Rainbow Con in Tampa

Hello,

It has been a little over a week since I last posted a blog. Before that, I posted on Feb 4th. Wow, *said unenthusiastically* I really haven't talked to you all much this month. Why? I guess I'mm too blah and I have nothing interesting to say. Although, at any given time, I probably would consider myself boring anyway. So… what to talk about now? RAINBOW CON!!!

Although I will be at other conventions this year, I want to start by talking about this one. Why? Because I got an e-mail this morning about which panels I will be on and when I will do Q&A and READ from my books. What a cool thing to wake up to. I am sure I will do something at Rainbow Book Fair, but I don't know the schedule and I don't know what I will be doing. (Probably a reading since I have a table there.)

During RAINBOW CON!!! I will be there April 17-20th. Check out the link, I am ON the author list. It is a good feeling being on a let somewhere! Believe me! As far as the schedule goes at the moment, I will be at the following "sessions":

1. Author Q&A on Thursday afternoon. Where? IDK.
2. Author reading Friday afternoon. Where? IDK. What am I reading? IDK.
3. Panel topic "Handeling Criticism" on Saturday at 5pm. … LOL. I think I picked this because I probably do NOT handle it well.
4. Panel topic "Religion and Genre Fiction" on Sunday morning at 10 am. HAHA. Oh my! What a topic.

If you are there and are interesting in hearing anything I have to say, please stop by. I don't like to be the only one in the room listening to myself talk, although that happens every day.

#4 is an interesting one especially given the post Dennis Niekro posted on Facebook this morning about  the eruption of anti-gay legislation nationwide. It is a scary time we are in my friends. The article is very interesting and I encourage your o read it. What I commented on his post was, "Thank you for sharing Dennis. This is very messy indeed. Many of the examples on the article can come across as outrageous, but they are well founded arguments. It is scary to consider what people COULD and will throw back as a way of fighting against change. (At this point, gay-rights change.) It's fighting the level of evil int he world." Perhaps these people are int he dark ages (as someone pointed out) but the dark ages got lots of people killed. There is a saying "never underestimate the power of stupid people in droves". (Or something like that.) If you have a large enough group of anyone, things can happen. OR, if you have the right tyrannical leader. Don't dismiss the "radical right" because they are backward and "in the dark ages", but instead listen and be aware of their stance. You have to know what you are up against in a war, correct? It is a war for freedom, but freedom doesn't come easily.

In the article it gives bullet points:

Here’s a few scenarios for you:

• Don’t feel like paying women a wage equal to men? Or hiring women at all because in your religious opinion, all women should be housewives? No problem.
• Hate people of color? You don’t have to hire them or rent to them or anything. If you own a store, you can dust off that old “No Coloreds” sign and put it back in the window. Go ahead and add “No Gays” if you like. And according to the law, you can also re-add “No Chinese, Jews or Irish either” like they used to have in the olden days. Just have an asterisk — “* = The Lord My God Commands It“.
• Let’s say you’re an EMT. And you come across a gay person bleeding out after a traffic accident. You don’t have to treat them if you think they should die. Same thing if you object to people being Jewish or Romani or ginger.
• Or let’s say you’re a cop answering a domestic abuse call. You see a husband beating his wife. You’re free to say, “Fine — it’s there in the Bible, men are allowed to beat their wives. Sweetheart, you need to submit to him. Call me if he uses a stick larger in diameter than his thumb.”
• Or a state-employed poll worker who believes that only white men should be allowed to vote, for people of color bear the Mark of Cain…

Although I would consider myself "religious" as far as the term goes, I would also not see myself siding with these views or arbitrarily throwing around the phrase "IN JESUS NAME". These are radical extremists to me, but the thought that these examples COULD happen is valid. People do scary, awful things int he world. Beware this is NOT a happy world we live in much of the time. There is always going to be people fighting for freedom, and always people sneaking up when you look away to try and steal that freedom away!

Ukraine is in turmoil right now for the same reason: FREEDOM. The people have a leader that will not listen to their cries. It is basically war. (and this changes often since the goings-on change by moments) War is real and isn't going away just because some individuals have won a petition for same-sex marriage. (Note: I am not implying that Ukraine is in turmoil over gay-marraige) Other countries are killing and jailing homosexuals. Americans can be very comfortable across the ocean and forget that war is all around.

Do not close your eyes, liberal-left or religious-right, I do not see an "agreement to disagree" an easy compromise that either will shake hands over. FREEDOM TO LOVE and marry whom you wish is not going to remain on the table if the "happily married" forget the insanity UNDER the table who is willing to shake it at any cost. Stand firm. Stand strong. Stand aware.

And now I don't need to talk about anything at RAINBOW CON!!!… LOL! (Kidding) Thank you Dennis for posting this article. Ryan Field is normally the one I see posting current events and articles on everything pertinent to life and liberty. (He seems to know a lot.)

