Green Fairy

• What's Green Fairy about?

  Here's the back cover blurb:

  If Sol can just survive his last year of high school, he can escape his homophobic small town and go live with his Internet boyfriend for the summer. But when he loses his starting spot on the baseball team and converts to vegetarianism--a wolf, giving up meat!--his father threatens him with a hot, muggy summer working in the peach cannery unless he gets his act together. His teammates, who suspect his sexuality already, won't make it easy for him. But even with nobody on his side but his best friend Meg (who is even less popular than he is), the teenager finds answers and solace in an unlikely place: a 1901 book about a tragic gay romance in the bohemian district of Lutèce, around the famed Moulin Rouge. Inspired by the spirit of the era, Meg and Sol share a glass of absinthe, with startling effect: Sol begins to dream that he is a cabaret dancer named Niki, offered a chance to escape his difficult life through romance--at the price of his beloved art of dance.

  When the dreams seep into his waking life, Sol adds "going crazy" to his worries, and the problems of a couple that lived a hundred years ago to the ever-growing list of his own. To save both Niki and himself, Sol will have to learn the difference between reality and illusion, and discover what love and life mean to him.

• Why are you releasing it at FWA?

  Furry Weekend Atlanta invited me last year to be a Guest of Honor in 2012, and since they don't have a con book for me to contribute a story to, I figured I would write them a book. I wanted it to somehow meld modern-day Georgia and their con's theme, which is the Moulin Rouge, and that combination proved inspirational.

• How did you get Rukis to do the art?

  Rukis and I have admired each other's work for a while and have been looking for a project to work on together. Since she is the other Guest of Honor at FWA, it seemed like the perfect fit, and fortunately she was able to make room in her schedule for it.

• How is this book similar to or different from your other work?

  There's one big difference: this book is a PG-13 book--maybe a light R--as there are no explicit scenes in it. There is sex, but it's mostly mentioned in past tense or elided over with a short non-explicit summary ("It was rough, and not very pleasant."). Otherwise, the book is very similar in theme and structure, though it is a bit more experimental. Where I often shift between two protagonists, here I have three, all with different voices and viewpoints. I think thematically this book is pretty similar to "Waterways," in which a young man (wolf, in this case) has to figure out his place in the world, with the added burden of being gay. But it does have a supernatural element to it, stronger than most other stories I've written.

• Is there going to be a sequel?

  Depends on how well the book does, but I have an idea for a continuing story I would like to write, so yes, hopefully.