Arts

WIPpet Wednesday: An admission

My daughter took this photo of the place where we stayed.

Happy Wednesday! We’re back to reality after a wonderful trip to visit with friends in England. I think I’ve left a bit of my heart there. I stuck diligently to my vow not to do any work while on vacation, so I felt like I’d had a real rest this time instead of halfway.

My son sang at his school’s voice recital last night, and it was beautiful. You can see the video at this link. Parent confession: I actually did not know he could sing like that. He has a nice voice, and he sings around the house all the time. But this was a piece he worked on and polished.

On to the WIPpet. Obviously, I didn’t really write while I was out of the country. But I did promise to reveal what Amelia’s problem was last week. Sigh…here is where I admit that a lot of readers will be bothered by the open nature of the relationships in these books. But I like to hope we can get to a point where non-monogamy is normalized as one way of having relationships, so I’ve written about people exploring that.

WIPmath: 5/30/2018 = 5 + 3 + 0 = 2 + 0 + 1 + 8 = 19 plus one bonus sentence. (The first paragraph here is from last week.)

“Oh, my God. Sweetie, that’s amazing! He’s such a honey. And hot-t-t!” She drew out the word. “So what’s the problem?”

Amelia’s cheeks burned. “He’s also fucking Mack.”

Denver’s jaw dropped. It took several tries, opening and closing her mouth, before she finally said, “Well, that’s a new one.”

“I know! We’ve never been into the same person before. Mack’s made it clear they’re not romantically involved, and I think he expects the same from me. I mean, I’ve never—” She cut herself off. She and Mack had very different reasons for not wanting long-term relationships. Jomari hadn’t made Mack question anything because it was how he was wired. Amelia had always told herself it was good enough for her. Being with Jomari had made her rethink everything, and she didn’t know how to communicate it to Denver.

“You’re really into him,” Denver remarked, sounding surprised. “How’d that happen?”

“I don’t know,” Amelia admitted. “Last weekend, he took me skating in the park, and…he kissed me. Not a ‘you’re hot, let’s do it’ kind of kiss. More like…” She trailed off, not yet willing to tell Denver it was a falling-in-love kind of kiss.

Like what you read? Be sure to check out the other entries and add your own. Just post a bit of your WIP, connect it to the date, and link up with us. Many thanks to Emily Wrayburn for giving us this space. Happy reading and writing!

WIPpet Wednesday: What’s the problem?

Books, Writing

Happy Wednesday! I’ve finished my required work for the week, so I’m finally getting a chance to write and do some beta reading. Tomorrow, we leave for vacation, which means we have a lot to do between now and then.

I’m still working on Minuet. I was struggling a bit with some parts of it, but I think I’ve worked out what I need to adjust. Hopefully this thing is on track now, and I can have it done soon. I’m not sure what people will make of this story. The characters are mostly in open relationships, and it’s not going to end with two (or in this case three) people in an exclusive partnership. I know some people regard that as either immature or cheating, but it was what made sense for the characters.

Anyway, this scene follows from last week’s. Amelia and Denver are enjoying each other’s company away from their male partners. Amelia’s about to make an accidental confession.

WIPmath: 5/23/18 = 23 sentences + 1 bonus because it’s only one word long.

“Mmm, that’s nice,” Denver said, her voice slow and sleepy. “I don’t get this so much with the guys.”

“Me neither.”

Denver snorted. “I didn’t picture Mack as the cuddly type.”

Amelia laughed. “He’s not, but Jomari is. It’s not the same, though.”

She realized her mistake the minute Denver shifted to sit up. “Jomari? Hot fiddler Jomari, from Cian’s band? What the fuck, lady? Spill it!” Denver gave Amelia a playful shove.

“Yes, yes, and I’m sorry I didn’t say anything.” Amelia pushed herself up and sat back against the pillows. “I don’t know what’s going on at this point. We’ve kind of been seeing each other, mostly having sex, but…”

“Oh, my God. Sweetie, that’s amazing! He’s such a honey. And hot-t-t!” She drew out the word. “So what’s the problem?”

Yes, Amelia, what exactly is the problem? Maybe she’ll tell us next time.

