Last week I invited new M/M authors to submit a short flash portrait of themselves and their book covers so that readers 
could get to know them and their work. The first author to accept my invitation was Brad Boney who is like a newly minted coin having written one novel, The Nothingness of Ben, which was released on November 23rd by Dreamspinner Press. When I read Brad’s portrait I couldn’t stop smiling and I realized why Dreamspinner accepted his manuscript.
As always with author profiles I don’t ask the questions the way I do in interviews, you get that pleasure. Please feel free to ask Brad any questions about his writing or even about himself – I get the sense he’s not shy. 🙂 Here’s Brad’s portrait:
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A gay guy enters stage right. Another gay guy enters stage left.
“Hey.”
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Nada. Have you heard about this Brad Boney?”
“I’ve seen the name on Twitter. Some old guy, right?”
“Yeah. He just wrote this romance novel that only straight women read. I heard it’s like 90% dialogue.”
“Weird. So he wrote about a guy and a chick?”
“No, he wrote about two dudes. It’s like #9 on Amazon’s gay & lesbian best sellers list, but supposedly gay guys don’t actually read it.”
“That’s because gay guys don’t actually read. Our eyes are too tired from all the porn we watch. Amazon lumps gay & lesbian books together on the same list?”
“Yes.”
“That’s disconcerting.”
“I know. Guess what’s #8?”
“What?”
“Montgomery Clift’s biography.”
“Please tell La Lohan not to remake A Place in the Sun. Did you see Liz & Dick?”
“I thought it was genius.”
“You would.”
“Did you ever hear the story about the time Monty got gang fucked on a pool table in some bar?”
“And I have a friend who gave Jake Gyllenhaal a blow job in an LA parking garage. You are so naïve. What’s the name of this book?”
“The Nothingness of Ben. The title’s from Thomas Wolfe.”
“Sounds pretentious.”
“I probably won’t read it. Let’s get a drink and go dancing instead.”
Hi Brad. I don’t have a question, I just wanted to let you know that your portrait put a smile on my face too and now I’m off to buy your book 😀
Hey I read that book between shags and cocktails and it was great! Oh wait I’m a sort of a straight married woman. 😉
Loved your book Brad. Another straight woman here lol. Seriously though – great characters and wonderful relationship building.
Hi Brad, I just finished your book – loved it! Soooo…when’s the next one coming out? 😀
I thought of you Pea when I read this book :). I think you will understand me when I say that amongst other things in this book I really appreciated that Ben being a great lawyer was handled as a good thing and his love of the fine things while being something which he puts after love of his family is nothing to be ashamed of. My God am I tired of the books where main character moves to another city for whatever reason – which is cool, but then his life in new York is shown as life of sin and other bad things to contrast how good the life is in that other city is. As if good things cannot be in different places.
I did enjoy it, but I kept thinking “If only I had that kind of influence as a junior associate!” I agree about the way NYC is often depicted. It’s too easy to paint the big city in a negative light, too much of a cliche. (Although it certainly is an expensive place to live…)
Good things happen in the most unlikely places. Thank you to everyone who has read the book. I want to be very clear that I love and appreciate my female readers. But this is Jessewave and we all read Stuart’s piece last week. I couldn’t resist engaging the topic. The next book comes out in July. It’s a spin-off to Ben, not a sequel. The main character is Topher, one of the mechanics who works with Travis at Groovy Automotive (which is a real Austin business). Travis and the Walsh brothers all appear as supporting characters, plus Colin and the Meads.
Oh, how nice to hear there’s another in the pipeline. I’ll look out for it next year.
Loved your book, I would really love to read a book about Colin he was such a good friend to ben and his brothers.
Thanks, Janet. I have heard from several people who want to read more about Colin. I can tell you that he and David are still happy together, and Colin plays a small but pivotal role in the next book.
Thanks Brad, I’m joining the chorus of praise, I particularly enjoyed Travis. Good luck with the next book.
Thank you, Raine. Ah, Travis. If only I could meet a boy like that.
Hi Brad.
I, too, just finished and so enjoyed your book. I saw the blurb, and read the excellent reviews on Amazon. It definitely lived up to everything. So glad there is more to read about these interesting characters. Thank you.
Thanks for reading, Susan. Has anyone gotten my inside joke on Ben and Travis’s last names?
Sorry, Brad. I don’t see what the reference is. Will you enlighten us?
Like Travis, I love a good teen soap. So I took their last names from two iconic characters. Brandon Walsh from Beverly Hills 90210 and Ryan Atwood from The O.C.
Thanks, Brad. I would not have known that, never having watched those 2 shows.:)
Congrats on your Novel!
So how did you get into this publishing gig? And why this story verses some of the other stories I assume you’ve been playing with? Do writers sprout fully formed one day after work or play? Answer 1 or none or some version of the above… 😆
Good questions, Reggie. All my education was in the theater, so storytelling has been in my blood since I was a teenager. I wrote a novel 15 years ago that went nowhere, so I gave up. Then I discovered M/M in the summer of 2011. When I saw that most of the publishers accepted unsolicited manuscripts, that was my cue to get started. I didn’t understand why I was attracted to Ben’s story until after I finished the first draft. I was in the process of breaking up with my boyfriend of 12 years when I wrote it, so like Ben, my life felt like it was unraveling. In both cases, however, our lives weren’t actually unraveling. They were just going through big transitions and things got messy for a while. I don’t know how other writers sprout forth, but that’s how it happened to me. Sometimes the worst possible thing imaginable leads you to the place you were meant to be all along.
Thanks Brad!
Sounds like you understand what most of us are looking for in our romance- hope, humor and connection to possibilities. ( oh and smexy people too!)
:skoal: Welcome!
I know I have downloaded the sample of your book …but just reading the dialogue did catapult it to the top of my TBR-list. 😀
Thanks, Sunne. I hope you enjoy it. 🙂