An excerpt from Irrestistible

For my continuing promotion of Irresistible Month, I thought I’d share an exclusive excerpt from the book.

Launch month is going well by the way. The book has gradually accumulated reviews at Amazon and Goodreads, and while the tea leaves are always tough to read until I get my first royalty statement, the title seems to be staying pretty solid in its bestseller ranking at the Kindle store.

I chose a scene from early in the book, and it requires very little set-up. Here, the main character Cal is out with his best friend Derek the night after he met a very cute and friendly customer at the antiques shop where he works.

Irresisible

Copyright © 2018 by Andrew J. Peters

Later that evening, Callisthenes Panagopoulos met his roommate and best friend, Derek Foster, for a free, outdoor screening of the Mae West film I’m No Angel. The Bryant Park film festival of Hollywood classics was one item on a long list of things Cal had researched for them to do that summer. They only had twelve weeks in New York City, and Cal was determined to get as much out of the experience as possible. Derek had a seasonal job at a booth for discount theater tickets while Cal tended his uncle’s antiques shop. Their paychecks had to go almost entirely to the rent of their one-bedroom, sublet apartment, but Cal had found a treasure trove of free entertainment in the city.

The small urban park was overfilled with picnicking families and couples. Cal scanned through the crowd and spotted a spare spot centrally located for viewing. It looked like a tight fit, but when he led Derek across the lawn to claim it, some very nice ladies with shellacked helmets of hair and Broadway T-shirts looked up at Cal and quickly shrugged back their blanket to make space. A pair of older gentlemen stared at him dreamily and scooted back in their lawn chairs so Cal would have some room in their direction as well.

Cal unrolled a tatami mat from his college backpack, and he and Derek seated themselves hip to hip. Cal unpacked two fried egg sandwiches and a sixteen-ounce can of Budweiser, which he portioned into paper coffee cups liberated from a nearby deli. They chomped on their sandwiches as the opening credits blared from the giant screen.

Mae West had always been a campy curiosity to Cal, but he found his attention drifting away from the film. Was the guy he met in the store earlier that day for real? It felt like it had been a dream. He wasn’t supposed to be fishing for dates while he was working, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Brendan was gorgeous and smart and really sweet and considerate, and he knew about Arthur Rimbaud, and he’d minored in classical studies. He was a native New Yorker, which made him something like five thousand times more interesting and worldly than anyone Cal had met before. And like a total airhead, Cal had asked him if he did a lot of traveling, working in the shipping business, as if he freighted the goods across the Atlantic himself. Brendan probably had some high-powered executive job. Cal winced, thinking about how dumb he’d acted.

Meanwhile, his companion was having a hard time paying attention to the movie for different reasons.

“I know we’re homosexuals, but do we have to live out every gay cliché known to man this summer?” Derek said quietly.

Cal whispered back, “What do you mean?”

“Last night, it was the Jackie Onassis Hat and Apparel exhibit at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The day before was the Breakfast at Tiffany’s walking tour of Greenwich Village. Tonight, it’s Mae West?”

“You said you liked the walking tour.”

“I did. But I’m beginning to feel like I’m turning into Truman Capote.”

Cal guffawed. Derek looked nothing like Truman Capote. He was a slight guy with jet-black hair who looked like he worked at a tech company and skateboarded to work. Cal trapped his mouth with his hand, hoping his laughter hadn’t annoyed anyone nearby. The Midwestern housewives were timidly watching him like they’d spotted a celebrity. One of the older gentlemen leaned forward and asked Cal if he’d like one of his chocolate-dipped strawberries. Cal thanked him and declined. He gathered that side conversations at a reasonable volume were acceptable during the outdoor film.

“I’m glad you mentioned Truman Capote,” he told Derek. “It reminds me—Columbia has a free lecture this Friday on the art of writing the nonfiction crime novel.”

Derek gave Cal a lopsided grin. “You really can’t stop yourself, can you?”

“We have seventy-one days left until the end of the summer,” Cal said. “We’re budgeted at forty dollars a day, max, and that includes meals. I want to get in as much as possible.” At the end of the summer, Cal would be starting a master’s degree program in classical studies. Derek would go back to his odd jobs as a math tutor and working at the health insurance call center.

Derek’s shoulder leaned against his. “Don’t forget— I want to go to the beach.”

