I saw this video last week thanks to Michael’s Gay Thought. Great song. I love the lyrics.

Anne Feeney and Evan Greer – Been To Jail For Justice?
(video embedded below)

Have you been to jail for justice? I haven’t…yet.
Maybe it should go on my bucket list.
Sloan Parker

Once a week I post about something I’m loving (tv, movies, books, art, photos, romances, authors, or anything else). So here is this week’s For the Love of…

I love being a writer.

I love brainstorming new characters and figuring out what their story is and how to tell it.

I love the editing process, the layering of story and characterizations.

But some days being a writer just plain sucks.

It can be hard to work through the self-doubt, the frustrations with a project, with the characters, with holes in the plot.

This morning was one of those days for me. The conflict for Breathe is a difficult setup for a romance story (I never said I take the easy road). People tend to have rather surprised and skeptical reactions when they hear what I’m writing about, and that fosters some doubt about whether or not I’ve wasted the last seven months. Usually, I’m able to stomp on the doubt and crush the hell out of it.

Some days it takes a little more effort than that.

So this morning I re-read a few of my favorite scenes from Breathe. They helped to remind me why I’m telling this story, what I love about it, and how happy I am with the way it’s turned out. Breathe has become the story I envisioned it to be, and I’m excited to be getting near the end of the writing process. I’m doing a final polish this month, working out a few kinks before I submit it.

It felt odd to use my own writing to cheer myself up, but it worked and I’m back to editing for the rest of the day.

So yeah, I love being a writer again.

Here’s this week’s quote I love from writer Victor J. Banis…

“…I can get those ideas anywhere and everywhere – sometimes at the most inconvenient times. I have actually been making whoopee with someone and had this killer bit of dialogue slip into my head. Talk about losing your focus!”

Victor J. Banis (author)
From Rick Reed’s blog series Why I Write

Almost spit my OJ on the keyboard with that one. Thanks for sharing, Victor.

Just wanted to let you all know that I’ve added an excerpt and sample chapters of More (an m/m/m erotic romance) to my website. More is coming to Loose Id later this month. I hope you like it!

MORE by Sloan Parker
Genre: Gay Contemporary Erotic Romance (M/M/M)
Publisher: Loose Id
Cover Artist: April Martinez
Release Date: March 23, 2010
Purchase at Loose Id

Read an Excerpt of More

Saw this on Geoffrey Knight’s blog and just had to share. It’s 10,000 Maniacs when they performed “Because The Night” on MTV Unplugged.

Natalie Merchant’s voice always moves me. Still does. There’s just something so sensual and sexy about it.  “Because the night belongs to lovers…” Enjoy!

A huge thanks to fellow Loose Id author Ethan Day for opening up his yahoo group to other authors of GLBT Romances at his monthly Gay Day event. This month I’ll be posting an excerpt from More. Hope to see you there!

Here are the details from Ethan…

Sunday, February 28th is Gay Day at my Yahoo Group.  Gay Day is the one day a month when the best authors in GLBT Romance stop by to post excerpts of their new and upcoming releases.

The following authors will be generously offering giveaways you can enter to win:

Z.A. Maxfield  is offering up winners choice of an e-book from her backlist

AKM Miles – Too Keen

Willa Okati – Tomcat Jones

M. Jules Aedin – Can’t Hurry Love – 2 copies are up for grabs!!

A.J. Llewellyn – Wanted

Ethan Day – an autographed Print copy of Dreaming of You

Kate McMurray – In Hot Pursuit

Trina Lane – Taking the Chance

J.R. Patrick – Only Yours

S.J. Frost – Midnight Dalliance

Jambrea Jo Jones – Stealing My Heart

Sophia Titheniel – King of Damon’s

Charlie Cochrane – an autographed Print copy of Past Shadows

The amazing Authors below will be popping in and out to chat & post excerpts from their latest books:

Lynn Lorenz – Baymore’s Heir & Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Carol Lynne – Ice Water in Hell

Z.A. Maxfield – Family Unit

Lex Valentine – Where There’s Smoke

Nix Winter – Kai Stubborn

P.A. Brown – L.A. Bytes

Sloan Parker – More

M. Jules Aedin – Windows In Time

T.C. Blue – A Game of Chances

Kimberly Gardner – Bound to Please

Andrew Gray – Love Means No Boundaries

Adrianne Brennan – My Big Fat Greek Pagan Lesbian Wedding

A.J. Llewellyn – Fawnskinw/ DJ Manly & Stephani Hecht Stealing My Heart the Anti-piracy Antho

The day will begin from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. CST in the Ethan Day Yahoo Group where we’ll be posting excerpts, running contests for free books, and chatting about all the new and upcoming releases from your favorite authors.