*If you want the story behind the cover, check out this blog post I did with author C.H. Clepitt. And if you want a torso cover of your own, let me know.

Rainbow Snippets: An offer

Books, Writing

Happy Saturday! My big kid is off at yet another performance, Music in the Parks. He’ll be singing with his high school choir and playing with the symphonic and jazz bands. If you follow me on Twitter, my pinned tweet is a short clip of one of his solos.

I’m still sharing from Keeping the Faith, a finalist in the 2018 Bisexual Book Awards. Last time, I posted a scene of happy domestic chaos. This one is a little sadder. Edited for length, but still over the 6 sentences by a bit.

“… Everything all right?” [Reid] leaned in and said more quietly, “You need to come over later and let us take care of you?”

Micah flushed a little, remembering the first time. He still felt guilty. The day after Cat’s funeral, Micah had spent his time in bed, sobbing uncontrollably but refusing to call anyone. Reid had come to check up on him and brought him back to his house. He and his partners had looked after Micah for a few days, which included a lot of intimate touch and sex. The guilt was less over allowing them to care for him and more about how much he’d wanted it.

Rainbow Snippets is a safe and welcoming space for LGBTQIA+ authors, readers, and bloggers to share 6 sentences each week from a work of fiction—published or in-progress—or a book recommendation. Feel free to join in!

WIPpet Wednesday: A break from the men

Books, Writing

Wow, I hadn’t realized I’ve missed nearly a month of these. It’s been so busy, with work and the kids’ schedules. You can read all about what we were doing last week in my Rainbow Snippets post from Saturday. This week, we have one concert (Kid 1’s jazz band), one music competition (Kid 1 again, both playing and singing), and one Confirmation of Baptism (Kid 2). A month from now, though, the chaos will be done and the school year wrapping up.

Today’s snippet is again from Minuet because writing in it is going slowly. I had to take a break to write something else and to do several editing jobs, so I haven’t made a lot of progress. It’s getting there, though. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

I know I left it hanging with Mack and Jomari, but I wrote this yesterday, and I really wanted to share more of Amelia. Here, she’s with Denver (the bar manager; the picture above is how I imagine her). Just a couple notes: 1. This is mildly steamy. I edited out the somewhat more explicit bits. 2. This series (except Nate’s story) includes a lot of non-monogamy, referenced here.

Amelia kissed Denver, a hard press of their lips. She put out the tip of her tongue to trace the thin ring in Denver’s lower lip. Amelia loved it—so sexy. Denver was gorgeous, the spread of her legs and the way her firm, small breasts pushed out when she arched her back. The soft sighs and whisper-moans coming from her mouth reminded Amelia why she’d needed this break from the men.

Afterward, they lay holding each other. Denver rested her head on Amelia’s chest, and Amelia stroked her hair. They were in a similar boat, though Denver’s male lovers were her long-term partners. She had a different relationship with them than Amelia had with Mack. The small voice in the back of Amelia’s head suggested she might think about what she was doing with Jomari, but she silenced it.

She and Denver were so comfortable with each other that anyone might’ve thought they were a couple or that they’d been doing this for more than a single year. But Denver was no more Amelia’s girlfriend than Mack was her boyfriend. In a similar way, this was an outgrowth of their friendship and mutual need for a woman’s touch.

Author Interview: Bill Kieffer

Books, Featured

Today I’m welcoming Bill Kieffer to the blog to talk about life, writing, and his latest book. I’m fairly sure I’ve never read Furry genre books before, but I’m intrigued.

Interview

Welcome! I’m always up for something outside the usual genre fare. How and why did you choose your genre?

My genre is Furry. Which sounds like kids stuff, because talking animals, right?

But it’s actually more than that, it’s allegorical SF and Fantasy that allows me to explore privilege and transformation. I can talk about racism, sexism, religious fissures, ableism, and all sorts of important issues without stealing other people’s own voices. I’m a white male and I don’t get out much… if I try to write a story about a black lesbian in the projects overlooking the wealth and the unattainable status of the Met Opera house… am I going to get it right? Maybe, but probably not, despite having grown up poor, despite being a bisexual, despite learning a lot about opera late in life, I am likely to make a fatal flaw in my thought experiment, and the real versions of the people I imagine will be offended. I might end up doing them a disservice, despite my well-meaning aims… I learned that I need to let the people that know that life better than I tell that story.

