{"id":35805,"date":"2026-06-07T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/twinsietalk.com\/?p=35805"},"modified":"2026-06-02T20:35:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T01:35:47","slug":"celebrating-pride-with-twinsie-talk-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/twinsietalk.com\/?p=35805","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Pride with Joel Shoemaker #WOTR2026 #attendingauthor #spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Happy Pride Month everyone!\u00a0 Twinsie Tenise here. I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who took the time to answer the questions for our pride month celebration. I thought hard about the questions and had fun coming up with them. I love that the authors seemed to have as much fun answering them. We will be celebrating all month with author spotlights\u00a0 as well as reviews for some of the LGBTQIA\u00a0 books we\u2019ve read this year.\u00a0 Check back daily to learn more about that days featured author or book and add to your TBR piles. I hope you enjoy getting to know a little about all of these wonderful authors and their work.<\/p>\n

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Day 7 of Pride month and I would like to introduce you to Mr. Joel Shoemaker. I have known him a few years now.\u00a0 He is an absolute delight to have a conversation with and his smile is always beaming! I love his love for his husband and enjoy keeping up with their shenanigans online.<\/p>\n

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🏳‍🌈 Tell us your name and a little about yourself?<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
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Joel Shoemaker has been a librarian for over a decade and a magician for more than three! He lives in central Illinois with his husband, frogs named Penn and Teller, a bearded dragon called Toothless, a colony of cherry shrimp, currently nameless, and his dog, Maximus. He consumes an inordinate amount of cheese.<\/div>\n
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🏳‍🌈 How many books have you written? Do you have a favorite?<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
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4, my favorite is probably my first, bacon grief, as it remains one of the only works of fiction for teens and tweens to celebrate and affirm both faith and sexuality. I also love Silas on Sundays which follows a gender nonconforming child to church. There is a sequel called Silas on Stage coming this year from the same publisher!<\/div>\n
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🏳‍🌈 Do you write one book and finish it completely before starting the next? If not, how do you keep yourself from confusing the projects?<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
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I don’t write a lot of “books” per se. My other two books not mentioned above are both short story collections. I write a lot of things that start out as flash fiction and may or may not become a book of some kind, at some point in the future.<\/div>\n
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🏳‍🌈 What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is it a default setting?<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I have NEVER even given this a single thought. Fascinating. I guess the default!<\/div>\n
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🏳‍🌈 How do you ensure your LGBTQ characters feel authentic and mutifaceted, rather than just serve a plot function?<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
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My LGBTQ characters are all I care about and I write about a very specific niche, that being, at the intersection of faith and sexuality. That said, I am not gender nonconforming and the publishing team put a lot of care into making sure Silas felt authentic.<\/div>\n
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🏳‍🌈 Do you have a favorite piece of LGBTQ history or fun fact you would like to share?<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The first openly gay doll, Gay Bob, was launched in 1977.<\/div>\n
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🏳‍🌈 What is one of your favorite books or movies with LGBTQ representation?\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n
Feel free to share more than one, I know it is difficult as a reader to pick one favorite of anything. Especially if its book related.<\/b><\/div>\n
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I really liked TWINLESS. I mean, it was bananas for sure, but I absolutely loved it. Also BOOTS. I hear it didn’t get renewed because of political pressures and that’s really annoying if true. Brilliant show!<\/div>\n
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🏳‍🌈What is something you have used for a bookmark that IS NOT a bookmark?<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
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Coasters! And receipts, of course. The library asks you if you want to print a receipt and the only reason I say yes is when I want it for a bookmark.<\/div>\n
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🏳‍🌈 Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what are some of your favorite genres or songs?<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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No, I’m not a big music person generally.<\/div>\n
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🏳‍🌈 What is a super specific detail you know about one of your characters that has no relevance to the story?\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Charlie, the character that is basically me in my roman a clef, that is, bacon grief, is a WIZARD at tetherball. Because I, while by no means being excellent at the game, ADORE even the very idea of tetherball. I wish there was a flourishing tetherball community somewhere that I could join. Honestly, there probably is. I’ll be looking into that now.<\/div>\n
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https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/stores\/author\/B09JWRXWTT\/<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy Pride Month everyone!\u00a0 Twinsie Tenise here. I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who took the time to answer the questions for our pride month celebration. I thought hard about the questions and had fun coming up with them. I love that the authors seemed to have as much fun answering … Continue reading Celebrating Pride with Joel Shoemaker #WOTR2026 #attendingauthor #spotlight<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paSW8H-9jv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinsietalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinsietalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinsietalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinsietalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinsietalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35805"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/twinsietalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36524,"href":"https:\/\/twinsietalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35805\/revisions\/36524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinsietalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinsietalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinsietalk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}