Shannon Yarbrough

HarperCollins UK released news several months ago that it was starting up it’s on Writer’s Forum called authonomy.com.  I tried You Write On.  I tried Writer’s Cafe.  I’ve also played around with Gather for a while.  So,Ii was excited to hear about something new.  I immediately signed up to be on their mailing list sometime last year, and received an invitation this morning.

I decided to give my piano making historical piece a try there first.  Go check it out!

It’s an election year, so you know the subject of gay marriages was bound to pop up sometime.  Kudos to California queers for putting up a fight.  The subject of gay marriage is like an old soap opera star we haven’t seen for a few seasons.  A has been big screen name that’s been tucked away in rehab since the last time we heard about it in the news.  I don’t care about gay marriage.  I just hope they make a reality TV show about all the gay divorces.  Bitch, I’m taking the poodle!  As long as I get the curtains, honey, I made them with my bare hands!

“Okay, so we are getting married and you look fabulous and I’m taking your last name, but I promised Mom we wouldn’t hold hands at the ceremony because I don’t want to embarrass her, mmmmkyay?”

I know I’ve been pretty quiet around here this week. The weekend was wet and rainy. Monday was cold and rainy, but got better. Tuesday? You guessed it. Raining, thunder, lightening, and hale all morning. Then sunshine in the afternoon. Work has been the usual….work.

I’ve spent the last few mornings working with a program I downloaded over the weekend called Book Cover Pro. It’s awesome, and I have totally revamped my next book cover from the previous post. I’m very proud of it and I think you will like it too.

But, I’m not giving a peek at it now. You’ll just have to stick around for that.

Last night, J and I saw Iron Man at the new Moolah Temple movie theatre here in St. Louis. The ambiance and grandeur of the building alone is amazing. They serve “adult” beverages which you can take into the theatre. There’s a bowling alley in the basement. There’s a bar. There’s a billiards rooms. The one movie screen in the auditorium is huge, with large leather sofas covering the floor down front which is where we sat. My only disappointment is that the sound is horrible. No surround sound at all. I couldn’t understand half the movie. Here’s some information and pictures I found about the building itself.

The Moolah Temple was home to the Shriners, a Masonic organization, until the mid-1980s, when the changing residency of the Shriners’ membership prompted them to move west. Built in the 1920s, the structure was never actually completed. Rooms within were rented out to various other Masonic groups and chapters, but as the middle class fled to the suburbs, they took their rental income with them. With heating and restoration costs looming, the building was sold around 1986 or ‘87.

Craig Cervantes Realtors offered the building for sale; a September 13, 2000 article from the Post-Dispatch reported that long-time owner TRiSTAR Business Communities planned to renovate the building to the tune of $11 million, to the designs of Cleveland-based GSI-Architects Inc. Office space would be installed in the unique interior spaces, with state historic tax credits requiring that they remain intact. An 1880s house located next to the temple was slated for demolition. The renovation never got underway, however; the building sat idle for several more years.

Around 2004, a $42 million renovation finally got underway, under the stewardship of developers Amy and Amrit Gill. In January 2005, the former Masonic temple re-opened with 40 apartments, a single-screen movie theater (boasting the largest screen in the area and leather couches among the seating), and a bowling alley and grille in the basement. A new garage stands behind the building, serving the Moolah Temple as well as SLU.

Sadly, I’ve never really had a chance to enjoy and get to know a lot of things like this in the city since I’ve lived here. I’ve always been a visitor on the cusp of the party, you could say. So, this was a nice treat despite the poor sound quality.

Iron Man, the movie, was awesome. A great action packed super hero movie, the kind I haven’t seen in a while. Kudos to Robert Downey Jr. too. He pulled it off!

To celebrate the upcoming release of my new book, Stealing Wishes, I’ve dropped the E-book price of my first novel, The Other Side of What, to just 25 cents!  That’s right.  Download it to your computer for a quarter, or you can still buy a paperback version for just $7.75 (regularly $9.99).

And check back soon for a new contest where you can win a signed first edition copy of both books!  Thanks to all my readers out there for your continued support!  This one’s for you!

Stealing Wishes, my new novel, is about an obsessive compulsive coffee barista in search of Mr. Right.  Obsessed with the number 32, Blaine turns jealous when his coworker and best friend finds a date before he does.  But can a blind date named Edward solve his dilemma and cure his illness? Complications ensue as Blaine obsesses with his hobby of taking pictures, all while trying to capture the perfect snapshot for a local photography contest!

Stealing Wishes will be released in early June!

Despite death threats, a gay bishop plans to go through with a civil union for him and his partner!

“When your life is at stake, you learn that there are things in life that are much worse than death,” Bishop Robinson told TODAY’s Matt Lauer Thursday in New York. “That’s the great reward of being a Christian. Not living your life — that’s worse than death. And if something were to happen to me, I would know that I am doing what I discern God is calling me to do.”