With Furry, I can dissolve the things I might to say about that giant apartment complex on Amsterdam Ave behind the Met and Big Apple Circus… people literally feet away from the Best and the Whatever You Want to Call Big Apple Circus… this is everything that I love and hate about Manhattan, you turn the corner and you are in another world. I can concentrate on the conflict, the dichotomy, the tease, the microaggressions, and the social commentary of it all by applying an SF/Fantasy filter to it all.

If I write about a female Gecko I’m on a level playing field. I can build the world from scratch and concentrate on the issues I know we’ll enough to talk about and imply the rest. If I do it right, the reader will infer other issues they are aware of and build their own world while reading.

That’s fascinating! My son is involved in the YA furry community, and I see a lot of the same feelings there. It definitely levels the playing field. Talking animals: bringing the world together, eh?

Moving on, you do write in a lesser-known genre. What is the hardest part of publishing?

Imposter Syndrome. It kicks in as soon as the afterglow of joy fades. There’s a certain point between acceptance and editing that I honestly believe that the editor made a mistake. I only wrote X drafts and I know I left words out. They are going to realize that I’m not a nice person and that they won’t want my name associated with theirs. I reread the acceptance letter, double check that I replied. There might be tears. I watch my other writer friends deal with publishers folding and vanishing… and, so help me, I might even feel left out. My brain hates me.

I’m from New Jersey. I think there’s this regional thing not to trust a good thing unless there’s a little piss and vinegar poured on it. The only thing that vanquishes it is when an editor tells me to fix things. That makes me happy. When an editor tells me that there’s just some proofreading that needs to be done, it makes me unhappy. I start thinking that maybe they hadn’t read my work. So, I’m also an ungrateful snot… and I know I shouldn’t be. I need my publishers and editors, because—obviously—with these feeling and doubts I’d never be good at that self-publishing thing.

Still, my ego has spurs. I feel confident about my work, intellectually. I know I am good at the craft. It’s just moments when I doubt that are the hard part.

I can certainly relate to that doubt, and I agree about finding it suspect if the editor doesn’t have much to suggest. On a related note, are there any types of scene you find hard to write (action, love, death, etc.)?

I apparently have trouble writing about love…except in terribly, horrific situations. I worry what that says of me, but I have been working in that. Part of that, I think, is complete repulsion to cliches, but that’s not all of it. Most of my issue appears to be a lack of editorial editing, as they say on Project Runway. So, I’m working on that. I’ve got a novel project with loving characters that I’m working on. I’ve written two short stories with them: one will be appearing in the upcoming Roar 9 from Bad Dog Books. It’s probably more slice of life than a romance novel, but I’m not done with them yet.

I love slice of life! I’m not much of a romance reader, though I do like when it’s woven into a larger plot. Sounds like that’ll be a great read.

Okay, time for Word Sprints! Plotter or pantser?

Pantser, mostly. When I write my Noir, I plot the mystery so I’m not pulling things out of my ass and cheat the reader.

Coffee or tea?

Tea. I have a tea queue. I’m currently drinking Vanilla Caramel Chai.

What’s a charity/cause you support?

JBJ’s Soul Kitchen. https://www.jbjsoulkitchen.org/volunteer I also volunteer for the NJ LGBT Chamber of Commerce. http://www.njlgbtchamber.org/ I am neither a chef nor a business person, but I think these things are important.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope your new book finds its perfect audience, and feel free to stop by any time when you have a new release.

About the Book

Title: Cold Blood: Fatal Fables

Date: May 7, 2018

Publisher: Jaffa Books

Length: 90k words

Categories: Violence, M/m, m/f, bi, mystery, noir, furry, gay, lgbt

Goodreads

Synopsis

Welcome to Aesop’s World, a world of allegory and violence.

