Andrew Q. Gordon

Blog

  • One Person Can Make A Difference For Gay Rights.

    What prompted this post is a story about Chick-fil-A possibly ending it’s support of anti-gay marriage groups.  According to this story, Chick-fil-A has agreed to stop funding anti-gay—which means anti-gay marriage as well since those are mostly one and the same—at least that is what Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno, who has been fighting the construction of a Chick-fil-A in Chicago, said today.

    I hope he’s correct, the company didn’t formally agree with the Alderman’s announcement, but I’d say that after 10 months of fighting Chick-fil-A and all the success he’s had, he must feel pretty confident he won for him to now support the construction of the store.

    Not that it matters, but I don’t think Alderman Moreno is gay. That he has taken this stand is all the more remarkable given he’s a newly elected official.  Stands like his, that welcome the adversity that come with them, deserve to be acknowledged.  For what little it’s worth – Thank you Joe Moreno!

    In a similar story, what about Brendon Ayanbadejo?  He’s a straight pro-football player for the Baltimore Ravens who public spoke out in favor of gay marriage in Maryland. This article in the NY Times talks about where his life views came from.  For this man to do this to help people like my partner and I who don’t have the ‘bully pulpit’ that comes with celebrity status is astounding. If you read the articles you’ll see where he took a lot of crap, had people call him gay, ask him in the locker room when he’d be coming out as a gay, it would have been so easy for him to cave in and shut up, but he kept at it, even chiding President Obama for not supporting gay marriage.  Thank you Brendon Ayanbadejo!

    One person can make a difference.

  • Writing With A Baby

    In two very different areas of my life—writing and having a child—I got a late start. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer and even though I knew I was gay, I always thought I’d be a dad some day. Both dreams took decades to become a reality, each for different reasons.

    I started writing in college. My school allowed for independent study programs, but it require a bit of leg work. The student had to come up with the program, find an adviser, convince them you were serious and that your project had merit if you wanted credit for your dream class.  I managed to do this for a creative writing class.  I passed, got an “A” and then focused on law school.  I still have many of the ‘original’ stories, each on a yellow legal pads or in black and white note books. But as time and my career became more intense, writing took a back seat.  It was only after Mike and I were together a good number of years that he encouraged me to write.  Guess he knew more about me than I did.

    Having a child proved a bit more labor intensive than writing.  For writing all I needed was a good laptop and I was set.  Sadly, having a child required much, much more.  One of the first considerations, perhaps the first, is what method to use.  Adoption can be fairly inexpensive if you go the foster care adoption route. But we wanted a baby—which left two realistic paths; third-party adoptions or surrogacy.  I won’t go into the pros and cons of each, but the short story is that surrogacy had a more definitive time-table, you didn’t need to wait for someone to pick you to adopt their child and there was no thirty day grace period where the birth mom could change her mind and take her child back.  For us surrogacy was the way to go.  The next biggest hurdle was money—surrogacy is, in word, expensive.

    The last piece of the puzzle—before the surrogate and the other issues involved in the actual process—was location. Where would we live. At the time we started to get serious about a child, we lived in Virginia, the state that soon after we moved there, passed an anti-gay amendment and didn’t allow second party adoptions for same-sex couples. 😐   Fixing that problem required a move to DC or Maryland.  So we sold the house in VA, found a new house, moved in, fixed it up and kept saving.

    Fast forward to today, we have a daughter who is biologically one of ours.  For those who’ve followed me through the surrogacy process and her first year, I’ve referred to my daughter on-line as ‘lil q to protect her privacy.  [Q being the nickname I got on Gay Authors.]  Here’s a ‘lil q update.

    ‘lil q will be a year old in ten days.  Her arrival has certainly changed our lives in so many ways, most of them we expected.  But I’ll confess, I expected I’d have had more time to write than I find I have lately. Part of that is underestimating how tired an infant/toddler can make me. The other is just sheer stupidity on my part.  Why I thought I could just settle in and write after she went to sleep is beyond me.  As if all the things I used to do that I have to put off while she’s awake were going to magically get done.  Like I said, stupid me.

    But, I’m starting to find a bit more balance and a bit more time to write now that she is in daycare.  The trade-off is, I don’t see her as much.  It’s only been eight days, so I’m not sure if it will feel normal at some point. But for now, I miss seeing her here on my days off. Even with the nanny taking care of her, I still had more time with her when I was off work.

    Two days into daycare, she got a cold. Three days later, she had two ear infections. That caused us to miss our first swim class since we started in June.  The remarkable thing is she didn’t miss a beat.  I only suspected she had an ear infection because she started rubbing her ears. Clearly life is too good for her to be slowed down by an ear infection or two.

    Daycare started with her being less than happy when we left.  Now? It’s almost like – “Okay daddy, you can go now, I’m going to go play with the other kids or the toys here.  See you when you come get me at 5 pm.” But at least she’s always happy to see us when we come get her.

