Queereaders discussion

Join Rodney Ross, author of The Cool Part of His Pillow at 3PM EST for a chat.

Rodney Ross, author of 'The Cool Part Of His Pillow' lives in Key West, Florida, among the literary ghosts of Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams and among living writers he admires, like playwright Terrence McNally and novelist Judy Blume.
As a former advertising Creative Director, he's accustomed to making shit up, so fiction was pretty much fated as the next logical step when he and partner Greg semi-retired to Paradise three years ago.

Past achievements include multiple ADDY Awards and an optioned screenplay and play (both currently unproduced).

Other screenplays earned Honorable Mentions or runners-up citations in the Monterey County Film Commission, FADE-IN and the LGBT One-In-Ten Screenwriting Competitions.

Most recently, he won the 'Most Creative' citation in the 2012 Key West Mystery Fest writing competition.

Rodney will be promoting 'TCPohP' next at Palm Springs PRIDE in California November 3rd and 4th; and in Indianapolis IN at the new independent bookstore 'Indy Reads Books' on December 21st.
He is also a producer of the upcoming documentary 'The Little Firemen' with Anne O'Shea, executive producer of 'The Kids Are All Right'.

Hello to all who can hear my voice or, rather, see what I type, from sunny Key West Florida.
This is Rodney Ross, author of 'The Cool Part Of His Pillow' to be referred to as TCPohP, to save my old digits from typing the full title again and again. Even though you cannot see me, do know I whitened my teeth overnight for y'all, and now my mouth aches like an SOB from too zealous an application of 20% bleach. So if my answers suddenly seem jumbled, it may be because an incisor broke off into my keyboard.

Hi Rodney! I hope I'm not late. I needed to pick up a few things at the store. Sorry I haven't had a chance to shower after the gym, but at least your teeth look fabulous.

You smell like a rose, Nancy.

Right now I am harmonizing with the sound of crickets in the room. It's a joyful noise.

I really loved The Cool Part of His Pillow and hope everyone here has an opportunity to read it. It was brilliantly written and explores grief in a realistic and positive way. So realistic that I suffered right along with Barry. This story left me in a puddle of tears, but by the time I reached the end I felt hopeful for Barry.

Thanks, Nancy. Writing it was difficult. Being partnered myself, exploring the unthinkable was, at times, draining. I awoke many nights in a sweat, having somehow mixed fiction with reality in my dreams. It's one of the hazards of writing a work that is sometimes unpleasant, just as actor friends often "take home" characters and find themselves behaving in unexpected ways.

While I typically reject HEAs that come out of nowhere, I DO appreciate hope for a character, and so I am glad that was your takeaway...uplift without the the painful underwire.

I am a big champion of sprinkling humor into the most dire of circumstance,t oo. otherwise it becomes unbearable, the sadness and tragedy...let's face it, there is a vein of laughter in everything, it's just often taboo to comment on it, much less dwell in it.

This might be a good time to pur forth a little excerpt...a passage from where the title emanated...

I push away the toss pillows plumped horizontally under the duvet to approximate a body alongside my own.
I hate this foam memory mattress. I wish we’d kept our very first lumpy, concave mattress. Andy’s dent would still be in it. I could sink into it, let it swallow me up.
I will never again hear him whisper into my ear, “Sleepy time now.”
I will never again feel his heartbeat when he wakes from nightmares, holding on to a spindle of our headboard.
I will never ever again kidnap the cool part of his pillow. It was just one push/pull in our 23 years of push/pull continuum. When my own was airless and warm, I would find that unoccupied part, I would slowly pull the pillow toward me until his shoulders grazed my breastbone, nestle my head behind his and go to sleep. It didn’t stay cool for long. I’d restlessly return to my own, or he’d wake enough to take it back with a grouchy harumph but two, three times a night my right hand, like a divining rod jerking toward a source of water, would go wandering for fresh, for safe, for cool. It was like winning a prize. I will miss those two big heads full of alpha male dreams sharing one pillow.
Now it’s all mine.
I can have as much cool as I want, can dominate every bit, which is very different.

