SHINY!
by Amy Lane

Blurb: Will Lafferty and Kenny Scalia are both having sort of a day. Will gets fired for letting fifth graders read Harry Potter, and Kenny finds his boyfriend and his sex toys in bed with a complete stranger. When Will knocks over Kenny’s trash can—and strews Kenny’s personal business all over the street—it feels like the perfect craptastic climax to the sewage of suckage that has rained down on them both.

But ever-friendly, ever-kind Will asks snarky Kenny out for a beer—God knows they both need one—and two amazing things occur: Kenny discovers talking to Will might be the best form of intercourse ever, and Will discovers he’s gay.

Their unlikely friendship seems like the perfect platonic match until Will reveals how very much more he’s been feeling for Kenny almost since the beginning. But Kenny’s worried. Will’s new-found sexuality is bright and glittery and shiny, but what happens when that wears off? Is Will’s infatuation with Kenny strong enough to stay real?

BUY LINK: Shiny!

 ——————–

People Like Me 

I’ve always had an inappropriate sense of humor.  Sometimes terribly inappropriate—I can’t believe what I found funny, because Tosh 2.0 wouldn’t do that joke.

But sometimes, I just knew it was funny.  I was sure of it.  I’d read enough books, seen enough comedy routines, worshipped enough movies to have developed my sense of irony.  Either something was off with my delivery but after years teaching and in theater, I was pretty sure that wasn’t it.  I could make the students laugh and they were a tough crowd!  Maybe… just maybe…

I was hanging out with the wrong people.

Wait.

Who was I hanging out with again?

Well, academics, high school teachers, my parents and their friends…

Uh-oh.  You know maybe I should talk to some people who are interested in some of my interests, and see if maybe I can tell a joke to save my life.

And hence, Internet.  Hence, male/male romance groups.  Hence, my publishers and getting published and finding new friends.

Hence my bestest friend, someone my age, in my place in life, who grew up on the same movies and laughed at the same thing.

I think she’s a riot—and I’d die for her.

And suddenly, I realize, ohmygod!  What I write isn’t porn, all my jokes aren’t crap, and the things I have to say aren’t bullshit.

But discovering that—finding my tribe or my bestie—that wasn’t easy.  That took an awful lot of looking around and talking to people and realizing that my tribe was a very select group of people.  The way we look at the world in m/m was (at that time) so very, very different.  Parts of the world are skewing around toward us, but more than that, we are refusing to be cowed by the people who don’t.

We have found our tribe, gathered, become a voice to be reckoned with.

But for so many of us, it all started with a whisper, a blog, a book, a fan-letter, a chat-group, a moment of saying, “These!  These are my people, and they are good and kind and smart and funny and educated and creative and amazing!  If these people like me, I might not be the complete asshole I’m starting to feel like when I talk to other people around me.”

And then we feel blessed.

My new book, Shiny! Features that sort of relationship—the moment of friendship, of realizing, “Hey!  Through sheer cock-up and freak of chance, I’ve found someone who gets me!”  and then realizing that “Oh my god!  This person is integral to my being!  How did I make it through a single day without him?”

Those who know me, know my journey through writing in the last few years, are going to recognize some other similarities to my life—I very rarely write things without little pieces of me embedded inside—but that one right there is the most important:

We can find our tribe in the most unlikely places—and if that happens, hang on to them.  People who laugh at your jokes are gold, platinum, diamonds, rubies and pearls.

That’s what happened to Will and Kenny in Shiny! – because that’s what happened to me.