For the rest of PRIDE, my young adult novel PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE is on sale at AMAZON! Get the Kindle at AMAZON USA for only $2.99 for the rest of June!
The first draft of this novel was written at the 2015 Muskoka Novel Marathon, after a long (hands-free) phone call with Lorraine Segato during my 2-hour drive to Huntsville, Ontario. Lorraine, who is the lead singer of PARACHUTE CLUB, called in response to my request to use both her and her song, RISE UP, in the novel that I had yet to write.
I had this big plan to use Lorraine as a walk-on character in the same way I used Gordon Lightfoot as a walk-on character in my novel SEBASTIAN’S POET. Gordon had jumped on right away and given his consent. With him, though, the pages were already written…it was just a matter of him reading them and giving me his blessings. With Lorraine, the book was not yet written.
I barrelled down the highway towards Muskoka, explaining my very loose plan for the novel to Lorraine. In the end, she gave me a lot of advise, and her blessings on using the song…but felt that the ‘scenes’ in which she was to be included wouldn’t actually be something she would do in real life. I did NOT want to put false words into the mouth of an idol from my teen years. So I thanked her profusely for her time and the gift of the song. And I wrote my novel!
Pick it up this month on Amazon!
Synopsis:
Ezra Caine is gay. He’s sort of out at school but not at home, where he fears the wrath of his father’s bigotry. When Ezra’s flamboyantly out friend Alex Mills takes one too many beatings from homophobic bully Will Carter, Ezra finally snaps. Fed up with the situation at school, he decides to do something about it. With the help of his BFF, Nettie, and some unlikely allies, Ezra rallies to create their small-town school’s first gay-straight alliance. The Rainbow Alliance Club is formed. But the changes don’t come without hiccups, one of which being a messy scandal involving Alex and a gay hook-up app. As Ezra and his friends attempt to sway their school into an alliance of tolerance and acceptance, Ezra experiences a few surprises of his own on the home-front. He also learns the hard way that friendships out of convenience aren’t always a good idea, just as some enemies might not be as bad as he originally imagined them to be.
Happy Pride Month to all! It’s time to consider reading books with LGBTQ+ representation!
I’m currently reading HOWL by Shaun David Hutchinson and LOVING it! Highly recommend! It’s such a subtly told powerhouse of a story about struggling to find oneself while fearing becoming something other than oneself…while at the same time punching back against bullying and biases. Really, such a deep read. Written for the Young Adult market.
My recently read Pride reads were pretty fascinating looks into growing up with gay dads. One from a Canadian woman whose father gravitated to the Toronto gay village area and one from an American woman whose father gravitated to the Castro in San Francisco. Loved them both! Poignant, sad, funny…all the feels. Highly recommend them…even as side by side reads:
I too write Pride books. Here are 3 that are available now!
Billions of Beautiful Hearts (Interlude Press/Duet Books) is a young adult story with two nonbinary teens finding love online during the time of Covid Lockdown. The Camino Club (Interlude Press/Duet Books) is a young adult story with six teens walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route across Spain as atonement for their crimes back home in Toronto. It features a gay narrator with lesbian rep. Pride Must Be A Place (Muse It Up) is a young adult story with Ezra Caine and his friends coming together to create their small-town high school’s first Gay Straight Alliance. Ezra discovers along the way that he can find happiness, love, and safety in the places he once feared.
I also have upcoming PRIDE reads! One of which you could definitely PRE-ORDER during Pride Month! YES, I’m talking about BOOK OF DREAMS again!
The Book.
Here’s the synopsis:
Gaige’s curiosity gets the better of him when he discovers a bookstore on an abandoned street where no bookstore should be. He steps inside and is immediately enthralled by its antiquarian sights and smells. But one book in particular calls to him. It isn’t long before he gets a bad feeling about it, but it’s already too late. The store’s aged bookseller gives him no alternative: once he touches the book, it’s his—whether he wants it or not. It’s bought and paid for and there are no returns. The book leads Gaige on a horrific descent into the unknown. As he falls into the depths of its pages, he loses blocks of time, and his friends become trapped inside ancient cellars with seemingly no means of escape. Gaige soon learns that the ancient bookseller is a notorious serial killer from a previous century, and fears that he has fallen into a predicament from which he may not escape. When all seems lost, he finds the one person he can turn to for help—Mael, a sweet teen also trapped inside the book who didn’t fall for the bookseller’s tricks. Together, they race against time to protect Gaige from joining a long string of boys who vanished without a trace inside the Book of Dreams.
