J.M. Snyder ~ Stepping Up To The Plate
From: Lulu
My favorite book to date is Stepping Up to the Plate. It was a labor of love on my part to write the novel ~ it took me the longest to write it (three years, to be exact), and it wasn’t because I didn’t know where it was going. The problem was I did; I knew exactly where it needed to go. My issue was, I didn’t want it to go there. In writing the book, one of the minor characters had quickly become a favorite of mine and I didn’t want to see him hurt in the course of the story, as I knew he’d have to be. So I put off writing the last fourth of the book because I didn’t want to break his heart.
Then I realized I wouldn’t get anywhere with my writing if I didn’t toughen up and say the hell with it ~ I mean, shit, I’ve broken hearts before. What’s one more, right? So I did it, as much as I hated to, but I think my own feelings for the character made the story that much stronger in the long run, because I’ve had readers comment on how much they’ve loved Ange and how much they hated the scene where he turns Stacy away. Which tells me the writing works. And that’s all I ever wanted it to do.
Well, since the reason I started writing gay fiction in the first place was in response to the horrible slash fic I found online, I can’t really name five books at the outset that were my favorites. So I’ll pick five favorite books that got me writing in general in the first place.
1. Richard Adams ~ Watership Down I read this as a child and it remains my most favorite book ever. I try to read it as frequently as possible if only to remind myself how transcendent the written word should be. The story sweeps me away, literally, and nothing else exists for the short amount of time when I’m engrossed in this book. Everything you need in a good book is in this one ~ adventure, friendship, loyalty, betrayal, war, excitement, courage. It’s all in there, everything you need to tell a good yarn. And I don’t even like rabbits all that much!
2. Douglas Adams ~ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy I tend to read books I don’t write, and one genre I envy so much and wish desperately that I could write is humor. Douglas Adams is hilarious, and Hitchhiker is pure brilliance. No matter how often I read this book, I still laugh out loud at the author’s wordplay. The rest of the series is awesome, as well, don’t get me wrong, but this one … this shines above all the others as my favorite among them. I reread it often.
3. Stephen R. Donaldson ~ The Mirror Of Her Dreams I fell in love with epic fantasy at an early age, and though I had one short story published in the genre before I moved onto gay fiction, it’s a very difficult genre to break into (particularly now … thank you, Ms. Rowling). I still love a good fantasy story, and the Mordant’s Need series by Donaldson is one of my favorite (is it called a series if there are only two books in it? The Mirror of Her Dreams is the first, and A Man Rides Through is the second). ***Teddypig ~ Not Available In eBook.***
4. Stephen King ~ The Stand Without a doubt, Stephen King is my favorite author and The Stand is my favorite book. It has two things I really like in a story ~ a virus that kills most of humanity and a post-apocalyptic setting. What else is there to say? Seriously, though, what I like best about King is his characters. I like that he spends whole chapters on backstory, building his characters from the bottom up, making them real, making them human. Too many reviewers complain when authors do that but you know what? I like that. I like character-driven stories. So he isn’t the scariest horror author out there. In my opinion, he doesn’t have to be.
5. Tom Robbins ~ Even Cowgirls Get The Blues I read this in college, and it was the first book I read in the mainstream which had GLBT characters at the forefront of the plot. It hit me in the right place at the right time, and for a long time after that, many people who knew me thought I would have gone into writing lesbian erotica (my mother actually asked me point-blank when I started writing fan-fic if it wasn’t fem-slash). I fell in love with the quirky character of Bonanza Jellybean so much, I even named my cat after her (despite the fact that my Jelly is male). My copy of Cowgirl is well-worn and heavily highlighted, and now signed by the author after I met him at the first annual James River Writers Festival a few years back.
Tags: Five Faves, J.M. Snyder
