Guest Post & Excerpt: Bigger Love by Rick R. Reed

The Setting is Also a Character in BIGGER LOVE
A guest post by Rick R. Reed

Bigger Love’s setting is a small-town high school. That’s unusual for me; the only other book I’ve set in a high school is its predecessor, Big Love. To visit my setting, I had to go back to my own high school, so to speak, every day while I was writing both books. Writing about the turbulent emotions of adolescence, first loves, and beginning to come to terms with who you are was a challenging and thought-provoking trip down memory lane.

I thought I’d share a couple pictures and memories of my alma mater, East Liverpool High School in East Liverpool, Ohio (the only high school in town). Like the characters in Bigger Love, my high school years were a time of struggle, sometimes joy, and often a lot about coming to grips about who that person was looking back at me from within the mirror.

Here’s the small, pottery town of East Liverpool where I grew up, taken from the Ohio River. The town rises up from the river’s banks. That’s the Ohio River in the foreground and the foothills of the Appalachians in the background. And yes, this is a picture of downtown. Picture it as you read Bigger Love. You’ll understand why boys like Truman (and like me) wanted to head for the bright lights of the big city once we got out of high school.

And here is the high school that I mentally traveled back to in order to draw upon the memories and feelings that eventually went into Bigger Love. The school sits on one of the hills surrounding the town, so there was always a good view of everything. As a personal aside, my eldest niece and her husband still teach at the very same school.

And here’s the picture you may or may not have been waiting for: me as a much younger version of myself. One is my high school graduation photo and the other is from a time when I was just entering the confusing and awkward torture of adolescence. Oh, the innocence of that young man/boy! He had no idea what was in store for him. I suppose that’s true for all of us, right?

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Title: Bigger Love by Rick R. Reed
Big Love Series Book Two
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Genre: Contemporary, Gay, New Adult, Romance
Length: 200 page/Word Count: 60,332

Summary:

A Sequel to Big Love

Truman Reid is Summitville High’s most out-and-proud senior. He can’t wait to take his fierce, uncompromising self away from his small Ohio River hometown, where he’s suffered more than his share of bullying. He’s looking forward to bright lights and a big city. Maybe he’ll be the first gender-fluid star to ever win an Academy Award. But all that changes on the first day of school when he locks eyes with the most gorgeous hunk he’s ever seen.

Mike Stewart, big, dark-haired, and with the most amazing blue eyes, is new to town. He’s quiet, manly, and has the sexy air of a lost soul. It’s almost love at first sight for Truman. He thinks that love could deepen when Mike becomes part of the stage crew for Harvey, the senior class play Truman’s directing. But is Mike even gay? And how will it work when Truman’s mother is falling for Mike’s dad?

Plus Truman, never the norm, makes a daring and controversial choice for the production that has the whole town up in arms.

See how it all plays out on a stage of love, laughter, tears, and sticking up for one’s essential self….

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Purchase Links: Dreamspinner Press * Dreamspinnner Press (Paperback) * Amazon * Amazon (Paperback)

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Excerpt

Here’s a little taste of our main character, Truman Reid. Like him, I was a target for bullies. Unlike him, I didn’t grasp the beauty of being different until I was much older. Go Truman!

When he boarded the bus, there were whispers. There were snickers. Someone said, “Get her!” which caused an eruption of laughter as Truman headed for the back of the bus.

He was used to it. There was a time when he would have been devastated by the laughter and the remarks, but now? Just another part of the school day, he told himself. Truman knew it was important that they didn’t know they could get to him. So he took a little bow, left, then right. He forced himself to smile at the other kids, who gawked at him. “Please. No special ruckus for the likes of me.”

Once upon a time, he wouldn’t have dared say such a thing. He would have hurried to his seat, face burning and head bowed. That was before he knew the power of claiming your own identity, however different it was. That was before he stopped believing he was worthless because he wasn’t like everyone else. That was before he’d caught on to the lie that being different somehow made you less. Often it made the reverse true.

He headed toward a pair of empty seats near the back of the bus, knowing every eye was trained on him. For his first day of school, he’d paired black skinny jeans with a hot-pink-and-black polka-dot button-down shirt—he’d raided Patsy’s closet for the blouse. Black Chuck Taylors completed the ensemble. He thought the look had kind of an eighties vibe, back in the olden days when his mama was born. For Truman, today’s outfit was dressing down. For everyone else on the bus, well, he knew they were stupefied into silence by his ensemble. He couldn’t imagine why. He’d been dressing this way—a style he’d come to term gender-fuck—since freshman year, when the bullying and teasing had reached a tipping point, driving him to the literal edge. He’d almost jumped off the roof of the high school after a particularly humiliating and cruel prank.

What he’d learned that year was not to hide who he was but to claim it—to get right up in the faces of those who dared challenge him, in effect saying, “Fuck you, sister. This is who I am. If you don’t like it, that’s your problem, not mine.”

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Author Bio

Real Men. True Love.

Rick R. Reed draws inspiration from the lives of gay men to craft stories that quicken the heartbeat, engage emotions, and keep the pages turning. Although he dabbles in horror, dark suspense, and comedy, his attention always returns to the power of love. He’s the award-winning and bestselling author of more than fifty works of published fiction and is forever at work on yet another book. Lambda Literary has called him: “A writer that doesn’t disappoint…” You can find him at www.rickrreed.com/a> or ww.rickrreedreality.blogspot.com. Rick lives in Palm Springs, CA with his beloved husband and their fierce Chihuahua/Shiba Inu mix.

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