• Check out my blog, “Confessions of a Str8 Gay Man”
  • Directory to My Short Story Collection, “Basic Butch”
  • Here’s an Excerpt from “For the Love of Samuel”
  • Here’s An Excerpt from My New Novella, “Buy Guys,” A Tale of Redemption
  • Here’s An Excerpt from My Romantic Novella, “Not In It For The Love”
  • Here’s An Excerpt from My Gay Erotic Novel of Deceit, Betrayal and Self-Discovery, “The Czar of Wilton Drive”
  • More On the Making of “For the Love of Samuel”

Monthly Archives: June 2016

My Books and What The Critics Think, Plus Samples From Their Audiobook Editions

21 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by str8gayconfessions in Uncategorized

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My Books and What The Critics Think

For the Love of Samuel
A story of love lost … and love found
Now in E-book and Audiobook Editions

New Yorker and aging gay man Billy Veleber who abhors growing old has lost Mitch, his former meth head lover, to his habit, and Gus, the older man in his life and mentor, to despair, when he is confronted with the chance to become 21 all over again, through the magical prowess of the dog tag of a long dead Civil War soldier, Samuel Evans. Young again, Billy abandons Manhattan for Fort Lauderdale where he meets Dare, the love of his life, whose clever quick rich venture first bonds them, then threatens to end their idyllic lives together forever. Billy also faces the reality of having to tell Dare the truth about himself.

“There have been countless stories about the quest for youth and everlasting life making it difficult to find a new way to approach it and write about it. Here is where Andrew succeeds. He takes the facts that he has learned and converts them into fantasy and he gives us a very sexy story. It seems that there were certain dog tags that contained the life force of their long dead owners and when the tags were transferred to a new owner, the person returned to the age Samuel was when he lost his life.

We meet some very hot men who have some very hot sex but the reader must be ready to read fast because the novel is fast paced. I actually heard, and thoroughly enjoyed the audio version that made it all seem very real (and very sexy). However, it is not only the sex that keeps the story moving. Writer Andrews tells a good story in wonderful prose…

There are a lot of characters and the story changes directions a few times keeping us alert. This is one of those books that will stay with me for quite a while.”

Amos Lassen Reviews

Here are some audiobook samples from “For The Love Of Samuel:”

Billy, the aging 51 old gay man, puts on the magic dog tag of the long dead Civil War soldier, Samuel Evans and over one weekend begins his transformation. Already feeling his libido renewed, Billy visits Manhattan’s last remaining leather hole, The New Eagle…

https://str8gayconfessions.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/rp-andrews-for-the-love-of-samuel-ch-11.mp3

Starting a new life in sunny Fort Lauderdale, Billy meets Dare, a 42 year disgraced ex New York City cop now working as a security guard at the leatherbar Billy gets a job at as a barback. The chemistry between them is immediate, and that night, Dare takes Billy back to his condo where they make love for the very first time …
https://gayeroticfiction.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/rp-andrews-for-the-love-of-samuel-ch-17.mp3

Buy Guys
A tale of redemption
Now in E-book and Audiobook Editions

Buy Guys is the story of Blaze and Pete, two young, handsome drifters with nothing and nothing to lose. Blaze convinces Pete, who is falling in love with him, to leave dreary New Jersey and lead free and easy lives as male BuyGuys_cvr Aprostitutes in sunny Fort Lauderdale, posting their profile on the male escort site, Buy Guys. Blaze, however, soon pulls Pete into a much larger, more dangerous scheme, a scheme that eventually threatens to destroy them both.

“Well written … I naturally assumed by the title that the story would be about two guys in the sex trade but I had no idea that this would also become a kind of mystery… the sex scenes are quite graphic … (and) Blaze and Pete use sex as a way to bolster their finances and get out of debt. More importantly, they try to deal with their pasts and it is with this theme that they find themselves involved in kidnapping, murder and drug use … RP Andrews gives us two characters that represent what can happen when the wrong choices are made and he does so in a way that they hold a fascination for us.”

