Virgin No More

Last night I read at Kieran’s Irish Pub, here in Minneapolis for the Raking Through Books Happy Hour Book Club. It’s co-sponsored by The Loft and Secrets of the City and I can’t be more pleased with how it all went.

My friends and plenty of strangers showed up. The reps from The Loft and Secrets were amazing. I also managed to read a lot and answer questions without too much awkwardness (by no means polished, but I’m getting the hang of this thing).

Mother Glory now has a life of her own and even if I wanted to stop what is about to transpire there’s just no going back for either of us.

The Jacket of Mother Glory

Okay, here’s where we’re at with the jacket copy:

The Children of Mother Glory
by
C. M. Harris

In the turn-of-the-century Midwest, young Glory Potter’s lot in life is to serve her father’s ministry. When Glory grows into a dominant matriarchal figure—transcending her father in the creation of the Potterite faith and an industry that supports the town of Gulliver—she finds herself fighting “demons from hell” that irresistibly draw her to the woman she craves with all her being.

Sebastian, reviled in Gulliver as a conscientious objector for obeying the pacifist dictates of the sect, ends up sequestered in a camp where he too is wracked by the fierce war between his faith and his desire for a fellow CO.

Danielle, fifteen years old, already wrenching herself from her implacably judgmental family, defying her faith to preserve her lesbian self, begins a journey unpredictable in its twists and turns, and its costs.

Jacob, working for the industry that Glory created, uncovers a number of dark secrets about the Potterite sect. The arrival of sales rep Diana, a transgendered woman, further upends his every concept of himself.

Like signposts across a century, these four intersecting lives reveal that mysterious inheritance known as human desire and its power to outpace ideology. This powerful, beautifully crafted and inclusive LGBT novel is a story for our times.

Research vs. Writing

I’m probably not the first writer distracted from the job at hand by all the research materials. In our info age, it’s just so easy to start Googling and forget the objective. On the one hand, all this fascinating material is close by, on the other, well, there it is.

Here’s just a sampling of my current reading list:
Our Inner Ape
The Social Outcast: Ostracism, Social Exclusion, Rejection, & Bullying
The Art of Subtext
www.dumpbachmann.com
The Idiot’s Guide: Running a Bed & Breakfast
Anything but Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth

Because I ‘think’ I know how this plot is going to tie up, It’s easy to get distracted. The actual typing becomes tedious. It’s not like earlier works where the excitement was in just ‘making sh!t up’ (Enter Oblivion) or twisting memories (Mother Glory). And while I’ve known many writers who take years to come around to their focus, my latest novel is just too topical to sit on. So I really don’t have time to get all epic. But my brain seems to require a magic window of time to process all these themes at once.

Sure doesn’t help that my kids’ birthdays were today, my dogs will not stop barking and I’m trying to finish a client Web site and train for a bike race.

Yeah, I’ve definitely laid some traps for myself.

Twitter & News

Okay, wow. Twitter is SO like more where I’m at right now. I’ll blog more when Mother Glory starts moving. But if you want to follow me, I post more often on Twitter.

>>> @flammablewords

Back to my writing. Cheers.

Fulfilling Our Foray

Well, the die is cast, the contract signed. The Children of Mother Glory is due out in late 2009. Details to come. As well as a new and improved Web site with flash elements and various hullabaloo.