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    The Underwear Dilemma

    Blog Talk Writing
    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:
    Picture
    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:
    Picture
    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.
    ​
    Don't forget to check out the ARDOR newsletter. The April issue is out and with it a prelude to the ongoing serial The One That Feels, presented here on the Passion Stroll.
  • Published on

    March Madness

    Blog Talk Writing
    Image description
    My life has been a little crazy for the past two years. In the midst of writing and editing, my father-in-law became deathly ill two summers ago. I wish I could say that was hyperbole, but I'm afraid it's not. He declined quickly from the healthy man I'd come to know into a frail shell. We tried to do everything ourselves so that he could stay in his house, but it became too much. He was admitted to the hospital, and the cancer they found was inoperable. Hospitals, then nursing homes, then hospice. Mercifully it was quick and certain in a way that left my husband with few doubts about our choices. I wrote every post for my Steven's Heart blog tour from a vigil beside his bed in hospice.

    Since his passing my life has been a whirlwind. We bought a new house. We endeavored to sell not just our own home but my husband's father's also. I missed the Dreamspinner Author retreat last year because I was in the midst of moving. This year I was determined to make it, and I did (There's this photographic evidence with Amy DiMartino, Charlie Chochet and Dani Maas). Authors are a frequently insular bunch, and I'm no exception. If it wasn't for Dani, I'm not sure I would have managed to actually meet anyone. The workshop was jam packed with goodness, time to make new friends and contacts, everything I needed to be energized. There was even a chance to pitch ideas to the editors and I'm really thrilled at the prospect of releasing something from Dreamspinner later this year.

    Unfortunately, it also meant returning home to both the impending sale of our former home (and therefore desperate last minute cleaning, bargaining, and endless meetings with lawyers and realtors) and two days missed from work at the college in the midst of spring break housing (which I coordinate) and the implementation of a new housing assignments and lottery system (guess who is on the implementation team). Something had to give and the immediate something was my posts here. My plan was only to be a week late posting. All my good intentions were for naught, and obviously last weekend nothing new went up. 

    I hope none of you are too disappointed at the delay, and I promise my next post will be the blurb and cover for the serial novel that we'll be discovering here on the blog over the next few months. 
  • Published on

    Meandering through the trials of love - and a cover

    Blog Talk Cover Writing
    Image description
    One of the difficult parts about writing love stories is that you can't aim for the target. The heart goes the direction it wants, and because of that, the path characters take to get there is often a meandering one. It goes slow when as a writer you want it to go fast. It speeds by when you're begging the characters to slow down. I love that about writing, because I've learned that the characters are the ones in control. And that's splendid -- because when I let the characters loose, they thrive and grow and they live, so magnificently that they can make me cry, and they do.

    So where are they meandering and how and what do I think that means? Let's find out together. A blog is practically a requirement for authors today, but I hope I can make this one worth an occasional visit. Unlike my newsletter with its fancy formatting and strict length provisions, my thoughts here will be less guarded, more raw. Sometimes they may be angry or excited in the ways the carefully placed words of the newsletter cannot be.  In my newsletter I explore the characters you've seen or will see soon. Here you'll also get to see the characters half-formed, and the stories as they become. 

    I'm going to share a story here. I'm going to do it slowly, and if you read, patiently, you'll get the whole story. And if you're impatient, and you want it NOW... well, once I get far enough into it, I may offer an opportunity for that too. For now, as I get this beast moving, I'll be sharing twice a month for the story. And I'll post a couple more times a month about other things. Sometimes that will be a thought on current events; others it may be about a writing triumph or failure. And yes, there's sure to be a bit of promotion now and then, not just of my stuff, but of stories, beautiful stories -- the ones I love and maybe sometimes the ones I hate too, because people's taste is always different. 

    Next week ARDOR, my formal newsletter, comes out with its February issue. I'm still writing the content (furiously, because it needs to get formatted as well as written!), but you can be sure that love and dating and Valentine's Day will all be covered. And there will be a short in that issue as well, connected to something that has already been written. While the editorial content is still being finalized, I do have the cover for the issue, and I wanted to share it with you, because it inspired me. Maybe it will inspire you as well. Enjoy, and I'll talk to you all next week!*

    *Yes, I mean talk. If you comment I will always try to answer! Books are one way communication, but this doesn't have to be... it can be a dialogue, if you want it to be.