MM MARCH MADNESS!!
March 9
Twinsie Talk is proud to present the 3rd Annual MM March Madness – a month to focus on the M/M, F/F, M/M/F, M/F/M authors. We love these books and want to share it with the rest of the world. Each day we will post an interview. We will also include any reviews that we have done on these books as well as links to the books.
Our hope is that you will love this genre as much as we do! <3
Today is devoted to E Llewellyn
E. LLEWELLYN is an essayist, poet, and writer of literary criticism and fiction. She is the author of the epic multi-volume Hollywood-based rock ‘n roll series, SUICIDE RIDE, comprised thus far of THE PLATINUM MAN and THE FIX. The third volume, THE HIT, is coming soon. Further additions to the series will follow in 2016 and beyond.
Affectionately known to her fans as “Elle,” her next project will be a nonfiction memoir entitled I DON’T KNOW MY NAME: THE TRUE STORY OF L TODD PITTMAN AND CREUTZFELDT-JAKOB DISEASE, dedicated to her late, beloved husband, a successful international business executive who succumbed on March 19, 2015 at the age of fifty-five to CJD, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Elle wishes to express her undying gratitude to the world-renowned experts at the National Prion Clinic in London, England; the National CJD Research and Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh, Scotland; and the incredible caregivers at the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice in Farnham, Surrey, who nursed both Todd and Elle through his last days with saintly empathy and compassion.
Like AIDS before it, CJD is a little-known but devastating fatal illness for which no treatment is currently available, only palliative care. Classified as a type of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, it is essentially an accelerated form of early-onset dementia that too often claims its victims within mere weeks of diagnosis.
While working in Berlin, Germany, on January 7, 2015, Todd experienced a brief episode of short-term memory loss, initially misdiagnosed as “harmless” Transient Global Amnesia. By February 20th, his condition deteriorated so rapidly within a single day, he had to be abruptly hospitalized on an emergency basis. Yet the diagnosis of CJD was not officially confirmed by the aforementioned experts until March the 6th. By the 19th of the month, being unable to eat, drink, talk, or move, Todd passed peacefully to paradise while cradled in his wife’s arms. Nicknamed “Smiley” as a child, he died with a radiant, beatific, teeth-baring grin on his blissful face. As Elle often remarks, “He came in smiling, and went out smiling.”
I DON’T KNOW MY NAME: THE TRUE STORY OF L TODD PITTMAN AND CREUTZFELDT-JAKOB DISEASE will tell his extraordinary tale, chronicle his amazing achievements, and educate the general public about this most horrendous of dementias. His loving wife hopes the book will make CJD the AIDS of our era and encourage charitable contributions to fund the research desperately needed to develop life-prolonging treatments and eventually uncover a cure. Until that blessed day, she aspires to comfort and support the families of other victims of this illness, who can do little but watch in helpless horror as their stricken loved ones lose first their memories, then their capacities to speak, move, and even swallow ~ invariably within weeks or sometimes days. Unlike Alzheimer’s patients, they do not long linger with us for us to nurture and cherish throughout their slow, pitiful decline. Tragically, they die rapidly but torturously of starvation and dehydration, plunging those they leave behind into a deep state of inconsolable grief and debilitating shock.
Although the odds of contracting CJD are roughly 1 per 1 million, when it does strike, it’s a California wildfire: it razes everything and everyone in its path. Todd truly WAS one in a million.
For more information, please google and visit the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Foundation.
Tell us about something about you (not included in your normal author bio) that maybe not everyone knows about you.
I’m an experienced writer with a varied background. Once upon a time, in another incarnation of my life, I was even a highly touted political pundit whose work was widely featured all over the web. I appeared on the nationally-syndicated Alan Colmes Show on Fox News Radio, and on KABC L.A.’s morning program hosted by Doug McIntyre, as well as on Al Rankin’s afternoon show.. My husband’s work then took us to Europe, where we lived for eight glorious years before he passed away, so unexpectedly and traumatically. I still enjoy punditry, and would like to get back into the game, every now and again, just for the pure hell of it!
There’s been a trend in writing a series. How do you feel about series? Do you write them? Do you think they are easier or harder?
I do write them, POWERHOUSE ones! I love them, because not only do they give the reader real substance and “meat to chew on,” so speak: they give the reader something salivating and titillating to look forward to. The time between installments is negligible, really, when you consider how long we wait patiently yet impatiently for movie sequels. (Consider STAR WARS.) Book series are much like soap operas or television mini-series: you really get to know the characters and bond with them. They become parts of your soul, your internal family. For that reason, I actually consider them, in the main, to be more fully satisfying if not superior to stand-alones. My only cautionary warning in this regard is the following: the reader must learn to exercise patience, because all good things are well worth the wait!
Where do you do most of your writing?
In the privacy of my home, at my computer. I never, ever, write in public venues, in coffee shops or hangouts with WiFi. My work demands my all, and I can’t give it my all with other people and needless distractions around me to vie for my full and complete attention.I take my writing, which is intensely angst-ridden in the extreme, extremely seriously.Besides, in order to ensure my dialogue is realistic,I often act out the scenes and speak the characters’ words out loud. Can you imagine me doing that in Starbucks? I’d be hauled away in a str8jacket, in a New York minute!
What are you currently reading? Any suggestions for your favorite books (beside your own, of course)?
