Tag: image

When We Were Strangers

For my One More Thing series, I wrote a free prequel called When We Were Strangers as an introduction to the characters. I don’t think I promoted it much on social media, so I’m finally doing that. Even though it technically takes place during the summer and this is the winter. I’m really selling this, aren’t I? I hope you have enjoyed this summary of everything I did wrong, now here is the book!

Okay, this is a scene from Ryan’s story, and I would explain, but it’s pretty self explanatory.

Ryan

Have you ever found yourself standing buck naked in a wheatfield in broad daylight? Only there wasn’t any wheat. Or if there was, it was in seed form, so you were basically out in the open where anyone could see you. Has this ever happened to anyone else? Of course it has. It probably happened all the time and was so relatable.

Man, if only I could say it wasn’t every day I ended up locked out while wearing no clothes, but it occurred way more than I was comfortable with. Once. It happened once times. This time, in fact. And it was once more time than I ever wanted.

Ha-ha. Just kidding. I wasn’t naked. Nope. Not at all. Who was naked? Me?!?! No way. I wasn’t naked, you were naked! Oh my god, don’t panic. RYAN, STAY CALM. DON’T PANIC. PLEASE SAVE ME BATMAN, SUPERMAN, OR RYAN REYNOLDS. HEY, HE STOLE MY NAME. No, he had it first since he was older than me.

Ahem. Okay. As I wasn’t in the best headspace for narration, I would come back later. Hopefully when I was calmer and wearing pants.

–the rest of the story is available here for free.

Kissing Complications

Luke’s life quickly gets out of hand when his stupid mouth and dumb ideas lead to strange new places in One Little Word. An excerpt and image quote will follow after my nonsense.

The idea that immediately came to my head for a title was, Luke’s experiences aren’t universal. Maybe that needs more explaining. That’s a quote from Kimmy Schmidt. As I’m really lazy right now, and most of the time, I’m going to roll the dice and hope I spelled Schmidt right even though there’s no way. Oh, I spelled it a different way the second time and the red squiggly appeared, so hooray, I got it right once and still don’t need to open a different window to look it up. Small miracles, y’all. I will take it.

I’m not sure whether Luke’s experience with kissing a boy is universal or not. Maybe not exactly but it’s also not uncommon. Many guys kiss other guys. The part that’s less universal is kissing another boy as part of a fake dating scheme. Well, it is universal in romance novels. Like this one.

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Luke

Lunch went… awkwardly.

Duh. I had just sucked face with a guy in front of everyone in the cafeteria.

And I thought the stares were bad before.

No, everything was perfectly normal…

Yeah right, that wouldn’t work.

This wasn’t a video or a rumor. I had kissed a guy in public. Naturally, the atmosphere at the baseball table felt incredibly tense.

I insisted the earlier kiss wasn’t real. I told the team that Ryan and I weren’t together. Then I kissed him in front of everyone, and now we were having lunch with my shell-shocked team.

There had never been this much quiet at the table before. Without anyone speaking, my thoughts were loud. My mind kept repeating that I had kissed Ryan in front of everyone. It wouldn’t let that go.  I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around it.

I kissed Ryan. Yep, there I went again. I hoped it would stop being true somehow. Wait, oh god. Instead of helping, I made things worse.

Because I couldn’t just say I kissed Ryan. That wasn’t enough. It had happened more than once, so the specific time would need to be specified.

I was a guy who had kissed another guy enough times to need clarification when referencing the touching of our lips.

Presenting a revolutionary new character, the Moody Teenage Girl

This mood board could speak for itself and I think I’m mostly going to let it. Except to say, hi, this is a mood board for the character Lydia from One Little Word. If you have questions, please refer to the image below. It’s literally all there.

I have nothing in common with Lydia, except that we both happen to be attracted to women, except she’s only attracted to women and I’m not, so maybe that doesn’t count. She’s one of the easiest characters to write even though we aren’t alike at all. Maybe it helps that she hates everything.

Lydia Smith could be a girl on a poster, beautiful and unattainable in a sweater that hugged her cleavage. Her black hair would get caught in the wind for a few seconds and whip around her face, making her look like a model. She smoked on top of the backrest of a bench, her legs hanging down on the seat. She had a free period and never spent it inside in a classroom when she could be a rebel instead.

We get it, you’re cool. That doesn’t mean you need to wreck your health with cigarettes or sit outside even though the weather’s getting cold

Ryan!

