Welcome guest blogger - Christopher Moss
Jan. 30th, 2014 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jana_denardoHi, I'm happy to have Christopher Moss here on my blog with his book Beloved Pilgrim
So let me introduce you.
1 - "Why this story idea?"
Initially I wrote BELOVED PILGRIM I just wanted the experience of writing a female character I could relate to. I read a lot of books set in the Middle Ages, and so many of them have female protagonists I found I had nothing in common with. The authors would go on and on about what color brocade gown she was wearing. Yawn. So I decided to write the story of a lesbian knight and a "Saracen" woman. The irony is that writing this novel was the beginning of a long evaded realization that I am not a woman, not in my mind and heart, that I am in fact transgender. The next year or so I spent grappling with the subject, and once I was fully Christopher, I looked at the first edition of BELOVED PILGRIM and saw that my protagonist, whom I'd called Elisabeth, was in fact transgender. Harmony Ink Press encouraged me to create a second edition that reflects this fact. It was a Herculean task but then so is transitioning to seeing myself as a man!
2- "Is there a story you've been wanting to write for a while, but haven't started it yet? What is it?"
I really have about a dozen like that. I want to write a couple mystery series, one starring my main characters from my Dreamspinner novel, WHERE MY LOVE LIES DREAMING, Frankie and Johnny. It would take place in New Orleans in the tumultuous years after the American Civil War, and would have ghosts as part of the stories. The other mysteries would have President James Buchanan and his "long time companion" Rufus King as the amateur sleuths. I am working now on a young adult novel that takes place in my favorite era, Anglo Saxon England, with a young man who "sees dead people". There are many more... so I need to take care of my health since the life expectancy tests say I only have fifteen years left!
3- "Who is your favorite author/why?"
Oh gosh. I suppose Dorothy Dunnett, the author of the monumental Lymond Chronicles as well as the House of Niccolo. The main reason is that especially with Lymond, in "Game of Kings" and so forth, has created in the series title character whose transformation even in just the first volume that will knock your socks off.
Among M/M authors I adore both Tamara Allen and Ruth Sims for the wonderful writing and the sheer heart f the novels.
4- What do you do when you hit a writer's block?
Weep, scream, and tear out my hair. I jokes, a little. Fact is I make my characters tell me what's next. I often employ and exercise where I write up a focus group of the main characters and ask them questions. It always gets me answers and inspires me to write.
5- Do you have a particular routine when writing?
I wish I did. I am not that disciplined. I discovered in college that my best papers were the ones I wrote at the last moment, under pressure. I'm wiser with fiction, but I really can't say I have a routine. Again, my characters drive me more that I do them.
6- Who is the favorite character you’ve ever created
When my friend Laura and I were in our preteen years we started first play acting and then writing stories about a king and queen that we called "Faithful Forever", a very inaccurate title. One of the characters derived from that project is an Irish bard named Shannon O'Neill. I suppose you could say he is my "bad boy" character, a drinker, a womanizer, but exquisitely talented. He's the type of character who storms out of rooms and is mistakenly believed to have killed himself and all such melodrama. I like him so much I actually named a Celtic music radio show "The Shannon O'Neill Memorial Celtic Music Hour.
There's a bit of Shannon in my second favorite character, Frankie in WHERE MY LOVE LIES DREAMING.
7. What else would you like us to know about you?
I'm blind. Not totally but then only about 10% f legally blind people are totally blind. I have only peripheral vision from a hereditary congenital condition. If anything I think this disability made me more creative, more resourceful, and more inventive. And thanks to things like computers, the Internet, Kindle text-to-speech and other adaptive technology, I am rarely at a loss for ways to do what I want to do. Well, except drive. It is a very good thing I can't drive. Don't want to cut into those fifteen years after all.
Find BELOVED PILGRIM here
Find WHERE MY LVE LIES DREAMING here
Christopher’s website: Shieldwall Productions
Christopher’s blog: That's All I Read
AN INVOLUNTARY KING: A TALE OF ANGLO SAXON ENGLAND (with Shannon O'Neill)
So let me introduce you.
