Entering the world in 1961, four days after John F. Kennedy was sworn into office, I began my life in New Orleans. Twenty years later, I moved away from Louisiana and onto Minnesota, where I eventually found myself in Saint Louis Park, a western suburb of Minneapolis.
Growing up in New Orleans sounds cool, but the city epitomizes the tired old cliché: it’s a great place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. The summertime heat and humidity are oppressive, and don’t get me started about hurricanes. Then there are the people, who can be downright hateful. I don’t belong to many New Orleans oriented social media groups for this reason. A major reason I’ll never live there again is the Upstairs Lounge Fire of 1973 and the city’s response to it. Even now, fifty years later, people still shut down if you even bring it up.
I come from a large Catholic family. There are six siblings, ranging in age from my brother Bill to me. Most of us grew up Republican, though the 2016 election caused us to drift apart. Thankfully I live far away, in liberal region miles from them and close enough to Canada for safety. We lost Dad to brain cancer in 1986. Mom passed away in 2022 after living a long and mostly happy life.
I'm the youngest of my siblings and I’ll likely be their “baby brother” for the rest of their lives. We’re arranged by age order in this picture: my eldest brother Bill (1950), then Gerald (1952), John (1955), twins Martha and Mary (1957), and finally me. Growing up was hard for me: My siblings walked all over me because I was the youngest, and my parents did nothing to discourage them. Kids at school laughed at my last name, Butts. You can bet I heard every single joke related to it. When I was in sixth grade, they learned a new name to call me: faggot. But I persevered and grew up. People who hated my guts in school are Facebook friends now.
I basically ran away from home, though I was 20 at the time, and ended up in Minneapolis. Through a series of bad decisions, I ended up homeless. It was a struggle to rise above poverty and involved forging alliances with other homeless people and pooling our resources. By the time I was 25, I had rebuilt my life.
I’ve worked in a variety of occupations. I trained as a typesetter for a rubber stamp manufacturer in Minneapolis before starting my own newspaper in 1992. I temped for many offices before finally landing a job in middle management at Wells Fargo, hands-down the most gay-friendly company I have ever worked for. I retired in 2007 because of my disabilities, and am currently living happily ever after with my roommate Jim Dayton. We’ve lived together since 1994, and I must constantly explain to people that he is neither my husband (
oh god no; he talks in his sleep) nor is he related to the filthy rich Dayton family that includes former governor Mark Dayton.
Since my retirement, I have battled many disabilities. In 1992, I was diagnosed as HIV positive, and in 2005, I officially had full-blown AIDS as a result of pneumocystis pneumonia. I also fought anal cancer and Hodgkin's lymphoma, which I was able to beat. I am living with COPD and hypertension, and avascular necrosis in my hips has confined me to a wheelchair. But this experience has only strengthened me. Even after coming close to death several times, like a Jehovah's Witness at the door, I remain undeterred.
It was once I retired that my real life began, and I embraced my identity as a writer.
Writing had been my passion ever since I first gained the ability to read. My first attempt was called The Flying Rabbit, which I wrote as a five-year-old. However, Hurricane Katrina probably destroyed any copies that remain. I improved my storytelling during high school by creating Hardy Boys-style detective stories featuring people from my school. After attending my first “con” and discovering science fiction fandom, I started writing fan fiction mainly based on Space: 1999. To this day, I’m semi-active in fandom and quite notorious for an argument I got into with the late Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman Rand from Star Trek) called me “an abomination” — to my face — because of her homophobic beliefs.
It took half a century for the dream to come true. My debut novel,
Grunch Road, was released in 2011 and uses a spooky legend from the early days of New Orleans as its basis. I loved my protagonist so much that I ended up writing four books about him while he was in college.
University of the Damned is set between 1972 and 1976 in the local area, containing lots of references to real historical events, including the Upstairs Lounge Fire of 1973, the Pascagoula UFO abduction, and the New Orleans district attorney being named Harry Connick (Sr.)
Nick Eismann and I had a good run but I decided to move on and write something else. I needed something different, something more. That's when I discovered gay romance novels. They opened up a whole new world for me, thanks to writers like
Tal Bauer and
Jay Bell. My debut gay-themed novel,
Love at Second Sight, revolves around a young gay telepath in Minneapolis who gets attacked and uses his abilities to seek justice against the perpetrators. The story takes place shortly after the Supreme Court decision that made same-sex marriage legal across the United States. A lot of my friends have told me they really enjoyed it; if only they’d post those reviews on Amazon!
My work is often influenced by politics and sociology, from the political scandal of Watergate to the conservative “don’t say gay” policies that make Florida a little too close to an Orwellian nightmare. My most recent book, Teach Me To Fly, follows a young Floridian boy whose mother moves him to Minnesota to escape all the craziness.
I've self-published all my books through Amazon, which hasn’t held back my ambitions. Take Andy Weir's The Martian, for example; it was a self-published novel that became an instant bestseller and a major motion picture! Money doesn’t drive me; I’m just in this for the storytelling and the chance to bring a bit of joy to people’s lives with a happy ending or two. 😉
