Party Like a Rock Star with Cecilia Tan #gayromance @ceciliatan
I’m so pleased to have Cecilia Tan as my guest today. I’ve known her online for about five years, and finally got to meet her when we did a panel together at Azkatraz in San Francisco. I didn’t realize then what an icon Cecilia is in the world of erotica, erotic romance, and portraying the full LGBT spectrum in her writing. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed her work—especially the Magic University series, but when I got to attend one of her readings, I was enthralled with her performance. If you get the opportunity to hear Cecilia read, do not pass it up. Today’s interview touches on many aspects of writing as well as her latest volume of Daron’s Guitar Chronicles, her ongoing love affair with sex, love, and rock and roll. Please welcome Cecilia Tan.
All the way back in 1983, when Cecilia Tan was a teenager, she began writing about a young guitarist named Daron, a gay rock musician trying to make it in the music industry while staying in the closet. She tried to write Daron’s story numerous times, and in 1992, while getting a masters degree in writing, she started what she thought was a novel about him. The novel quickly grew to the size of three or four books, though, and Tan’s agent urged her to cut the story back. Cutting proved impossible, and Daron languished in a drawer until 2009, when Tan launched Daron’s Guitar Chronicles, a web serial detailing the day by day travails of Daron and, not incidentally, the sexy lead singer he has a secret (or not so secret) crush on. This month marks the fourth anniversary of Daron’s Guitar Chronicles, which continues on, and the release of volume 5 of the collected Chronicles in ebook form.
To celebrate the latest volume, Cecilia has graciously provided the full 5-volume set as a prize. Enter below with Rafflecopter. The contest ends November 16 at her live chat, but you can get additional entries by , commenting, liking Facebook pages and tweeting.
Author bio: Cecilia Tan writes about sex, love, and sexuality for people of all genders and orientations from her home in the Boston area. Tan is the author of many books, including the ground-breaking erotic short story collections Black Feathers (HarperCollins), White Flames (Running Press), and Edge Plays (Circlet Press), and the erotic romances Slow Surrender (Hachette/Forever), Mind Games (Ravenous Romance), The Prince’s Boy (Circlet Press), and the Magic University series (Red Silk/Ravenous). Her short stories have appeared in Ms. Magazine, Nerve, Best American Erotica, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and tons of other places. She was inducted into the Saints & Sinners Hall of Fame for GLBT writers in 2010 and won the inaugural Rose & Bay Awards for crowdfunded fiction in 2010 for Daron’s Guitar Chronicles.
Find Cecilia Tan online: http://daron.ceciliatan.com Blog: http://blog.ceciliatan.com Twitter: @ceciliatan
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thececiliatan Instagram: ctan_writer Tumblr: ceciliatan
How did you get started writing gay romance?
I’ve always written erotic stories but I always wanted them to have more meaning and more impact than “just porn,” so I’ve been writing love stories for a long time. I always wanted to write about sex that was not only hot, it changed the people having it. And I like to write from all different gender points of view. In the case of Daron’s Guitar Chronicles, I specifically wanted to get at some stuff about how damaging being in the closet can be, and about how hypocritical and weird our culture can be about masculinity and celebrity. Nothing like putting your character in the most difficult environment for coming out that there is!
If you could have a free pass one-night-stand with anyone, who would it be and why? Any details about you would do are welcome!
David Bowie. Forget Robert Pattinson. Bowie was the sexy vampire in the movies of my generation!
What kind of research do you do for your books?
In the case of Daron’s Guitar Chronicles, I put my personal experiences in the music industry to use. I worked at a hit radio station in New York City when I was a teenager. I moved on to a commercial radio station at my college. I managed a band. I was a club d.j. for a while. I worked for a promoter briefly. I was a roadie for the university concert agency. I was never really in a band myself (unless you count the marching band…) but I had all of these various looks at the business from behind the scenes. Most of my other books are more like The Prince’s Boy, with magic and swordfighting, which don’t take so much research as world-building. But for Daron’s story, which really immerses the reader in his world, the world of the 1980s rock music industry, I had to draw on a lot of details. These days, thankfully, I can look stuff up on the Internet when I don’t remember, also. I can find out how many seats the Seattle Coliseum held and stuff like that.
