Gay Parody: Stepbrothers In the Attic

I’ll have a new book coming out in a few months titled, Step Brothers In the Attic, and as the title suggests, clearly, this will be a gay parody of Flowers In the Attic. This will be one of the first parodies I’ve done in a while and the only reason I’m doing it is because a publisher approached me about it.

It’s still so new I don’t even have edited excerpts yet that I can share. I will soon, but right now I’m still working out issues in the plot, and dealing with how I think the characters should be portrayed. It hasn’t been easy either. I didn’t even know where the story was going until last week. And that’s because I didn’t want this to be a dark, creepy book. It’s a parody. It’s not a tribute of fan fiction to the original book or movie. There’s a huge difference. I hope people find it a little campy at times, and a little peculiar, too. I didn’t see any other way it could be done, at least not with a book like this that has such a controversial theme.

With all that said, I also get into certain issues that still haunt gay men. Reparation/Conversion therapy is one of them. I can’t go into details about how this comes into play in this book, but I thought it worked well considering the general story line. It’s actually been the first time I’ve ever been able to work Conversion Therapy into any story line, so I hope readers will find that part a little different.

I will definitely post more in the coming weeks, with release dates and links. I’ll post an excerpt, too, as soon as I have one I think is ready to go.

Keep one thing in mind. In the original story, the controversial theme revolved around incest. However, in this parody, the controversy revolves around two gay men who fall in love and raise a family. I’m not by any means comparing gay love to incest. That should be abundantly clear. What I’m doing is showing that there are people out there who think one is as bad as the other.

Faye Dunaway On Mommie Dearest

Speaking of campy parody, here’s an article that discusses how Faye Dunaway has always felt about doing the film, Mommie Dearest. In spite of the fact that millions of people have loved that film time and again, and quoted from it every chance they can get, she’s not too thrilled with it herself.

“I think it turned my career in a direction where people would irretrievably have the wrong impression of me,” she says, “and that’s an awful hard thing to beat. I should have known better, but sometimes you’re vulnerable and you don’t realize what you’re getting into.”

“It’s unfortunate they felt they had to make that kind of movie,” she continues. “But you can’t be ashamed of the work you’ve done. You make a decision, and then you have to live with the consequence.”

I loved it…and so did many of the people in the comments. You can check that out here. 

Polyamorous Love Relationships

This is an off-beat piece about polyamorous relationships, which I know nothing about so I can’t comment too much in detail.

Polyamorous love. Is it all it’s cracked up to be? How could you possibly know until you’ve given it a try?

Writer Jeff Leavell and his husband Alex have been together for almost five years. A year and a half ago, they opened their relationship up to include a third man, Jon, and the three became a triad.

You can read more here. I have personally known guys in three-way long term relationships and I’ve never seen one last. They always think it will. They always claim how wonderful it is in the beginning. But in the end, one always winds up becoming the third wheel on that proverbial wagon. That’s just from what I’ve seen personally, with friends. I’m not making a broad generalization.