1 - "Why this story idea?"
Initially I wrote BELOVED PILGRIM I just wanted the experience of writing a female character I could relate to. I read a lot of books set in the Middle Ages, and so many of them have female protagonists I found I had nothing in common with. The authors would go on and on about what color brocade gown she was wearing. Yawn. So I decided to write the story of a lesbian knight and a "Saracen" woman. The irony is that writing this novel was the beginning of a long evaded realization that I am not a woman, not in my mind and heart, that I am in fact transgender. The next year or so I spent grappling with the subject, and once I was fully Christopher, I looked at the first edition of BELOVED PILGRIM and saw that my protagonist, whom I'd called Elisabeth, was in fact transgender. Harmony Ink Press encouraged me to create a second edition that reflects this fact. It was a Herculean task but then so is transitioning to seeing myself as a man!
2- "Is there a story you've been wanting to write for a while, but haven't started it yet? What is it?"
I really have about a dozen like that. I want to write a couple mystery series, one starring my main characters from my Dreamspinner novel, WHERE MY LOVE LIES DREAMING, Frankie and Johnny. It would take place in New Orleans in the tumultuous years after the American Civil War, and would have ghosts as part of the stories. The other mysteries would have President James Buchanan and his "long time companion" Rufus King as the amateur sleuths. I am working now on a young adult novel that takes place in my favorite era, Anglo Saxon England, with a young man who "sees dead people". There are many more... so I need to take care of my health since the life expectancy tests say I only have fifteen years left!
3- "Who is your favorite author/why?"
Oh gosh. I suppose Dorothy Dunnett, the author of the monumental Lymond Chronicles as well as the House of Niccolo. The main reason is that especially with Lymond, in "Game of Kings" and so forth, has created in the series title character whose transformation even in just the first volume that will knock your socks off.
Among M/M authors I adore both Tamara Allen and Ruth Sims for the wonderful writing and the sheer heart f the novels.
4- What do you do when you hit a writer's block?
Weep, scream, and tear out my hair. I jokes, a little. Fact is I make my characters tell me what's next. I often employ and exercise where I write up a focus group of the main characters and ask them questions. It always gets me answers and inspires me to write.
5- Do you have a particular routine when writing?
I wish I did. I am not that disciplined. I discovered in college that my best papers were the ones I wrote at the last moment, under pressure. I'm wiser with fiction, but I really can't say I have a routine. Again, my characters drive me more that I do them.
6- Who is the favorite character you’ve ever created
When my friend Laura and I were in our preteen years we started first play acting and then writing stories about a king and queen that we called "Faithful Forever", a very inaccurate title. One of the characters derived from that project is an Irish bard named Shannon O'Neill. I suppose you could say he is my "bad boy" character, a drinker, a womanizer, but exquisitely talented. He's the type of character who storms out of rooms and is mistakenly believed to have killed himself and all such melodrama. I like him so much I actually named a Celtic music radio show "The Shannon O'Neill Memorial Celtic Music Hour.
There's a bit of Shannon in my second favorite character, Frankie in WHERE MY LOVE LIES DREAMING.
7. What else would you like us to know about you?
I'm blind. Not totally but then only about 10% f legally blind people are totally blind. I have only peripheral vision from a hereditary congenital condition. If anything I think this disability made me more creative, more resourceful, and more inventive. And thanks to things like computers, the Internet, Kindle text-to-speech and other adaptive technology, I am rarely at a loss for ways to do what I want to do. Well, except drive. It is a very good thing I can't drive. Don't want to cut into those fifteen years after all.
Find BELOVED PILGRIM here
Find WHERE MY LVE LIES DREAMING here
Christopher’s website: Shieldwall Productions
Christopher’s blog: That's All I Read
AN INVOLUNTARY KING: A TALE OF ANGLO SAXON ENGLAND (with Shannon O'Neill)
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Date: 2014-01-31 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-31 05:14 pm (UTC)Focus groupw
Date: 2014-01-31 08:08 pm (UTC)Kit Moss
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Date: 2014-02-01 07:19 pm (UTC)