Ben Monopoli & Christopher Connors

Ben Monopoli (born July 14, 1981) lives in Boston with his husband, Christopher Connors. They married on September 1, 2007.

The Cranberry Hush won a 2011 Rainbow Award as Best Bisexual / Transgender Contemporary and Best Bisexual / Transgender Debut.

Further Readings:

The Cranberry Hush: A Novel by Ben Monopoli
Paperback: 260 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (March 6, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1468189557
ISBN-13: 978-1468189551
Amazon: The Cranberry Hush: A Novel
Amazon Kindle: The Cranberry Hush: A Novel

Vince Dandro might be going through the quietest quarter-life crisis of all time. He lives alone, works in a comic book shop, and has a crush on his coworker he can't seem to act on. Like an old comic book, his life's colors have started to fade. Everything brightens when Vince's long-lost friend Griff appears on his doorstep in the middle of a blizzard. They were roommates in college, so close back then that Griff's girlfriend called them "lifebuddies" -- but Vince's love for Griff had ended the friendship, he thought, forever. They haven't spoken in years. Why has Griff shown up again? And, more importantly, can Vince handle his return?

Vince and Griff are two twentysomethings struggling to find their places in the world and in each other's lives. This is a story of friendship and love, both unrequited and requited, and of learning how to fly through the post-college void, which just might hold more than a cranberry hush.

More Rainbow Awards at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, Rainbow Awards/2011

Matthew J. Metzger (born September 1)

Matthew is an asexual, transgender author from the wet and windy British Isles. He is currently lurking in the Bristol area, but has lived all over, and has a special fondness for Yorkshire.

Matt writes LGBT novels, both adult and young adult, and particularly enjoys digging into the weird and wonderful diversity of people all across the sexuality and gender spectrums. When not writing, Matt is usually asleep, or crunching numbers at his day job. Free time is not really a concept here.

He is also owned by an enormous black cat. Approach with caution.

Vivaldi in the Dark won a 2014 Rainbow Award as Best Gay & Lesbian Young Adult.

Further Readings:

Vivaldi in the Dark by Matthew J. Metzger
Paperback: 294 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (December 5, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 149362279X
ISBN-13: 978-1493622795
Amazon: Vivaldi in the Dark
Amazon Kindle: Vivaldi in the Dark

Out-and-regretting-it comprehensive attendee Jayden Phillips turns his cast-iron plans for life upside-down by falling in love with private-school violinist Darren Peace, a sardonic boy with the craziest hair Jayden's ever seen.

But all is not what it seems, and Jayden's bullying problem becomes meaningless when he is confronted with what the music does to Darren. How do you stop a dangerous depression rooted in the same thing that makes someone what they are? Dark moods, blank apathy, and the undertow of self-loathing all simmer beneath Darren's dry and beautiful veneer, and Jayden feels powerless to stop them.

Then a mugging gone wrong takes the music forcibly away, and Jayden is finally given the chance to change Darren's life -- and, quite literally, his mind.

More Rainbow Awards at my website: elisarolle.com, Rainbow Awards/2014

Baron Adolph de Meyer, Olga de Meyer & Ernest Frohlich

Baron Adolph de Meyer (1 September 1868 – 6 January 1946) was a photographer famed for his elegant photographic portraits in the early 20th century, many of which depicted celebrities such as Mary Pickford, Rita Lydig, Luisa Casati, Billie Burke, Irene Castle, John Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Ruth St. Denis, King George V of the United Kingdom, and Queen Mary. He was also the first official fashion photographer for the American magazine Vogue, appointed to that position in 1913.

Reportedly born in Paris and educated in Dresden, Adolphus Meyer was the son of a German Jewish father and Scottish mother—Adolphus Louis Meyer and his wife, the former Adele Watson.

In 1893 he joined the Royal Photographic Society and moved to London in 1895. (Drawing of Olga de Meyer by John Singer Sargent, 1907)

He used the surnames Meyer, von Meyer, de Meyer, de Meyer-Watson, and Meyer-Watson at various times in his life. From 1897 he was known as Baron Adolph Edward Sigismond de Meyer, though some contemporary sources list him as Baron Adolph von Meyer and Baron Adolph de Meyer-Watson.

In editions dating from 1898 until 1913, Whitaker's Peerage stated that de Meyer's title had been granted in 1897 by Frederick Augustus III of Saxony, though another source states "the photographer inherited it from his grandfather in the 1890s". Some sources state that no evidence of this nobiliary creation, however, has been found.


Olga de Meyer was an artists' model, socialite, patron of the arts, writer, and fashion figure of the early 20th century. She was best known as the wife of photographer Adolph de Meyer and was rumored to be the natural daughter of King Edward VII. Violet Trefusis said of the de Meyers—who counted Olga among her lovers and whose mother, Alice Keppel, was Edward VII's mistress—as "Pederaste and Médisante" because, as Trefusis observed, "He looked so queer and she had such a vicious tongue."


