It’s pride month, and as I sit and contemplate this journey into writing LGBTQ fiction and romance, I’m reminded of the first story. The story that almost didn’t get told. As I’ve written about in guest posts on blogs before, I started writing as part of an online roleplay game. I would develop wrestling characters, like professional wrestling style, and write their storylines, which were a good basis for learning the art of storytelling, their promos which taught me how to write dialogue, and even the matches, which went a long way in teaching me to write an action sequence.

After a good fifteen years of playing the game and generating a host of characters and writing with other folks in which we took our characters out of the wrestling world and into paranormal universes, I realized that I really didn’t want to limit myself to the game any longer.

At that time, I was writing a story arc in which my oldest character, Asher, had been left in charge of his nephew by his ex sister-in-law while she went job hunting in Canada. It was done as a suggestion by a fellow player who wanted to see what would happen if I gave this loner character, who was often times erratic, someone to be responsible for.

It was supposed to be short, three, maybe four pieces where he’s trying to adjust to having the kid around before the mom showed back up to get him, but that wasn’t where the story went. Instead, as he is learning to take care of the kid and put his needs first, he also very slowly, and at times, reluctantly, learned to be honest with himself about who he was, and what he wanted out of life.

And yet, there was this moment when this character I had written for years, who’d had failed relationship after failed relationship, connects with a neighbor, a male neighbor, and reveals to me that he was quite interested in the other man.

I’d always written my stories the way the characters gave them to me. I’d always loved how they were like Christmas presents waiting to be opened and each new reveal was a brand new surprise, and yet, when that surprise popped up, I hesitated. For the first time ever, I wasn’t going to write what the character wanted me to. I was going to write what was expected.

Only, the more I sat there, the more the character refused to reveal more of the story past that moment until I wrote it the way they were showing to me. Finally, after a few days of inactivity and a deadline to produce a roleplay looming ever closer, I sat down and analyzed exactly why I was being so hesitant in the first place.

The answer was simple, really. I was scared.

Very few people in my life knew I was bisexual, even fewer knew that I consider myself to be gender fluid. I was scared to give my character the relationship he wanted because I was scared to acknowledge my own feelings and desires, and even more so, scared to paste his story into a roleplay board filled with mostly guys I’d known for years who I didn’t think were as open as it turned out they were.

In the end, I wrote what the character wanted, he’s always been stubborn that way.

Instead of giving me a hard time, my writing companions encouraged me to continue the story and finish the storyline, which, is still ongoing. The story became Guitars and Cages, it was continued in Guitars and Choices and soon, part three will be revealed in Guitars and Canvases.

Now, when I look back on that moment of indecision, I am reminded of how much it sucked to feel like I had to hide who I was, and be afraid to write the story I wanted. Yesterday, I went to Des Moines Pride, and I wore my rainbow colors proudly as I wandered the East Village, and today, when I was out in Waterloo, I wore my Queer pin on my dress, because I no longer feel like I have to hide it anymore. I can be proud of being me, and I can be proud of the stories I write, and I can be proud of knowing that with each one I create, I am further spreading the message that love is love and everyone deserves a happy ending.

So here it is, a little snippet of the story that started it all.

“Uncle Asher, Uncle Asher!”
Oh God, one more hour of rest, please, is that too much to ask? One more hour, and then I swear, I’ll get up and take the kid to the park or the zoo or the aquarium or the movies or wherever the hell it is that he’s gonna beg for me to take him today. I’ll get him McDonald’s, an ice-cream sundae, a slice of his favorite pizza, anything for sixty more minutes of sleep. And yet still the bouncing continued, as well as the loud repeating of my name. Apparently, silence wasn’t making the point and the kid wasn’t gonna go away without some sort of verbal acknowledgement from me. I groaned, and he began his singsong chant again. When the hell did they grow outta that shit, anyway?
“Uncle Asher, Uncle Asher, Uncle Asher, Uncle Asher!”
Every word punctuated with a bounce, goddammit all; whoever said you had to die to be in hell was a bloody fool.
“Rory!” I roared, realizing as he toppled from the bed and landed on the floor with a thud that I’d likely scared the hell out of him.
Silence, oh blessed, blessed silence.
“Uncle Asher?” he asked hesitantly now, and much, much quieter. I groaned, as the silence had been far too fleeting.
“Rory, is the apartment on fire?” I asked, refusing to pull the pillow away from my face and acknowledge the sunlight that I knew was shining into the room.
“No.”
“Are the cops at the door?”
“No,” he responded with a bit of a sigh.
“Is the whor… err, my girlfriend at the door?” I asked, hoping he hadn’t caught my little slip.
“Uh-uh,” he said solemnly. Well, that was a good thing, anyway; I was beginning to not be as fond of her as I’d once been.
“So, is the Super at the door demanding rent?” I asked, figuring that was a bit of a long shot since I’d paid the rent at the start of the week.
“Nope,” he said, and I could feel him climb up and sit on the edge of the bed.
“Has the zombie apocalypse started?”
“Uhh no, but wouldn’t that be awesome?”
I chuckled into the pillow. Awesome wasn’t quite the word I’d use, but hell, if several people I knew managed to get themselves turned into walking corpses at the very least I could shoot them in the head and actually get away with it.
“Have aliens landed on the roof?” I asked him, and now he was laughing.
“Don’t they only land in cornfields?” he replied, and I groaned and let out a long-suffering sigh.
“So let me get this straight. There’s no mass hysteria, no flames, no one at the door, and no zombies on the streets, and yet you’re waking me up a whole hour before I told you it was okay?”
“Well, yeah, but you gotta get up or you’re gonna be in trouble,” Rory said in a quiet voice that sort of scared me. It certainly got the pillow from over my face, and I opened my eyes, blinking at the soaking-wet form of him sitting on my bed. Why was he soaking wet and fully dressed and getting water all over the place? And did I really want to know?
“What did you do?” I groaned. I don’t wanna know, I don’t wanna know, I don’t wanna know, a voice inside my head practically screamed as I could hear what sounded like running water hitting the floor in the other room. I threw the sheet aside and bolted toward the sound—too fast, because as soon as I hit the next room I went skidding across the damned linoleum floor and crashing into the kitchen cupboards.

Asher Logan is a bartender and a pretty wicked guitar player, when he isn’t wrecking his hands fighting in a cage. With a past he keeps hoping to outrun, Asher’s been on a downward spiral for longer than he can remember. When his sister-in-law leaves Rory, his eight-year-old nephew, in his care, Asher is forced into two things he’s never been good at: sobriety and responsibility. As he struggles to care for Rory, his own life begins to unravel.

When Asher’s brother, Alex, turns up, presenting as a girl and announcing her new name is Alexia, it further complicates matters, as does the arrival of his new neighbor, Conner. Both, in their own way, compel Asher to look at his own closely-guarded views on sexuality.

When the siblings’ older brother, Cole, reacts violently to Alexia, Asher is placed squarely in the middle of a family conflict which compels him to confront who he pretends to be versus who he really is.

Asher must choose who to trust and who to finally walk away from.