Our July feature for the Signature Author Background is "Crosscurrents" by Adam Phillips. If you're a fan of Adam's story, I hope you'll like the background featuring the moment in the story where Andy and Matt's relationship takes a turn. Haven't read the story yet? Never fear, we have a lot of incentive to get you excited. Download your background, check out Tyler's review from Monday's blog, and then read this interview with Adam... then get started!

 

 

Single people often have more time to write. Are you single?

 

No. I'm married and have a 8-year-old son and a 4-year old son. On top of that, I write nonfiction stuff for a living now, in addition to a part-time gig as an adjunct math professor at a local juco and chasing after one other income stream. The money's great, and the diversity appeals to my ADHD. But time gets precious. So the best time for narrative-writing for me is before everyone gets up or after everyone's gone to bed.

 

Do you eat your fruits and vegetables?

 

Absolutely. My wife's a doctor, and she'll put me in Food Detention if I don't. Also, I have kids watching.

 

What are you wearing (and no fibbing!)?

 

Jeans and a polo shirt with a couple of holes in it. Yeah, I know. Boring, huh? That's the nice thing about being self-employed. Lots of "dress-like-you-want" days.

 

Have you ever gone out in public, realized your shirt is on backwards, and just don’t care?

 

Seriously? Who does this?

 

What brought you to the site?

 

I love good writing, and for all kinds of Freudian and autobiographical reasons, I guess, I gravitate toward coming-of-age stories. I'd discovered the Nifty site some time before this one, but the quality is so variable there, it's kind of hit-or-miss for the reader. I wanted to find a place that was a little more selective, and I knew it had to be out there if I could locate it, so I Googled "Gay Stories," and Gay Authors was one of the first five hits that came up. With a name like "Gay Authors," I figured the writing mattered to the folks who ran the place. So I jumped in as a reader. And I haven't been disappointed.

 

What books have most influenced you?

 

As a writer of gay/bi narrative? Let me see:

 

Jamie O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boys. Masterful, beautiful, devastating writing.

 

Jim Grimsley's Dream Boy. The stylistic minimalism packs an incredible punch in this sexual-awakening tragedy.

 

J. G. Hayes's A Map of the Harbor Islands. Joe Hayes is all about pain and redemption, and his characters are endearing and unforgettable. Also, he tends to like the happy ending, and while I don’t require that, it’s nice.

 

A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I know it's the butt of all kinds of jokes and object of all kinds of scorn, but that's because too many high school teachers make kids read it. It's not a book for high school kids. Only a few of them have the stuff at that age to see what the author's up to. Still, it's a memorable story of the innocence of youth and the darkness of the human heart. And the writing's rich and vivid.

 

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

 

1) I'm a gym rat and a sports enthusiast. I play in an old guy's soccer league (I'm 35); I enjoy getting out and tossing the ball around with the neighborhood kids; I'll get into a pickup basketball game at my gym; and I coach my older son's soccer team. So there's that. Oh, and over the last couple of years I've taken up boxing. There's a real art to it that involves the whole body and mind; it's not just about pounding people's faces until they crumple.

 

2) I read. Voraciously. Especially fiction, philosophy, math & science, and politics.

 

3) I like to watch good TV and good movies.

 

4) I listen to music. Of all kinds. And I'm a halfway decent pianist.

 

5) I grill outdoors in the summer and avoid the kitchen in all other seasons. I like having friends and loved ones over—with their kids or without--for a summer meal. The guys can hang out in the back yard, drink beer, and shoot the breeze with me while I’m attending to the manly art of searing flesh, and when it’s time to eat, the bonhomie is soul-restoring.

 

If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?

 

My only real mentor for the kind of writing I've done on Gay Authors was my first editor. He's a guy who edits scripts for TV and movies for a living. He saw some early posted chapters of Crosscurrents that he liked enough to ask if I'd be interested in his help. I've learned so much from him.

 

Just in terms of how to write a story people want to read, the stories of Dom Luka at this site have taught me a lot about how to set up a scene, how to tell what you need to and show most all of the rest, how to transition scenes skillfully and with style. How to make your characters live and breathe, and how to make them memorable. Dom feels in his bones, I think, how the narrative formula of western civilization is best executed to brilliant effect, and he turns that formula into art in his stories. Each novel of his has a story to tell. That may seem so obvious as to not need mentioning; don’t all stories tell stories? Well, not always, as you discover when you survey the landscape. But with him, there’s a start, a rise, a high point, and a coast down to a smooth landing, whether the landing is upbeat or more bittersweet. When you finish one of Dom’s novels, you feel as though you’ve read a story. And his genius is that he doesn’t just paint by the numbers; he takes that long-honored template and puts freshness into it.

 

Where do you get your ideas?

 

Well, my only large work here is Crosscurrents. My ideas there came from my life experience. I also have one short-short at Gay Authors, The Confrontation, and one short story, Brushfire, in progress here. I have ideas sketched out, or in some cases, partially written, for 12 more works of various sizes. And, as is the case with the smaller stories I have at Gay Authors, the ideas for each of the 12 came from my own inner reactions to something I’ve experienced in my everyday world. Not always anything that has to do with me. It’s common for me to notice something out there as I'm walking through my day and be so struck by it that I’m mentally off-to-the-races, taking that thing I saw, asking “what if…” and starting to tell myself a story in answer to the “what if.”

