Book Name: Inclination
Release Date: February 25, 2015
Author Name: Mia Kerick
Mia Kerick is the mother of four exceptional children—all named after saints—and five nonpedigreed cats—all named after the next best thing to saints, Boston Red Sox players. Her husband of twenty-two years has been told by many that he has the patience of Job, but don’t ask Mia about that, as it is a sensitive subject.
Mia focuses her stories on the emotional growth of troubled young people and their relationships, and she believes that physical intimacy has a place in a love story, but not until it is firmly established as a love story. As a teen, Mia filled spiral-bound notebooks with romantic tales of tortured heroes (most of whom happened to strongly resemble lead vocalists of 1980s big-hair bands) and stuffed them under her mattress for safekeeping. She is thankful to Dreamspinner Press, Harmony Ink Press, Cool Dudes, and CreateSpace for providing her with alternate places to stash her stories.
Mia is a social liberal and cheers for each and every victory made in the name of human rights, especially marital equality. Her only major regret: never having taken typing or computer class in school, destining her to a life consumed with two-fingered pecking and constant prayer to the Gods of Technology.
Where to find the author:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mia.kerick
Twitter: @MiaKerick
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/miakerick/
Publisher: Cool Dudes Publishing
Cover Artist: Louis C. Harris
Blurb:
Sixteen-year-old Anthony Duck-Young Del Vecchio is a nice Catholic boy with a very big problem. It’s not the challenge of fitting in as the lone adopted South Korean in a close-knit family of Italian-Americans. Nor is it being the one introverted son in a family jam-packed with gregarious daughters. Anthony’s problem is far more serious—he is the only gay kid in Our Way, his church’s youth group. As a high school junior, Anthony has finally come to accept his sexual orientation, but he struggles to determine if a gay man can live as a faithful Christian. And as he faces his dilemma, there are complications. After confiding his gayness to his intolerant adult youth group leader, he’s asked to find a new organization with which to worship. He’s beaten up in the church parking lot by a fanatical teen. His former best pal bullies him in the locker room. His Catholic friends even stage an intervention to lead him back to the “right path.” Meanwhile, Anthony develops romantic feelings for David Gandy, an emo, out and proud junior at his high school, who seems to have all the answers about how someone can be gay and Christian, too.
Will Anthony be able to balance his family, friends and new feelings for David with his changing beliefs about his faith so he can live a satisfying life and not risk his soul in the process?
Categories: Contemporary, Gay Fiction, Romance, Young Adult, Christian, Spiritual
Buy Links:
https://gumroad.com/l/Inclination1
Hi, it’s Mia Kerick with a guest post about how my new YA LGBT Christian romance Inclination is a love story, but not only in the traditional sense.
After reading Inclination, one of my beta readers wrote me a note saying that it was a love story, but it was Anthony’s love story with Jesus more than it was his love story with his boyfriend, David. I was thrilled that she got this message from Inclination; it was truly my goal. Having grown up in a strict Catholic family, I know that Christian youth who are highly involved with their churches can be so devoted to doing God’s will that their passion is beyond that of person in love.
Anthony is one of those extremely devoted boys. He values his relationship with God above everything else in his life. However, he has a problem. Despite his desire to live the way God wants him to, he cannot seem to change his sexuality so that he can live by the laws of the only church he has ever known, the Catholic Church. At one point in the book, he becomes frustrated with his inability to change his gayness, and he decides that the only thing he can change is his Christianity.
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Excerpt from Inclination:
“But despite my devotion to Jesus, I still know that my gayness isn’t a choice. I can’t turn it on and off like a faucet.
My gayness isn’t a choice… but my Christianity is.
I am incredibly frustrated with myself and with my friends. My next realization shocks me—I’m also frustrated with God.
My Christianity is the only thing that I can change here, I think as I drift off to sleep.
From my spot on the edge of the dirt path, I can see Him in the distance. His eyes are strangely bright, as if on fire from the human pain and fear He can’t avoid, combined with His all-encompassing love for us—for me—that tethers Him to this path. He is bloody and dirty and weary—wearier than I can even conceive of a person being. And as He struggles to put one foot in front of the other, staggering under the weight of the heavy wood, He catches my eye. And He stops to talk to me, crouching slightly to support the bulky mass on his shoulder.
“Anthony, my son….” His voice is as weak and ruined as His body.
I fight the urge to run to Him, to heft the cross upon my own back and carry it in His place.
He knows my desire and shakes His head to stop me from acting upon my urge. “You are my son, and I love you.” He recognizes my need to help Him with these simple words.
“I love you, too, my Lord! You’re everything to me and there’s no cross I won’t bear for You!” I shout the words into the small distance between us, my voice shrill and frantic with the need to be heard.
“I am carrying my cross.” His response is woven through shallow breaths, in a low but purposeful tone. “Anthony, my son, you must discover your true cross. And then you must carry it.”
He straightens up a measure, and then He staggers forward on His path to my salvation.
I wake up bathed in perspiration—and knowing, beyond a single doubt, that my love for Christ is not something I can be flexible with. I need Him. That fact is plain and simple and perfect.”
