Andrew Q. Gordon

Author: Andrew

  • Something New

    A wise someone suggested I do a bit more posting to let readers get to know me a bit better. The same wise person also pointed out why my new story wasn’t going to get very far as I started it.  Given that he was totally right about the story, I suspect I ought to give him credit for being wise and try my hand at doing more posting.  So I’ll strive to it more often.

    Our daughter started daycare today – I’m not sure who that was more traumatic for, her or us. If I say so myself, she looked adorable in her school outfit.  From the comments we got from the staff, I think we might want to reconsider using cute outfits and go with boring basic clothes she can get all messy.  We’re learning, slowly.

    Writing wise, I’m sort of in a quandary; too many ideas/projects to work on and not enough time. Some, the urge to get out is greater than others, but all have their own issues.

    Chosen of Honorus: is Due out early next year, though I may want to change the name.  It might be too ‘weird’ to attract readers. The sequel – and this is going to a series of at least 4 books, maybe as many as 7 – is written in a very very rough form.  I find rewriting to be almost as hard as writing from scratch.  The problem is, sometimes it is better to blow it up than try to clean it up.  The concept/idea is still good, but the writing isn’t nearly good enough.  I find it hard because I’m constantly fighting the battle of clean up vs blow up.  Often that makes things long and tedious.

    Archangel: About a year ago, I wrote a short story for Gay Authors called Archangel. I said at the time I wanted to work on it and suddenly I have a muse – you know who you are – who has inspired me to work on this.  Since the short story is out there, I won’t be giving away too much of the basic plot.  The more detailed plot isn’t available so I won’t give that up. After four chapters, I need to go back and redo most of them. The plot is good—at least I think so—but the opening chapters need a bit more umph.  So I’m working on Chapter 1 again.

    AGG: This is the code name for a new book Anyta and I are working on. We are about 5 chapters into it, but I think there is something missing from the plot/story so we put this on the back burner for the time to see if we can’t figure out how to make it better.

    Second Shot Sequel:  I started this, but haven’t really gotten very far. I have the basic story out lined, but I trying to get to more projects before getting back to this.  It might actually be the easiest to write if I got to it, I don’t know.  But I’m up and down on this. I love the universe of characters, but I also want to create new ones.

    Dlgen: I’ve done almost nothing with this, but I see this as  5 book story based on the characters of A Cold Rain something else I wrote for the GA Anthologies.  That one would be a major project too. Not sure I can do that, Archangel and Chosen without going crazy.

    Okay that’s it for now.

  • Sex, No Sex, Somewhere In Between.

    Yesterday’s blog resulted in some good advice on how important sex scenes are to the story.  But I’m hoping for a few more opinions before I out this to rest.

    Maybe my opinion would help people to way in. For me, I think it’s best to get the characters excited and aroused, but not – as one person said – give a blow by blow, lick by lick accounting of their bedroom gymnastics.  I prefer to get them to the point of sex, then fade out.

    I have several reasons for preferring this approach. The first is I don’t anyone who reads my books to think that is how I prefer to have sex. I know it’s stupid, but when I read a sex scene – especially one between two men written by a gay male – I begin to wonder if that scene is drawn on a prior experience. If not, it clearly is something the writer imagined.  So in a way, it’s revealing my own imagination for sex and I almost feel that is too close to home to what happens with me and the husband and I don’t want folks ‘wondering’ if that’s what we do.  Stupid I know, but still.

    Another reason is that by NOT giving out the details, the reader can imagine the characters doing whatever they want the characters to do. Which in a way allows for something of an interactive experience. If I define their sexual activities, the character’s sex lives are limited to my vision. If I get the reader but so far then leave the details to their imagination, they can-and maybe do-do just about anything and everything anyone can think of. Some would say that’s lazy, but I don’t think that’s the case. I can write sex scenes, but there needs to be a reason for it and then, to be honest, an 8-10 page ‘lick by lick’ account is way too much.

    Last I don’t think everyone likes sex scenes, but no one can be turned off by getting the MCs to the point where the lights go out and leaving the intimate details to the mind of the reader. But the flip side to this, is good sex writers sell a LOT of erotica books. So if the goal is to make lots of money – and it’s not for me – then I ought to not only write sex scenes, but write losts of them and brand the stories Erotica.

    So with that in mind, those who have not responded already and have an opinion, fire away. Those who have already, I think I know your opinions, but feel free to expound if you feel so moved.

     

     

     

     

    So the real questions are 1) how important are sex scenes to a non-erotica story? If you think it’s needed, how explicit? 3) Some examples of stories that had it right, needed more, had too much.

