P.A. Brown (born March 14)

P.A. Brown wrote her first book at 17. She spent 8 years in Los Angeles where she formed an attachment to the city of Angels that endures to this day. After holding a host of jobs, at 40 she went back to school and became a Network engineer, which eventually landed her on the shores of Bermuda where she spent 2 years learning how to drink rum swizzles and battle hurricanes. Back in Canada, she buckled down and started producing books seriously resulting in a multitude of books coming out in the next year.

L.A. Heat won a 2009 Rainbow Award as Best LGBT Mystery / Thriller and Best Gay Novel, 2nd place. L.A. Boneyard won a 2010 Rainbow Award as Best Gay Mystery / Thriller.

Further Readings:

L.A. Heat by P.A. Brown
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Bristlecone Pine Press; 1st Kindle edition (July 2, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1555839487
ISBN-13: 978-1555839482
Amazon: L.A. Heat
Amazon Kindle: L.A. Heat

When LAPD detective David Laine first encounters hunky party boy Chris Bellamere, it is to interrogate him about the murder of one of Chris's many sexual conquests. When Chris's efforts to prove his own innocence mark him as a victim, David steps in to save him, and finds himself falling in love with a man who might be a brutal murderer. P.A. Brown's debut is a gritty mystery set in LA's edgy, less glamorous East Side, where gangs co-mingle with gays, gunfire is heard after dark, and where a gay cop like David Laine could live undetected. At least until now.

L.A. Boneyard by P.A. Brown
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Bristlecone Pine Press (June 6, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1608200175
ISBN-13: 978-1608200177
Amazon: L.A. Boneyard
Amazon Kindle: L.A. Boneyard

From a shallow grave in Griffith Park, to the bucolic streets of West Hollywood into the dark heart of the gang-infested streets of East L.A, evil is pursued in this dark story of passion and redemption. Detective David Eric Laine is no stranger to violence and brutality, but even he is taken aback at the sheer viciousness of the murder of two pregnant Ukrainian women. This is just the beginning of a baffling case which leads from their shallow grave to a bungalow community in West Hollywood, tree-lined and tranquil, on to the heart of the gang-infested streets of East Los Angeles, and points in between. And what of Jairo Hernandez, David's new, young partner? The attraction between them was immediate and intense and growing by the day. Would this be a threat to David's settled life?

More Spotlights at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, My Lists/Gay Novels

More Rainbow Awards at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, Rainbow Awards/2009 & 2010

Craig Scott & Kovit Ratchadasri

Craig M. Scott (born March 14, 1962) is a Canadian politician and academic. Formerly a law professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and a director of the Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security, he was elected as the New Democratic Party candidate in a federal by-election in Toronto—Danforth on March 19, 2012, following the death of Jack Layton in August 2011. Scott and his partner, fashion designer Kovit "Aeh" Ratchadasri, previously owned the Craig Scott Gallery, an art gallery on Berkeley Street near Toronto's Distillery District. Craig has lived in Toronto-Danforth for the last 25 years, for many years in East Chinatown and then in Riverdale beside Withrow Park. He now lives in the Pape/Mortimer neighbourhood of East York, Dingwall Avenue, with his partner and their mini-Schnauzer Joey.

Scott was born and raised in Windsor, Nova Scotia. From 1979 to 1981, he attended Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific in Canada, where he gained the International Baccalaureate Diploma. He then earned undergraduate degrees from McGill University and from the University of Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar at St John's College. He has a Bachelor of Laws from Dalhousie University and a Masters of Law from the London School of Economics. His academic specialty is international law with a focus on human rights law. Scott was a professor in the University of Toronto Faculty of Law from 1989 to 2001. He was Osgoode Law School's Associate Dean (Research and Graduate Studies) from 2001 to 2004 and has remained on the faculty subsequently.


Craig M. Scott is a Canadian politician and academic. Formerly a law professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and a director of the Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security, he was elected as the New Democratic Party candidate in Toronto—Danforth on March 19, 2012. Scott and his partner, fashion designer Kovit "Aeh" Ratchadasri live in the Pape/Mortimer neighbourhood of East York, Dingwall Avenue, with their mini-Schnauzer Joey.

( Read more... )

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Scott_%28politician%29

Gay Block & Malka Drucker

Malka T. Drucker (born March 14, 1945) is an American rabbi and author living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is openly lesbian, and is the longtime companion of artist Gay Block. "I had been writing books for ten years successfully, but I felt that something was missing for me. I had thought a lot about being a rabbi. In fact, I had this wild passion for it, but I didn't do anything about it until one day when I was sitting on a beach in California with my friend Yaffa Chase and she said to me, "You know, you would make a wonderful rabbi!" I was forty but I needed someone to give me permission. That was February and by July I was in Yerushalayim beginning my studies with HUC. While there I met a rabbi named Barry Block who introduced me to his mother Gay who was a talented photographer. Though I had been married for 19 years, Gay and I fell in love and I left Jerusalem mid-year to reorganize my life. In 1989, I decided to try again for the rabbinate. I thought of private ordination and but people kept mentioning AJR to me. I investigated and liked it immediately. I didn't want to be in a place where nobody knew my name." (http://www.malkadrucker.com/pressajr.html)

Ordained in 1998 from the Academy for Jewish Religion, a transdenominational seminary, Malka Drucker is also the founding rabbi of HaMakom: The Place for Passionate and Progressive Judaism, in Santa Fe.