 

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

 

I always have to watch out for dialogue. So many writers are abysmal with dialogue. I try to imagine the scene in my head and think about the way the character in question would say it. Then I just transcribe what he said. That said, it’s not the easiest part of writing.

 

I'm also tempted with lack of restraint, which I absolutely hate. Rewrites frequently involve ratcheting a scene back a notch so I'm not sledgehammering the reader with it.

 

What’s the best part of being an author?

 

Well, if we're not talking about the money I make doing nonfiction writing for hire, I guess it's connecting emotionally through my narrative writing with so many readers who’ve written me telling me how deeply they’ve been moved by the story. Many of those readers have had a crosscurrent experience of their own in their pasts, and it’s been humbling to have so many of them share the details with me.

 

Did something specific inspire you to write Crosscurrents?

 

The story’s about me and my childhood best friend, actually, and I was at a place—when I started—where I feared that the realities of young-adulthood would end up unintentionally and gradually removing us from each other’s lives, until he was just “somebody that I used to know.” The heartbreak I felt as I was contemplating this caused me to start this story for him and for his eyes, as a sort of cri de coeur and as a way to Say It. And to move on.

 

How much of the story is based on personal experience or is the story primarily research-based?

 

Yeah, it’s all me. I’ve distorted to a minor degree some facts of history and geography and chronology; I took one “minor character” from real life and split that person into two “narrative characters,” and I did the reverse: I took two people from real life and combined them into one narrative character. I also changed the gender of one minor character because I felt that person needed the extra protection of anonymity that change might produce. And some of the characterization has been slicked-up a little bit for "publication" in order to make the appeal more immediate and to conform to the conventions of the genre. Beyond that, it’s all personal experience. There is no fictional narrative material in it.

 

How did you come up with the title?

 

I felt it was a perfect description of the way people who experience themselves as bisexual often feel: Pulled by strong currents in two different directions at the same time.

 

How long did it take you to write this story?

 

(Winces hard) Ten years. Yeah, I know. But I was busy living life, you know? I promise my upcoming stuff won’t be so slow.

 

What was your favorite part of Crosscurrents?

 

Writing about Andy’s and Matt’s estrangement after their high school beach encounter was excruciating for me. I wrote those three chapters (15-17) in one sitting, and when I finished, I was emotionally wasted. Drained. But as I looked at the writing, I realized it was quite strong there.

 

Chapter 30 was also really gratifying to complete. It charts a pivotal turning point for Andy, and for the reader it releases a lot of the emotional tension that’s been generating for fifteen chapters.

 

Can you share a little of your current work with us?

 

By summer’s end, I want to have my little short story Brushfire finished. There will be between two and three chapters more.

 

I have an unfinished five-chapter short story called Tumbleweed Connection languishing at Nifty. It's mostly erotica and not really narrative-centric. It's about a small-town West Texas assistant football coach and an 18-year-old on the team. I’m also planning on finishing this one up this summer.

 

What are your future projects?

 

Well, in addition to the above, I actually have ideas for 6 novels, 6 short stories, and a sonnet (!!!). I have no idea in what order I'll work on these. Here they are with their tentative titles and general summaries:

 

One short story (“Remix”) and one novel (Not to Touch the Earth) each deal with a bisexual man who wakes up one day to alternate realities, realities that present him with important and potentially life-changing choices. Although the stories are completely unrelated, both have science-fictiony elements to them, but the sf is not the main thing in either case. That's just a vehicle for showcasing the protagonists’ conflicts and life paths.

 

One (“The Tree”) is a short story that uses a minor para-natural situation to explore recognizable universal themes about love and life and the various distractions and temptations we face when we try to live with integrity.

 

One book-length story (Small Town Boys) is a nostalgic/erotic piece of Americana, hometown values, and hometown boys. Imagine a sexy gay period-piece with a feel like that of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine.

 

One novel (Rage) and one short story (“Solve”) are each about the scary and devastating consequences of rage; rage at self, and rage at others.

 

Two short stories are pure erotica: One (“Piel Canela”) is about a casual encounter between two men who come out of completely separate orbits and collide. The other (“Spunk”) is an abstract three-part literary experiment focused on men and on, uhh...semen.

 

One (“Gate”) is a short story dealing with deep, sustained, and unresolved longing.

 

Two novels (It Happened Online and Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters) are tales of young men who meet up by chance, snap into place together as if they’d been fated to, and experience the way that plays out.

 

One (Sculpt) is a sonnet on male beauty. Ok, I fell in love with the genre a while back and want to see if I can do one that honors the structural conventions of classic sonnets but feels completely contemporary.

 

And one novel (Finding Home) is the frequently-requested sequel to Crosscurrents. It tells us The Rest of the Story between Matt and Andy.