Amos Lassen Reviews

In this audio chapter we meet the two men of our story, young and studly Blaze and Pete and find out why they decide to leave dreary New Jersey for the sun and fun of Fort Lauderdale as paid escorts on the pick up site Buy Guys…

https://gayeroticfiction.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/BUY-GUYS-Chapter-1-by-R.P.-Andrews-121318-7.29-PM.mp3

Blaze and Pete encounter all kinds of guys in their pursuit as sexy studs for hire in sunny Fort Lauderdale but Pete, who thinks he has seen it all, finds his client on this particular afternoon certainly in a class by himself…

https://gayeroticfiction.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/BUY-GUYS-PROMO-by-R.P.-Andrews-121318-7.29-PM.mp3

 

The Czar of Wilton Drive
Now in E-book and Audiobook Editions

My erotic novel of sex, drugs, deceit and betrayal, set in Fort Lauderdale’s Wilton Manors, Gay America’s playground. Available on amazon.com

Jonathan Antonucci, a 21 year old, barely-out-the-closet gay man from suburban New York, overnight finds himself a multi-millionaire, Czar Cover Bthanks to a bequest by his late gay great uncle. Uncle Charlie has unexpectedly died of a heart attack, leaving him the sole owner of several of the most successful bars in Wilton Manors, Fort Lauderdale’s gay ghetto.

Flying down to Lauderdale to claim his bequest, Jon encounters Uncle Charlie’s dubious friends and business associates, and is immediately submerged in the underbelly of Lauderdale’s gay scene. He also discovers his great uncle’s memoirs which reveal truths not only about Jon’s own past but also what may have really happened to his uncle.

“This is one of those reads that just takes you along and dominates you as you read and you do not have to think about anything but getting lost in the story.”

Amos Lassen Reviews

Here’s a sample audio chapter from “Czar.”

Summoned by Uncle Charlie’s lawyer to Lauderdale. Jonathan learns that Uncle Charlie left him ownership in two of Lauderdale’s most successful gay bars. He is in Charlie’s beachfront condo which is now his when he finds his uncle’s smartphone and calls the last number of the last text message Charlie received. It is from Marcos, a local barber and fuck buddy who offers to come and help Jon sort things out…

https://gayeroticfiction.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/czar-of-wilton-drive-chapter-4-by-R.P.-Andrews-112318-8.54-PM.mp3

In this audio chapter from “Czar,” Jonathan is introduced to forbidden fruit by humpy leather man Gil, manager of the Gearshaft, Lauderdale’s leather and levi bar Jon inherited from his late uncle. Gil was also one of Charlie’s lovers …

https://gayeroticfiction.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/czar-of-wilton-drive-chapter-16-by-r-p-andrews-10ef80a225ef80a218-4-13-pm.mp3

 

Not In It For The Love

A novella of unconventional love, betrayal and redemption set in the New York City of 9/11. Available in e-book and audiobook editions.

Set at the turn of the new millennium. this is the story of Josh, a young street-smart Florida drifter is snatched from his dead-end existence as a male hustler in a cheap Key Largo motel by Bishop, a Wall Street power broker who sets him up as his trophy boy in Not In It CoverManhattan society.

There, Josh, after leading a promiscuous lifestyle within New York City’s gay sub-culture, meets Hylan, a young, bi-racial, down-on-his luck, wheelchair-bound musician who awakens in Josh what love can be between two men. But their chance at happiness and the lives of those around them are forever changed by 9/11.

“A brilliant story you can’t help but inhale whole non-stop till you reach the end … this is not your everyday romance, this is not your everyday fiction either. This story is like taking a peek out there in the lives of real people in the real world.”

MM Good Book Reviews

“Appealing,” … “(a) taut, richly detailed … unapologetic … gritty realistic tale… a character-driven plot that moves smoothly and easily from first page to last.”

