I’m a pretty visual guy, so when a story idea is rattling around in my head the first thing I often do is play with a book cover. For me the cover art isn’t so much about illustrating a moment from the story as it is capturing visual elements of the theme or mood of the piece. Something like sexy boys in space, a little blue fairy lost, or a young man alone on an empty road. These images help me write. Like I said I need visuals.
I also tend to work on several stories at once. I haven’t decided if this is wise or productive, but it is the way I’m working right now. I’m an old guy but still a baby when it comes to the writing process. Either I’ll have a lot of work coming out at the same time or I’ll never get anything done!
Let me know what you think of the covers. I just created a Pinterest account so you can pin these suckers.
Pax,
Stephen
Bennett Bay
Bennett Bay is my southern and much gayer version of Lake Woebegon. I think my two most favorite story tellers are Mark Twain and Garrison Keillor. They both get inside characters but the character of a place as well. I read Twain and feel the roots of my southern family. I always enjoyed Keillor’s story telling on the radio, but I didn’t realize how much of the nuisance I was missing until I moved to Minnesota. I realized that on one level each story was a love letter. A love letter to the Minnesota that he held I his heart.
In my exile from Florida, first in the parched deserts of Arizona, then gloomy Pacific Northwest, and finally in the frozen parries of Minnesota, I developed a longing for my home. I created an idealized little town by a bay that was a mix of all I love and knew of Florida. It was the beach, the bay, and the black water swamps. Bennett Bay is my Woebegone, a place where a boy can fall in love with another boy. A place where they can hold hands, have a nice plate of pasta out on the pier, and not get hassled about it. Now wouldn’t that be a wonderful place to live?
| Blue Fairy Falls. This is what I’m currently working on, another short piece—around 30K words. It is a contemporary fantasy (or Urban Fantasy set in the country, or Rural Fantasy. I can’t keep up with the genres.) Max Crawford, the Executive Director of the Bennett Bay Historical Society, inherits his great Aunt’s farm when she passes. He spent a lot of time there in his early teens after his father died. When he returns to the old homestead he finds more than chickens, pigs and goats. He find a naked man in the woods and rescued a little blue fairy trapped by an evil spider. Oh yeah, then there is Elisha, his aunt’s pet crow. What is up with that bird? |
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| Return to Cooter Crossing. Aidan Quinn is returning to the little backwater village of Cooter Crossing, just up the Big Cypress River from Bennett Bay. He really didn’t want to return but his lover traded him in on a younger model and he lost his job. He thinks he might hook up with his two boyhood friends but one gets shot and the other one won’t talk to him. Then he gets shoot. Fortunately there is a rather attractive deputy sheriff looking out for him. |
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| The Dixieland. This story is still in the formation stages. It’s going to focus on the happenings at the Dixieland an old roadhouse and biker hang out just south of Blackwater. It is the place to get the best darn BBQ in all of BigCypressCounty. There is a good chance that there will be heterosexual activity in this book, so it may not be suitable for all audiences. |
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Avalon
So I have this Science Fiction series in the works. It is the conflict between the two colony worlds Delta and Epsilon about the star Avalon and the Terrans, you know the evil life consuming folk back on Earth.
| Terran Threat Part One: War. War breaks out between Avalon and the Sol Systems. The planet Epsilon is occupied. Tito Vega is one of the few to get off the planet before all hell breaks loose. He is reunited with his lover Alex Skies and together they try to implement the plan their government devised to end the Terran Threat. |
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| Terran Threat Part Two: Resistance. This part of the story takes place mostly on the occupied plant of Epsilon. |
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