Category: Author Wednesday

AUTHOR WEDNESDAY: Gregg Shapiro

4/6/2016

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This week we put our five questions to How To Whistle author Gregg Shapiro:

Would you like to introduce yourself as a writer?
My name is Gregg Shapiro. I was born in Chicago. I received a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston. My poetry and prose have been published in a variety of literary journals, anthologies and textbooks. I am the author of two short story collections – How to Whistle (Lethe Press, 2016) and Lincoln Avenue (Squares and Rebels, 2014). My chapbook Fifty Degrees was selected by Ching-In Chen as co-winner of Seven Kitchens Press’ Robin Becker Chapbook Prize and will be published in May 2016. I am also the author of the chapbook GREGG SHAPIRO: 77 (Souvenir Spoon Books, 2012) and the poetry collection Protection (Gival Press, 2008). I make my living as an entertainment journalist for an array of regional LGBT publications and websites.
Summarise your latest book from Lethe in five words!
I’ll do my five word summary of How to Whistle in three words: Universal queer fiction.
What’s the secret to your writing? Locking yourself away and writing a disciplined word count, or waiting for inspiration to strike? (Or something else entirely, of course…)
There is no secret to my writing, although as a deadline-driven journalist, my process has definitely evolved over the years.
If your house is on fire, what book do you rescue? (Forget about your loved ones, they can save themselves…)
I have too many favorites to choose one. As someone who once won a 108-second shopping spree at Strawberries Records in Boston, I’m capable of carrying many things in my arms.
Finally, let’s pay it forward. Recommend one gay-lit writer we should be reading right now. (Or any writer, if you prefer.)
For me, the most enduring gay writer is Andrew Holleran. I don’t think contemporary gay lit would exist without him.

How To Whistle: Stories is out now from Lethe Press. Check it out.

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EDITOR WEDNESDAY: R. Jackson

2/10/2016

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This week we put our five questions to Biggest Lover editor R. Jackson.

Would you like to introduce yourself as an editor (or writer, or any other hats you also wear…)
Greetings, readers and writers! I'm a Bear community pioneer and bisexual men’s advocate, living in Western Connecticut. Under my pen name, R. Jackson, I edited the men’s fiction anthologies Bearotica, Bear Lust, Bears in the Wild, Tales from the Den, and The Biggest Lover, all published by Bear Bones Books; with PJ Willis, Kink, from StarBooks Press; and Bi Guys, from Lethe Press, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist in Bisexual Literature.
Summarise your latest book from Lethe in five words!
Groundbreaking sexy smart chuberotica anthology.
Was there a specific kind of story – a feel, a style, a character, etc. – that you were looking for when choosing stories?
My criteria for The Biggest Lover included (In no particular order):
~ Stories that show diversity.
~ Stories that feature sharp humor.
~ Stories that depict the love between all men of different body sizes.
~ Stories that give insight into Chub and Gaining communities.
~ Stories that celebrate the romance and sexuality, rather than demonize, fat people.
~ Stories that make my dick hard.
Is there an elusive story somewhere that you’d love to find but never quite have? (In other words, what’s the perfect recipe to get into the next anthology…)
My next antho will be a 2017 collection of bisexual men's erotica, so if you're interested in submitting, my basic advice is to buy and read the first volume of the Lammy-Finalist collection of Bi Guys (reprinted by Lethe Press), then write a completely unique, ball-busting story that's better than anything in Bi Guys 1.
That advice seems so intuitive to me, but since it's apparently not obvious to a lot of new writers, this is actually the best recipe for any anthology you want to break into: read and analyze the CFS and research what the editor has already published, then write a story for them based on that.
Do this because it will improve your writing, and so that when you send in your submission, you can honestly tell your editor how much you loved reading their earlier work. This indicates to your editor that you have gone to the trouble of: a) supporting their earlier work by buying their book, and, b) researching the project before writing your story. This will endear you to an editor even before they have read the first word of your story.
One more thing: Never submit a draft of your story; submit work only that's absolutely your best and 100% ready for publication as is. Write, rewrite, and polish your story and have a beta reader proofread and give you feedback before you send in anything. When you submit a story that is not ready for publication and appropriate for the project, requiring extensive edits or a rewrite, it shows the editor how little you care about their time.
In your reading, did you come across any new names (whether they are included in the anthology or not) that are ones to watch for the future?
Yes, several writers with great stories whom I've not worked with before stand out: Jerry Rabushka, who wrote "Golden Walrus"; Dylan Thomas Good, who just published his first novel, Woof, with Bear Bones Books; and Matthew Bright, a very talented Brit who also designed The Biggest Lover book. Definitely keep an eye on these guys!