Mrs. Condit and Friends

Up to now Josh, the Florida drifter and sometime male prostitute who has been adopted by Wall Street deal broker Bishop and brought to Manhattan as his trophy boy, has always viewed sex as a way of benefiting himself minus any emotions. That all suddenly changes one Sunday evening when Josh pays a visit to New York’s West Village…

https://gayeroticfiction.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/not-in-it-for-the-love-chapter-11-by-r.p.-andrews-2ef80a224ef80a219-1.30-pm.mp3

Josh has plans to meet Bishop for lunch at Windows on the World on top of the World Trade Center, site of Bishop’s new job, and visit Hylan at St. Vincent’s Hospital where he is being treated for his paralysis, when all of their worlds are turned topsy turvy. The date: September 11, 2001.

https://gayeroticfiction.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/not-in-it-for-the-love-chapter-31-by-r.p.-andrews-2ef80a217ef80a219-4.54-pm.mp3

 

My other works include:

Basic Butch

A collection of edgy short stories set in some of America’s leading gay venues like New York, San Francisco and Fort Lauderdale, with characters – gay men and women- whose arrogant, aggressive natures lead them down life paths they wish they had never explored. Available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

BasicButchCover_Amazon_960x1280“Andrews’ stories are sensuous and disturbingly human. His genius rests in his rare ability to weave deplorable criminal acts such as murder and child abuse into an erotic patchwork, and render the balance tragic poetry … a truly unique and darkly gifted writer.”

Fredryk Traynor, author

“Sweet is an author who uses irony to create literary image with the deft skill of a cloisonné artist. Civilization, truth, history and love are examined under the diamond brightness of an Indian sun.”

Wayves Magazine

Confessions of a Str8 Gay Man: Second Edition

The collection of my no-holds-barred, unvarnished, introspective social commentary on gay life in today’s America from my daily blog, str8gayconfessions.com. Available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

confessionssecondeditioncoverI also offer my own critical reviews of some of America’s so-called gay hot spots, including my own home base of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which is frequented by more than a million gay travelers annually.

Written from my perspective as a “str8 gay” man, a member of the great silent gay majority who do not espouse the fluff of gay sub-culture or all its political correctness but instead lead quiet, ordinary lives,

Confessions covers such diverse subjects as:

• The Gay Psyche
• Man Makeovers
• Playing the Web
• Gay Culture
• The Hirsute Man
• Sex
• Friends and Family
• Relationships & Erotic Adventures
• Gays and God

“Confessions takes a deeper behind the scenes look at the gay community, but with the standard rose-colored glasses removed … for every opinion I did not agree with, there were many more that I felt were ‘right on’ and only wish were more openly discussed on a regular basis by the gay community.”

The Scrambler

Furry Man’s Journal

 

 

 

My memoirs as a hirsute gay men as told through my erotic experiences with the dozen or so iconic hairy men I knew – and loved. In it, My Furrry Journal Cover FINALstory parallels the evolution of Modern Gay Life in America from the birth of Gay Liberation, through the AIDS crisis, to today’s techno-crazed age. Available on amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com

“Absolutely fantastic.”

All Bear Magazine

My New Play, “Ode To A Dying Dog” Now Up on Amazon

20 Monday Jun 2016

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ode2aud copy final

To order click here:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Ode+To+A+Dying+Dog

“Ode To A Dying Dog,” a drama, with comedic overtones, is about two aging gay men, once longtime partners, now estranged, who reunite on the occasion of one of the men’s dog dying. Over the three days that the play takes place, they grapple over the issues that led to the failure of their relationship. The play touches on a host of hot-button topics in contemporary gay life including relationships, infidelity, separation and living alone, narcissism, growing old, AIDS, drugs, May-December relationships, the sugar daddy syndrome, and of course the love of pets. During the course of the play, a number of the characters in each of these men’s separate lives come alive on stage.

If I were to characterize my play in just a few phrases I would describe it as a cross between a gay “Odd Couple” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.”

