A Thousand Things or More

Okay–I know.  I feel like a full time self-pimping ho-bag these days–and I’m not sure how that happened.  The thing is, everything came out at once.  

First there was Country Mouse on April 23rd, then there was Gambling Men: The Novel on May 7th, and now, there’s The Talker Collection in Paperback  and Talker in French.

Mary Calmes and I are going to do a chat to celebrate some of this– we’ll be on Dreamspinner Press’s Facebook page on Saturday, May 12th, 1 p.m. pst (4 p.m. est) to chat about our new releases.  Mary’s book Acrobat (which just happens to be the title of one of my favorite U2 songs) is doing really well on Amazon.com and she deserves a whole lot of celebrating herself.  I can’t wait to chat with people about my guys.  (Oh yeah– btw?  Mine and Mary’s books are going to be part of  DSP’s anniversary sale starting Sunday, May 13th… Happy Mother’s Day to US!) 

But, uhm, other than that?  I don’t know what else to say!

The promo for Country Mouse was sort of intense– the publisher scheduled a blog tour, and it worked because the title sold, but.. oh geez.  Blargh.  Between that and the trip out of town, I was SO not ready to pimp Gambling Men: The Novel, which is a real shame.  It came out and people thought, “Oh, it’s just a retread of the original stories.”  Except it wasn’t– it was AN ENTIRE NOVEL–and the thing was, Jace, who was my original alpha male, didn’t get the fawning and adulation that he so richly deserved.  (Not that Jace particularly gives a good goddamn, but I sort of wrote that book for the people who loved him in the first place, and I wanted him to get his dues for them, which is sad.)  

And now The Talker Collection is coming out tomorrow (and Talker in French is already out, and it will be out in Italian by the end of the month) and I don’t know if I can explain how happy this makes me.  

I wrote these books for all of the broke college kids out there, for all of the couples living in shitty apartments working for a better day, and for all the people who started out with a bad hand and reshaped themselves to a better life.  The last novella in the series was often accused of just being an epilogue–and in a way, the people who said that hit it right on the head.  I wanted my boys to have a hard-earned happy ever after, and as they progress through the three novellas, they do.  To have their story out in paperback makes them more real somehow.  To have their story going out in Spanish, German, French, and Italian makes them universal.  I’m offering a signed copy of this one at Stumbling Over Chaos and I’m really going to celebrate when my copies arrive at my door.  My boys.  My boys.  Talker’s Redemption won an award for best young adult m/m book, and if you know my story, you know how proud that makes me.  These guys are all about hope and faith.  They’re all about Mate and me (without the scary, painful thing that happens in the first book or the second) and all about not knowing your own worth until you try to make someone else know theirs.  I love my guys.  I love that they have their own complete ISBN and I love that someone in France or Germany may be reading their story and thinking that Americans might have some redeeming qualities after all.  I love that Talker reinvents himself and Brian loves the person he becomes, and I love that Brian is so completely un-self-aware that not only can he not figure out why girls are falling into his bed, but he can’t figure out why he’s more interested in what his roommate is doing than the girls in his bed!  (It should have been a clue.  It should have.  He’s not quick, our Brian, but he makes up for it with soul.)

So, Talker.  It started out as a whim, a brief novella, something I was just going to kick out to exorcise this thing going on in my head, this image which an anonymous student put up on someone’s board of a kid who was half normal and average and preppy and half punk rocker.  The fact that the last novella features a climactic piece of art with the same theme seems circular somehow, and perfect, and necessary.  The fact that these guys are speaking to other people in different languages?  God–it almost makes me weepy.  They’re all about hope, and doesn’t this world need more hope?  They’re all about strength and doing the right thing even if it’s the hard thing, and all about making your way in the world with what you can earn and not what you’ve been given.  All the stupid politicians in this world asking for handouts, and they fail to see that guys like Tate and Brian, who don’t ask for anything but each other, aren’t going to want to give them shit–and they’re the guys the politicians should be working for in the first place.

They’re tough and vulnerable and surprisingly funny and kind and gentle and strong and flawed–so flawed–and perfect.

And real.  

Well– there you go.  Seems I figured out what to say after all.  

Like I said, I can’t wait to hold this one in my hands.