So… where are YOU going to be? Will I see you in Tampa? Will I see you in a couple weeks in New York at the Rainbow Book Fair????? Please come up and say hi! I have ordered some swag to take to these events. I will have books for you to buy. I will do a drawing for a free audio book. I will give out free hugs ;)

Ciao for Now,

Wade

xoxoxox

Good writing expands the mind.

So… I've been dormant lately. Sorry. My muse went MIA and coupled with the constant snow and ice I have dipped into a seasonal type of depression. I hate it. I feel trapped. As fellow writers will understand when NOT writing, I feel anxious and frustrated and agitated like in no other way fro any other circumstance. Writing is a "freeing" mechanism. Writing helps my feelings and thoughts flow out. When not writing, the feelings and thought get cramped and jumbled, and I feel like a mouse in a maze with the smell of cheese all around but no way to reach it. I start thinking ridiculous thoughts about being forgotten because I don't write fast enough, or meaningful enough. I worry about going to conventions where NO ONE has heard of me at all! I start doubting my ability as a writer. After all, what is a writer who can not write? The words are stuck and therefore I fail.

My son asked me the other day how my writing was going and I had to tell him, "It's not." It felt sad to admit. I haven't been inspired AT ALL. And  it's cold out. I hate being cold. The kids have been off school A LOT!!!! And that is also bad. It ruins my routine. I like to have a scheduled time to write. I have been all thrown off because there is always someone home. I like silence to write. I NEED silence to write. I've had none. I've not had time to myself for weeks. Even now they are home and have locked themselves outside because one daughter went to play in the snow but didn't check the door before closing it. Another daughter was trying to hook up the TV to watch a DVD and the sound was turned WAY up and it gave that "feed back" sound that shatters glass. And then my son was up early (for a teenager) so he could ask to go to the girlfriend's house to "study" and do homework. I told him not to do anything I would write about. (lol) Always something going on and never a moment to just sit, close my eyes, and visualize my characters.

So, yesterday, I opened Names Can Never Hurt Me. I've been missing my characters Nick and RC in a bad way. I've been thinking about them a lot. A deep urge to read this novel, which is already done and submitted and waiting on publication, has been rolling through my mind and I have pushed it aside for weeks. Why? Because that one is finished. It is dangerous to reread a novel I have already submitted because I tend to change things and add things BEFORE the editor sends me edits. I shouldn't do that. I was trying to wait for official edits to reread it for fear of changing things prematurely. But, as I opened it yesterday, I realized why the nagging thought to read it was so strong. It was inspiring. I NEEDED to read it to remember how much I love Nick and RC, AND because I'm currently writing the sequel and needed to read about Corey so I could write his story. I woke up this morning with an idea of something to write and it was the first I've had in what feels like forever. SO, after blogging, I'm writing!!!

A side note is that I was over my mother-in-law's house yesterday afternoon and my niece read an article she found amusing. It was! Very amusing indeed. But it is also an example of the kind of things my family does. We talk about homophones and prefixes and where words come from and such. It is a disease in ways, but one that has expanded my vocabulary greatly over the past 22 years. I am grateful for it. I was not a literary person EVER. I was a math major. I like and understood numbers. Words and the English language … lol… not so much! It has been a hard road for me to get this far. I strive to improve, and I press on to express myself better as the years progress.

But anyway… I HAD to share this article because I think an author who can express themselves this intelligently is AMAZING and noteworthy. Authors with this type of mine inspire me! :D

This is the article: (I copied and pasted it)

SHOUTS AND MURMURS about man who describes meeting his wife at a party. In his description, he drops many prefixes. It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way. I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it, since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do. Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion. So I decided not to rush it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads or tails of. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings. Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory char- acter who was up to some good. She told me who she was. "What a perfect nomer," I said, advertently. The conversation became more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.


Here is the LINK. 

I hope you get the humor. I thought it was hilarious.


Anyway… Off to WRITE something. Pray my depression is at an end.




and remember to give when you can to TJ and Eric. YOUCARING.com. Click HERE.


Hugs to all my supporters and readers and fans. I NEED you!




Wade

A glimpse into my reading history

Hey. I've been MIA lately, but it is only because I have nothing going on worth talking about. I haven't written much lately. I was on this awesome kick for the New year and I wrote 22 days in January almost in a row, but then it stopped. I got burned out or something and the muse went away. IDK. Whatever it was it made all thoughts leave. And when I say all I mean all. I was having difficulty thinking about anything. Last week I had a headache for days. I think I was dehydrated. I need to drink more water, but I'm not in the habit of doing that.

Plus it's cold. I am tired of the cold. Matt Boston always posts about snow predictions and weather forecasts and I'm like, "NOOOOO!!!" It is a good thing I don't live in Boston. I don't want more snow. For one thing, school shuts down. For those who do not read my website, I have three children. When schools out that means I have three children in my house asking for food all day long, or bickering, or generally making noise. Like yesterday. I don't function well when my routine is messed up. I feel like it has been up-ended for a few weeks now. In the midst of the up-ending, I lost my voice. (Not literally, I'm using it metaphorically.) My characters went silent in my head.