I don't mean to say that Barry's life was all sadness. He has some great friends, a supportive family and enough humor to lighten his load a little.

Rodney, I'm curious if you have done a lot of traveling. Your story takes place in Florida and New York and you've managed to create richly detailed settings that make me want to visit.

A book's title is, of course, a tremendous selling tool, as is the cover. I was elated with Anne Cain's design; it speaks of lonelines, something missing and I love the color "wash" over. I most assuredly did not want a Fabio-like man in a puffy shirt unbuttoned to the pubs fighting back a tear...not that dreamspinner would have EVER done that...but I sure as hell see some M/M publishers who toss the most unappealing, if not cartoonish, illustrations and stock photos onto their covers.

Yes, Nancy, I am quite familiar with NYC, and of course I reside in Key West, so pinpointing detail for both of those locales was simple, really.

I have MANY friends who reside in NYC, most of whom work in theatre -- Broadway, dancing, singing, cruise ships, theme parks -- and I visit consistently for theatregoing and catching up...always have, since my mid-teens, which was in about 1917, when travel by horse-and-buggy was dreary...

Rodney wrote: "While I typically reject HEAs that come out of nowhere, I DO appreciate hope for a character, and so I am glad that was your takeaway...uplift without the the painful underwire."

I don't mind reading sweet romances with HEAs now and then, but mostly I prefer a story that reflects real life and struggles people face with characters I can empathize with.

Research is inevitable, of course; we've all read geographical or era details in novels that weren't accurate, or seemed "off" and I was determined that my minutiae would be as precise as the big picture stuff, so I DID spend a fair amount of time compiling stats and tidbits, most of which I did NOT use, but still somehow drift into your work by making the author seem credible.

Rodney wrote: "I am a big champion of sprinkling humor into the most dire of circumstance,t oo. otherwise it becomes unbearable, the sadness and tragedy...let's face it, there is a vein of laughter in everything,..."

I'll never forget when my grandmother died in 1986, we were all sitting in a Bronx funeral parlor wondering where her body was. It turned out she was accidentally shipped to PA and would be a few hours late. One of my uncles said, "well she was never on time for anything, so why should today be any different?"

My goal, and I hope I attained it, was to NOT make Barry's life sad. That sadness occurred is a reality we ALL deal with. How we face it, how we overcome it, whatever coping tools we find, utilize or discard along the way, that is what I think constitutes an interesting novel, or story arc.

I have been VERY touched by several reader E-mails and contact. I am always surprised at how invested people get. Without tipping off spoilers, some of the plot turns took readers by surprise. A few were outraged that more grief was heaped upon the character. But the symmtery appealed to me, and also the precept of how you deal with the expected versus the unexpected, and the lessons learned from each.

Lord, Nancy, that's a good one. Being late to one's own funeral, while not rude, is certainly an unexpected turn of events.

I offer another excerpt...this, the PROLOGUE that offers a glimpse into Barry Groom's here-and-now, before we jump back a year to the journey he's taken:

Prologue
“You Change.”