Cal grinned. He and Derek had been best friends since freshman year in college. In fact, Derek had been his only male friend for the past five years. With other guys, complications had always cropped up. They acted like they wanted to be friends, and then it turned out they wanted to jump Cal’s bones, which wasn’t bad in and of itself, with the right guy, or even the semi-right guy if Cal was in the mood. But it seemed like the only thing guys ever wanted was sex, and Cal had a knack for attracting the most intense and possessive types. That was why Derek was so great. They could hang out all the time and do regular things without any sexual tension and drama.

“There’s a beach on Coney Island,” he told Derek. “You can walk to it right from the subway. I looked it up. The subway fare’s only two seventy-five. The first sunny day both of us are off from work, we’ll go.”

Derek grinned and leaned into Cal some more. “Hey, what about going down to Little Italy tomorrow night?”

“Oh. I can’t.”

Derek gave him a double take. He was aware Cal closed up his grandfather’s shop by seven o’clock at the latest. They’d never made plans without the other. Neither of them even knew anyone else in New York. “You can’t?”

“I met someone.” Cal’s face bloomed. “We kind of have a date. Or, I think we have a date. Or, it could just be getting together as friends.”

“When did you meet someone?”

“This morning. At the store.”

“A customer?”

“Yeah.” It felt like sunshine was spreading over Cal. “His name is Brendan Thackeray-Prentiss.”

“Jesus. Did his family come over with the first gay pilgrims?”

Cal giggled. He evened out his enthusiasm. “He’s probably too perfect to be real. And it’s only going out for ice cream. I think he was just being friendly.”

Derek shot him a crooked glance.

“What’s that for?”

“Cal, you can be so oblivious when it comes to guys.”

“I don’t think I’m oblivious,” Cal objected. “It’s not a hookup. I didn’t get that impression at all. You think after everything that happened with Steve, I’d be giving out my phone number to random strangers?” He sat up straight, self-righteous. “I’ve actually been super conscious about not giving off any sexual vibes.”

Another crooked glance came back at him. “You’ve been super conscious about not giving off sexual vibes,” Derek repeated flatly. “Wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Want a lick?’”

“It’s ironic,” Cal said. “The whole T-shirt is meant to be ironic.”

“There’s nothing ironic about you, Cal. That’s the problem.” Derek dug his cell phone out and started tapping on the screen. His face twisted up skeptically in the blue light of the phone, and he turned the display screen to Cal. “That him?”

Brendan’s strong-jawed, handsome face sparkled in Cal’s vision. Cal took the phone so he could admire the photo more closely. Brendan was wearing a tuxedo for some society event. His wavy, dark brown hair was shorter and perfectly groomed. He stood in a ballroom filled with people who looked like they owned islands in the Caribbean. A modern-day prince.

“How did you find him so quickly?”

Derek took back his phone. “Brendan Thackeray-Prentiss is not exactly a common name.” He swiped and tapped at the screen. “And there’s, like, a zillion articles about him.” Derek read from one of them. “New York Magazine— Heir to Thackeray shipping magnate hosts fundraising gala for LGBTQ homeless teens.”

“Really? That’s so sweet.” Cal reached for the phone. Derek held him back as if Cal were a toddler trying to grab his lollipop.

“Stalk him on your own time,” Derek said.

Cal took his arm and nuzzled up close. “But I want to stalk him with you.”

“Don’t come purring up to me,” Derek scolded him mildly. “I turn my back for a half second, and you’ve got guys luring you into ice cream parlors to get down your pants.”

“Brendan’s not like that. He buys Victorian cameos for his grandmother. And he was really shy about his family being wealthy. It was cute.” Cal brushed his hand through his thick, wavy blond hair. “I don’t know. I’ve got this really great feeling about him.”

Derek took a long, stiff draw of his beer. “That’s great. So what’s going to happen? You two are going to run off and make genetically gifted babies, and I’m stuck hanging out in New York all summer by myself.”

“No,” Cal said. He squeezed Derek’s arm. “I’d never do that to you.”

“It’s cool, Cal. I mean, it’s not like I can expect a guy like you to stay single for the rest of his life. You walk down the street, and people are falling over each other to try to inhale the air you breathe.”

Cal gazed at Derek steadily. “That only happened once.” A smile crept up his face, which earned a mild chuckle from his friend. Cal nudged Derek on the shoulder. “We came down here to experience New York together. I’m not going to renege on that. Brendan and I have known each other for, like, five seconds. It’s nothing serious. You want me to text him and cancel for tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Cal’s heart sank in his chest, but he rummaged in his pocket for his phone.

