Hey 2017!! I’m over here.

So the New Year has arrived with a shy kiss and a gentle caress. It’s the start of something fresh, new beginnings that let us plan and decide how our future may look. I for one have a lot planned this year and I mean to make the most of it. Top of my list though (no, not a New Year’s Resolution, as I don’t believe in those, this is more my To Do list) is getting back into writing. You may not have known this, but the last year to eighteen months has been tough for me.  There’s been an insecure demon sitting on my shoulder who has led me down a dark path and made me doubt myself and my abilities to bring stories into the world.

And I still don’t know why. I simply lost my passion for my craft and that in itself triggered a huge backlash, a sense of failure which fed on my own insecurities. 2017 is my chance to get back that writing passion and try and immerse myself once again in words.

And boy, 2017 is looking like a great year for me.  So without further ado, let me tell you a bit about it.

Firstly, Sight Unseen comes out for release on January 26th. This book is the result of a partnership between me and my wonderful friend and collaborator, the amazing Nicholas Downs. In life, we are meant to meet people who come to mean something to us. I had no idea when I first interviewed Nicholas for Divine Magazine (at the bequest of the Divine CEO who thought Nicholas was hot and sexy and wanted to feature him) that it would form a lasting relationship that led to us to this point. I mean, you can see why he thought this, right? This is Nicholas. Sigh. The man looks so good in a suit. And a cowboy hat. And a plaid shirt…

Bottom line, we had respect for each others’ talents – me for writing and Nicholas for acting – and decided we’d create a medium to bring both of these to bear in that of a potential film creation.

Nicholas provided the story line in the screen play he’d already written, I developed it into a novel and together we’re writing the screen play to potentially bring it to the screen. It’s been an amazing journey for both of us, learning about each other’s industries and melding them together to where we are today. And not only are we doing this but -SQUEEE! I get to travel to LA in March next year to attend a conference with my publisher, Boroughs and do a series of book signings with Nicholas, even get to stay with him and his husband Nick for a couple of nights. I am so damned excited. And not only do I get to hob-nob with Nicholas and Nick, I get to meet my publisher for the first time.

Boroughs are quite simply, amazing. They have treated me with absolute respect, compassion on the bad days, and LOVE. Yes, it’s tough to say this about someone you’ve never met but the CEO, Michelle Klayman, has been a rock for me. Not only is she a fantastic editor, making my stories flow better and offering advice and support, but she’s also there when I need to vent or talk to someone. She’s like a big sister, only tougher. Smarter lol. Boroughs’ faith in me when I have floundered myself and had doubts has been heartening and welcome. I am so looking forward to giving Michelle the hug she deserves when I arrive to stay with her at her home with her husband Miguel. Bless him, he even asked her whether he was expected to make me Bubble and Squeak! I told her an emphatic No, I’m in his country now so anything other English food is what I want. Mexican sounds good…

I’ll be at the California Dreamin’ Conference and at various other locations in Los Angeles with Nicholas and Michelle but more to follow on the itinerary once we get it all confirmed. And another SQUEE! I’m hoping to catch up with the supremely talented voice over artist and actor Jason Frazier ( we owe each other a drink at Chateau Marmont, it’s a long story…) and *sigh* hoping to finally meet the most awesome and fabulous of writers Cody Kennedy. This particular coming together of souls has been a long time coming.

I’ll be back from the US at the end of the March then jetting off again to Cape Town, RSA to visit family at the beginning of May. The wonderful thing about this holiday is that my whole family is going over, my husband, my kids, and my daughter in law. It’s going to be wonderful seeing my mum and sister again and touching base with my brothers in law.

I’m signing at the fabulous event in Birmingham in July, the ShiMMer Author Event, which promise to be a great day out seeing old friends and readers. If you haven’t already made a plan to attend this, you should. It’s going to be awesome.

In August I’m at Brighton Pride with friends and in September, my best pal and author friend John Trevillian and I are off to Dublin for a creative few days, writing, gaining inspiration and drinking wine no doubt.

Oh and did I mention I’m also a trustee for the Being Me Campaign which I’m hoping will see a busy and fruitful year, as well as taking back my old position as Editorial Manager for Divine Magazine, because I really missed this. This particular role has bought with it many opportunities, not least of which was meeting Nicholas.

Heh. Luckily I have a very understanding boss at the day job who simply rolls his eyes and says ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, Sue. You do what you need to do.’ I’m blessed to be where I am with such lovely people who really care about my ‘other life’ and encourage me. Eunisure, you rock !!

