Today we are happily welcoming Author David Pratt to Love Bytes talking about romance and he also offers a Giveaway !

Welcome David !

I am a romantic. What does that mean? To me it means I long  to see the good in people and in life. I long for people to be good and kind, and if they are not, I get angry and cast them in my fiction as bad characters. Even then I like to see them redeemed. Perhaps by being funny. By being frank. By succeeding in spite of the odds. By doing the odd good thing. Many fans of Looking After Joey have said that it is not a conventional romance. But it sure comes from a romantic point of view. To me there is nothing more beautiful and poignant than romance tinged with reality. So Joey has a realistic point of view, too. Quite a feat for a book that starts with a fortyish man entering a porn video, and goes on to have him bring a young man out of that video, into this world.

The results are comical—Joey wants to have sex, but he can’t tell time; the only food he understands is beer and pizza; he’s shown Cabaret, but rather than adore Liza, as a gay man should, he falls for the Nazis, because they’re hot. His dilemma is also touching—where he comes from, time does not exist, so he gets upset that now his hair and nails grow. Time means loss, but loss can be romantic, too. “Looking after” doesn’t just mean “caring for.” When someone walks away, you say you “look after” them. And parting is sweet sorrow. I hope there are both tears and smiles at the end, when Joey, now on his own, meets Calvin for a coffee that Calvin arranged because he missed his boy. They embrace, and Calvin has just the beginnings of an erection.

I am a dad, and my characters are my children. To me, almost nothing is more romantic than being a dad. A few years ago a straight friend of mine in his twenties rested his head on my lap as we watched TV. Like Calvin with Joey, I got the beginnings of an erection, but what really swelled was my heart. Though he had a fine dad of his own, I felt how much at that moment my young friend needed me and trusted me.

In a short story I wrote, I created what I think is a touching and telling scene of finding fatherhood:

A middle-aged man hooks up with a law student who wants “discipline.” They arrange a role-play: coach and student. The boy comes to the man’s apartment. The man is stepping out of the shower. He makes his “student” confesses his misdeeds, then orders him to strip. The “coach” removes his towel, puts the boy over his knee, and paddles him. He starts by scolding but ends up asking the boy every few swats if he is all right. He stops paddling, though the boy can take more, and tries to edge the conversation toward sex. The boy says, “Actually, I’d like if you held me, Coach.” They lie naked on the man’s bed, and the man holds the boy to his chest. It is the man’s favorite part of himself. His chest is deep and hairy, like his own dad’s, and he holds the boy there and strokes his hair. The boy can see the man’s penis, soft, but he does not touch it. He does not make it an object of desire; he admires it as a sign of the man’s strength and nurturing.

But I digress.

 

I am not a biological dad, though there are many young people, young men in particular, about whom I have felt paternal. Writing fiction lets me be a dad in a different way—a dad to my characters, and I love them all. They are all me. That’s me, awestruck by the calves of soldiers in the Prado (Calvin). That’s me, obsessed by obscure gay cultural figures and inflicting my taste on others (Peachy). That’s me, feeling clueless and afraid to go out (Joey). And I can only hope I might also be Doug , with his capacity for unconditional love. And I would love to have Jeffrey’s character and personality, and Melinda’s tough-as-nails ability to love and to defy fate.

As dad of the book, I have also adopted (created) some difficult kids, too. I am dad to Stuart, who is loud and sex-obsessed, but he plants trees in Israel, and he helps Jeffrey publish the story of his personal struggle. I am dad to Desmond, who is a self-involved lech, but his lechery is frank and upfront and it succeeds, and Desmond does help the young men he lusts after. I am dad even to the villains, whom I try to understand and love. What terrible fears brew in Jürgen’s mind for him to do what he does? What insecurities lie behind Bunce’s cheery machinations? Bunce is funny, but I think I failed him a bit. Dads have moments of thinking they failed their kids. If I wrote a sequel, I would be more sympathetic to Bunce.

Now, though, my kids are all out in the world. They are on their own. I will always love them, and I hope you will, too. Isn’t it romantic?

 

Title : Looking After Joey

Author : David Pratt

Publisher : Wilde City Press

Length: 334 pages

Blurb:

From the author of Bob the Book comes a funny, fast-paced, touching tale of love, laughter, family of choice and fabulousness! Wouldn’t it be great if a character from a porn movie stepped right out of your TV, into your life? Well, be careful what you wish for.  Because that’s how Calvin and Peachy end up looking after Joey. Then Peachy decides to make Joey the center of in a social-climbing scheme that will take them all from Chelsea to Park Avenue to Fire Island and will entangle a rogues’ gallery of eccentric Manhattanites, including portly, perspiring publicist Bunce van den Troell; theatrical investor Sir Desmond Norma; studly thespian Clive Tidwell-Smidgin; and evil lubricant king Fred Pflester and his mysterious nephew, Jeffrey. Tender, wise, witty and utterly deranged, Looking After Joey will make you wish you, too, had a porn character sitting at your kitchen table, pointing at the toast and asking, “What’s this called again?”

Buy Links:

Wilde City Press

Amazon

 

About the Author:

David Pratt is the author of the Lambda Award-winning novel Bob the Book (Chelsea Station Editions) and a new novel, Looking After Joey, from Wilde City Press. His short stories have been collected in My Movie, also from Chelsea Station. He has published in several periodicals and anthologies. He has presented work for the theater in New York at HERE, Dixon Place, the Cornelia Street Cafe, the Flea Theater and the NY International Fringe Festival.

 

 

 

 

 

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