Tag: saints and sinners

The post about hot air

A few weeks ago, New Orleans was almost late-summer sultry when Tim and I were there. According to Greg, after Saints & Sinners, the temperature suddenly became more bearable. The past few days in NYC, people kept assuring me that usually the heat and humidity aren’t quite that intense until later in the summer. Is it that every place just gets hotter when Tim appears? Or do I talk too freaking much? Hmmmm…

However, that being said? Just for the sheer pleasure of being in one of my favorite places on the planet, I’ll deal with whatever weather NYC offers. I may whine about the walking and the heat, but there is NO PLACE anywhere like Manhattan. It’s a city that would eat me alive if I tried to live in it, but I sure love visiting there.

So, y’all ready for some photos?

then click here

Featured S&S Author No. 2

Last year, one of my favorite panels at Saints & Sinners was a discussion of whether HIV/AIDS is still part of the story. There was a bit of a crowd at that one, with some good questions, and the speakers were excellent.

This year, though the crowd was a little smaller and quieter, the speakers at HIV/AIDS Awareness: A Novel Approach were equally excellent. As long as S&S hosts a panel on writing about HIV and AIDS, I’ll be in the audience, because this is my particular writing challenge that I grapple with. Though I think there is mention of AIDS/HIV in every novel I’ve written/co-written, and certainly there are references to safer sex, those moments in fiction barely scratch the surface of my real-life experiences.
read more if you wish

Featured S&S Author No. 1

I love this photo that I took:

of author William J. Mann

One of the reasons that I, and so many others, mourn the demise of independent GLBT bookstores is because of experiences like the one I had when I was introduced to the writing of Bill Mann. I went into Houston’s Crossroads bookstore one day, where the biography Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines was prominently featured on a display table.

I’d never heard of William Haines (or, at that time, William J. Mann), so without Crossroads, I might not have found this story of a man who was the number-one leading box office star in America in 1930. The reason I–and maybe you–never heard of Haines is because he walked away from a career in show business rather than pretend he wasn’t homosexual and living with his partner, Jimmie Shields. Considering that in 2007, the Hollywood closet still exists, with its doors tightly shut, Haines’s story is an amazing one of courage and honesty.

That book led me to the novels and other work of Bill Mann, including some of these:

You can read descriptions of all the books on Mann’s web site.

I was fortunate enough to attend his master class at Saints and Sinners, in which he talked about the unique challenges facing those who want to write biographies and memoirs. I also got him to sign my brand new copy of his latest novel:

Having met the men in this novel in The Men From the Boys, and caught up with them again in Where the Boys Are (the cover of which remains one of my all-time favorites ever), I was eager to see how they’re doing in Men Who Love Men. It’s good to know they’re still around, grappling with love, romance, friendship, and commitment as they settle into their mid-thirties and forties. Now that I know Mann has done right by them, I can get back to work on my own novels.