in the Next Big Thing Blog Hop, so today I’m posting about my current work in progress!  Read on to find out more about it.

What is the working title of your book?

Lifelines

Where did the idea come from for the book?

This is the third book in my undead series, which started with Art of Death and then followed with Bonds of Death.  I decided to write this book because the story and the characters just weren’t done after Bonds of Death.  At this point, I plan on Lifelines being the final book in the series, but I acknowledge that there’s still an endless amount of potential stories for these characters and their future dealings with the undead.  So you never know.

As for the plot itself, I actually cannibalized an old comic I was working on during my early college years, in which students would perform rituals in order to control other students as if they were puppets, using strings—or “lines”—drawn from their life essence.  In Art of Death we had paintings, and in Bonds of Death we had dolls.  In Lifelines, the theme is marionettes.

What genre does your book fall under?

M/M paranormal mystery/thriller (with a side of romance)

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie?

This question is going to be the death of me.  It’s bad enough that I live under a rock when it comes to actors and such, but even with my limited knowledge, I really can’t imagine anyone who would be a good match.  But I’ll give it a shot, knowing that these are all sort of rough estimations of the characters:

Riley: He bears some physical resemblance to Gaspard Ulliel in this interview, but he’s not meant to be quite as “exotic,” if that makes any sense.  And of course, Riley's key features are his bright emerald eyes and long eyelashes.  The image to the left is a portrait I did of Riley awhile back.

Westwood: I’m completely at a loss.  I can’t think of anyone with that “obnoxiously masculine to the point of looking animalistic” quality that Westwood needs.  This photo of Rafael Verga is close in terms of physical features (and hair!), and he's at least from the right region, but Westwood has a deeper complexion and is more intense and intimidating, with cold black eyes that are set a little deeper.  He's also just a touch older than the model.  Hopefully before the end of the year, I'll be able to do a portrait of him.  I've been dying to do one for a long time...

Porter: I think a 20-year-old Matthew Gray Gubler could probably capture Porter’s personality and his sense of fun, and they share a body type, but Porter’s face is long and narrow rather than square.  Not a perfect match, but as close as I can think of right now.  Of course, he'd need big poofy hair that resembles a tumbleweed...  I did this sketch of Porter when I was in the beginning stages of writing Bonds of Death, and I still haven't had a chance to paint it, but I really want to..

Arman: Unfortunately, Iranian-American actors don’t have much visibility here in the U.S., so I don’t know of any that would be a good fit.  But in terms of physical appearance, the first guy on this page is a close match.  I've tried and failed at drawing Arman a few times now.

Quinn: If pressed, I’d say that perhaps a hardier version of Tilda Swinton (with long hair) would make an interesting Quinn.  I imagine Quinn to look quite a bit less ethereal, but they do share a certain sense of severity.

What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When Riley and Westwood are called to a prep school in the Chicago suburbs to investigate a case of mysterious undead activity, they’re caught in the middle of a vindictive scheme by someone who’s determined not only to tear them apart but to destroy them body and soul.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

The first two in the series were published by Dreamspinner Press, and I hope the third will be the same.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I’m still writing it.  I’ve been working on it since August and hope to finish and submit it by March.  Progress has been slow compared to the first two.  I wrote Art of Death in a month and edited it in two or so additional months.  I wrote and edited all 96,000+ words of Bonds of Death within two months, but that was horribly tight, and I never plan to do that again.  This time, I’m pacing myself.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre.
I don’t know of anything similar other than the two previous books in the series, especially not within the m/m genre.  The undead are somewhere in between vampires, zombies, superheroes, and demons, without falling into any of those categories, and the books are definitely on the harder edge of the m/m spectrum.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?
I mostly see this story as a natural progression from the previous two books.  Really, Riley himself was the inspiration.

My main reason for writing this story is Riley’s unresolved issues as a character: his recklessness, his dishonesty, his fear of intimacy, and his depression.  All of these issues (along with one other huge problem) prevented Riley from finding happiness in his last relationship, and I knew that nothing would stop him from doing the exact same thing with Westwood unless something changed.

