Paperback of UG is coming soon...

The paperback edition of Underground Guy is 316 pages and just under 100,000 words.  Cost will be $12.95. It'll be in a 5x8 inch format and I'm thinking a darker cover than what I'm using for the ebook. Not sure yet, but I don't want to mislead anyone on it. It's a very brutal book. The ending got adjusted to where Devlin is not completely over his past...hell, not by a long shot.

This story really is raw, in many ways. I hope not too much so. I've heard from a couple of people Bobby Carapisi winds up that way...though one man actually said it's not a very deep book. Not sure what he wanted or expected. In fact, I'm not sure how I could have made the book deeper than it is. But it's something to keep in mind as I work on A Place of Safety -- finding ways to add to the depth of the story.

UG has a fair amount of rough sex in it, too...but it also gets pretty deep into Devlin's mind and emotional turmoil, I think. I guess I won't know how it comes across until people start reviewing it. If they do. Which makes me nervous. People tend to either love my work or hate it; it's very rare for me to get a middling kind of reaction. Good thing is, it's already selling in ebook.

Looks like another trip to the UK is in store, this time to Reading and probably straight from LAX. Then home via JFK...though I am wondering if it'd be easier to come back through Toronto, again, and just catch a bus home. I'll check into that once the trip is actually set. Right now it's only 98% sure.

I'll be in Anaheim for 2 days just after the first of the year...the opposite end of town from where my friends are. I'm still going to try and see some people, but I'm staying on East Coast time so can't go too late. I'm going to see if some of us can get together at a place like Real Food on La Cienega near the Beverly Center for dinner once of the nights.

Right now I'm zoning...so this is all, for the moment.

UG is definitely up as an ebook

I reread the notice from Smashwords about my upload not passing epub-check and realized it wasn't going to be fully available until the issue was repaired, so went in and reworked the Table of Contents and uploaded a new one...and that worked. It passed. So it's fine and is available in nearly a dozen formats, including Kindle.

I turned to working on the paperback file and Word decided to have fun with me. I was trying to work it so the header didn't show up at the top of the first page of each chapter...and thought I had it...but then Word went into meltdown and seemed to wipe out everything I had done. I freaked.

But...I had saved beforehand, so before careening into trash my computer mode  I shut it down and reopened the file...and there was only one issue that needed work. So it looks like the text of the book is set, too. All I need is the cover, then it's done. Underground Guy will be completed and will be my second original novel published this year.

I'm taking off a little while from writing before I get back onto A Place of Safety. Obviously I'm not going to meet my planned deadline, but it's immaterial. I now have the rest of my obligations out of the way...and I'm ready to see how I do with Brendan's story.

The positive thing about working on UG and slamming out Dair's Window for NaNoWriMo is it's built my confidence in my writing. I think UG holds together well, and events flow naturally...for a hot and heavy murder mystery-suspense tale. Apparently very hot, because just to announce it I was going to buy an ad on Facebook...and they refused. Facebook, one of the avaricious companies there is refused my money because the book is for adults.

The puritans have returned and we're the witches they want to burn.

UG is up...I think...

I posted Underground Guy on Smashwords and it looked okay...but then I got an error message so dug back into the Word doc to correct what I think the issue is. When I got done, I went online to update my submission...and it looks like it actually was all right. I checked it in epub and everything did what it was supposed to. Same for Mobi. So I sent Smashwords an email asking about it but don't expect an answer till Monday. Still, they're offering it for sale...so maybe it was a glitch on their end.

I worked up a cover using the artwork I commissioned and like it a lot more. Still not 100% on it. The feel is too light for the darkness of the story...but I sort of like how the light shining on Reg works with the shadows laid in by the artist. I know him as Wereorc but his human name is Brendan Fann and I do enjoy his fantasy work of orcs and satyrs and werewolves. I just think this is too mainstream for him.

Anyway, the story is complete. What's funny is how I kept finding errors as I was formatting for ebook. Nothing major, just bits where the quotation marks were wrong and, to my surprise, a couple of lines where I liked grammar-check's suggestions on sentences better than my own. I also made a few more changes in the telling and found I'd spelled Leila's and Sir Monte's names three different ways and didn't notice it when I was going over the last time. But then, neither did my proofers...

