Elisa - My reviews and Ramblings

"My name is Derekica Snake aka kiix. This is the part where I write about myself. It is harder than it looks. It is so much easier to write about fictional characters…hummm. Wait. I have a light blub moment.

On a dark and quiet evening in the month of April, a little girl child came into the world in St. Joesph General Hospital. Upon seeing the little girl with the little curl in the middle of her forehead, the father was heard to remark…why does she have red hair? At that moment I’ve been known as the milkman’s kid, oops, I meant she’s been known as the milkman’s kid. See, this is why I write in first person. If it works for you, stick with it.

My favorite book was “Green eggs and ham”. Apparently my mother got so annoyed with me reciting it that it accidently on purpose got tossed out the window of a moving car. So I guess I started writing my own stories once I was taught to print. I’ve always loved writing fiction. In elementary and secondary school we were required to keep a journal. I didn’t want to. I love to write but not about myself. I just wrote little ideas down and handed them in. I graduated so I guess it was good.

I thought I was in deep fascination with a boy in grade seven who was very into Star Trek. I had no clue what he was talking about so I started learning about Star Trek and now it was what was his name? Sci-fi segued into Fantasy and from there I never looked back. I was a big Star Wars geek (pre-episode 1) and wrote pastiche Han Solo adventures as a teenager.

My writing began to lean towards my current selection of offerings. I initially was a little distressed. I thought I was off – way off. I was uncomfortable with the content and toned it down or cut it out completely on second draft attempts. However, it kept cropping back up and I thought I was going to have to pull my hair out to make it stop but then…on May 6, 2006 at 9:15 a.m. I discovered “Ai No Kusabi” on youtube.

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Source: www.goodreads.com/author/show/3023964.Derekica_Snake

Further Readings:

That's What Brothers Do by Derekica Snake
Paperback, 1st Edition, 167 pages
Published February 1st 2009
ISBN: 0981180213
ISBN13: 9780981180212)

To save his family, he sold his innocence.
To save his sisters, he sold his body.
To save his love, he sold his soul.
Why?
That's what brothers do...

More Rainbow Awards at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, Rainbow Awards/2009


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Joseph Olshan is an award-winning American novelist.

He is the author of nine novels, most recently, Cloudland (St. Martin's Press, 2012). His first novel, Clara's Heart, won the Times/Jonathan Cape Young Writers' Competition and went on to be made into a feature film starring Whoopi Goldberg in 1988. In addition to his novels, he has written extensively for newspapers and magazines, including San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Times, The Observer, The Independent, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Observer, Harper's Bazaar, People Magazine, and Entertainment Weekly. Between 1992 and 1994 he was a regular book reviewer for The Wall Street Journal. For most of the 1990s he was a professor of Creative Writing at New York University, where he taught both graduate and undergraduate courses. He is currently Executive Editor of Delphinium Books (distributed by Harpercollins).

Joseph Olshan is published in the U.S. by St. Martin's Press and Berkley Books and in United Kingdom by Bloomsbury Publishing and by Arcadia Books. His work has been translated into sixteen languages. He grew up in Harrison, New York, and New York City and graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Olshan is openly gay. He is not considered a gay literature writer but he prefers to be simply a "writer".

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Olshan

Further Readings:

The Conversion by Joseph Olshan
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition (June 23, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312565569
ASIN: B0046LUHDE
Amazon: The Conversion
Amazon Kindle: The Conversion

Russell Todaro, a young American translator, moves to Paris to take stock of his life and goals only to further lose himself in the surprising twists fate has in store for him. One night, two men waving guns and knives break and enter their Paris hotel room, terrorizing Russell and his much older companion, a famous American poet named Edward Cannon. The intruders, not finding what they seemingly expected, leave without further incident but the baffling, traumatic events overwhelm Cannon who dies in his sleep later that night. Now Russell is left to ponder the meaning of the attack, what to do with the poet’s unfinished, problematic memoir and, perhaps most importantly, how to reconstruct and move forward with his own life.

Hearing of the disturbing circumstances of Cannon’s death, an Italian writer, Marina Vezzoli, invites Russell to recuperate at her villa in Tuscany. But what at first seems like a generous invitation slowly reveals itself to be a calculated offer. As Russell’s stay in Italy lengthens, he begins to realize that the people in his life are using or manipulating him, most of all the poet’s New York publishers who, against the dying man’s wishes, are trying to acquire his unfinished manuscript. Looming over everything is the long and fascinating legacy of Villa Guidi, where during Word War II a Jewish family hid in the subterranean floors, later undergoing a conversion to Catholicism. In an echo of this dramatic history, Russell is forced to undergo a conversion of his own in order to find redemption and meaning in his life.

More Spotlights at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, My Lists/Gay Novels


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Terrence McNally (born November 3, 1938) is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild since 1970 and has served as vice-president since 1981. McNally was partnered to Thomas Kirdahy following a civil union ceremony in Vermont in 2003 (they met in 2001), and they subsequently married in Washington, D.C. on April 6, 2010.

Born in St. Petersburg, Florida and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, McNally moved to New York City in 1956 to attend Columbia University, where he majored in English and wrote Columbia's annual Varsity Show, graduating in 1960, the same year in which he gained membership into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He worked briefly for the alumni magazine Columbia College Today.

After graduation, McNally moved to Mexico to focus on his writing, completing a one-act play which he submitted to the Actors Studio in New York for production. While the play was turned down by the acting school, the Studio was impressed with the script, and McNally was invited to serve as the Studio's stage manager so that he could gain practical knowledge of theater. In his early years in New York, he was a protégé and lover of the noted playwright Edward Albee.

