Read with Pride Northwest discussion

We’ll be interviewing GRNW Attending Authors all summer as we prepare for the Gay Romance Northwest Meet-Up on September 14 in Seattle.

Please feel free to join in and ask your own questions for the authors!

GRNW interviews David Holly

Here we interview David Holly, author of The Moon's Deep Circle and other works.

GRNW: Your novel, The Moon's Deep Circle came out earlier this year from Bold Strokes Books. Tell me about this story and what inspired you to write it.

David: The Moon’s Deep Circle is about a curious high school senior, Tip Trencher, captain of the swim team, who lives in rural Oregon with his conservative parents. The family home has a mysterious locked room, the former bedroom belonging to Tip’s two lost brothers Thad and Tye. As the novel begins, Tip gets into the room and begins reading the journals that Thad left fifteen years earlier. Tip learns that Thad was initiated into a gay pagan cult that practiced wild homoerotic orgies under the full moon. As the plot branches out, Tip continues reading Thad’s story of his initiation, in between trying to win swim meets, cope with his parents and community, solve the mystery of his two brothers’ disappearance, and, inspired by Thad’s journals, try out every gay sex position possible with several of his fellow swimmers.

I didn’t have an initial idea or inspiration. I created a scene of a mystical homoerotic sex romp under the full moon, and the rest of the novel grew from there. I liked the idea of the parallelism between the story of Tip and his brother, Thad, and how they both achieve liberation through uninhibited orgasm and penetration, so I expanded that theme as I wrote.

The Moon’s Deep Circle focuses on a high school student’s sexual awakening. Would you qualify the book as Young Adult?

Not at all. The novel contains a butt load of hot male-on-male action. I considered making Tip and his friends older but I rejected the notion because I wanted them on the verge of crashing into adulthood, but not yet there.

What challenged you the most while writing this novel?

It was difficult to weave the story Tip is reading in his lost brother’s journals in with Tip’s own story. I had to keep asking myself whether I was doing something that would confuse my readers. I was finally forced to provide headings for each shift, which sounds simple but was difficult to keep from becoming cumbersome.

You’re also the author of the short story collection The Dream in the Heart of the Forest. What do you like about writing short fiction?

I can experiment with different plots and characters. Sometimes it’s easier to saturate a short story with a mood or an aura than it is an entire novel. For example, I’ve written a couple of stories set in a Lovecraftian universe, but I wouldn’t care to extend that horribleness through an entire novel. The Dream in the Heart of the Forest has a variety of stories ranging from those written for a “one-hand magazine” to ones depicting luscious love affairs in exotic realms. An earlier collection, Delicious Darkness is loaded with gay sex encounters with demons, ghosts, space aliens, and other occult beings.

You are well known for writing gay erotica. What do you like about writing erotica vs. writing romance? (And vice versa, what do you enjoy about writing romance?)

Sex and love are two different things, but they often go together. Thus people have sex in my love stories like “Out Island Cruising” or “Guy Sydney” or they might fall in love in a story like “Blazing Bicycle Seats,” which was written for readers who could only turn the pages with one hand.

How do you like to write? Do you have a routine? A favorite writing spot? A preferred writing tool?

I don’t have a routine. I do write at my desk, which is secluded behind high bookcases. I cannot stand to have anyone looking over my shoulder while I’m writing. I need a wall behind me. When I write I go into another place so that I’m not aware that I’m writing. I’m in the scene that is pouring out the ends of my fingers without me even willing the action. Of course, after that comes the cutting, the explicating, the moving, and all the other details of the rewrite.

Were there any books or writers that inspired you to become an author?

I read Swiss Family Robinson the summer before I started first grade (which made elementary school damned boring), so I’m a life-long reader. I have a taste for literature. I also read plays—a great many plays. I’ve read every one of George Bernard Shaw’s plays (although Shaw wouldn’t approve of my putting an apostrophe in his name), most of the classical Greek dramas, English Renaissance and Jacobean drama, Bert Brecht, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, most of the absurdist plays, and a vast number of twentieth century American playwrights. Why? To develop the ability to write dialogue.