    Adjusting to life with her in daycare means I have to make better use of my time to see more of her. So this Sunday, when she stirred, I got her up, dressed her for the day knowing grandma was coming, and they we went out for a walk. One of the great things of living near a major university is walkability. We got in the stroller and off we went for daddy to get his coffee and then a stop at the deli for breakfast. ‘lil q generally is a good eater who will eat regular food.  After eggs, yogurt and fruit [which the staff at Jason’s Deli were very accommodating to make for me even though it wasn’t on the menu], daughter and daddy set off for the farmer’s market.  One thing I’ve learned is ‘lil q loves her walks in the stroller. She is a curiously little thing who loves to look around.

    When we got home we found out Grandma was feeling ill, so no visit.  Daddy/Daughter day continued with the mundane task of grocery shopping – which I had planned to do while grandma watched the baby.  This is how the afternoon ended.  My little angel.   🙂

  • Things I Learned . . . .

    When little kids get sick, they produce an infinite amount snot.

    I should not drive when I have my daughter in the car because I still have a potty mouth.

    A potty mouth is very hard to stop cold-turkey.

    Most people who drive are stupid – but I’m not ‘most people.’ 😉

    What looks like a little bit of pink medicine for a baby can leave a huge stain when spit out.

    It is never a good idea to take the first half of the day off on Friday.

    Migraines ruin even the most beautiful of days.

    Political reality is some bizarre dimension where only the candidates and their ‘surrogates’ live, but they seem to be allowed unlimited free passage to our world.

    Sports teams are never the same in real life as they are ‘on paper.’

    Being nice to people DOES pay you back over time.

    And when a baby/child smiles at you, things never seem quite so bad as they did a moment ago.

  • What A Difference A Year Makes

    In fifteen days my daughter turns 1 year old. A year ago, I couldn’t wait to meet her and hold her. Now I wonder where that year went. She’s all but walking, she’s animated and vocal, she’s happy and playful, in daycare and about to turn one.

    Some milestones this past year – some good, some sad:

    My parents celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

    My niece(s) graduated college.

    My first book was purchased by a publisher and is now out.

    My second book was purchased by the publisher for a release date in early 2013

    My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, had surgery, chemo, radiation and is now cancer free.

    We lost our dog, the first dog we got when Mike and I bought our first house.

    We learned we don’t like derechos – not that we knew what they were until we lived through one.

    We’ve watched her lay there, sleep through the night, sit up, roll around, stand up, get teeth, and start to show her personality. [We’re probably in trouble if what we see is a sign of things to come.]

    We’ve been stay at home dads for a time, had a nanny and are now beginning the daycare/pre-school experience.

    On her birthday, both sets of grandparents will be here to celebrate. The surrogate is coming with her aunt and cousin. It’s the first time the grandparents will meet the surrogate.

    It’s hard to imagine another year with this much happening. Like I said, what a difference a year makes.

  • Marriage Equality In Maryland – Vote Yes In November to Question 6!

    Yesterday I suggested that authors, like businesses, need to take a more measured approach when offering their opinions. A wise person who has been generous with his insight in the past, asked me, what good is the first amendment if we fail to exercise it by self censoring ourselves.  He further said that if something was near and dear to my heart before I began published a book, I ought to continue to speak out for it after the book came out. – Thank you Podga.

    That said I don’t know that I totally agree in that my online persona is not me in real life. In real life, using my true name, I can and do voice my opinions on things important to me – like the Gay Marriage fight in Maryland, where my partner and I are raising our 11 month old daughter.  But one thing that I came to realize, while taking a side on the gay marriage debate might not be the best thing to do for Dan Caty and Chik-fil-A, it will have zero effect if I do it.

    For those that don’t know, Maryland passed a bill in the spring to allow gay and lesbian couples to legally marry. In an odd quirk, the state recognizes gay marriages from other states, but won’t allow its citizens to marry in their own state. This came about when the Maryland Supreme Court refused to expand the definition of marriage to gay and lesbian couple, stating that ought to be something the legislator should do, but they found that state law required them to give full faith and credit to ALL out of state marriages.  So in effect, every gay couple in Maryland could go to DC, get married and Maryland would recognize it the same as if the ceremony had been done in Maryland. Practically, Maryland already allows gay marriage, you just can’t have the ceremony performed in Maryland. How such tortured logic can come from the ‘highest’ court in the state is baffling.

    The law that passed in the spring is, however, up for a referendum in Nov.  The wording is somewhat different than in past referendums in other states on the gay marriage issue.  In other referendums, the vote was to redefine marriage as only a man and a woman. Maryland’s referendum is much simpler. Do you want the gay marriage bill to remain a law – yes or no.  A straight up referendum on the law enacted.