Got the picture? Audio version soon…

Inside The Mind Of a Writer

20 Monday Jun 2016

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Inside The Mind of a Writer

Here’s the blow-by-blow saga of me making it as a writer…

The Beginning

I’ve always been a good writer. Got mostly A’s on my papers in high school and that allowed me later in college where I was an English major to skip most of the basic essay writing courses freshmen are obliged to take. Yet ironically, when I took the creative writing class, I got a C+! Maybe the prof had the hots for me and was frustrated – who knows?

Later, when I went for my graduate degree at the University of Southern California in L.A., more to get away from my controlling folks than for its wild gay scene, I enrolled in its school of drama. Maybe because part of me, at 5’6, fantasized about 20150109_140534-1being the next Dustin Hoffman, and part because I was interested in script writing, plays (Tennessee Williams was my favorite playwright), maybe even film.

As a kid, I thought movie stars never grew old, and even today I believe “film,” – in all its variations – is the closest thing we humans have to immortality. (Think about it: our collective fascination with old Hollywood lauded and energized by media outlets like TCM is based largely on people who are long dead.)

I did well in my playwriting course –seems I have a natural talent for dialogue – even had one of my one act plays mounted as a class production. But I realized quickly that writing for actors is a collaborative effort involving many people. And I’m a solo kind of a guy which is why writing fiction was the creative niche I was drawn to.

I wanted to stay in L.A., clinging to the hope I might somehow make it in the movie business, but my rude awakening came when I took the bus to Culver City, home of the fabled MGM, to apply for a “title” writer’s job at the studio. This was 1970 – Culver City was a ghetto, MGM’s glory days had long gone, and its property, like most of the mecca studios, was being sold off. So instead of being interviewed in a spacious Louis B Mayor kind of office, the HR guy met me in a small shack just inside the security gates.

He pondered my resume – remember, I had no experience since I just finished my master’s degree – and reacted positively to what he saw, then pointed to two bulging mailbags behind him. “You look good, but I’ve got a lot more applications to go through before I decide.”

That – and a 6.6 earthquake a few weeks later –put an end to my Hollywood fantasy.

Two months later I was back home living with my folks in suburban North Jersey, and working at my very first professional job as an assistant to the editorial supervisor in the public relations department at Blue Cross of New York on Lexington and 26th. (This was before Blue Cross and Blue Shield emerged.)

In the era before Monster.com and Career Builders, the only way to find a professional position if you didn’t go into teaching was to religiously comb the want ads in Sunday’s New York Times, and hit the pavement and check out the employment agencies in Manhattan. When the rep mentioned the job at Blue Cross in its public relations department, I slyly thought, “What’s public relations? Group sex?”

But, I’m a quick learner and Betty, my boss, taught me everything I needed to know to make PR my life’s career. Reflecting back, the office was a version of “Mad Men,” with Betty the only professional woman on staff, surrounded by chain-smoking, womanizing, liquored-lunch males.

That job was a stepping stone to the assistant to the community relations director at a hospital on Staten Island, the forgotten borough of NYC, where I moved to cut my commute to twenty minutes by car. Unlike many people who go through three or four employers in their work years, I pretty much stayed put, and moved up the ladder to eventually become the marketing and communications VP for had evolved into a multi-facility healthcare network.

The one problem was, after working a hectic sixty hour work week where I was on the computer writing reports, media releases, advertising copy, you name it, fifty percent of the time, the last thing I wanted to do was write in my precious spare time. Not a cop-out – a reality.

That would have to wait until decades later when I semi-retired to sunny, sexy Fort Lauderdale, which not only gave me the time to write but also a hell of a lot of experiences to write about.

My Baptism of Fire in the Writing Game

In 2002, having put my pennies away while I was making the “big” money in New York, I decided to leave The Big Apple and my corporate job, and semi-retired to sunny Fort Lauderdale where I had snowbirded for over a decade and already owned property. I was fortunate to line up a teaching job at a small private boy’s school; then, a year later, I gravitated to adjunct professorships at two local universities where I taught college writing. Compared to my staggering workload back in New York, teaching was a cake walk. Hell, I had all my lesson plans on Power Point, which meant I could walk in drunk and still teach the class.

