Elin Gregory

I’m delighted to welcome Garrick Jones – author of O, Canada in Manifold Press’s latest anthology Rainbow Bouquet – to my blog today.

Thank you, Garrick, for so kindly answering my questions.

For how long have you been writing?

I retired from an active performing career in 1999, taking up the position as Lecturer in Music at CQUniversity in tropical northern Queensland. Always having been a keen letter writer (remember those days?) and having done three university degrees while performing (two in research) I found academic writing right up my alley. I retired six years ago and started to explore the LGBT literature, finding very little dealing with Australia that wasn’t angstful. While much of it was excellent (Holding The Man, Head On, etc.) there wasn’t anything about gay men and our history, other than non-fiction. So I decided to see what came from my fingers. I happened to run across some very helpful professional writers, who steered me in the right direction. Having my first professional edit was an eye-opener. I suddenly realised it was something I could do, and I haven’t stopped since. I’ve only, in the past seven months had the courage to submit to editors, with a deal of success. What is it about us writers and self-worth?

What attracted you to the brief for Rainbow Bouquet?

I wanted to try my hand at writing a Romance story. Romance is not really my thing; my books have romance in them, usually as a thread throughout the story, but it’s not the focus.

What inspired your story?

A combination of two real-life stories. Canada, because I went there on an exchange program in 1963 at the age of fifteen, and was mesmerised by the handsome airline pilot sitting at the tour desk in the lobby of the Hilton Hawaiian Hotel. He became a fantasy as I gradually grew into my sexuality. The roses? Ah, my wonderful Craig, who remembered every occasion, whether real or imagined with flowers and gentle whispers in my ear.

Please tell me about your current work in progress.

I’m at an interesting crossroads right now. One work ready to go to the editor, another just come back from betas, the third with a theatre historian to check details, and the fourth a book I half-finished over a year ago, but found it too confronting to continue with. I’m currently looking at it to see if I can go on. However, the next book you might see in print is The Cricketer’s Arms, a book beta-read by the wonderful British author, Charlie Cochrane. It’s an old-fashioned, pulp-fiction style detective novel, set in 1956, involving cricket match fixing (and written before the dreadful controversy this time last year, how prescient of me) gang wars, and sex trafficking. It’s a cracker of an action mystery story, even if I say so myself.

Could we see an excerpt?

I’ve attached the first section, with the knowledge that it may not end up word for work in the final version once the glorious Victoria Milne has had her way with it.

I’d just put a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter, typed the date at the top of the page, “Tuesday, 17th of January, 1956,” lit a cigarette, and stretched back while I got the first dozen or so words sorted out in my head, when someone thumped at my front door.
“Who is it?” I called out, as I walked down the hallway.
“It’s me.”
“Fuck off!” I said.
“Come on, Clyde. Open the door. It’s business.”
I turned and leaned against the wall of the hallway, out of sight of the ripple-glass panels of the door, and ran my hand through my hair. I didn’t want him here—not now, not ever. He began to pound at the door, and I began to worry about the neighbours.
“Clyde! I’m not going anywhere. Open the fucking door!”
I strode to the door in a fury, pulled it open, grabbed him by the tie and one lapel of his jacket, and then dragged him into my hallway, slamming the door shut behind us with my foot. Something in the kitchen rattled. We stood for what felt like five minutes, but which could only have been the same number of seconds. But, in those five seconds, I’d inspected every square inch of his face, fought the feeling of his body pressed up against mine, and taken a deep lungful of his breath in my face—he still smelled the same. Damn him.
“Hello, Clyde,” he said, cheekily, and then ran his hands up between mine and forced them apart. I let go of his tie and jacket. He took my cigarette from my mouth and took a puff. “Still smoking this shit?”
“What’s it to you, Sam?”
“You used to call me Sammy, Clyde.”
“You used not be to be an arsehole.”
He laughed in my face. We hadn’t moved, the toes of our shoes touching, our knees the same. I cursed myself inside. I had no self-control. I tried to move away from him, but he grabbed my shirtsleeve.
“Let go,” I growled.
“Or what?”

Where may we follow you online?

Website – https://garrickjones.com.au

Sign up for monthly newsletters about LGBT history, and interviews with well-known authors.

#####

Stories of love in the past, present and future…