Did you read this month's CSR story? I love a good country story, as I grew up on and around farms, horses, cattle, sheep, and can spot who wears their boots in the saddle versus who wears their boots to be fancy (and yes, we did make fun of those visitors at fair!). I love asking what's something personal about you that people might be surprised to know and getting all sorts of answers to my interview questions to share with GA members about our authors, and getting to read more about a fellow country soul! Read on to find out more about @Griz and his story, Spring and a Ring! Make sure you share your comments below. 🤠

Chocolate or Vanilla?

Hmmm.....Chocolate, I think. Vanilla is integral to good chocolate, so really, I get both with each and every bite.

What’s one location you’d love to go to research for a story?

Wojtowa, Poland. It's a small village now, but before WWII, was larger and very much like Lewistown, Montana: an agricultural railroad town. The Nazis reduced the town to mostly rubble, but my remaining Polish relatives and many, many others restored it as much as possible. I have this idea for a story about my (young) great-great-great uncle on a boat out of Gdansk, Poland, bound for the States. He and another traveling immigrant meet, a young Dane from Copenhagen, when the boat stops there on the way West. The end might be predictable, but the details will focus on both Denmark's big city and Poland's little village, and the challenges in a new country the two young men are truly not prepared for. I want at least two weeks in Wojtowa to research around 100 years of history and geography.

What’s something personal about you people might be surprised to know?

I was born and raised in Lewistown, Fergus County, Montana. I returned here after years away for college and working for a larger international company which focuses on farm commodity shipping and receiving. The folks here have no idea I write gay romance stories (with some nookie included, of course), and the readers of the stories have no idea I'm a real farmer with a real farm and real livestock. No, really.

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

As with many aspects of Life, one thing leads to another, and then returns home. I take my horse out and ride around the property, checking the fences. I get most of my story ideas, including dialogue, on horseback. Generally, a ride results in stuff for a story, and the stories seem to include horses (and nookie). Same happens if I'm cooking; I get an idea while standing at the stove, and write stuff down. Sometimes in the margins of cookbooks.

If you could give advice to yourself when you first started writing, what would it be?

Write everything down when ideas come to mind. They might not be used, but it's a good bank of ideas for plot, characters and dialogue. Some of them will never come back to mind, once forgotten.

How did you come up with the title?

I was trying to think of a title that conveys personal and professional growth. Spring is the beginning of agricultural growth, and traditionally, a ring is the beginning of personal and interpersonal growth. This is a traditional community, and the seven or nine other gay farm guys we know give each other rings (or if it's necessary to be discreet) or nicer wrist watches, when we want to have physical connection with each other by proxy. Screw the 'patriarchal heteronormative' drivel we hear when we are in bigger cities and folks see our rings; farm boys are not hung up on labels from the very people who insist we should not live by labels. One of these days, I'll work on a story about our own tribe's selective, near-militant hypocrisy. It'll depend on which acre my horse takes me for checking the fences, I guess.

Do you relate more to one character or the other, Sal or Tim?

I relate more to Tim, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, behaviorally and physically. I am 6'5", 235 pounds and furry. Due to a badly-timed investment in equipment a few years ago, I wound up in Tim's boots-----in bankruptcy. It took a long time to dig out of the nightmare, and I didn't have my own Sal del Vecchio to save my sorry butt. Sal, though, is a re-named (straight) friend in real life, and in real Walpole, Massachusetts, who said he'd try to find me a rich sugar daddy. That's its own can of worms I'd rather leave unopened, although.....I'd like my own version of Sal. Not that he needs to resemble the character, but just be a good man, smaller than myself, who likes horses, cows and crops, and thinks snow is the very best crop a Montana farmer can grow. (I love cold weather and snow. And the best candy in the world is heated maple syrup with a little cinnamon added, then drizzled in a snowbank, which is Winter thing only.)

Did something specific inspire you to use the setting for Spring and a Ring?

Well, yeah, actually; Sal's farm and log house, which in real life is my property and house, and my favorite little town, Winnett, Montana. My property and its precise location is the setting for another agro love story, "Harvard Comes To Montana". Longer than "Spring And A Ring", and not yet complete. My farm has been in our family for five generations, and my veterinarian nephew and his boyfriend will take it into the sixth and beyond. I'm solidly planted here, just like the wheat, oats, rye and Black Angus and Scottish Highlander cattle I grow.

Do you have a favorite line or scene in the story?

Those were my nephew's boyfriend's idea, when he read the story as I was working on it. That guy is the funniest, most romantic, knuckle-dragging redneck I've ever met. I told him I want to collaborate on a full story with him sometime. I hope sincerely that will happen.

Can you share any of your current or future story you’re working on with readers?

I kinda already did, or a specific story: "Harvard Comes To Montana". High school graduate farm boy, sixth generation on Polish immigrant family farm, meets visiting Harvard professor. Twelve years apart in age. They have a lot to teach each other about challenges, compromises, family, career and (of course) love. Oh-----and food. Seems to be a regular topic in stories I write. Everything 'food' I've written about is stuff I've actually prepared. It's on nifty.org, and once I get the next chapter written, I'll publish the whole thing on GA, too. One of my readers is a professor at Barnard College. I am, he says, his 'personal favorite gay mushy-trashy novel author'. That's an honor, as far as I'm concerned. There's another one-chapter short story on nifty.org: "On Eggs And Kinsey". I want to submit that to GA, as well. Just need to get my lazy butt in gear.