Jay Bell Books

Novel November News

Back in September, I did a blog post collecting all the happenings that happened to happen that month. While the life of a best-smelling, jet-setting author may sound fascinating, in truth there’s not always enough to report every thirty days. So while these wrap-ups will continue, they will only appear in months that I have plentiful cool stuff to share. Like now!

My Gay Book Club is a wonderful site for gay fiction that has been hibernating the last year. Now it has woken up, just in time for winter, but maybe Something Like Summer is to blame since it’s the book of the month. Head on over there, check out some of the old reviews and discussions, and visit the brand new forums. And while you’re there, share your thoughts about Ben, Tim, and Jace. They’ll be listening.

There’s a wee little store you might have heard of called Amazon, and the good folks there (that just happen to keep food on my table) chose Something Like Summer as one of 2011’s Best Gay Books. And mine just happens to be the cheapest book up there. In price I mean, not in standards.

On to other unstoppable couples, my next gay romance novel has returned from the editor covered in more red than Carrie on prom night. This is good, because it means we’re one step closer to a new release. By the time you guys are tired of sucking on your frozen digits and begging for a little spring heat, I hope to have a new book to help warm you up inside. And no, I still haven’t revealed the title yet, because I’m weird.

Andreas has been a busy boy too, creating illustrations for the Cat in the Cradle sequel From Darkness to Darkness. The cover art is complete as well as half the illustrations. This time, instead of asking him to come up with an image for each chapter, I requested a handful that help bring key scenes to life. So far all the drawings for the sequel feature hot guys. Don’t tell anyone I said this, but I’m starting to think Andreas might be gay.

As for next month… Oh my gosh! That’s all I have to say for right now.

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Books in Fourteen Words (or less!):

Religion gets in the way of you being able to believe, and that sucks: HELL’S PAWN

All these things I feel make me strong, not weak: THE CAT IN THE CRADLE

I love you, so stop being afraid: SOMETHING LIKE SUMMER

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What’s in a Name?

Last week, a handful of people happened to ask why I decided to name Something Like Summer what I did. To me, this coincidence was the cosmos saying “Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do!” And explain I will.

I’ve often said I’d rather write an entire book than a single synopsis. The same applies to choosing a title for a book. It’s so incredibly hard to sum up an entire story with just a few words. Impossible, really, so the best you can do is create an evocative title that makes a potential reader want to learn more. The working title of Something Like Summer was The Many Loves of Benjamin Bentley. A little long, but I liked it. Originally I planned on showing many more of Ben’s failed relationships, but then Tim and Jace ended up hogging the book. I was tempted to use the title anyway, until The Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button came out. Thieving Hollywood bastards! Suddenly I needed a new title. Thus began a month of me pestering anyone that would listen: Friends over email and phone, the checkout lady at the grocery store, and even Andreas in the bedroom. Inevitably, each clever title we thought up was already taken.

Then inspiration struck. Twelve Years of Summer. Perfect! Or so I thought. As a professional hermit, I don’t pay much attention to what’s going on in the world. My editor saved me/broke my spirit when she informed me of a recent movie called (500) Days of Summer. This time Hollywood had beat me to the punch. Their title was just close enough to make me appear a copycat—or worse—that I had written a parody. Back to the drawing board. I ate psychedelic mushrooms, fasted except for chewing gum, and conversed solely with small pebbles. Then I came up with it. Something Like Summer. But what does it mean? I recently posed this question on Twitter, and these are some of the replies:

@WanderingReclus (MacKenzie Stewart) said: “I thought the title meant to symbolize the heat and intensity of Ben and Tim’s relationship.”

@ladykatana70 (Stacia Hess) added: “because it makes you hot and sweaty..lol”

These two responses show why I wanted “summer” in the title. Summer conjures up visions of passion, heat, and sweat. The book is more romantic than erotic, but these associations also apply to intense emotion. But does the title mean more? Here are more responses:

@rolypolywoly (Alan) said: “Thought it might be ‘Something Like Summer’ ’cause the summer Ben & Tim meet is a starting point that reverberates through the story.”

@TaylorSalley (Taylor Salley) said: “Because summer is something really good that we all have a hard time letting go of. Much like Ben and Tim’s relationship.”

Leave a question for the reader to answer, and chances are, they’ll come up with something brilliant. I love the symbolism that these readers picked up on. I’m tempted to lie and say that’s exactly what I intended. My answer is much simpler. To me, summer is the time of year that I feel the best, both physically and emotionally. Perfect blue sky days when the sun warms my skin and makes the world beautiful—those summer moments make me feel sixteen again. There’s only one other thing that makes me feel so blissfully content. Love is something like summer.