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My goal in writing this scene—this dream—was to allow the reader to grasp the sort of love that Anthony feels for Jesus. I wanted his desperation and gut-wrenching pain to be tangible. In fact, this was one of the scenes that made me I cry when I wrote it, and I fervently hope that it will affect others in a similar way. Despite his torture, Anthony’s love of God is stronger than his need to be comfortable with his sexuality.
Conflicts for teens in YA fiction come in all shapes and sizes. Anthony’s crisis with his faith forces him to make some significant changes in his way of viewing the world and his religion.
I’ll pass on the Kool-Aid, thank you
It sounds like a joke, but it’s all true. Every student who volunteers his or her time on a weekly basis at an animal shelter, a hospital, or a home for the elderly receives a free lunch on the last Monday of the month, putting to rest the veracity (got that word on the last SAT practice test I took at my desk in my bedroom the other day) of the old idiom, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” And as I spend every Sunday afternoon patting and playing with cats at the Centerton Humane Society, I qualify. If nothing else, it gives Mom a day off from making me lunch.
“It was so disgusting.”
I drop down into my usual seat in the cafeteria beside Laz, my tray with the bowl of free macaroni and cheese, a slice of bread, and milk, sliding onto the lunch table in front of me. “The mac and cheese?” I ask. “Last time I had it the stuff wasn’t too bad.” It’s not one of Mom’s gourmet lunches, but it gets the job done.
“No, Anthony.” Emma Gillis rolls her eyes and swallows her bite of free mac and cheese she earned by reading classics to the elderly on Saturday mornings at the New Horizons Elderly Center. She gulps in a breath and informs me with her usual haughtiness, “I was telling everybody about these two old men I read to last Saturday who think they are some kind of couple. They actually kissed each other.” She fake-gags.
“I threw up a little in my mouth when I saw that!”
For my own personal reasons, I gasp, while everybody else snickers.
“Those old dudes must be losing it, as in, they could have Alzheimer’s or something, and they forgot that dudes belong with ladies, not other dudes.” I glance over at Lazarus, who abruptly stops babbling to suck down the first of three cartons of chocolate milk. “But seriously, that’s messed up.” Laz wrinkles his nose in distaste and runs his hands through his shaggy dark hair, before moving on to carton number two.
I’m basically frozen, my hand still hovering over the slice of wheat bread on the corner of my tray, my mouth hanging open. I might even be drooling.
“It’s not their fault, Emma.” Elizabeth-the-devout always takes the case of the underdog. It’s how she’s wired. “They’re just sick in their minds.” She sends Emma a you-ought-to-be-ashamed-of yourself sort of frown. “We, as Catholics, are called to compassion.”
Everyday single day at lunch since freshman year, I’ve sat with the kids from the Our Way youth group. In fact, the other kids in my grade have long referred to our lunch table as “Our Way to Survive Cafeteria Food”, which somewhere along the line got shortened to the “OWSCF Table”, which eventually morphed into “awe-scoff”. I have always felt safe and secure sitting at the awe-scoff table. These are the kids I’ve prayed with three times a week at Our Way, and the ones who I was confirmed with in ninth grade. I’ve collected toys for the poor with these kids—in fact, for three years running we’ve made sure that no child in Wedgewood missed out on having a small stack of Christmas gifts, and that brings about some major bonding. We’ve shared weekends camping in the Maine woods, singing and holding hands and sometimes crying when the Spirit moved us.
This is my safe spot at school, like my tiny room is my alone spot at home.
“If you ask me, all fags deserve to die for going against Christ and everything that’s natural. They should be forced to drink poison Kool-Aid, like those cultists had to do down in Jonestown…’member that?” Is that Rinaldo Vera who just suggested mass murder as the “final solution” to the gay problem?
Sweet, passive Rinaldo—the gentle giant. Um, not so much.
“I saw a TV movie called the Jonestown Massacre.”
“I caught that too…those people were warped.”
The conversation drifts away from the vileness of homosexuality, toward the disturbing personal stories of the few survivors of the Jim Jones Cult Kool-Aid Massacre. But I’ve heard more than enough, in terms of stuff that pertains to me.
Feeling as if I’m going to lose what little lunch I ate, I jump up off my chair and race toward the boys’ room in the hall near the cafeteria.
Maybe there really is no such thing as a free lunch.
Pages or Words: 70,000 words
Tour Dates/Tour Stops:
23-Feb
24-Feb
25-Feb
26-Feb
27-Feb
2-Mar
3-Mar
4-Mar
5-Mar
6-Mar
9-Mar
Wicked Faerie’s Tales and Reviews
10-Mar
11-Mar
12-Mar
13-Mar
Rafflecopter Prize: One of three copies from Mia’s extensive backlist
Thank you LOVE BYTES REVIEWS for hosting me today on my book tour. The topic I discussed is probably one of my most important points and goals for the book. Inclination is a love story- but not just in the sense of Anthony falls in love with David. Anthony and David also have a love story with Jesus and that is why this YA conflict is so important. Thanks for reading!
Congratulations on your books. I’m looking forward to reading them.