Tag: authors

Random Thursday Musing

Today is novelist Anne Rice’s birthday. In honor of the occasion, I’ll share–and probably somewhat repeat past entries–some of my favorite moments with Anne Rice’s work.

Back in the mid 1980s, I made a new friend who, upon finding out that I was an avid reader, suggested that I read Interview With the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat. While anxiously awaiting release of The Queen of the Damned, he wanted someone to talk with about the novels.

I wrinkled my nose. Although I enjoyed the artistry of classic literature with some characteristics of horror or the supernatural–most notably works of Poe, Hawthorne, and the Bronte sisters–my heart and mind didn’t really go in that direction. But I valued his friendship and his opinion, so I said I’d give Interview a go.

read more about Anne and me here

Speaking of writing…

Mark G. Harris recently submitted questions to several writers (including me) about the writing process. There are twelve questions, and he’s apparently going to post them one at a time so as not to overwhelm his readers with the answers.

Here’s a link to the first question. I’ll continue linking to them as he publishes them. And if you’d like to answer these questions on your own blog or journal, I’m sure asking Mark nicely if you can use his questions will get you a “yes.”

Saturday, getting ready to write (or not)

I could do ten posts right now, I have so much going on in my head. Hopefully, I can remember them during the coming week for those times that I stare at the monitor with a duh look.

I have a new crush. Sometimes links to other blogs show up in my sidebar because I get these crushes, but they’re not ordinary crushes. I get crushes on people’s dogs (and occasionally, their cats). However, Jeffrey Ricker‘s name has been on the list for a while because he’s Jeffrey Ricker and I like him, then because he’s a writer (and a contributor to MOONLIGHT AND ROSES), and then because of his dog Dakota.

Recently, the Ricker household got a new addition which is when I got my new crush. I want to scoop her up and give her a million kisses. Jeffrey says Anya and Dakota are getting along fine, although so far, the cats are reserving judgment and can’t be enticed by her to play chase. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before she wins them over.

For those of you who didn’t get Paws and Reflect: Exploring the Bond Between Gay Men and Their Dogs when it came out last November, you can pre-order the paperback now from amazon.com or your favorite bookseller and read essays, including Jeffrey’s, about the many gifts dogs bring to our lives.

A piece of my heart

Like a lot of people, I grew up a little intimidated by poetry. I read it, and had it read to me. When I went to college, I studied a lot of it in my survey courses. But once I got into my junior and senior years, I fled poetry for my real love, novels. Most particularly, American novels. And ultimately, modern American novels. I took far more American lit courses than I should have, sneaking under my advisors’ radar to use all my electives on them.

When I started my Masters program, I knew I had two weaknesses: British Lit and poetry. Since I’d be teaching poetry as a TA, I decided to take the plunge. I immersed myself in the poetry of one fantastic British writer after another, and I had superb teachers to keep me from drowning.

I discovered that poetry wasn’t really an intimidating mystery at all. It was, instead, the most beautifully economic form of language. (I have never been much good at economizing with words; have you noticed?) I suppose if there’s a down side to the respect I have for poetry, it’s that I’ve been exposed to too much of it that’s flawless. Therefore, I have little patience with my own efforts at writing it, and usually with anyone else’s.

When I first got online, aspiring writers often wanted to send their poems for me to criticize, and I would usually beg them not to. I can teach and edit like nobody’s business, but having done that for a living, I didn’t really want to do it in my spare time for free. Especially when I was using that spare time for my own writing.

Late one night, I was in THAT chat room when I spied a screen name that used the initials and a book title belonging to a famous British author. Of course I had to check it out, so I opened his profile. Then I got confused. His name…his boyfriend’s name…his city…his occupation… They were all the same as Tim’s. Even without the different birthday, however, I was sure it wasn’t Tim under another screen name. After only two months of reading Tim’s online chat, IMs, and e-mails, I knew his writing well. This person didn’t have the same voice or style.

I was intrigued by their other similarities though, so I honed in on the newcomer. It wasn’t long before we were having a lively discussion, though I have no memory about what. At some point, I mentioned that I wanted a photo so I’d have a face to go with the conversation, but he said he didn’t have one scanned. When it was time for me to sign off, I said goodnight to him, unsure whether I’d ever see him online again.

The next morning, I had an e-mail from him. I don’t have a photo, he wrote, but maybe this will do. I groaned a little when I saw that he’d sent me a poem. I didn’t want my good opinion to be colored by bad poetry.

Then I read it.

And read it again.

And then I had tears in my eyes because it was such a finely crafted, moving poem. It was the real thing.

I’ve been reading his poems for ten years. And his fiction. I’m even the caretaker of all his private journals. It doesn’t disturb me that over the past couple of years he’s taken a breather from consistently writing. Everything he sees and experiences goes into the deep pool where this Pisces swims, and if it’s meant to be transformed into language, it’ll happen when it’s time.

I fell hard for his poems. I fell hard for him. I met him at a time when I’d had to make my world small, and he helped me navigate my way back into a larger life. One of the kindest things he ever said, very early on, was after I expressed my anxiety that circumstances had left me emotionally needy. As a normally self-sufficient person, I didn’t like the feeling, and I feared it would drive people away. “I’m not afraid of needy,” he said. And he never has been.