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD! Also, put Book of Dreams on your Goodreads shelf!
It’s Pride Month. Whatever you choose to do with your reading time this month, just consider spending some of that time reading and supporting LGBTQ+ fiction!
You may have noticed a couple of new covers if you recently visited My Amazon page. Both Pride Must Be a Place & Summer on Fire are now sporting new clothing. (-;
Unfortunately, my publisher, MuseItUp, had to make a tough decision and close their doors. It was a great pleasure working with the folx at MuseItUp! We had a long relationship. They were the publisher of both my debut novel and my sixth novel. I’m grateful for the time we spent together!
I now offer the SAME stories wrapped in newer clothing.
Here are the new covers:
PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE – Ezra Caine is gay. He’s sort of out at school but not at home, where he fears the wrath of his father’s bigotry. When Ezra’s flamboyantly out friend Alex Mills takes one too many beatings from homophobic bully Will Carter, Ezra finally snaps. Fed up with the situation at school, he decides to do something about it. With the help of his BFF, Nettie, and some unlikely allies, Ezra rallies to create their small-town school’s first gay-straight alliance. The Rainbow Alliance Club is formed. But the changes don’t come without hiccups, one of which being a messy scandal involving Alex and a gay hook-up app. As Ezra and his friends attempt to sway their school into an alliance of tolerance and acceptance, Ezra experiences a few surprises of his own on the home-front. He also learns the hard way that friendships out of convenience aren’t always a good idea, just as some enemies might not be as bad as he originally imagined them to be.
SUMMER ON FIRE – Zach Carson is a loyal friend. But is loyalty enough to keep best friends together when one of them sets fire to the rural barn they use as the local hangout? Zach, Jeff Barsell and Arnie Wilson struggle to pick up the pieces when news spreads that a body was discovered in the burnt out shell of the neighboring home. When the word murder is used by the local police, the stakes grow even higher. When the police start searching for their most likely suspect—none other than Jeff’s older brother, and nemesis, Marty Barsell—the boys decide to join forces and come up with a way to prove his innocence. But just how innocent is Marty Barsell? When Marty admits to being at the scene of the crime, the three friends enlist the help of Zach’s annoying sister, Sherry, as well as the sympathetic town eccentric, Ms. Halverton. But can they keep it together long enough to save Marty, and themselves, from eminent catastrophe? Summer on Fire is the story of friendships, and the lines we are asked to cross in order to keep them.
To purchase copies of either of these novels, you can visit MY AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE RIGHT HERE. Maybe consider grabbing a copy of PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE for #PrideReads! Pride month is almost over.
Please note that if you already have copies of either of these books–THE CONTENT IS THE SAME. ONLY THE COVERS HAVE CHANGED.
For some unknown reason, My Google alerts chose today to send me an alert on a PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE review from July. Maybe Google knew I needed a boost in spirit?
Anyway, I’ve been talking so much about my recent release, THE CAMINO CLUB, that I sometimes forget how happy I was to have PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE published. I absolutely loved writing that story about the inception of a Gay Straight Alliance in a small town high school! I wrote half of Pride at the 2015 Muskoka Novel Marathon. Then, Michael and I stayed at his sister’s cottage for a week later on during that same July and I finished the manuscript. It was a fun ride!
Anyway, Google sent me an alert for a beautiful review of Pride that was posted at Muskoka Style Magazine in July. The reviewer, Kaitlyn Sutey, actually suggested it for a Pride Month read. It’s really a gorgeous review and it reminds me that I have written other books. We lose sight of that when we’re in the thick of publishing The Next Novel.
Click the photo from the article below to be taken to the review: Pride Must Be A Place, A Summer Read
If you haven’t yet read PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE, you can pick it up at any of the below links (there’s also a link to Goodreads, where you can add it to your shelf and read what others are saying about Pride:
Today (Wednesday February 19th, 2020) is #IReadCanadian Day!
To explain the idea behind I READ CANADIAN, here’s a screenshot from the I READ CANADIAN WEBSITE:
I have lived in and around Toronto, Ontario for all of my 53 years. I checked with the judges, and apparently this makes me CANADIAN. I also happen to be an author. ERGO…if you read MY books, you are in fact READING CANADIAN.
I thought I would give a quick description of TWO of my books with links so you can check them out. You can read the synopses in the links, so I’ll just give a quick picture for each here.
