✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍✍

 

 

 

 

 

Lee Brazil’s In from the Cold Series –  Pulp Friction 2014 Elemental Connections!

Lee Brazil stopped by today to talk about Pulp Friction, his series In from the Cold and writing.  He also brought along a terrific contest for you all to enter.  Look out for the details Lee has supplied towards the end of his guest blog.  Good morning, Lee!

Good morning all! Thank you, Melanie, for letting me steal your blog for the day. *sips coffee* For those who don’t know me, I’m Lee Brazil, author of m/m Romance with Breathless Press, Evernight Publishing, Totally Bound and Pulp Friction. It’s Pulp Friction that brings me here today. I’m getting ready to start working on my fifth In From the Cold book of the year, the final single title in the series.

So I thought I’d take a short break and begged Melanie to let me do a giveaway on her blog. She very kindly said yes, and then I realized…That meant I’d have to write a blog post of some sort to go along with the giveaway. Instantly, every idea deserted me. I could almost see the little buggers out the corner of my eye, like will-o-th’-wisps vanishing in droves, sparks dying out and leaving me in darkness, wondering why I do this to myself.

Then a review caught my eye…and reminded me of something. In the Out in the Cold series, Finn has always fancied himself as something of a Prince Charming, a knight in shining armor out to save the downtrodden and rescue the prince. And I thought, what about you?

What did you always want to be? What did you picture yourself as when you were ten?

That’s a kind of complicated question, because I wasn’t very steadfast at the time. I’d watch a great movie and picture myself as a character in it…Say Star Wars. I’m pretty sure that Finn would have been Luke Sky walker. Other people would choose Han Solo. I’m pretty sure that some even wanted to be Darth Vader.

Me? I wanted to be Obi Wan Kenobi.

Watch Star Trek, and people were clamoring to be Kirk, Spock, McCoy even. Not I. Hero of the galaxy? Saving the universe from Klingon oppression through sheer bravado, courage or heart? (Did you ever notice the similarities between Star Trek and the Wizard of Oz? But that’s a different post) I had a slew of favorites from Star Trek…but if you made me choose, and I could be only one? I wanted to be Scotty. Screw the universe, save my ship!

So as an adult, I have been several things. I was a student for what seemed like forever, at the whim of red tape and bureaucracy. I worked retail, and fast food, and even did a stint as a phone operator updating directories. Then I was a teacher, and I learned that Obi Wan hid a lot of his real feelings from us. Teaching is a grand profession, and it was full of moments of sheer exhilaration and joy. BUT… It is also one of THE most frustrating and wearing of professions. So yes, I did sort of fulfill my childhood ambitions to teach, but after fifteen years I retired, somewhat dis-spirited.

Today? I write. I have a hard time sometimes curbing the instinct to “teach” – i.e. write blogs on correct grammar and word usage etc. But I enjoy writing immensely and I think that I wouldn’t have made it here without that fifteen year stop in America’s classrooms.

As for Scotty? Well, my ship is a hundred year old farmhouse and sometimes it seems like keeping it standing is a full time labor of love.

What about you? Who did you think you would be when you grew up?

Leave me a comment here and tell me what you wanted to be when you were ten, and you’ll be entered to win a random drawing for a $10 ARE gift card.
*Contest begins Friday Aug. 15th and ends Friday August 22. One entry per person, winner selected by random number designation and notified via email. (Must provide valid email with comment). Winner will be selected Saturday-Sunday Aug. 23/24 and notified/announced Monday Aug. 25th.

✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎✎

Author Name: Lee Brazil
Author Bio:
Somewhere in a small town in up-state New York are a librarian and a second grade teacher to whom I owe my life. That might be a touch dramatic, but it’s nevertheless one hundred percent true.

Because they taught me the joy of reading, of escaping into worlds crafted of words.

Have you ever been nine years old and sure of nothing so much as that you don’t belong? Looked at the world from behind glasses, and wondered why you don’t fit?

Then turn the page and see… there you are, running from Injun Joe in a dark graveyard; there you are fencing with Athos; there you are…beneath the deep blue sea- marveling at exotic creatures with Captain Nemo.

I found myself between the pages of books, and that is why I write now, it’s why I taught English and literature for so many years, and it’s why my house contains more pounds of books than furniture.

If I’d had my way, I’d have been a fencer…or a starship captain, or a lawyer, or a detective solving crimes. But instead, I am a writer, and that’s the best thing in the world to be if you ask me, because as a writer, I can be all those things and more.

If I hadn’t learned to value the stories between the pages, who knows what would have happened? Certainly not college…teaching…or writing.

Author Links:

• Twitter: @leebrazil
  Amazon Author Page
  Goodreads Author Page
  Blog: Lee’s Musings    
  Facebook