What else about your book might interest the reader?

When staying at his childhood home, Riley sees a hauntingly familiar figure standing underneath the apple tree in the backyard, where his older brother had committed suicide eleven years ago.  Soon after, he discovers clues about an arcane ritual that allows for a human to be reborn as undead—hidden among his brother’s old belongings.

I’m also sharing this excerpt from Lifelines, which says a lot about Riley’s state of mind.  Throughout this book, it gradually becomes evident that perhaps Riley really isn’t as stupid as he’s appeared all this time.  Reckless, yes—but not stupid.  His problem, unfortunately, is much bigger than that.

---

Excerpt: Lifelines

A yearbook sat at the top of the box.  It was from the end of Andrew’s sophomore year.  Although he’d died in January, his classmates had arranged to pass the yearbook around at the end of the year and get signatures and messages from all of Andrew’s former friends and classmates.  Riley remembered being blindsided when a kindly sophomore he’d never met before handed him the book on the last day of school.  Up until now, he’d completely forgotten about the yearbook.

He fought back tears as he pulled the book out of the box and flipped to the sophomore portraits.  There was Andrew Burke: stick-straight blond hair, freckles, a somewhat delicate nose, and ears that stuck out just a bit.

Out of curiosity, he flipped to the freshman portraits and found his own.  He compared it back to Andrew.  Although Riley had always gotten far more attention for his looks than Andrew, they did share a clear resemblance, especially in their eyes and their bone structure.  Riley noticed the resemblance much more clearly now than he had back then.

Before Andrew died, Riley had been a blissfully stupid fifteen-year-old, always eager to accept whatever dare or challenge his big brother tossed his way.  He’d gotten into more scrapes than he could remember, but he knew that Andrew always had his back.  Andrew would tell him to swim down to the bottom of the lake in search of tadpoles or try to steal a pack of condoms from a senior football player’s locker, and Riley would do it without hesitation, knowing that his brother wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him.

During the years after Andrew’s death, Riley slowly came to accept the fact that no one else would ever have his back the way his brother did.  Yet he still put himself down into the depths of dangerous waters over and over, knowing all the while that his lifeline was long gone.

One of these days, he’d finally get pulled under for good.  For eleven years, he’d wondered when that day would come.  He almost wanted it to come.

Alanna’s words surfaced in his mind.  “Sometimes you act like you don’t really care about your life.”

When he’d first met Westwood, the man had accused him of having a death wish.  Just a few months ago, he’d said, “I’m wondering why I’m wasting my time on a human who’s intent on getting himself killed.”

Riley gritted his teeth, trying to fight off a surge of anger.  What did they know?

---

I have the pleasure of tagging/linking the following lovely people, who will share their works in progress next!

December 26

J.B. Sanders

Jana Denardo

Zahra Owens

January 2

Anne Barwell

Grace Duncan

Follow the Rainbow Book Reviews Blog Hop: What Writing GLBTQ Literature Means to Me

Welcome to my post for the Follow the Rainbow Book Reviews Blog Hop! 

I'm excited to be a part of the celebration!  I'll be chatting a bit about some of my inspiration and why I write what I write.  Also, I'm giving away one free ebook!  You have your choice between my two current titles: Art of Death, and The Dragon Tamer.  To enter the drawing, simply leave a comment on this blog post along with your email address any time before midnight central time on Sunday 8/26.

On Monday, I'll randomly draw the name of the winner from the comments and contact you by email.  If you have a Dreamspinner account, we'll put the book of your choice on your virtual bookshelf.  Otherwise, the book will be delivered as a PDF by email.

Also, make sure to check out the Rainbow Book Reviews Blog!

What Writing GLBTQ Literature Means to Me

I like to write fun, weird, unusual stories.  Stories with action and drama and humor.  Stories that don't take themselves too seriously.  Heck, my most recent release was about undead painters and the people who worship them—and there's a sequel coming out in October.  When I write stuff like that, how can I take myself seriously?  I like to keep things light, and I like to joke around.  But at times like today, when I take the time to sit down and really think about why I write what I write, I realize just how serious I am.

