Rainbow Snippets

Rainbow Snippets: Drumbeat, Torsos, and Giveaways, oh my!

Happy Saturday! I spent my morning watching my son and his team run their second cross-country meet. I’m not a runner myself, but I love watching these events. Everyone cheers for everyone, regardless of what school they’re from, and it’s exciting to watch the kids finish, especially if they achieve a personal best time.

Meanwhile, I’m nearly up to 600 likes on my Facebook author page. When I hit 600, I’m doing a giveaway. Two people will win a copy of any book from my backlist. Also, I will celebrate by making an Official Torso-ified Cover of a Stephen King novel. Be sure to like my page and vote in the poll if you’d like to see this happen. (For those not in the know, a fellow author, C.H. Clepitt, and I decided everything can be improved with a naked torso. We made covers and new blurbs for lots of classic literature.)

I’m snipping again from Drumbeat, my recent release. We met Jamie last week, and now it’s time to meet Cian through Jamie’s eyes.

The dance and the costumes had an ethereal quality which evoked images of woods and the fair folk. The dancers all had on some kind of green makeup which caught the light and shimmered. Cian’s midnight-black hair was slicked back, and he had a green mask covering the top half of his face. That was just about all he had covered, aside from a small, tight pair of green shorts. He wasn’t tall and reedy like some dancers. He was shorter, muscular and broad rather than slim—almost stocky. He made faeries seem powerful and majestic rather than prim and delicate.

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!

Rainbow Snippets: Drumbeat is here!

Books, Writing

My latest novel, Drumbeat, is one week old today, so that’s what I’m sharing from. You can read all the details below the snippet, including my wonderful interviewed for the WROTE podcast. We had a great conversation about writing bisexual characters, non-binary representation, and invisible disability.

I’ve been just blown away by how well this book was received. I wondered if people would have issues with the polyamory or the on-page “het sex” (I’ve been scolded for that in the past) or the fact that I (a hearing person) wrote D/deaf characters or the way I wrote Jamie’s eating disorder or the fact that I have a former adult film actor babysitting a small child. So far, none of those things have been challenged at all. Heck, I only had one person say it didn’t read to them as fully a stand-alone (and that’s fair, as well as it being the best “negative” review I’ve ever gotten). If any of that appeals to you, maybe you’ll like Drumbeat too.

This snippet is in Cian’s POV and introduces us to Jamie.

It was too bad Jamie was so standoffish. He was a thousand shades of adorable, and no amount of pseudo-bad-boy-rockstar play-acting could hide it. While making his way to the table after performing, Cian had taken a few minutes to admire him. Jamie was tiny, probably barely five foot five. His brown hair was short and spiked. He had piercings all over, enough in visible areas that Cian wondered if he had some in less public places too. He didn’t recall him having any in his videos, not that he wanted to admit how much of Jamie’s body he’d seen. And those eyes—dark and sparkling, black-lined to give him a hint of being trouble.

Book Info

Listen to my WROTE interview here or follow this link.

You can also read Jayne’s review on the website and my guest post on Jeanne G’Fellers’ blog.

Title: Drumbeat

Series: Notes from Boston (#3)

Date: September 1, 2018

Length: 231 pages

eBook ISBN: 978-1-944591-78-6

print ISBN: 978-1-944591-51-9

Category: LGBTQ Literature, Gay Romance

Goodreads

Purchase Links

Synopsis

Jamie Cosgrove is doing his best to recover from a break-up after years with an abusive boyfriend. All his usual coping strategies have failed, and he’s fallen back on things that make him feel safe: drumming, food, and his friend Trevor. The trouble is, two of those are still secrets, even from those closest to him.

Cian Toomey has it all. He has loving relationships with his partners and a fulfilling, creative career. The one thing he’s missing is someone to go home to at night. When sudden changes occur at one of his jobs, he’s faced with a choice to find something new or move in with his partners in a different city.

Well-meaning but pushy friends seem to think Cian and Jamie are the answers to each other’s prayers. They couldn’t disagree more. A series of random events thrusts them into each other’s lives, and they find they have more in common than they thought. But when all of Jamie’s carefully constructed walls crumble at once, both of them will have to depend on the support of their friends and family to strengthen their fragile bond.

Rainbow Snippets: What no one says

Books, Writing

Happy Saturday! Last night was my kids’ party. Their birthdays are only 5 days apart, so they often share. We took them and six friends to do an escape room. They didn’t quite make it out, but it was pretty close. Everyone had a blast.

Last week, I shared from my recent release, “Year of the Guilty Soul,” a novella-length YA story that’s included in the Seasons of Love anthology from Beaten Track. All the stories are great, so be sure to check them out. You can find all of them separately as well as in the anthology as a whole.

Here’s the blurb from mine:

The year is 1991, and Antonia “Toni” Moskowitz is caught in the middle, always having to pick a side. Whether it’s between her family’s two religions or in her relationships, she has choices to make. Does her heart belong to the outgoing boy with the lime-green nails or the girl in the black velvet skirt? Where does she fit in when both gender and gender roles feel confining?

But learning who she is and who she wants to be with has a price. Every decision has consequences, especially when some kinds of love and expression are still taboo. Sometimes it’s hard to choose between being good and being right. Four seasons. Four kisses. One year to figure out what her heart wants.

Beaten Track | Amazon | Amazon Paperback

And here is this week’s snippet:

Levi is Dom’s boyfriend, but no one says so. It’s one of those things everyone avoids talking about, like how Dad doesn’t tell his parents I’m going to church with my other grandparents or how no one says anything when Matteo wears Sofia’s outgrown dress-up clothes and gets into Mom’s Avon drawer and pinches her tiny sample lipstick tubes. Gran and Gramps call Dom and Levi “roommates.” I don’t think my parents are against Dom being gay, but it’s not open for discussion. I wonder sometimes if it’s because they worry about him, not because they agree with my church or with Gran and Gramps.

