Dirty Dozen blog hop Spotlights Author Rafe Haze (GRL Supporting Authors blog hop & Giveaway)

Today is the last stop on the Dirty Dozen blog hop. September has just flown by with all the different Author's that have taken part in this hop, supporting each other as we gear up for GRL. 

It's now my pleasure to be hosting Author Rafe Haze today here at TTC Books. First up, let's take a look at his book, The Next.

Also known as: The Gay Rear Window.

A romance springs to life as two strangers merge with a common goal: to catch a killer they suspect occupies one of the apartments across the courtyard. But their romance must hurdle the main protagonist's suffocating, unresolved demons as well as encroaching, life threatening danger. But if they make it through, they can both bring life back to their lives.

Grab your copy of the next straight from Wilde City or from Amazon

Rafe Haze was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and lives on the west side of New York City. Having worked for the legal compliance industry, fashion industry, music industry, art industry, and flesh industry (the most interesting people on earth have), his most life-changing employment was teaching Meisner Technique of Acting. He wrote himself out of one whopping funk with his debut novel The Next, and is ecstatically thankful for the entire, messy, beautiful cadence.   

He refuses to be handcuffed to one discipline only: he writes classical music for orchestra and small ensemble, country music songs, musical theater, plays, screenplays, and digs two-stepping, line dancing, and West Coast Swinging. Be it words, notes, or movement, the emotional origin, schlep, and endpoints are equally compelling and satisfying.                                              

He is grafeful to his twin brother (the straight one) who continues to make the slicing through this rambling, thorny life worthwhile.

Author website: http://www.rafehaze.com/

Author Twitter: @RafeHaze

I'm not sure which is hotter, that cover or that author. I know who I will be stalking at GRL... Oh, sorry... here is our nifty little Dirty Dozen Interview Q&A with Author Rafe Haze.

TM ~ What inspires you most when you are writing? 

 

I get fired up by the excitement and suspense of feeling your way through the murky, emotional, dangerous terrain of biographically sourced material.   It’s a jungle full of big ugly infectious bugs and greenery that requires a machete to hack through, but then you come across those beautiful gem colored pools and gorgeous waterfalls.

Tempeste ~ What brought you to write m/m? What keeps you writing in this genre? 

You can find out the juicy, salacious, boldly unflattering answers to these questions in the romance I’m finishing, “Sky on Fire.”  And thank you for the opportunity to plug.

Carter ~ Of all the characters you've written, who is your favorite and why?  

I’m still fascinated by Gary R., a blatant rip-off of Encyclopedia Brown that I created when I was ten years old.  I made my Mom invite her friends over and sold the answers to each Gary R. mystery for ten cents in the “Gary R. Mystery Shop” that I set up in the living room.  I’ve always wanted to be one of the smart ones of the world, and Gary R. and Encyclopedia represent that tragically distant fixed ideal.

LE ~ Many of us have pen names that we use and there are an infinite number of ways and reasons behind them, but I doubt many of them reflect the names we wish we’d been born with.  If you could micro-manage the ultimate do-over, what birth name do you want? What nickname? 

I love my real name – Daniel Tobias. If I could redo my pen name I’d NOT have a pen name.  Honestly.  Oooh!  I’d love to have the nickname, Strut!

Morticia ~ Name one unusual fact about yourself that you think your readers would be surprised to learn. 

I write and sing country music. A lot. I line dance, two-step, and West Coast Swing.  I taught Meisner Acting Classes for six years.  Whoops.  That’s three.  Oh!  I also have an identical twin brother who’s super straight – and that’s some fun shit to fling in a story that he doesn’t know I’m writing about us.  (Shhh!  Let’s just keep that between us.)

Rafe Haze:  "What do you do that most injurs the progress of your writing, and why do you do it?" 

I give my attention to neurotic people and generously provide their incessant, invasive anxieties a safe ear.  Fucking unending waste of time, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE talking about their whack-job craziness subsequently to my friends.  So writers: don’t hesitate to come by and say “Hi” to me.  ;-)

Jeff ~ If you had to trade writing for another creative pursuit, what would it be?

 

Commercial Property Architect.  Or a Line Dance Teacher.  Yeah…definitely a superstar line dance teacher like fucking Guyton Mundilicious or Rachael SmackEnany.

Max ~ In one sentence, write the beginning of a sex scene using some kind of food. Think of it as your hook.  

Oh jeeze, everybody’s going to try out-clever each other in this response.  And who am I not to as well?  “As I felched him, I noticed his asscrack smelled like six-day old hog tripe left out on the counter of an overheated pueblo in July.”  Yep, I like that hook.  That’d be an irresistible sell to me.

Wade ~ Name one of your favorite characters of all time that someone else wrote. Can be M/M or any genre. 

Captain Haddock.

JC ~ If you could be one of your characters, who would you be and why? 

I’d be Mr. Perfect, only much cleverer.  I wouldn’t have gotten caught.  I know you wanted me to select Schlongzilla, but I already have that covered.  As Josh Lanyon can allegedly attest to.   (Well, how else was I supposed to get him to read my book?) 

Diana ~ How many versions of a book do you usually write before you arrive at ‘the one’, and how does your editor impact that? 

My trial-and-error process is enacted word-by-word as I write, so there are twenty million versions that have been eliminated as I hit the end of the runway.  By the eighty-seventh thousandth word, it’s as damn perfect as it’s going to get.  Like a tightrope walker who constantly adjusts the minutia of his journey from pole to pole.  There’s just one rope, but a million tiny corrections.

Ethan ~ If you came with a warning label, what would it be? 

 

“Be careful even saying hello to him:  that fucking Rafe Haze uses EVERY shitty thing he experiences in his writing.  He’s like the omnipresent pooper-scooper at the parade with his bucket and flathead shovel.  Scraping poop for gold.”

Great responses Rafe! And a huge thank you to all the Author's that have participated in this blog hop, see you all in Chicago!!

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