Two of my books are with a small publisher in Montreal, Quebec called MuseItUp:
SUMMER ON FIRE: This is the story of three friends who do something very idiotic. The thing they do–accidentally set fire to a barn–sets off a chain reaction that includes broken limbs, bodies, lies, the testing of friendships and the complicated relationships of siblings that don’t like each other but still feel the bonds and pulls of loyalty.
SUMMER ON FIRE is currently on sale for around $1.
PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE – Ezra is extremely pissed that homophobia still exists in his school, especially since his best friend Alex always finds himself the target of it. The two, along with Ezra’s other BFF Netty, form a Gay Straight Alliance. But this story is also about the complicated relationships that occur when you become close with someone just because they’re the same as you. Ezra and Alex formed their friendship around their sexuality…not because they shared the same values.
My other novels were with publishers who have since closed their doors. They are still available and you can find them on Amazon. HERE IS MY AUTHOR PAGE ON AMAZON
Before the details of the giveaway, I wanted to point out that SEBASTIAN’S POET is definitely the most CANADIAN of all my books. It takes place in Toronto’s Beaches District in the 1970s. It focuses on Sebastian, a young boy who is mostly neglected by his father and abandoned by his mother. A folksinger comes into his life and changes it forever. The folksinger is based on LEONARD COHEN. There’s a cameo appearance by Gordon Lightfoot. It’s set in Canada and it is ALL Canada. It’s my homage to Cohen and to the Beaches.
The Giveaway. It’s over on TWITTER so you’ll have to go find MY PROFILE over there (Hint—the words MY PROFILE in that sentence are linked to my profile. Just click the link).
Just FOLLOW and RETWEET the tweet about the giveaway. That’s the whole thing…all you have to do to enter. The PRIZE? One paperback copy of PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE…delivered to anywhere in North America. (-:
So many authors create playlists for their novels. I never quite got it until now. You see, I usually pick ONE song and play it on a loop while I’m working on a novel. It just plays over and over and over and the vibe I get from that particular song sort of infuses with the words.
For Sebastian’s Poet, the ONE song was ANTHEM by my glorious Leonard Cohen. The story took place in Toronto’s Beaches District in the 1970s and the main character was a folksinger named Teal Landen, who had the nickname of The Poet. The young narrator, Sebastian Nelson, woke up one morning to find Teal sleeping on his couch. In the absence of Sebastian’s parental influences, the two form a relationship that–in the end–helps to save Sebastian. I wrote that novel over a 48hr period during my very first Muskoka Novel Marathon. 48 hours listening to the same song on repeat. It’s pretty powerful. I’ll just say right now that Teal Landen is my interpretation of Leonard Cohen himself.
For Pride Must Be A Place, the ONE song was RISE UP by The Parachute Club. I reached out by email to Lorraine Segato (the lead singer of The Parachute Club) for this one. I originally envisioned using Ms. Segato as a character in the novel, so I wanted to run it past her. Also, I wanted to infuse the story with RISE UP. I was going to write Pride at another Muskoka Novel Marathon over the course of a 72hr weekend (I did!). What I didn’t expect was receiving a phone call from Ms. Segato while I was driving up north to Huntsville, Ontario to participate in that marathon. I quickly pulled off the road and had a conversation with Ms. Segato that lead to me making some really big changes to the Pride idea. For those who read the book, spoiler alert…Ms. Segato does not appear in its pages. She did, however, give me the permissions to use lyrics from the song…and some direction in the story. I’ll be forever thankful. The playlist for that novel? RISE UP. In case you’re wondering…YES!!!! It is totally empowering and uplifting to listen to RISE UP on repeat for 72 hours. I was literally ready to TAKE ON THE UNIVERSE! To this end, the endless supply of coffee and Skittles did not hinder a thing.
Did I do another digression? Maybe. I wanted to mention 2 of my favourite novel writing experiences prior to getting to THE CAMINO CLUB!
During the writing of this novel, I finally discovered the joy of creating an entire playlist!
I wrote The Camino Club over the course of a couple (maybe 3) weeks. It was a completely different experience from my usual tactic of getting the first draft down over the course of a weekend. I had more time to spend with it, so I flexed on the playlist. And I admittedly stole a whole bunch of the songs from the soundtrack for the movie THE WAY (With Emilio Estevez and Martin Sheen).
So, without further ado, here is the playlist that I created for the novel of my heart and soul!
