reviews_and_ramblings | The Inside Reader: Heidi Cullinan

Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends - Silas Weir Mitchell

One 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...

3) Going Postal by Terry Pratchett (and everything else by Terry Pratchett). Pratchett is, without question, my favorite author. Going Postal is my favorite, however, because to me it’s the modern-day equivalent of Tom Jones: satire, high adventure, rakish (but fantastically endearing) hero, crude jokes, and deep-seeded themes. Not a note is out of place in this symphony of words, and when I want to hook someone on Pratchett, this is the one I give them to start. Once again, Going Postal is everything I aspire to in writing a novel: richness and intricate craft presented in a breezy, easy package. And it’s set in Discworld with a con artist hero named Moist whose love interest is a chain-smoking golem rescuer named Adorabelle Dearheart. He had me at “Moist.”

Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: HarperTorch; First Thus edition (September 27, 2005)
Publisher Link: http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780060502935/Going_Postal/index.aspx
ISBN-10: 0060502932
ISBN-13: 978-0060502935
Amazon: Going Postal

Suddenly, condemned arch-swindler Moist von Lipwig found himself with a noose around his neck and dropping through a trapdoor into ... a government job? By all rights, Moist should be meeting his maker rather than being offered a position as Postmaster by Lord Vetinari, supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork. Getting the moribund Postal Service up and running again, however, may prove an impossible task, what with literally mountains of decades-old undelivered mail clogging every nook and cranny of the broken-down post office. Worse still, Moist could swear the mail is talking to him. Worst of all, it means taking on the gargantuan, greedy Grand Trunk clacks communication monopoly and its bloodthirsty piratical headman. But if the bold and undoable are what's called for, Moist's the man for the job -- to move the mail, continue breathing, get the girl, and specially deliver that invaluable commodity that every being, human or otherwise, requires: hope.

4) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay by Michael Chabon. I forget exactly why I picked up this novel initially, but I wasn’t fifty pages in before I was preparing to shelve it next to American Gods as a favorite novel—and this was before I knew one of the main characters was gay. Somehow I managed to go into this story so cold that I discovered Sammy’s orientation right along with him, which is a gift I’ll always cherish. (I realize I’ve just ruined it for anyone reading this who didn’t know. Ah. Sorry!) But the Sammy’s sexual journey is just one facet of the novel. It’s set in the period around the second World War, and overall it is a story of loss and change and growth. Not growing up, exactly. Just growth. Growth of a country, of the comic book industry, of men, of families. Loss of innocence, loss of love, of life. There are missed opportunities and opportunities made out of sorrow. The book is just so big I don’t know how to describe it. It’s a rich tapestry of lives and character and hope built out of great loss. It’s also flat-out a wonderful novel about men.

Paperback: 656 pages
Publisher: Picador (August 25, 2001)
Publisher Link: http://us.macmillan.com/theamazingadventuresofkavalierclay
ISBN-10: 0312282990
ISBN-13: 978-0312282998
Amazon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay

This brilliant epic novel set in New York and Prague introduces us to two misfit young men who make it big by creating comic-book superheroes. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. His Brooklyn cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit America the comic book. Inspired by their own fears and dreams, Kavalier and Clay create theEscapists, The Monitor, and Luna Moth, inspired by the beautiful Rosa Saks, who will become linked by powerful ties to both men.

5) Ethan of Athos (and everything by Lois McMaster Bujold). This is a stand-alone novel from Bujold’s beloved Vorkosigan series, but it features a minor character from the main series and Ethan Urquhart, an obstetrician from the planet Athos, unique in its solar system because it is inhabited entirely by men. Their babies (genetically engineered to be male) are born from uterine replicators and conceived by artificial insemination between the male parent and female cultures purchased and maintained by the colony. Except they need new cultures, and soon, and the latest shipment (which came at a dear price) was horribly, horribly wrong. So the council decides that Ethan should go off-planet and see what the mix up is. Ethan ends up embroiled in an intergalactic scandal, but that isn’t the worst part: to get his proper cultures back and keep his colony out of the middle of a war they have no hope of winning, he must team up with—shudder—a female!

What I love about this story is the way it turns so many societal expectations on their heads. We’re exclusively in Ethan’s point of view, and he is of a very isolated culture. The homophobic remarks he’s given off-planet befuddle more than offend him; his real trouble is accepting a female as his partner in solving his problems, because he was raised to believe that females were dangerous and evil. I think what drew me most to this book was the interplay of cultural and gender expectations. Ethan’s orientation was also not a prominent feature of the plot; it was simply who he was and who his culture was. There was no commentary on homosexuality here except to portray it as normal, and in the end, even the singlesex colony began to seem the most civilized, even though it began as seeming more than a little backward. And there was a romance for Ethan by the time it was over, which I enjoyed. Like all Bujold’s novels, it is full of layers and depth and rich in character.

Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Baen (December 15, 1986)
Publisher Link: http://www.baen.com/series_list.asp#VS
ISBN-10: 067165604X
ISBN-13: 978-0671656041
Amazon: Ethan of Athos

Drafted into aiding a quest for ovarian tissue samples, Chief of Biology Dr. Ethan Urquhart confronts the female members of his species, who have been forbidden to live on their home planet.

6) Farm Boys by Will Fellows. I read this book as research for a story I wanted to write, and it completely changed not just the book I was researching but my perception of Midwestern gay men in general. I think this book also single-handedly turned me from a gay rights empathizer to a full-blown LGBT advocate. The pain revealed by the men in the essays contained in this book—all true stories—broke my heart and got me off my chair and into the One Iowa volunteer corps.

The most fascinating (and hopeful) aspect of this non-fiction work is how vivid the progression through the generations is: with each passing year it's clear that the gay men interviewed felt more and more included and more and more safe. But it also reveals how much work is yet to be done and how different a gay rights struggle is in the heart of the United States than it is on the coasts or in the South. This book also reveals quite starkly that what opponents of equality truly fear is not gay men or gay sex but change, not just for their sense of community but also for the fragile sense of masculinity which props up a Midwestern social code.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough and encourage everyone to read it. It's especially good to give to friends/family members who are on the fence regarding LGBT equality and don't think it needs to be such a big deal. This book will change their minds.

Paperback: 360 pages
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press (March 1, 2001)
Publisher Link: http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0418.htm
ISBN-10: 0299150844
ISBN-13: 978-0299150846
Amazon: Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest

First time in paperback, with a newly designed cover. Homosexuality is often seen as a purely urban experience, far removed from rural and small-town life. Farm Boys undermines that cliche by telling the stories of more than three dozen gay men, ranging in age from 24 to 84, who grew up on farms in the American midwest. Named among the best books of 1996 by Esquire Magazine and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

7) Tanya Huff: Smoke Series. I read the second book of this series as both my introduction to Tony and to Huff’s writing in general: I love the whole Smoke Series (Smoke and Shadows, Smoke and Mirrors, Smoke and Ashes), but I’m afraid Tony has ruined me for all Huff’s other characters. I tried reading the Blood books, but all I do is skim rampantly for Tony. A gay man who is also a budding magician working on a soap opera set, crushing on one of the stars as he solves mysteries? Yes, please! My complaint, though, is that Huff skips the good stuff. I reread the scant paragraphs of Tony’s first kiss with Lee six times before giving up to put the book down and imagine the rest. And the scene with Henry and Leah and Tony in the bed, where Leah the hot sex goddess has to step aside and let Tony get Henry off because Tony “knows what he likes”? I get a hand on Henry’s thigh, and we fade to black. No! The story didn’t stop there; you just didn’t show me! These books became influential to me because while I loved the story they gave a gay man, they inspired me to write novels that didn’t leave anything out.

Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: DAW; First Thus edition (April 5, 2005)
Publisher Link: http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780756402631,00.html?strSrchSql=0756402638/Smoke_and_Shadows_Tanya_Huff
ISBN-10: 0756402638
ISBN-13: 978-0756402631
Amazon: Smoke and Shadows (The Smoke Trilogy, Book 1)

Tony, a former street kid, is now a production assistant on a TV series about a vampire detective. But the special effects wizard is actually a real wizard who's come from another dimension-along with a dangerous foe. And Tony will definitely need the help of vampire Henry Fitzroy if he, his friend-and the world-are going to stand any chance of surviving this invasion.

8) The Stone Golem and The Lion’s Eye by Mary Gentle. These novels function as a set, and they suffer the same pull-away-too-fast aspect as Huff’s novels: the reviews on the back of the book promised they were “sexy,” but don’t get excited. We have at best one real sex scene, and everything else is “decent.” But even with this, I love this imagining of a sort of alternate world around the Renaissance: it’s rich in description and allows the reader the feeling of walking through a time in history often studied but rarely opened for us in such an everyday way. The other distinctive feature of this story is that Ilario is intersexed and partnered with a eunuch.

These stories have intrigue, both personal and political, and they will take you on a journey through worlds you only thought you knew. I highly recommend them both.