The Biggest Lover is out on February 14th from Lethe Press and Bear Bones Books. Check it out.

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AUTHOR WEDNESDAY: K.A. Kron & Brenda L. Leffler

1/20/2016

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This week we put our five questions to Blind Justice authors K.A. Kron & Brenda L. Leffler:

Would you like to introduce yourself as a writer?
KAK: I am pretty new to writing novels, this being my 4th release since 2011. One series I write with Brenda Leffler, and the other series I write solo.
BLL: Blind Justice is my second published novel with Kathy. I had toyed with the idea of trying to write a book for a long time when Kathy challenged me to stop talking about it and to just sit down and write. From that one conversation in a Panera Bread in Boulder, CO, we were able to map out the Nemesis series.
Summarise your latest book from Lethe in five words!
KAK: Uncontrolled Chaos and Strong Women.
BLL: Murder. Sex. Chaos. Humor. Manipulation.
What’s the secret to your writing? Locking yourself away and writing a disciplined word count, or waiting for inspiration to strike? (Or something else entirely, of course…)
KAK: I write for about an hour first thing in the morning and last thing at nite. When Brenda and I are working on a book, we each have it every other week, exchanging on Sundays. So, I work for one week on the series with Brenda and the off week on one of my books. After Brenda and I have a good draft, or if we're kind of stuck on a plot point, I usually fly out to Denver and we spend a long weekend getting the kinks out. For the most part, the 2000 mile gap hasn't been a huge problem.
BLL: My writing style is erratic... because I have another career and I'm in a long-distance relationship, I write in bursts whenever I have a spare moment. I am lucky enough to have been blessed with the ability to block out everything when I write and have managed to write entire scenes during meetings, on airplanes and even at a 4-year-old's birthday party and still appear to be paying attention to what is happening around me.
Kathy and I have never collaborated on a project prior to the Nemesis series and it took us a bit to work out a system that worked for both of us. Living in different states means we do a lot over email, text and phone calls at random hours. Typically, one of us writes for a week and then emails it to the other person, who picks up the storyline. We don't always agree on the where to take the story next, but we have known each other long enough to not spare one another's feelings. I think it's fair to say we have each compromised on plot points at some point for the sake of the overall storyline, but that we are both happy with the end product. If we get completely stuck, Kathy will fly to Denver and we work the kinks out.
If your house is on fire, what book do you rescue? (Forget about your loved ones, they can save themselves…)
KAK: If my house was on fire, I'd probably tell one of the dogs to grab Fried Green Tomatoes, and we'd all get out.
BLL: I have a first edition of Stephen King's The Stand... it's coming with me
Finally, let’s pay it forward. Recommend one gay-lit writer we should be reading right now. (Or any writer, if you prefer.)
KAK: I'd say Mardi Alexander.
BLL: I'm enjoying The Giddy Death of the Gays and the Strange Demise of Straights by Redfern Jon Barrett right now. Highly recommended!

Blind Justice is out now from Lethe Press. Check it out. (Plus, first in the series Injustice is reduced to $12 in paperback.)

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AUTHOR WEDNESDAY: Redfern Jon Barrett

1/13/2016

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This week we put our five questions to Forget Yourself author Redfern Jon Barrett.

Would you like to introduce yourself as a writer?
Well, I'm a queer polyamorous pagan giant who likes writing queer polyamorous pagan fiction. These themes are prominent in the two titles I've published with Lethe Press: the concisely-named The Giddy Death of the Gays & the Strange Demise of Straights (queer polyamorous fiction set in Wales) and the upcoming Forget Yourself (queer polyamorous fiction set in a mysterious dystopia that isn't Wales). I managed to trick Swansea University into giving me a doctorate in literature, and I also campaign for polyamory rights -- which has earned me some pretty exciting hate mail, as well as attacks from angry conservative newspaper columnists.