There it is, my personal interpretation of the title, but that doesn’t make it true. The book has been set free and is out there in the world, romping through fields of imagination that no longer belong to me, and that’s how it should be. The title means what you want it to mean, and the story now belongs to you.




Er… Not legally of course.

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My Favorite Monsters

With Halloween creeping steadily closer, and the world becoming spookier by the day, I can’t help but think of all the monsters that used to terrify and fascinate me as a child. I was heavy into horror films as a kid, and my parents had no qualms about indulging this interest. There wasn’t a gory film I wasn’t allowed to rent, or an issue of Fangoria I couldn’t browse through to my twisted heart’s content. Now that I’m a feeble old man, I find my tastes aren’t so different than that of my younger self. While I find historical dramas more riveting that horror movies, I still have a soft spot in my heart for those same monsters. Here are just some of my favorites:

Werewolves –

Easily the best monster ever, werewolves have always played second fiddle to vampires. I’ll never understand why. What’s so great about sleeping in a coffin and exploding when the sun comes out? Werewolves have it so much better, living a normal life for all but three nights of the month. And there’s none of the delicate constitution of vampires. The only thing that can kill you is a silver bullet, which most hunters are way too cheap to keep in stock.

Werewolves are also sexy! Taylor Lautner aside, a man that is in touch with his primal animal instincts must be a tiger in the sack. Or a wolf, as the case may be. I suspect all that shapeshifting back and forth is great for muscle tone too. The only werewolf to appear in my books so far is Nikolai in The Cat in the Cradle. His rarely seen human form is as handsome as can be, and I even gave him his own short story, but I’d like to write an entire book about lycanthropes some day.

Skeleton Warriors –

If there were runway models in the world of monsters, skeletons would be the most sought after. That’s not a skinny joke either. Skeletons simply look great no matter what you put them in. Whether they are wearing a sombrero, a bride’s gown, a pharaoh’s cowl, or a classy suit and top hat, skeletons never fail to impress.

My most favorite skeletons accessorize with a simple shield and sword. In Jason and the Argonauts, an evil wizard tosses hydra teeth to the ground like he’s spreading grass seed. What grows is a terrifying army of skeleton warriors. Not only do they look great, but they make effective soldiers as well. What are you going to do, stab their flesh? Poke out their eyes? There’s not a lot of ways to damage a pile of bones, especially when it’s animated and trying to kill you. See for yourself:

Demons –

I’ve always found demons interesting. I don’t mean generic devils. The demons I like have strange names and roles in Hell’s hierarchy. Asmodeus, Beelzebub, Mammon, and of course Lucifer. Each has their own story, but better than that is the creepy art portraying them. Few things inspired the artists of old like the threat of burning in Hell. Hieronymus Bosch made this his life’s work, and even though his paintings are over five hundred years old, their nightmare visions remain terrifyingly original.

Of course demons also have their charming side, appearing in the night and seducing innocent women (and not-so-innocent gay guys) with sinful promises of passion and pleasure. The most famous of these are the incubi. Okay, so succubi are more popular, but we’re talking about hot demon lords here. My favorite of course is Rimmon, who has a starring role in Hell’s Pawn. I certainly enjoyed writing him, and had more than one feverish incubus dream while working on that book.

Multi-headed dragons –

I’ve never been much for dragons, the generic beast of fantasy novels. I have nothing against them, but they’ve never interested me much. But give me a dragon with more than one head, and suddenly I can’t get enough. I love hydras, and not just because their teeth can raise armies of skeleton supermodels. Hydras are cool because they’re so damn hard to kill. It’s hard to say how many heads a hydra starts with, but cut off one and two grow back in its place. The only way of preventing this is by burning the severed neck stump. Unless you’re really good at multitasking, the hydra’s other heads are going to kill you while you’re trying to deal with just one of them.

The best hydra of all is Tiamat. Forget Babylonian mythology, I’m referring to the modern Dungeons and Dragons creation. This Tiamat is a dragon with five heads, each a different color and possessing different kinds of breath. It’s like someone combined a pride flag and a hell spawned dragon for the ultimate expression of gay fury. The red head breathes fire, the blue head shoots electricity, and the green head spews delicious martinis that render foes drunk and vulnerable. Not only that, but while Tiamat is devouring you whole, the other four heads can function as a decent barbershop quartet!