So busy, busy, busy…oops, sorry in all the excitement I forget to tell you about the writing plans. *Facepalms* In between all this I’m co-writing a screenplay, have to finish writing Living on Air, (my ‘circus’ book) and possibly carry on writing the ninth Men of London book as well, Survival Game which is Kyle and Eric’s story from Hard Climate. I have so many other books planned, and some truly exciting ideas and I need to get cracking if I want to bring them all to life. I need lots of coffee and mince pies and a healthy dose of ‘slap me silly when I lose focus’.

So that’s me for this year and no doubt there’ll be a lot more happening and I’ll let you know as it does.  To those people who helped and encouraged me over the past years and no doubt will continue to do so because that’s the kind of people they are-  Joanne Swinney, Val Degeorge, Kirsty Bicknell, JP Bilbao, Rita R, Janice Birnie, Petra Andrea, Karen Jones, Anders Rodskar, Isa Jones, Ann Alaskan and myriad of others (forgive me if I haven’t mentioned you specifically but you are legion lol)  who kept me sane and also indulged my girlish passion for Benedict Cumberbatch and Adam Lambert – thank you. You are all the spokes in my wheel without which, there would be no turning and moving forward.

To the bloggers who’ve ever allowed me space on their blogs to promote or share something, you are truly the other wheels of this industry that keep it turning. And to my fellow authors who give so much of themselves in many ways without expecting anything in return- you have my eternal gratitude and appreciation.

May 2017 be everything you want, need and deserve and if I can help you in any way to reach your own goals and dreams, all you have to do is shine this bat signal and I’ll be there.

SYNERGY IS BETTER THAN YOUR WAY OR MY WAY. IT’S OUR WAY.

Stephen Covey

 

True love and Hummingbirds

I came across a gentleman called Ted Hayes recently. We are both friends of Kindle Alexander and Ted mentioned he had read Stripped Bare and enjoyed it and was about to read Worth Keeping. Ted discovered M/M Romance novels shortly after the death of his long time partner Jack. The picture below is Ted and Jack- Ted is on the left.

We talked and I found out that Ted has a remarkable story to tell, a really beautiful tale of love between two truly deserving men which I believed needed to be shared. There are some heartfelt wishes expressed in Ted’s missive at the end, which perhaps everyone in the world could sit up and take notice of. If they did, no doubt the world would be a much better place.  Ted tells me that Charlie Cochrane, Jake Wells and Ilene Cutler have been incredibly supportive about Ted telling his story because of its unique nature and tenderness so I thought I would do my bit for Ted too.

All about Ted and Jack

Ted is the oldest founding member of the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Centre in Kingston, NY, which is arguably the largest rural Centre of its kind in the US.  This organisation began in 2005 with an exploratory group of 28.  At the close of 2013 it had a membership of over 1,800. Ted was also part of the Harvesting a Lifetime Project where teens and seniors met and recorded interviews- keepsake interviews in the effort of preserving stories and learning from their “elders.”

Before Ted’s retirement in early 1995 he had a varied work life.  He was a chemist, minister, college professor and human resources counsellor.  Yet in all this time he says he did not come out until he was 47 years old—celibate all the years before. His Jack was his only partner.

Jack lived in New York and was coming back into the world after a 4-year period of mourning the death of his first partner, with whom he had 39 years of togetherness.  Ted was living nearly 2,000 miles away in Santa Fe and coming into the world after 52 years—47 in the closet—with the help of two long time friends.  Jack had placed an ad in the personals in a national gay newspaper, The Advocate, and when they still ran personals, and it caught Ted’s eye (along with 199 other men—Jack chose four with whom to carry on further correspondence) since Ted was planning on relocating to New York where there was a greater possibility of him finding a job calling for his training and skills.  They “courted” for about 6 months by letter and by telephone and with the exchange of photos.  They knew they loved each other before they met face to face.  I find this such a romantic story, it brings out the softy in me. Like a romance film…

Ted says that those 199 other men have no idea what they missed and still marvels that Jack chose him but in doing so, it meant that Ted was privileged to be his primary caregiver the last year of his life—the most intimate of their time together. Sadly, Jack passed away at the age of 95 on May 2nd 2009 leaving a void in Ted’s life that will remain with him.

Ted shared this lovely story with us – I agree with him. There are things far stranger in life that we can sometimes dream about in fiction.

