Anatomy of a Wish

The new cover from the forthcoming novel from Hayden Chance, entitled, Anatomy of a Wish.  It's his fourth novel from Dorje Publishing.   What do you guys think?

What Do You Expect From Gay Stories?

Gay Fiction has struggled for a long time.  Back in the eighties and nineties it was mostly about pornography or graphic gay sex.  Guy on guy fiction was either about domination, slavery, cruising, muscle or coming out.  And though these subjects work for some readers, other readers did want and still do more from their gay stories.  They want to read about characters who grow, who overcome obstacles, who find happily ever after.  And why shouldn’t they?  People read stories to find hope and motivation and to engage their imagination.  So why shouldn’t our stories be more complex?

Now, there’s a current trend of women writing our fiction for us.  There’s nothing wrong with women wanting to get in on stories about gay love—after all, strong men are engaging, exciting and enticing to read about. The fact that women want to write about gay men or man on man stories is just proof of how captivating this “men for men” arena really is.  It’s rich and forbidden.  The subject is still Taboo to some.  After all: don’t you feel excited about the possibility of taking a forbidden adventure?

But what about those of us who want to read fiction from gay male authors who’ve had the experience?  Who’ve been there?  You can’t deny that an author writing about what he knows intimately gives a story a sense of authenticity.

Gay stories about men in love don’t have to be just about gay sex.  Granted, sex is a part of life and is a great motivator for some character—many a guy’s life has gone terribly wrong because he was thinking from his sex glands rather than his head.  But you can’t deny that Many great stories have nothing to do with sex.  And we, as men, hopefully have more to us than our physical desires and lust.

Our stories can and should can have complex plots and fully developed characters.  They needn’t be about stereotypes from writers who haven’t had real-life, first-hand experience with the subject matter.  And something in the stories should happen.  Stories about gay guys should have fully developed plots that should not only delve into some greater truth, but that should mirror the natural process a human goes through when he or she experiences change.  Otherwise, what’s the point of reading a story to begin with?   

I hope you enjoy Forbidden and Taboo.  Not only do they take the reader through the struggles of being gay, of the pitfalls behind finding love, but they address some huge real world issues that face all of us now, issues that very few are willing to own up to right now.  Issues like: have we been lied to?  Are our gifts stolen from us when we are very young?  Is our educational system hobbling us?  What metaphysical forces lie below the surface of our every day experiences? And do our leaders have our best interests at heart?

Be careful the contracts you make...

Your ex was wrong. Fairytales do come true for guys like you...

Do You Know What the Ultimate Taboo Is?

How do you feel when you turn on the television and see individuals engaging in simulated sex? Or portraying drug use?  How do you feel when, in a news story, you hear the account of someone who was raped?  Or see a social media story about a priest or teacher who forced a child to have sex with them, or worse?

The other day a friend of mine posted a still frame on his facebook account from one of those daytime tabloid shows.  It was of a teenage black girl and under her picture was her name and the fact that she’d recently had sex with a man for a “lobster buffet dinner”. Of course the reaction of everyone to the photo was laughter and mockery.  The inevitable evolution of the absurdity that has become our public treatment of what we once saw as shocking or, at the very least, private.

It’s strange, isn’t it?  That the greatest Taboo in our society right now isn’t sex or drug use.  It isn’t violence or rape.  It isn’t incest or  pedophilia or necrophilia.  It isn’t prostitution or cannibalism. It isn’t bondage or S&M. It isn’t gluttony, infidelity, pride or deceit.  It isn’t any of these things. Doesn’t it feel like somehow some of these things should shock us?  Or at the very least present us with some sense of mystery?  But they don’t, do they? 

In fact, all of these topics are portrayed vividly and matter-of-factly any time of the day or night you care to log into the internet, or flip on your TV, or slap down your ten bucks at the theatre to see the latest blockbuster.  Constantly, we are barraged with these topics by tepid minds who believe they are being clever, counter-cultural or shocking.  Or worse, by those who are trying to desensitize us, break down our boundaries and force us into the constant discomfort between the extremes of utter titillation and total disgust.  