That's embarrassing. The nice thing about find is you can locate the offending words with just a few letters in the right order and figure out how many other mistakes you made, like that. I have a sheet of them to transfer to my paperback Word file...a long list.

Jesus, me and typos...

Workin' through it...

I'm threatening to come down with another cold, which is making it hard to concentrate on UG. I can go for a couple hours then start zoning and wanting to sleep. I know it's not the story doing that to me; I also feel it in my nose and back and everything. What perfect timing.

It's still my goal to get the book out in ebook form this weekend. I've got about 130 pages left to smooth over, then shifting it into the format is next. I've sort of started on that, but setting up the table of contents is a lot of work so we'll see how it goes.

I'm not sure if I want to go through the trouble of making up a new image for the cover, right now. I've thought of something that might make the artwork I commissioned work better, since it came out to light and gentle for the tone of the book...but we'll see how it goes on Saturday.

It's going to be interesting to get people's reactions to this story, considering my hero...well, anti-hero, really...starts out as a rapist and shifts into a true-hero...of a sort. He's still something of a bastard at the end, with his subtle knowledge he's basically recruited another straight guy onto his side of the aisle and plans to take it farther.

Can't be too nice about my assholes, can I?

My own private dichotomy...

I keep having this hysterical dialogue within myself as I work on Underground Guy. It's just an erotic novel with a bit of meaning. Why are you slathering so much effort on it? The guys and girls who read this won't care about your grammar; only if it something that's really glaring, and even then they'll toss it off.

At the same time, another voice...or voices...scream back, Why're you minimizing your work? Why are you even thinking of dissing your characters? They trust you to do your best for them; that's why they've revealed their stories to you. Who cares that there's sex in the book? It's there for a purpose and is used to reveal story and character. If it offends people, so fucking what? It's good and right to be there.

I am working like crazy to make UG as solid a work as I can...and it's got a lot of very positive aspects to it. Devlin goes from being a serial rapist to a man tied into an imperfect relationship that makes him so happy, he never wants to hurt anyone ever again. Tawfi and Reg also have character arcs, albeit much smaller ones, and there's a solid critique of America's judicial system in it, showing how it favors the rich and sometimes the only path to justice is through illegal means.

That's a running thread in my work -- how broken our judicial system is...how it always has been. If you're white with money, you can all but get away with raping a woman or molesting underage girls or stealing funds from widows and orphans. If you're black, brown or poor, you're screwed.

One perfect example of this is how two different women were treated for wrongful voting. A black woman who thought she could vote did so and got sent to jail for 2 years. A white woman who deliberately voted twice got a scolding, nothing more. Or, to keep it in line with my story, a white frat president got probation and didn't have to register as a sex offender after raping and strangling several women while a black woman who was being used as a sex slave was sent to prison for 51 years because she killed her abuser.

Nothing new about it. When Stanford White was murdered by Harry Thaw in 1906 (as depicted in the movie Ragtime) Thaw's wealth kept him from being hanged or even being sent to prison, though he was put in a mental institution where his money let him live a comfortable life. And after the Johnstown flood, the owners of the dam that collapsed where able to keep themselves from being  held responsible for the deaths of 2200 people because they were wealthy and knew the judges hearing the cases, even though modifications they had ordered on the dam were the cause of its collapse.

I guess it's always going to be this way...

Smoothed over synopsis for UG...

I'm giving Underground Guy one last pass then shifting it into ebook format...probably the end of this week. Here's my last pass over the synopsis I'll be using for it --

-------

Devlin Pope’s life has been a fight to maintain control, but it looks like things have finally leveled out. The company he owns with his brother is doing well. He's able to purge his anger with men who are into the same sort of sex games as him. He’s even at the point where his long-deceased father’s physical abuse has become little more than a hard memory.

But the day before he’s set to return to New York from a business trip to London he’s contacted by the New Jersey State Police. They may have found the remains of his mother, who vanished 22 years ago, and want him to provide a DNA sample to verify the body.

