Happy Wednesday Scribblers. I hope you are all staying safe with all the craziness that is going on. I can’t believe another week has flashed by. Today, I’m honored to have Author, Pianist, Actor, Singer, Composer, Director, and Podcast Host Wayne Goodman with us. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Wayne over the last several months and I finally got him here to share his newest work All the Right Places and to share more of his personal story with us. Sit back and enjoy.
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How many times have you submitted a short story to a submission call only to have the editor tell you the work isn’t a good fit? Most of us have received many rejection notices, some kinder than others, some even laudatory. Still, we’ve all been rejected at some point during our writing careers.
My name is Wayne Goodman. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area with my partner Rick May (and too many cats). My writing has tended to be historical fiction with a focus on LGBTQ+ characters. When not writing, I like to play piano music from the Gilded Age with an emphasis on Women, Black, and Gay composers.
From time-to-time I submitted short stories to anthologies or collections. Some got accepted and printed, many received polite rejections. After a few years my compilation of shorter works grew to a point where I wanted to publish them together. “All the Right Places” contains eleven pieces that take place starting in the near future and chronologically progressing to the near past.
Two of the stories (“Rumpspringa” and “Looking for Love in All the Right Places”) had been submitted to a journal looking for stories where a sense of “Place” drove the action. The journal never moved forward on that project, but I ended up with two good pieces.
One piece of public art that has fascinated me sits at London’s Piccadilly Circus. Atop a circular pedestal, the statue of Anteros (usually mislabeled Eros) has acquired a mystique for bringing potential lovers together. I find it so compelling that two of the stories begin and end there (the title story and “Nice Day for a Picnic”).
“Population Maintenance,” my first accepted work, went to Off the Rocks. Their call for submission asked to redefine “Gay,” and that’s what I gave them. “Noah’s Raft” got printed in the subsequent edition focusing on historical romances. The story involved quite a bit of local history for the area where I live and started out as a submission to the Best Gay Erotica series. The editor thought it too tame, but it ended up finding a home anyway.
And speaking of Best Gay Erotica, my partner frequently had his stories printed there. My piece, “Out of Yoshiwara,” made it into the final edition of the collection, along with one of Rick’s. We were the first couple to have stories in the same edition.
Ideas for stories sometimes come from unusual places. I am a member of KQED in San Francisco, and they produce a program called “Bay Curious” that responds to listeners’ questions about local points of interest. One such show dealt with Mile Rock Lighthouse, which sits one mile off the rocky coast. That led to “Stag Station,” the designation given to a lighthouse where women are not permitted.
“Sunday/Sinday” came from a quick glimpse at a television commercial for some event happening on a Sunday. However, either I saw it wrong or the text on the screen actually read, “SNDY,” and my mind filled in two sets of vowels.
Queering history has always fascinated me. I like to take little-known or nearly-forgotten times and reintroduce them with queer characters. A few years back I retold three historically-significant books: the first Russian-language book featuring a gay character (Mikhail Kuzmin’s “Wings”), the first American gay novel (Bayard Taylor’s “Joseph and his Friend: A Pennsylvania Story”), and the first English-language gay novel (Francis Lathom’s “Live and Learn”). The challenge for me was to revive these important works but for 21st Century readers. Much of the original language regarding same-sex couples relied on subtext, ambiguities, or inferences to get their meaning across. My works put the queerness right up front where you cannot miss it.
Since October 2018, I have hosted Queer Words Podcast, conversations with queer-identified authors about their works and lives (www.queerwords.org). Each week I release at least one 20-30 minute episode featuring writers from the barely-known to the well-known. We talk about their queer experiences as well as their literary works. If you are a published, queer-identified author and would like to be featured in a future episode, you can email here.
According to David Pratt of Hosta Press in his Goodreads review: “Wayne Goodman writes with a welcome frankness and gives us some wonderfully sexy set-ups … Goodman reminds us that men had desires and knew what they wanted even in the old west of the U.S. or nineteenth century London. A very frank and refreshing change-up from the warm and delightful host of the Queer Words podcast.”
I hope you enjoy the stories in “All the Right Places” as much as I enjoyed writing them. Bon Voyage!
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Want to meet some other amazing authors who I think you need to check out? Here are some that I think you’ll really love:
Interview with R.L. (Ro) Merrill Check it out here.
Interview with Barbara Russell Check it out here.
Interview with Author Mike Lopez Check it out here.
Book Announcement and Interview for J.S. Strange Check it out here.
That’s all for this week Scribblers, please remember to drop me a heart/like letting me know you stopped by. If you want to help support artist like Wayne Goodman and myself please consider sharing this post on your social media platforms to help keep the conversation going. It really does help. Until next time I hope you stay safe and have a great week.
