A warm welcome to author Michael Bailey joining us today to talk about new release “Looking Forward”.

Michael is telling us a secret 😉 , shares an exclusive excerpt and brought a giveaway to participate in!

Welcome Michael 🙂

 

Looking Forward

Michael Bailey

Gay Fiction

258 Pages

Release Date: 08.22.18

Cover Design: Jay Aheer

 

BLURB:

Owen Hannity was nineteen when he lost almost everyone he thought he could trust. Each loss more painful than the last.

With the unwavering support of his best friend, Andy, Owen put the pieces of his life back together. Now, more than two decades later, Owen owns and operates a successful comic shop. Despite his modicum of success, he still feels like a shell of a man, carrying the emotional scars from his past.

Without warning, Owen’s past returns. Secrets come to light. Secrets that could either destroy Owen or finally give him the strength to re-evaluate everything he thought he knew about Andy, himself, and the way in which he views the world.

To see that he is truly worthy of loving himself and finally begin…

…Looking Forward.

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I have a secret to tell.

I started writing “Looking Forward” in November of 2017. I knew when I started that Owen’s story was going to be a difficult one to tell. I knew where he came from and how hard he had fought to put himself back together after his world fell apart. Translating all of that to the page was going to be excruciating.

The problem that I had was two-fold. First of all, Owen was a character introduced in my first book, “Looking In.” That book was written as close to what I felt romance was as I could possibly get, while still telling the kind of story I wanted to tell. Owen’s story was even further from romantic than David’s was. (As an aside, yes, I view each book from the perspective of a single MC. They are the one’s that speak to me initially, and they’re the ones that typically need their HEA.) I struggled early on trying to fit his story into the mold of what is considered romance. Which also meant that I knew what I wanted his HEA to be. That little piece becomes very important in a little bit.

The second problem I ran into was the fact that I couldn’t get the other MC to talk. I prefer stories told from the First Person, from both MC’s perspective. For me, it allows the reader to get into the head of both leads, to see what they see and feel what they feel. So not being able to get the other MC to talk was incredibly frustrating. I tried, I really did. There were times, few and far between, where he would give me little pieces of insight into his motivation, but for the most part, he was quiet as a church mouse.

I tried to force it, which was my first mistake. I knew where I wanted the story to end up, and who I wanted Owen to end up with. I had The Plan!! (Yes, capitalized because it was important at the time.) But I just couldn’t make it work, not with the other MC not talking. So, I decided to go with a single MC perspective, and cut over 7,000 words. Now, to some, that may not seem like a lot, especially to those that have the ability to pump out 2,000 at a time. But I write primarily on the weekend. Cutting that much was especially devastating.

Ultimately, I was much more comfortable with that decision.

A friend of mine had given me a deadline. Unfortunately, I missed the first one, then the second one. I was bound and determined to make the third one. That was in March, 2018.

But then this really weird thing happened. We’ve all heard stories about secondary characters that suddenly begin to “talk.” They sometimes make their presences known in ways that we could never have imagined. It happened with Greg from the first book, and it happened with another character in this one. I vividly remember sitting at a table in Starbucks, happily typing away on my laptop, when this character whispered something in my ear. Something that would change the course of the story if I went with it.

I had a choice to make: listen to what this character was saying or continue on with The Plan.

I couldn’t allow anything to distract me from The Plan. I had already missed two deadlines, and I was terrified of missing the third and letting someone down. So, I ignored what this character said. I ultimately finished the book. In time for the third deadline. But something seemed…off. That’s the best way I can describe it. The book didn’t feel right.

I sent it to him anyway, as well as two other people.

And waited.

When I heard back, all three said exactly the same thing. And I knew where I went wrong. Had I listened to what that character told me months before, the book as it is now would have been finished long before it was. I knew at that point why it felt wrong when the first draft was finished, and I knew where and what needed changes. Almost half the book was rewritten, all because I didn’t listen to one sentence from one character who, at the time, was rather insignificant. But that one sentence ultimately did change the trajectory of the entire book. For the better.

I’m still new to writing. I still have a lot to learn, and I honestly don’t think I’ll ever stop learning. But the one take away from that experience is to listen to what your characters are telling you, no matter how insignificant you think they may be, or how much they may alter your plan. Because at the end of the day, the thing they tell you could mean the difference between staying true to your characters, or shoe-horning the story into what you

“Did you realize there are different kinds of love?”

“I guess on some level I did. To be perfectly honest, it’s not something I’ve thought about a lot.”

“Given what you went through when you were younger, that’s not surprising. You were taught that love hurts, it’s painful, and it’s conditional. People that were supposed to love you unconditionally didn’t. They threw you out without hesitation. I have no doubt in my mind that you were in love with Jack and he walked away from you without hesitation or a second glance. Those acts gave you a skewed view of what love really is, they made you blind to it.”

Meghan paused, allowing me to really absorb what she was saying. I knew on some deeper level that she was right. That admission, if only to myself, hurt more than I could have ever guessed. Could I have closed myself off so completely? And, if so, what was it I felt for Jack? Or Andy, for that matter?

“There’s the love a parent feels for a child,” she continued. “There’s the love one family member feels toward another. There’s the love like you feel for Andy or for me, which feels completely different. Hell, there’s even the love you feel for a pet. There can also be different types of romantic love as well.”

“Possibly.”

“Definitely. There’s the romantic love where you feel yourself falling, nonstop and headlong. You can’t stop yourself, you don’t want to stop yourself. It’s new and electric. It’s exciting because here’s this person you’ve never met before who only has eyes for you. The problem with that kind of love is that sometimes it can burn out quickly. By the time you realize it, you feel stuck. You end up complacent, taking the other person for granted because you know they’ll always be there.

“Then there’s another kind. One that takes years to build. Sometimes it starts off small, you don’t even see it or feel it for what it really is. It sneaks up on you and turns something wonderful into something magnificent. It wraps you up like a blanket. You feel safe with it. It’s not as…addictive as the other, there isn’t a high that comes along with it. It’s subtler. It’s that feeling you have for, say, a friend when you realize that person is the one person you never want to be without. That one person who makes the worst days better or that you want to take the pain from. That you want to share all of your successes and failures with, no matter how big or small. That one person you would move heaven and earth for.”

“Meghan, what’s this all about? Why are you telling me all this?”

She paused for a moment and looked down at her desk.

I’m the oldest of three, from the Glass Capital of the world, Toledo Ohio.

Don’t laugh too hard.

I’ve dreamed of writing since I was eleven years old when I wrote a truly awful Choose-Your-Own-Adventure. It sold exactly zero copies. I think my mother may have a copy lying around somewhere. Mothers keep that kind of thing.

Through junior high and high school, I wrote a number of short stories, one actually published in the first (and only) issue of his high school’s literary magazine.

Life took control shortly thereafter, as it often does, and the dream of writing was put on hold. Then, in November of 2016, I took a leap of faith, and began writing my first novel as part of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) competition. The goal of the competition is to write a 50,000-word novel in a thirty-day period.

I failed.

However, on the advice of a friend, I “pushed through”. And so, in September of 2017, my first novel was published.

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