We have cried together. Laughed together. Written together. We have shared ghost stories and love stories and family stories. We have argued. We have on occasion even hurt each other. I think I can make him mad. I know he can make me mad. But for a decade, this man who is young enough to be my son has been one of my greatest teachers in the courage of the human heart.

Thank you for not ever becoming permanently invisible, Timmy. I’m so glad you wrote your way into my life ten years ago this month. I will love you always.


Timmy and Becky on Striker’s Mountain, 1999

Thinking about creativity

Does anyone remember as a kid collecting money at Halloween to give to UNICEF? Do kids still do that: find ways to raise money and awareness of the plight of children all over the world?

The United Nations Children Fund began in 1946 as a way to help children impacted by World War II, and over the decades, it’s grown into an organization that provides humanitarian relief that helps children globally, focusing on child survival and development; basic education and gender equality (including girls’ education); child protection from violence, exploitation, and abuse; HIV/AIDS and children; and policy advocacy and partnerships for children’s rights.

Here’s how my journey to thinking about UNICEF began.

thanks for reading on

I’ve been here before…or not…

One of the nice things (for me!) of keeping this LiveJournal is that I can go back and see what I’ve said about a novel as I’ve/we’ve worked on it, and what I’ve said about all the novels as each completed work was sent to the editor, was returned as galleys, and then was released and the first reviews and e-mails began coming in. This helps me remember that the various thrills and terrors are normal and they, too, shall pass.

For WHEN YOU DON’T SEE ME in particular, it’s lovely to go back and remember how immersed I was in things (like the Pet Shop Boys) and how I grew to understand and love a narrator that I initially had my doubts about co-creating. It’s not so lovely to remember how the research for this novel hurt, really hurt, but at least I can know that I’m not in that place anymore, which is a relief.

In this calm period before the novel goes out to the world, whereupon we’ll receive some praise for things we never expected people to notice, and some criticism for things that make me wish people had to say it to my face, I feel very fortunate that I’ve read one positive pre-publication review and that some extremely special readers have offered comments that helped me believe that even though, once again, we may lose a reader or two because “this is not like the other Beck books” (i.e., please write boy-meets-boy-chases-boy-wins-boy over and over), most of the people who’ve been on this journey with us will be glad to be on the road again… And hopefully, we’ll meet some new travelers along the way.

Thank you, Tim and Jim, for that magic thing you do. No birth is without pain, but this is one novel that was served by having its creators take anything that hurt and translate it into a story. I’m so proud to know we did this together.

Thank you special readers Tom, Lindsey, Rhonda, and the California crew for your time and your insights and for not telling anyone the secrets. Once the book is out, we won’t be able to control those inevitable spoiler people, but y’all have been magnificent with your discretion.

And finally, a most fervent thank you to Timmy. How odd it is to think that you weren’t part of writing this novel, since you were parent to these characters, too, when they were conceived and born and took their first steps into the world and began to grow up. People could learn a lot from you about how sometimes the best thing a parent can do is step away for a while. Thank you for being able, when you came back, to look at our offspring with a loving eye: liberal with your approval for how it turned out, never vocalizing what you might have done differently. For so many reasons which only the four of us can understand, when I wrote, I was very often writing with you as the silent reader sitting next to me. So, in fact, you are still very much a part of WHEN YOU DON’T SEE ME and the chain is still unbroken.

It’s okay to suspend belief in “I’m 35” for a few moments

When I was in graduate school, I was friends with a couple of other graduate students who’d been raised in the same hellfire and brimstone fundamentalist religion that I was. At that point in our lives, one of us was becoming Episcopalian, one was becoming Catholic, and one was becoming agnostic. All of us in our turbulent twenties, we’d come together at a point when a lot of those things we were taught to believe in as little Southern girls had proved not to be all they were promised–religion, politics, higher education, careers, marriage, family.

So we were a little abashed to find out that we were all secretly yearning to stay awake through a hot night in July to watch a love story on our TV screens. Once we cleansed our liberated souls with some good old-fashioned confessin’ to each other, we threw feminism and cynicism to the wind and gathered in comfortable clothes with lots of snacks to see a virgin bride wed her prince.

The bride wasn’t much younger than us, and we wanted so much for her to escape the harsh realities that we’d endured as she grew into her twenties. It was not to be, of course, but somehow, as she got older, either despite or because of public scandals and her own flawed nature, she became even more interesting, more beautiful, than she had been as a shy young bride.

I was online, in my old chatroom, late on an August night in 1997, when someone said, “Isn’t it terrible about Princess Diana?” When I asked what he was talking about, he said, “She’s dead.” I thought it was a joke in really poor taste, but after other people confirmed it, I went to the TV and CNN as I’ve done so many times when I get awful news. I was transfixed by the television over the following days, until I again stayed up all night, this time alone, to watch the last flower-strewn ride of a princess.

During those few days, I do remember leaving the house one night. My friend James called and told Tom and me to go to the intersection of two streets, Montrose and Westheimer, which, as I told Debbi in comments to another post, has long been considered the center point of gay Houston.

this is what I saw there