Fan Favorite
Philip Potter
Thanks, M.A., for having me back on your blog to talk about After Christmas Eve, my new release from
MLR Press. You’ve spruced an already nice place up quite a bit since my last
visit. I don’t know how you find the time for everything you do!
To
celebrate the 10/11 release of my second novel, I’m giving away 10 copies
(ebooks) through an 11-stop blog hop. To enter, comment before midnight,
October 25, 2013 on any of my posts on the eleven participating blogs. Be sure
to include an email address.
I had no idea when I wrote Until Thanksgiving that a
prequel would follow. The idea of writing a novel was intimidating enough—never
mind a series. But something about Philip Potter, a supporting character,
grabbed me and wouldn't let go. I wanted to know more about him. Readers loved
him too, and shared my interest in his past.
After Christmas Eve is Philip Potter's story. Fans of Thad
Parker's uncle will find out what sparked his interest in helping gay teens,
abandoned by intolerant parents. They'll also learn Philip's deepest, most well
kept secret—unknown even to his precious nephew.
Discovering Philip required a trip to the sixties—a difficult
decade in U.S. history for gays and lesbians. Homosexuality was not just a sin,
but also a mental illness, against the law, and universally scorned. Major
cities across the U.S. shut down gay-owned businesses, raided gay gathering places,
and destroyed the lives of hundreds of men through entrapment, harassment,
extortion, and/or brutal, often fatal assaults.
Considering I made him up, you’d expect me to know everything
about Philip Potter. Well, I don’t. Philip is one cagey dude. The man’s got
more secrets than the National Security Agency and tells me stuff only on a
need-to-know basis.
He’s pushing 80 now. Anyone who has been out as long as Philip
would be just as careful. Old habits die hard. The sixties were a horrible time
to be gay in America.
In a conversation with his nephew in the first book, Philip
mentions James, a lover who’d killed himself thirty years earlier. You could
have knocked me over with a feather. I had no idea! Like everyone else, I had
to know more. After Christmas Eve is
Philip’s story—at least as much as he’s told me—about the weeks following
James’s death in 1966.
Here’s the blurb:
As Philip Potter wraps up his last minute shopping on
Christmas Eve, 1966, James Walker, his lover of six years, takes his life.
Unaware of what waits for him at home, Philip drops off gifts to the homeless
shelter, an act of generosity that later makes him a suspect in the murder of a
male prostitute.
Two men drive yellow Continentals. One is a killer, with the
blood of at least six hustlers on his hands. Both men have secrets. And as
Philip is about to discover, James had kept secrets, too. But James wasn’t
trying to frame him for murder…
*This
is the sixth of eleven stops on the After
Christmas Eve Blog Hop. Excerpts appear in serial form along the hop,
beginning with my post at http://www.shiraanthony.com/?p=3217.
Excerpt #6 of 11
As he tried to focus on keeping
his footing on the icy sidewalk, James sorted through the shattered fragments
of his dreams for a shard to hold onto. In one afternoon, his father had
decimated his hopes and aspirations, leaving nothing but despair and regret.
He wondered if his mother knew
about the meeting. She’d been there that awful day when his father had kicked
him out, turning her back and leaving the room when he’d pleaded with her to
intervene. Roland treated her no better than he had James, but it didn’t excuse
her absence or her failure to protect him from the man she’d married in haste.
No, even if she wasn’t in the
room when his father had told him to leave, she was every bit as much to blame.
His mother and father had thrown him out, together. Leaving him to fend for
himself had been a joint decision. They had abandoned him, like an infant in a
basket. Only instead of a hospital or church, they’d dropped him off at the bus
station with ten dollars in his pocket.
That had been the worst day of
his life—until today. Six years ago there had been a silver lining. Escaping
the father who had always hated him had spared him the constant criticism and
incessant disapproval that permeated every horrid, painful minute spent in his
company. Although the odds were against him, asking his father for help was a
gamble he had to take—an all or nothing bet that he’d lost.
And now he had nothing.
James should have known better
than to give his father yet another chance to hurt him. What had possessed
James to think he might have changed? When it came to hurting his wife and son,
Roland Walker hadn’t missed an opportunity in his life. Today had been no
different. He’d taken the opportunity to spoil James’s dreams and run with it.
Meeting Philip had restored
James’s faith in mankind and given him reason to believe in himself. Philip offered
a chance to leave behind the dangerous, high-risk lifestyle the other boys led
on the streets. But thirty minutes with the father who despised him with a
white-hot intensity left James with nothing to believe in but lies and
shattered truths.
Buy link: MLR Press http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=MRAFTERX
