Tag: humor

Titles are hard. Even when they’re easy.

Titles are hard. Even when they’re easy.

by fnmanning ♥ 1 Comment

When it comes to novel ideas, I’m fantastic. I can dream up ideas all day long, there’s ideas coming out the wazoo… you get the gist. The follow through, however, is where I start running into problems. And slapping a title on a finished creation that miraculously made its way from idea to publishable-novel? Ugh.

Damn, people still like titles? Yeah. It’s not easy.

I like short clean titles that are a word or two because this is easy and classy. And also I’m lazy. But often short titles can’t sum up the whole work on its own and also doesn’t really intrigue people as much as something more compelling and thought out.

But for my latest novel about best friends falling in love, magical hexes, and bisexuality, I thought I had the perfect title all set and ready to go.

Okay, here’s the premise:

Our hero John is an overlooked 16-year-old in Buffalo, New York. His quest to come out as bi and confess his love for his best friend becomes infinitely more complicated when he starts disappearing from view.

So what’s it called? Invisi-bi-lity.

Yes, still one word, but the way it breaks up provides two of the most important points: there’s invisibility and bisexuality involved. Truthfully, I wanted to call the book ‘invisible.’ I ran into my first snag when realizing how invisible was actually spelled.

‘Bi’ is not in ‘invisible.’ Now I know. Changing it to invisibility solved that.

My next hiccup came when putting the book upon Kindle Vella. I typed in Invisi(bi)lity and thought all was well. But not so! On the page where I input the info, it shows up correctly. But when I looked at the page others see it showed up as invisi(bi) lity.

Now maybe I shouldn’t care about the extra space in there. Maybe I should just let it go. But I’m not known for my ability to just let things go and move on. I’m not sure what I am known for but it definitely isn’t that.

I just don’t like the way invisi(bi) lity looked.

Maybe I should use invisi (bi) lity instead but I don’t love that either.

Maybe, definitely, I should have taken a screenshot of what I’m talking about. As this whole post proves, I make mistakes and things don’t always go my way. So this didn’t occur to me until now. Oops!

What did happen next was that I tried to fix the issue. I started over and typed the whole thing in again as I wanted it to appear. I copied and pasted the title in how I wanted it. I typed the whole word in then added the () later. Nothing worked!

At some point I gave up. And eventually settled on Invisi-bi-lity.

Or so I thought. Only later did I realize what I actually wrote was Invis-bi-lity and spell checker couldn’t help me because it doesn’t like any of these combinations where I break up the word, so I expected to see the red squiggly lines of wrongness. If you’re having trouble seeing my mistake (or if I’m imagining someone else might make the same error so I can feel better about myself?) then I’ll let you know there needs to be another ‘i’ after the ‘s’.

If you somehow saw and caught the spelling error that was definitely on the Vella page for I’m not sure how long, good job! You caught it before me. But look at us laughing at our mistakes now! Or okay, my mistakes.

And thus ends my comedy of errors where creating a simple title turned out to be anything but. Simple. Anything but simple. TL;DR I’m bad at spelling, titles are hard, and you should check out Invisi-bi-lity.

What’s the plural of vampire? …Besides vampires.

What’s the plural of vampire? …Besides vampires.

by fnmanning ♥ 2 Comments

What kind of book am I working on right now?

Well, let me answer that question with… a statement, but not the answer. Because I like making things complicated.

I just looked up what is a group of vampires called.

Yes, I’m working on a historical drama. Just kidding, it’s a paranormal romance. And also gay, in case the blog title didn’t clue you in that everything here is hella gay.

Fortunately, when I looked up vampire group names, the internet didn’t treat me like I was a weirdo and instead provided lots of helpful information. Apparently there isn’t one correct answer. Vampire families can be called a clutch, clan, brood, coven, or pack.

Werewolves already claimed pack, so good thing there’s other options. I kind of like brood because you’ve got some (almost) rhyming and alliteration going on with vampires drinking blood in their brood.

However my initial instinct, and what I’ve already used at least once in the novel I’m writing, is clan. I guess I can’t officially decide all groups of vampires are forever hereby referred to as a clan (because I unfortunately don’t rule the universe) but I’m going to use clan from now on.

If you disagree with vampire clans, well, keep it to yourself maybe? Those guys are dangerous.

Though to be fair, this guy is pretty broody.

Make the Yuletide Gay

Make the Yuletide Gay

by fnmanning ♥ 2 Comments

Have you ever wondered how to make Christmas gayer? I haven’t, which is weird because I always think everything should be gayer. Fortunately, Norway took care of it.  

Norway’s postal service does a holiday advertisement and this year’s is called When Harry Met Santa.