Realizing that his mother didn't run off but was murdered by his father crashes Devlin into chaos. In a desperate attempt to regain control, he fixates on a good-looking guy he sees on the Underground, follows him off the train then kidnaps and sexually assaults him.

It’s not the first time Devlin’s done this, but he’d only attacked men who had crossed him, before. This guy had done nothing but sport a tattoo Devlin liked ... so instead of calming the beast within, his turmoil is increased.

What’s even worse -- Devlin finds out the man he attacked is an undercover cop named Reg. Three men have been raped and murdered in the last few months by a man who resembles Devlin and Reg was acting as a decoy to trap the killer. Now another man is dead thanks to Devlin’s interference and the British media are howling. On top of this, the police think he’s the killer’s accomplice and there is nothing he can say or do to change their minds.

As the evidence against him mounts, the shame he feels for what he did to Reg brings up issues and memories he thought long buried. Mixed in is the confused realization he’s fallen in love with the guy ... despite him being married with four kids and not the least bit interested.

Devlin careens into a brutal re-evaluation of his life even as he does all he can to track down the killer before another man dies ... because it’s looking more and more that thanks to his actions Reg has been marked as the maniac’s next target.

And Devlin would sooner die than let that happen.

Is my ending right?

I've been going back and forth about my ending to UG. It's sort of a Happily Ever After which I think is earned...but I'm torn about whether or not it goes too far. But I just went through it, again, and I couldn't change it...even though I think it should be. Or...maybe I'm just afraid and that's why I think it should be.

This is usually the point where I don't know what I'm doing, or why. I'm going by gut instinct when my head is trying to override that. I don't know which is right...but I usually stick with my gut. And in this instance...well, my head is telling me it's the wrong choice.

At the end, Reg is kidnapped and is about to be made into the next rape victim but Devlin saves his life and is seen as a hero for it, because he's almost killed, as well. So after all the hoopla and uproar has begun to die down, Reg shows up to his hotel room and lets Dev have him...somewhat. In short, Devlin has recruited a married straight man into...well, at least a bit of bisexuality. And the suggestion is this won't be the last time they're together.

Tawfi shows up and indicates he'd be open to a threesome, making Devlin and Reg his little harem. Kind of a goofy off-the-wall way of ending a pretty intense story, so I was thinking -- maybe I should have Reg's part just be just a dream. But then I wondered if that was playing it right with the characters. If I'm not just simply concerned about the message I'm sending?

Truth is, I think any man is capable of having sex with another man no matter how straight he is, so long as the circumstances are right. Prison's long been proof of that. Straight men go in, rape or get raped or just have sex with other men because they need the connection or protection, then come out and go home to their wives or girlfriends and don't even think about making it with a guy on the outside. Gay for pay is the same thing; it's a way to make money.

So maybe I am over-thinking this. Maybe I'm just scared of how it'll be seen, and my fear is threatening to hurt the story. That's why my gut takes over and tells my brain to shut the fuck up. Which I appreciate, as a writer. We can think something to death without batting an eye.

I've ruined stories and characters by doing that...and I don't want to do it with this one...

Had to face reality, today...

I had a dental appointment, this morning, at 11:20 so got up at 10am, still tired. I did the appointment, ran a couple of errands, came back to start in on my last polish of UG...and suddenly did a crash and burn and had to take a nap. I intended to just do the 20 minute thing, which is supposedly very refreshing. Instead, I went down for six hours...and woke up feeling good.

I guess jet lag caught up with me. This wasn't a good trip, physically; I was popping Imodium like candy and don't know why unless it was something in the second airline meal...which I couldn't eat, it was so nasty. Coming back, the food was even worse...but that's beside the point. I never was on top of myself in Hong Kong so I guess it finally caught up to me and even though brain said one thing, body overruled and that was that.

Still...I have gone through a fair amount of the story and found a few typos and made some minor changes for clarification. I also have a tendency to state the obvious and have been trying to weed out moments like that. All this for a book I'll be lucky to sell a thousand copies of.

