I went through my docx copy of this story and reformatted it, corrected grammatical mistakes I stupidly decided made sense, and made it look more like a professional book than a self-published vanity novel. While doing so, I reread it...and I'm damned proud of it. I call it one of my adult novels because it has some very intense sexual moments in it, but it also has a protagonist who's borderline insane, driven there first by grief and then by fear for the safety of a man he loves.
I hadn't realized just how nuts Antony is in this...but he's dangerous. He believes in a scorched earth policy when dealing with those who threaten him, and has since he was a child. Yet he also loves his Jake so deeply and completely, he'd die for him. The problems that explode are when his emotions take over from his brain, without him realizing it, and he makes mistakes that nearly destroy him. He's not a hero or even an anti-hero; he's a psychotic fuck who also has some major redeeming qualities to him.
I decided to update the formatting because this book is the real lead-in to The Vanishing of Owen Taylor, and I want them to be consistent with each other. Margins. Contents page. Block justified instead of left justified...something that really made the book seem amateurish. And I can update it at no cost on Lightning Spark till the end of the month, so I'd be a fool not to take advantage of this.
It's sold okay -- not on the scale of How To Rape A Straight Guy, but that one's title is so provocative I halfway think people read it just to see if it lives up to itself. So far, no one's said otherwise and, in fact, I've gotten some pretty nice feedback on it...mostly of the shocked sort from people who never thought they could care about a man who commits a brutal rape. When I get those comments, I preen like a peacock.
I think I'll reformat Bobby Carapisi, next. It's another book people are shocked by...and horrified by...and the truth is, I was way too heavy with it. I'm not rewriting it; just using it to remind myself I prefer Tolstoy's humanity to Dostoyevsky's wallowing in the brutality of life...and need to keep that in mind when writing. As I've said before, Shakespeare put comedy even into his tragedies because he knew the audience needs the respite.
Still in the process of learning that...
I hadn't realized just how nuts Antony is in this...but he's dangerous. He believes in a scorched earth policy when dealing with those who threaten him, and has since he was a child. Yet he also loves his Jake so deeply and completely, he'd die for him. The problems that explode are when his emotions take over from his brain, without him realizing it, and he makes mistakes that nearly destroy him. He's not a hero or even an anti-hero; he's a psychotic fuck who also has some major redeeming qualities to him.
I decided to update the formatting because this book is the real lead-in to The Vanishing of Owen Taylor, and I want them to be consistent with each other. Margins. Contents page. Block justified instead of left justified...something that really made the book seem amateurish. And I can update it at no cost on Lightning Spark till the end of the month, so I'd be a fool not to take advantage of this.
It's sold okay -- not on the scale of How To Rape A Straight Guy, but that one's title is so provocative I halfway think people read it just to see if it lives up to itself. So far, no one's said otherwise and, in fact, I've gotten some pretty nice feedback on it...mostly of the shocked sort from people who never thought they could care about a man who commits a brutal rape. When I get those comments, I preen like a peacock.
I think I'll reformat Bobby Carapisi, next. It's another book people are shocked by...and horrified by...and the truth is, I was way too heavy with it. I'm not rewriting it; just using it to remind myself I prefer Tolstoy's humanity to Dostoyevsky's wallowing in the brutality of life...and need to keep that in mind when writing. As I've said before, Shakespeare put comedy even into his tragedies because he knew the audience needs the respite.
Still in the process of learning that...
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