Unfortunately, I’ve no time to read right now, because I’m still struggling to glue together the broken pieces of my life, without Todd. My favorite books are strange but brilliant ones, like the great mid-20th-century world literary classic, penned by the brilliant French lesbian Marguerite Yourcenar: THE MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN. In it, she muses, as Hadrian himself on his deathbed, about his life and contribution to the Roman Empire, as arguably the greatest of its five great Emperors. But of especial interest to M/M readers, its greatest focus is on his obsessive love for the beautiful young Antinous, his lover who drowned in the Nile in a mysterious incident that history has yet to resolve. The chapters where he mourns the loss of the beautiful boy he adored and even worshiped are unrivaled for their tender, realistic, heart-wrenching evocations of grief.
Do you feel that this genre is growing? And what do you contribute to that growth or decline?
Oh, Lord, it’s only growing! The sky’s the limit! My contribution is decidedly in favor of that growth, because I believe my work to be truly groundbreaking. In fact, I intend it to be. I want readers of the M/M genre to understand; gay fiction doesn’t have to be pat and formulaic; it need not be confined to the more typical subsets of romance or BDSM or sci-fi, etc.It can, and does, come (as men and their genitals do) in all shapes and sizes! And that is as it should be. Until the genre ceases to be less a genre and just a part of the whole literary cannon, it won’t be fully mainstreamed or assimilated. And M/M needs to be right up there on the physical and cyber shelves with all the rest, like the Stephen Kings and the Danielle Steeles, and yes, even the Marguerite Yourcenars!
What is the most surprising thing you have learned about writing?
That no matter how good you think you are, no matter how accomplished you are at your craft, you can always, ALWAYS, learn new ways to be better! And even the tiniest tricks of the trade can greatly improve your writing style.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on the third, though not final, installment of my epic SUICIDE RIDE series, THE HIT. I hope to release it in early 2016. Here’s a synopsis/promo: Love is love … When you find it, you’re lucky—PERIOD. And when you lose it—when you destroy it by your own hand? Well, that’s a Hell all its own … Norman Dimond had it all: money, power, a life of leisure, and finally the man of his dreams. After moving heaven and earth, he was able, by degrees, to bring the obscenely beautiful but adamantly straight Johnny Gellis around. Just as they were starting to connect—really connect—things went haywire: Norman lost his head and flew into a rage, launching into one of his epic, smut-mouthed rants. Now it’s all over. Johnny’s gone, for good. Or is he? Can Norman win him back? “Outside his bedroom door, he froze. Missing his bed mate, he could not bear the THOUGHT of going back inside that keep without him. Just the image of curling up in that big bed alone without those broad shoulders to wrap his arms around was anathema.” ~ © E. Llewellyn, from SUICIDE RIDE: The Hit, coming in 2016. Curl up with Johnny and Norman. Start your journey down this twisted bi-erotic road with Book 1 of the SUICIDE RIDE series, THE PLATINUM MAN, followed by Book 2, THE FIX. #PrepareToTakeTheHit. #HitchYourRide and #GetYourFix. #OneClick this #MustRead #MM #rock #romance #series now. SUICIDE RIDE: The Platinum Man (Book 1) US Link: http://amzn.to/1fgZrGp UK Link: http://amzn.to/1erRHQZ SUICIDE RIDE: The Fix (Book 2) US Link: http://amzn.to/1eUsmUp UK Link: http://amzn.to/MLrC9x SUICIDE RIDE: The Hit (Book 3) Coming soon! PRAISE FOR SUICIDE RIDE “What is someone supposed to say when they’ve read the best of a genre? Somehow ‘OMG! I LOVED IT!’ feels paltry and weak in comparison to how rich the experience was for me as a reader … [SUICIDE RIDE] is fiction unleashed. It is lyrical madness. This? This is not a book. This is literature.” ~ Shandra Torbett, Reviewer, This Redhead LOVES Books “PHENOMENAL! Like nothing I’ve ever read: gritty, raw, crude, crass, and in your face.” ~ Robyn Roze, author of HELLKAT
What is your favorite thing to do on a Saturday night?
Well, lately, even on Saturday nights, I’ve been working, struggling to rebuild my life and the tattered remnants of my formerly promising indie career. But given a choice, I’d dearly love to curl up on the couch with my departed husband and watch good movies the way we used to, with him so sweetly and tenderly rubbing my feet. Love you, Todd, always! <3 <3.
Tell us about the highest HIGH and lowest LOW in your career so far. How has it changed you?
The highest high was seeing my work published for the first time. Debuting at number one or two on the Hot New Releases List in my category was also very exciting, at first. The lowest low was when the Trolls pounced. Actually, though, in time, it made little difference, for I could go no lower than on the day when my beloved husband passed away, all too prematurely, from CJD. THAT set everything in perspective. Now, I’m striving for equilibrium: I write my heart out and pour my whole Art and Soul into my work. Those who get it, get it; and those who don’t, don’.t And hey: my husband has taught me, even from beyond the oven, I can’t be anyone but ME, at my best and most authentic. I write Gay/Bi literature, not snappy, breezy romance. But that’s okay. That kind of writing has its place, too, in the marketplace, but one thing I do know: my writing stands apart, even alone, as I do, and it certainly differentiates me from the crowd, As a result, I have a truly original and authentic voice, love it or loath it!
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Enter the giveaway!! You could win a Kindle from the Twinsies or one of the great prizes donated by our featured authors during the MM March Madness Celebration!!
E. Llewellyn has donated a free copy of the first book, THE PLATINUM MAN (Kindle version only available at present).
A big THANK YOU to all of the authors participating in our month long celebration!! We appreciate all that you do!!! MUAH!!
Much Love from the Twinsies!!! Angie, Brenda, Deb, Kelly, Kristi, Jen, Jo, and Melinda!!!