The other day in a public Laundromat I saw, on one of fifteen TV's hanging from every angle in the place, a cable show dedicated to the hundred most violent and horrifying deaths of all time.  Each one of them was vividly reenacted with actors and stunning special effects while it was described in matter of fact detail by a expressionless narrator.  No one in the Laundromat thought that this was a strange thing to see there.

It’s as if, in desensitizing people from these things, the real taboo becomes less obvious.  But it’s there if you pay attention.  In all of the arguments for gay rights, abortion, rape, public health care, teen sex, political scandal, race tension, terrorism, murder and suicide there is one thing missing.  One thing that no one wants to talk about.  Or, if it is talked about, it’s met with scorn and derision and dismissed by those who quickly put up another shocking photo of a teenage girl who recently gave her priest a blow job for a number seven value meal and a two slices of Eli’s cheesecake.

The most horrifying, objectionable Taboo is any individual who stands up and says he does not want to be a slave.  To any religion, or government, to any job or academic institution.  The real Taboo, my friends, is advocating self-reliance and freedom. 

Why?  Why is such an assertion so shocking?  That one should want to be free and have the right to his own choices?  To speak the way he wishes to speak or disregard political correctness?  Why must he be punished for not paying homage to everyone else’s damage and victimhood or for not conforming to what the man or woman down the street defines as a ‘good person’?  Why is it despicable that he should want to learn to defend himself and those he cares about rather than recklessly and irresponsibly trusting someone else to do it for him?

Why is it shocking?  Because the world is dangerous.  There are terrorist out there.  Evil men want to rape you and your children.  You may get sick.  You need to give your power to us so we can protect you.  Someone is going to attack you for your gender, race or sexual preference.  Or worse, someone may call you a fatty on the bus.  And you won’t be able to protect yourself. We’ll make sure of that. So let us make laws for you.  Lots and lots of laws that you too will eventually fall victim to. 

How does that make you feel?  To know that the very individuals who are desensitizing you to all of the perversions that they find titillating are trying to make your most basic freedom to be independent and self sufficient, to grow and become actualized the greatest Taboo of all?  That they are using your own security fears against you so that you give up your independence?

It should make you feel afraid. Uncomfortable.  Angry. Outraged.   

And if it doesn’t, try this.  Next time you’re waiting for your Chinese take out and see a twelve year old on a talk show slap her mother, or find yourself sitting in front of a big screen watching some dude giving a simulated hand job to another, ask yourself this question: Why would I feel that the guy who wants to be optimistic and live his life his way, who doesn’t want to be forced into someone else’s idea of healthcare, or who thinks political correctness is a form of thought control, or who would rather all governments stay out of his personal relationships—why would I feel that is more shocking than this?

What do you do when your childhood vows come back to hold you to your word?

Out now. A fairytale of a different kind, for adults...

Brian Cooper is having a very bad day.  He’s awakened with the worst hangover of his life.  He’s lying next to the date from hell who won’t leave.  And a vow he made in his childhood has suddenly appeared on his front door to haunt him.  To top it all off it’s the Year of the Bull, which, according to the crazy little waiter at a trendy Chinese restaurant may be his lucky year IF he actually lives through it.  As the day progresses, however, that seems less and less likely…

Join Brian in the adventure of his life as he rekindles passions he thought were dead, finds the hero inside him and rights the wrongs of this world in this hysterical fairytale for adults.

 

Click here to take a look inside

Why you SHOULD Change For Your Relationships.

People tweet it, text it and say it to each other over coffee-house tables. They post it in bold script in pithy little e-cards on Facebook, decorated with line-drawings of frustrated 50’s housewives.  Celebrities say it in interviews on late-night talk shows while we watch in bed, nodding and telling ourselves: “What great wisdom Theater majors have.”   You hear it in songs and read it in books.  It’s written as dialogue in movies and plays.