THE CAMINO CLUB PLAYLIST
Nadal de Luintra by Berrogüetto
Thank U by Alanis Morissette
Pink Moon by Nick Drake
Fusco by Berrogüetto
Mykonos by Fleet Foxes
Daniel by Tyler Bates
Santiago de Compostela by Tyler Bates
Muxia – A True Pilgrim by Tyler Bates
Lost by Coldplay
Daniel by Elton John
Country Road by James Taylor
My Oh My by David Gray
Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads
This is the Day by The The
Living on the Ceiling by Blancmange
Perfect Way by Scritti Politti
Blister in the Sun by Violent Femmes
I Try by Macy Gray
Afternoons and Coffee Spoons by Crash Test Dummies
And if Venice is Sinking by Spirit of the West
Pull up to the Bumper by Grace Jones
Sissy that Walk by Ru Paul
Cover Girl by Ru Paul
Late in the Evening by Paul Simon
Kodachrome by Paul Simon
That’s it. I know…it’s long. But it is what it is. The songs that saw me through the writing of The Camino Club. ❤
For Pride Month, I’m giving away a print copy of PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE! To enter the giveaway, find me at Twitter and RETWEET the following TWEET before Midnight June 21st:
Here’s the synopsis of PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE from AMAZON:
Ezra Caine is gay. He’s sort of out at school but not at home, where he fears the wrath of his father’s bigotry. When Ezra’s flamboyantly out friend Alex Mills takes one too many beatings from homophobic bully Will Carter, Ezra finally snaps. Fed up with the situation at school, he decides to do something about it. With the help of his BFF, Nettie, and some unlikely allies, Ezra rallies to create their small-town school’s first gay-straight alliance. The Rainbow Alliance Club is formed. But the changes don’t come without hiccups, one of which being a messy scandal involving Alex and a gay hook-up app. As Ezra and his friends attempt to sway their school into an alliance of tolerance and acceptance, Ezra experiences a few surprises of his own on the home-front. He also learns the hard way that friendships out of convenience aren’t always a good idea, just as some enemies might not be as bad as he originally imagined them to be.
For reader reviews of PRIDE head on over to GOODREADS. You can also place it on your shelf while you’re there. (-;
I thought I would share the first chapter of PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE today. As I gear up for the 2019 Muskoka Novel Marathon, which is where I will be writing my next novel…I’m also reflecting on my previous MNM achievements, failures and attempts. PRIDE is MOST DEFINITELY my most commercially successful novel to date. I wrote the first draft mostly at the 2015 Muskoka Novel Marathon. Here you go…the first chapter. I’ll include buy links at the bottom. You know…just in case you wish to read on. (-;
Chapter 1
It’s hard to be yourself. I know, because I’ve been avoiding it for years. But I’ve also been embracing it. It’s hard to explain. You know when you know if you reveal too much of yourself you could be in for a world of trouble? Well, that pretty much sums it up for me. I live in a world where I’m not the same person all the time. I’m getting there. But I’m not ready yet. Not today, anyway. It sucks. I mean, it really sucks. A lot. But I’m not willing to destroy everything in my life just yet.
I think my father hates gays. Or, at least that’s how I see it. I can’t really know for sure what’s in his heart. Or if it will matter if (when) he finds out his oldest son is gay. I just know by the way he sneers when he sees them on TV, or out in the wild on those rare occasions when I’m with him. He looks down his nose at them like they’re some disease-carrying pariahs. It gives me this burning ache in the pit of my belly. Sometimes I think about the way he will eventually turn that scorn and disgust upon me, and I just want to die.
But I don’t think he knows.
I’m not one of those in-your-face gays like Alex Mills. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, so the joke goes. Alex is an awesome guy, sometimes. I love him, mostly. He’s my second best friend, next to Nettie English. But Alex is one of those friends I can’t bring home. Dad would take one look at him and know there’s something wrong with me, something gay with me. You don’t have friends like Alex Mills unless you’re one of them.