However...I've found I don't care about the sales so long as someone's reading it. I price the books so I make very little off them...not even a dollar each. I don't want price to be a deterrent. Looks like UG will price out at $14.95 and that'll make me $.68 per book sold. I think that's why I'm releasing the ebook first -- it'll be priced at $1.95 and available to anyone over the age of 18.

I may do a Facebook ad just to get some notice going, since Tumblr is shutting down people like me and that was my main source of contact with like-minded people...male and female. It's surprising how many women like to read books about men brutalizing men. I put that in Dair's Window so should be fun to see what happens.

Now I'm ready to go back to sleep.

Final reworking of UG

The opening...basically the same as always but cleaner, crisper and crueler...

___

I saw him on London's underground, looking tired. Sad. Alone. Sleepy gray eyes under honey-colored brows. Thick hair covering a classic skull and cropped close enough to see he had a couple of scars in his scalp. Aquiline nose. Taut lips. Strong neck under a clean chin. Smooth cheekbones. Mid-twenties. His shoulders broad. His chest full and round under a threadbare red hoodie. No gut to him, even sitting sloped over. He got on at Knightsbridge and grabbed a seat near the rear door of the carriage close to where I was standing, his focus on his cell phone -- excuse me, mobile phone -- the whole time. His dark cargo pants were smudged with white paint and his legs filled them just right. Smallish feet in basic tennis shoes splashed with more paint counterpointed by powerful hands. A workman's hands. All the complete opposite of what I like ... and of me.

I'm as Italian-American as they come -- with a Roman nose in good proportion to my face and chin, a wrestler's build that's stocky but tight thanks to running five miles a day, dark hair everywhere there should be, eyes so brown and wary they're close to black, clean-shaven but at least sporting a suit and tie instead of casuals. Very Brooklyn, even in London.

My preferred type was like this one man who entered just before my underground guy at the same station and stood right by the door -- tall, dark, handsome in a Jewish way. Either side of thirty, which put him about my age, and wearing a sleek suit of brushed wool -- a lot sharper than the one I got on sale at Macy's. Probably Savile Row. A neat goatee, trim body and no briefcase added to the sense he was someone whose life was perfectly organized. What was even better? I caught him giving my guy a low-key look of appraisal. The second I saw that I knew it wouldn’t have taken much to get him out of his suit, and under normal circumstances I'd have found a way to strike up a conversation with him, get him back to my hotel and spend a few hours in bed. But nothing was normal for me, right then, and I desperately needed a good solid fuck, one that went all night if that’s what it took to clear my head.

But for some reason the sad guy kept drawing my attention. I can’t explain it ... except I noticed he wasn’t happy about a text he got. He made a reply, waited for an answer and took a deep breath at what he read. The vague lines in his forehead drew deeper and his eyes darker. The news was obviously not good and I felt for him ... which was weird because, to be honest, fair-haired Englishmen never really interested me. But even Savile Row’s dark good-looks, perfect posture and calm control couldn’t drag me away from the little drama unfolding before me via text as my underground guy tensed and shifted and leaned back and scrunched and shifted upright, each movement increasing my awareness of his beauty.

We were on the Piccadilly line, westbound, and it was growing solid with evening commuters, every damn one of them the typical English sort. I was standing not three feet from him just a bit to his left, and I was flat out gazing upon him like some needy puppy seeking a treat or scratch behind the ears. He finally noticed as we pulled into Hammersmith, gave me a couple of quick confused glances then scrunched deeper into his seat. He shifted so I could see his left hand held a thick gold ring on his third finger, and he pulled up a photo of a woman and some children on the phone's screen. Then he got into another serious back and forth via text.

Him sending me a subtle hint that he's not into guys is no problem for me; I’ve had lots of straight guys. But I was way too impatient to take the time needed for a decent seduction, so I decided to adjust my gaze to Savile Row ... but then my underground guy leaned forward to rest his arms on his lovely thighs, still focused on his phone, and in his reflection in the window I noticed he had a tattoo of some Asian character on the elegant nape of his neck. Japanese, it looked like.

Beautiful.

Perfect.