I hope everyone will stop by to catch up with your favorite authors and join in all the fun!

Once a week I post about something I’m loving (tv, movies, books, art, photos, romances, authors, or anything else). So here is this week’s For the Love of…

I watched the Breakfast Club earlier this week. Love that movie, even after all these years. Takes me right back to my high school days.

I like stories where people who would normally never be friends or have feelings for each other move past their differences and find common ground, find something special they didn’t even know they were looking for. Of course all that teen angst bonding them together doesn’t hurt.

My current writing project has a lot to do with finding a commonality where you least expect it, so maybe I’m influenced by that right now. It’s on my mind a lot, that’s for sure.

In any case, I did enjoy watching The Breakfast Club, and today I thought I’d share some of my favorite lines from the film…

John Bender: “Sweets. You couldn’t ignore me if you tried.”

…

Bender: “You load up, you party…”
Brian: “Well, no, we get dressed up, I mean, but we don’t, we don’t get high.”

…

Bender: “Screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place.”

…

Bender: “You won’t accept a guy’s tongue in your mouth, and you’re gonna eat that?”

…

Allison: “I’m not a nymphomaniac. I’m a compulsive liar.”

…

Brian: “Bender, did you know without trigonometry, there’d be no engineering?”
Bender: “Without lamps, there’d be no light.”

…

Vernon: “False alarms are really funny, aren’t they. What if your home, what if your family . . . what if your dope was on fire?”
John Bender: “Impossible, sir. It’s in Johnson’s underwear.”

…

Brian: “Chicks cannot hold dey smoke – dat’s what it is!”

…

Allison: “Your middle name is Ralph, as in puke, your birth date’s March 12th, you’re 5′9 and a half, you weigh 130 pounds and your social security number is 049380913.”
Andrew: “Wow. Are you psychic?”
Allison: “No.”
Brian: “Well, would you mind telling me how you know all this about me?”
Allison: “I stole your wallet.”

…

Brian Johnson: “Saturday, March 24,1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois, 60062. Dear Mr. Vernon, We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did *was* wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us – in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That’s the way we saw each other at 7:00 this morning. We were brainwashed.”

…

“And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds; are immune to your consultations, they are quite aware of what they are going through.” -David Bowie

Any others you liked?

Thanks to the talented April Martinez, More has a cover, and it’s gorgeous. Thanks, April and Loose Id!

Cover artist: April Martinez
Coming March 23, 2010 to Loose Id: http://www.loose-id.com/More.aspx

I’ll be adding an excerpt to my website this weekend.

Once a week I post a quote I love. It may be related to writing, inspiration, lgbt issues, my own life, or anything else that interests me. So here’s this week’s Quote I Love…

I’ve been working on revisions for my current work-in-progress, Breathe. Part of the goal of this last round of edits was to increase the romantic tension and build up the emotion in every scene.

Focusing on the love and desire in my work puts me in a romantic mood, so today I’m sharing some of my favorite quotes about love and passion.

Hope you enjoy these.

“And sometimes when we touch
The honesty’s too much
And I have to close my eyes and hide
I wanna hold you til I die
Til we both break down and cry
I wanna hold you till the fear in me subsides”
– Dan Hill

…

“You’re nothing short of my everything.”
– Ralph Block

…

“We are each of us angels with only one wing.
And we can only fly while embracing each other.”
– Lucian de Croszonza

…

“We lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open and
all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.”
– Marge Piercy

…

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
– Aristotle

…

“You were made perfectly to be loved – and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.”
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning

…

“I love you not only for what you are,
But for what I am when I’m with you.”
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning

…

“What the heart has once owned and had, it shall never lose.”
– Henry Ward Beecher

…

“Where there is smoke, there’s fire. Where there’s you, there’s desire.”
– Unknown

…

“Passion… it can hurt so much sometimes, we can hardly stand it. Without passion, maybe we could all have some sort of peace in this life… but then, we’d be hollow. Without passion, we would be dead.”
– Unknown

Aren’t they lovely? Hope you enjoyed them.

Sloan Parker

This video is a teaser for an online soap opera-style series called Venice. Venice follows the life of a gay female interior designer. I just started watching the show this weekend.

I love this song. Not sure why, but it puts me in a gushy, romantic mood every time I hear it.

(video embedded below)

You can read more about Venice here: www.venicetheseries.com. Has anyone watched it yet? What did you think?

Thanks for stopping by,
Sloan Parker