It seems a harmless couple of phrases, and at first glance, full of veracity: “Don’t change for anyone.  You be who you are.”  It reminds one of grade school and how young teenage girls would write in each others' year books in pink, permanent marker: 2 Good 2B 4gotten.  Don’t ever change! XXXOOO 

Can you imagine how horrifying that would be?  To wander through life with the emotional and intellectual maturity of a frustrated 8^th grader who’s most desperate need is to be accepted by other frustrated and insecure 8^th graders?  

Still, adolescents aren’t the only ones to say it.  We hear it all the time as adults from parents, from friends, from “experts” on talk shows.  “Don’t change for anyone,” They say.  “You be yourself!”

And just which “self” are we supposed to hold to so uncompromisingly?  The self we are at work? The self we area around our parents?  The self we are at home while we’re warming up a family-sized frozen lasagna for one? Or while we’re being a parent?  Or is it the self we are when we’re out partying with our friends?  Is it the self who sits alone on a Tuesday night reading a book?  The self who wants blood when our favorite hockey team is losing?  Is it the self we are when we’re jerking off to our darkest fantasies (Don’t deny it—you know you’ve got a dark side.)  Or is it the self we are when we’re standing on Sacred Ground and we feel closest to that bolt of Divinity that zings through all of this chaos and tells our heart that there is some kind of Holy Order to all this mess?

Which of these "selves" are we supposed to cling so firmly to when we’re in a relationship and not give up for the sake of another? Humans are constantly changing. There is no such thing as consistency even though we lie and tell ourselves there is.  If there was we wouldn’t develop gray hair and wrinkles, wouldn’t end up buried in six feet of dirt like every human who ever came before us.  And why shouldn’t we change? Why is change so bad?  And why are people so keen on telling everyone else to be inflexible and immovable in their relationships? 

“Don’t change,” they say.  Subtext: “Let your lover bend to your will, your needs, your caprices.”

What sort of person refuses to change when they’re in a relationship?  The person who is either going to end up leaving that relationship or be destroyed by it.  People who can change are the people who can adapt and find happiness in any situation.  The also have what it takes to grow with someone else.  The people who can’t are put on medication to make sure they can stay one mood all the time in all situations. 

Have you ever taken a walk in nature and seen what happens to areas that do not change?  They fester.  Water becomes stagnant.  Blood drinkers appear: mosquitoes, ticks, and other nasty biters.  Animals get sick and die because their food and drink gets poisoned.  Carrion eaters show up.  The place smells foul, of death.  Things rot.  It’s only when floods or rain showers come in and wash all that rot away that healthy things can begin to grow again in such spaces.  What makes humans believe they are so far removed from nature?  Everything in nature is meant to change.  EVERYTHING.

People who refuse to change in their relationships, because of their relationships or in relation to others end up like these static places.  If you get into a relationship you should change.  You will change.  If you don’t, you’re not in a relationship: you’re inflexibly inflicting your damage on someone else.  Relationships—real relationships anyway—should help us to become better.  To grow and be more than we could be on our own.  They should unlock potentials in us that would otherwise remain inaccessible.  Relationships should show us contrast because it’s through contrast we learn very valuable things.  

We get into relationships to begin with because we feel an absence of something. If we didn’t we wouldn’t need to have lovers.  Every one of us falls in love because we want someone else to accept us, cherish us and act as a mirror of who we are.  Relationships should help us to become aware of something bigger than just ourselves. If they don’t they aren’t relationships.  They are self-centered indulgences.

The current trend of encouraging people to be inflexible in their relationships and consider only their own needs is the very sort of advice that’s leading to such a high break up rate. The fact is: if we never change, never grow, we might as well walk around scribbling adolescent wisdom into each others’ yearbooks: ”I like you as you are.  So, don’t you ever grow or be different than you are at this moment.  Because that makes me uncomfortable.”  

Which, if you think about it, is really the gist of it. 

So, love.  Grow.  Change.  Get messy and see what the hell this thing really is we call life.  Become bigger and better then you ever could on your own. Watch what kind of power unity with another can give you.  See what else you can become.  Otherwise, what’s the point?