Let me be very clear.
I am not mocking the tiny cashier’s fractured English.
As someone who is often called “ma’am” by pizza delivery dispatch, I don’t dare.
I hesitate to even quote her. I was raised not to ridicule the language barrier of another.
I could rephrase it more PC: “Here’s your change.”
That would sound better.
But I just handed this woman with a bun a twenty dollar bill, she hit the register with those little fists, and it’s what she said:
“You change.”
My attention goes elsewhere, lost, as friends have called it, in aesthetic astigmatism, my eyes twirling different directions in survey of my radius. It’s what I do, what I used to do, edit your stuff, reduce clutter. I am that precious someone who finds exposed electrical cords distasteful, who wishes all lamps ran on batteries, the dumbass who complains in the sports bar if an HD broadcast isn’t set to the right aspect ratio. Little things, big things, they all count and OCD Me is compelled to mentally reset this bodega.
The first thing I’d do is find a new place for those small, foreign-made American flags, since I stopped counting at 52 stars.
A chalkboard tells me I can have a $3 Sanwich! For 50 cents more, can I get the D with that?
Only in Manhattan is a cellophane-wrapped, stale corn muffin an impulse purchase.
This kind of stuff drives me bonkers.
Like that dairy case, which I want to squeegee. It looks like someone’s been kissing it. I can barely see the Yoo-Hoo behind the glass.
Bunwoman says it again, serenely. I want to see what that hair looks like down.
“You change.”
A male employee, trying to activate an edible color from the bottom of a soup kettle, stops stirring to stare at this wayward customer holding flowers.
“You change.”
How many songs have been written about changing? The content always made sense; it was the context I was missing. You have to, you’re forced to, everyone else did and you didn’t, friendships change, minds change, cities change, months, loyalties, store names, genders and --
“— you change.”
My cashier clearly wants to finish the transaction. Here’s an idea, Bunwoman. Why don’t you change? And, hey! How’s that courtship working out for Eddie’s father?
It has been said that the biggest moments in your life often pass unnoticed or remarked upon.
That’s funny.
My last year has been accompanied by a John Williams score.
I just did my damndest to stay afloat. I can make order of your disorder but, for my own life, I’d need a considerably bigger featherduster.
This is not where I thought I’d be on my 46th birthday, ahead of another customer holding a plastic container of fake crab with the real stench, and not who I thought I would be, a Newer Yorker buying daisies in crinkled plastic for myself.
No, this is not, you see, the life I thought I’d be living.

Hi Rodney! I bought The Cool Part of His Pillow this week and I am really looking forward to reading it.

Are you working on something new at the moment?

Rodney wrote: "I have been VERY touched by several reader E-mails and contact. I am always surprised at how invested people get. Without tipping off spoilers, some of the plot turns took readers by surprise. A fe..."

I wonder if the outrage that readers were feeling is because they expected some sort of a romance. I'm pleased that Dreamspinner Press is welcoming new authors who deviate from standard romance formulas.

It is very realistic that when a loved one dies the living partner reminisces about the good, bad, funny and annoying aspects of that person. Barry's thoughts made Andy a richer character, one with wonderful qualities and with flaws.

Hi, Susan! Thank you for picking up TCPohP. I am, indeed, hard at work on a new novel.

Yes, I'm also interested in what you are working on now.

Yes, Nancy, I am sure the way DSP markets their works DOES build an expectation. It's also age-centric...by that, I mean some of the pop culture refernces will soar over the heads of a 25 year-old, if indeed that's even the DSP demo...I truly wrote this as a novel, with no expectation it would fall into the M/M genre. LGBTQ, yeppers, but the Romance category, hopers...yet, having come from the bowels of Marketing and Advertising, everyone looks for a niche to easily push something into, and TCPohP probably fell more into that than, say, humor.

Rodney wrote: "Hi, Susan! Thank you for picking up TCPohP. I am, indeed, hard at work on a new novel."

Can you tell us anything about it?

Most currently, though, I am finishing an essay for an anthology due out next May, 2013 from JMS Books entitled 'The Other Man'. It is about...well, uhm...The Other Man, being that guy, being cheated upon, etc. 22 notable gay male writers are contracted to contribute, and I am beyond HONORED that i was asked, based upon reviews of TCPohP, and a few online interviews that struck the editor's fancy. It WILL be a piece couched in humor, and I have been feverishly scribbling, because I have scant time in November, with the Palm Springs PRIDE appearance, etc. (I'll be there a week, at the PRIDE itself, bookstore signings, judging a drag pageant, etc.)

Well, Susan, I am always hesitant to talk about my work before it's fully gestated...kinda like how a woman 3 months along hates to announce her pregnancy...let me say it is about very good luck, and some very bad luck, and how they look a lot alike for a mother, her son, a gay male neighbor and the many people who come into their lives from 1970 until, literally, yesterday.