When my Jack and I relocated to the Kingston, NY area in 1995, two of our friends owned and operated a delightful business—The Bird Watchers’ Country Store—in High Falls. Not too long afterward they got us hooked on hummingbirds and we always placed a feeder with nectar outside our screened-in back porch in early May. Our friends encouraged us to put it out the first week in May. We followed their advice even though we never saw hummingbirds at our feeder prior to the second week in May. Never!

On May 1, 2009, less than 24 hours before Jack died he “reminded” me to get the feeder ready. At first, I suggested that we wait until the following week because of our record with the little ones. But he insisted and, of course, I could not say no to him. So I set it up so he could know we were ready.

During the night Jack died. Early morning on May 2, 2009, as two friends and I sat out on that porch putting the finishing touches on his obituary, not one, not two, but three hummingbirds came to taste that year’s “crop” of nectar. The next year, and each one since, I prepared the feeder on the first of May. Since that day in 2009 no hummingbirds have appeared at the feeder prior to the second week in May. 

Try to convince me that the ones that visited that morning in 2009 weren’t there simply to pay their respects.

Ted was privileged to officiate at the wedding of the two long time friends—mentioned above—on December 14, of 2013, four months AFTER they had celebrated their 40th year together as a couple.   They knew and loved Jack since they had travelled together on a couple of occasions and they wanted to come to New York from Tennessee to be married in the room at the Centre which was named after Jack and Ted.

What a wonderful emotional moment that must have been.

This is something Ted wrote about Jack which I wanted to share with you as I think it encapsulates a tenderness and understanding that perhaps sometimes get lost in the fast pace of the world we know today.

The love of my life has died at the age of 95.  You probably didn’t know him.  Truly, truly that was your loss.  He was the kindest, gentlest, most loving person I have ever known.  All who knew him loved and respected him for who and what he was.   As for me, my life is a thing of greater beauty and purpose simply because he was a part of it.  In all our years together I was truly able to say every day, “I love him more today than I did yesterday.”

 He was one of that rapidly diminishing group of veterans of World War II.  He served in the U.S. Navy for four years. Fortunately, he never had to kill anyone.  He was a great lover of all life.  And, oh, how he loved animals. And he generously supported those organizations whose purpose was their protection.

 He supported the community in many ways both culturally and socially.  He supported organizations that were developed to advocate for the disenfranchised, the minority, and the poor.  He never was in trouble with the law and never shunned his responsibility as a tax-paying citizen nor did he ever shirk any other responsibility expected of the citizens of our country.  

 A truly model citizen you might say?  Indeed!  Yet, many who never met him nor ever came in contact with him – mostly people who identified as Christian — demanded that he be both condemned socially and be denied equality of citizenship.  Some even clamored for his death!  Why?  It was simply because he was gay.   

He was not raised in a home where he was exposed to any religion.  But I will tell you one thing: I saw in him a person much more like Jesus than many, many of those who sought to condemn him in the name of Jesus.

 We were life partners for decades and there is a great void in my life because he is gone.  Although known as a loving person, I never knew I could either love or be loved as deeply and completely as I experienced with him.  As we prepared for his death, we talked about many things.  One that broke his heart more than any other was the “Christian” attitude toward us.  He never hurt one of them — ever!.  So he could not understand why those “godly” people so despised us and demanded that we be relegated to no better than second-class status in the country of our births.  He never could grasp how our being married would have harmed another’s marriage in the slightest, especially since many of those who condemned us experienced three or more spouses during the time we were a loving, monogamous couple.  And so we were separated without our loving relationship ever having been recognized legally as a family.

 A democracy is defined as the “practice or principles of social equality.”  That he, who loved, was loyal to and served his country — allegedly a democracy — was not granted equality during his lifetime, is an indictment against that claim.  I will never forgive my country for that.

Ted was awarded the Founders Award from the LGBTQ Centre in 2012 where he’d worked so tirelessly to support others. This is the video from the event and thanks to Ilene Cutler for allowing me to share this here with you today.

http://vimeo.com/45855546

Thanks so much to Ted, Irene, Charlie and Jake for their contributions to this post and I hope that some of Jack and Ted’s words and views might give you an insight on the world from their perspective.

Gay rights in Russia and the Winter Olympics

Violent attacks on lesbian, gay, bi and trans people in Russia are sky-rocketing. And they’re being fuelled by a new law that make it a crime to be open about who you are and who you love.

