OPEN TRENCH

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Advocate: How Does a Gay Man Deal With A Disfiguring Penis Condition?

Thank you Diane Anderson-Minshall and Brooklyn Social Media.

Listopia

Hello Friends,

If you are a Goodreads member on Amazon, perhaps you would like to help me to help men with their troubles. And for your time, I will give you a gift of Tolstoy at the end of it all.

The internet, in all its open beauty, needs to be organized. So Goodreads has Listopia to organize its many books so if, say, you like cookbooks about meat and fish, there is a list on Listopia called "Best Cookbooks About Meat and Fish" and you can add books to that list for others to choose.

Which leads me to Peyronies disease, gay people and Bent But Not Broken.

If you want to help more men, and the women, men and other gender categories that want to help these men, straight, gay or otherwise, with their Peyronie's disease...or if you just think it's a good idea to get people to read a book about facing the roughness of the occasional curve ball tossed in life, please get Bent But Not Broken on these Goodreads Listopia lists, if you have the time.

The 9 steps:

Get Bent But Not Broken on your Goodreads shelf

1. You need to be a member of Goodreads. (Amazon's literary deep state.) Easy enough. Many people are. If not, you can easily join for free, here: Goodreads Signup.

2. Sign into your Goodreads account.

3. In the Upper toolbar, in "Search Books," type in Bent But Not Broken.

4. When the book comes up, there will be a green button just below it, Want to Read. Click that.

5. Okay, now Bent But Not Broken is on your shelf of books in Goodreads.

Put Bent But Not Broken on these Listopia Lists

6. Click on the first link of the 8 links below. Follow steps 7 & 8 once that link is open.

7. Click ADD BOOKS TO THIS LIST, upper right.

8. Next to Bent But Not Broken, to the right, click VOTE FOR THIS BOOK.

Thanks. You never know whose life you might be changing. I leave you with a story by Leo Tolstoy. I love this story. I hope you will, too. I'm not a believer like end-of-his-days-Leo-Tolstoy, but I believe in this story. It's worth the time.

What Men Live By -- Leo Tolstoy

Thursday, May 30, 2019

The Blog Tour, The Teddy Smith Show & The Last Bookstore

Hello friends,

Here we are: A Memoir, A radio interview, some more reviews, and how the World Experiences this kind of thing.

Thank you, Trish Collins, for setting up a Blog Tour for Bent But Not Broken. The reviews are lovely and the experience was enjoyable.

And thank you, Teddy Smith, fellow Suffern High School Alum, for the radio interview on WPAT 930AM Radio that led to this:

Teddy Smith Show on You Tube

The Blog Tour:

The Reading Corner For All

BookNAround

DownToGetTheFictionOn

The Desert Bibliophile

From the TBR Pile

Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to read and for being thoughtful about Bent But Not Broken.

July is coming. Here we go:

A Ticket Gets you One of these Great Books

Happy Summer!

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Book Clubs Are Forever

Spoiler alert for those who have not yet read Bent But Not Broken.

Pause.

Leave if you must.

Don't keep reading if you don't want to know what happens to my relationship with Adam.

*
*
*

I end up marrying him.

But I didn't just marry a man, I married his book club. It's called Adam's Book Club, and I believe it has been going on, uninterrupted, for 27 years. I was in it for a while...but I tend to get thrown out of groups.

Of course, I always show up for the Christmas Book Club. I love these friends and have seen some of them right after they have given birth, most of them in ski pants, some of them in hot tubs, all of them drinking wine. Not one of them in rehab.

A few of them make appearances in Bent But Not Broken, so with their permission I am going to show the faces of three of these characters from this group of fine beings that I call, well, best friends.

First of all, here they are, being annoyingly middle-age art directed by me for the album cover of Adam's Book Club in my back yard.

That's Gary, Maggie, Susie, Joe, Mary, Mary, Marcia, Bart and Mark.

(Yeah, yeah, they're all white and were named before Carter took office. They want to diversify but at this point they're too drunk to put out the word.)

But hang on, we're getting to the characters in BENT.

But just before we do, here are a few more of these funsters having fun during the book club.

And now, as promised, I bring you: Hogan, who often appears in Bent But Not Broken as the affable sidekick, the good friend, the guy in San Francisco where the "BIG FIGHT" happened, and of course, he is so much more than that.

Let's hear it for:

BART as HOGAN

I always liked the name Hogan. It's really a last name from my childhood. Seemed like the perfect character name for Bart, the intrepid, the easy-going, the guy with all the newest gadgets, the one you always want along for any occasion. Bart-Hogan, thanks for being in my life and in my memoir (and for the great idea of wearing name tags)!

Next, I bring you: Russell. Russell only has one line in Bent But Not Broken, but it's an important one. Russell, while we were all rock climbing (well, they were all rock climbing, I tried one short climb, started fitfully sobbing out of fear and got the hell out of those carabiners as fast as possible) --so while they were all rock climbing, and I was swearing I would never try it again, Russell remarks on how well Adam and I are suited to each other because of our ways with words.