It does have an LGBTQ component, but it's fairly minor in comparison with the scope of the tale, following three, then 6, people on a journey from the Midwest to London, to New York, from stardom to 9/11 and a very lucky state lottery drawing.

I'm in the age group that appreciated most of the pop culture references. Many of the theatre ones went over my head, but I found Barry's interests fascinating just the same.

If I were shelving your book in my bookshop, I would proudly display it in the contemporary fiction section. And I would remove all the LGTBQ books from the ghetto and find an appropriate section for them as well.

I hear that, Nancy. NOTHING is more discouraging than going on a fruitless hunt for my book in a shop and fidning it in a dismal back corner, one shelf, near road atlases.

Rodney wrote: "Well, Susan, I am always hesitant to talk about my work before it's fully gestated...kinda like how a woman 3 months along hates to announce her pregnancy...let me say it is about very good luck, a..."

I can understand that. What you have said sounds intriguing, though. I'll look forward to it.

I GET that most LGBTQ writers, with the exception of Sedaris or Burroughs or Michael Cunningham, are not necessarily going to be on the Front Table or even an end cap at Barnes & Noble, but the marginalization of out community's literature makes me crazy. Granted, some of it is shit, but there's a lot of poo being sent out by Random House and Dutton and Knopf, too.

Distribution for a small shop like DSP is also problematic and there really is no way around it. Wal-Mart and other big box stores rule the world, and publishing is no exception when it comes to little fish/big pond.

Permit me to post one more excerpt for those who might happen upon this late and archived. This is an abridged version of a chapter called 'Inventory' in which Barry, drunkenly opting to attend a nude workout class during PRIDE weekend in Manhattan, decides to check out in the mirror what the rest of the class will be seeing.

I totally agree! There are wonderful writers that don't even get shelf space in a store. Thank goodness for the internet that gives us a better chance of discovering new writers.

Will be be doing a book signing in MA or NH in the future?

How long as it been since I objectively inspected my body as a means to an end? I have woefully forsaken the Dewey Decimal of my own bits n’ pieces. To compete in events of the flesh, I need recertification. So how old was Miss Brodie anyway when she was in her damn prime?
I stare at myself in the 3/4-length closet mirror. My people have an allergic reaction to the neglected physique. Backfat intolerance, it’s called. I tie a towel low around my hips. I turn in profile and twist, a photo trick that whittles the waistline but will be impossible to maintain during a workout. As lean as I was in my 20’s, I was never cut like that. Now I’m pleated. I retie the towel higher. With all the strides made, it seems someone should have a flesh lace-up along the backbone that I can tighten, like a corset. If I wear the sheerest Spanx available, will that count as nude? I knead my love handles (although I challenge anyone to actually carry me by them). Only when I inhale until it hurts do I locate my ribs, comfortably resting beneath soft folds.
My nipples used to be Hershey Kisses. Now they’re sun-dried tomatoes. Maybe I should go boil some water and macerate them. My breasts have begun a doughy slide into my armpits. I can’t see, but I wonder if I have hot dog neck, overlapping pink bands plumping on the back of your neck. Add some baked beans and gnats, I’m a picnic.
I have old hands, my mother’s hands. All of those refinishing solvents, that’s what did it. Old and dirty hands. I must have the shabbiest fingernails of any wealthy person I have ever known, in need of a good cuticle push.
“Well, you could stand to be thinner,” I announce to my reflection. I drop the towel and look down. “And you could be fatter.” Here’s where I’m supposed to swagger that “I ain’t had no complaints…” All cockbluster aside, I wish it looked better in a communal gym shower, but it’s an average penis, not the serious sizemeat that lends itself to puppetry but also not the convenient bite-size God saddled some with. I cup my stuff with my old, dirty hands -– my tenders, as a friend taught her young son to precociously call them. Well, my tenders aren’t so high or so tight but they also aren’t trussworthy. I don’t yet have to completely hoist my sac to just cross my legs the way I watched my dad’s dad do.
When did my legs get so puny? My calves were once sturdy. Why does a knee now look like a witch’s chin? I turn around. My flabby ass looks like a baseball mitt. That was left out in the sun. After being run over by a car. I turn back around.
Skin tags. What are they? Why are they called that? Tag, you’re it, here’s another for your left inner thigh. I find a constellation of them near my collarbone. I’m turning into an anti-slip mat. What is it Mom said about these, something about a string trick? Tie a bit around each, it cuts their blood supply, they’ll wither. Drawing attention to each dermal growth with a bow. Sounds like a winner. I stop feeling around. I don’t have enough curling ribbon.
My eyes aren’t as blue, my temples are teased with gray and flecked with hyperpigmentation and my earlobes grow goatees if untended. I stick out my tongue. It still looks gouged. Geographic tongue, my dentist called it when I asked, rough-terrain and denuded but nothing to worry about, maybe try taking zinc. I stared at it for a few days, then forgot about it, since it didn’t impede talking or swallowing.
I remember how Mom was always trying to bolster my sister Olivia: “Look around, you’re cuter and have a nicer figure than 98% of the people here, what’s the problem?” and Olivia’s monotone reply: “The 2%, Mom.”
If I mix up a pitcher of Master Cleanse right now, I wonder how much weight I can lose by tomorrow morning. Damn it. I don’t have cayenne pepper.
What the hell. What is clothing but armor? I am going to Nudercise.

