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Showing posts from December, 2014

2014: What a Year it Was!

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“…These empty white pages before me, which I feel compelled to fill with the black indelible ink of memory…I must write it all down—quickly, before it leaves me…” Thomas-Edward Lawrence What Binds Us   As 2014 draws to a close, I thought I’d look back over a year that was—for lack of a better work—brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. But before I go on, don’t take that to mean that it was a perfect year—it wasn’t; it brought with it, fears and disappointments and challenges. In retrospect, I like to think I met each of them with grace and a determination to overcome. But I like to learn from the bad stuff, not dwell on it so this post is about the good stuff, the stuff of which I’m most proud and for which I’m most grateful. In March, the Lambda Literary Foundation announced its 2014 Lambda Literary Awards (“Lammys”) My official Lammys photo. finalists. My semi-autobiographical third book, the gay coming of age romance, Unbroken made the cut: I was a finalist. I coul

Oh Christmas Tree: The Holiday Tree as Storyteller

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Our Christmas tree isn’t just a Christmas decoration—it is a visual history. It tells a story, the story of me, the story of us, the story of our family. The idea of Christmas tree as visual history it predates Stanley. My story began before him but, often, I think his story began with me . I hang simple papier mâché ornaments from IKEA which I bought back when I was starting out and money was tight. While moving forward is important, I keep them and hang them each year to remind myself of where I came from, of how far I have come. There is an ornament an ex-boyfriend bought at a thrift store our first Christmas together. It had been his first real Christmas. I keep it to remind me of the joy that first Christmas, of how much we had loved each other, of how hurt I was when things fell apart but mostly to remind myself that I survived, moved on; I keep it to remind myself that broken hearts mend. There’s an ornament from Channing’s, my first dog’s Christmas. Each year, I bought an

My New Story is Now Available

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My new short story, “The Christmas Present,” is now available as an individual eBook for just $0.99. All proceeds from the sale of this story go to benefit The Trevor Project . “The Christmas Present” is part of a holiday anthology which brings together 24 authors from the UK, the USA, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.   When my publisher and friend, Debbie McGowan, first approached me about joining the project, I knew I wanted mine to be a story of hope, because so many of our youth, so many of the youth The Trevor Project works to support, feel they are without hope. And I knew it would be set at Christmas, the season of hope. When I was a kid, hope was what got me through. But for me the season of hope was always in September. At the start of each new school year, I would be filled with hope: the hope that the bullying would stop, the hope that this year I would make a friend, the hope that this year the boy I liked would like me back. I remember during the last presidential