Reality, what a concept.
Read on for more:
Read on for more:
When people find out I've had books published, they always
asked, "What's your book about?" The first 'issue' to deal with is
the M/M topic. But since anyone who knows me well enough to know I write, knows
I'm gay, partnered, with a kid, it's not too tough to put that out there. [We'll skip for today the "do you ever
write about non-gay characters?"] But once you get passed that issue, they
want to know the subject matter of the books.
This always raises the question for me of what constitutes a
romance novel? Does the romance need to be the central plot of the book or can
it qualify if the romance is a strong sub-plot? Someone recently suggest to me that
if there are two characters that get together–even if it's just a small
sub-plot–and they stay together through the rest of the book, then it qualifies
as a romance novel. By this definition,
almost everything can be a romance book.
So perhaps romance, isn't a good way to describe things then.
My most recent book, The Last Grand Master is relatively easy to explain. I can
tell folks "High Fantasy" and those who read a lot will understand.
If they don't I just say LOTR and they always get it. If I want to confuse people I can toss in
that there is a gay romance sub-plot.
But how do you explain a guy with a curse that makes people
see the person they most want to see? That's the basic idea of (Un)Masked. But it did/does take the whole book to explain
what's going on. And even if I wanted to explain it by using a genre like high
fantasy, what would it be? Paranormal? That encompasses enough different things
to make it not terribly helpful.
The same is going to be true when my next book, Purpose comes out. Blurbs can give you a
good sense of what's going to happen, but they probably won't really explain
enough of the elements to satisfy friends and family. They expect that since
they have the 'ear' of the author, they'll get more.
Purpose is
grounded in a reality found only inside my head. For me, creating a new world,
even one that is almost entirely based on this one, but with just a minor
little twist, is one of the allures of writing. Of course fiction books by their
nature aren't grounded in reality. If they were, they wouldn't be fiction;
they'd be something else. But when elements not found in this world, such as
vampires, werewolves, wizards, aliens, super humans, etc, are introduced into
the novel, our 'reality' is gone and a new alternative one is born.
So enough of the philosophy of genres, what is Purpose about? Forty years before the
story begins, an eternal spirit of vengeance, a Purpose, takes William Morgan
to be Its host. As host, Will must avenge the innocent dead
by killing the guilty. After a time,
Will needs to find a way to cope with what he's become and he retreats behind
the alter ego of Gar. Gar is cold, almost
logical and feels very little for others.
Into Gar's tidy orderly world comes Ryan, a young man who
reminds Gar of someone from Will's past. But not just anyone, Ryan reminds Gar
of David, Will murdered ex-lover who died the night the Purpose chose
Will.
So that's the reality I created for Purpose. One of the things I'm going to try to do for this book is
release a series of short stories on my site and in guest posts that will take
place forty years before Purpose. The
stories will be short–couple thousand words at most–and will cover events that
happened in the early years of Will being host to the spirit of vengeance. Hopefully the use of 'prequels', if I can use
that term, will help drum up interest in the main story. If not, no problem, they are already written.
They helped me conceptualize my new reality by giving me a bit of history to
draw on while I was writing the story.
Like I said at the start, reality, what a concept.
I can be found on my website: www.andrewqgordon.com where I post a
free flash fiction story most Wednesdays and Author Spotlights on most
Thursdays.
You can also find me on my Dreamspinner
Press Author Page
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