Derek caught him by the arm. “No. I was kidding.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not going to be a total dick,” Derek said. “Hey, maybe I’ll do you one better and meet some billionaire to take me out for an actual dinner.”

“Thanks, Derek. Have I told you lately you’re the best friend in the world?”

“No, you haven’t.”

Cal kissed him on the cheek. “You’re the best friend in the world.”

“You still owe me the beach, you frickin’ ho.”

They scowled at each other, and then they tucked in to watch the rest of the black-and-white movie on the giant movie screen.

And now, the big reveal…

I’ve been coyly hinting at an upcoming release, and frankly been neck deep the past few weeks working with the production team on copyediting, proofing and conceptualizing the cover design.

The ARCs are out, and the title is up at the publisher’s website, so at long last, all can be revealed!


Ka-bam!

The book releases everywhere on August 14th, and I’m designating August as “Irresistible Month,” with a bunch of posts about the story-behind-the-story, book extras, and fun stuff like that. Here’s the back cover blurb:

Brendan Thackeray-Prentiss is an Ivy League-educated trust-funder who Gotham Magazine named the most eligible gay bachelor in New York City. He lives for finding his soulmate, but after walking in on his boyfriend of three transcendent months soaping up in the shower with an older female publicist, he’s on a steady diet of scotch, benzodiazepines, and compulsive yoga. Men are completely off the menu.

Callisthenes Panagopoulos has a problem most guys dream of. With the body and face of a European soccer heartthrob, the vigorous blond hair of a Mormon missionary, and a smile that makes traffic cops stuff their ticket books back in their utility belts, he’s irresistible to everyone. But being a constant guy-magnet comes with its discontents, like an ex-boyfriend who tried to drive his Smart car through Cal’s front door. It makes him wonder if he’s been cursed when it comes to love.

When Brendan and Cal meet, the attraction is meteoric, and they go from date to mates at the speed of time-lapse photography. But to stay together, they’ll have to overcome Cal’s jealous BFF, Romanian mobsters, hermit widowers, and a dictatorship on the brink of revolution during a dream wedding in the Greek isles that becomes a madcap odyssey.

A gay romantic comedy of errors based on Chariton’s Callirhoe, the world’s oldest extant romance novel.

You can get in on pre-ordering the e-book at NineStar Press. 

Here’s the link at Goodreads to add it to your shelf.

Last but not least, I’m hustling to get reviews, so if you do that kind of thing, the title is available at NetGalley, and I’m also happy to share the e-ARC with folks who are interested in writing early reviews. Just hit me up!

Some photos from the BGS-QD Pride Reading

Last night was great! What better way to celebrate Pride month than reading fierce, audacious, queer stories in what must be the queerest bookstore in New York City (if not the United States, the world?).

Many thanks to our fearless leader Tom Cardamone (The Lurid Sea, Green Thumb), and the owners of Bureau of General Services – Queer Division Greg and Donnie!

I’ll keep this post-event dispatch brief, just sharing a few photos from the event with captions.

BGS-QD Sandwich Board

BGS-QD Panel

Here are all the authors (l to r): Nora Olsen (Maxine Wore Black), Ann Apkater (Cantor Gold series), Tom Cardamone (The Lurid Sea), Nell Stark (The Princess Deception), Alexa Black (The Outcasts), and me

BGS-QD Deniro Hello

My favorite shot from the night. We invited folks from the audience to join us to give President Trump a Robert Deniro Hello from the queer literary community. You can see some of the cool artwork on display throughou the shop.

Pride Month Reading at BGS-QD

New Yorkers looking for a little something literary to do on a Tuesday night: Next Tuesday, June 19th, I’ll be on a panel of authors talking about LGBTQ+ lit and reading from our latest work. For me, that’s The Sim Ru Prophecy (Werecat #4), which is celebrating its one-year book birthday this month. 🙂

Here’s the Facebook event page. It’s hosted by the fabulous Bureau of General Services-Queer Division at the NYC LGBT Community Center (208 W. 13th Street). The line-up of authors gives you some lesbian crime fiction (Ann Akpater’s Criminal Gold), some gay erotica (Tom Cardamone’s The Lurid Sea), some lesbian YA (Nora Olsen’s Frenemy of the People), and of course gay paranormal adventure from me!

We will of course have signed copies of our books for sale, so you can pick up The Trilogy: Werecat Books 1-3 and The Sim Ru Prophecy. The event is also a benefit for BGSQD, with 40 percent of sales going to the not-for-profit queer literary organization, so it’s also a great way to support the community this Pride month.

