QSFer A.T. Weaver has a new MM time travel book out: Earthquakes.
David Cummings has dreams.
For ten years, he’s dreamed about two men who lived in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. He feels that he was one of the men. Their relationship was cut short when one of them died in the great earthquake and fire.
David decides to go to San Francisco to see if either man really existed. There he meets Marc Willis.
Marc Willis has dreams of two men as well. He feels that he was one of the men.
As David and Marc search for answers, they wonder: Are they the same two souls? Did they know and love each other in that past life? Will Fate grant them a happy ending this time? Or, will this life end in tragedy like before?
Author Bio
My real name is Julia Flowers. I am a 70+ year-old great-grandmother and live with my two cats, Cleopatra (who is 15 years old) and Kiyah the devil cat (who is not quite 2), in downtown Kansas City, MO. I either tell people I live next door to the church with the gold dome, or I live at the northwest corner of Bartle Hall. I have four children, nine blood grandkids, two extra, and one great-grandson.
Two questions I am often asked are:
1. Why a pen name and where did it come from?
When I began writing at the age of 60, I didn’t want my kids to be embarrassed by their friends knowing their mother wrote gay fiction, so I decided to make up a pen name. When I got my first computer and set up an email account I had a hard time finding a username that wasn’t already taken. I’d been a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism for several years, and my SCA name is Alisaundre Muir, and I dye, spin, and weave wool. Alix is a nickname for Alisaundre and I came up with alixtheweaver. Thinking about a pen name, I thought, ‘Weaver is a good last name’, and so I became A(for Alix) T(for the) Weaver.
2. Why would a straight great-grandmother write gay fiction?
When I was growing up, the word gay meant happy and carefree and homosexuals were called queer or ‘one-of-those’. However, I never heard those terms or knew what they meant until I was married and a mother. When two men moved in down the street from us in St. Charles, MO, I didn’t think anything about it until my then husband told me they were ‘queers’. I didn’t know what he meant.
Later on, after moving back to Kansas City in the late 1960s, two men moved across the street from us. Again, I thought nothing about it. One was an actor, and we went to several of his plays. I was later to learn that one of them was the driving force behind the gay movement in Kansas City. Of course, at the time I knew nothing at all about the LGBT Community.
In 2003, there was a TV show on Bravo called Boy Meets Boy. Having watched The Bachelor and Bachelorette and being totally disgusted, I decided it couldn’t be any worse and watched. In the middle of the show, one of the ‘contestants’ set up a Yahoo group for fans and I joined. I have to admit, my record with guessing who was gay and who was straight wasn’t all that good.
At the peak, there were over 3,000 members of the group. After the show as over, several of us continued to ‘talk’ daily. These men educated me as to the inequalities suffered by the LGBT community, and started me reading gay literature and watching movies. On a trip to see my mother in Turlock, CA, I visited one of the men in San Francisco who lived just up the street from the Castro. As he showed me around, we stopped in front of what was once Harvey Milk’s camera store. My question, “Who was Harvey Milk?” started my education into Gay history. When I mentioned I’d like to try writing. His response was, “I’d like to read a book where the boy gets the boy and they ride off into the sunset together.” I said, “I can do that.” This was in 2003 – before Brokeback Mountain, and before the advent of gay erotica.
I was unable to find a publisher who would even read my story and paid $500 to have it published. Since then, I use self-publishing. My first few books were mildly erotic, but since, I have chosen to put the sex behind the bedroom door.
I’ll never make even a little money, but if I can move you in some way, whether you laugh or cry, love it or hate it, I’ve accomplished what I aim for.
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. Cyril Connolly (1903 – 1974).