Author Spotlight: Kim Fielding

Thank you, Jessica, for letting me visit you today!

I think many of us have a romantic vision of what it’s like to be an author. My version of that fantasy involves globe-trotting, autograph-signing, margarita-swilling, café-sitting, and go-go boys. It looks a little like this:

And like this:

The reality, I’m afraid, is like this:

Slaving at my laptop at the kitchen table. If I’m lucky, my children and husband are gainfully employed elsewhere. Generally they’re hovering nearby, wanted homework help or mediation or chauffeuring or watching loud TV.

One part of a writer’s job that can sometimes be a little tedious is research, especially when it involves researching very specific things, such as the differing types of screw heads or whether jollyboats can be lowered into the water by the jollyboat passengers.

On the other hand, because I write m/m romance, sometimes the research can be really fun. I mean, how many jobs occasionally require one to view porn? Recently, I was doing some background work on men’s underwear. I know. Tough, tough assignment. It involved spending a fair amount of time at the Andrew Christian website (which currently features twerk off video.) Now I know more about men’s underwear and I get Andrew Christian as I browse the web.

Another benefit of this particular research project was that I found a model who looks just like Colby Anderson, one of the characters in my new novel The Tin Box. The model’s name is Cory Lee, and you can see him here and here. And here, because, well, he’s adorable.

Even if I have to spend most of my time chained to my boring laptop in my boring kitchen, drinking Diet Coke instead of tequila, rest assured I will conduct more in-depth research like this!

To buy The Tin Box:

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=4196&cPath=55_603

To buy the Ennek audio trilogy, which released last week:

http://www.cherryhillpublishing.com/ (100% of my trilogy royalties go to Doctors Without Borders!)

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At my blog.

Blurb:

William Lyon's past forced him to become someone he isn't. Conflicted and unable to maintain the charade, he separates from his wife and takes a job as caretaker at a former mental hospital. Jelley’s Valley State Insane Asylum was the largest mental hospital in California for well over a century, but it now stands empty. William thinks the decrepit institution is the perfect place to finish his dissertation and wait for his divorce to become final. In town, William meets Colby Anderson, who minds the local store and post office. Unlike William, Colby is cute, upbeat, and flamboyantly out. Although initially put off by Colby’s mannerisms, William comes to value their new friendship, and even accepts Colby's offer to ease him into the world of gay sex.

William’s self-image begins to change when he discovers a tin box, hidden in an asylum wall since the 1940s. It contains letters secretly written by Bill, a patient who was sent to the asylum for being homosexual. The letters hit close to home, and William comes to care about Bill and his fate. With Colby’s help, he hopes the words written seventy years ago will give him courage to be his true self.

An excerpt from The Tin Box:

With the menus gone, William had nowhere to hide. He pretended to be closely examining his surroundings, but in fact the Java Joint was pretty unremarkably decorated, and he couldn’t avoid Colby’s thoughtful stare.

“You don’t like me much, do you?” Colby finally said.

“I… I don’t think I know you well enough to not like you.”

“Yeah, but you sort of make these faces and you keep flinching away.” He narrowed his eyes. “Are you homophobic? Afraid you’ll catch my queer cooties?”

If William had been sipping his water, he would have choked. As it was, he coughed rather loudly. “I’m not a bigot.”

“It doesn’t bother you to be seen with a flaming gayboy?”

“I don’t care what anyone else thinks.” That was true, more or less. Once he’d given up on gaining his parents’ respect, the only judgment he’d feared was his own. Unfortunately, he was a harsh critic of himself.

“So then what’s the deal? Hermit? Confirmed introvert? Asperger’s? Maybe you just disapprove of my stylistic choices.” Colby gave a significant look at his own tight and fairly skimpy outfit, and then at William’s Oxford shirt and sport coat. “Are you the fashion police, Will?”

“William.” He wanted to frown, but Colby was looking genuinely upset, his sunny smile replaced by troubled eyes and a frown. For the first time, William felt guilty for how he’d been acting. Colby seemed like a nice guy. Friendly and cheery. It wasn’t his fault he made William uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Colby. I think I’m just kind of a jerk.”

The grin reappeared, and William was strangely relieved. “You’re not really a jerk,” said Colby. “We just need to work a little on your social skills. Loosen you up a little. ’Cause Will, my man, you’ve got a stick so far up your ass you must be tasting it. Who the hell put it there?”

William felt a little flutter of panic at the question. He intentionally pushed it down and focused instead on the coarseness of Colby’s language, which made him blush. It didn’t help that he knew Colby was right—William was about as uptight as they came. And Colby wasn’t the first to accuse him of it. Even Lisa used to complain and tell him to ease up, and she was wound pretty tight herself.

The coffee arrived, hot and blessedly caffeinated. William burned his tongue but didn’t especially care. Coffee had always been his one true vice, the one thing he wanted, knew he shouldn’t have, and couldn’t quite give up. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the rich, bitter flavor. He imagined he could feel his veins singing in happiness. Oddly, the song sounded a lot like the one Colby had been humming in the car.

“I’ve seen guys look less blissed out than that after a really good orgasm.”

William opened his eyes to glare. He looked around, but if any of the other customers had heard what Colby said, they weren’t reacting. “I need to buy a coffeemaker,” William said.

“Yeah, Frank’s will have one. How come you didn’t bring yours with you to JV?”

“JV?”

“Jelley’s Valley. See, now that you’re a local we can let you in on our secret lingo.”

“Oh.”

“So why no coffeemaker?”

After taking another soothing swallow, William answered carefully. “I didn’t have one before I came. I used to just go out for coffee.” That was sort of true. A few years back he and Lisa had splurged on a really nice Italian machine, the programmable kind that brewed coffee and espresso and probably did your income taxes if you punched the right buttons. Naturally, Lisa had kept it when he left. And during those miserable weeks of living in his office, he did go out for coffee, buying it from a campus vendor when he could afford it, pouring it from the burner in the graduate student lounge when he was broke.

“I guess that’s one of the advantages of living in civilization. You can go out for stuff.” Colby seemed neither sarcastic nor sad, just matter-of-fact.

“Have you really lived here your whole life?”

Colby had been slurping at his soft drink; now he smiled around the straw. “Why? You figure I’m a little too colorful for JV?”

“Maybe,” William answered cautiously.

“I thought so too, when I was a kid. Couldn’t wait to shake the dust from my feet. I graduated high school early, when I was only sixteen. Took off for the bright lights. San Francisco—homo heaven, right?”

“And your family let you go?”

Colby shrugged. “Dad was dead. Mom was remarried, to a truck driver. He has a house up in Redding but he spends most of the time on the road. Mom too. They’ve got their rig all set up like a little apartment, practically. It’s pretty cool. And Grandma and Grandpa, they were a little overwhelmed with me, I think.” He batted his eyelashes, which were unnaturally long. “I was just too fabulous for them to deal with.”

The waitress came to the table and plopped down laden plates. She pulled ketchup and mustard bottles from her apron pocket and set them on the table. “Anything else?”

“We’re good for now,” said Colby.