Let's thank him for his gimlet ear and let's give a big hand for:

JOE as RUSSELL

Before we get to insulted Midge (my mistake, awful) let's hear it for Susie, an early bonus here, who simply was not in the book. She had a name tag, a Sharpie, some time and some wit.

Enjoy this one:

SUSIE, NOT in MY BOOK

And lastly there is Midge. There is a short scene in Bent But Not Broken when I make a very off color joke and Midge, well, I really blew it. I was young. I was always pushing things beyond their limit. I went too far. But we made up. And I believe I might be the father of one of her abortions. (Oh Shit! I went too far again!) Okay, I am not the father of anything. But I did once do a flip off the diving board of her pool and I landed flat on my back and in physical therapy for nine months. So, if not her, her real estate certainly got back at me.

Let's give her the biggest respect of all because she deserves it:

MAGGIE as MIDGE

Because of my wretched mouth, or maybe it was just coincidence, my long-suffering husband and I were never invited to Maggie's and Gary's ski house in Whistler. So here she is, rubbing it in, reading my book in that very house. I love when history turns into humor.

MAGGIE reads BENT in WHISTLER, where I am NOT WELCOME (yet)

The fun thing about white privilege is Always having to say you're sorry!

I highly recommend you join a book club as soon as possible. If you have a time machine, why not go back and start one during an earlier era, perhaps the First Gulf War. Some books that came out in 1990:

Jurassic Park, by Michael Chrichton (The cover designed by the very same man who designed my cover: Chip Kidd)

The Bourne Ultimatum, by Robert Ludlum (I never went on even one date with Matt Damon)

Rabbit at Rest, by John Updike (Of course, I thought this thing was written in 1954)

Get Shorty, by Elmore Leonard (I loved the movie Living Out Loud with Danny DeVito & Holly Hunter)

and

Shrek!, by William Steig (Let's all go clean our ears)

And lastly, friends, speaking of books, clubs and what you can do to save literature on the planet, please buy my book if you have not, and please go to Amazon and Good Reads and give me the best review you can cough up. Sales are brisk, but no one minds an occasional gale of affirmation to push up the ranking. Oof. There. I asked for it. And though I don't need new shoes right now, I will eventually.

My favorite books ever that pop into my head without much thought?:

Anna Karenina

To the Lighthouse

On the Road

Happy Reading!

And thank-you Adam's Book Club for being such a big part of my life, Adam's life, and the backbone of the Southern California reading-eating-and-drinking scene.

--Don

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Book Soup: All the Ingredients You Need

Thank you, Book Soup, for hosting our event: TMI: Brutal Honesty, Embarrassing Transgressions and Why We Do This.

Vanessa McGrady read from her brilliant memoir, Rock Needs River, A Memoir About a Very Open Adoption.

Royal Young hosted! Thank you Royal. You need to read his fantastic memoir, Fame Shark.

And there I was, too, with Bent But Not Broken.

With an intro by Book Soup's very own Sarah Bofenkamp!

You can order all our books from Book Soup.

Lots of curious citizens packed themselves in for a great night. We helped each other by reading characters within the stories. We answered questions. And our good friends up the street, Brent and Tim, hosted a party for us afterward. Thank you, guys!

That ends my book tour for the spring. But there's more coming. July 18 at 7:30PM at The Last Bookstore, Sit 'N Spin goes downtown: Summer Session: Books With Benefits.

I will be reading from Bent But Not Broken, along with with Maggie Rowe's Sin Bravely: A Memoir of Spiritual Disobedience, and Jacob Tobia's Sissy: A-Coming-of-Gender-Story, with music by Henry Wolfe.

Buy tickets, because that's how this one is going to go!
(The ticket also gets you your choice of a book.)

Stay sexy and healthy,

Don

Book Soup

Monday, May 06, 2019

Chaucer's Bookstore, Santa Barbara, What a Treat--Book Soup, West Hollywood, Friday, May 10

Thanks to my wonderful publicists, Louise Crawford and Linda Quigley at Brooklyn Social Media, for setting it up, the gracious, talented writer, Mary Hershey, who runs the events and more at Chaucer's, and the hosting superpowers of Vibeke & Joe Weiland and Colleen & Earl Lynch, we all had an enjoyable evening of love, laughter, hope and great questions.

Some pics below for you.

Long live Chaucer's Bookstore!

Buy online, early and often--

Last stop of Spring: Book Soup, Friday, May 10 at 7PM in West Hollywood with Vanessa McGrady and her book Rock Needs River (A Memoir About a Very Open Adoption), hosted by Royal Young, followed by a party just one block away. Details at the bottom. :)

Stay Sexy and Healthy,

And Keep Reading!

Don Cummings

Friday, May 10, 7PM, Book Soup, West Hollywood

RSVP Book Soup