Baron Adolph de Meyer was the first official fashion photographer for the American magazine Vogue. After the death of his wife, Baron de Meyer became romantically involved with a young German, Ernest Frohlich, whom he hired as his chauffeur and later adopted as his son. The latter went by the name Baron Ernest Frohlich de Meyer. From 1898 to 1913, de Meyer lived in fashionable Cadogan Gardens, London, and between 1903 and 1907 his work was published in Alfred Stieglitz's quarterly Camera Work.

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

Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa Rolle
Paperback: 760 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (July 1, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1500563323
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/4910282
Amazon (Paperback): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500563323/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Amazon (Kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MZG0VHY/?tag=elimyrevandra-20

Days of Love chronicles more than 700 LGBT couples throughout history, spanning 2000 years from Alexander the Great to the most recent winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Many of the contemporary couples share their stories on how they met and fell in love, as well as photos from when they married or of their families. Included are professional portraits by Robert Giard and Stathis Orphanos, paintings by John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini, and photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnson, Arnold Genthe, and Carl Van Vechten among others. “It's wonderful. Laying it out chronologically is inspired, offering a solid GLBT history. I kept learning things. I love the decision to include couples broken by death. It makes clear how important love is, as well as showing what people have been through. The layout and photos look terrific.” Christopher Bram “I couldn’t resist clicking through every page. I never realized the scope of the book would cover centuries! I know that it will be hugely validating to young, newly-emerging LGBT kids and be reassured that they really can have a secure, respected place in the world as their futures unfold.” Howard Cruse “This international history-and-photo book, featuring 100s of detailed bios of some of the most forward-moving gay persons in history, is sure to be one of those bestsellers that gay folk will enjoy for years to come as reference and research that is filled with facts and fun.” Jack Fritscher

Leslie Feinberg & Minnie Bruce Pratt

Leslie Feinberg (September 1, 1949 – November 15, 2014) was a transgender lesbian and communist activist, speaker, and author. Feinberg's first novel Stone Butch Blues is widely considered a groundbreaking work about gender. Feinberg's partner was the prominent lesbian poet-activist Minnie Bruce Pratt. "I share my home and life with Leslie Feinberg, the novelist, historian, and transgender activist. In 1992 I met Leslie at hir slideshow/lecture in Washington, D.C., where s/he spoke on the historical basis for unity among people who experience different oppressions—and where s/he read, looking up at me, from hir classic "Letter to a Fifties Femme." Now, seven years later, s/he is my "one and only," my beloved lesbian husband.

I fell in love with Leslie because of hir voice, hir vision, and hir revolutionary optimism.

My adult life has been an exhilarating struggle to understand how to resist, militantly, the oppressive categories that the ruling status quo places on us, and how to live, triumphantly, the identities and complexities that we feel to be true for ourselves. As my life and Leslie’s flowed together, I gained immeasurably in my understanding of that struggle—in my understanding of how we live all our sexualities, sex identities, and gender expressions.

The stories in my book S/HE are about these complexities in our daily life—and many of them are also love tributes to Leslie. I could write a book about how much I love hir—and I have!" --Minnie Bruce Pratt (http://www.mbpratt.org/mylove.html)

Feinberg's 1993 first novel, Stone Butch Blues, won the Lambda Literary Award and the 1994 American Library Association Gay & Lesbian Book Award. While there are parallels to Feinberg's experiences as a working-class dyke, the work is not an autobiography.


Leslie Feinberg was a transgender lesbian and communist activist, speaker, and author. Feinberg's first novel Stone Butch Blues is widely considered a groundbreaking work. Feinberg's partner is the prominent lesbian poet-activist Minnie Bruce Pratt. Pratt is an U.S. educator, activist, and award-winning poet, essayist, and theorist. "In 1992 I met Leslie at hir slideshow/lecture in Washington, D.C. I fell in love with Leslie because of hir voice, hir vision, and hir revolutionary optimism."


Minnie Bruce Pratt and Leslie Feinberg -Jersey City, N.J, 1993/95, by Robert Giard

American photographer Robert Giard is renowned for his portraits of American poets and writers; his particular focus was on gay and lesbian writers. Some of his photographs of the American gay and lesbian literary community appear in his groundbreaking book Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, published by MIT Press in 1997. Giard’s stated mission was to define the literary history and cultural identity of gays and lesbians for the mainstream of American society, which perceived them as disparate, marginal individuals possessing neither. In all, he photographed more than 600 writers. (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/giard.html)

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

I was pretty young when I read Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, maybe 20, and it was one of the first books I read that really challenged the way I thought about gender and identity. The novel is a book about just getting through life, too, about facing challenges and fighting to make the world a better place. --Kate McMurray

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg is arrestingly plainspoken, deeply felt, passionate, heartbreaking, and yet profoundly consoling and hopeful. This book is also proof that not every novel now has to come out of a workshop or from someone with an MFA in Creative Writing. One shudders to think how a workshop might have sapped Feinberg's vision and passion. But we need not worry: s/he had the good sense to avoid it, and hir novel is better for it. --David Pratt

Minnie Bruce Pratt (b. September 12, 1946 in Selma, Alabama) is an U.S. educator, activist, and award-winning poet, essayist, and theorist.