I am assuming most people who see my blog speak English, so this one has English subtitles. Combined with the original, this already has over two million views. Yes, it’s a love story involving Santa. It’s really sweet too!

So, I saw this earlier on Queerty and bookmarked it for later. I thought, ‘hey, I’m a gay romance author and I’m gay—bi if you wanna get technical about it—this will be on-topic and something fun for Christmastime. This will be fun!’

True story though, the commercial is a bit of a tear-jerker? I literally choked up and was not ready for all the feelings. (No spoilers, but don’t worry, there’s a happy ending.)

Full disclosure… when I actually watched, yes, I’d been offered limoncello and was a tad tipsy, so the video, which has nice production values and is almost a mini movie trailer, was a lot more emotional than I was expecting. Though I’d argue a little tipsy is the perfect way to watch this because then you’ll tear up and be invested in the ending and think, ‘OMG santa/this guy, it’s totally great, I hope they end up together!!!’

An actual queer Norwegian person said this about the video, “For many of us, Christmas is a time we spend with those we love, and it’s nice to see Norway Post show that love belongs to everyone, regardless of orientation, age, or whether you live at the North Pole.”

Happy holidays!

P.S. if you’ve never experienced limoncello before, try it! It will change your life. I rarely drink much lately, but I always say yes to limoncello.

5 Superheroes Who Should Come Out Already

5 Superheroes Who Should Come Out Already

by fnmanning ♥ 1 Comment

I’m not a huge comic book person, so I had no idea about the newest version of the Superman character until I heard a stray comment on TV from a critical pundit. He said something like, “Superman is bi now but nobody cares.”

Well unfortunately, homophobes gonna homophobe (slightly less catchy but just as true as haters gonna hate) so somebody always cares and has a problem when our world gets publicly gayer. But people mostly seem to be reacting well, which is awesome. And perhaps by ‘nobody cares’, he meant ‘an angry mob isn’t freaking out and clutching their pearls’ and this is just being treated as a regular thing humans experience, which is even more awesome. I originally assumed this meant Clark Kent was bisexual but apparently his son is the new Superman and likes his friend with pink hair.

More bi representation is awesome, though my only experience with Superman is the ooooold show with Dean Cain and Terri Hatcher. I’d eventually like to watch the newer program with Tyler Hoechlin because he looks very Superman-y and I adore almost everything about him as a person and beautiful human being.

So incredibly pretty, right?

So seeing as I don’t have a big interest in Superman, the comment about nobody caring got me thinking. Which other heroes could come out and generate more excitement? I came up with 5 heroes that the whole world… or at least fans… or at least me would care about extremely if they were gay.

5 Superheroes who should come out already

1. Spiderman (Peter Parker)

Come on, Spidey! Deadpool is already canonically pansexual and he’s waiting for you!

2. Captain America (Steve Rogers)

Despite only seeing a handful of Marvel superhero movies, I caught onto support for bi Steve Rogers being a thing and am wholeheartedly in favor of this development.

3. The Falcon (Sam Wilson)

Not having Disney+, I can’t say how gay the series The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is, so this isn’t the reason I think he should be queer. It’s more because… I got confused somehow and definitely believed he was already canonically gay? I’m not sure what happened but the only thing I (thought) I knew about him when Anthony Mackie first started appearing in the movies was that The Falcon was one of the earliest black gay superheroes. I even remember an interview where Mackie said he wanted his character to hook up with Black Widow and everybody laughed uproariously as if this was hilarious and impossible, and I have literally no idea what the joke was if he wasn’t being comically ignorant about his character’s sexuality. I only realized Sam Wilson wasn’t gay like a year ago and it’s still slightly weird he’s apparently straight.

4. & 5. Old Married Mutants

I ended up seeing First Class randomly in theaters because friends wanted to watch it. I had no idea what to expect and was surprised how good, and gay, the movie was. I remember turning to my friend twice when Professor X and Magneto seemed really in love and saying ‘is it just me…’ and each time she told me I wasn’t crazy, they were acting hella gay (blog title!) Seeing as she is straight and more objective than me, this is totally proof.

New Cover for One Little Lie

New Cover for One Little Lie

by fnmanning ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

For self-published authors like me, hiring a cover designer is crucial. Unless I want to make everything myself with my questionable design skills. I do not want this in the slightest, but I’ve paid various prices for results of varying quality and sometimes it’s very hit and miss.

So some of my covers are unfortunately made by me. But I’ve found a designer I like and am slowly updating my catalogue. This is the new cover for One Little Lie, and there’s also an excerpt from the book that is probably more appealing than my brief discussion of cover woes.

