My First Published Book

My first Published Book is a short story... 

There is a group of AWESOME blogs and people that are helping me promote my first completed literary work, that I have published and am selling online. I would like to thank all of those involved in this! 

My First Book, is a short story entitled... 

 Nathan's Facade 

 

Synopsis;

A short story about the power of first love at first sight

  …a modern day fairytale.

What if the walls come tumbling down…What then? 

An architect and construction worker meet and fall hard for one another. When certain circumstances arise they are pulled apart. Can they find their way back to each other, or are they destined to be alone? With the help of a mysterious old woman and a newly formed family of great friends and odd ball characters, they may just stand a chance! 

                                                                         ~

Nathan is the hottest young architect around and a greatly sought after as he is the most eligible trust fund bachelor playboy. Everyone wants a piece of him and many seek out his artistry. Nathan however is lonely and keeping a very big secret from the entire world. He is kind and shy and is always afraid in the back of his mind that he will once again loose everything that matters to him in life, as he did once before.

Joe is a construction worker who is large and in charge. He is what he is and doesn’t hide a thing…except how empty he his life has began to feel. He is tired of one night stands and desperately yearns for something deep and real…a love that will last, and a relationship beyond the physical. He also has a desire to know the finer things in life…he wants to drink wine and know if it is a good vintage, he wants to look at paintings and understand their secret language…he wants a better life where poverty is a distant memory. He would happily and thankfully however, settle for true love even if he never gets the rest.

When these two meet, lives and emotions collide and great transformation is around the bend and life will never be the same for either men.

Will these two unlikely lovers be able to overcome their differences? Why do both men feel like they have met each other, upon first glance? Will Nathaniel let go and let Joseph knock down the walls of his careful facade to come in? If he does…what will the fall out be?

Main Character descriptions;

Nathaniel Langly: is the hottest young architect in Chicago. Sought after by everyone and caught by none. In fact dating none…as in ever; not really. He goes on fake dates four times a week, and the evening always ends after dinner. Despite his status, his business achievements, and his talents…he is shy, kind, gentle, soft spoken, and utterly hopeless when it comes to seeking what he really wants…what he really needs. A big strong man to come in and share his life with him…and a big strong hand on his behind. He never had a father to show him how to be a man and he has always wanted a father figure…a father figure with benefits. Unlike the circles he runs with… he doesn’t care about money, prestige, or any part of the superficial facades that the upper class concern themselves with in desperate attempts to hold on to their fortunes, and distract themselves from the miseries in their own lives. The fact that Nathaniel looks like the love child of Emmet Cullen and Clark Kent, with a side of Michael Angelo’s David doesn’t always help him in his personal life, though it most likely did get him his first few jobs that made his career. He doesn’t think of himself as all that attractive though a lot of people tell him that he is. When he looks in the mirror all he sees is hopelessness and what he doesn’t have. Despite this fact, he always finds a way to put a smile on face, ever the professional and soldier on through all the lonely nights. Until he meets Joseph and his world to changes almost overnight.

Joseph Hays: is a usually quiet, very intense construction worker with a longing to better his life and situation. Not that he minds hard work and anyone can see that. Hard work turned him into one of the hottest men ever to walk the earth. He is the definition of tall, dark, and handsome. He is not shy about who and what he is either, which despite the differences from his co-workers earned him some respect. While the other men cat call women to no end, he himself cat calls young college age boys confusing some, infuriating others, and making a few feel orgasmic when he looks their way. He is the manifestation of what it would look like if you crossed Eros and Adonis the Lords of sex and beauty, with the dark knight on his black steed, and then threw in a little cowboy for good measure; did I mention he was born and raised in Texas…and they really do grow them Bigger in Texas! He moved to Chicago at sixteen. A couple of his peers and ex’s would describe him as a blue collar god. He likes guys a little younger than himself. They are more open and more malleable then men his age, who seem so stuck in their ways. His friends often call him Smokey Joe because his sexual attractiveness is evident even to his straight fellow co-workers. Smokey Joe doesn’t exactly refer to a cup of coffee, but alludes to the fact that Joe is smoking Hot. He wants someone to share his life with. He is tired of the occasional one night stands. He wants to be adored by one person who he considers truly worthy of his time, attention, skills, and oh yes… actual Love! He also wants someone to let him take control in the bed room, and also to show him the finer things in life that he longs to know!

