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The Inside Reader: Heidi Cullinan
Jun. 18th, 2010 10:05 amShow me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends - Silas Weir MitchellOne of the best character I read lately is the "slutty" boy in Special Delivery by Heidi Cullinan. I really think this debut author (debut for the year, since she has already at least 3 novels out now) is a very new and fresh voice in the M/M gay romance world, and so I'm really glad to have her as a guest today. And then, an author who starts their list with Tom Jones? that is worthy of all the list.
Heidi Cullinan’s Inside Reader
It’s always hard to give a list of favorite or influential books; inevitably whatever number is asked for feels too short to do justice, and even after the list is composed stories keep popping up like dandelions. Do I need to mention all those Little House on the Prairie books I sucked down as a kid that taught me about setting and place and the lure of a saga? What about the Dragonlance series that inspired me to write my own fanfic during fifth period algebra? As soon as I think of one book, it spawns eight more, and they in turn lead me down tangents of their own. So in the end I decided the only real way to do it was to first list the books I know hands-down are my greatest overall influences and all-time favorites, and the rest had to have an m/m influence somehow. Some of them managed to be both influential and have m/m elements, which was handy, but mostly this is a very hodgepodge list. And so here, in absolutely no order of importance, are my ten influential books.
1) Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. This is the novel which changed my life as a writer. I read it initially during a course on the British novel in my undergraduate study, taught ironically enough by a Johnson scholar. I spent hours arguing with the instructor (who was also my advisor and a surrogate father figure) about whether or not Fielding’s work was moral and whether or not fiction should have a moral filter on it at all. I didn’t do very well because I was only nineteen and mostly borrowed my arguments from articles found in those dark days before the Internet, but those arguments and this book taught me a lot about what a novel should be. I learned structural truths from this novel: layering, theming, echoing, and pacing. I learned about the importance of place and setting and the need to let these things build and move, but organically and in the background. I learned that a novel can be a rich tapestry so intricate it can take years to explore. But I learned a lot about what a reader really wants in a novel too. I love the fun of Tom Jones laid over rigorous craft. I love the blatant theming. I love the intrusive narrator. I love the snide little jokes. And in a foreshadowing of my own work, in Tom Jones I learned how to use of sex in a novel: that sex was important and to be had by people I liked, and that these people didnʼt have to die in the end. I think Tom is present in a lot of my heroes and probably always will be.
Paperback: 1024 pages
Publisher: Penguin Classics (September 27, 2005)
Publisher Link: http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780140436228,00.html?strSrchSql=0140436227/The_History_of_Tom_Jones,_A_Foundling_Henry_Fielding
ISBN-10: 0140436227
ISBN-13: 978-0140436228
Amazon: The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling
A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr. Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighboring squire—though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. When Tom is banished to make his own fortune and Sophia follows him to London to escape an arranged marriage, the adventure begins. A vivid Hogarthian panorama of eighteenth-century life, spiced with danger and intrigue, bawdy exuberance and good-natured authorial interjections, Tom Jones is one of the greatest and most ambitious comic novels in English literature.
2) American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman is one of my heroes and falls only under Terry Pratchett as favourite author of all time. I love everything he’s written, but this is my favorite of all his books. American Gods is the story of Shadow, a man who has been released from prison only to discover his girlfriend (who he went to prison for) has died in a car accident while giving his best friend a blow job while he was driving. He’s quickly roped into the schemes of a man who gives his name as Wednesday and drags Shadow all across the country running con games and organizing the gods dragged along to America by their respective immigrants into a coalition for a great war against the new gods born out of technology. That’s the very, very simple summary of the story. But this book is so much more: it’s full of mythology from all over the world, full of magic and wonder and exploration of all the strange and beautiful and downright creepy corners of the United States. It’s probably the best portrait of America ever made, which I love all the more for its being painted by an Englishman. (The House on the Rock ride of the carousel is my favorite part.) This novel does have an m/m element in one of the vignette stories Gaiman peppers throughout the book: the story of the man who had come to New York from an Islamic country and meets a djinn operating a cab, makes love with him, and ends up switching places with him. Whether the man was homosexual or simply gave in to the beauty and wonder of the spirit being or whether the djinn was homosexual or not is debated; what I love about its inclusion is that homosexuality is not just portrayed as natural but as heedless of cultural and even mortal boundary.
