What If You Were The Only One Of Your Kind?

Today is the last day of the Heartbreaker's Blog Tour. It's your last chance to win a Kindle and read posts about me, diversity in YA books, Minority Of One that follows a gay black teen and a straight white girl as they each seek answers to the question,

What if you were the only one of your kind?

Check out the following tour stops. And don't forget to enter the giveaway for a new Kindle.

Feb 9 A Life Bound By Books for a synopsis of Minority of One and an in-depth look at the main characters, Neill and Sheila.

Feb 10 For What It's Worth Reviews where I discuss some diversity issues

Feb 11 Jennzah Cresswell's Blog to hear about some of my favorite books.

Feb 12 Judith Tewes Blog where I talk about heartbreak in movies and books

Feb 13 Ashley Poston and the romances in Minority Of One

Feb 14 Little Library Muse where I explain why I write multicultural literature and A Simple Love Of Reading where I reveal a little something about myself and an old love

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Boy Book Review - The Hero

Hero by Perry Moore


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Thom Creed lives in a world where super-powered heroes are real and protect humanity from super-powered villains. He hides two secrets from his father, the former hero known as Major Might but now considered a pariah after his failure left thousands dead. Thom is fast developing a superpower of his own, the ability to heal illness and injury. And the League, the organization of superheroes that abandoned his father years earlier, wants him to join them.

Thom’s other secret – he’s gay.

He fears revealing either part of himself will hurt his father. While Thom forces down his growing feelings for Goran, his rival on the basketball court, he can’t deny his desire to be accepted by the League. That means he has to learn to handle his new powers while continuing to hide his inner feelings. This includes his concern that revealing his secrets would destroy his relationship with his father, fear that he will never find true love, and pain when he realizes he’s fallen for someone who already has a girlfriend. And then there’s that Dark Hero guy who seems to be stalking Thom. Dark Hero refuses to be part of the League and no one knows his true identity. But somehow he’s always around, apparently determined to ferret out every one of Thom’s secrets.

Thom wants to make a difference in the world. He wants to find a place for himself. Most of all, he wants his father’s acceptance. Although The Hero was written several years ago, the news headlines of today documenting bullying and teen suicides like the recent deaths of Tyler Clementi and Raymond Chase, make Thom’s promise to himself that he won’t even consider suicide all the more poignant. Thom faces a moment of truth, when the only way to protect an innocent man means revealing himself to a world that considers his sexual orientation more than just a violation of the morality clause in the League contract.

Naturally, the fate of the entire world ends up resting, literally, on Thom’s shoulders. And that’s when he learns the true caliber of his father, and the real strength of their relationship

The author, Perry Moore, renders Thom's emotions and journey in a believable fashion. Yes, the book has flaws. I kept wondering why Thom didn’t at least try to heal Miss Scarlet, another League newbie, when he discovered her illness. The League heroes are such obvious caricatures of the comic book heroes I read as a child it became a game to note who was, and who was not, included. And Dark Hero’s secret was easily guessed. Yet it all worked. And when Thom and his father face each other for the last time, my heart jumped. The Hero is a major coming-of-age, finding-yourself novel, with a strong and sympathetic, a good father and strong cast of friends, and I look forward to a sequel.

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Getting back to normal (and to my writing)

Today I'm back to the real reason for this blog, my writing. I've decided to put out the beginning of my WIP's and take a look to see which I should concentrate on next, since I finally think I'm bringing the story that initially was titled Life sucks, and now holds the name, Minority of One (MO1) to a close.

I'll begin by giving the opening of MO1, my sequel to PULL MY STRING today.
Cold day in hell has its own meaning when you’re standing outside school in a minus twenty wind chill waiting for your boyfriend. The gray clouds promise another blizzard will hit soon. Nothing combats Chicago weather in January, not even my brown bomber jacket. And don’t mention the so-called magic of gore-tex. Commercials lie. Cold flows up through the bottom of my boots and my toes burn.

Where the heck is Carl?

He worried about first semester finals last week. I understood when he said he had no time to get together. Carl’s always been silent and moody. Artists can be like that. I understand. But he’s grown worse since school started again after winter break.

No. Even before.

Carl’s acted strange ever since his uncle, the old guy who claims he’s no longer gay, lost his job and moved into the family’s basement. The whole Redkin family acts different. They even skipped church yesterday. Probably the first time Carl’s mother’s voice didn’t overpower the choir since the days of Noah.

Most students moving around me and climbing the stairs to Farrington High School’s doors act like I’m just another lump of dirty snow. Doesn’t matter, I see Carl at the end of the block.

His solid frame looks better than usual. Or maybe it’s just that I haven’t seen him in so long. Even bundled in that bulky down coat his parents insisted on buying him, the one he says makes him look like a human marshmallow, he looks good.

I feel hard and tight and ready to go off like a Fourth of July bottle rocket as I jump to his side and give him a slap on the back. “Where you been, man? Damn near froze my ass off waiting on you.”

“Don’t.” He jumps and pulls himself free like my fingers are knives. “I…we need to talk.”

I know what that means. Code for, I’ve found someone else. It all comes together. His silence, the way he’s found excuses not to meet, the unanswered phone calls.

Who is he, I want to ask. What’s the name of the guy who’s taken Carl away? I’m ready to order him to stay with me. Dad used to call me Orders ’R Us, and even my big brother sometimes finds it easier to just salute and let me rule. But that’s not what I want with Carl.

“It was all a mistake.” Carl bites his lower lip the way he always does when he’s nervous. “I’m not gay. I’m…I want to be normal.”

