Here we go again, folks. Another installment of your questions being answered by GA authors. Have you sent me a question to pass along already? No? Why? I never reveal who send in the questions so you need not be embarrassed of anything you may want to ask. Hell, once I send the question to the author, I delete the message so I don’t even know who asks most of them in. I’m old and my memory’s deficient.

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With twenty-eight stories and over 800,000 words posted in a little over two years, @Geron Kees could be the poster-child for prolific authors. His varied output has garnered a multitude of fans and this month lands him on Ask an Author with a question form one of his many followers.

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I enjoy your writing very much and I appreciate that your stories span different categories including sci-fi. ROYGBIV, The Road of Dreams, and The Frost Covered Marker are a few of my favorites. Your stories though are all young adult/teen. What is it that appeals you to that genre?  What is the most difficult thing about writing from the teenaged perspective?

 

And just because we can’t be serious all the time: what is the most embarrassing thing that you’ve ever worn? 

 

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Hmm. Very nice to hear that you have enjoyed the stories. 

I began my 'gay' life quite young. I grew to age nine in a suburb of Amsterdam, Netherlands, where the 'gay revolution' had already come to pass. Gay teens were open about their lifestyles, and as a youngster I was quite curious about it all. I and my best friend knew an older teen in the next block who was 16 and gay, and we started to pester him about what exactly it was that 'gay' guys did together. He finally got annoyed enough with our persistence to tell us. My friend and I were quite amazed, and curious, and...just not all that timid, I guess. 

I came to the US when I was nine, and was simply amazed at the backward state of sexual affairs here. Amazed and horrified, actually. But I soon learned that there was still gay life around, it was just all undercover. I found myself a boyfriend by the time I was 13, and never really looked back. 

I started writing on a dare. I was recounting some of the adventures of my youth to friends here, and one said I should "write that stuff down." I did, and submitted the results to Nifty, the only site I was aware of at that time. The response really astonished me. I just couldn't get over the fact that people would like to read about this! But, again, I never looked back. I soon found other sites to post on, and here we are. 

I have written some adult gay fiction, but I have not published it. Not yet anyway. The night is still young, as they say. 

I am more than a little saddened by the amount of misery prevalent in so many stories of gay youth. Growing up gay in America was tough for a lot of people. Through luck or circumstance, my life has not been laden with such misfortune. My teens were actually quite wonderful for me, and I enjoy sharing that sense with others , that being a gay young person need not always be so challenging. Sometimes, it's pretty darn nice! 

I really don't find it terribly challenging to write about teens. They're people, like anybody else. I was one, you were one. It's just about remembering what that was like. As I said, for me it was a very nice time of life.  

The adult world is more complex, and more challenging, I think. I do write those types of stories when the urge strikes me, but it simply is not as much fun, and I mostly write for fun. But...you never know. 

As for the most embarrassing thing I have ever worn? Well, you have to understand first that European values are different from American ones. When I first came to the US, I wore some clothing that was perfectly fine at 'home;' but which didn't go over as well here. Not quite enough of it, as it turned out. Very short shorts, for one thing. But I learned, and changed. 

But I have never been bashful about myself, so I don't become embarrassed easily. I guess the most embarrassing thing I ever wore in retrospect was in sixth grade, when a few friends and I appeared in front of the entire school dressed in nothing but loincloths and feathers and performed some Native American dances we had learned. Not a Native American among us, either, but the dances went over big, and girls followed us around for weeks afterwards. And, um, a few guys, too.  

Thanks for your interest. 

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@Defiance19 took many of us by surprise when she shared her first story on GA. It was so well written, technically and thematically, some of us felt she had been holding out on us. Subsequent offerings have not disappointed. On a personal note, Def has followed my series from the beginning, leaves me wonderful comments, and has more than once served as a sounding board for when my characters are in New York. I had the pleasure of meeting her earlier this year (she helped me celebrate my 60th) and I can tell you she’s even lovelier in person than in cyberspace.

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You've written several short pieces, which are really very good. Do you see a longer project in the future?  