 

#PrideReads

I’ve caught the Twitter hastag bug again, and this is a really good one. For June, which of course is Pride Month, the #PrideReads meme is trending to bring attention to queer books and authors. While I’m participating on Twitter, I thought I’d share some of my responses here. There are links to Goodreads in case you want to check out my recommendations.

Describe an LGBTQIA+ novel you’d like to see written?

That pretty much describes my own writing process, but I’ll pick something outside of my wheelhouse. I love historical fiction, so I’d love to read a novel featuring LGBTQIA+ lead characters set in an evocative and underrepresented setting, like say pre-colonial Mesoamerica, or Mogul-era India, or Qing dynasty China.

Tell us about an underrated queer book.

I’ll give you three. First, John Weir’s The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socketwhich is like The Catcher in the Rye set in New York City during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Second, Ben Neihart’s Hey Joe, which was awesome, modern gay YA before awesome, modern gay YA became a thing. Third, only because I read it most recently, and it’s also underrated, being far ahead of it’s time in terms of modern, matter-of-fact gay portrayals, Philip Ridley’s In the Eyes of Mr. Fury.

Queer #ownvoices authors we should follow.

@ScareBearDan @lawrenceschimel @alexharrowSFF @jscoatsworth @jp_howardpoet @Xtianbaines @johncopenhaver @JoeOJazzMoon @allanbrocka @AnnAptaker @TrustMiguel @Hans_Hirshi @BrianCentron @CAClemmings @KenJONeill & sorry I ran out of characters

Your favorite queer books.

[Head explodes] Well gosh, here I’ll stick to my wheelhouse to put some boundaries on it. For SFF #Ownvoices, Samuel Delaney’s Tales of Neveryon, Ricardo Pinto’s Stone Dance of the Chameleon trilogy, and Douglas Clegg’s Mordred, Bastard Son are probably my favorites.

Does a queer book need to include romance?

Absolutely not, though my reading “sweet spot” is action-adventure with a minor romantic storyline that doesn’t have to be HEA.

Who’s a queer supporting character that should get their own book/series.

I’m going to go off canon because I didn’t read the books (shame, shame, shame), and I understand the character of Olyvar in Game of Thrones was created for the TV series. Anyway, he’s my favorite gay character in the series (and the only one who hasn’t been killed off!), so my vote is for Olyvar to get a platform to do some damage in Westeros.

via GIPHY

Favourite books with lesbian rep?

I really liked Malinda Lo’s Ash. Also, though not an #Ownvoices title, Richard Morgan’s The Steel Remains has a well-developed lesbian character Archeth who I thought shone through as the best POV character.

Favourite books with gay rep?

I mentioned a bunch of them above, but this gives me a chance to share more! For literary/history, I’ll shout out Felice Picano’s Like People in HistoryFor mystery, Michael Nava’s The Burning Plain is probably my favorite title from his Henry Rios series. For family saga/coming of age, Shyam Selvadurai’s Cinnamon Gardens. For YA, anything by David Levithan. For romance (guilty pleasure), Scott Pomfret’s Hot Sauce. Last, for humor, far, far off the radar: Andrew Killeen’s The Khalifah’s Mirror and Jim Anderson’s Chipman’s African Adventure.

Favourite books with bi rep?

Going to do a throwback here, I read Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia as a young adult, and it’s one of those books that stayed with me for years and years.

Favourite books with trans rep?

I haven’t read nearly as many trans books as I should have, and the book I’m going to mention probably fits better as intersex. But Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex is a terrific cultural and historical saga in which the main character was born with ambiguous genitalia and lives as a girl and a young man and later as someone in-between.

Favourite books with non-binary rep?

Here again I’m shamefully poorly-read, and to mention Ursual Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness feels somewhat lame, since so many books about trans and non-binary experiences have been written since that groundbreaking SFF came out. But there I did it. I’ll add Daniel Heath Justice’s The Way of Thorn and Thunder, which takes inspiration from Indigenous lore and traditions, including non-binary ways of living.

Favourite books where everyone is queer?

I love this question because I think it’s an underrated approach to queer fiction, and it’s not uncommon to see reviews of queer books that complain it’s “unrealistic” there are so few straight characters (barf). So here’s to Alex Sanchez’ Rainbow Boys series with three rotating gay male narratives and Allison Moon’s all-lesbian Lunatic Fringeand Matthew Rettemund’s Boy Culture, and all the fabulous queerly retold fairy tale collections like Lawrence Schimmel’s The Drag Queen of Elfland and Jeremy McAteer’s Queer Tales: Fairytales for Gay Guys.