Above all, I firmly believe in the subjects I write about: first and foremost I consider myself a propagandist.
Summarise your latest book from Lethe in five words!
Queer. Identity. Lost. Dystopia. Absurd.
What’s the secret to your writing? Locking yourself away and writing a disciplined word count, or waiting for inspiration to strike? (Or something else entirely, of course…)
I don't have any techniques or tricks. I write because if I didn't I'd be wandering the streets screaming creative fiction at strangers (note: most strangers don't like that, but the ones that do are new best friends). As such I have to be disciplined in working less - making sure I leave time for things like 'leisure', 'friendship', and 'not neglecting those two boyfriends I live with'. Left to my own devices I'd eventually starve to death.
If your house is on fire, what book do you rescue? (Forget about your loved ones, they can save themselves…)
Stonewall by Martin Duberman. Queer, gay, trans, lesbian, and bi people all have a shared history, and it's vital that we preserve and cherish that. On a side note, I was once house-sitting a friend's apartment here in Berlin, when the apartment next door caught fire. We watched in total dismay as the firefighters threw hundreds of smouldering books out the windows, to land in the courtyard four stories below. I still have nightmares about it.
Finally, let’s pay it forward. Recommend one gay-lit writer we should be reading right now.
Though I'm somewhat obsessed with Marge Piercy and Alison Bechdel, they're not exactly in need of any shout-outs from me! But I am currently reading Puppet Boy by Christian Baines, and I'm devouring it. Baines writes with a Brett Easton Ellis-style darkness, something which always captures my attention and eventually, eternal devotion. Quick-witted, well-paced, and deeply fucked up, I'd pass it along to friends and mortal enemies alike.

Forget Yourself is out now from Lethe. Check it out here.

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AUTHOR WEDNESDAY: Jeff Mann

12/23/2015

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For the holiday season, here's a poem from Jeff Mann's wonderful collection Rebels.

SNOW QUILT

He is sleeping in a field between
Berkeley Springs and Hancock,
he and his Rebs exhausted from
the march. After midnight a wet
finger brushes his brow, and he
murmurs awake, pulls the damp
blanket over his face and sleeps
again, corpse-still. When
he wakes in first light, he wakes
warm, too warm, tosses off
his blanket, scatters five inches of
mountain snow that sheltered him
in the night like a crystal shield of
righteousness, like a father’s arms,
and he looks about him at
the great logs of men...covered over
with snow and as quiet as graves,
rising one by one warm, amazed,
shaking off God’s wool—and oh,
how they wish they might weave
of snow durable and lasting
blankets, as snow shields tender
wheat and the earth-tamped hope
of seeds, till one breaks the mood,
shouting,“Great Jehosophat!
The Resurrection!” and they
are up, starting small fires for
a spitted beef and hardtack breakfast.

Rebels is out now from Lethe Press. Check it out.

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EDITOR WEDNESDAY: Evey Brett

12/16/2015

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This week we put our five questions to For Want Of A Horse editor Evey Brett.

Would you like to introduce yourself as an editor (or writer, or any other hats you also wear…)
For Want of a Horse marks my editorial debut, but I've written lots of queer SF/F, romance and erotica and have gone to workshops like Clarion, Taos Toolbox and the Lambda Retreat for Emerging LGBT Writers. I have a Lipizzan mare named Carrma, although I don't necessarily call myself a horse person. See, I wasn't horse crazy as a kid and didn't know anything about them until I met Carrma in 2009. Yet somehow she decided I was the perfect sucker--er, human--to pamper her in her later years, so she arranged the universe so that I'd be her main provider of carrots and walks around the barn. Since then, she's been a contributing factor for many of my books and stories.
Summarise your latest book from Lethe in five words!
Magic horses, old and new.
Was there a specific kind of story – a feel, a style, a character, etc. – that you were looking for when choosing stories?
The easy answer is that I was looking for tales featuring magic horses. Beyond that, I needed a balance; some were fairy tales (and I had to be sure they didn't all have the same general plot,) some were more modern, some fantasy, some horror, and one SF. For the four more recent reprints, I wanted stories that both complemented the stories I already had and offered something new.
Is there an elusive story somewhere that you’d love to find but never quite have? (In other words, what’s the perfect recipe to get into the next anthology…)
Next time, when I'm not doing an anthology with a very limited call for a limited number of reprint slots, my ideal stories are what I look for when I read magazine slush: good prose, depth of character, a plot that's not straightforward, has something unique and is not a trope I see over and over. There's no one specific ideal story I have in mind; I'll know it when I see it.
In your reading, did you come across any new names (whether they are included in the anthology or not) that are ones to watch for the future?
Beth Cato ("Red Dust and Dancing Horses") has been producing some excellent books and stories in her Clockwork Dagger universe with more to come. Renee Carter Hall ("Horsemen") has several works that run the gamut between children and adult. Deborah J. Ross ("The Hero of Abarxia") is continuing the Darkover series under that name and creating original works such as The Seven-Petaled Shield series under her married name, Deborah Wheeler.