But now I had run out of excuses on why I couldn’t write for the pleasure of it. And, with the advent of the personal computer and Microsoft Word ( I remember the days in my early career when my office floor was littered with “drafts” off an IBM Selectric typewriter), writing, at least technically, had become easily than ever. Yea, it was “shit or get off the pot” time. Either become a writer or stop wet dreaming about it.

As they say, writers, particularly beginning writers, should write about what they know, and over the next year I labored over a semi-autobio novel about my two opposing worlds back in New York – the one of a corporate executive working for a Catholic healthcare system, juxtaposed against my life as a leather/levi gay man, cruising the underbelly of the City’s West Village on weekends.

I came up with my pen name, RP Andrews, by scrambling my initials, RP, for my first and last name, and Andrews, a play on my middle name.

But in this BTW era – Before The Web – the only way one could navigate the world of publishing was to secure a literary agent, in my case, one who handled gay manuscripts, which narrowed the field of possibilities. So, I trotted over to Barnes and Noble, bought a guide to literary agents, canvassed which were gay-friendly, and started hustling my book which, depending on their specs, meant sending them (often by snail mail) anywhere from a synopsis to some sample chapters to the full manuscript. To protect myself, I took the poor man’s copyrighting approach and mailed the manuscript to myself so I had some evidence from the postmark when I had created it.

Well, the response I got from the twenty or so agents I narrowed my search down to was underwhelming.

Now, it’s one thing if somebody tells you your stuff sucks; it’s another if they never even looked at it, and in my case it was the latter. Their responses, whether terse or verbose, all came down to something like: “We get so many unsolicited manuscripts we can’t possibly look at them all, and yours is one of them. Sorry.” Some came as form letters, some as humiliating postcards with my name spelled wrong.

Okay, I guess my stuff wasn’t any good, but were all these literary agents relying on their established stable of writers who, sooner or later, would stop producing product? Were all their new prospects recommended by peers in the business which is what happened to Margret Mitchell, a former journalist, and her originally voluminous manuscript of “Gone with The Wind” done on one of those small portable typewriters? Originally begun as a project while her leg, injured from a horse riding accident healed, “GWTW,” using tales told to her by a Confederate relatives, was never intended to be seen by another human being. That is, until a friend of a friend at MacMillan came over for a visit and asked to see her creation. BTW, the original name for her protagonist was Patsy.

Publishing folklore says J.K. Rowling’s manuscript of “Harry Potter” was rejected numerous times until the secretary – secretary – of an editor pressed her boss to take a second look. And Nicholas Sparks’ “The Notebook” only saw the light of day when an agent just happened to grab the manuscript from a pile out of boredom.

So if agents – and publishers – who were willing to accept unsolicited manuscripts didn’t look at most of them, how were they ever going to discover the next Hemingway or Steinbeck? To say it was demoralizing would be like comparing the explosion that obliterated the Hindenburg to deflating a balloon.

Meanwhile, I was having a gay old time in sex drenched Lauderdale, and with it came a whole new set of experiences, perfect for molding into prose. So, the next time around, I took a different approach and two years later in 2008, with, “Basic Butch,” my anthology of edgy short stories, a done deal, I canvassed gay publishers and got a bite from the San Francisco-based GLB Press. Yea, he was interested in publishing my work. If I paid him. Eight hundred bucks for two hundred fifty copies (what I realized later was vanity publishing), which he promised to distribute in gay book stores in key markets. For the cover, I got a local photographer who lined up a couple of humpy bartenders for the shoot.

But there were two strikes against me from the beginning, First, my publisher was gravely ill and about to fold if he couldn’t find a buyer, so promotional support was minimal. Secondly, exclusively gay bookstores, an institution for decades, and, for that matter, exclusively gay publishers were beginning to fade away as mainstream publishing houses saw the profit potential including popular “LGBT” titles in their dossiers and carrying the books in their outlets.

The result was my book didn’t go much anywhere, and I was about ready to reactivate my stamp collection as a diversion when a new player came to town.

