Rogue's Angels Present: The Grass Sweeper God by Doug Howery

Please welcome Doug Howery author of the Grass Sweeper God.

Doug Howery will be awarding a $25.00 Amazon GC and an autographed copy of the book to one randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Please note geographical restrictions apply. United States only for the physical prize.

The Grass Sweeper God

by Doug Howery

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GENRE: Historical Fiction

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INTERVIEW:

1. What or who inspired you to start writing?

WHO—My deceased brother inspired me to write.  That’s why I dedicated the story (paperback version) to him.  WHAT—My mother’s 1982 suicide.  She became a martyr for her cause of sexual identity intolerance.  After learning that my brother and I were gay, she killed herself 2 days later.  She left a suicidal note in which she referred to my brother & I as, “Gutter rats’ that could rot in hell.”

Book Example:

She stretched out and placed the gun at her side and stared at the ceiling.  She thought about her children.  She had never owned them, never owned herself, and now they could choose their own road in life.  But she could choose when to exit this world and how.  She had to get out of her head, out of her heart.  Tears like the mistakes she had made in life flowed down her face.  She put the gun under her ribs and pulled the trigger.

2. What elements are necessary components for this genre?

Since this fact-based story is so close-up & personal to me, I consider this as a “Hybrid-like” genre.  It is a mixture of Suspense, Thriller & Historical because of the 1969 Stonewall Riots of NYC.  The component elements necessary are clichéd, indeed:  Write what you know!  That’s where your passion lies, that’s where your best prose shines through & engages the reader to feel your passion, your hurt, your love, etc.  Conflict:  What does the protagonist want so bad that he or she is willing to give their life to fight the antagonist, be it society or one individual.

Book Example from the antagonist’s POV:

Now the whole goddamn town knew.  This would have to stop.  What kind of a freak had the boy grown up to be?  Ted had overlooked most of the outlandish ways of the boy.  But he couldn’t and wouldn’t have his two little boys growing up around a queer.  He thought of Smiley bathing the children.  Smiley had probably tried something with his sons.  He gulped down the beer.  Oh no, he wouldn’t have that sick-o around his children.  If the boy wanted to be a woman, well, he could show him.  The three walked to the barn below the knoll.  Ted directed the boys to sit in the back of the rotted wagon.  Ted had heard enough, but the boys continued. 

3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel?

A life of hard knocks.  My brother died of AIDS in 1996.  His wish was for me to write our story.  I fulfilled that wish by putting pen to page.  My idea was to write a very personal story of two young gay men & a transsexual struggling in the backwoods & in a staunch anti-gay environment paralleled alongside the fight for national sexual identity rights. So, I juxtaposed a rural Southwest Virginia coal mining camp town against the historical NYC Gay Stonewall Riots of 1969.  

Book Example: Dedication/acknowledgment page:

For

My Brother, Deno:

You answered the unrequited silence with a deafening applause of approval. 

Book Example:

The Stonewall riots had been vicious, but the real battle would be won or lost on another continent:  Solitude, Virginia.

4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?

I write what I know.  The story (The Grass Sweeper God) is true except for the parts that aren’t.  I’m amazed at the critiques’ that actually think the story is total, “Fiction.”  “Life is stranger than fiction,” indeed.  If you can construct prose in such a way as to actually put the reader in the shoes of the characters in your story (walk a mile); you have done your job regardless of the critique’s.    

Book Example:  Verified Amazon Review

 Bysoup labels need reading tooon July 6, 2016

Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

I am used to forming my own images when reading a story. For me the images placed in my head by Mr Howery are vivid and blazingly real. Some might say that this is total fiction. I would argue that too many of us come from a town called Solitude.

5. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

I plan on adapting The Grass Sweeper God into a screenplay.

6. If you could be one of the characters from this book, who would it be and why?

I am Brac, the young man that is in the book.  I wanted realism.  I wanted intimacy.  I wanted to feel my life from a young child into young adulthood.  The memories flooded in and, I must say it was tough to relive.  I grew up during the course of writing out a lot of pain in my life.

7. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?

My story is on the fringe or lives in the margins of society.  I could not get traditional publishing to touch it.  Not even agents would take it on.  So, I did it myself because it is an important story that needed to be told.  Traditional publishing is all about the money.  Agents have to at least make $25,000.00, etc.  Now with POD technology through Amazon, creativity in all its forms can be expressed.  And if your story takes off, it is because the prose along with the story line spoke to the public.  Give yourself a pat on the back.

8. Do you outline your books or just start writing?

I outlined the book.  I am ‘anal’ that way.  I have to have a plan which includes a skeleton of the beginning, middle & end.

9. How do you maintain your creativity?

I make the time to be creative.  I plot the next book in my head all the time.  Now, it is the screenplay version of The Grass Sweeper God I’m plotting.  I keep a journal with all my ideas.

10. Who is your favorite character in the book. Can you tell us why?

Permelia is my favorite character in the book who also happens to be fictionalized.  I think it is the fiction part of the creativity in bringing this character to live between the pages.  I like her tenacity, her will power to thrive and not just survive against all odds, against a society that rejects her time & time again.