Pratt was born in Selma, Alabama, grew up in Centreville, Alabama and graduated with an honors B.A. from the University of Alabama (1968) and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina (1979).

She is a Professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University where she was invited to help develop the university’s first Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Study Program.

She emerged out of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s and 1980s and has written extensively about race, class, gender and sexual theory. Pratt, along with lesbian writers Chrystos and Audre Lorde, received a Lillian Hellman-Dashiell Hammett award from the Fund for Free Expression to writers "who have been victimized by political persecution." Pratt, Chrystos and Lorde were chosen because their experience as "a target of right-wing and fundamentalist forces during the recent attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts."

Her political affiliations include the International Action Center, the National Women's Fightback Network, and the National Writers Union. She is a contributing editor to Workers World newspaper.

Pratt's partner is author and activist Leslie Feinberg.

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

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( Further Readings )

More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices

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

UK Meet: Violet Joicey-Cowen

Starting from June 1, 2015, I will daily feature authors attending the three conventions I will join, Euro Pride in Munich (July), UK Meet in Bristol (September) and GRL in San Diego (October).

For the UK Meet in Bristol, September 11-13, 2015, today author is Violet Joicey-Cowen: Violet Joicey-Cowen is the proud owner of one rather chaotic life. This includes her son, her menagerie (currently – two dogs, one cat, one guinea-pig, one fish and 5 stick-insects), her friends and a rather battered laptop she would be lost without. She lives in North Yorkshire in England. When she is not writing she plays a lot of pool and is on a couple of teams.

She has been writing since she was about ten years old and has always loved escaping into other worlds where the people living there would tell her their stories and she would just have to write them down. She always dreamed of having her stories published so her characters could get out there and meet other people who might begin to love them as much as she does.

Further Readings:

Shadow's Dagger [Hari: The Princes of Nilan'dane 2] by Violet Joicey-Cowen
Series: Hari: the Princes of Nilan'dane
Paperback: 214 pages
Publisher: Siren Publishing, Inc. (September 24, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1627419578
ISBN-13: 978-1627419574
Amazon: Shadow's Dagger [Hari: The Princes of Nilan'dane 2]
Amazon Kindle: Shadow's Dagger [Hari: The Princes of Nilan'dane 2]

How can an assassin be Prince Belden's safest choice? When Prince Belden of Nilan'dane picked his husband at the traditional gathering of men, known as The Choosing, he thought he had made a safe decision. Sent by a mage who plotted the downfall of the royal family of Nilan'dane, Barli was supposed to get close to Bel's family and then kill them all. However, when Barli looks into the eyes of the vulnerable Prince Belden for the first time, something changes, and he knows he will never be able to do anything that would hurt this man. But how is he ever to confess the truth of why he was at The Choosing when Bel now carries his child? Barli has to teach Bel that, though he is a prince, submitting to Barli is what he really needs, and what Barli needs, is to believe in Bel's love.

GRL: Amy Lane

Starting from June 1, 2015, I will daily feature authors attending the three conventions I will join, Euro Pride in Munich (July), UK Meet in Bristol (September) and GRL in San Diego (October).

For the GRL in San Diego, October 15-18, 2015, today author is Amy Lane: Amy Lane has two kids in college, two gradeschoolers in soccer, two cats, and two Chi-who-whats at large. She lives in a crumbling crapmansion with most of the children and a bemused spouse. She also has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and m/m romance--and if you accidentally make eye contact, she'll bore you to tears with why those three genres go together. She'll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.

Further Readings:

Bitter Taffy (Candy Man) by Amy Lane
Paperback: 314 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (July 29, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1634762878
ISBN-13: 978-1634762878
Amazon: Bitter Taffy (Candy Man)
Amazon Kindle: Bitter Taffy (Candy Man)

Rico Gonzalves-Macias didn't expect to fall in love during his internship in New York―and he didn’t expect the boss’s son to out them both and get him fired either. When he returns to Sacramento stunned and heartbroken, he finds his cousin, Adam, and Adam's boyfriend, Finn, haven't just been house-sitting―they've made his once sterile apartment into a home.

When Adam gets him a job interview with the adorable, magnetic, practically perfect Derek Huston, Rico feels especially out of his depth. Derek makes it no secret that he wants Rico, but Rico is just starting to figure out that he’s a beginner at the really important stuff and doesn’t want to jump into anything with both feet.

Derek is a both-feet kind of guy. But he’s also made mistakes of his own and doesn’t want to pressure Rico into anything. Together they work to find a compromise between instant attraction and long-lasting love, and while they’re working, Rico gets a primer in why family isn’t always a bad idea. He needs to believe Derek can be his family before Derek’s formidable patience runs out―because even a practically perfect boyfriend is capable of being hurt.