His name: WWW.

The E-Pub Revolution

In 2010, swept by blogger fever, I launched “Confessions of a Str8 Gay Man,” my trice-a-week commentary on the highs and lows, triumphs and short comings of contemporary American gay life and the mainstream social and political firestorms that impact it.

Guys over the years have asked why I called it what I did; a few even thought it pretentious. But as I said in my inaugural blog, to my intended audience:

“I know you’re out there. Guys like me. Str8 gay guys, guys who are guys who want guys who are guys. Some bullshit at times – can two guys ever avoid it? – but Calvin Klein cologne, never. You’re out there in the urban jungles leading the gay solo life, or married in suburbia, sometimes with kids, checking out the gym sauna or that adult bookstore on the sly. You’re auto mechanics, teachers, lawyers, UPS drivers, corporate execs, clerks, jocks and beer guzzlers. Some of you still have one foot in the closet for whatever professional or personal reasons. Then there are those of you who’ve kicked the door off its hinges and don’t give a fuck what people think because you’re confident in your masculinity and feel that what it is to be a man has a lot more to do with what’s upstairs in your head than what you’ve got between your legs. Some of you like giving it, others like getting it, but while you may use terms like “top” or “bottom” in your conversations or web profiles to cut to the chase, you hate labels. You’re a homosexual – not a fag – because you’re a guy who just happens to want a guy and knows what a guy wants.’

‘Sure, being gay can be adventurous, but because we haven’t got a script like straights, it can also be a challenge. That’s why I think it’s time us guys had something to guide us and talk about what we want and think without all that fag fluff, glitter and gloss that the media and even our own sub-culture peddles. I’ve lived and played in New York City, L.A., and South Florida, hotbeds of gaydom, and traveled throughout most of the U.S., and what I try to do here, is give you guys a heads up on what it is to be gay in America and, most importantly, how best to navigate the invariably rough bumps all of us in this Life will encounter sooner, if not later. A gay fantasy with walks on the beach and hot showers this book ain’t (though there’s an ample amount of sex to keep you, well, happy).’

‘Unlike some gay propagandists that paint a rosy, cum-stained picture to sell their camming hunks, two-for-one drink specials, or stainless steel douches, I have no agenda other than to tell the truth as I’ve seen it. Some of you, when you read my unvarnished, highly biased observations, opinions and advice, sprinkled with a healthy dose of true confessions, will say “right on, bro!” But I’m sure there will also be just as many of you out there who’ll shout, “who the fuck does this arrogant queer think he is?” So be it.”

“Confessions” is now in its seventh year and when I started my personal Facebook page, I automatically had my posts appear there as well. Today, I have close to five thousand FB “Friends.”

My “Confessions” manifesto has been mirrored in much of my fiction, stories about men on the edge.

Doing “Confessions” has also had other benefits. Besides giving me a soapbox for my often unorthodox views, blogging has taught me to write faster. I was always a quick writer in PR where you’re constantly facing marketing and media deadlines, but my avocation as a blogger sped up my thinking process even more, a skill that I easily transferred to my fiction writing.

From a larger perspective, the web ushered a new era for us authors. No longer did we have to kiss the asses of literary agents or sublimate ourselves to publishers. If they didn’t like or want our stuff, hey, we could self-publish! And self-publish for pennies as e-books which, thanks to popularity of Kindle in particular which today dominates 80% of the market, are changing people’s reading habits.

(The publisher of my novel “The Czar of Wilton Drive” admitted that self-publishing is giving small publishers that cater to a niche audience like gay readers a run for their money.)

So using a company in Colorado, Book Nook, that transferred my Microsoft manuscript into an e-book format, as well provide me an artist to create a cover, I self-published a compilation of my blogs under the title, “Confessions of a Str8 Gay Man” as an e-book in 2011 which I uploaded myself onto Amazon and Barnes and Noble. A year later, I came out with a second edition, and soon after self-published my memoirs, “Furry Man’s Journal,” which followed my life as a gay man from the dawn of gay liberation through the AIDS crisis to today’s web-driven lifestyle as told through my experiences with the dozen or so iconic furry men I’ve known in my life.