Rainbow Snippets: What if it does?

Books, Writing

Happy Saturday! Posting and running because I have to go do some cleaning. We’re having some trouble with fleas this summer. It’s never been this bad before.

I’m currently working on a companion novella to this about one of the other characters. The stories are set in 1991, so if it reads as “dated,” that’s intentional.

Here’s the blurb from mine:

Antonia Moskowitz is caught in the middle, always having to pick a side. Whether it’s between her family’s two religions or in her relationships, she has choices to make. But learning who she is has a price, and every decision has consequences. Sometimes it’s hard to choose between being good and being right. Four seasons. Four kisses. One year to figure out what her heart wants.

Beaten Track | Amazon | Amazon Paperback

And here is this week’s snippet, following on from last week’s:

We don’t say anything about [the kiss] afterward. I want to tell Hannah that it doesn’t mean anything, that I’m not like what some of the kids at school say about me. Except what if it does mean that? What if those feelings I had for my friend years ago meant more than liking her Pac-Man skills? I stare at the television, willing myself to focus on Dana Carvey. Except he’s playing the Church Lady, and all I can think is that she sounds uncomfortably like the church elders.

Rainbow Snippets: Secret Kisses

Books, Writing

Happy Saturday! Gonna be a gorgeous weekend. My family is spending it out at a local amusement park.

I had a new release this week: “Year of the Guilty Soul,” a novella-length YA story that’s included in the Seasons of Love anthology from Beaten Track. You can read about the other stories in my blog post about it.

Here’s the blurb from mine:

Beaten Track | Amazon | Amazon Paperback

And here is this week’s snippet:

I finish licking the orange cheese powder off my fingers. Hannah is giggling madly at a penis joke on the show like it’s the first time she’s ever heard one. Maybe it is, given what she said earlier. She rolls toward me and starts to ask what I think, but I’m too close, and she bashes her nose into my cheek. It only makes her laugh harder.

I’m laughing too, and then, out of the blue, she kisses me. Or I kiss her. It’s hard to tell because I think we both went for it at the same time. It’s sticky from the Cheetos, and neither of us knows what we’re doing. We don’t go any farther, which makes it awkward—we stop in the middle of it, and we both back away.

Rainbow Snippets: Pride and another bit of Upstaged!

Books, Writing

Happy Saturday! As promised, here are some pictures from last week’s Pride.

Now for today’s snippet. I’m sharing again from UPSTAGED! An anthology of women who love women in performing arts. None of these are my stories, but I had the privilege of curating and editing the anthology.

Just to give an idea of the wide range of styles and stories, I’m sharing from something radically different from the previous one. Last week, I shared a bit of JL Merrow’s excellent steampunk. Today, I’m giving you a poetic, lyrical contemporary YA, “I Think I’m Gonna Like It Queer,” by Allison Fradkin.

I love this story first because my kids were utterly delighted by it. They had fun trying to spot all the Broadway shows referenced in it. Second, I’m a fan of Broadway myself. And third, it’s such a different writing style from anything else I’d included.

The narrative of any good musical always, like Oliver!, requires a twist, and Reyna’s is that she’s psychic.

Like, Disney sitcom psychic—just your average adolescent doin’ what comes supernatur’lly.

For her part, Melinda knows, believes, and accepts the prophetic proponent of Reyna’s identity.

But how would she feel if she knew that seer was also queer?

Because it may be five to places, but it’s ten to one that Mel finds it soothing that the soothsayer is so secretive, keeping her gift hidden from possible naysayers—and impossible bullies. If no one knows Rey has a penchant for the paranormal, then she and Mel can just be a pair a’ normal girls.

So she definitely can’t go singin’ in the rainbow that she prefers dolls to guys, not when she’s been crooning about each and every crush—letting everyone hear it’s for the boy—since junior high. And she certainly can’t contemplate how loverly it would be if she and a certain non-boy crush could pair their thespian tendencies with lesbian tendencies.

No, she has no choice but to negate, fabricate, overcompensate.

Blurb: I Think I’m Gonna Like It Queer, Allison Fradkin – Theatre is an ensemble of inflection, projection, and rejection. So when 16-year-old Reyna—a performer who’s part prima donna, part dreamgirl next door—desires a duet with Melinda, the ingénue who plays her best friend, she can’t just run and tell that. Or even run and tell Melinda. But with the arrival of a triply threatening romantic rival, it’s five to places and ten to one that Reyna had better act on her feelings before the curtain closes on her chances.

About the Author: Allison Fradkin is a playwright with thespian tendencies. She makes her stage presence felt in community theatre productions of musicals (State Fair, Big Fish, Spamalot), as well as straight plays (The Miracle Worker, The Women, Children of a Lesser God). In addition to performing, she plays the part of Dramatist for Special Gifts Theatre, adapting musicals for actors of all abilities; and acts as Literary Coordinator for Pride Films & Plays, curating new works by female-identified screenwriters and playwrights. Scriptly speaking, Allison’s plays, which include “Girl, You Know Its True Colors” and “I Love Lezzie,” not only surpass the Bechdel Test but have come out onstage at 10-minute play festivals nationwide. Although she has a soft spot for short plays, Allison is currently developing her first full-length work: a feminist tribute to The Golden Girls entitled Say Cheesecake! The Musical about Girls of a Golden Age. To give her props, please visit allisonfradkin.blogspot.com.

Rainbow Snippets: Drumbeat, Torsos, and Giveaways, oh my!