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First off, whaat? So surprised, but I’m grateful to be included by whomever submitted this question.  Thank you!  

I write the short stories mostly because it allows me to focus on a theme, and there’s a due by date. I do have ideas, and have things written toward a longer serial story goal. But also, other than second guessing myself I need to have a better writing discipline. Hopefully soon, I will have something completed. This is great motivation. 

Thank you again, for your question.

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Having written about a dozen stories based in Washington, D.C. you would think I would have asked @oat327 for help at some point. However, I didn’t discover he was a resident of the District until recently. Had I known before, I could have asked him to hit Uproar on a Thursday night and meet with the Scandals Rugby Football Club after their practice to provide me with background info. Nah, who am I kidding? I’m glad I did it myself but I’ll definitely invite him to join me next time I’m in the city.

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The Best Four Years of Adam Becker sees Adam trying to come to terms with his sexuality, and finding out who he is and how he fits, all while attending college.  

What are some of the things that get edited out of the story? Was your college experience anything like Becker’s?

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Honestly, my college experience was very similar; Tulane was a trip. I actually started this piece as a kind of way to kind of memorialize my college years, and much of the first few chapters especially are pulled directly from real life. The racially-tinged car accident en route from Ben and Jerry’s, Erik’s crazy roommate that they try to integrate into the group, weekends starting on Tuesdays at Bruno’s or The Boot, the ludicrous fraternity politics—all actually happened. Basically, I like to think of this as being a true story in the details; the main plot is generally fictional (I didn’t have a Kevin until after college, sadly) but everything else is generally being pretty accurate. Everything still follows the general arc of my college years.   

What gets edited out... considering this story is already about 150,000 words long, probably not nearly enough. In retrospect, I wish my editing had been a little tighter at the beginning; I think there are a lot of things in the early chapters that were fun memories for me but aren’t all that relevant to the plot. Once Becker met Kevin, I got a bit better with keeping focus. Most of what we lose is Becker's relationship with his friends. (Which is sad, because Tripp is my favorite character and I always feel guilty for neglecting him.) College is so much dicking around in other people’s dorms and doing absolutely nothing--that's how Becker probably spends 90% of his time and we definitely miss that. 

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I’ll close this month with @JohnAR. The Germany-based author created a universe full of all sort of critters defying the usual vampire/werewolf tropes found in most stories. He struck a chord with readers and his weekly posts were eagerly anticipated by his fans.

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I was curious as to why he chose a shifter story to write, and how he came to write such a different shifter story.

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Some years ago I was stationed in a far-away country with little attraction of the male kind, so I read lots of ‘enticing’ books. And like in overall popular culture, the werewolf/vampire theme was ubiquitous. 

Unfortunately, most of the stories were so formulaic I got bored quickly: A big, young, hairy, dark Alpha wolf finds ‘his and only his’ gentle, blond, smooth, submissive Omega pup, takes him as his own rather forcefully as he cannot live without him (her?) anymore, and f***ks him (her?) raw happily ever after. I discovered that most of these male Alpha wolf/kind-of-male Omega wolf stories were written by women and for women (I think Colt explains that better in book MetaOrigins). The only exception are the ‘Tameness of the Wolf’ books, though those have too much sex (if that is possible). 

However, when I found that a gay author used exactly the same set-up I decided that I had enough and started to write a story that would break with all of those for me dreadful cliché characters. Hence, I created an Alpha that isn’t dark-haired and doesn’t get to do the f***ing, an enforcer that likes all sweet things but trips on pain, and a Beta that loves playing women for his pack’s advantage, but is the ultimate power bottom. This is crowned by the contrarian hero nerd who in no other book would ever get to do the unspeakable things he does to his pack wolves in Meta – after all he has to take one for the team, doesn’t he? 

Once those characters were set, my mean imagination did most of the rest; occasionally conflagrated by the cute expectations of my readers which I enjoyed to crush with OCD precision. 

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That’s it for this month, my friends. If you wish to ensure this feature remains alive, don’t forget to send me a question for any GA author. I have one more month in inventory but after that…