11. Are your plotting bunnies angels or demons?

A mixture of both.  All angels would be boring.  Throw a demon in there for the conflict and the fabulousness of it all.

Book Example:

“The  Grass Sweeper God is a force that flows through all things,” the Indian, Carr, had instructed.  “Have you ever stood in a meadow and watched as the wind whips the grass?  Listen closely and you can hear harps—angel’s wings unfold, or the drumbeat—that is the devil.”  The Indian seem to float over concrete angels in a graveyard as his last words trailed into the starry sky, “You are a force, a warrior.” 

The angel’s wings unfolded upward and she spoke through a translucent light: “Jesus resurrected from the gutter.  You can see the stars from the gutter.  Your mother, like Jesus’ mother, stays behind and starts cleaning up the mess.”

16. Anything else you might want to add?

Thank you for allowing me the time and opportunity to speak to my work.

BLURB:

Sixteen-year-old Smiley Hanlon is a young woman tethered to a young man's body.  In the 1950's Appalachia coal fields of Solitude, Virginia, Smiley is placed in the "Mentally Retarded Class" because he is effeminate and wears a blouse and saddle shoes to school.

Smiley is backed by his best friend, Lee Moore who protects Smiley from a father and many townspeople who hate him.  Smiley has dreams of becoming an entertainer.  Raised by his aunt in a juke joint, as a child Smiley sings and dances on the Formica bar top into the wee hours.  Chosen as the female lead, Dorothy, in a new town production called Dorothy of Oz Coal Camp, his dream is being realized.  The triumph of the play and his dream is sabotaged by his father and classmate bullies culminating in a tragic and horrific moment that changes both Smiley and Lee, forever.

Smiley and Lee flee to NYC.  They learn that prejudice is prejudice whether in the coal fields of Virginia or on the streets of NYC. Smiley suffers at the hands of his real mother who is a religious zealot.  She tries to change who Smiley is because he is a boil on the body of Christ. Lee suffers at the hands of psychologists who practice Aversion Therapy-electric shock treatment to cure his homosexuality.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  Both Smiley and Lee become forces of change as do countless others.  In 1969, Smiley Hanlon and his friend, Lee emerge as leaders of a gay revolution, the historical Stonewall Riots.  The riots are vicious but the real battle will be won or lost on another continent: Solitude, Virginia.

The Grass Sweeper God is a force of nature that flows through all things...straightens out that which is bent...which is sick...

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EXCERPT:

This godforsaken place was the backwoods of Appalachia coal mining country.  And being sixteen meant a cultured age of about ten or twelve, really.   Especially if you were retarded and rode the short bus.  This meant riding a school bus designated specifically as the retarded kids’ bus, but it also meant boarding normal kids alongside retards at each bus stop.  The only real specificity:  If you were trapped inside the wrong body—if you were a young man who wanted to be a young woman—you were the bull’s eye in the kids’ cross-hairs because you were the biggest, retarded mongoloid excrement of ‘em all, really.   Excrement being too proper of a word:  Specifically you got the ‘cultured’ and ‘godforsaken’ shit kicked outtaya every school day by retards and rednecks.   Proper language left this place along with any civility once branded as a retarded freak, really.  Indifference to proper language and civility ruled the day, and brutality beat the night.

  

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

DOUG HOWERY has been writing both fiction and essays since 1990. His essays and familial stories have appeared in The Blue Ridge Lambda Press.
In many of his stories, as in "The Grass Sweeper God," Mr. Howery's true lode, his font of inspiration is in the passion and suffering he has experienced.

Author, Doug Howery penned the novel with insight into his own struggle for sexual identity and personal tragedy. His mother committed suicide in 1982, blaming her two sons' sexual identity in a letter and declaring herself a martyr for intolerance and social bigotry. She referred to her own sons as "Gutter Rats that Could Rot in Hell" and represents the hate and mistrust that have plagued society.
Suspense author, Maggie Grace, with the North Carolina Writers' Network writes about her cohort Mr. Howery: "What I like is the riskiness, the cutting edge of the narrative voice we hear. The moments when he lapses into descriptions of the moon, of the horse, etc. are true poetry that offers some relief from the coarseness of the story, and he places them well. He has an ear for the rhythm of the story, a natural sense of when to end--hangs fire with a new way of looking at someone or something, turning the entire chapter on its ear. I like the way he makes it impossible for the reader to stop reading at the end of the chapter."
Mr. Howery lives in Virginia with his partner of 34 years where he is at work on his next novel.

Links:

Buy @ Amazo
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Twitter:
https://www.twitter.com/@dhowery1

Goodreads:  
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8087260.Doug_Howery

Facebook:  
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Grass-Sweeper-God/1475772659315049#!/pages/The-Grass-Sweeper-God/1475772659315049

Book Website:
http://www.dhowery-book.com

Book Video Trailer:  
https://youtu.be/Bz6bNcZ6p4E

Linkedin:  

https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-howery-90bb975a

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

Doug Howery will be awarding a $25.00 Amazon GC and an autographed copy of the book to one randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Please note geographical restrictions apply. United States only for the physical prize.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f1811