A warm welcome to Annabeth Chatwin who is joining us to share an exclusive ficlet of her free bee City of Perfect Moments
Which is free from Dec 28 to Dec 30!
Welcome Annabeth 🙂

 

1. I meet West at a concert, and he decides we should be boyfriends for the night.
2. We kiss on the subway.
3. In the morning, he begs me to see him again.
4. I drive out to his place in Jersey, where we wear fur hats in his hot tub during a blizzard, drinking nonalcoholic mint juleps, no parents in sight.
5. We catch snowflakes on our tongues.
6. He recites poetry in public.

 

Is this real life?

But as I see West more and more, the cracks begin to show. Maybe my manic pixie dream boy isn’t what he seems. Maybe manic pixie dream boys are too weird for the real world, anyway. Maybe my high school would eat him alive. Maybe West is the weird kid.

Maybe I don’t want to be the weird kid with him.

But what if one person’s weird is another person’s beautiful?

From internationally best selling author Annabeth Chatwin comes a book about wild love slamming against hard reality, and choices we make to believe in each other, despite stories the world may want to tell us.

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I drove to Malcolm’s that weekend. We held hands on our drive to the grocery store. Despite the cold, Malcolm had promised he’d barbecue for his mom, and we needed barbecue supplies, from tongs on down to meat. “I’ve never grilled anything in my life, but I think it shouldn’t be that hard?” he said. “She says we should celebrate President’s Day. Any excuse for a holiday, you know?”

“I guess we could YouTube it.” I shrugged. “Everything’s up on YouTube.”

He glanced at me. “Have you ever grilled anything?”

I shook my head. “Why would I grill something?”

“Damn. I was hoping you had some kind of real-world grilling experience.”

He led me through Whole Foods. “I don’t think we can screw up hamburgers and hot dogs too badly, right?” Malcolm asked as he examined the nitrate-free meat.

“Probably not?”

He glanced at me. “Are you sure? Because I can think of a lot of ways —”
I shoved him. “You’re terrified of grilling. Pick out some hippie hot dogs so we can go to the damn bakery. I think I want a cake.”

He grabbed some hot dogs. I pulled him across the store. “Excuse me,” I said a girl behind the bakery counter. “Do you have any extra birthday cakes? You know, the ones no one picks up?”
She rolled her eyes. “We always have birthday cakes no one picks up.”

“We’ll take one,” I said.

“Let me see what kinds we have.” She disappeared, then returned and rattled off a list of cakes.

“I think it’s Madison’s birthday in our house,” I said.

“Um, the Little Mermaid cake?”

“That’s the strawberry one, right?”

She nodded.

“We feel especially gay today. Bring on the pink mermaid cake.”

Malcolm cracked up. “Strawberry is my mom’s favorite flavor.”

“Good, we can all go slightly nuts off Red 40 and call your mother ‘Madison.’”

“That was supposed to be my name if I was a girl.” Malcolm laughed harder.

“Well, you’re Madison now.” I swiped at his cheek. “A little prickly for it. But we can up your eyeliner game.”

“My eyeliner’s fine!”

“Your eyeliner could be more even and smudgy. I like it smudgy.” I took our pink and purple cake from the bakery girl.

“It’s plenty smudgy!”

I kissed his nose. “You shame your drag queen ancestors.”
He cracked up. I carried our cake to check-out and insisted on paying for everything. I held Madison’s birthday cake on the way home.

He laughed. I loved making Malcolm laugh. I adopted lost cakes. I kissed his nose in Whole Foods. Malcolm loved me for all that and I gave it to him.

Malcolm touched my leg. “You’re being quiet, West. What are you thinking about?”

“How you would look as a Madison.” I suppressed a grin.

Somehow, cursing out lack of gloves in the winter cold, we lit that grill without killing ourselves. Bonus. We charred hot dogs and hamburgers, and they had that barbecue-smoke-fire taste that meant summer, even in mid-January.

“You two boys are so sweet,” Ms. Mary said as she brought out potato salad to her kitchen table. Sometimes we had potato salad at the country club. But hers was better, with more kick to it. “This is awesome,” I said as I looked at our charred hot dogs, the bowl of chips, and the potato salad. Amid a collection of ceramic chickens decorating her kitchen, the meal seemed so American somehow — like I was part of something for once, not watching a holiday from the outside in.

When we finished our dogs and potato product, Malcolm grabbed more plates, and I snagged our cake from the dining room, carrying it in while singing a very loud and off-key version of “Under the Sea.” Malcolm and his mom laughed.

“Now I’ll have that song stuck in my head all day.” She pointed her fork at Malcolm. “You loved that movie when you were a kid. I should’ve known then.”

“Hey now. My sexuality has nothing to do with me wanting to be Ariel when I was five,” he said, and we all cracked up.

His mom could hardly breathe. “He made me buy him a mermaid tail and tried to make shell boobs. Hand to God. Oh my gosh I haven’t thought of that in years.”

I put my hand on Malcolm’s. “It’s okay, baby,” I said. “I wanted to be the girl from ‘Goonies’ who’s Josh Brolin’s girlfriend. My parents realized real quick.”

Malcolm shook his head and picked up my hand. “I love you, West.”

“I love you too, even if you did want to be a mermaid, Madison,” I said, and they laughed into the spilling January sunset.

Annabeth Chatwin hit best seller lists in three countries with her debut novella “He Called Me Beautiful,” a gay YA romance set in 1998. Hailed as “full of yummy pop culture references!,” “He Called Me Beautiful” reaches back to Annabeth’s high school years as a bisexual teenager. She earned numerous writing awards during her graduate program in fiction. These include a position as a top-ten finalist in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Writing Competition in the novel-in-progress category and an award of semifinalist in the novella category, both in the same year.

Annabeth’s young adult fiction features LGBTQ teenagers dealing with gossip, finding themselves, and living extraordinary lives in ordinary situations. She writes characters people want to “wrap up and snuggle,” often in instalove and friends-to-lovers situations. She especially loves manic pixie dream boys and the complications they bring to the real world.

Annabeth taught creative writing and wrote in the freelance (read: non-fiction) world before turning to young adult literature, with pieces appearing in The Washington Post, Time Magazine, and The Huffington Post. During that time, she was a featured guest on CNN, NPR, and Canadian public radio. Much of her writing focused on her three sons, all of whom have offbeat names and love David Bowie.

While she spends most of her days unschooling her boys, Annabeth spends her spare time writing, usually curled up on the loveseat with her beloved German Shepherd (it’s his seat, and he side-eyes anyone who takes it, including her husband). She is addicted to energy drinks; loves blue glitter and sloths; and when she has time, kayaks and hikes in the mountains of North Carolina.

Join Annabeth’s reader group on Facebook! Find it easily by searching under groups and “annabeth chatwin.”
Or visit her on the web, where you can find freebies, links to playlists, and more! Search for ‘annabeth chatwin” on the search engine of your choice.

Annabeth is always available for free mom hugs! Email her at annabethchatwin@yahoo.com.