Read the whole article here!

What would Jesus do? I somehow doubt he’d call in a bomb threat or put cyanide in the punch bowl.

To celebrate the upcoming publication of my second novel, Stealing Wishes, I’m offering a bigger discount on my first novel, The Other Side of What.

Right now, you can buy the paper back for $7.75 (regularly $9.99) or you can download the E-book version for .75 cents (regularly $1.00).  Check it out!

And don’t forget you can download my first book to your Amazon Kindle for just $5.20.

I received the review copy of Stealing Wishes today!  At 250 pages, it looks great.  I have a few changes to make, including to the book cover (see the previous post for a snapshot of what it looks like now).  But I’m hoping to have it available by the end of the month!  Check back soon right here for update!

This is the tentative book cover for my next novel coming out soon.  I’m expecting the first review copy in the mail by this weekend.

Big apologies to Anne Rice and any fans I might have upset with my remarks in an earlier post about a Time Magazine article concerning the possible publication of a new Lestat novel.  Anne commented and later emailed letting me know there would not be a new Lestat novel.  She can’t make it work, but is instead working on a” new supernatural series” with different characters and a Christian focus.  I look forward to it.

I also was directed to a message on Anne’s site concerning this topic.  She basically does not want to revisit the places and characters she gave birth to in her earlier books, and is putting her focus on new characters and subjects.  Enough said.  I was instantly reminded of the similar words of horror novelist, Poppy Z. Brite, who has done the same thing.  Brite’s recent focus has been all about a gay couple running a restaurant in New Orleans.  She received lots of frowns from angered fans who desperately wanted Poppy to write sequels to her older books or at least revisit the beloved characters she created when she wrote horror.  She said no.  She much prefers to write about new characters, and the recent ones in her Liquor series are indeed brilliant.

As a writer/author myself, who I am to judge another author for choosing to write about new topics in new genres?  I have yet to corner myself into any one particular genre at all.  My first book was considered gay fiction by some, although I called it Southern young adult.  Ahem, there was no erotica in it, by the way.  A lot of readers assume that calling something “gay fiction” means it has steamy sex scenes.  Not so!  But I have to admit, I’ve written a few erotic short stories which are in some anthologies out there.  I’m about to publish my second book which is a bit of a romantic comedy.  And currently I’m writing historical fiction.  So there…I’m all over the map, aren’t I?

Sure, readers will complain when their favorite author leaves their genre for something completely and utterly different.  How dare they get bored with writing about the same old thing we want more of! We may have no interest in reading their new books.  We may boycott them and write rude posts about them in our blogs, but I think I know what it’s like for that writer.  As a writer myself, I have a need to create, to expel my creative energy in whatever means are necessary.  My mind is always churning. One day I’m writing about an obsessive compulsive coffee barista and tomorrow I’m writing about a piano making Civil War soldier.  I’ve never written a bestseller.  My biggest royalty check was maybe 300 dollars.  Thousands of people never lined up to get my signature or hear me read.  But I still write.  I still find ways to fulfill that need, no matter what I’m writing about.  No matter who, or how many, is reading.

It’s not always about the money.  It’s not always about the paycheck.  Sure, we need those things to sustain our livelihood.  I work for a medical book and supply wholesaler by day to pay my bills.  I’d love to write full time and open the paper and see my next book on the bestseller list.  We all dream, don’t we?  A million dollar advance?  Hey, we might as well dream big, right?  For writers, it still all comes back to that need to tell a story…no matter who is listening, reading.

In writing this post now and thinking back to Poppy, who returned to New Orleans after Katrina, and Anne who left New Orleans after the death of her husband, I’m reminded of an NYT editorial that Anne wrote a while back in response to the devastation of the Big Easy after the hurricane.  You can read it in full here, but in it she says…

During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us “Sin City,” and turned your backs.

Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.

In a way, this reminds me of that constant struggle between writer and reader and the need to satisfy the demands of someone.  Writing for others, whether we are compensated financially or not, is very rewarding.  We all love an audience.  But there comes a time when we have to stop and just write for ourselves.  And here I am writing this now for myself in my blog, knowing that someone might read it once I press that “Publish” button.  Or they may not. But I don’t care either way.

I am a writer, and this one’s for me.

I came across this site today, a forum for participants of the Amazon.com ABNA contest which I was a part of from October to January.  I think it’s great that the community is still thriving and has turned into a nice little website.  And good news for me, the review copy of my own manuscript, Stealing Wishes, will arrive in the mail before the weekend.  So, it should be available in print very soon.  I opted not to use the free Createspace option I earned by being an entrant in the contest, because my book would have only been available through Amazon.com.  So, check back soon for more news on my new book!