As someone who will use any excuse for a moodboard, I really like moodboards for some reason, here’s one for the character Ryan from One Little Word.  I have definitely made art for OLW before, but this is new art. And I’m pretty sure I didn’t use the “as a gay scientist” picture the first time, such a missed opportunity and travesty. Plus, I’m celebrating the new edition of the book.

 

There was a lot to Ryan.

I couldn’t force any baseball knowledge into his brain unless he thought a player was hot, but he absorbed science facts like a sponge. He listened to weird bands I’d never heard of, but they played good music. He was a devoted son, and he loved pasta but was so bad about not getting sauce on his face.

 

I’m not sure this is related, but in my head it is, so that’s close enough for me, as I’m you know, the one writing this. David from Schitt’s Creek kind of reminds me of Ryan because they’re both opinionated, sarcastic, and awkward. Which is as good a reason as any to post a clip of David being cute with his boyfriend.

 

 

 

Luke OLW

Here is some writing and art about Luke Chambers from One Little Word. This is part of my series of posts celebrating the new edition of the book. Yay!

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Luke

On the pitcher’s mound with all eyes on me, I can handle heavy hitters, fastballs, anything. Real life is different. And dumb jocks like me aren’t known for being good with words. When some careless remarks heard by the wrong ears land me in big trouble, I panicked as my easy life turned anything but.

Being Luke Chambers means guys want to be me and girls want to date me. I never considered guys could want to date me too. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately because, as crazy as it sounds, there’s only one way to prevent disaster: I need a boyfriend.

Out of the fire and into… a gay relationship. My pretend romance with Ryan Miller may look like puppy love, but his real feelings for me seem closer to pure hatred. The guy showed up to one of my games in a cheerleading outfit for girls just to humiliate me. It worked. He challenges me on everything, even something as unimportant as a game of ring toss.

I didn’t think life could get crazier than having a fake boyfriend. Then I started liking him.

Ryan is more challenging than Algebra II, yet a million times more interesting. Making him laugh is like hitting an out of the park home run. His hand in mine… there’s no comparison, I’ve never felt anything like this before.

Being out and proud isn’t the easiest thing in a small town like this, but it doesn’t stop Ryan from wanting something real. I don’t blame him. Pretending with him has started to feel more real than anything else in my life. That doesn’t make admitting my feelings easy. I’m not sure I can give Ryan what he needs… but someone else is willing to try.

If I don’t figure this out soon, I might lose Ryan Miller before he was ever really mine.

 

Luke is always the last to know

If it seems like I’m posting a lot about the first book in my gay romance series, One Little Word, the reason is because… I am. If you like these posts, awesome and I love you. If you don’t, then sorry and it won’t last forever.

At least in this instance, there’s a method to the madness. The method is celebrating the release of the new edition. Or maybe that’s the madness? It’s either the method or the madness.

Here’s a summary and a quote from the book.

One Little Word

Luke faces trouble of monumental proportions. The straight baseball player has one chance for salvation… a plan that includes “dating” another boy. Yikes. Luke is (reluctantly) ready for every possibility involving a fake boyfriend except what happens if he falls for the guy.

Ryan the awkward science nerd is the only openly gay kid in their small town. He’s smart enough to know that crushing on a straight jock is a terrible idea… even if Luke is painfully attractive.

From innocent kisses that turn scorching to holding hands and never wanting to let go, what started as a fake relationship feels shockingly honest and genuine. But Ryan fears what they have can’t be real. Luke’s afraid it’s already too real.

Will this unexpected couple step up to the plate and go to bat for each other, even if it might mean striking out?

 

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I’m single and ready to mingle. Wow, that sounded incredibly lame. I would never say that out loud.

I couldn’t keep a grin off my face as I walked down the halls. Maybe a few people shot me weird looks, but who cares? I had a lot to smile about. Namely, I no longer had a boyfriend.

What a weird sentence. At least for me, a straight guy.

Dealing with Ryan these days had gotten… Wait, he’s not a bad guy. He’s really nice, for a snarky jerk. I like him. Platonically! Not romantically because I’m straight. Some other guy will go crazy for him and those weirdly nice legs of his. Just not a straight guy like me.

 

If you outlaw love, only criminals will have guns. Wait what?

What should I title this post? I asked myself while looking at the image, which was literally all that I had on the page. Hey, my brain pointed out, that’s almost a Ke$ha song. Then, upon invoking her name, glitter rained down on me and unicorns were also there or something.

Bonus Ke$ha thoughts!