Main Character Physical Descriptions and Inspirations;

Nathaniel Langly is taller than the average man, standing at six feet. He has black curly hair that always manages to look flawless and perfect. He has kind, soft, blue eyes, and a complexion that is almost unreal; looking as if porcelain can have a natural bronze tone. His face is angular with both sharp and rounded features, and high cheek bones that make him look as if he is descended from royalty…or possibly from a mythological deity.

Joseph Hays is taller than Nathaniel by a good five to seven inches; he is built, and broad. He has dark hair that when not tied back hangs just above his shoulders and around his chin. When it is tied back short strands fall out and hang in wavy tendrils around his face. His dark eyes are intensely warm and bright. They are a mix of dark chocolate brown, and copper, with flecks of amber and red. The guy smiles a large sexy grin. He has a cocky swagger, his hips sauntering so that when he walks he looks as if he is making love to the entire world.

The Physical Inspirations behind Nathaniel and Joseph are Henry Cavill and Joe Manganiello.

 

Nathan's Facade Playlist; 

Hear the songs and music that Inspired me as I wrote this story. 

Nathan's Facade Playlist

About me;

My Official Bio:  

A Mystic Born into the wrong century and on the wrong continent, L.C. Bellami somehow ended up being born and raised in Texas. He was born into a family which has long been in The Ministry. Religion and Spirituality play a part in all that he is, though as a proud Queer he has a far different perspective about life than most people. He was raised loving Literature and The Arts. After Deciding traditional education was not serving him all that well, he enrolled in vocational school and became an Alternative Health Practitioner; and later went on to become an Ordained Minister. He had many interests growing up and many dreams that never came to fruition; however one dream never left him. The desire to be a published author has been a life long aspiration. As a Survivor of abuse and bullying he loved to escape into books, movies, and music. Stories were and still are a lifeline that takes him to a brighter place. His goals as a writer are as follows; to write the stories he always wanted to read as a young queer man and never had, to bring the awareness of God and Spirit to people with a new perspective, and to help people understand that sexuality is neither wrong or without sacredness and beauty!

My Author Links: 

Author's Blog

Author's Facebook Page

Author's Goodreads Page

Buy Links: 

This book can only be purchased on ARe for now... 

ARe Buy Link for Nathan's Facade here...Click Me!

Things that might be of interest to anyone who is thinking of reading my work: 

Author's Thoughts on accepted rules of grammar

Author's commentary on what to expect from his writing

Author's further thoughts on writing 

Info on The Tour which is now long closed; 

The Nathan's Facade Release Blog Tour Hosted by T.T.C. Books & more. 

Tour Schedule: 

* Day 1 * 12-13-14 {TTC Books & More – The O’Raven Chronicles}

* Day 2 * 12-14-14 {MM Good Book Reviews}* 

Day 3 * 12-15-14 {Wade Kelly Writes}*

Day 4 * 12-16-14 {Purple Rose Teahouse (Charlie Cochet)}

* Day 5 * 12-17-14 {Daring Adventures in Writing (Mortie)}* 

Day 6 * 12-18-14 {Crystal’s Many Reviewers (Crystal Marie)}

* Day 7/1 * 12-19-14 {Carly’s Book Reviews}*

Day 7/2 * 12-19-14 {Gay Media Reviews (Paul Berry))}

There will be a Rafflecopter Giveaway with a surprise Swag bag, so be sure to follow the tour and enter the giveaway for a chance to win some free loot! lol 

My issues with accepted modern grammar rules;

Things that I as a writer would like to say about grammar. At the risk of angering a lot of people….teachers, and editors especially; I want to say that I honestly believe most grammar text books should be thrown in the trash or used for kindling. Most of what is accepted in modern American educational standards is truly troubling to me. The modern so called rules of grammar are not proper according to classical English as most claim. What’s more is that even if they were they would still be outdated notions as so many of these rules are now. Language and culture is not static but ever evolving and changing. I find the failing to recognize this simple truth to be absolutely ignorant and irritating.  Another thing I would like to mention is that to have a bases in reality something needs to at least attempt to make sense and many of these so called rules do not and need to be done away with once and for all.