What queer character do you identify with?

As a closeted queer teen, I devoured Paul T. Roger’s Saul’s Book, and thought I found in the narrator Stephen a deeper understanding of myself. Later, I’d say I saw more of myself in Duncan from David Levithan’s Wide Awake, with his heartfelt conviction in social justice. Nowadays, with a dearth of stories featuring older queer characters, the one who comes to mind is Gabriel Noone from Armistead Maupin’s The Night Listener.

What sparks your interest in a book? Cover? Reviews? Blurb?

This is an interesting question in the context of queer books, because thinking back to my coming of age in the 80s and 90s, living in upstate New York, it was hard as hell to find the kind of books I was interested in! I pretty much had to sneak into the stacks at librarires or bookstores and find the sexuality section, which felt like a huge taboo in itself. Even then, I had to find titles catalogued with the sterile, scientific label: homosexuality and hope they weren’t insidious, pseudo-scientific, neo-Freudian, pathologizing horseshit.

The covers of those older books rarely gave hints about the story, and the books were all fairly tragic, violent and highly sexualized (not a bad thing necessarily, especially for the young, disaffected me who was also quite eager to learn what gay men did together).

With the advent of the Internet, it became a whole lot easier to find queer books I might like. Covers matter to me, though looking through my Goodreads shelf, some of my favorite titles have pretty awful ones and that doesn’t stop me from singing their praises. I read blurbs to see what the story is about, and I’ll check out what people have to say on fan sites and Goodreads.

Favourite queer couple?

I often say my favorite couple is Gorgik and Little Sarg from Samuel Delaney’s Tales of Neveryon. They lead a frickin’ slave rebellion that liberates an entire country, so try beating that. Honorable mentions: Maurice and Scudder in E.M. Forster’s Maurice (I weep at the end of the movie), and though the relationship is muted and ill-fated in Gregory Maguire’s inimitable way, I loved Liir and Commander Cherrystone in Son of a Witch.

Does a queer book have to have a happy ending?

That’s a provocative and important issue to talk about. I expect a lot of readers would say we need more queer lit with happy endings to balance out the long history of tragic queer stories–those classics like Lillian Helman’s The Children’s Hour and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, which suggested the impossibility of queer people finding love and leading happy, well-adjusted lives.

Some of those books, now called “bury your gays” tropes, were written from a non-queer point-of-view, which is susceptible to marginalizing, tragedizing, and at its worst demonizing queer people, e,g, the tendency to portray villainous characters as sexually ambiguous as a foil to the heteronormative hero/heroine. Yet some queer tragedies of the past were written by queer people themselves, like James Baldwin, Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider Woman), the aforementioned Lillian Hellman, Patricia Highsmith, and you could say most of the authors known as The Violet Quill who broke ground with realistic portraits of gay men living in the 1970s and 1980s (Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, and others).

Themes of death and suffering reflected salient aspects of real life for queer people, and I’d say writing about those issues was both realistic and helpful for readers, both queer and straight, to better understand the challenges faced by queer individuals (and for queer readers, to realize they’re not alone with their personal struggles).

All of this is to say I subscribe to the notion embodied in a famous quote by Ernest Hemingway: “A writer’s job is to tell the truth.” And the truth is some queer lives are tragic, some are triumphant, and all of them are filled with many moments of both. So no, a queer book doesn’t have to have a happy ending. But I would hope there’d be at least an equal number of books with happy endings as books that end tragically. And then, of course, stories are more complex than happy vs. sad. I tend to enjoy books that take me on a journey that runs the gamut of emotions.

Does a queer book have to have sex scenes?

Here’s another question that on its face sounds simple.

No. Why in heaven’s name would a queer book have to include explicit sex? There are tons of ways to write about queer people that don’t involve what they like to do to get it on.

So yeah, I enjoy all kinds of queer stories that have no sex or very little sex, and I certainly don’t feel as a writer that I need to add a sex scene in order to develop a queer character or make the story more interesting or marketable.

But as a guy who’s always been much more interested in queer liberation versus assimilation, I also feel it’s important to add that queer sex scenes can be marvelous and subversive and fabulously declarative and rebellious. Writing queer sex is a political act, and I respect writers who do it and think it’s important that it has a place in our literature.