And here’s a small hint that you may want to buy this book now. You may want to buy this book now. Hint, hint. Because with this spiffy cover and an upcoming box set, I’ll eventually change the price back to $2.99. Once the box set for the first four books in this series is out, this one is going back to regular price. Though I guess you could also wait and get the boxset. Because then you get more books for less. You have options, I guess that’s the point.

Here’s the new cover:

In this scene, boyfriends Ryan and Luke are getting ready for a double date.

Ryan

Luke acted like a contestant in a beauty pageant, obsessing over his outfit.

He faced away from me but glared through the mirror in front of him. “Ryan, stop laughing and tell me which one of these shirts makes my eyes pop!”

I giggled helplessly while Luke directed his gaze to the two shirts in question. He held them up to his chest one at a time while deciding.

“Baby, you look good in anything.” Sure, my tone still sounded at least 20% sarcastic but that was my baseline.

He scoffed, unimpressed with my answer. “Stop being a weirdo.”

“I’m a weirdo for you,” I cooed. Teasing was the only option to avoid combusting into a puddle of hormones and fondness.

“You do realize this might be the only time I ask you for fashion advice?”

Well played. “Wear the red one.”

Luke frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, moron, I’m sure.”

Hey, could moron be Luke’s pet name?

He held the chosen shirt up in front of the mirror and nodded decisively. “Thank you.” A serious look crossed his face and he turned to me. “Your pet name for me is not going to be moron.” He turned towards the mirror again to fuss with his hair.

Wow, had we become so in sync we thought alike? Maybe we developed a psychic connection. Probably the first one. Just to be sure, I should double check.

I concentrated on thoughts of Luke’s ass. “What am I thinking about?”

“My ass,” he answered without hesitation.

“You are psychic,” I marveled.

“I can feel and see you staring at my ass.” He met my eyes in the mirror with a laugh.

—

Pageant Moms Fighting Other Pageant Moms

Pageant Moms Fighting Other Pageant Moms

by fnmanning ♥ 1 Comment

For the final book in the One More Thing Series, the lovable losers of Lake Forest are headed to greener, gayer pastures as they graduate high school and move on to college. So One Big Decision deals with college decisions and discussions, which threatened to cause problems for me.

Technically, I think it’s okay to mention colleges in books? As I’m a small-time indie author, probably nobody would care if I used actual colleges. The rules for using real things in fiction is tricky, and sometimes TV shows are careful about that, but they also reach a much larger audience. By my understanding, you can use real brands and titles and whatnot as long as you’re using them fictitiously, which seems obvious in fiction but whatever.

So while I debated whether to use real schools or make some up, the answer occurred to me. Neither one! I could use code-names instead. That’s something I love about first person stories, the character tells the story, so the unreliable narrator can be even more inaccurate as they might want to tell the story incorrectly.

The following is how and why Ryan came up with nicknames for different institutions of higher education.

Ryan

Okay. Researching colleges and fantasizing about being at them? Actually a stress reliever during some of my less pleasant high school years. I loved higher education, I could talk higher education all day. I wasn’t going to be one of those people who said, ‘oh, I went to Harvard or Princeton’ only because I recognized that was obnoxious. I was saving all my obnoxious passes for other parts of my personality. But when bringing Luke into the mix, my brain freaked out and wanted to make the situation less scary.

So while we were contemplating life-changing, possibly relationship-breaking areas of the future, let’s spin it positively. Make it something awesome or at least weird so I wouldn’t mind thinking about it. Thus code-names like Pageant Moms Fighting Other Pageant Moms, Dancing Pineapples University, and T-Rexes with Longer Arms were born.

Other College Code-names

(Some appear in the book, others do not)

  • T-Rexes with Longer Arms
  • Honey-badgers
  • Space Unicorns
  • The University of Perfectly breaded chicken fingers with the right amount of dipping sauce
  • Sculpted Male Torso with Goldilocks Amount of Chest Hair
  • Tap-dancing Walruses University
An epic battle?

An epic battle?

by fnmanning ♥ 1 Comment

This is to celebrate the release of a new contemporary gay romance from me. One Big Decision is the hilarious and heartwarming final novel in the One More Thing series which follows a small-town couple as they navigate fake relationships, first loves, high school, and making everything more difficult than it needs to be.

Here’s a quote and little scene from the novel. In this scene, everything has worked out for the best. Hooray? Not so fast. All Ryan and Luke’s problems are solved, it’s time for the happily ever after, but Ryan is acting weird.

~

Luke

Huh, Ryan babbling about unimportant matters was hardly new, but… he seemed regular and tired. How strange. He wasn’t even bouncing on his feet or making odd, accidental noises from his throat.

“You’re acting weird,” I realized.

“How dare you, sir!” he jumped right into outrage mode. “Let us fight, not to the death, but to the making out.”