I will give you some examples of this. It is very common these days to write forty dollars by putting a dollar sign in front of the number instead of behind it. Why would anyone do this? It makes no sense. We do not walk around saying dollars forty…no, we say forty dollars. The sign should come after the number because that is the way we speak it. Another issue that I am bothered by is this modern practice of putting punctuation marks inside of quotations marks instead of after them, when the end of the quote is the end of the sentence. Why would anyone do this, it makes no sense. Ask yourself these questions; “what do quotation marks end”? “What do punctuation marks end”? Here are the answers. Quotations mark someone speaking. The marks at the end of the quote mark the end of said person speaking. Punctuation marks however mark the end of a sentence. How can the sentence be over before a person stops talking? I like the Judge Judy quote… “If it doesn’t make sense it isn’t true”. I have asked many people to explain to me why these so called rules are considered right and proper and no one has ever given me a satisfying or what I call legitimate answer to my inquiries. These rules need to be truthfully and honestly examined and then we can throw them out and put rules in their place that not only make sense, but that are in touch with our actually contemporary language and culture that has evolved past the old paradigms. Another issue I am having as of late is with people who believe me to be yelling at them online because I use exclamation points freely. They truly seem to believe that an exclamation point indicates a raised voice. While it could indicate that on occasion, where people got the notion that it only means that is beyond me. A declarative sentence gets a period. A declarative sentence is merely a stated fact. An example of this would be “Jane kicked the ball”. An exclamatory sentence exclaims OR speaks to a strong or intense emotion or feeling. An example would be “Dick kicked the ball hard and high, so that it flew like an angry bird”! As you see the exclamatory sentence is more descriptive and imparts a feeling. I don’t know about the rest of the world but I have many strong emotions which I can verbalize without screaming. I can have emotional thoughts without ever vocalizing them at all, as a matter of fact. So why people believe that exclamation points mean you are screaming is baffling to me.

Yet another issue that has come up as of late is that I have gotten chastised because according to the person who read my work…. “Your sentences are not structured correctly”. I am currently unaware of any American who speaks in so called correctly structured sentences. We do not speak that way and if we did it would be strangely, overly formal sounding and slightly obnoxious. We speak in fragmented thoughts and run on sentences. So since we all speak this way and understand each other, why do we not write in this way? It makes no sense to do something constantly aloud in real every day life and then turn around and call it incorrect if we write it down in the way in which it happens.

As a reader when I am reading a sentence it is slightly annoying if there are too many commas in a sentence. So there are other options I employ as a matter of regularity that I guess irritates so called grammar nazis. The first is the dot dot dot method. This indicates in modern writ an ongoing thought or run-on sentence. Another method really makes people upset for some unfathomable reason, and that is the use of the semi-colon. For people who are confused as to what a semi-colon does or is supposed to do let me offer this; among other things the semi-colon is used when one wants to join a fragmented, run-on, or additional thought to a previous sentence before one ends the sentence.

That is all I have to say for now, but I am sure there will be more to follow eventually as anyone who knows me will attest, I love to complain about that things that irritate the fuck out of me!!! Oh more then one exclamation point…I can feel the grammar nazi’s getting pissed off right now. Hahahahahaha

A Message from L. C. Bellami about what you can expect when reading his stories;

What you can expect from me as a writer. Well right away there are several things that might upset more than a few people. I say these things to warn people ahead of time. I think a lot of accepted modern grammar rules are stupid and outdated and need to be done away with. Not all of them, but there are several. Next, Just like Hollywood imagines the same actors for different roles, I get inspired by a lot of the same models, musicians, and movie stars and see them in different stories in my head. So you will see me use the same people as listed inspirations more than once most likely. I am majorly attracted to men with muscles, long hair, tattoos, and piercings so you can expect lots of me with that type of look in my books. Also and this will really irritate many people, I am a religious person. So you will see a lot of religious and spiritual themes and morals in my works. You can also expect many of the stories will include the concepts of eternal love, and insta-love. You can expect that most of my stories will involve things that can get them labeled as Romance, Erotica, Fantasy, Paranormal, and even Sci-fi. Even the stories set in the so called “real world” will have metaphysical elements to them. Again I am a very religious person. This is not meant to come off as preachy or anything, I am simply being honest about who I am and what inspires me. You can expect that my books will many times be considered easy reads lol. Also you can expect all endings to be happy. I do not write freaking tragedies. I am so sick and tired of people’s obsession with tragedies. I don’t care if they do teach great life lessons at this point. I am just tired of them and do not find them entertaining any more. I think life should reflect art not the other way around. I think Art should inform Life. I think it is the duty of art not only to teach and communicate, but to inspire, and uplift. I also think the same thing about religious services and institutions by the way. The spirits of Oppression, and depression, Sadness, and apathy have taken hold of this world and I believe that it is the duty of both art and religion to fight this darkness. Most of the time my endings are so sugary sweet they will rot teeth. I am not ashamed of this, I proudly proclaim it. Also I do not like a lot of loose ends, so you will find very little of them in my work.