Paperback: 624 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial; Later printing edition (September 2, 2003)
Publisher Link: http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780380789030/American_Gods/index.aspx
ISBN-10: 0060558121
ISBN-13: 978-0060558123
Amazon: American Gods
Shadow is a man with a past. But now he wants nothing more than to live a quiet life with his wife and stay out of trouble. Until he learns that she's been killed in a terrible accident. Flying home for the funeral, as a violent storm rocks the plane, a strange man in the seat next to him introduces himself. The man calls himself Mr. Wednesday, and he knows more about Shadow than is possible. He warns Shadow that a far bigger storm is coming. And from that moment on, nothing will ever he the same...
( books from 3 to 10 )
This list is not, as I have said, exhaustive, and some of the picks are a little fringe as far as “favorites,” but I can say with confidence that these more than any have influenced my career as a writer of m/m fiction. I didn’t really know there was an established genre before I started writing it, so I came in with all these books in my head, unsure of where in the world a product of their mingling would ever fit but hoping that if I built it, people would come—only to find out, of course, that many other people had already built plenty, and I needed only to shift slightly to the side to find the home I’d been looking for had existed all along. Still, I don’t think I’d trade my journey to this point for anything, even if it might have been easier to take a more direct route, because I couldn’t say what knowledge and experience I’d have to sacrifice. Besides, while neither Blifil nor Thwakum nor Square would make good slash partners for Tom Jones, I like to think if Edward Mitchell pulled him into a closet he’d be as game as Boy, at least for an afternoon.
About Heidi Cullinan: Heidi grew up in love with story. She fell asleep listening to Disney long-playing records and read her Little House On The Prairie books until they fell apart. She ran through the woods inventing stories of witches and fairies and enchanted trees and spent hours beneath the lilac bush imagining the lives of the settlers who had inhabited the homestead log cabin and two-story late 1800s home on her family farm. She created epic storylines for her Barbies (Robin Hood was a firm favorite) until it wasn’t satisfying enough to do so any longer (age ten), and then she started writing them down. Her first novel, The Life and Times of Michelle Matthews, was published when she was twelve in the school anthology and took up nearly half of it.
Though Heidi continued to write novels through high school (and still has the Rubbermaid tub full in her bedroom), she stopped in college, deciding it was time to grow up and do something meaningful with her life. When the specifics of that didn’t pan out, Heidi ended up in grad school to become a teacher, and through one of the courses rediscovered her love of romance novels. She began to write again on the side, continued to do so while she taught seventh grade language arts and reading, and when she quit teaching to have her daughter, she took up writing with more seriousness, both as a stress relief and as a potential means of bringing in money.
Eight years and many million pages later, Heidi has learned a lot about writing, more than she ever wanted to know about publishing, and most importantly, finally figured out that writing IS the meaningful something she wants to do with her life. She has been a member of many writing organizations including Romance Writers of America and moderates on Jennifer Crusie’s online reader and writer forum.
A passionate advocate for LGBT rights, Heidi volunteers as often as she can for One Iowa and donates with her husband as a monthly partner to the Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal. She encourages you to support your own local and national LGBT rights groups, too.
Heidi enjoys knitting, reading, movies, TV shows on DVD, and all kinds of music. She has a husband, a daughter, and too many cats.
Double Blind by Heidi Cullinan Paperback: 350 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (April 9, 2010)
Publisher Link: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=55_192&products_id=1769
ISBN-10: 1615814051
ISBN-13: 978-1615814053
Amazon: Double Blind
Poker player and professional smartass Randy Jansen believes in fate but doesn't let it rule his life. Whether he’s at the table or between the sheets, Randy always knows the odds, and he only plays the games he can win—until he meets Ethan Ellison. Ethan came to Las Vegas with a broken heart and shattered spirit, and when he sits down at the roulette table with his last five dollars, he means this to be one of his last acts on earth. But Randy ropes him into first one bet, and then another, and then another.... Pretty soon they’re playing poker on the Strip and having the time of their lives—and all this even before Randy gets Ethan into his bed.
