Lola Dances by Victor J. Banis
I’m thrilled to have Victor J. Banis as a guest here today. He is a household name in gay fiction, author of over 150 books, even some het romance under a pen name! Here’s how one of my favorites, Lola Dances, came about. Even if you think you don’t like historicals, you should not miss it!
A few years back, I was reading a piece about how tough life was in the old gold-mining camps for women, and I found myself thinking, “Yes, I’m sure it was – but how much tougher must it have been for a gay boy? Say, a gay boy who liked to dress as a woman?”
I thought at the time that there was an interesting story there, but I didn’t think I was the one to write it. For one thing, I know next to nothing about cross-dressing. And, anyway, who would buy it. Gay fiction and m/m fiction is generally about big, gorgeous studs, and the young man in my mind was little, effeminate even. A sissy, to put it bluntly.
Still, the idea wouldn’t go away. It bugged me and bugged me. I even had a title—Lola Dances. One scene in particular—when the young man finally discovers his alter ego in a dress—kept playing itself over and over in my mind, until finally, thinking maybe once I’d written that down, the ghost would go away and leave me alone, I sat down and wrote the transformation scene in which Terry Murphy becomes, for the first time, Lola Valdez. But, for Terry, this is about far more than just donning a dress and dancing for the miners. This is a young man who has been abused, used by others for their selfish pleasure, the butt of a lifetime of jokes—and, “for the first time in his life, Terry knew love, felt it sweep over him in great waves from those cheering, clapping shouting men—all their loneliness, all the grubbiness of their lives in this dismal place, their affection and desire, their excitement, coalesced into a great bubble of happiness that enveloped Terry, and that it almost seemed he could float away in.”
At which point, I was hooked—because of course, I had been wrong all along, this wasn’t about cross dressing, it was about yearning for love, about the need for it, the need for acceptance. Something we all of us have in common.
I finished the book, and sent it to MLR Press, and happily the publisher, Laura Baumbach, loved it immediately, and published it, and I’m happy to say that plenty of others have come to love my little Terry and lovely Lola.
It is a book that holds a special place in my heart.
Visit Victor online at his website.
3 Responses to “Lola Dances by Victor J. Banis”
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“Lola Dances” was the first Victor Banis book I read, and after only a few pages I knew why he ranks among the most respected authors of m/m. I had just begun reading in the genre, but it became clear immediately that this was a one-of-a-kind novel in Banis’s treatment of his subject. “Lola Dances” satnds out among the many backlist novels merit a reminder they’re out there.
This story was my introduction to Victor’s lovely writing as well. Happy sigh.
One of the few books in the genre I remember clearly. Since I don’t like historicals, and rarely read them, I have to admit, I was surprised how deeply this book touched me. I’m not even a little bit sorry I read about Terry. Thank you Victor!