Part of why I wanted to be a writer was to help provide stories to all the young queer guys out there with the stories I never got to have growing up and always wanted. I wanted the fairy tales or any story really to reflect me somehow; to have characters that resembled me. It just never happened until I was much older. I hope that somewhere out there, there are young queer guys who like spirituality and also modern day fairy tales, and that they enjoy my stories. I am very aware I am writing to a very niche Market. My stories are not going to appeal to most people. My stories have graphic and very explicit sexual scenes in them. So they are not for the faint of heart, as far as sex goes. I fully hope that my sex scenes inspire masturbatory fantasies and activities. It will shock and anger many that I can talk so freely and openly about sexual things and in the next sentence speak of religious matters. Why this shocks anyone I can’t fathom. Even the bible has an entire book of utterly graphic sexual romantic poetry. Sex and Spirituality should have never been forced so far apart way back when, but they were. I do not believe it is a good or healthy thing and my writing is in part an attempt to correct that grievous mistake. Sex is many things to many people. It is an expression of love, lust, passion, and affection for some. It is a means of healing for others. Still for some it is a way of finding connection in a world where we are far too often isolated. For many people sex is also a sacred spiritual and often a ritualistic act. Sex to me is beautiful, and sacred and should be treated as such. Why not treat it with dignity and reverence, and also humor and irreverence all at once? What sex is not, is un-spiritual or filthy. Though it can sometimes be dirty lol. Kinky fuckery is something I am all for lol. I just wish people would stop acting like it is utterly secular with no spiritual components to it what so ever. I also would like churches to stop teaching people that sex is wrong or dirty, or that two people who happen to be of the same gender are wrong or living in sin simply for whom they love. I hope that my work inspires people to look at religion, spirituality, and sexuality differently. I also hope they will just be enjoyable to read. If you don’t like my work, well the answer is simple…don’t read it. Problem solved. If anything I have mentioned here is likely to irritate of offend you…well you can put a book down at any time after all, and find something else to read. Thank you ahead of time for giving my work a chance. Blessed Be! 

Something I believe about writing;

Writing should for the most part sound like you talking and telling your story to your friends. Part of what made the classics great and turn them into classics, was that they so wonderfully embodied the time and place from which they originated. In most circumstances we do ourselves no favor when our own voices are not to truly be found in our work, somewhere. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, but when I read a book I like to hear the author's voice and feel like I am being told a story by an old friend. Of course this is just me and my opinion. To each their own. 

Poem; Courage of The Honest Queer

Courage of The Honest Queer

by L. C. Bellami

written in the year of our Lord 2014

Born this Way

Born this Gai

I’m not a sin

Not led astray

I’m not a Mistake

God did not Forsake

I’m not Confused

I am not Fake

You tell your Lies

You spread your Hate

Your Wickedness will be your Fate

I am not Hiding

I won’t live a Lie

Not for you or anyone will I Lay Down and Die

I Will Stand and I will Fight

and I will always do what I think is Right

  

I am not Weak

But you Are Blind

I see your mask

On flesh you dine

You think you speak on God’s behalf

You are nothing but a talking Ass

You say you haven’t met the right woman yet

Well you haven’t had The Right Man make you wet

So go on with your ignorant games

You do not Know, you can not say

I was born this way, born this Gai

Your sin will Not lead me astray

You say I chose, but when did you

You sit un-hearing in your Sunday pew

I’m not confused, I am not You

I am who I am, despite those with no Clue 

God Made me as I am to stay

He tells me so when I do Pray

He Loves me always, even when I’m Odd

This Truth I Know beyond all facades

I Am a child of The Living God

News...and a new playlist!

So I am pretty much done with the editing process and re-writes for my short that I intend to put online to sell. I am still waiting on my Beta-Readers to give me some feedback and for my cover artist to get back into town so we can get the cover done. I have already made a playlist, but as you have no reference to why I would choose the eclectic collection of songs to listen to for my short story it will seem very random indeed. however you can find the play list by following the link below. It is simply titled N. F. and soon enough that will be explained! lol  


Nathan's Facade Playlist