“So your characters talk?”

“They sure as hell do.”

“A lot?”

“I can’t shut them up.”

With the rise of gay romance and gay erotica (and their publishers), have you found it easier than years before to get your work published?

We live in a time when anyone can get published. With print on demand machines available, anyone with a computer and twenty-five dollars can end up in print. Then, of course, there’s online publishing and e-books. Getting a publishing house to approve, edit, publish, promote, and distribute at its own expense is still a challenge.

What do you think about the growing popularity for gay romance and gay erotic fiction?

I think that it’s a reflection of our changing society. We are becoming more accepting of people finding love and enjoying the pleasures of their bodies. Why should people having fun during sex be labeled pornography while the same people being hacked into itty-bitty pieces or getting shot full of giant bloody holes be acceptable?

For new writers wanting to “break in” to writing LGBT romance fiction and erotica, what would you recommend to them?

Read everything you possibly can. Be knowledgeable. Learn the tools of your craft, meaning you should know a dangling modifier from faulty predication and a semicolon from an ellipsis. Study what everybody else is writing and then try to write something original—but not so original that nobody can stand it. Learn to revel in rejection. (Back in the Middle Ages during the performance of miracle and mystery plays, a naked man would pass through the crowd with a wheelbarrow full of dung, which he would throw at people to acquaint them with God’s true opinion of humanity. The only people that happens to today are politicians, celebrities, and writers.)

I’m going to steal a question from GRNW author Andrea Speed. If you were a kitchen appliance, what you would be? (And why??)

Thanks for that, Andrea. I’m an electric mixer, because I mix my plots and my genres. I’ve written a gay romantic comedy Kissing Behind the Bathhouse, a gay political novel Stealing the Mayor’s Underpants, a series of creepy/funny femdom/male reduction stories called Measuring Down (all three available through Kindle, Kobo and Nook), and assorted stories of mystery, science fiction, fantasy, horror, literary, and humor.

Can you tell me about any future writing projects on the horizon? What should readers keep an eye out for?

I will have short stories coming in anthologies from Cleis Press in 2014, and my next novel from Bold Strokes Books will be out next summer. I can’t say much about that one at this time since it’s still sub rosa, but it’s strange, erotic, philosophical, and beautiful, and I hope that everyone on Earth buys a copy. I’m willing to personally autograph all eight billion of them—the line forms to the right.

As far as future projects go, I’m thinking about writing a novel about a guy in love with a fellow with multiple personalities (DID), which has me reading thick books of psychology for research—and the joy goes on and on.

Last question (from me. GRNW followers can jump in after this.) We’ll have a lot of readers at the September GRNW Meet-Up in Seattle, and it’s always interesting to hear what authors like to read and would recommend. What gay romance titles are some of your favorites?

I try never to talk about other authors’ writing until after they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. After they’re dead, they can’t get pissed at me for mentioning them or—worse—failing to mention them. Every living author is working his or her ass off trying to come up with something meaningful, moving, and wonderful for his or her readers. I recommend all of them.

Thank you for the interview, David!

Gay Romance Northwest Meet-Up - Sept. 14

You can see even more of David Holly and our other GRNW authors at the Gay Romance Northwest Meet-Up on September 14 at the Seattle Central Library! We hope you can join us. :D http://gayromancenorthwest.wordpress....

Special thanks again to David Holly for talking with us!

If you have questions for David, please feel free to ask here. This thread is open to questions. :D

I'm open for questions.
David Holly

Howdy,
While writing about Paganism, did you do any research such as studying Wicca, or any of the other "Pagan" faiths? Or did you write on intuition and creating as you go?

Thanks
Eric Andrews-Katz

The events that take place under the moon's deep circle are entirely fictional and bear no resemblance to any actual wiccan or pagan practice. That said, I have been a participant in pagan and wiccan circles. The scene in the church, however, was drawn from an actual observation of a christian deliverance (though still fictionalized for artistic purposes).

Thanks for asking.
David Holly