First Things

I want to give a big thanks to Dani and the Love Bytes crew for the opportunity to write this monthly guest post. From a writer’s POV, I’ve found Love Bytes to be one of the more professionally run LGBT lit sites. It’s always been a pleasure to work with them.

So who is this del Mar Guy?

I’m an American-Euro-mutt-gay-male that is quickly sliding toward 60. I come from Midwestern and Southern farm stock, with a few doctors, nurses, school teachers, engineers, and just plain hard working folk thrown in. This boils down to two important themes in my family’s DNA: love and respect for the land (nature), and the love of education and literature. Interestingly enough, these themes also show up in my writing.

As a boy, I was fortunate to spend several summers on my great-uncle’s farm in central Florida. Living in the old family home built by great-grandfather (one of the first doctors in Mount Dora) gave me a sense of rootedness—a tangible connection with wider family and the past. Something that I think is rare in our modern culture of mobility and cookie-cutter suburbs.

The tensions between Northern and Southern sensibilities played out in my family. My father’s people alternated between Indiana and Florida and my mother’s did the same only with South Carolina being the southern point. In fact, my mother’s maternal grandmother was ostracized from the family in South Carolina for running away with “that damn Yankee.” The family eventually mended itself. I find most families want to heal and reach some kind of stasis—to at least scab over so the wounds aren’t bleeding anymore.

One of the things I love about my southern heritage is the way we use language and tell stories. As a boy, we’d visit the folks in South Carolina and I’d just sit and listen to the “cousins” of my grandmother’s generation talk. Too often, the southern accent is associated with provincialism and ignorance. But, I come from a well-educated family and the cadence, turn of phrase, and the easy and deliberate way they’d spin a story was enthralling. A tale of hanging the wash out on the line on a windy day or chasing the chickens out of the garden told over a helping of peach cobbler and ice cream was high entertainment!

If only I could have spent more time with them and absorbed more. My attempts at capturing the Southern Voice are feeble echoes at best. But the echoes of the family are there and I strive to make the family proud.

Pins in a Map

One of the hallmarks of southern lit is the importance of place, often spoken of as using the setting as character. Of course, every region and culture is impacted by their environment, but somehow the live oaks, Spanish moss, humidity, and sweet tea gets under our skin, ruminates around, and comes out in how we tell stories. I’ve taken this importance of place with me as I’ve moved around the country and visited a few other points on the globe.

I did most of my growing up in various parts of Florida and then was yanked away from paradise and plopped down in southern Arizona for my last year and a half of high school. I did some college in eastern Washington state (bleak as fuck in winter) and grad-school in Minnesota. I really fell in love with the land and people of that state, but I’m happy to be back “home” in Florida, especially with the winter they’re having right now. (January 2019)

All of these places have turned up in my stories, sometimes as protagonist and sometimes as antagonist (I’m looking at you Arizona). I’ll get into this more when I write posts about the writing craft and my process. Suffice it to say, I’ve been greatly impacted by the places I’ve lived and that comes out in my writing.

Studies & Passions

It seems appropriate in a writer’s introduction to mention my studies and passions. As a kid, I had a passion for science—the story of how the universe works. This probably isn’t too surprising for the son of an engineer growing up on Florida’s Space Coast. The Apollo Space Program was happening thirty miles from my front door. We’d watch the liftoff on TV, walk out front, and watch the Saturn V booster hurl three members of our species into space. Science Fiction wasn’t speculative—it was happening right then. My friend’s dads were building spaceships—real honest to god spaceships! Arthur C. Clarke was my favorite author at the time and I got to watch him on TV chatting about space travel with Walter Cronkite all the time. (Yes, I was reading Clarke in late elementary and middle school—total nerd.)

Despite the space stuff, the area of science I really had a passion for was biology. There was some natural Florida still left when I was a kid and I was fascinated with all the critters. For a long time I was going to be a marine ecologist and then I suddenly found myself in the desert. Fantasy became more important and I survived my last year and a half of high school walking in Middle Earth, thanks to Mr. Tolkien.

I had a number of majors in college while trying to figure out what the hell I wanted to do with myself. I ended up with a degree in video production because the pull of storytelling, especially visual storytelling, was just too strong to ignore. I think my script writing classes were more helpful than any creative writing class I ever had in the English department.

Life happened and I ended up in Minnesota studying theology—moving on to major meta-level Story. While there, I learned a lot about justice, liberation, action, and politics. Then, there was that bit about all my brothers dying from that fucking plague, still not sure how I dodged that one.

In seminary, we learned context was essential in understanding a text. Whether an ancient one or contemporary work, you needed to know the context of the work, and, if possible, the author. I hope learning more about me will contextually ground my work and give you a deeper appreciation of the themes behind it.

Scrivenings

To date, I’ve published five novels, a novella, and a number of short stories. The Bennett Bay Stories and the Live Oak Tales, a paranormal sub-series, are all set in and around the fictional Florida town of Bennett Bay. They have a telenovela—soap opera vibe to them and the best way to sum my Bennett Bay Stories is to think of them as the southern love child between Dark Shadows and Queer as Folk.

My work is character driven with a strong sense of place. The prevalent themes are loss, love, family—the families we are born into and the ones that find us along the way, and humor. Be aware, that humor can be rather adult-gay-male at times and extremely silly.

If you are interested, you can find a list of my books on Amazon here. One of my projects this year is to expand them to other retailers, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Word Magic

So why did I pick Word Magic as the title of this post series? Admittedly as a writer, I’m rather biased, but I think written language is the most killer app humanity has come up with to date. It’s simple—a few glyphs scratched into or on something and one person’s thoughts are not only stored but they can be transmitted through time and space. To an old guy born in the analog world, the fact that this electronic text of mine can be read all over the world is damn amazing.

However, you know what’s even more amazing? I can pick up a translation of some old clay tablets from thousands of years ago and read about King Gilgamesh, his lover Enkidu, and their adventures to challenge the gods. Now if that isn’t magic, I don’t know what the hell is.

The Path Forward

Okay, you still there? I know this has gone on longer than I intended, but I’m southern and we’re not known for brevity. Also, as you get older it takes a bit longer to get at who you are. I’m finding I have a renewed appreciation of Ents. But, I wanted to share where I hope to take this column over the next few months.

I plan on going into more detail about the literary works that have influenced me personally and as a writer. (Hum, as I look at that, I’m not sure that is a functional dichotomy.) A bit about my take on the craft of writing and my process, because everyone always seems to be interested in that. However, I’d really like to make this more interactive. Let me know what you’d like to hear about. What have you always wanted to ask one of those crazy people that have entire words in their head and feels the need to inflict the crazy on others?

Pax,
Stephen

About Stephen del Mar

Stephen del Mar lives in the Tampa Bay area and writes in the Southern Literary Tradition. His stories are character driven with rich settings. They often have a touch of the paranormal, supernatural, or magical realism.

Although he writes about serious subjects, they are sweetened with humor and wit. He says, “It’s a southern thing.”

Stephen del Mar’s book list on Amazon.