In 1968, McNally asked that his name be removed from the credits for what would have been his first major project, the musical Here's Where I Belong. His decision proved to be a wise one, as the show closed after one performance. Although several early comedies such as Next in 1969 and The Ritz in 1975 won McNally critical praise, it was not until later in his career that he would become truly successful with works such as his Off-Broadway play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune and its screen adaptation with stars Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer.


Together since 2001, Terrence McNally married Thomas Kirdahy in a civil union ceremony in Vermont in 2003, and they subsequently in Washington, D.C. on April 6, 2010. "The best thing I've done in my long life is marry Tom. It was that moment, just a year ago, in the shadow of the Kennedy Center when I understood who I was and all I still could be. The total commitment of two lives to each other is a profound moment for anyone, but for a gay man born in 1938 it was an overwhelming one"


Terrence McNally & Thomas Kirdahy by Scott Pasfield (Gay in America)
"The best thing I've done in my long life is marry Tom Kirdahy. It was that moment, just a year ago, in the shadow of the Kennedy Center in our nation's capital when I understood who I was and all I still could be. The total commitment of two lives to each other is a profound moment for anyone, but for a gay man born in 1938 it was an overwhelming one"

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_McNally

Tom Kirdahy has dedicated his professional career and personal life working for LGBT causes. Tom spent nearly two decades as an attorney providing free legal services to people with HIV/AIDS, helping to create projects at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Bronx AIDS Services and on Long Island. Tom currently serves on the board of a LGBT Center. Separately, Tom has raised the curtain on the second act of his career as a theater producer, receiving a Tony nomination as one of the lead producers of RAGTIME.

Terrence McNally, playwright, and Thomas Joseph Kirdahy, public-interest lawyer, affirmed their partnership on December 20, 2003, at the Inn at Sawmill Farm in West Dover. Vt. Millicent B. Atkin, a justice of the peace for Dover, Vt., performed the civil union ceremony. (Picture: Terrence McNally)

Mr. McNally won Tony awards for best play for ''Love! Valour! Compassion!'' (1995) and ''Master Class'' (1996) and for best book of a musical for his adaptations of ''Kiss of the Spider Woman'' (1993) and ''Ragtime'' (1998). Mr. McNally also wrote ''Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune'' (1987) and ''Lips Together, Teeth Apart''(1991).

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/style/weddings-celebrations-terrence-mcnally-thomas-kirdahy.html

Love! Valour! Compassion! By Terrence McNally – Okay…so it’s a play, not a novel or short story. But it’s totally bril so it has to be included in this list. I know some people can’t get into reading plays the same way they do a book, and maybe it’s the writer in me, but I LOVE it. I get to create the sets in my mind, cast it with actors I like and basically direct the entire thing in my head while I’m reading it. Try it sometime if you haven’t already. It’s fun, damn it!! : ) Other than playing director, the story is also in my opinion, one of the best and most true depictions of gay men I’ve ever read. I can honestly say I either am or know every single one of the characters and like life – it is at times funny & sad, sexy & romantic, as well as sweet & sarcastic. If you just can’t get into reading the play, then watch the film. For me the play is better, but either way, McNally will have you running the emotional gamut, yet somehow leaving you with this incredible sense of hopefulness. --Ethan Day

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More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices

More LGBT Couples at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance


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Crossed Hearts (Hearts and Scars 1) by K. Vale
Link: www.goodreads.com/book/show/25150920-crossed-hearts

Kory Vansant doesn’t deserve to be alive.
As time sucks him dry of energy, sapping the final ounces of strength from his congenitally enlarged heart, he's forced to end his career as Kory Kent, porn star. Staring down death, he questions his life choices and prays for a miracle. For another chance at life, he vows to change who he is at his core.
His prayers are answered. A perfect heart now beats in his chest, but it comes at a heavy price. The donor is an innocent young man cut down far too prematurely.
And Kory's blemished history is nowhere near an ideal match.
As his debts skyrocket, Kory can’t help but think his resolve to walk the high road is being tested. After he meets the adorable Will Squire at the gravesite they both visit, he’s doubly damned because there’s no way he can keep up his end of the bargain. What happens when a man breaks a deal with a higher power?
Will often prefers the company of the dead to that of the living. Following a bad breakup, he pours himself into his two jobs—funeral director at his uncle’s mortuary and part-time paramedic. He’s drawn ever closer to Kory, as if fate sticks her fickle hand in and pushes them together like two unlikely puzzle pieces. But sometimes history can’t be buried, and maybe divine intervention isn’t always right. Will discovers everyone is imperfect, no matter how pretty the outer package, and opening one’s heart is never easy, but can be oh so worth the pain.

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About the author:
K. Vale writes erotic romance of all stripes, from hot hetero to mouthwatering manlove. Find her MF work published under Kimber Vale. Come for the sex. Stay for the story. Stalk Kimber on Facebook and Twitter @KimberVale, and check her site for updates, new releases, and freebies at http://www.authorkimbervale.com.

Where to find the author:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kimber.vale
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kimber-Vale/311761975532531?ref=hl
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KimberVale
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/kimbervale/



Tour Dates & Stops:
April 6, 2015 Parker Williams, Inked Rainbow Reads, Divine Magazine, Molly Lolly, BFD Book Blog, Fangirl Moments and My Two Cents, Charley Descoteaux, Carly’s Book Reviews, Cate Ashwood, TTC Books and More, Bike Book Reviews, Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words, Bayou Book Junkie, Love Bytes, My Fiction Nook, Wicked Faerie's Tales and Reviews, Elisa - My Reviews and Ramblings, MM Good Book Reviews, Book Reviews, Rants, and Raves, Rainbow Gold Reviews

Enter to win a copy of Crossed Hearts by adding it to your Goodreads "Want to Read" shelf. Kimber will pick a winner on release day. Follow the link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25150920-crossed-hearts?from_search=true





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