    Some say this will help the law remain in effect because past battles a yes vote meant you were in favor of restricting marriage.  I think that’s wishful thinking. If you’re counting on  people not reading the question or being too stupid to understand it to win, that doesn’t say much about the strength of your position.  Rather I think people are able to figure out – yes, means keep the law – no, means overturn it.  Simple right?

    Having cleared up all lingering confusion, if you’re reading this and you live in Maryland – VOTE YES ON QUESTION 6.

    If you have family or friends in Maryland and you can exert any influence over said friend or relative, urge, cajole, shame, whatever it takes, to get them to VOTE YES ON QUESTION 6.

    The vote is close, but current polls suggest the referendum will pass and the law will remain. I would dearly love for Maryland to become the first state to uphold the gay marriage law in a statewide referendum. Let’s make it happen!

  • Writing In The Age Of Amazon And ePublishing . . . and a couple shameless plugs.

    Things have changed a bit for me since my book got published. For one thing, I need to be more careful of what I say on line. Take Dan Caty, President of Chik-fil-A whose anti-gay statements earned him a boycott by my family. Had Mr. Caty kept his views to himself, he would still be the same anti-gay marriage person he is, but he wouldn’t be pillared by so many LGBT people and their supporters.  Lessons learned:  1) What people don’t know they can’t hold against you; and 2) if you’re selling something, be as Switzerland like as you can in your on-line life. Thank you Dan Caty.

    What brought this up were two distinct events.  The first is a review – or rather a rating – I received on Goodreads for Second Shot. For those that have followed my writing, you know that this was my first attempt at a novel and I posted it, without any real editing, on Gay Authors to get feedback on how to improve.  Somehow it got listed on Goodreads and this week someone gave it 1 star.  Clearly this person didn’t like it, which is fine. I wish they’d have told me why, but in the end it doesn’t matter.  And from what I could tell of this person from their history, they have given more than a few 1 stars as well as 5s, 4s, 3s, & 2s.  It was not someone who joined up just to trash me.  So, while it’s a bit of a downer, it’s also a valid reflection of what a reader thought of the story. As the old adage goes, you can’t please everyone – Or can you. . . ?

    The second reason event that got me thinking about the whole on line rating/review system is that I read an article about a guy who made $28,000 a month writing fake book reviews for author’s on Amazon.  Here’s the story. The jist is, for a fee, he’d see that your book twenty or more 5 stars. That way, however good or bad the book, it would appear to be fabulous and hopefully attract a bevy of new-i.e. real, booking buying- readers.  I can say that I’ve read a number of books lately that have good ratings and reviews and been less than thrilled by the content.  None lived up to the hype given.  So even if they weren’t the product of a paid fake reviewer, who’s to say they weren’t done by friends and family at the request of the author? 

    The point is, how good/useful/accurate is the ‘peer’ review model that seems to rule the internet? Somehow because it’s ‘real’ people not professional reviewers giving the feed back, it’s supposed to be far better and more accurate than the old NY Times book review system.  I’m questioning this because it is so easy to manipulate these ratings.  Don’t think your rating is high enough? Get some friends to create an account and jack you up, or do it yourself, or better yet, do both.  Don’t like someone? Do the same in reverse and trash whatever they’re selling.  A 1 star rating can drag down someone’s rating more easily than a 5 star can pump it up. Getting on someone’s bad side can certainly negatively impact your rating.  And since a high peer review is necessary for getting sold, be as close to Switzerland as you can in your on line life, because you’re going to get enough 1 stars even without pissing people off. 

     

    Okay shameless plugs for those who have made it this far:

     

    First as you know, (Un)masked is out and available for sale. What you might not know is that the Goodreads M/M group is holding a fund raiser for a LGBT Youth organization one of the Moderators works with.  Anyta and I made a pledge to the M/M Romance Group Gives Back Charity Event tied to book sales of (Un)Masked. Basically for every book sold we’ll make a donation. Here’s a link to the Charity Event post, our pledge is the last post on the first page of the topic.  So if you’ve been thinking about buying the book, buy it in September because you’ll be helping a good cause too. [Not just my daughter’s college fund. 😛 ]

     

    Second, my nephew, Nicholas A. White, wrote a book.  He’s all of 20 and studying to be an engineer at Clemson. It is not a gay romance story, but it’s worth reading.  The book is called Forever In Carolina it’s available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble. If you need more of a reason to buy the book than to help out a first time author, he’s donating 20% of all profits from the book to Cancer Research.  Since it was self-published, he has a bit of upfront money to recoup, so help him out and buy the book if you can.

     

    Last, if you read this – the few of you that do – a comment now and then would be great. I’m weird like that, I like to hear from folks reading.  Even if it’s to say this.

     

    Thanks

     

  • 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.