I've had GLBTQ friends for as long as I can remember.  I'm of an ethnic minority, thus I've always empathized with others who felt like they weren't—or couldn't be—one of the "normal" kids.  I'm even a minority within a minority—a rare Indian with a Christian upbringing when all the other Indians I knew were Hindu.  Not Indian enough for most Indians, not Christian enough for most Christians, not girly enough for most girls, and so on.  My GLBTQ friends were the ones who accepted me for all my weirdness—my utter lack of so-called femininity, my refusal to adhere to, promote, or support restrictive traditional gender roles, and more.  They accepted these things without judgment or questions, the same way I accepted and respected them—and I can't even express how much gratitude I have for that acceptance.

I've wanted to be a storyteller for my entire life, but I've always felt frustration as a consumer because I strongly believe that minorities of all types—ethnic, GLBTQ, gender-based, etc.—should have fair, varied, realistic, and significant representation in fiction.  I'm passionate about this for two reasons:

• People who are part of these minority groups deserve to see characters like themselves in primary roles in fiction.
• People who are not part of these minority groups need to be exposed to these characters as a way of cultivating understanding and empathy, especially when they aren't lucky enough to live in a diverse environment.

Mainstream media likes to essentially "neuter" GLBTQ characters and have them be no more than colorful sidekicks for heterosexual heroes (who happen to get far more on-screen action than said sidekicks).  On the flip side, lower budget indie movies and small press GLBTQ books sometimes reduce their characters down to their sexuality and nothing else, with stories that are either focused entirely on sex and romance, or on the Gay Experience (coming out, gay bashing, AIDS, etc.)

The latter is true of most minorities: stories that feature minority leads are almost always about the "minority experience."  While I think those "minority experience" stories absolutely do need to exist, they're not enough.  Minority characters need to be heroes in all kinds of stories, not just minority-themed stories, and at the same time it needs to be done in a way that doesn't ignore their identity, neuter, or whitewash them.

I looked at these mainstream stories with neutered GLBTQ sidekicks, and then at the genre stories of romance, sex, and more sex, and then at the stories of AIDS, gay bashing, self-loathing, and victimhood.  It left me wondering: where is the middle ground?  Where are the stories of GLBTQ characters living not just the gay experience, not just the love-and-sex experience, but the full human experience?

It got to the point where I felt more frustration than joy after consuming a work of fiction.  I was sick of the idea that only straight white men could have high-flying adventures, solve a murder, make a heroic sacrifice, climb the career ladder, conquer paranormal creatures, or tame a dragon.  I was sick of the idea that minorities could only be sidekicks and supporting characters in such stories, but never leads.  I was sick of GLBTQ genre stories that refused to rise past clichés and familiar territory and failed to deliver substance beyond the sex scenes.

Most importantly, I was sick of ranting about these things but not actually doing anything to fix the problem.

So that's where I stand.  That's why I write what I write.  I write in the middle ground, the land of adventure, love, joy, danger, fun, loss, sex, success, missteps, and everything else that's part of the human experience.  I'm by no means the only person who's devoted to this middle ground of GLBTQ literature, and I rejoice every time I find someone else who shares this exciting space with me.  I'm excited by the recent growth of this middle ground, and I hope to see it continue to flourish.

Thanks for reading!  Make sure to leave a comment below to be entered in my giveaway!  And make sure to check out all the other participants of the blog hop!

[EDIT] Congratulations, wulf, for winning the giveaway!  I will be contacting you by email shortly so you can claim your prize!

Manga and Romance: They will rob you of your innocence (as if you had any to begin with)

As part of the Manga and Romance Blog Hop, today I'm going to talk about how manga, yaoi, and gay romance chipped away at my childhood innocence—in the best possible way.