“What are you talking about?”

Carl stands with his arms crossed tightly around himself, as if to push off an attack. “I just want to be normal. Is that too much to ask?”

For Carl to be normal, he has to dump me.

Maybe I didn’t really think we could be a forever couple.

Or maybe I did.

I thrust my hands deep into my pockets so he can’t see them shake and try making a joke. “We’re not abby-normal.” Stupid, and way below my usual standards. “There’s nothing wrong with us. Nothing except we’re standing out here with our nuts freezing when we should be smart enough to get inside.”

He frowns so hard his cheeks bulge. “My uncle says it’s a choice I have to make. He did, and it worked for him.” The eyes barely visible below his cap are wide and so dark they’re almost black instead of the coconut brown I fell for a year ago. The visor keeps snow from landing on his face, but moisture gleams on his cheeks and the tips of his eyelashes are white. The future doctor in me wants to tell him to brush the tears away before they freeze and make him sick. The lover in me wants to kiss him and make all this go away.

When I move closer, his eyes open and he steps back. “I’ve gotta change. You can handle this Neill, you’re strong. But I can’t deal anymore.”

Strong? It’s ten below and snowing and every word he says leaves me ready to melt into the salt-strewn sidewalk. “Nothing’s wrong with us.”

“There is no us anymore. I won’t be gay anymore.”

Just like that. As if he can turn his feelings off.

Maybe he can.

“I can’t deal,” Carl continues. “My family says--”

“Don’t listen to them.” I know what they tell him. I’ve heard it myself. God hates you fags. Homos are an abomination.

How do you argue with the God thing?

“Don’t listen to Mom and Dad? My uncle? I’m tired of being called a queer, faggot, or fudge-packer. Listening to my mother crying and praying because I’m on the fast path to hell.”

He turns.

I jump forward and grab his sleeve.

People stream around us. The first period bell will ring in a few minutes. Neither Carl nor I are invisible. Bet the talk’s already raging about the family squabble.
Ex family.

“Are you saying you don’t love me anymore?” My heart pounds as I wait for his answer.

He doesn’t turn and look me in the face. Just nods like some bobble-head doll. “We can still be friends.”

Friends. The word is a knife in my chest.

When I release him, he heads up the stairs to the school entrance. As he disappears through the doors, the words of Kanye’s song run through my head. Now that that don’t kill me can only make me stronger.

Who’d ever want to be so fucking strong?

If Mom and Dad were still alive--

What would I do? Run home through the snow and throw myself in Mom’s lap? Been there, done that back in seventh grade, the first time a kid called me a butt-eating faggot. I won’t let my feelings control me. I’m Neill. My parents knew what they were doing when they named me chief. I know what I am and I won’t drop to my knees and go bitching about what Carl and I have.

What we had.
Yeah, my hero's gay. And he's got a heck of an arc to go through.
Tomorrow I'll go for Girl Marked X (Adult Romantic Suspense)

BIAW - Day 3

I think I'm liking this crash way of writing. Being the kind who likes to create scenes and does not start at the beginning, go all the way to the end and then stop, I've got the outline of my complete story down in ninety pages and 10,000 words. I even managed to put together a synopsis, unheard of for me this early in the process.

Today its the scene where our hero, Neill, meets the new girl in school, and the new teacher, and has an immediate reaction to both. Is he wrong about his sexuality - or is something else afoot?
The first time mom called me a contrarian I had to look it up. I’m proud of that word, it describes me perfectly. Explains why I have French fourth period instead of the Spanish that ninety percent of the students taking a language attend.

Spanish classes are always packed. Most Farrington students have no trouble getting good grades there. The school’s forty percent Hispanic. Like most of the other kids in the who didn’t learn Spanish in their homes, I got my share on the playground tangling with friends who did. I swear as fluently in Spanish as I do in English. Better. Mom never punished me for the Spanish swears she didn’t understand, so I used those most often.

I take French.

Less frantic. Fewer students.

But today there is a new student. Blondie.

She settles into a seat next to mine as we wait for our teacher. Once again I find myself studying her face. Something draws me, and I wonder if I’ve met her before.
She turns. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

It takes a few seconds for me to realize she means Yolanda and I almost burst out laughing. “My friend, not my girlfriend.”

“Her loss.”

It won’t take her long to know how unimaginable that would be. And not just because I’m gay and don’t want or need a girlfriend. The great Yoyo Dare and anyone except David Albacore? Even if I was into girls it’d never happen. The long fist of David Albacore would reach across the state and strangle me, or anyone else, who tried to put a move on his Dare. I’d live longer putting a move on his little sister.

The door opens and a woman walks in. We’re all wondering who the new teacher will be. Mr. Faber unexpectedly retired just before finals. Normally that would mean we’d have to suffer through a string of subs for weeks, maybe even until the end of the semester. There aren’t a lot of spare French teachers in the Chicago Public Schools, and fewer still with so little seniority they can be transferred to an inner-city school at a moment’s notice. But we were told the Principal was lucky enough to find someone willing to take the post.

This woman’s tall, blond, pale skinned, and, except for her eyes being a smoky gray instead of green, she looks enough like Blondie to be her sister.

Or her mother.

I turn my head and see Blondie do an eye roll that would make a sister proud. She looks like she’d disappear if she could, but since she can’t, she stares at the wall and mutters “Welcome to my world.”

The woman in the immaculate and totally out-of-place in this world, anyway, dark velvet suits leaned against the desk and smiled at us. “Je m'appelle Alison Grant. Je serai votre nouveau professeur.”