I’d seen it before ... something like it ... and I got caught in one of those moments where you almost glimpse what the memory is but can’t quite grasp it. Then he leaned even farther in and the hoodie pulled lower to expose the frayed collar of a faded green t-shirt and the beginning of yet another Japanese character and --

My heart began pounding. My breath went soft and sharp. I totally forgot Savile Row, forgot the mess in my brain -- hell, damn near forgot that I was headed back to the States, tomorrow.

All that mattered was him.

He was my prey ... and it was all I could do to keep from reaching over just to ruffle his hair and let him know the chase was on, I was so overwhelmed by the idea of having him.

I snuck some photos on my cell phone, which only made him lovelier.

And lovelier.

And lovelier.

My focus became so intent he tightened even more. Oh, he knew I was interested ... hell, a blind fuckin’ poodle would’ve known. But he wasn’t acting like a man who’s freaked out by my attention; it was more like he was surprised. I wondered if he was wondering if this might be the way to make a bit of extra money. Let the fag suck him off for a quick fifty. Looked like he could use it.

I watched him work his texts. Work through confusion ... then wariness ... finally ending with a weary stubbornness over some decision he’d made. I figured it was marital trouble. Maybe telling the wife he’d be late for dinner and she was pissed. Which hurt him. Made him sadder. And more beautiful than anyone I had ever seen.

My heart pounded stronger. Son-of-a-bitch, I had to have him. Had to be with him. Completely. No matter what it took.

He glanced at Savile Row a few times. I almost thought my guy expected something to happen between them, but that man was too lost in his own contemplations, so he cast one more half-glance my way, sent a last text then put his phone in his hoodie pocket and, as we were pulling into Hounslow East, stood up.

I stopped breathing for a moment, because those legs flowed into what was promising to be the most perfect ass ever in existence. Then as he worked his way to the door he brushed against me -- his solid arm rubbing mine, almost like he was saying Here I am -- and I fell headlong into animal mode.

And followed him.

Okay, that was a stupid thing to do. Period. Like I said, not one real, honest, serious ping on my gaydar. The most I could even have hoped for was the cash-for-access scenario, and while the thought of making an offer did dance across my mind, it died quick ... because I wanted more than that would give me. A hell of a lot more. But getting a straight guy’s no problem for me; it all depends on how far you're willing to go.

And I’d learned a long time ago that I had no limit.

Tumblr is the latest to go homophobic...

You see this painting?

Tumbler flagged it as adult content. It's part of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican! Tens of thousands of men, women AND children see it every day...but Tumblr says it's a no-no and won't let you view it. It shows a man's pee-pee.

Then there's this photo. He's wearing as much as you'd see on any high school or college campus across the country...or walking through a park...or at the beach, but it's adult content and flagged, says Tumblr. I've had a dozen on my blog just this innocuous that were handled in the same way.

It seems the puritanical scum at that company are most offended by men being viewed in any way except fully dressed in a business suit. I mean, they flagged one on another site that was of two guys sitting next to each other, fully dressed. No hand-holding, no crotches, even...but one's knee was touching the other one's so it's adult content. Seriously.

That's not an algorithm mixing up men's nipples with women's or seeing a bit of nudity as being hard-core porn. That's a deliberate purge of content that might even begin to be perceived as gay-oriented. It doesn't matter if it's a work of art.

This piece by John Constable -- Academic Study of a Male Nude in the same Pose as a Figure in Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgement’ in the Sistine Chapel, Rome -- was painted in the 1820s and is on view at Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire! But Tumblr got all goofy over it. FLAGGED!!!

On December 17th, a mere two weeks after making the announcement of their plan, Tumblr will erase all content it deems Adult Content. They ignored pleas from Tumblr bloggers to rein in the porn-bots taking over the system. They're either too fucking lazy or cheap or ignorant to just put up a wall to keep adult content behind, like Facebook now does and Blogger can do. Hell, even Smashwords and Kobo have walls for adult material, and sell my books from behind them.

But Tumblr's given in to the hateful right wing and is doing the easiest thing it can to make the intolerant happy. It won't work. Others like myself are exploding over this and their stock is dropping like a rock into the ocean. They have probably killed the company...or maybe not. Verizon owns it so they may be happy with this shit.

But it's so fucking stupid and insulting...