The main challenge of self-publishing is promotion. It’s the old story: it’s not enough to do something; you’ve got to let world know you’ve done it. I used my blog to promote my stuff and set up an author website, but not totally versed in social media, which frankly was not as expansive as it is today, I also tried more expensive venues. These included ads on the male hook-up sites or flyers distributed through the bars here in Lauderdale in an attempt to reach my demographics. One advantage living here is that Lauderdale is a gay vacation mecca, visited by gay men from across the country and around the world, so that distribution of my propaganda went way beyond the Florida state line.

But again, these cost money and generated mixed results (you know whether they’re doing any good from the sales stats generated weekly by Amazon and B&N).

The other challenge is that the number of gay and gay-friendly niche publishers continue to decline.

That’s why is was both helpful and affirming to have gay publishers agree to publish my last three books: “Not in It for The Love,” picked up by Britain’s Totally Bound Press; “The Czar of Wilton Drive” published by Kokoro Press; and “Buy Guys” released by Wilde City Press. Through them I was “adopted” by editors who not only pick up on typos but know what sells.

Recently, to supplement their limited PR resources, and my own promotion on my blog, author website and FB pages, I hired a publicist, Indigo Marketing and Design which, for a very nominal cost, has expanded my social media penetration through guest blogger opportunities on gay lit sites and reviews through lit outlets like Goodreads.

Now, I admit that not everybody loves my stuff, but since I’m not writing to make money, criticism, while bothersome, won’t kill me.

After all, if I didn’t like writing to begin this – for myself – why do it at all?

Dealing with Editors

If you’re lucky enough to have your manuscript picked up by a publisher, it ain’t over yet. The next hurdle is dealing with one of its editors, a necessary evil.

Necessary since your masterwork needs to follow the publisher’s guidelines (more on that in a second); the “Authors Style Guide,” which one of my publishers shared with me and covers everything from formatting, critical in this era of the e-book, and correct punctuation and grammar, to when to write out numbers; and good old proofreading. No matter how many times l read my final ‘script out loud (the best way to catch errors), I still miss a slew.

Then there’s the evil side of dealing with editors. That’s when they sadistly wreck your precious writer’s ego and “suggest” substantive changes to your stuff. Like one editor who found a scene between my two male protagonists/lovers where, while attempting to out a pizza place in an upstate New York redneck town, one leans over and eats the cheese over his lover’s beard. I thought this was fucken erotic as hell. My editor didn’t agree.

Guess who won. You have to pick your battles.

Now, virtually every gay publisher (and there aren’t a hell of a lot of them left since mainstream publishing houses have followed the money trail) has the same list of no-no’s: no incest, no pedophilia, no forced rape, no violence strictly to titillate, and no bestiality. A manuscript which pivots on this kind of stuff will get an immediate rejection. But if the stuff is only sprinkled here and there, well, that’s where the editor comes in to do the pruning and get you, the author, to bridge any gaps with new PG-13 material.

And since a significant portion of readers of male gay erotic fiction are women, selling romance between your protagonists is an absolute. If it’s there but in an understated way as two real gay guys might express it, you’ll be asked to beef it up till the saccharin comes out of their ears.

And so not offend, kinky shit some gay guys do all the time like fistfucking, rimming, and barebacking (it’s a myth more guys are using condoms – just look at the HIV rates) will need to be excised or toned down. We wouldn’t want that frustrated housewife in Des Moines who doesn’t know how to ask her husband if she can suck his cock throw up. Ditto overt infidelity, i.e., sleeping around. Guess only str8 romance can do that.

As a college prof who taught academic writing, l often used Microsoft Word’s “track changes” feature to note suggested changes or question material right in the margins of the copy on student essays. If you’re not familiar with it, get crackin’. Editors use it almost universally to communicate what they feel you need to change.