“I kinda expected a shower of confetti or—” No. In case the excessive displays of excitement were coming later, I shouldn’t give him too many ideas. Still, “I kinda expected you’d be shouting your happiness from the rooftops.”

–The book is available here, so grab your copy or read on Kindle Unlimited today.

ONE BIG DECISION DESCRIPTION

In the conclusion of the One More Thing Series, Ryan and Luke face prom, college decisions, and what happens to their relationship when high school ends.

Despite the fierce competition over who can pull off the best prom proposal, Ryan and Luke are ridiculously in love high school sweethearts. But high school is drawing to a close, and the boyfriends have very different ideas for college.

While the guys want to stay together, they know young love doesn’t always last. Especially when one of them is thinking more about them than him, and the other isn’t being entirely forthcoming about his future goals. Will their love be enough to ensure a happy ending, or will they go their separate ways for good?

Available now!
Sex sells?

Sex sells?

by fnmanning ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

When I’m writing, there’s always background music. Usually instrumental or classical, though occasionally something with words. I don’t pay much attention to it, but when a song called ‘Dance Naked Under Palmtrees’ came on, I took notice. Probably because it says ‘dance naked under palmtrees’ over and over.

So here’s a friendly reminder to dance naked under palmtrees. If you want to.

A volcano, a horse with a sombrero, and more

A volcano, a horse with a sombrero, and more

by fnmanning ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

First, a shout out to the best holiday of the year, Cinco de Mayo. This is better known as the day I’m contractually obligated to drink a margarita. While I am of Mexican descent, this isn’t why I’m obligated to drink a margarita. The reason is… because I want to.

I searched for sombrero pictures hoping I could find one with an animal, but my favorite thing about this picture is the horse is apparently ‘in disguise.’ Wait, I mean, what horse??? I only see a very festive human!

For the final book in the One More Thing Series, Ryan and Luke are at the end of their senior year in high school. Which means college decisions and figuring out whether they have a future together.

For the last two books about them, I decided to switch it up and for them to be more stable, so the drama wasn’t about their relationship. This book… isn’t like that.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Senior year means prom, and prom means promposals. So I figured I’d share a fun scene where Luke asks Ryan to prom. 

~

Luke

“At least offer to split the therapy bill with me as a gesture of goodwill,” Ryan said while exiting his house, too busy arguing with his father to notice me.

“You think you need therapy?” Mr. Miller spoke while shutting the door behind him. “You left me with parenting PTSD.”

“You called me fat!”

“I only suggested a walk,” Mr. Miller tiredly corrected.

“Who goes on freaking father-son walks?” Ryan complained merrily in fine form.

They began talking over each other.

“We don’t both have to—”

“Which brings us back to you thinking I should lose some weight.”

“If you could be patient for five seconds—”

“Oh, are we making wishes to the never-gonna-happen-fairy because—”

“Really? My wish already came true.”

“So not fair! What did you wish for?”

“For him to put me out of my misery.” Mr. Miller nodded his head, indicating me. To me, he said, “You owe me so badly.”

“Luke!” Ryan exclaimed. “And… a giant anthill.”

My promposal did resemble a giant anthill. The brown mass nearly reached my knees, a volcano surrounded by a small island and ocean landscape. I put in the ingredient to make it blow. The ‘lava’ bubbled and foamed with a small rush of sound as it began pouring from the top and erupting over the island and spilling out into the ocean.

“Is that… root beer?”  Yep. Ryan’s favorite drink. A huge smile burst over his face.

 Lava funneled from the volcano to the carefully cut spaces below to spell out ‘prom.’ More statement than question.

“Prom?” I asked. There, there was the question.

“Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!”

“Once is fine.”

He leapt into my arms, giving me just enough time to plant my feet and ensure we stayed upright instead of toppling into the display below. The first brush of his lips landed a few inches left of my mouth, though it worked as he began peppering kisses all over my face, too giddy for finesse or aim.

Yeah, this went well.


One Big Decision comes out on May 17th. Pre-order your copy now!

TV ruined my vocabulary

TV ruined my vocabulary

by fnmanning ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

This is a very random post. In an attempt to make sense, I will explain the thought process which brought me here.

Okay. Personally, my luck with ads has been terrible, but these days its very difficult to be seen by readers without them. So I’m trying to slowly do one or two ads and dip my toe back into them. I went back to my notes for ads, which are in an excel document titled ‘keyword bible.’

So when seeing the word ‘bible’ and thinking it in my head, I learned I like pronouncing the word a certain way now. A way which is different from the normal. The way its said in the following video.

When searching for a video, I now see the word is ‘bibble’ and not a terribly mispronounced version of ‘bible.’ Clearly, I did not know this beforehand. Also, shut up, I never watched Victorious.