Nancy, I don't know...I and DSP are always on the lookout for "event"-type things (PRIDEs, etc.) where we get visibility for the book and them as a publishing entity. LGBTQ bookstores are clearly more open to me; Barnes & Nobles in Indianapolis dinged me, and Books & Books in Miami asked for an exorbitant fee to cover insurance, security (like I would NEED security), etc. for a one-hour appearance. So if you personally know of any bookstore that might be open to it, I would happily pursue it; I have also done some TV talk show appearances and radio, so we are always also looking for opportunities to cross-pollinate.

I'm so glad you posted this excerpt! I was just looking for it.

It comes to mind when I'm working out at the gym with 20 and 30-somethings and takes my mind off my own flab.

Who was your favorite secondary character? I liked Barry's mom a whole lot and his annoying friend Potsy was hilarious.

Thank, Susan. Unless I turn into an utter and complete drunk or expire, my objective is to finish the novel by next Summer. I am a very finicky writer; I edit as I go. I wish I could push out a rough draft, then refine and refine, but that's not my my modus operandi. I rewrite as I go so, essentially, when i finish a novel, I finish. Beyond edits and fixes and clareifications, I am pretty comfortable with what I have at the end of the writing period.

Potsy, for sure. We ALL have a friend like him, whether he's stoned, an idiot, a drunk or a goofass who has never quite grasped the concept of adulthood.

While I of course relished Barry's Mom and her various second-guessing, I also knew her character arc and so, in the writing, I was wary. Now, with some distance, I can appreciate her world-weary approach to mothering, but at the time, the progression of her character was a little chilling.

I also like Marjorie, the crazy poncho-loving boss. 'ya gotta love soemone so self-abosrbed and eccentric, even if she was a piece of work that most people could never tolerate in real-life.

And, upon that, I am going to seek closure and comfort...and a glass of champagne. We are in the midst of fundraising for an AIDS/HIV social services organization in Key West, and tonight is an event that is sure to bring in dollars, one which I and my partner Greg are going to attend. The teef are taken care of, but the hair and general hygiene leave much to be desired.

I thank you for coming to the Queereaders event...talking about my work and the path toward it is always insightful, for ME, too.

Thank you, Rodney. Have a nice evening.

I hope you enjoy TCPohP, Susan, and I thank you for popping in on a Sunday afternoon.