But before Ethan can plot out a new course for his life, they’re drafted into the schemes of Randy’s former lover, a tricky gangster who needs a fall guy. To survive, Ethan will have to stop waiting on fate and start making his own luck, and Randy will have to face the demons of his past and accept that to win this round, he’s going to have to put up a big ante. It isn’t money going into the pot this time, either: it’s his heart, and Ethan’s too—because for better or for worse, the game of love has a double blind.
Read about Randy before he meets Ethan in Special Delivery.
1) Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. This is the novel which changed my life as a writer. I read it initially during a course on the British novel in my undergraduate study, taught ironically enough by a Johnson scholar. I spent hours arguing with the instructor (who was also my advisor and a surrogate father figure) about whether or not Fielding’s work was moral and whether or not fiction should have a moral filter on it at all. I didn’t do very well because I was only nineteen and mostly borrowed my arguments from articles found in those dark days before the Internet, but those arguments and this book taught me a lot about what a novel should be. 
2) American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman is one of my heroes and falls only under Terry Pratchett as favourite author of all time. I love everything he’s written, but this is my favorite of all his books. American Gods is the story of Shadow, a man who has been released from prison only to discover his girlfriend (who he went to prison for) has died in a car accident while giving his best friend a blow job while he was driving. He’s quickly roped into the schemes of a man who gives his name as Wednesday and drags Shadow all across the country running con games and organizing the gods dragged along to America by their respective immigrants into a coalition for a great war against the new gods born out of technology. That’s the very, very simple summary of the story. But this book is so much more: it’s full of mythology from all over the world, full of magic and wonder and exploration of all the strange and beautiful and downright creepy corners of the United States. It’s probably the best portrait of America ever made, which I love all the more for its being painted by an Englishman. (The House on the Rock ride of the carousel is my favorite part.) 
Double Blind by Heidi Cullinan 
I really like Jet Mykles, I still remember when I bought Heaven, one of the first M/M romance I read, probably the first full gay erotica, how I was both shocked and enthralled; only for this reason I managed to go through the first chapter of this novel, and not since it’s not a good romance, on the contrary it’s a very good romance, but guys, this is for sure a bisexual novel. I read het romance trying to pass for gay romance, and gay romance going down the straight path, but I think I have never read a real bisexual romance till know. For me being bisexual means that you have really no issue at all on the gender of your partner, the most important thing is being good, with you and with your partner. So it’s not the bisexual thing that let me perplexed at the beginning, but more all the sex with a woman between the two men; it was the ménages that was not really my cup of tea, and when the two men finally realized that they needed to understand the dynamics between them before trying to add a woman, that was the moment I started to really like the book. So, if you are like me, don’t give up to this book, try to reach the middle, and I will assure you will find what you are searching. 
I really like Jet Mykles, I still remember when I bought Heaven, one of the first M/M romance I read, probably the first full gay erotica, how I was both shocked and enthralled; only for this reason I managed to go through the first chapter of this novel, and not since it’s not a good romance, on the contrary it’s a very good romance, but guys, this is for sure a bisexual novel. I read het romance trying to pass for gay romance, and gay romance going down the straight path, but I think I have never read a real bisexual romance till know. For me being bisexual means that you have really no issue at all on the gender of your partner, the most important thing is being good, with you and with your partner. So it’s not the bisexual thing that let me perplexed at the beginning, but more all the sex with a woman between the two men; it was the ménages that was not really my cup of tea, and when the two men finally realized that they needed to understand the dynamics between them before trying to add a woman, that was the moment I started to really like the book. So, if you are like me, don’t give up to this book, try to reach the middle, and I will assure you will find what you are searching. 
The second in the City Hospital Novel is also probably the most romantic. As before it’s a Doctor/Nurse story, as before the Nurse is probably more assertive than the Doctor, but there is a difference: here the Doctor is also confused and on the brink of divorce from a woman. 
The second in the City Hospital Novel is also probably the most romantic. As before it’s a Doctor/Nurse story, as before the Nurse is probably more assertive than the Doctor, but there is a difference: here the Doctor is also confused and on the brink of divorce from a woman.