For Want Of A Horse is out now from Lethe Press. Check it out.

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EDITOR WEDNESDAY: Jean Roberta

12/9/2015

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This week we put our five questions (and a sneaky extra one) to Heiresses of Russ 2015 co-editor Jean Roberta.

Would you like to introduce yourself as an editor (or writer, or any other hats you also wear…)
Gladly! I’ve taught first-year English classes at the same Canadian university for 26 years, and in the past three years I’ve been allowed to teach Creative Writing there too. I’m notorious for my grammar tests, and as the rules of grammar come to seem more and more arcane to younger and younger students, I think of myself as Professor McGonigle in the Harry Potter novels. (I sometimes wear my witch hat.)

As a freelance writer, I’ve had approximately 100 stories (mostly erotic) in print anthologies, plus three current single-author collections, and an erotic novella. (The novella and one story collection are both historical, woman-centred, and available from Lethe Press, which publishes Heiresses of Russ.) I have several out-of-print works that I plan to revise and send out again during my upcoming sabbatical. (More on that later.)

I’m fairly new to editing, and I think I’ve been unusually lucky so far. In 2013, I co-edited (i.e. copyedited) OutSpoken: Perspectives on Queer Identities, a collection of non-fiction pieces that began as a series of presentations on queer subjects. This was work by my more-accomplished colleagues in the Ivory Tower, and I was nervous about approaching them to ask for revisions, but the authors were all grateful for my attention and willing to follow my suggestions.

When Steve Berman invited me to co-edit Heiresses of Russ, I knew this would be a different process because all the available stories had been published at least once. In this case, the editing was like selecting the best 17-20 chocolates from a box of fifty or so.
Summarise your latest book from Lethe in five words!
If Heiresses of Russ can be considered “my” book (although the contributors made it what it is), I would say: entertaining, truer-than-life, terrifying, heartbreaking, magical.
Was there a specific kind of story – a feel, a style, a character, etc. – that you were looking for when choosing stories?
I was looking for variety, especially a variety of tone: something creepy and gothic, something that would be hilarious to anyone familiar with lesbian (feminist) culture, some plausible science fiction, some variations on traditional myths, a dash of woman/woman sex.
I was also looking for three-dimensional characters who would fall somewhere on the assertiveness spectrum between the Too Stupid to Live romance heroine stereotype and the Kick-Ass Heroine who was born in full armour from the head of Zeus.
Is there an elusive story somewhere that you’d love to find but never quite have? (In other words, what’s the perfect recipe to get into the next anthology…)
Since every volume of Heiresses of Russ has a different guest-editor, I can’t offer a recipe for getting into the next anthology! However, I’ve already started encouraging a few writers and editors to send relevant recently-published stories to Lethe Press to be considered for the 2016 edition (of stories published in 2015).
Re: whether I was satisfied with the available smorgasbord of stories, the answer is yes! I liked the utopian lesbian fantasies of the 1980s when they were newly-produced by small, brave presses. When reading for Heiresses of Russ, I was hoping to see a complex picture of the political structure of an all-female (or female-dominant) society, with major characters in the foreground, but I suspect that kind of thing requires the bigger canvas of a novel. Short stories have a more specific focus.
In your reading, did you come across any new names (whether they are included in the anthology or not) that are ones to watch for the future?
I came across several impressive writers who are new to me, but I doubt if any of them are new to writing.
Nicola Griffith is probably too well-known to need an introduction, but she is still fairly “new” to me in the sense that I haven’t read enough of her work. I had admired the work of Annabeth Leong and Stacia Seaman before I chose stories of theirs for this anthology, and I hoped I wouldn’t be unreasonably biased in their favour. (I told myself that I wouldn’t simply reach for familiar names, but Stacia Seaman’s version of “The Little Match Girl,” set in a dystopian, too-true-to-life American city, was irresistible.)
Seanan McGuire is a writer I hadn’t known before, and I had trouble choosing between her two nightmarish stories about genetically-modified food, loosely speaking. (One story is a sequel to the other.) I would advise readers to look for more of her work.
B.R. Sanders, Ken Liu, and Alex Dally MacFarlane are all writers whose work I hadn’t read before, but all had more than one excellent story published in 2014. Therefore I had to make hard choices about what to leave out of the anthology.
I would recommend all the contributors to Heiresses of Russ, even though limited space discourages me from mentioning them all.
What are your future plans?
I’ve recently been granted a full-year sabbatical to work on a book about censorship, loosely speaking. Over a year ago, I had a conversation about this with the director of the local university press and the acquisitions editor there, and they were encouraging. I came to realize that I couldn’t possibly write a book while teaching full-time and squeezing out the occasional short story. I’ve already given presentations about erotica and censorship, and I’m willing to expand on what I’ve already written, but I’ve been asked to write about my personal experience as a past member of the local government film classification board, as a contributor to Herotica 7 (published, then withdrawn by the publishing collective), and as a concerned bystander in the Feminist Sex Wars of the 1980s. (My long, rambling 1999 essay on this is mentioned in the Wikipedia article, “Feminist Sex Wars:”
I also plan to revise several of my out-of-print works and send them out again, and write some new stories. I look forward to a year of writing dangerously. J