It all began on a bright sunny day in the 1990s...  Or maybe it was cold and cloudy.  Hell if I remember.  I was eleven years old, and my mom had taken my sisters and me to Blockbuster to rent movies.  (Remember when people used to go to a store to rent movies?  Good old VHS tapes with a sticker telling you to be kind and rewind, etc.)

Anyway, even at that age, I was completely absorbed in my own characters and stories, and my pet project at the time had a major character named Maurice.  So when I came across a movie called Maurice and read the back of the cover, I thought it was "funny" that the character named Maurice was gay and decided to make it my pick for the day.  My mom took a brief look at the back of the box and said, "Gay?  Why would you want to watch that?"  But she let me rent it anyway.  I think she didn't look too closely at the warnings on the back of the box, such as the big bold one that said, "This movie will forever corrupt your daughter and offer her first glimpse of men's penises other than when she walked in on her dad in the shower and laughed her head off."  (I'm paraphrasing.)

As it turns out, I was a little too young to truly appreciate Maurice.  But even then, some of the more heated moments in the movie stuck in my mind like the glue my mother used to make for us out of rice while all my classmates got to use that fancy Elmer's stuff from the store.

A couple years pass, and my friends get me into Sailor Moon, which was airing at around six in the morning on TV every weekday.  Granted, in the mangled American TV version of Sailor Moon, they turned one of the men from the first season's gay couple into a girl, but I was tech savvy enough to navigate the web (at that time known as "America Online") and discover the truth behind Zoisite and Kunzite.

Things didn't really click for me, however, until I was fourteen or fifteen years old.  By that time, I was heavily into anime, and my friends had introduced me to Neon Genesis Evangelion (which, by the way, I do not recommend unless you like to see lots and lots of creepy and grotesque sexualized imagery of fourteen-year-old girls).  But, again while surfing online, I stumbled upon some (pretty tame) "yaoi" fan art of Shinji and Kaworu.  I asked myself, "All these fascinating pictures I really like are labeled 'yaoi.'  What does that mean?"  So I went to Yahoo.com and did a search.

Thus was the end of my innocence.

Throughout the next decade or so, I watched and read every yaoi title I could get my hands on.  One of my favorites at the time was the manga series Kizuna, a love story between a former kendo prodigy and the son of a yakuza boss.  I had to buy the books from an online Japanese import shop and then download text translations online, or text summaries if translations weren't available.  Apparently now you can buy the whole manga series in English, which is still on my list of "things to do when I have money."

The manga that probably had the largest influence on my own storytelling, however, was Yami no Matsuei (which you can also now buy in English under the title Descendants of Darkness).  This was primarily a fantasy story about (some very pretty) gods of death who judge the souls of the deceased and handle cases where those souls are interfering with human life.  This series also has one of the better anime adaptations, which I also recommend.  What I loved most about this series was that it had a very strong plot, and the plot really was the focus, but there was also a steady stream of m/m content throughout.  While I appreciate straight-up romance, I prefer stories about other types of struggles that happen to also have strong romantic themes.  This is the way I approach most of my own work.

Later in college, when my interests as an illustration major began shifting toward a more detailed and "realistic" aesthetic, I began branching out from just yaoi and began exploring m/m novels, movies, and TV from the U.S. and other countries.  I even revisited Maurice, both the novel and the movie, and both remain favorites for me.  (The audiobook of Maurice is also wonderful, and has the best narration I've heard on any audiobook.)

Now in my own work as an artist and writer, I like to try to find a healthy balance between the fantasy of yaoi and the (relative) realism of other m/m media, as well as the balance between plot and romance. I'm looking forward to my 7/2 release of Art of Death, as well as the time that more of the m/m elements begin to pop up in my webcomic, Demon of the Underground, because I'm really happy with the balance I've found in both.

Check out the other participants of the Manga and Romance Blog Hop, and be sure to leave a comment on my blog or another participating blog for a chance to win the GRAND PRIZE!  There's lots of m/m and yaoi giveaways, and you don't want to miss the opportunity to shed the last of your innocence, do you?