Anyway, I have to talk about Ke$ha. Guess what? I like Ke$ha. Does she still do the dollar sign in her name? I wanna say no but that’s a hard habit to break. Also, I have to say the same Kesha fact I say literally every time she’s brought up, which is that she’s really smart! Because you can be the patron saint of partying and hangovers and still have a brain, so that’s inspirational or something.

Once, I went to one of her concerts and what I remember is a giant pear costume and a giant penis costume. Along with a mother of some grade schoolers a few rows ahead of my group, who gave up at the point the giant penis entered the stage and she promptly took her children somewhere more family-friendly.

I don’t remember the context for the giant pear. And the context for the giant penis was that I was at a Ke$ha concert.

This is my favorite song of hers, entirely because it is very fun to do the ‘rrrrr” parts of tigerrr or Budweiserrr.

The Original Point

Sharing an image quote from One Little Word is what I originally set out to do, so I should probably do that now.

True story, the app I have for making these graphics is just for my phone where the screen is obviously much smaller. So everything looked fine there but now I don’t think I centered the text right. The important thing is I tried.

Ryan is an embarrassing nerd who likes Luke, and he would really like all of this to not be true, but he’s in a gay romantic comedy, so he doesn’t get his wish. Here are more of his feelings on the matter:

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A quote from nothing (Also books and gay magicians)

Soon as I started writing this post, intending to share an image quote, I got sidetracked and thought of something from Arrested Development, so I will now journey down this detour and see where it goes.

First order of business is, of course, the obligatory disclaimer. I, F.N. Manning, being an Arrested Development fan of Sound(ish) Mind and Body, and having seen all the episodes and seasons while in possession of a brain, do hereby acknowledge that the new offerings aren’t as good as the old ones.

If you like AD, you will never in your life be able to have a convo about the show without talking about how the Netflix seasons aren’t as good.

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And now, a very brief version of the story of one family and their disappointing magician relative

Do I sound a little bitter? I didn’t hate the new stuff. (It wasn’t as good the original, I agree and I know, but I didn’t hate it) And without the new stuff, there would be no gay-magician Gob in all his glorious gay-magician glory.

blunderI would never want to live in a world without the beautiful trashcan fire that was Gob Bluth and Tony Wonder. Two narcissistic showmen with few redeeming qualities realize that they’re alike enough to fall in love with the only person they could ever fall in love with: themselves.

A wild and very entertaining ride to watch. Gob, a person who only knows how to make a giant spectacle of himself had very little experience with being a human being suddenly had to handle real emotions in his over-the-top, completely stupid way. Basically, he was very suited to being in peak gay disaster mode, but he also got just about as close to acceptance and honesty as a person like him is capable.

Gob and Tony also have one of the best and most accurate couple names: Blunder.

Closer to what I actually intended to talk about

The very precise and thoughtful way I come up with titles for blog posts is just by writing down whatever and then going, eh, good enough. As soon as I wrote, a quote from nothing, it made me think of the moment (in the 4th season of AD) where Tobias starts singing what sounds like a show tune.

Why is that hilarious? I have no idea. I think it’s hilarious. That’s basically the story of AD, you either love it and all of it is brilliant for reasons you aren’t really sure of (minus the new seasons) or you don’t care about it at all.

At long last

We get to my original point, which is an image quote related to Ryan and Luke from the One Little Word series, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t actually from any of the books. Unless it is. Keeping track of things is hard.

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Ryan and Luke are really good at being giant idiots together! So that’s… something.

Beach Bum

Here’s an image quote and excerpt from Beach Bum.

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My friends and I did indeed achieve success after procuring money and the necessary supplies. We were so successful that we were still a bit altered the next day. Well, we hadn’t gone to bed yet. We were on a more secluded stretch of sand by the country club. Bryce says I’m a trust fund brat, but I really don’t spend all my time here on the property by the club; it’s not like there’s any decent parties here.

It was quiet and almost peaceful, but the part of me that felt an instinctual need to ruin nice moments like this was too tired to care. The sand was cold underneath me but the residual alcohol in my system warmed me from the inside and the crisp air layered with the tang of salt from the waves kept me awake. I stared at the choppy waters in front of me moving in patterns only the ocean and the moon understood. The latter was waning now as the sun struggled to take its place.

I had a great night that faded into a lazy morning and my two best only friends next to me. Without anyone else in eyesight, it felt like we had an entire beach to ourselves.

As a 17-year-old stoner with little parental supervision, this was as good as it got.

-You can read the rest here.