If you’re a decent writer or one accustomed to the publishing world or even self-publish, you probably looked at your “final” manuscript half a dozen times. And that’s before you let a trusted friend whose honest, unfiltered criticism you respect read your “Gone with the Wind.” And doesn’t like it and suggests major changes. Like an avid reader of male erotic gay fiction who my publisher put me in touch with who loved my novel, The Czar of Wilton Drive” but who thought my next manuscript l was only beginning to hustle to publishers needed major work. I listened and made just about all the changes he suggested, and l think it made my novella stronger and probably helped get it picked up by a publisher.

But even after all that, you got to be ready for the red ink. If you honestly feel the editor, who is taking orders from your publisher no matter how much the publisher (mostly female) initially loved your stuff, is compromising your message or writing style, you have two options:

Swallow your shitty little writer’s pride since you want the cache of a publisher’s Good Housekeeping seal of approval connected to your book, and make the changes; or

Pull out and either let your manuscript lie in USB drive purgatory, or self-publish.

After all, it’s your make believe name on your make believe story, damn it

Authors and Writing Styles That Influenced Me

To be honest, I’m not an avid reader of novels – magazine articles are more my game. Even in college, I fudged a bit and used Cliff Notes to get through the voluminous reading demands of an English major. And I rarely read someone else’s erotic fiction for fear I might subliminally copy them. Reading or writing fantasy, somewhat of the rage today in both books and film, doesn’t thrill me.

But there have been a handful of writers that have made their mark on me for their realism and their attention to detail. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, Tennessee Williams for his earthy sexuality, Camus, whose novella, “The Stranger” is a masterpiece of profound brevity, ditto with Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” and, of course, Virginia Woolf, who with “To The Lighthouse” crystallized the technique known as stream of consciousness.

But, hands down, the writer who most influenced me was Mark Twain and his “Huckleberry Finn.” Hey, I taught it when I was the one man high school English Department for my 65 member private boy school, the job I took in Florida after leaving New York and my thirty plus year PR career. It’s considered America’s first true novel, but what it taught me was the power of the rite of passage, episodic approach which enriches the plot with stories within the story, and explodes the opportunity for introducing new, fresh characters that help change the dimensions of your protagonist.

In fact, the plot and characters for my novella, “Not In It For The Love,” were inspired by Twain and Huck. My protagonist, Josh, begins as a kid of North Florida trailer park trash, a druggie dad and alcoholic mom, runs away (much like Huck) to work as a waiter at his uncle’s motel in Key Largo where he moonlights as a prostitute to spice up married couples’ sex lives. He impresses Bishop, a Wall Street investment broker checking out the motel for possible acquisition by a major hotel chain, who takes Josh back with him to New York to be his trophy boy where Josh continues his bunk hopping in the NY gay scene of the 1990’s. Content up to then with just the sex, Josh falls in love with Hylan, a young, biracial, wheelchair bound musician. But their plans to run away take a strange twist when 9/11 hits the city – and the world.

I adopted the same strategy with “The Czar of Wilton Drive.” Again my protagonist, Jonathan, is a young drifter, this time living on Staten Island, NYC, going nowhere as a Perkins server until he inherits two of Fort Lauderdale’s most successful gay bars from his late gay uncle who had been ostracized from the family when Jon was just a young boy.

Going down to claim his inheritance, Jon meets his late Uncle Charlie’s dubious leather friends, two of whom he falls in love with, and is swept into Lauderdale’s gay underbelly of drugs and deceit. By the end of the book, he is no longer the “wet-behind-the-ears” kid from Staten Island.

With “Buy Guys,” I’ve once more used the episodic approach to carry my two main characters, Pete and Blaze, again, young, pretty and nowhere, through their new “careers” as Fort Lauderdale hustlers, and right into trouble that threatens them both.

And with my latest work, “For the Love of Samuel,” my protagonist actually lives two lives: first as an aging 51 year depressed gay man, the second reborn, thanks to the magic of a long dead Civil War soldier’s dog tag, as his 21 year old studly self.

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