Mother's Day... it makes me think a lot about my books. I write a lot of college age protagonists. That means I write a lot of young gay men with family struggles. While that is getting better, it's far from good. LGBT youth represent a staggering disproportionate percentage of homeless youth because of both feared and actual rejection by their parents. 

I've tried to be even handed about writing nasty parents and supportive parents. The relationships can get complicated, and they can be downright strange. Sometimes they involve total rejection, others there is more nuance involved. Sometimes one parent is supportive and acts as shelter. Sometimes the support is only in comfort afterward. So when I think about Mother's Day, I struggle.

I've been thinking about relationships with mother's a lot in part because I've been working on the current Work-in-Progress, The Rodeo Knight, and the mother/son relationship is a turning point in that story. Let's face it. Moms are important. 

Mother's Day is over, but relationships with mother figures are still something formative. I'm revealing a bit about my next College Rose Romance, Book 4, below. But for a moment I hope you'll think about book 3. Because Andrew's Prayer is a lot about mothers, and how they love their gay sons, and also about how gay sons love their mothers. 

I'm going to leave you with a quote from Andrew's Prayer, from the very first page of the book, but it's one that's particularly appropriate for Mother's Day, and also one that I think sets the tone for Drew's relationship with her:

Andrew's Prayer is available at Torquere Press, Amazon, and other fine e-book retailers. The best ways you can support an author are to buy directly from the press or to leave an honest review or rating (especially on Amazon).

I write gay romances. Pictures of hot guys are something that get shared in those circles. Often these are models, and so it's not infrequent to see this on my screen first thing in the morning:

Hot, right? But it's also frustrating. I work and write in medium where I am virtually never represented, after having lived my life and grown up in an environment where I am, again, almost never represented. While no character is a perfect stand-in, most of us growing up have heroes that we can or want to emulate, to resemble, to aspire to be.

This guy with the perfect head of teased dirty blond hair and the hot tattoos and the smooth skin and the glorious abs... so often he is the guy I'm writing. Because romance is fantasy. In my head I always wanted to be that hot guy. The one that looks hot in just his underwear.

And that of course is where this comes from. Because I do shop for underwear online, and facebook somehow knows that. And it delivers this picture to me.

Often.

I don't have the heart to ban the picture in the way I've banned so much political talk from my feed. I like looking. I like dreaming. I like thinking about how hot dirty blond boy would feel skin to skin crawling up me to do unmentionable things. But it hurts. Why? Here's a hint. The picture above is edited to take out this:

It's a shame of course, because in my desperate desire to be that hot jock, I would, as I imagine many do, join that club. Aspire to be hot. Except that an XL in those undies is a size 36. That makes me a full 12 sizes larger than the LARGEST SIZE THEY HAVE. At my size I can't get sexy underwear. At my size I'm lucky to find underwear at all. There's plenty of shame in that. 

A lot of people will go on about how it's all about will power and if I really wanted to blah blah blah. Sure.

For the record, at my heaviest I topped 420 pounds. Possibly more. That's where my industrial strength fatso scale tops out. In an effort to be sexy for my hubby, shortly after I asked him to marry me, I shaved the comb over and went on a full on no holds barred I was not going to fail this time diet. Successfully, as it happens. I lost at least 140 pounds, going to a low of 270. At this weight I was still, by doctors, considered morbidly obese. At this weight I also started showing the signs no person who loses weight wants to see... excess skin. The kind that won't go away even if you lose the weight gradually. 

Mind you, my six foot five frame, at 270 pounds, still had a 44 inch waist. a full 8 sizes away from fitting into the largest size of sexy underwear offers.  I kept the weight off for almost five years.

That bit about you get used to it, you feel better, you don't get hungry. That's all bullshit. For me? I was hungry all the time. I felt guilty if I ate a snack. I subsisted on tiny meals and exercised daily. My knees and back thanked me for the weight loss. The rest of my body waged a full on war. I was cold all the time. I felt weak, even though I exercised. I never developed a taste for the healthy foods I needed to eat, even though I tried an endless variety in an effort to maintain the weight I'd reached.

I've bucked the odds. A full 12 years after losing the weight, I'm still down 50ish pounds over my heaviest weight. But that means I've gained back a painful 100 pounds.

But I'm terrified of dieting. It never made me feel better, and even going through herculean lengths, I never even got close to my goal. Being able to buy XL undies and jeans at a regular store. 

I despaired and I searched high and low for places that sell sexy undies in my size. Like everything else I wear, it IS possible to find such a thing, but the choices are extremely limited, and heinously expensive.

Almost every book I write talks about the underwear the hero wears. About how sexy it makes them look. I think that's because I know I'll never get to feel that for myself.
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