I don't like when they go silent. It's like losing a friend (or several). I tried rewriting a story to stir them up, but I'm still not inspired. Last week I took Misplaced Affection and switched it all around. It wasn't chronological before so I tried simplifying it. I moved scenes and now it flows in chronological order. AND I am considering making it YA because it seems geared more to a younger crowd. I don't know. Any thoughts on that? Would you read it without the sexual content I normally have? And if it is YA, should I have a pen name just for YA like Andrew Grey has Geoff Laughton, or JP Barnaby has Jamie Mayfield? I thought I could write YA as Darian Weston. Although, I've never written YA so I would have to read the guidelines and make sure it is what I think it is.

At the moment I am reading YA. I picked up The Descending Darkness by Michael Chulsky when my mind was at its emptiest. I needed to do something other than write, so reading seemed logical. So far it is very good. I haven't read this type of book in a long while. It is more fantasy/paranormal with an X-men quality and I have typically only read M/M for a long time. I used to read fantasy all the time. I was fond of Elves and Dwarves and such forever. Fantasy was my genre of choice. But then I read a sci-fi novel with gay characters called Shadows of the Mind by Mark Alders and it opened up a whole new world. I could read sci-fi (Or fantasy) and have an M/M factor in it. WOW!!! I never knew. I can actually remember a time when I had never read a romance novel because I liked sic-fi so much that I didn't think anything in romance could compare. But in 1999 I picked up a book in a Borders Books and Music that was "romance" yet contained science fiction and world hopping. WHAT??? Yes, that was me being shocked. I had never heard of such a thing. So in 1999 I started reading romance and in 2008 I found GAY romance and sci-fi combined. Worlds were opening before me.

I started writing seriously in 2006. In that year I wrote (basically) a sci-fi/romance trilogy. This trilogy is still Unpublished , but it is also still around. I have my word docs. I have my characters intact. One day I will unleash them on the world. What I lack is time. I wish I had loads of time to sit and write continually and do nothing else. Who needs a shower? Who needs sleep? I want to write all the stories I have inside my head. But alas, I never have time. There is always someone who needs something like a meal or laundry or a ride somewhere. This is why things take me forever to finish. I'm a mom. And a wife. There was a time, probably back toward 2006 when I didn't do anything but write. I was consumed by writing and most everything else got put off. Then the pendulum swung the other way and I shoved writing aside to the point of painful realization that I can't do that and remain sane. I HAVE to write. It is in my bones. I fingers cry out to scrawl my words. Right now, I think the pendulum swings relatively in the middle. It does move toward either extreme (Writing ONLY or Neglecting writing all together), but it never reaches the extremes. I teeter in the middle which is good for my sanity and everyone's happiness. Because when I'm not writing, I feel it. I think I was depressed last week because I wasn't writing anything. I've had no voices telling me what to write and the silence is very sad and empty. I don't like it.

So I was reading a little. I need to read more. I like The Descending Darkness so want to find out what happens and then write a review for you all to read. I love Michael Chulsky so I want everyone else to read his work and love him too. He and Nick are great guys! I met them last year at GRL.

So yeah, where was I? I started off this month so well and then my mind went blank. Thankfully I wrote something yesterday. Only like 850 words, but after a week of silence that is a good thing. And even now I hear Corey's voice.  I am writing a different book. Well, I HAVE been writing two books at once. Mostly Misplaced Affection, but every now and then I scribble down words for Only Skin Deep. OSD is the sequel to Name Can Never Hurt Me which is coming out later this year. I feel a deep need to write the next part. Corey's voice is strong and I have to write about him. Book 1 was only a taste. Book 1 in what I'd like to call the "Self Esteem" series, is about Nick Jones. I hope you like it. I really really do. I miss it. I think that's why I can't write. I miss Nick too much. It's been months since I submitted it to Dreamspinner. It was accepted and it WILL get published this July, but I miss them. I'm probably going to end up reading the manuscript before edits begin. I want to reread it and take notes to better write the second book. And this way my characters will not seem so far away. I miss Nick Jones. It's weird to miss someone who is not real, but I do. And Corey, and Paul, and RC, and even Marcy and the mom and sister…. So many people in NAMES that I enjoyed and haven't read or written in far too long. Please pray they talk to me.

I feel like I've lost my way sometimes. Like writing was just a dream and that I've lost my touch. It makes me sad that I haven't written, but it mass me safer to think I lost a gift. I need to voice to come back strong. Yesterday was a start. It was a glimpse. I know I have it in me somewhere. Come on Corey, speak to me! I need to finish more manuscripts to submit!!!

Anyway… this is what is and is not going on.

Remember to pray for Eric and TJ and lend financial support whenever possible. Hospitals are very expensive and they will not be out of bills for a long time. Help when you can. Click HERE.

Also, I'm on TUMBLR.

Thanks for stopping by.

Wade