Thursday, 25 March 2021

Beta readers ...

 


I'm looking for a couple beta readers for Leaving Wonderland (50,000 words).  What you're in for;

  • Espionage thriller with fast paced action
  • Well researched spy techniques and lexicon
  • A love story that is awkward and mysterious
  • Frequent forays into the LGBTQ+ community
  • Cis/trans love scenes
What I would like from you;
  • Feedback on the novel; the good, the bad, the ugly
  • Opinions from the LGBTQ+ community to see if I 'got it right'
  • Review comments I can use on the back cover and inside jacket
I can send the finished novel as a .epub, .mobi, pdf.  If you're interested, hit me up at aaron@gangsterstory.ca (copy/paste) or through my website.

Aaron D McClelland
Penticton, BC

Tuesday, 16 March 2021

Fugue ...


His home fluctuated in size at times.

Tonight it was so expansive that he'd gotten lost in it.  He walked long corridors that led to empty rooms, studs and beams exposed, plaster and lath of the ceilings below requiring him to walk as a tightrope walker walks, balanced on the narrow edges of the floor joists below.  He knew if he brought his weight down on the lath he would plunge through it and fall for eternity.

He picked his careful way through the windowless maze, passing through doorways that led ever deeper into this foreign house, now his prison.

Where is Lauren?

At other times, the house shrunk around him until all that remained was his kitchen and his bedroom, both rooms becoming so small that it felt like the walls were closing in, the doors and windows shrinking to a size impossible to pass through.

Both iterations held him prisoner.

Where am I?


"Nest of the Coquatrix"


Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Tuesday, 9 March 2021

New Covers ...






I've redesigned the covers of the Gangster series.

https://www.amazon.com/Aaron-D-McClelland/e/B07HLLSJXD

Monday, 8 March 2021

Transgender Realities ...

 


In my most recently completed novel, Leaving Wonderland, one of my main characters is a male-to-female transgendered Mossad Officer - (it's an espionage thriller with an unconventional love story).  I'd always wanted to include a trans character in a piece, and did so in my short story Royal & Rene, and I enjoyed the love story between the pair so much I used them for Leaving Wonderland.  I even included a couple steamy love scenes that needed to be there to drive the story forward.


There still exists so much ignorance about the T in LGBTQ, that I want to do my part to support them.  As a mental health therapist I have worked with transgendered adolescents and found them to be no different than others in their particular gender basket.  But don't take my word for it ...


Research

Since the advent of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine, neuroscience has expanded its scope of understanding.  By stimulating the brain with sights, sounds, and tactical experiences during a fMRI scan, researches can watch in realtime how the brain functions.  What they discovered was there are subtle differences between male and female brains, not just in their function, but in their structure as well.  Researchers at facilities around the world got so good at this they can look at an fMRI scan and tell you if the patient is male or female.


A few years ago, some of these research facilities started to look at the brains of transgendered people and what they discovered was what trans people have been trying to tell us for years; it is the brain that determines gender, NOT the genitals.


My own observations about transgendered children and youth is that the emergence of their gender identity begins shortly after they achieve theory of mind.  Typically at five years old, trans children will begin to tell their parents and others they are a girl or a boy, NOT the gender assigned to them at birth.  At that age thoughts of sexuality can be excluded, so we are left with a child speaking of their identity.


Be Accepting and Kind

Imagine living in a world that rejects and vilifies you simply for being who you are.  Being surrounded by people who mock the core of your identity, and label your very existence as 'wrong'.


The suicide statistics amongst unsupported transgendered adolescents are shocking; 19% of trans teens had seriously considered suicide, 15% had made a plan to commit suicide, 8% had attempted suicide and 2.5% had been injured by a suicide attempt.  Amongst transgendered adolescents these rates drop by 40% if they are accepted and supported by a single adult and drop exponentially the more they are surrounded by caring adults.


We have never lived in a totally binary world and it's time to accept and embrace that.  I urge my fellow authors to include transgendered characters in their stories.  Its pretty simple; just write them the way you'd write any other male or female character.


If we make this our normal, the world will follow.


Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website


Thursday, 4 March 2021

First time for everything ...


 Nest of the Coquatrix contains many firsts for me.
  • It's my first psychological horror as we follow psychologist Doctor Nigel Blason feel his mind slowly come apart
  • It's the first book I've ever written a complete outline for; the setting, the build, the evolving relationships between colleagues and patients
  • It's the first book that 3/4 of the way to completion I completely changed the ending and had to return to page one
  • It's the first book I've written without a love story in it.  There was no room for that in this
  • It's the first book which doesn't have a 'good-guy'.  There are no heroes in this story nor really are there any villains
  • Lastly; it's the first story I've written that will come with a strong warning.  This isn't a novel for the faint of heart.  It deals with a dark fetish subculture that most people are not familiar with and I'm thankful for that.  Even I have cringed as I write some of the scenes and if you are easily triggered I promise it will give you nightmares

Coquatrix: (kä-kɘ-trɘs) - a mythical serpent with lethal breath and gaze, whose nest can be located by the scorched earth surrounding it; a cockatrice, it was said, could only be slain by seeing its reflection in a mirror

Think; American Psycho meets The Sixth Sense.

You get the picture.

Aaron D McClelland
Penticton, BC

Dead Tomcat

  The shivering gooseflesh that trilled up his back was fading as Devil drove quickly to the Adams house on Clinker Avenue. It was the part ...