     

  • New Story – looking for input

    I while back I wrote a short story for the Gay Author’s Summer 2011 Anthology.  The title was Archangel. The short story can be found here:

    Archangel

    I’ve always wanted to go back and create a bigger, fuller story using this as template.  There is a lot to the story arch I did not delve into with the short story and I won’t give that out in public – folks are going to have to buy the book to find out. 😛  But if you’ve read the story or will read it and care to help out, here are a some questions I have that I’d like to hear from readers and/or other authors. You can email any comments or post them here if you like.  [email protected]

    1) Sex – I’ve read quite a few m/m stories lately as a means to see what’s out there and what’s selling.  I know that erotica is very popular and it sells better than drama/romance.  I’m not an erotica writer, sorry.  But that said, I’ve read romance stories that are replete with long detailed sex scenes.  I find myself skimming them, if not just turning pages until they ends.  Many of these scenes last page after page.  Some are ‘flashbacks’ to prior relationships and they are still pages long.  I personally find these very boring. I’m rarely turned on and even rarer do I feel a detailed sex scene added to the story.

    What about others readers?  Do you find it useful, desirable, necessary spice for the survival of the story?

    2) If you read the story, is the description of the characters – Nick: whom everyone thinks is really nice, but is just an average guy; and Alex: the beautiful guy that everyone swoons over because he’s handsome and rich – too over done?  There is a real reason for the Alex character being ‘devilishly’ handsome and stinking rich – he’s an archangel who’s centuries old.  [not giving anything away since the short story is there for the reading.]  Would it be better for the Nick character to be better looking than he believes, but maybe not in the same class as his best friend and Alex? Or just leave it as it is?

    3) Is one long story better than several shorter books?  i.e. just fleshing out the story arch from the original short story could come close to filling a 100K word novel.  The full story could be 3 books long, or I could just make it 1 or 2 books. Any thoughts?

    Okay, we’ll see if anyone has any useful suggestions.

    Thanks

    Andy

  • (Un)Masked is out today!

    After several months of waiting, editing, reviewing, tweaking, rereading and the like. (Un)Masked is finally published. If you’re interested, here is where you can buy it. It’s available in print, or eBook in all the formats. Here’s the link again:

     

    http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=3151

     

    Thanks to everyone at Dreamspinner Press, they were really amazing to work with.

    Hope everyone who buys the book enjoys it. Anyta and I had fun writing it – cliche? perhaps, but it is still true. It will always be a great memory for me the time I spent working with her on this.

     

     

     

     

  • (Un)Masked to be released August 17, 2012!

    The big day is almost here. The day our first book gets published.  It might be a bit bigger deal for me than Anyta since she has ePublished a number of books herself so she’s already seen her work in ‘print’ and offered for sale. Me – first time.

    Here’s a link to the release notice:

    (Un)Masked Release Date

    That’s for the eBook, they are doing a paper release as well.

    To the millions  . . . . and millions [okay so I’m not the Rock, but it sounds good] of fans who are looking to buy the book – paper or eBook – would go to the publisher’s site to buy it, that would put a little more change in the author’s pocket, but Amazon or B&N or wherever you buy your books is just fine too.

  • Chosen Of Honorus is getting published

    Last week I signed the contract to have my second book – Chosen Of Honorus published.  Dreamspinner Press purchased it and we have a tentative date of early 2013.  Chosen is the first in a series – not sure how many books it will be, depends on the length of each but I envision at least four probably six or seven. Now that I know it is going to get published, I’m working on cleaning up book two so there isn’t too long of a break between books.

     

    More details to follow when they become available.

     

    Andy

  • Cover for (Un)Masked

    Another step closer to our book being published. Anyta commissioned this from a friend of hers, cover artist Caroline Wimmer. The publisher Dreamspinner Press has approved the cover so we can share it with the world.

  • Welcome to . . . me. An introduction of sorts.

    The first post should belong to me, so here goes.

    I’ve been meaning to start a site to promote my writing, but there never seems to be time; so I made some. Anyta Sunday and I co-wrote a story that is scheduled to be published in August/September by Dreamspinner Press, so it is high time I got started.

    Basically I started writing at the suggestion of my partner – we’d like to be husbands, but although Maryland passed a law allowing gay marriage, it needs to survive the referendum in the fall. It started with a fantasy novel that in no way resembles the form it is in now. That story, in a new, chopped up, heavily edited version is currently being posted chapter by chapter on the Gay Author’s website. They site has it in their premium content section, meaning you need to be a paying subscriber to read it. Hopefully it’s worth the subscription. I hope to see it published and have submitted it to Dreamspinner for their consideration. If not, I’ll ePublish it myself.

    But I digress. I started writing as a hobby. Then I took a writing class and my instructor suggested – strongly – that I join an on line bulletin board – she is rather old school – so I could get feed back on my writing. In response to her suggestion, I joined Gay Authors. I began posting something I was working on which became – Second Shot. It is available for free on Gay Authors, along with other stuff here.

    It was after I joined Gay Authors that I met Anyta and we became friends. We read stuff for each other then we co-wrote an entry for the sites 2011 novella contest and our entry Bettor To Lose won first place. Based on that we began to consider strongly writing to publish.

    And that leads me to this site. So once things get in print or ePrint, I’ll post links for any who are interested in buying them.

    Andy