Ryan Field Books : "Pretty Man" New Release by Ryan Field; Chris Donohoe and White Privilege; Underpants That Celebrate Men of All Sizes

Sunday, August 12, 2018

"Pretty Man" New Release by Ryan Field; Chris Donohoe and White Privilege; Underpants That Celebrate Men of All Sizes

Pretty Man New Release by Ryan Field

I have a new, but older, release out this week titled, Pretty Man. It was originally published in 2009, and the rights reverted back to me a few months ago. When Riverdale Avenue Books asked if they could publish it, of course I said yes.

This time I wrote an introduction to the book, explaining why I wrote it the way I did back then. In just about 10 years time a good deal has changed, and I thought readers might be curious about how things were 10 years ago. We also wanted to release this book now because the new play, Pretty Woman, is hitting Broadway very soon. This way gay people get a story they can relate to as well.

In any event, here's the blurb, and I'll post the introduction below at the end of this post.

Roland Marcus—rich, handsome and pushing 40—is still not over the fact that his 20-year relationship has ended, and desperately needs someone to distract him while he attends a bevvy of charity events in New York. With all eyes upon him, including his ex’s (who left him for a younger man), Roland accidentally bumps into a hot young guy in a used book store…a strapping male hustler whom he decides to hire for one week to accompany him to his social events. He offers him $5,000, with no strings attached, to just stand by his side and look pretty.

Josh Holden, a young guy who is helping to support his son and saving money to buy a business with his best friend and ex-wife, is only too happy to escort Roland anywhere he wants to go that week. And he’s not doing it just for the money…

Roland learns in less than a week’s time that his future can still hold both earth-shattering sex and a love of real substance.

And you can check it out, here, on Amazon.

Chris Donohoe and White Privilege

As I've been predicting all along, these discussions (in general about white privilege, gay and straight) are going to be popping up everywhere in the near future. And I think that's because so many people don't understand what white privilege is. This is about the guy, Chris Donohoe, who was asked to leave a swimming pool because of his speedo. I posted about him earlier this week.

In his anger over his treatment at the Wynn’s pool, Donohoe suggested he’s not quite the gay Rosa Parks he seems to think he is when he said: “I’m a white guy and I have power in society and I still feel completely powerless.”

Um, what?

It's a very well written, thoughtful piece that might give you some insight, and you can read the rest here.

Underpants That Celebrate Men of All Sizes

I follow a photographer on Instagram who is always posting sexy photos of men of all sizes. He doesn't just post photos of perfect men with perfect bodies who spend most of their day at the gym. And this photographer has a huge following because of his photos. Gay men of all ages seem to be more attracted to not so perfect bodies than they are to perfect bodies. In fact, I'm starting to think that stereotype of the perfect male body is becoming tired and cliche. It's also losing a lot of its sex appeal.

So this is nice to see for a change.

Surge is a new a UK-based underwear brand that just launched last week, and they’ve got a message for the world: sexy out model/Instastud Austin Armacost may be the face of the underwear’s debut campaign, but their underpants are for everyone.

Here's the link. There's a fantastic photo with men of all sizes in the underwear.

Introduction: Pretty Man by Ryan Field

Anyone who grew up as an LGBT person during the 20^th Century saw little or no LGBT content in books, movies, or television. If there was LGBT content, it was either a mockery or a highly emotional serious dramatization that left us in tears. There were no gay romances with happy endings. There were no gay characters living happy lives. Even though we craved stories like this, and we looked for them everywhere, the best we could do was fantasize about heteronormative romances with happy endings and dream about what they might be like if there were LGBT characters. And even though Pretty Man is a gay male romance, I’m including everyone that falls under the LGBT umbrella, including people who are asexual. The general LGBT content simply was not there.

So when a romance publisher asked me to rework the Pretty Woman storyline into a gay romance with gay male characters, I took the project on because I’d always wanted to see something like that done. I didn’t know until much later that many other people wanted that, too. I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that a portion of Pretty Man is a parody of Pretty Woman. But it’s more than that. If you remove the erotica, the story line itself is the classic Cinderella trope. It’s been done many times, in many different ways, but never with two gay characters that actually meet and fall in love just like heteronormative characters meet and fall in love. There are certain differences that had to be taken into account with respect to the way two gay characters interact, but they weren’t dramatic differences either.

And now new generation of LGBT people can read or see a story line with LGBT characters at least once in a while. The most important factor for me was a happy ending. But there’s still a long way to go, and my hope has always been that a book like Pretty Man would give LGBT readers something with the happy ending they’ve always craved.

On Amazon