When Love Is Not Enough

Hello readers :)

I'm a bit nervous as I "blog" so very little. In fact, if you google me not much comes up. :s Tristan asked me to write something as a way to promote my book so here it goes...

When Love is Not Enough is the very first Wade Kelly publication!!! (SO exciting for me!) I started writing this book in 2009 when the image of someone touching a casket popped into my head. Yes, it sounds odd, but I DID grow up watching horror movies! In this mind-image I saw the wood, and I felt a shiver surrealism as if I WERE THE ONE about to look into the dead face of someone I loved. At that moment, I HAD to write it down!

I was on a subway at the time, notebook in-hand as it is so very often. My thoughts raced. What if my character was at the funeral of his best friend? What would he feel? Hurt, sadness, anger, emptiness? the first words in my notebook were, "Matthias Dixon fingered the casket." I later added, "fingered the rim of the wooded casket with distant fascination? uneasiness?" ... These were my first words but as stories change and take on a life of their own, so did my book. This line is now in chapter 3. "MATTHIAS DIXON fingered the rim of the wooden casket with distant fascination. It wasn’t as if he’d never attended a viewing before, but this one… this one sucked all the sorrow right out of him, until he felt as if he were nothing more than a hollow shell." 

I also do not always follow the rules of proper writing--so untrained am I--that I am ever so thankful to Dreamspinner Press for publishing my manuscript!! It is unconventional to say the least. Normal stories, in my experience, go in chronological order. They build up in suspense and keep the reader entranced by the mystery of what might come.  Yeah--no mystery here. You know in the prologue that Jimmy dies. I don't know how to keep secrets. I like to put the tragedy right out there. I ALSO have a hard time reading love stories that take forever to get to the sex. *blushes* These are not girls I am writing about! Sex--in my opinion--doesn't have to be romanticized and seen as a climax of love and commitment. Sex can be raw and urgent, and often based on need not romance. In When Love is Not Enough you will find romance--definitely--but also lust, need, and desire.

I strive for realism. If you feel I am being ridiculous--call me out on it! my book is listed on goodreads.com http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12399401-when-love-is-not-enough

I guess what I want to say about this book is that it means a lot to me personally. People say, "Write what you know." There is a little bit of me in every character. I take my own experiences, good and bad, and express them through fiction. It is therapeutic. Bullying over homosexuality is wrong. This book is not exactly about that, but deals more with hate and intolerance. These are real issues and I wanted to write what I have experienced into my characters in hopes of making people think. I hope this book does just that! MAKE THE READER THINK! (and cry! I would love to make people cry.)

So, thank you for your time and I hope you enjoy my book. Leave a comment below this post. (and share this blog around town!) I will be sending ONE person a signed copy of When Love is Not Enough. Comment on WHY you WANT to read it, OR what MEANT the MOST to you when you did. I will give this two weeks and select a winner then.

my website is http://wadekelly.weebly.com/index.html

and I am on facebook :)

xoxo,

Wade

Big Bad Blurbs

I need to get a few things off my chest. 

First, I have dropped and shattered yet another jar of peanut butter on the floor.  This is the second jar that has met its doom this month.  The funny thing is that they don’t shatter but merely crack and send powdery shards of glass everywhere. It’s hilarious and a blast to sweep up in flip flops.  Naturally, both jars were full.  I can’t seem to keep one in my possession long enough to eat the contents.

Second, I’ve admitted to myself that I believe in elves.  Every time I drop and break something, which is often, I actually pause for a moment and hope this will be the time when those elves that helped the shoemaker are going to appear and clean the mess up.  I contemplated leaving that shattered jar of peanut buttery goodness on the floor just to see what would happen. 

I did this once with laundry at an old apartment building and was rewarded with my clothes being taken.  It was a progressive thing.  I would go down one day and they were on the dryer, I took what I needed and left the rest, the day after that they were folded.  It made sense that if I left them there one more day they would somehow magically appear put away in my drawers.

Not so.

Why didn’t I put the clothes away?  I don’t remember.  I was in college it was a 100 years ago.  Who knows?

Now that I’ve unloaded my dirty laundry let me also say I HATE writing blurbs.  If ever there was a time for those elves this would be when I would request their help.  I recently had to write a blurb for my upcoming release “The Incident,” with Seventh Window Publications and found the task of writing the blurb daunting.  I always do.  I began to wonder why.  After all the book has been accepted for publication, the book is written, edited, the cover art has been decided, so what is the big deal about writing a little paragraph summing it all up?

