It's great to be back in San Francsico and the good ole' USA. The warm sun and cool breezes here in the Bay Area are unlike anywhere I've been in the world. I couldn't help but drive over the inviting Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County and steal a couple recouperatiive hours at the ocean at Point Reyes National Seashore. The golden fields passing by on both sides of my open-air MGB reminded me of the words of Katerine Lee Bates in "America the Beautiful" - "O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America!..." 

Now that I'm back, I am absorbed in finishing "The Edge of Madness," my next m/m/b erotic romance set in futuristic NewAmerica thirty years after the "Total Meltdown" (Wildside/Borgo Press, currently awaiting release) written under the pen name Raymond Gaynor with co-author William Maltese.  My trip to Hawaii and Japan to do research for another book, "The Sword of Kamehameha," providentially provided me with the ending for "The Edge of Madness," the last piece in the storyline. Now I'm typing as fast as my fingers can go to move the concluding chapters from my fertile mind onto paper. It's going to be a hell of a book, quite possibly one of my best, though when I go back and re-read my other works - oh, yes, I re-read them regularly to gauge their staying power and just enjoy them, I must say I like them all.  As an aside, I think when an author can read and re-read his or her works and still find themselves riveted to each successive page, that says something special.  But more of that later. Right now, I just want to say that "The Edge of Madness," in which I explore the million nooks and crannies of bisexuality, homosexuality and heterosexuality together is already a fascinating read and great sequel to both the Kingsley & I and Tripler and Clark (i.e. "Total Meltdown") series.  It's right on, right where it should be, with lots of action, passionate romance and graphic sex.

It'll probably take me several weeks to organize my photos, notes and thoughts for "The Sword of Kamehameha," but I must admit this is one work where the storyline jumped out at me and screamed - "Write me! Now!" - and I did just that. My research at this point is mostly detail work, flesh on the bones so to speak.  This work is quickly growing into what already appears to me to be my first full-length novel.

I promised to return to the topic of an author liking his or her own work. It surprised me, earlier in my professional writing career to discover that not all author's love or even like their works. Several I've know seemed hell-driven, obsessed, tortured would be a better term, with the need to perfectly record something just out of reach. I've seen it, I know authors who are enslaved to their hard mistress-muse, and I don't envy them.  My drive to write comes from my own enfolding experiences in a life-quest search for who I am. It's not driven. It's freely done, and with unbridled joy with eyes wide open.  The challenge I feel is more like that of a scribe, recording at the same time that he is experiencing the journey, dedicated to sharing as clearly as my talents will allow, what I discover along the way. In that sense, "Kingsley & I," "Kingsley & I Together" and "Total Meltdown" are all reflections of that journey and the insights my own muse provides.

I like my works and I hope all of my readers will, too. I don't mean like necessarily in the sense of approve, but more in the sense of making a new friend who will be there beside you throughout your journey whenever you desire. I guess that's what a good book is to me - very much like that imaginary friend we conjure up as a child, but one, in this case, who we can continue to enjoy throughout life. Well, I'm waxing pretty philosophical here, so maybe it's time to return to earth:  return to your seats, fasten your seatbelts, grab one of my books and get ready for a flight of fancy that I hope will prove so interesting and enticing that you won't be able to put it down!