fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
I previously wrote about my excitement about attending the Saints & Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival in New Orleans again. It was set to take place March 27-29. And then COVID-19 happened. Wisely, though sadly, the Festival cancelled this year’s edition. New Orleans has been hit hard by the pandemic and I wish all of my…
Author Wayne Goodman has hosted singly and with his partner author Rick May various literary readings in the Bay Area. He has now launched a new venture: Queer Words Podcast. Premiering this month, the podcast features Wayne talking with queer writers about their work, their influences, and how their queer identity shapes what they write….
My friend Hans M. Hirschi’s 12th novel will drop on May 21, 2018: Returning to the Land of the Morning Calm. Here is a synopsis: Martin is eighty-four years old, a Korean War veteran, living quietly in a retirement home in upstate New York. His days are ruled by the routine of the staff. In his…
This weekend I’m attending, for the first time, the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans. In its 15th year, this gathering of LGBTQ writers has become one of the premier events of the queer literary world. Today, I presented on a panel discussing Queer Fiction as Social Commentary with authors Matthew Griffin, Nick…
So what have I been doing that kept me away from blogging for about a month and a half? Writing a book. More on that later. Meanwhile, I’ll be reading from and talking about said book, Sin Against the Race, this coming Wednesday as part of Perfectly Queer‘s reading series. Details! You Are the Author! Wednesday,…
Patricia Dunn and I stayed up long nights back in college to put together an alternative campus newspaper. She had a friend who owned a computer – exciting enough in the mid-80s – but it also had desktop publishing software. We were in awe. I remember having to space out columns the old-fashioned way in…
My first encounter with Roger Ebert, as with many outside of Chicago, came from his TV programs with the late Gene Siskel. To be sure, none of us really went to the movies that much. But we loved watching the two of them go at it, so their program became a TV watching ritual in…
Friend Patricia Dunn, author of the celebrated new YA (young adult) novel “Rebels by Accident,” and her colleague Christopher Messer run a series of essays on her blog entitled “Why Do I Write.” She asked me for a contribution and, after panicking about “OMG! I have to write on demand!” and other silly writer’s nonsense,…
I received some nice feedback for my short story “Clyde” published a few weeks ago. Thank you for that, and thanks to everyone for reading my stuff. I truly appreciate it. A friend asked if “Clyde” was in fact a true story. I said quickly, unequivocally, and publicly (on Facebook) that it was a work…
Have you ever used a pickax? The first time I ever used one was to create a ditch for a french drainage system on one side of the house. In the Bay Area, the soil is generally some type of clay. When it rains, it’s mud. But when it’s dry all bets are off. It’s…