In less than 100 days, all eyes will be on Russia for their Winter Olympics. But behind the excitement and sporting drama will be thousands of people hiding and living in fear.

But what if instead of facing the handful of people in Russia brave enough to stand up to terrifying violence and state power, the Russian government faced a movement of millions around the world?

The Olympic games are our best chance to end to Russia’s outrageous anti-gay laws – but to do it, it’s going to take lots more of us to speak out about what’s happening in Russia right now.

Watch this beautiful 2-minute video, and then sign the petition: https://www.allout.org/Olympics

Thank you for going All Out.

Andre, Guillaume, Jeremy, Leandro Tile, and the rest of the All Out team.

PS: If the Russian government attacks LGBT people and there is no response from around the world, leaders in smaller, less powerful countries might think it’s safe to copy them. And things could get worse for many more people around the world. So if you haven’t already, please sign the petition here: https://www.allout.org/Olympics

The Equal Rights Blog Hop – Why do I support it?

http://queertownabbey.com/join-the-equal-rights-blog-hop-july-4th-through-7th/

Let me very honest. I’m not gay, transgender, gender fluid, lesbian, homosexual or any other label society chooses to put upon people who are classed as ‘different’ from the norm (according to ‘set society’ stands at least). For who the hell we are we to define ‘normal’ ? And don’t tell me the Bible says so because I might punch you with it. Apologies to any religious friends I have out there but I’m entitled to express my opinion the same way the Spanish Inquisitors did. Only I won’t torture and massacre people who don’t believe the same things I do.

I am a ‘straight’ woman-(another bloody label) – who has been married to the same man for twenty nine years. But that doesn’t stop me getting on my soapbox and reveling in the fact that DOMA is dead, in the UK we have a bill being presented to Parliament that gives same sex couples the right to marry and that at last society is starting to come around to the idea that if two people love each other, who gives a flying f*** what gender they are?

And I also know that these victories are hard won, that there has been a lot of heartache and angst in the process and that there is still oh so much work to do. Lives have been destroyed, people have destroyed themselves after being tainted with the stigma of being ‘different’ for loving someone of the same sex as them and nothing can change that. But there is wonderful and untiring work being done by so many people around the world to get their voice out there and tell people that they are simply human beings -and that’s all that’s required to be in love or get married and share a life together.

I am not a fan of any sort of persecution. I wrote an anthology of poetry about this in my younger days. Colour, religion, beliefs, sexuality – these are all simply facets of life that contribute to our growth as human beings. Which colour, which religion, which beliefs and which sexuality –these are all irrelevant. Instead we have a person who chooses to live their life in harmony with another person. Isn’t that what life is all about? A phrase I think that has been so overworked that it seems to have lost its meaning unless used in cliché ridden conversations and writings is Live and Let Live.

From research I’ve done, it appears that this proverb is Dutch in origin and is first recorded in Ancient Law Merchant by G. De Malynes, published in 1622. It was later included in a book of English proverbs collected by John Ray in 1678. This is what it is defined as being –
Run your own life the way you want to, and let others do the same; be tolerant of differences.

Remember the Christmas Truce of 1914? Both sides of the opposing armies laid down their arms and formed a truce to come together as a group of people just trying to beat the cold, the hunger, the death, the grief and the need to be with other human beings in peace and in harmony. Their differences were forgotten. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could nurture this in every second of every day? If children didn’t have be taught that being ‘gay’ or loving someone of the same sex and wanting to have sex with them was not a sin, that them being different to others isn’t something that can be surgically removed or psychologically changed or meant they don’t have the same rights as other couples do.

So for me being a member of this GLBT community in the way that I am- someone simply believing in the thought that all individuals should have the same rights as others despite their differences – means I care. I support the fight, the drive to take away the imperfections so that life can be the same for all, no matter what their sexual persuasion. And I hope that qualifies me to join this amazingly feisty and passionate band of people and rejoice in their victories.

I’m giving away an e-book copy of my new release, ‘Stripped Bare’ to one random lucky winner who comments on this blog post. You may be asked a question to qualify for the prize draw. The answer is in this post, honest. The book itself will only be released on 22nd July, but I promise, you’ll get it if you win it…

Question for Grand Prize Giveaway- How long have I been married?

Click on this link to keep hopping along….

http://queertownabbey.com/join-the-equal-rights-blog-hop-july-4th-through-7th/