Malka T. Drucker is a rabbi and author. She is the longtime companion of artist Gay Block. "While in Yerushalayim I met Barry Block who introduced me to his mother Gay who was a talented photographer. Though I had been married for 19 years, Gay and I fell in love and I left Jerusalem mid-year to reorganize my life. In 1989, I decided to try again for the rabbinate." Their work, Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust, has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, NY, in 1992.


©Gay Block. Gay Block, How do you like my new necklace?, 1997/2003. Archival ink jet. (http://www.reframingphotography.com/content/gay-block)
"In 1982 I had my first solo museum show in Houston. As I walked into the gallery Mother ran up to me. I expected her to say she liked my new pictures but instead she said, "How do you like my new necklace?" This became my favorite narcissistic-mother story.
Twelve years have passed. Mother has been dead for three years and I have all her jewelry. This piece stands out, different from all the rest. No diamonds - no stones at all. Recalling the last time I saw this necklace, I imagine the untold story:
You bought it especially for my opening, in my honor. You thought I would prefer it because it was designed by an artist, Agam. Right? Why couldn't you tell me you did it for me? Or why couldn't I know it without your telling me? Why do you have to be dead before I begin to forgive you?


©2014 Gay Block. Mother and Daughter, Esther and Joan, 1978

( Read more... )

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malka_Drucker

Gay Block (born 1942) is a fine art portrait photographer, who was born in Houston, Texas.

In 1973 she began photographing her own affluent Jewish community in Houston. She later photographed an older Jewish Community of retirees in South Miami Beach, many of whom were Holocaust survivors. Block also photographed girls at summer camp. In 2006, Block re-photographed women who were the girls in her 1981 series from Camp Pinecliffe, twenty-five years earlier. Her noted work with her life partner Malka Drucker, Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust, both a book and traveling exhibit, has been seen in over fifty venues in the US and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, in 1992.

In 2003, Block's 30-year series of portraits of her mother, in photographs, video, and words, Bertha Alyce: Mother exPosed, was published by University of New Mexico Press and continues as a traveling exhibit. The book, Bertha Alyce, was cited as one of "Twelve Great Books Published During The Year 2003" by the editors of RALPH (The Review of Arts, Literature, Politics, and the Humanities). Her video of the material, "Bertha Alyce", was awarded People's Choice and Best Documentary by the Madrid International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Spain.

( Read more... )

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Block

( Further Readings )

More Artists at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Art

More Real Life Romances at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance

Heather Poe & Mary Cheney

Mary Claire Cheney (born March 14, 1969) is the second daughter of Dick Cheney, the former Vice President of the United States, and his wife, Lynne Cheney. She is politically conservative and is involved with a number of political action groups.

She is openly lesbian, has voiced support for same-sex marriage, and has been credited with encouraging her father to support same-sex marriage.

In 2013, she was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case.

Cheney attended McLean High School in McLean, Virginia, graduating in the class of 1987. Following that, she attended Colorado College, her mother's alma mater, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and graduated in 1991. She earned a graduate business degree from the University of Denver in 2002.

In 1993, she became one of the first employees of the Colorado Rockies baseball team, working in promotions when the team began playing in Denver. Thereafter, she was a public relations manager for the Coors Brewing Company and worked as a gay & lesbian outreach coordinator, helping to end a national gay boycott of Coors.

She has been one of her father's top campaign aides and closest confidantes. In July 2003, she became the Director of Vice Presidential Operations for the Bush-Cheney 2004 Presidential re-election campaign.


Mary Cheney is the second daughter of Dick Cheney, the former Vice President of the United States. Cheney has been together with her partner, Heather Poe, since 1992. In December 2006, Cheney was reported to be pregnant. Cheney and Poe were said to be "ecstatic" about the baby. Mary Cheney married Heather Poe on June 22, 2012, in Washington, D.C. Cheney gave birth to their first child, Samuel David Cheney, in May 2007, and to her second child, daughter Sarah Lynne Cheney, on November 18, 2009.

( Read more... )

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cheney

( Further Readings )

William M. Milliken (1889 - March 14, 1978)

William M. Milliken (1889 - March 14, 1978), second director of the CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART, was born in Stamford, Conn., to Thomas Kennedy and Mary Spedding Mathewson Milliken (1858-1932). His father was a New York linen importer and manufacturer. The younger Milliken graduated from Princeton University (1911). Summers were spent traveling in Europe where he became familiar with the Gothic churches and art museums. After graduation he was assistant curator of the Dept. of Decorative Art in New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The curator, William R. Valentiner, had returned to Germany during World War I. During this time, the Met hosted the loaned collection of magnificent medieval object collection of Board president J. P. Morgan (1837-1913). Milliken had a first-hand opportunity to study these pieces (the show remained until 1916). That year, 1916, the Morgan pieces became part of the Metropolitan and Milliken was promoted to Assistant Curator. With the United States entry into the War the following year, Milliken enlisted serving as a ground officer in the 282nd Air Squadron in England. Following his discharge, he became curator of decorative arts at CMA, a post he held until his retirement from the museum in 1958.