What is the coolest thing that has happened to you as a result of being an author?
The coolest thing by far has been connecting with readers! The life of a writer is very solitary. You sit around alone and talk to your imaginary friends. It’s amazing when readers want to talk to them, too. I’ve had readers send me some of the most amazing gifts, like fan art of my characters, or teddy bears dressed like them, or songs inspired by them. It’s the most incredible thing about publishing DARON’S GUITAR CHRONICLES as a serial, too, is that people leave comments. Unlike a book where I finish writing it, send it to the publisher, and readers read it months or years later, with the serial the readers get to suffer right alongside me and the characters at the same time. It’s validating and liberating in a way I didn’t expect.
Where was the best vacation you ever had?
Seville, Spain. My partner corwin and I had just been through pretty heavy couples counseling after coming close to breaking up. For our 13th anniversary we took a trip to Seville, just the two of us, after our therapist pointed out to us how long it had been since we had taken a REAL vacation, just the two of us, not a group trip, not a family trip, not a business trip. It was a real chance to disconnect from everyone else and connect with each other. We saw all the art, drank all the wine, ate all the tapas, and discovered our bond was still there. We just had our 23rd anniversary last week!
If you could live in the world of one of your books, which would it be?
Magic University. I already practically do, since I set the book in my real life neighborhood next to Harvard. It’s just the magic part that’s elusive…! Then again I feel I get to live a magical life. I experience a bounty of love and creative freedom that not everyone does. I live in a place so liberal it’s a fantasy utopia to others. It’s not a coincidence we were the first place in the USA to legalize gay marriage.
What is the craziest thing you have researched for your writing?
It’s tough to pick one thing. What’s really crazy is how you think you just need one little detail and it leads to hours and hours of research. Like I did a gender-bending story in the book LESBIAN COWBOYS and I wanted a realistic name for a brothel/saloon in the American West. Six hours later… It turns out brothels in the American West were really fascinating. Then there are the things like trying to figure out what the rate of blood loss from a vampire bite would actually be. In Daron’s Guitar Chronicles the band was on tour recently and I had to research what a tour bus in 1989 would have been like, what features it would have, and whether you could park such a thing in Montreal.
Describe the perfect meal? Do you like to cook?
I love to cook. corwin and I take turns cooking and we go all the way into molecular gastronomy. The perfect meal is the one that satisfies both the cook and the guests eating completely. It should be beautiful, delicious, healthy, and make you feel good while and after eating it. I’ve made people euphoric with my food. It’s second only to making them euphoric with my fiction. I make a damn good tongue taco, and no, that’s not a euphemism.
Which of your books do you think hasn’t been discovered by readers?
The Magic University books are overlooked by a lot of readers, I think. The “mistake” I made as a writer was in having so much fluidity of gender and sexuality in the books that I think m/m readers don’t even realize that the main couple in the series is a gay couple. The mistake my publisher made was in not marketing the books as GLBT at all. They made them out to be very het. It’s true, the first book is the “straightest” but, well, it’s a lot like college. When you arrive you haven’t done all the experimenting and finding yourself that you are going to over the next four years. When they were released, the genre “new adult” didn’t exist yet. If I were going to do it all again, I’d market Magic University as GLBT new adult.
How do you challenge yourself in your writing?
