Inclination (24 page)

Plus, I’ve been gifted with the ability to
coherently use the word
abundant
in a
sentence, which isn’t a bad thing, seeing as the October SAT date is fast
approaching.

As David starts
to drive, I lean back, close my eyes, and listen to the familiar melody,
silently rejoicing in the confidence that, gay or straight, as long as I live
His way I will someday celebrate eternal life with Jesus.

Yes, when this
flesh and heart shall fail,



And mortal life
shall cease;

I shall profess,
within the
vail
,



A life of joy and
peace.

1. What gave you the idea for your latest book?

It might seem
that the answer to this question would pop easily into my head, but I actually
had to think quite a bit to identify the true source of my idea. I will preface
my answer by saying that I am a Catholic who was raised very strictly in the
Faith, but who hasn’t practiced in about ten years. I still hold a strong
belief in God, feel that there are intrinsic moral rights and wrongs that our
consciences keep us informed of—not that we always listen—and continue to pray
every day and night.

Much like
Anthony, I am a rules-follower. Things are black and white to me. And I
couldn’t manage to follow all of the rules of the Catholic Church. For many
years, I tried. And I failed. When I was a child, I worried incessantly over
things such as talking back to my mother or using God’s name in vain. As a
teen, I compulsively went to confession the way Anthony does in
Inclination
,
for fear my soul would be blackened by sin and I might accidentally get hit by
a car, and die in that state, plummeting to hell. As a young adult, I struggled
with sexuality issues involving the rules of the Catholic Church. I just kept
on sinning, confessing, and suffering over what “kind of girl” I was.

And I was a good
girl—a kind girl. But I really couldn’t see that. All I could see is that I
sometimes broke the rules. I worried continuously over how I was disappointing
God.

As a new mother
who had married outside my Faith, I struggled to bring my children up in the
Catholic Church. At one point, I had an eight, six, four, and two-year-old. And
we missed Mass sometimes. Some mornings it was just too difficult to get there.

Again, I couldn’t
follow the rules, and truthfully, I never had been able to do so as perfectly
as I wanted, and so I just gave up. But no one who has faith ever really gives
up on God altogether. I knew Jesus—I KNOW Jesus—and he is always with me. But I
felt like I wasn’t a real Christian because I had no formal religion, and I was
no longer passing a formal religion on to my children.

When I met my
very close friend Michael Bowler, my eyes were opened to what true Christianity
is. I learned this by observing how he lives. Michael showed me that following
the church’s rules is all well and good, but to be a true follower of Jesus you
must LIVE LIKE HE DID. You must give of your time, and your heart, to those in
need. You must be honest and open minded, less quick to judge. And I realized
that following the true spirit of Christianity is actually much more difficult
than merely following the rules. It involves self-sacrifice of so much more
than Sunday morning free time to go to Mass or stifled curses or sexual
restraint. These things pale in comparison to what one must do to really call
yourself a Christian. I learned from Michael that being a Christian is not all
about following the rules, but living with the intentions of Jesus in your
heart and mind. I am not sure that I am yet a true Christian, but the criteria
to consider myself one has greatly changed.

And so, I came up
with the idea to write
Inclination
. I know what it is like to struggle
with Christian rules in regard to behaviors over which I have power to choose,
but what about those who are born a way that truly offers them no choice? In
Inclination, Anthony struggles with his own devastating rule-following problem.
He knows that to live as the person who God made him, a gay person with the
desire for a committed, monogamous, and sexual same-sex relationship, is, in
itself, sinful in the church that he knows and loves.

Inclination
was inspired by my struggle, my realization, and my hope.

2. Give us an insight into your main character. What
does he/she do that is so special?

In short, my main
character struggles with conflict. And isn’t that what makes a character
special and a book memorable?

Anthony
Duck-Young Del
Vecchio
, a South Korean born,
Italian-American raised teenager is a significant Young Adult character because
of how he confronts and survives the conflict of his life. He identifies the
problem, which, in itself, is a painstaking process, wrestles with it in a
variety of ways, and he arrives at a resolution he can live with. On the
surface, this may seem like a simple series of actions, but the battle with
which Anthony struggles has a high price tag: his eternal soul.

One beta reader
said that
Inclination
is like a love story about Jesus. I include this
comment because it sums up how incredibly important Anthony’s relationship to
God is to him, and puts it into perspective as a Young Adult novel. To Anthony,
his conflict is more important than any struggle to climb a mountain or to run
for class president or to win a boy’s heart. This is a struggle to determine if
he can truly be who he was born to be, and at the same time, be who God wants
him to be. Anthony is a quiet, “fly under the radar” kind of boy. He is very
intelligent, but not a born leader. He always knows the answer in class, but
struggles to vocalize it. To have attention focused on him is the stuff that
Anthony’s nightmares are made of. To be different from the crowd and to take
risks, let alone to take a stand, are not behaviors that come to him naturally,
but they are the all things he must do in order to define himself in
Inclination
.

3. When you read books yourself what genre do you
prefer to read and why is that genre your favorite?

I enjoy reading
adult and young adult LGBT romance. I will admit that a love story is the most
attractive to me, probably just because of how I am wired. I fell in love with
Jack Wilde in
Puff’n’Stuff
at five years old, and I
have been falling in love, along with the characters I read about, ever since.
I guess I believe that love can save—not that it should or even has to—but that
it can. Love gives me hope, it lets me dream. It anchors me to earth, while
letting me fly.

4. What is the best advice you can give to a fellow
writer who is writing their first book and to help them get it out there?

*Be true to
yourself—write the story in your heart and do not change it to please your
future reading audience.

*Find a publisher
who is passionate about your novel and you will enjoy the entire process.

*Write the novel
and then put it away for a period of time. When you pick it up and read it
again, the changes you need to make will pop out at you.

*I do not think
you can edit your work too many times. It will get better and better every time
you reread it.

*Promotion is as
challenging, time-consuming, and necessary to the success of a novel as writing
it is.

Books published
by
Dreamspinner
Press

Beggars and
Choosers

Unfinished
Business

A Package Deal

Out of Hiding

Random Acts

Here Without You

Books published
by Harmony Ink Press

Intervention

Not Broken, Just
Bent

The Red Sheet

Us Three

Published by Mia
Kerick

Come To My Window

Mia
Kerick
is the mother of four exceptional children—all named
after saints—and five non-pedigreed cats—all named after the next best thing to
saints, Boston Red Sox players. Her husband of twenty-two years has been told
by many that he has the patience of Job, but don’t ask Mia about that, as it is
a sensitive subject.

Mia focuses her
stories on the emotional growth of troubled young people and their
relationships, and she believes that physical intimacy has a place in a love
story, but not until it is firmly established as a love story. As a teen, Mia
filled spiral-bound notebooks with romantic tales of tortured heroes (most of
whom happened to strongly resemble lead vocalists of 1980s big-hair bands) and
stuffed them under her mattress for safekeeping. She is thankful to
CoolDudes
Publishing,
Dreamspinner
Press, Harmony Ink Press, and
CreateSpace
for
providing her with alternate places to stash her stories.

Mia is a social
liberal and cheers for each and every victory made in the name of human rights,
especially marital equality. Her only major regret: never having taken typing
or computer class in school, destining her to a life consumed with two-fingered
pecking and constant prayer to the Gods of Technology.