It’s a dark world where love and redemption have a cost that can only be measured in blood and violence. It’s just like your own Earth, except darker… furrier… scalier. There are no humans. If there were ever humans, they are just the myths now of strange religions and cultures.

The place to be is New Amsterdam, where its five boroughs form a familiar cityscape in the Independent and United States of America. Every race, every species co-mingle here with a tolerant surface of live and let live. At least, until you cross the wrong person. Rubbing someone’s fur the wrong way might get you killed.

In these six stories, you’ll explore different stories of love and violence across different decades of alternate furry history.

Prohibition: The world is full of conspiracies, syndicates, and crackpot cults. Cops have to be tough. Shepard is as hard headed and as hard hearted as they come. He has just one soft spot, an impossible love for Lynne Black. When Lynne calls to say her youngest boy was kidnapped, he drops everything to get the boy back. The boy that should have been his.

PostWar: Brooklyn Blackie was scarred by the things he saw in the war, including the death camps of Reptiles. It haunts him and he buries that pain in sex and violence with both genders of any species willing to lift a tail for him. He’s bisexual in a time when it doesn’t even have a name… and he’s not even a very good detective, but he’s never let that stop him before.

The Outrageous Eighties: Rap stars like St. George and Dr. Ice, are beginning to make millions in record deals… and if they don’t kill each other, it might be the start of a new dynasty.

Purchase Links

Jaffa Books | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

About the Author

Bill Kieffer was born in Jersey City, NJ.

He never fully recovered.

A brain injury at an early age left him with some mild issues and just enough aphasia to be amusing at parties. He tries to be very open about these. He doesn’t drink, having the bare minimum of inhibitions to begin with. He also tends to describe himself in negatives.

He’s happily married to a woman who encouraged him to discover and explore his sexuality. She also encourages him to keep on his meds. They both dabble in writing erotica. He is bisexual but does not stray. She is straight and the relationship is only open in the sense that he tells her everything (they blame rumors to the contrary on his aphasia).

When he is not looking in the mirror, Bill Kieffer is actually a 6 foot tall gray anthropomorphic draft horse that types as Greyflank. He is a member of the Furry Writers Guild and has recently published short stories in several Furry anthologies put out by Fur Planet. Past writing credits include comic books like “Billy Joe Van Helsing: Red Neck Vampire Hunter” and “Great Morons in History, the Dan Quayle Bio.”

His first book, The Goat: Building The Perfect Victim, by was published by Red Ferret Press in 2016. He can be found, once a month, bothering indie publishers about what’s on their bookshelves. “Shelfies” believes that a bookshelf tells more about person then a mere Selfie.

Social Media

Website

Rainbow Snippets: Utter Chaos

Books, Writing

Happy Saturday! It’s been a wild, wild week, and the coming ones are no quieter. It’s final performance season, with 3 concerts and 4 recitals coming up. We kicked things off with the annual Stars of Tomorrow gala. This is a showcase of local high school musicals. Below, the cast of BIG FISH back stage at the theater. My older one is on the right, wearing the fishing vest, in the first photo. My younger one is the dark-haired girl in the front row of the second one. (There’s no pic, but my older kid was also in the gala choir for the opening Hamilton-themed production number.)

In other news, I was surprised and thrilled to find out my novel Keeping the Faith is a finalist in the general fiction category for the Bisexual Book Awards. Congratulations to all the finalists!

This week’s snippet is from Keeping the Faith. Here, Micah, the main character, has gone to have dinner with his late spouse’s sister and her family.

Inside the house, it was utter chaos. Langston, the seven-year-old, was chasing Emily, his five-year-old sister, with a stick. He was wearing what looked like a graduation gown, which was so big on him he kept tripping on the hem. Emily didn’t seem bothered by it. She was giggling and playing along with whatever it was. Four-year-old Maya, the quiet one, was coloring at the kitchen table. Micah didn’t see Robbie, but chances were high that with everyone else occupied, he was up to no good. He was a wily one.

WIPpet Wednesday: An admission

WIPpet Wednesday: What’s the problem?

Rainbow Snippets: An offer

WIPpet Wednesday: A break from the men