With so many things happening in the world, I often back away from promoting my own books and focus on issues that deal with things either publishing related or LGBT related. I also don't like to promote too much because it always feels so awkward. Actually, it feels creepy and declasse.
So I often do the exact opposite and don't focus much at all on book promotion. Which isn't fair to readers either. To rectify this, one of my New Year's resolutions will be to post unpublished excerpts from published works that I think might be of interest. And, offer an explanation as to why I wrote the book and what the general theme behind the book is. I find it much easier to do this after the book's been pubbed and sold what I'd hoped it would sell at the time. That distance for me is important because I can talk about the book more candidly.
Here's one from "Ricky's Business." This book was a parody of the old film, "Risky Business," with Tom Cruise. I'd like to emphasize the word parody this time. What makes it a parody is that it's highly erotic with detailed sex scenes, and the characters are gay. And while it does NOT go scene by scene from the film, and I did deviate from most of the storyline in the film because it didn't work for the book, I've always been up front about it and never kept it a secret that I've done this with gay fiction.
If I had been trying to hide it I wouldn't have titled the book "Ricky's Business." That wouldn't make sense. But more important, I would never parody a *gay* film...unless I were to write a book with straight characters. I would NOT try to re-tell the "Brokeback Mountain" story because that wouldn't work. My focus with these het mainstream romance films is to give gay readers something they didn't get for so long. And, to try to do it with a sense of humor. Not all sex scenes have to be taken seriously, especially with books designed purely for escapism.
In any event, here's the excerpt. It's g-rated because this blog is g-rated. But the book itself has more than a few explicit gay sex scenes. If I had to describe the book in a sentence, I would focus on the fact that it's a gay coming of age story with a character who finally discovers what he truly loves in life: men and money.
Ricky looked into his eyes. “I didn’t mean anything. I wasn’t judging.” He was telling the truth, he didn’t understand Chad ’s sudden change in tone.
“We’re standing next to your father’s expensive boat, at your father’s expensive yacht club, and your father’s expensive foreign car is parked over there. It’s easy for you to judge me. You have it all.” Then he turned his back on Ricky and walked toward the club house.
Ricky let out an exasperated sigh. He stood there, naked, with his arms spread wide, and asked, “What did I do?”
“C’mon, Chad ,” Ricky said. “I didn’t mean anything. Don’t get mad.”
When he realized Chad was not going to turn around, he slapped his forehead and stomped on the grass. Then, without thinking, he bent down to get his jeans and his naked ass bumped into the rear fender of the Porsche. He heard crunching twigs; his head went up, his eyes widened. And when he turned and saw that his father’s Porsche was slowly moving forward toward the dock, he dropped his pants and ran to the driver’s side.
Only the door was locked and the keys were still in his pants pocket. So he ran to the back of the car and fumbled with his jeans. The faster his fingers moved the harder it seemed to grasp the keys. Did his hands grow or did his pockets shrink? He heard the keys jingling around, but he’d forgotten which pocket he’d put them in and had to check them all. Of course they were in the last pocket he searched, and by that time the car had slowly crept up to the dock and was heading toward the lake.
On the way down, he ran so fast he tripped over a rock and the keys went airborne and landed in a row of azalea bushes that had a fresh fertilizer/horse-farm smell, as if they’d been recently mulched. He knew there wasn’t enough time to find them in the dark, so he ran down to the dock in his bare feet, stepped in front of the Porsche stark naked, and tried to stop the car with his hands. The car was in the middle of the dock and it was moving faster.
He pressed hard on the hood and started shouting. “No! Someone help! This can’t be happening!” His parents had only gone away on a short trip. And in the time they’d been gone he’d lost his mother’s putto, become tangled with a male prostitute, been threatened by a pimp, gone on a high speed chase through mid-town Manhattan, and now he was about to sink his father’s car in the lake. “Fuck no.”
He pushed the front of the car until his hands ached. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get a good enough stance. His bare feet kept sliding on the rough dock, the car continued to inch forward. And as it reached the end of the dock, he jumped up on the hood and went down on his back to avoid being run over.
When the car reached the edge, with less than an inch to spare, it stopped moving. Ricky remained sprawled across the hood dead still, on his back, with his arms and legs spread wide, exposing his entire body. Everything around him turned silent. His heart pounded in his ears; his stomach felt as if it was in his throat. He looked up at the sky and exhaled with relief. Then he gazed down at the water with his mouth open wide. There was hope; this wasn’t so bad. All he had to do was carefully get up and find the keys in the bushes. It was all good and he still had time to save the car from ruin.
But as Ricky lifted his shoulders and moved his right leg, he heard a crunch from below the dock. Then he heard two or three splits and one large crack. The end of the dock collapsed, there was a sudden jerk and Ricky’s legs went up. He screamed for help as loud as he could. But it was too late for anyone to save him. The Porsche rolled forward and slipped into the lake with a quiet splash, almost as if it had crawled into the water in slow motion. As it sank to the bottom of the lake nose first, Ricky slid off the hood, tumbled to his side, and landed face first in the ice cold water.
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