He published his first article for the museum the same year as his employment, "French Gothic Sculpture in the Museum," in the Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Milliken's first major acquisition for the museum was the 1922 small ivory plaques. He has so impressed board president and wealthy collector Jeptha Homer Wade II (1857-1926), that Wade purchased them personally and made them a gift to the museum. The following year Milliken purchased the Spitzer Cross enamel and the Stroganoff ivory in 1925, all with the assistance of Wade. After Wade's death, Milliken purchase the nine spectacular Guelph Treasure pieces (one was later exchanged in a purchase deal for the Gertrudis Altar). Milliken was appointed director of the Museum in 1930, but retained his position as curator of Decorative Arts. He set about to make the Museum one of the major art centers in the nation and one particularly attuned to the public. Milliken hired the innovative art education curator, Thomas Munro the same year. During the Depression, Milliken headed the Public Works of Art Project for the mid-west ("Region 9"), part of the federally funded WPA. He instituted the "May Show," an annual exhibition of local design arts which connected Cleveland industry and commerce with the Museum. In the 1940s, Milliken was awarded an Honorary M.A., Princeton University in 1942 and Doctor of Fine Arts at Yale University in 1946. He retired as director in 1958 and was succeeded by Sherman E. Lee.

( Read more... )

Source: https://dictionaryofarthistorians.org/millikenw.htm

Brady Allen & Rob Byrnes

Rob Byrnes (born December 8, 1958) is an American novelist and blogger, whose fiction focuses primarily on gay men and other sexual minorities. Byrnes's writing is often set in New York City, where he lived from 2003 until recently with his partner Brady Allen. They met on March 14, 2003. The couple now lives in West New York, New Jersey.

In 2011, Byrnes was elected to the Executive Council of the International Association of Crime Writers/North American Branch.

Byrnes was born on December 8, 1958 in Rochester, New York. After graduating from Union College (Schenectady, New York) he worked in politics and government. While working as Chief of Staff to two Members of the New York State Assembly, he ran as a minor-party candidate for Monroe County (NY) Legislature in 1981 and the United States Congress in 1986. In 1996, he moved to Manhattan, and has worked as an executive in the not-for-profit business development field since then.

Byrnes's first three novels were gay comic romances. His acclaimed debut, The Night We Met, was released in 2002. His second novel, Trust Fund Boys was released in 2004 and his third, the Lambda Literary Award-winning When The Stars Come Out, in 2006.

Beginning with his 2009 novel Straight Lies, Byrnes began a series of comic crime capers featuring a hapless gang of gay and lesbian criminals led by partners in life and crime Grant Lambert and Chase LaMarca. The second novel in the series, Holy Rollers, was released by Bold Strokes Books in November 2011; and the third, Strange Bedfellows (not to be confused with the 2000 anthology), which was published by Bold Strokes in September 2012.

( Read more... )

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Byrnes

Further Readings:

When The Stars Come Out by Rob Byrnes
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Kensington (October 30, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0758213255
ISBN-13: 978-0758213259
Amazon: When The Stars Come Out
Amazon Kindle: When The Stars Come Out

Guess Who's Coming Out? Noah Abraham is back in New York tending to his ailing father while dealing with his writer's block on a book about gay congressional staffers. What he needs is a break, and he gets it when he meets Bart Gustafson, the personal assistant to former film and television star Quinn Scott. The macho stud has been living in exile for years since running away with one of his ex-wife's backup dancers . . . a male backup dancer. And just like that, Noah's writing block is cured. The Full, Shocking Story! Getting a sizzling, tell-all book out of Quinn won't be boring-or easy. The 72-year-old is profane, hard-drinking, and hard of hearing, but he's got plenty of dish on Hollywood, especially its very deep closets. The only topics that are off-limits for Quinn are his son, heartthrob actor Quinn, Jr., and his marriage to 1960s wholesome screen queen, Kitty Randolph. The girl once known for her "sweetness" has spent the last forty years morphing from girl-next-door to scary Hollywood mogul. She owns that town, and she's not about to let her ex-husband spill secrets . . . Exclusive! Unbelievable! And Very, Very Hot . . . Now, in an outrageous La-La-Land of come-ons, coming outs, and tell-alls, where everyone's got something to hide and plenty to divulge, Noah and Bart are riding fame's heady, strange wave and trying not to get drowned in the process. It's going to take every bit of cunning they've got, because when the stars come out, someone's going to take a fall . . . "Clever dialogue and an astute rendering of the prices people pay to keep secrets buried add crossover appeal" -Publishers Weekly "Byrnes turns out another deftly written and enticingly complex gay romance" -Booklist

More Spotlights at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Lists/Gay Novels