My father would love for me to dislike gays as much as he does. He’s such a homophobic bigot. I can’t believe I’m actually telling you this. It’s so humiliating to know something like this about a man you’re supposed to love and respect
During the 2016 Muskoka Novel Marathon, I wrote 1/2 of the novel PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE in 72hrs. I usually strive to write the entire first draft of a novel at the yearly novel writing marathon. Honestly, it’s where/when I do the lion’s share of my entire yearly writing output. I’m scatterbrained and forgetful. This makes for a terrible daily writing routine where one has to pick up where one left off the previous day. When I try to write in this manner, I find myself needing to go back a chapter or more just to find out where I am and what the story is about. We make do, right? We figure workarounds and MacGyvers to bypass our weaknesses. The Muskoka Novel Marathon is my workaround. I get to sit and write a novel hopefully from start to finish. Doing it this way, I don’t forget the thread… I carry it with me throughout the entire weekend and the weaving is both tighter and more sensical (as an aside here, I would like to point out that the spellcheck on this thing just told me sensical is not a word and that I should correct it to nonsensical… that is probably a sign in itself).
With PRIDE, I only got halfway through the novel during the marathon weekend. I say only but really, who gets to write half a novel in one weekend? It was a great start. I found my pace and I allowed the characters to take me on their journey. Prior to starting out on the writing journey every year, there is an almost 3 hour car trip from Toronto to Huntsville, Ontario… the heartland of the Muskokas, otherwise known as one of Ontario’s premiere cottage countries. I do this journey with the help of Tim Hortons, obviously. I am, after all, Canadian.
The difference with the year in question, 2016, is that not quite halfway to Huntsville I received a phone call while I was in the drive-thru of the aforementioned Tim Hortons. I pulled into a parking spot and answered my cell.
It was Lorraine Segato on the other end. For those who don’t know who that is, she’s the lead singer of the Parachute Club…the fabulous Canadian new wave band of the 80s that gave us the anthem song RISE UP. I had already chosen the song as the playlist for my 2016 Muskoka Novel Marathon novel. I had a playlist of one song, the title PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE, and an idea to somehow weave Ms. Segato into my story by way of reunion concert with my group of gays flocking to see the band that gave them their song of empowerment. It was going to be EPIC!
I spoke with Ms. Segato for a good 20 minutes. She told me what she liked about my ideas as I ran them by her, and she told me what she didn’t particularly stand by. She told me, most importantly, how she WOULDN’T act in certain situations I described. She gave me her authenticity and denounced one of my envisioned final scenes by clarifying that it just didn’t seem like something she would say/do.
After our conversation, I realized the very different turns my story could take. I realized I didn’t need to possibly misrepresent Ms. Segato by having her being inauthentic in the story, that I could leave her out of the story and still tell it. What I did keep in PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE was the thread of the novel’s one song playlist. RISE UP is woven throughout that novel in such a way that I sincerely hope it encourages my readers to reach for the Parachute Club and discover the power and magnitude of the anthem.
Pride did take a totally different direction than the one I envisioned for it. This is often the case when you chase a story over a short amount of time like this. You rush to keep up with the trajectory of your characters, who feel free to just explode onto the page and take the wheel. This is especially true in the wee hours of the mornings when you find you’re still writing the story but kind of in a fugue state… an auto-pilot state where writer has disappeared and only writing is left. I brought in parental characters who had their own story to tell, by way of gay parents for one of the teen characters. I brought in a gay hook-up app and age-inappropriate relations. I brought in characters unwilling to change and characters unable to do anything but change. I introduced love interests and bigots and bright-sides, all the while playing that RISE UP song… both within the pages of the story and in the earbuds connected to my short Spotify playlist. The song fueled me in the same way Ms. Segato’s conversation fueled me. With her help, I totally avoided the bad ending I envisioned for my story. She essentially wrote herself out of the story in a way that kept her presence all over it.
It’s FRIDAY today as I write this. On social media, writers and readers alike use this day to tell the world what they’re reading and suggest what others COULD be reading. So today, I’m going to make a suggestion. Bet you can’t guess what it is.
Here’s the blurb for PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE:
Ezra Caine is gay. He’s sort of out at school but not at home, where he fears the wrath of his father’s bigotry. When Ezra’s flamboyantly out friend Alex Mills takes one too many beatings from homophobic bully Will Carter, Ezra finally snaps. Fed up with the situation at school, he decides to do something about it. With the help of his BFF, Nettie, and some unlikely allies, Ezra rallies to create their small-town school’s first gay-straight alliance. The Rainbow Alliance Club is formed. But the changes don’t come without hiccups, one of which being a messy scandal involving Alex and a gay hook-up app. As Ezra and his friends attempt to sway their school into an alliance of tolerance and acceptance, Ezra experiences a few surprises of his own on the home-front. He also learns the hard way that friendships out of convenience aren’t always a good idea, just as some enemies might not be as bad as he originally imagined them to be.
