Addiction doc says: It’s not the drugs. It’s the ACEs…adverse childhood experiences.

You need to read this.

ACEs Too High

He says: Addiction shouldn’t be called “addiction”. It should be called “ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking”.

He says: Ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking (what traditionalists call addiction) is a normal response to the adversity experienced in childhood, just like bleeding is a normal response to being stabbed.

He says: The solution to changing the illegal or unhealthy ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking behavior of opioid addiction is to address a person’s adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) individually and in group therapy; treat people with respect; provide medication assistance in the form of buprenorphine, an opioid used to treat opioid addiction; and help them find a ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking behavior that won’t kill them or put them in jail.

This “he” isn’t some hippy-dippy new age dreamer. He is Dr. Daniel Sumrok, director of the Center for Addiction Sciences at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Medicine. The center is the first to receive the…

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If you’re a straight cisgender woman writing m/m romance, sorry, you are not striking a blow for equality

Yup

A Trick of Light

[Dear people reading this in the Year of Our Lord 2017: I don’t know where you’re all coming from, or why you’re coming here now, but I wrote this literally years ago and don’t give a shit anymore, so please be aware that when you feel the need to register your disagreement with me, all you’re doing is clogging up my inbox with opinions I don’t care about regarding a thing I don’t care about. Which annoys me. Given that, I’m locking the comments. Thanks and enjoy your stay.]

Just to get my argument clear in the headline.

A lot of things have prompted this, and nothing in particular has. The truth is that this is something I’ve been feeling for a while. It’s something I’ve wrestled with a bit, given that two of the novels and two of the novellas I’ve sold have been marketed as m/m romance, though…

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The Art of Plotting While Painting

OMG SHE DID A THING!!!

Another Piece of Me

Hello everybody (said in the voice of Matt Bellasai from Whine About It video fame). AJ Rose here, lowering the tone of Karin’s classy blog to bring you some rambling about books, reading, and my new favorite hobby, painting masterpieces… with a paint-by-numbers guide. What? I can’t paint to save my life. Unless it’s a wall.

So, a bit about me for those who don’t know. I have 12 books out, of which my most recent is the 4th installment of the Power Exchange series, Restraint.

Aside from writing Ben and Gavin, my other books include reapers, ghosts, everyday guys going through extraordinary circumstances, a dueling piano bar with a life of its own, and one hell of a power outage.

The last time I was on Karin’s blog, I wrote about knitting, which is one of my happy places when I need to…

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Chapter 3 is Available!

  Hi, Patreon fans. Chapter 3 of my new Work in Progress The Road to Redemption is now available on my Patreon page. http://www.patreon.com/fefeeleyjr   This is a work of gay fiction in the urban fantasy/ post-apocalyptic world. I really appreciate your support and can't wait to bring this newest book to you all. Check out my page. …

Prayer for the wounded (Poem)

    unsplash-logoToa Heftiba The bruises now are healed The scars covered by tattoos I don't jump when I hear the door Nor am I a captive audience in the pews You took away my innocence The little boy who loves God and Santa You beat me where no one could see me When your …

Gay Writer needs your love (I swear to God it’s not what you think)

  unsplash-logoDmitry Bayer Hey Everyone. I am really excited to bring to your attention something that I think I should have been doing for a while now. As most (all three of you) know that I post my poetry online for free, I have decided (my husband has decided) that I should post them as …

My take on women writing MM Romance

Good Article. Yet, I think there is a generation gap here. I didn’t have access to anything ‘gay’ growing up. Nothing. It was a pejorative term – frequently used against me and made my life hell.
Even if I could find something that was gay affiliated, I wouldn’t have touched it with a ten-foot pole lest I get caught with it.
I like romance just fine. I just don’t like romance as the plot. People are human and human beings have human interactions but romance throws everything out of the window to focus solely on the H.E.A.
If I could go back before The Haunting of Timber Manor and choose to be affiliated with m/m romance or gay fiction I would have chosen the latter due mostly because I don’t write in nor do my books belong in this genre. My fans might criss-cross between m/m and gay fiction but the worlds are decidedly different.
However, they are often viewed through the same lens.
When I published When Heaven Strikes I made it clear that this book was not romance.
Almost every review, save for a few that ‘got’ what I was doing, said otherwise.
I do have romantic scenes because I think it’s important for people to read that and understand that gay people do make love (I once had someone tell me she couldn’t’ see what gay men do as lovemaking) and it’s as affirming as heterosexual sex.
This happens because regardless of what you put out it’s viewed through that lens. Those optics, those romance rules, are superimposed on anything with the word ‘gay’ in it and the comments are oftentimes unpleasant to read as Jamie pointed out “Not enough sex”.
Think about it this way. I love my husband. We’ve been together seven years and will be married five this August. in our home, it’s just me and him. We’re a couple. We cook. We talk. We binge watch shows. We take the dog to the vet. We argue we fight, and we make up (which, yes, often includes sex).
However, we’re part of a greater whole of society. We do not exist in a vacuum and when you get into a same-sex relationship, it’s both liberating and somewhat difficult to navigate the real world.
Saying, “I do,” is like typing “The End” on your manuscript because now, the work starts. Maintaining a relationship, regardless if it’s heterosexual or homosexual, is hard work. Shit gets real especially as time marches on.
I’ve tossed shade on m/m romance over people who’ve either made a joke of gay relationships, who’ve been ignorant of gay issues, exploitive, or downright shit individuals looking to make a few bucks off a hot genre.
Yet the thing is, m/m romance has given some people happy endings that gay fiction didn’t necessarily give it’s own due mostly to the amount of negativity in their world at the time. Romance is still a noble thing.
Yet it often times is a victim of its own myopic worldview. While gay fiction should in no way go back to the way things were in the past it would be nice to see m/m evolve into something more than what it is now – a catch-all for all things ‘gay.’
It just shouldn’t.

Jamie Fessenden's Blog

The argument has surfaced again and again over the four years since I first published in this genre:  Are women really capable of writing MM Romance?  After all, it’s about men.  Shouldn’t men write it?

My answer to those questions is a bit complex, so bear with me.

First, a little history.  This is based upon my personal experience, supplemented by some cursory research, so don’t take anything I say as absolute fact.  I would love to see someone do a really thorough history of the genre someday.

I don’t know how old modern “gay literature” is.  I do know E.M. Forster wrote Maurice in 1913 (though it wasn’t published until after his death in 1971).  Blair Niles published a novel in 1931 called Strange Brother, which tells of the friendship between a heterosexual woman and a gay man.   Authors such as Christopher Isherwood and Langston Hughes…

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