Heiresses of Russ 2015 is out now from Lethe Press. Check it out.

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AUTHOR WEDNESDAY: Dan Stone

12/2/2015

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This week we put our five questions to Ice On Fire author Dan Stone.

Would you like to introduce yourself as a writer?
As a writer I think that I really embody my Pisces with Gemini Rising self. My writing emerges from and largely focuses on the stuff of dreams--the mystical, the magical, the romantic, the poetic--but I am also a genre hopping multi tasker who loves to play in different and diverse sandboxes and challenge myself in new and interesting ways. Unfortunately it's one of the reasons why fans of my novels have to wait longer than they (or my publisher) would like for sequels or other new work: As soon as something's finished I tend to bounce off in a completely different direction for a while. Some would call that flighty or fickle. I prefer ‘mercurial’.
Summarise your latest book from Lethe in five words!
Ice and Fire make magic!
What’s the secret to your writing? Locking yourself away and writing a disciplined word count, or waiting for inspiration to strike? (Or something else entirely, of course…)
I never use outlines to write fiction and have generally not imposed daily word or page counts on myself. I do seem to need to write in a different physical space from where I do other kinds of work—and I always handwrite the first draft of my books in hardbound journals, then transcribe the manuscript to my computer as my first rewrite.
I love the fun and adventure of not really knowing from one day to the next what’s going to happen in the story. I try not to make it difficult and reject the notion that something only has value if we struggled to achieve it. I do spend a great deal of time in the beginning of a book getting to know the characters who drive the story, making copious notes and creating more biographical and other detail than I’d ever actually use in the book, then make ongoing appointments to sit with them and listen to the story they want to tell. They never let me down.
If your house is on fire, what book do you rescue? (Forget about your loved ones, they can save themselves…)
As much as I love hardback and paperback books, nearly everything I'm reading or have recently read is on my iPad/Kindle. So that's what I grab. I'm all about what's going on now, not what I need to save from the past.
Finally, let’s pay it forward. Recommend one gay-lit writer we should be reading right now. (Or any writer, if you prefer.)
This will sound like a cop-out or blatant brown-nosing but honestly, any Lethe Press author. And I say that not because I am one, but because the reason I am one, which is that Lethe Press is home to writers whose work, although genre-specific--is not generic in any way. Lethe Press is an island of talented misfits who've found a place (and a publisher) who values unique takes on a diversity of aspects of the gay experience--and who at the same time, demands excellence of vision and craft. If you want to read quality gay lit, open the Lethe catalog, close your eyes, and let your finger land where it may. You can't go wrong.

Ice On Fire is out now from Lethe Press. Check it out. (Plus, buy it in paperback today and you'll receive a copy of The Rest Of Our Lives at no extra cost.)

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AUTHOR WEDNESDAY: Gregg Shapiro

EDITOR WEDNESDAY: R. Jackson

AUTHOR WEDNESDAY: K.A. Kron & Brenda L. Leffler

AUTHOR WEDNESDAY: Redfern Jon Barrett

AUTHOR WEDNESDAY: Jeff Mann

EDITOR WEDNESDAY: Evey Brett

EDITOR WEDNESDAY: Jean Roberta

AUTHOR WEDNESDAY: Dan Stone

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