The blurb says nothing about Gary. I honestly didn’t know Gary would strike a chord with so many people, but he has. I’ve even had emails and contacts through my site here from readers telling me how much they loved Gary…who is one of Marc’s two fathers. I don’t know where Gary came from, but I’m almost certain he was born around 2am on the Saturday of that marathon. He’s flamboyant af and when he entered the story he pretty much pranced, garden sheers in hand…demanding to be noticed. That’s one of the delights of the Muskoka Novel Marathon…unexpected characters, unexpected scenes, unexpected everything. THIS IS THE WAY TO WRITE A FIRST DRAFT. Trust me.
Today, may I suggest this little novel that I poured so many dedicated hours of work into…both at the marathon and after. Yes, we plow through first drafts at these marathons, but man do we ever work and rework these things when the weekend’s over. It took me more than a year of rewrites to get to the finished manuscript for this novel. And that was before the big edits at the publisher stage. MNM is for first drafts. It’s a magical way to produce them, too. POOF! In one weekend you have a draft or a good portion of one. And if you get stuck along the way, you’re in a room with 39 other writers doing the exact same thing. We depend on one another to bounce ideas around and help get each other through the hard bits.
I’ll be doing the Muskoka Novel Marathon again this coming July. It’ll be my 11th marathon. I’ve no idea what I’m going to write this time around. I’m almost certain I’ll have no celebrity phone calls during my long ride up to Huntsville, but I’m also certain I’ll have some ideas floating around by then. Maybe even a playlist. In the coming weeks, I’ll be asking for MONEY. Not for me, of course, but for the CAUSE. The marathon is not just an amazing way to write a first draft. Though we often forget it’s not a con or a workshop or a writing retreat…it is first and foremost a fundraiser. Every year the 40 writers who attend the marathon collect pledges prior to attending. All monies raised go to the literacy programs of the YMCA of Simcoe/Muskoka. We typically raise over $30,000.00 a year…these much needed funds keep all the vibrant literacy programs running. Keep a watch here for my donation link. I would really appreciate your support.
In the meantime, how about heading over to Amazon and picking up a copy of PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE for #FridayReads You can see just what sort of thing comes out of a 72 hour novel writing marathon. I’m making it really easy for you. JUST CLICK ON ONE OF THE TWO BOOK COVERS BELOW:
AMAZON CANADA BUY LINK
AMAZON USA BUY LINK
If you have already read PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE, I thank you for doing so. If you haven’t already, please consider leaving a review at either AMAZON or on GOODREADS. It would be very much appreciated. Us authors with small publishers rely a lot on word of mouth…Goodreads and Amazon are great ways for new readers to discover us. THANKS SO MUCH!
Happy #FridayReads whatever you choose to read today!
Check out this Wiki Ezvid List on which Pride Must Be A Place is being featured! Pride is in some great company on this list of YA novels with diverse LGBTQ+ representation! Watch the accompanying video to get a snap-shot of Pride‘s synopsis! CLICK ON THE HEADLINE BELOW TO WATCH THE VIDEO FEATURING THE 11 BOOKS:
Pick it up this month on Amazon!
SUMMER ON FIRE: This is the story of three friends who do something very idiotic. The thing they do–accidentally set fire to a barn–sets off a chain reaction that includes broken limbs, bodies, lies, the testing of friendships and the complicated relationships of siblings that don’t like each other but still feel the bonds and pulls of loyalty.
PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE – Ezra is extremely pissed that homophobia still exists in his school, especially since his best friend Alex always finds himself the target of it. The two, along with Ezra’s other BFF Netty, form a Gay Straight Alliance. But this story is also about the complicated relationships that occur when you become close with someone just because they’re the same as you. Ezra and Alex formed their friendship around their sexuality…not because they shared the same values.
Before the details of the giveaway, I wanted to point out that SEBASTIAN’S POET is definitely the most CANADIAN of all my books. It takes place in Toronto’s Beaches District in the 1970s. It focuses on Sebastian, a young boy who is mostly neglected by his father and abandoned by his mother. A folksinger comes into his life and changes it forever. The folksinger is based on LEONARD COHEN. There’s a cameo appearance by Gordon Lightfoot. It’s set in Canada and it is ALL Canada. It’s my homage to Cohen and to the Beaches.
KEVIN CRAIG 