I like to challenge myself to discover what a story is about, and I like to make rules to follow. When I wrote THE PRINCE’S BOY, which is a male/male BDSM high fantasy, I wrote it as a serial with the rule that there had to be a sex scene every week. I didn’t outline the plot in advance. I knew the general shape of it (true love conquers evil) but I didn’t know what was going to happen week after week. I got to find out the same time readers did. Looking back on it, though, I have a perfect three-act structure, so I think my subconscious is doing a lot of planning I’m not aware of. That makes it fun. Here I am still writing Daron’s Guitar Chronicles after decades of playing with this character. I know some of where the story is going. I don’t know what is going to happen exactly. I trust myself to get there and I hope my readers trust me enough to enjoy the ride. (If anyone wants to get on the ride, the Chronicles are free to read online, starting from the beginning at http://daron.ceciliatan.com/start-here)
In Volume 5 of Daron’s Guitar Chronicles, Daron and the band are on tour. Everything seems to be going well, with sold-out shows, legions of fans, and positive press wherever they go. But the pressure cooker that is the tour bus has been affecting everyone. Will it ultimately fuse the band together or crack them apart? Daron has never really resolved his crush on Ziggy, the lead singer, even while holding him at arm’s length to try to stay sane enough to perform. Meanwhile, Ziggy may have decided that sanity is over-rated. The final leg of the tour approaches and the pressure is on.
Enjoy an excerpt from Daron’s Guitar Chronicles:
One day, we were in the park outside the subway station, on one of those sunny days that tell you summer is about to arrive. A roasted nut vendor was somewhere downwind of us making the afternoon smell marijuana sweet. The sky was blue with just a slight nip in the wind. A semi-circle of people had gathered around us to listen. If I’m remembering it right, we were playing something upbeat, “Just Like Heaven,” I think. I wasn’t paying much attention at that moment, just kind of grooving on the afternoon and looking at Bart without really making eye contact with him.
Then someone jumped out of the crowd, dancing, an orphan vampire child, dressed in layer upon layer of ancient clothing straight from the rummage bins at Salvation Army and his eyes ringed with heavy black liner. He had on at least three different patterns of plaid. His fingers pointing from fingerless gloves, he waved his hands over our eyes. He struck cat-like poses, sprang into the air, and laughed. He danced around passers-by, miming undecipherable stories, and then, sometimes, singing.
He jigged over to Bart and said something in his ear. I couldn’t hear what, but I saw Bart shrug. The stranger pointed to the amp on the ground and said something more, a wicked smile on his face, and Bart looked bemused. Bart shared a look with me then and started the chorus again.
The stranger dropped to his knees in front of me, cupped his hands to his mouth and began singing into the soundhole of the guitar. Bart watched, incredulous, but never missed a beat, and I never missed a note–not then, not ever. The hollow body picked up his voice, gave it an eerie wooden tone, and pumped it through the amp. He bounced on his knees, keeping his mouth trained on the hole. I wondered when he would stop. We did the whole song like that, with him hollering into my crotch, until his knees gave out.
I stopped playing and gave him a hand up, my eyes on him and not the dispersing crowd. I had made up my mind. We shook hands.
“I’m Daron,” I said, “and this is Bart.”
“Ziggy. Hi, Bart.” He smiled. “You don’t remember me.”
Bart did a double-take. “No, I don’t.”
“The party at Susanna’s. My hair was blond, then. At the end of the summer? At the loft by The Channel. And this must be the guy you were talking about.” Ziggy turned his dark eyes on me, appraising something, I wasn’t sure what. “The bigshot guy from Nomad.” He smiled at me from under his mop of jet black hair. “I thought you’d be taller.” We saw eye to eye.
I smiled back. “Well, I’m not.”
Bart shook his head. “I still don’t remember you, sorry. There were a lot of people at that party.”
“It’s okay.”
“Do you sing a lot?” I put in, trying to keep the subject on him.
“In the shower,” he said. He had to be underexaggerating. He’d known all the words and hadn’t flubbed any.
Bart was looking at me like he wanted my attention, but I kept my eyes fixed on Ziggy. “I mention it for a reason.”
“Daron,” Bart began.
“We’re looking for a singer,” I went ahead, “And I think you’re it.”
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