Paperback: 303 pages
Publisher: Eos (June 26, 2007)
Publisher Link: http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780060821838/Ilario_The_Lions_Eye/index.aspx
ISBN-10: 0060821833
ISBN-13: 978-0060821838
Amazon: Ilario: The Lion's Eye: A Story of the First History, Book One

Abandoned and alone, the fosterling Ilario grows up as the King's Freak, surrounded by all the pomp, intrigue, and danger of the Iberian court. Fleeing a failed treacherous attack, Ilario crosses the sea to Carthage, where the mysterious Penitence shrouds the sky in darkness. There, a strange and awful destiny awaits the would-be painter, one that spans continents and kingdoms. Filled with intrigue, sex, and mystery, Ilario: The Lion's Eye is a stunning tale of secret histories and self-discovery. The adventure continues in Book Two: The Stone Golem.

9) Luck in the Shadows and Stalking Darkness by Lynn Flewelling. This is yet another set of books I became hooked on largely to chase a homosexual relationship I barely got to see explored, though in these two books Flewelling was less of a tease than most of her peers. Who can forget the inns with the green lanterns? I had much less interest in the third book of the series, and I am possibly permanently stalled in the first fifty pages of book four, because honestly, I think I came to this party only to see Seregil and Alec get together, and since the relationship is now not the man focus of the stories, I’m not invested anymore. Yes, I love a good fantasy story with a romance wrapped in, but this series has for me left too much of the romance behind.

But these first two books! The adventure! The relationship! The push, the pull, the yearning, the confusion, the longing, the green lanterns—ah. These I’ll reread again and again, hoping maybe this time that magically the sex got left in.

Mass Market Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Spectra; 10th THUS edition (August 1, 1996)
Publisher Link: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780553575422
ISBN-10: 0553575422
ISBN-13: 978-0553575422
Amazon: Luck in the Shadows (Nightrunner, Vol. 1)

"A new star is rising in the fantasy firmament...teems with magic and spine-chilling amounts of skullduggery."–Dave Duncan, author of The Great Game. When young Alec of Kerry is taken prisoner for a crime he didn’t commit, he is certain that his life is at an end. But one thing he never expected was his cellmate. Spy, rogue, thief, and noble, Seregil of Rhiminee is many things–none of them predictable. And when he offers to take on Alec as his apprentice, things may never be the same for either of them. Soon Alec is traveling roads he never knew existed, toward a war he never suspected was brewing. Before long he and Seregil are embroiled in a sinister plot that runs deeper than either can imagine, and that may cost them far more than their lives if they fail. But fortune is as unpredictable as Alec’s new mentor, and this time there just might be…Luck in the Shadows.

10) The Back Passage by James Lear. Lear, of course, does not leave the sex out: if anything, there’s a danger the plot will get nudged aside by Mitch as he kneels in his grey flannels to give another blow-job or knocks it off the edge of the bed when he and Boy feel like going at it again. But the books are so much fun, if nothing else to see who in the hell is going to have sex with Mitch next. Tom Jones this is not, but Lear has the pacing and the theme of fun down pat. I have a hard time remembering the plot of the mystery, but I’ll never forget the inspection of the outhouse behind the police station. Lear is an influence for me because after reading so many books where the lovers held back, it was a wonderful release to have… well, release. And then I thought, oh, if only the two could come together…..

Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Cleis Press (May 5, 2006)
Publisher Link: http://www.cleispress.com/book_page.php?book_id=173
ISBN-10: 1573442437
ISBN-13: 978-1573442435
Amazon: The Back Passage

A seaside village, an English country house, a family of wealthy eccentrics and their equally peculiar servants, a determined detective — all the ingredients are here for a cozy Agatha Christie-style whodunit. But wait.... Edward "Mitch" Mitchell is no Hercule Poirot, and The Back Passage is no Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Mitch is a handsome, insatiable 22-year-old hunk who never lets a clue stand in the way of a steamy encounter, whether it's with the local constabulary, the house secretary, or his school chum and fellow athlete Boy Morgan, who becomes his Watson when they're not busy boffing each other. When Reg Walworth is found dead in a cabinet, Sir James Eagle has his servant Meeks immediately arrested as the killer. But Mitch's observant eye pegs more plausible possibilities: polysexual chauffeur Hibbert, queenly pervert Leonard Eagle, missing scion Rex, sadistic copper Kennington, even Sir James Eagle himself. Blackmail, police corruption, a dizzying network of spyholes and secret passages, watersports, and a nonstop queer orgy backstairs and everyplace else mark this hilariously hard-core mystery by a major new talent.

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.

The Inside Reader: Heidi Cullinan

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