Those are some of my favorite beasties. Even though I poked fun at them, they still capture my imagination to this day and always will. Come this Halloween season, I wish you many delightful nightmares filled with sword fighting skeletons and debonair demons. Oh, and be sure to leave a comment below and tell me about some of your favorite monsters!

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September Sidelines

September has been a busy month for me, but a lot of good things have happened. Here are some of the highlights:

Something Like Summer is book of the month over on Goodread’s M/M Romance group. Readers have been chiming in on their opinions of the book, and I’ve been sharing some insights into the plot and the choices I made. If you’re not a member of Goodreads, I highly recommend it since there’s no better site to share and rank what you’re reading. The M/M Group over there is a wonderfully friendly place to chat about gay fiction.

Something Like Summer has also been the book of the month over at YAMM Books, a new site reviewing gay fiction that is young at heart. Many readers ask me for book recommendations. This site is the perfect answer. It’s a great source for books and authors you might not have discovered.

After a marathon of hunching over my laptop, I’m happy to announce the completion of a new novel. I’m not ready to release a title or synopsis yet, since this is only a first draft, but fans of Something Like Summer should be pleased as it’s another contemporary romance novel. And no, it’s not the oft requested sequel, but I think you’ll fall in love with these new characters just as much. Along with From Darkness to Darkness (The Cat in the Cradle sequel), I expect these two books to be released sometime next year.

There’s a new interview with me over at Diary of a Gay Erotica Author where I talk about satisfying myself (huh-huh-huh) and how readers have the power to make or break a book.

On a more personal note, today (September 27th) is my wedding anniversary. Andreas and I tend not to make a big deal out of it. We prefer to celebrate the day we first met, but since I love the big guy, I thought it was worth mentioning here. We plan on going out to eat to celebrate, because getting fat together is one of the coolest things about being married.

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Inspiration – Hell’s Pawn

It’s hard to pin down just when and where Hell’s Pawn took root in my mind. When I was a kid, Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series introduced me to the concept of Purgatory and a contemporary take on the afterlife. I later made a study of mythology and religion in my teens which was obviously a huge influence, and in my twenties, my best friend shared with me his idea for a story. His story must have sunk into my subconscious, because when I emailed him excitedly about my “brand new book idea,” he very patiently pointed out that I had rehashed many of his own ideas. Embarrassing but true. That’s just one of the many reasons the book is dedicated to him.

Those were the cornerstones of Hell’s Pawn, but there were plenty of inspirations that came while actually writing the book. Music is always an influence. Every book I’ve written has its theme—a song I play to get me in the right mood. I discovered the song for Hell’s Pawn halfway through writing and while binging on a German group called Alphaville. Their song, For a Million, is every bit as weird as my story and some of the lyrics fit all too well.

“For a million years they dream
And the fog conceals and hides
and eats our souls
Before they open up their eyes again
How far we’ll be”

 
I mentioned weird, right? This verse reminds me of the foggy hidden underbelly of Purgatory, or the poor souls trapped in the dome surrounding it, sleeping until someone can free them. Then there was this verse:

“Oh I love to dance
Under an alien sun
Along the dunes with you
I kiss you in the sand”

 
I had already finished writing the Egyptian part of the story, but I liked the idea of Rimmon and John dancing along the dunes together and added it to the narrative. Did they kiss there? Man, I don’t think they did, but you know John wanted to. And then there are lines about time running out, about refusing to stop loving someone, even if you have to leave them behind… but the story does a better job explaining that than I could here.

Speaking of love, check out that handsome angel up there! That’s Archangel Uriel. Although his part in the story is small, I stared long and hard at this image while thinking about angels. I loved that his wings are colored instead of boring white, which encouraged me to make all the angels that way. Just think how pretty they would be if they had feathers like tropical birds instead of boring old white.

And finally, down the street from our apartment in Berlin was a small copy shop. Bobby the English Shepherd worked there. Okay, so his owners did, but I would often make an excuse to have something printed, hand the files over, and spend the next ten minutes rolling around on the floor with him. I’ve always loved dogs—even though it’s been awhile since I had my own—so I was very happy to give John some animal companionship in the form of Bolo.

As you can see from these few examples, there are all kinds of inspirations that contribute to a story’s creation. Every sexy demon, little ceramic soldier, or seedy coffee shop in Amsterdam has their own anchor to the real world, which just goes to show how strange reality can be when you tell the story in the right way.

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