I think it has something to do with exactly that.  As writers, we spend an inordinate amount of time on our output.  The entire process from start to finish in getting anything published is arduous.  It is also thrilling, wonderful, and exciting.  Now after weeks, months and I’m sure in some cases years, the project is done and you are asked to ice the cake with a blurb.  Sum up all of that in a paragraph; please, thank you and goodbye.  I realized as I was writing this blog that maybe writing the blurb is painful because it is like sending your kid to college.  It’s the final farewell before you both begin the endless promo-ing, interviews, and will endure both praise and criticism from reviewers and readers, who, lets face it, in this genre can be pretty intense.

Neither you, nor your baby know what the future will bring and the blurb is really the first impression of your work to a potential reader.  So don’t fuck it up and could you keep it to a paragraph, max.  Thanks.  I obviously want people to read and enjoy what I write.  I want my kid to be well-dressed and well-mannered.  I want all the other kids to like him/her and I don’t want a bad report from the parents.  So I write the blurb, all the time wondering if those elves could lend a hand or at least clean up that damn peanut butter, or at least maybe that kind soul who folded my laundry years ago could swing by and this time take the peanut butter.  I’m not picky.  Elves and thieves are welcome around my fire.

So adieu little blurb, go out and make Poppa proud.  Smile, say thank you, even when you get a crappy review or some tired queen from Oregon gives you shit on goodreads, you just smile and take it honey, cuz there’s plenty more where that came from.

Ever hear of a synopsis?

***

Make sure you come on by my website where the elves are always at work or find me on Facebook and Twitter.  I can also be found dishing dirt and smut at my sex advice column over at examiner.com and be sure and keep your peepers peeped for “The Incident,” and “The Birches” both from Seventh Window Publications and “Lily” coming soon from Silver Publications.

-- Xavier Axelson

Hot Head by Damon Suede

I'm not sure that I can say anything different than all the other "review sites" and people who actually know what they are talking about, but here it goes...

I enjoyed reading Hot Head!  *so eloquent*

First of all, I bought the book because I read a review. >>AND because I met Damon at a book fair and think he is a wonderful guy! Cute, funny, & very intelligent, but that is beside the point<<

I read "Up front, this is one of the best M/M romance I have read lately, even more surprisingly since this a debut from Damon Suede. The author is not new to the M/M crowd and so maybe he socked up a lot of do and don’t about this genre, and he wonderfully displayed them in this novel....etc." by elisa ramblings. How can one NOT buy a book when a review starts off this way? I HAD to!

I started reading it as I normally do with casual interest and a la-la-la feel to the day. I wanted to relax and read something fun with firefighters. Not so with this book. I have read a fair amount of books where deep reading is not really needed. (Do you know those kind?) Some people write shallow. NOT that I am saying these authors can't write (they shall remain nameless), but rather the story doesn't take a lot of thought and can be read easily. Easy-breezy, and la-la-la under a tree in the shade. Well, I had to stop. (Hence why it looks on goodreads like I took forever to read it!) This was not a "breezy" book.

Unexpectedly I bought something that had depth and great detail. The characters had more to them than "My name is Griff" and I was forced to absorb every word. Damon pulled my attention to New York with all its surroundings. The people, the bars, the streets, and yes-9/11. His care about presenting the emotion and destruction of that disaster got to me. The description of the soot in Griff eyes and the impact of the air wooshing hard enough to through a man through plate-glass. It was gripping.

It also had the unexpected twist of a Russian guy running a *hmm-hmm* website...lol... I wasn't expecting that. It made me laugh but also had me drooling. Cleaver way to get the two characters naked though not the first time I read that type of scenario. (Str8t Boys also had a similar thing with photography.) I also liked the strong family characters who added more realism and depth to the main characters. Damon put thought into them and how their opinion and interaction would make Dante and Griff into two guys that could really live right down the block. (If I lived in NY, that is.) I took my time reading this so I could savor each chapter. I suggest you do the same!

I may not be the best reviewer, but for some reason you are here reading this post.. hehehhee :)

I read what I read, I like what I like, and don't really know how to say it otherwise.

I hope you enjoy reading HOT HEAD by Damon Suede as much as I did!

Ciao for now,

Tristan ;)