A warm welcome to author Scudder James JR joining us today to talk about new release “Power Players”.
I’m Scudder James Jr, celebrating the release of my book, Power Players. Thank you for the chance to be part of the fantastic Love Bytes community.
I married a guy I met in a college history class. I was a closeted fraternity guy, and he was out-and-proud on campus, marching in vigils, protesting, and singing German art songs. Early one September, he wrote in the margins of his notebook, “Cute guy in red sweater.” That was me. I noticed him shortly thereafter when he wore a “Gay rights are human rights” button to class. We began the dance of getting to know each other. I still wake up with Eric every morning and I know I’m in heaven.
Eric’s college experience was the opposite of my mine. He was healthy, open, balanced and so mature he was a Resident Assistant in a freshman dorm, then Resident Coordinator for a large quadrant of campus. He ran orientations and games to help people get to know one another. I was a writing major struggling to find my voice. Back then, I wouldn’t have written about characters like Jeffrey and Derek in Power Players. Why am I telling you this? All to say, I’ve loved the curiosity and open questions I learned through Eric and his thoughtful friends. They’re how I live now and inspire the kind of questions I’ll answer here.
Why do you write? I love telling stories. I especially love editing, for me, a process of getting closer and closer to truth.
What revisionist history book would you like to write? If I had a history kind of mind, I’d write about what North America might be like if Napoleon hadn’t desperately needed money for his war and sold the United States territory from the gulf of Mexico to Canada. What if there had been no Louisiana Purchase and North America today were three countries, the United States along the entire the East Coast, New France at the center, and New Spain on the West coast? A good North American would be tri-lingual.
What kind of secret society would you like to start? The Daily Kindness Society.
Is there something you feel foolish about not realizing earlier? I was convinced my laptop and Word program were showing their age by acting up and refusing to acknowledge that the word paraphanalia was correctly spelled. To be clear, I don’t have a Boston accent. My mother is from the Midwest, my father the South, and I was born in D.C, although I’d we’d moved to Massachusetts when I was a toddler. Frustrated at Word for telling me paraphanalia didn’t exist, I Googled the word. I was wrong. Was it a relic of growing up outside Boston that I missed the middle “R” in paraphERnalia?
What literary character would you like to meet? I’d like to talk with Jack the day he drove away from Ennis in Brokeback Mountain after a surprise visit. Listen, Jack, Ennis wasn’t expecting you. He had his kid for the weekend. Get a room, wait it out, connect with him later. Don’t get pissed, think everything is over and go to Ciudad Juarez for a hookup. Talk it out with Ennis.
Favorite movie? About Time.
Guilty pleasure favorite movie? Holiday with Kate Winslet & Jack Black, Cameron Diaz & Jude Law. Jude Law in a tweed. I repeat, Jude Law in a tweed. And, um, yeah, that’s kind of my husband, a Missouri farm-boy gone professional and now sometimes in a tweed.
In your personal life, what would you like this time next year to be? I currently have a part-time day job. I’d prefer to write full time.
In Power Players, do you identify more with Jeffrey or Derek? Neither, really. I grew up closer to Derek, but my work life has been more similar to Jeffrey’s. I do wish I had the powerful focus and determination of both characters.
Power Players blurb
Jeffrey knows the underbelly of Washington, DC, well. Once homeless, he’s now the director of a massive coalition of shelters. The last person he’s interested in meeting is wealth consultant Derk. T. Hinsdale III, another slick-talking, privileged jerk. Jeffrey has had enough of those.
But Derek’s latest project could impact Jeffrey’s organization – with a multimillion-dollar gift awarded at a special dinner and ceremony. Jeffrey and Derek seem so different, but in their convictions, they find common ground, and the heat they call up in each other can’t be ignored. Can they salvage a disastrous evening and a painful reminder of Jeffrey’s past?
Buy Links:
Where I grew up wasn’t the toughest of DC’s tough, but twenty years ago, violence had been my fear, not gentrification. When Mom died it sucked, until I left at age fifteen, never wanting to see my father or Columbia Heights again. Eddie changed all that. He taught me love. No, he wasn’t my first boyfriend. Not exactly, well, no, not at all because his heart and all that always belonged to the ladies, but eventually he introduced me to other guys who liked guys the same way I did. In truth, he introduced me to myself. And to the future. When I was a homeless fifteen-year-old, he introduced me to his family, and I shared a room with him for the rest of high school. He also introduced me to people who helped get me to college, and he taught me how to give back. Seriously, he saved me. I could say Eddie knew what was best for me. So why, decades later, was he trying to introduce me to exactly the sort of guy he knew I hated to be around
Derek T. Hinsdale III? Just the name, and Eddie should have known better. Slick DC wealth consultant? What the hell was a wealth consultant anyway? Clearly a job for a clueless guy who thought being surrounded by money was normal. Who cared if he bankrolled some of the best political and philanthropic causes? Who cared if the work he supported impacted not just DC but the whole country? Yes, I’d seen his name on donor lists, and yes, he supported good work and could be a good guy, but I wasn’t interested in someone from the stratosphere. There were enough guys around. Couldn’t Eddie have suggested someone who breathed my kind of air? How could he not understand that Derek Hinsdale was not someone I wanted to be set up with?
Scudder James Jr bio
I believe happily-ever-after begins today. Junior high was terrible, boarding school better, and college the place where I met the guy I married. I started working in finance because I thought I was supposed to, but quickly left for an ideal job helping refugees. I have since become a counselor, teacher and fundraiser. After Chicago, Japan, London, and Seattle, I’m back in Boston where it all started. My favorite place to write has a harbor view of two colonial ships.
I’m also thrilled that my short LGBTQ films have shown around the world in places as unexpected as Alabama and East Africa. Twenty years ago, I was diagnosed with a neurological disease that doctors are bewildered has mostly disappeared. I’m an avid meditator and passionate about appreciating every moment.
One of my favorite mornings has been waking up on a boat in Patagonia with my perfectly imperfect partner and hiking an island of 120,000 penguins.
www.scudderjamesjr.com