I was/am a big fan of Patricia Nell Warren having read all her books.
In the 1980s I met her at a Gay Pride festival and after an interesting talk she agreed to meet me for dinner later on and it was really a fascinating evening talking (believe it or not I listened more than I talked!) and to my surprise I received the photo above about a week later.
Sadly she died but her great books will be read forever!
FROM RICARDO:
To my family and friends, my new book is out and available to everyone. You can click on the ink below to purchase.
I want to thank you all for your love and support in this project.
Some of your names are written in the thank you section of the book.
My goal in this book was to explore solutions to achieve peace, love, and success.
Writing a book is exhausting but satisfactory way to accomplish what you feel you need to accomplish.
In the mid 1980s I met, was interviewed and eventually quoted quite a bit in an excellent book by George Chauncey called “Gay New York 1890-1940” and which I always recommend to anyone who knows very little about gay life or those who think they know a lot about gay life.
I consider myself an expert in 3 fields: one being MY life, another about weight problems of all sorts and gay life through all my experiences in it for over 65 years. I have observed, seen and participated in gay life in New York, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee—well 49 out of 50 States plus Mexico, Central America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, the Caribbean, Canada, etc.
In the past two weeks I have read comments by two people who think they know it all but know nothing. One based her comments on knowing, maybe, 4 gay men, while another who thinks she is an expert on everything really knows very little about gay men, what they think, know and want. Oh yes there is also the one who lives in my complex who is married to a self hating gay alcoholic who enables them to justify why they are together when she doesn’t have a clue.
I have had 8 books published of which 3 dealt with my ‘fat’ before and after and after story (yes, two afters!), 2 which dealt with my 4 live in relationships, one which was a series of essays before I learned what blogs were and the other were books dealing with motivation and/or cookbooks. All were a labor of love and my last two were polished by the great and late LadyeSparks, an editor only a writer can dream of and, justifiably, used her red pen on me!
I, also, wrote and had a play produced which was a big failure and a screenplay of that play which was made and disappeared after the week it opened.
After reading the comments referred to above I decided to write about the gay life I have lived and observed since I came out in 1948 and up to the present day and my involvement physically, mentally, emotionally, politically and what I see are the main differences between the gay youth (anyone under 50!) of today to the gay youth of yesterday, which includes gay ‘marriage’ which I am against the model it is based on and don’t see as the end all, be all, of the gay equal rights fight. I’ll write about gay couples who follow the failing template of nongay marriages and will wind up becoming statistics of failure like they have.
I’ll respond to women who think they know how men—gay or nongay—think about sex, sexuality and women. I’ll write about what it means to be gay in 1948 and in 2017 and how similar it still is and the few, very few, differences that have taken place.
Writing a book is a very disciplined exercise for me including a certain amount of time doing research plus a certain amount of time actually writing and then the, for me, dreaded, rewriting.
There is also the legal aspect because ‘name dropping’ might be involved if I want to be honest, which I do, and I have, in 2 cases, promised not to name names though they and most of their relatives have died—ah, one of the advantages of being old.
Right now the aim is to write a 350-400 page book and, after a little ‘sweet talking’, signing my life away but most of all pleading, to get Nina Pettis of Nina Proofs to take that dreaded red pencil to my pages!
I have given myself a deadline of December 2017 to finish writing the first draft!
I started writing when I was 10 and knew I wanted to be a writer when I won a writing contest at 12–I wrote an essay for the contest “Why Bing Crosby Is My Favorite Singer”–he wasn’t– (don’t worry kids if you haven’t heard of him–he was an Oscar winning actor, a shrewd real estate guy an world renown singer with one his big hits being “White Christmas”) and being a winner I won a Bing Crosby shirt! It was so easy I figured writing would be my career.
Long story short–I have had 8 books published–the last two self-published–a play produced–one performance–BUT it was made into a movie for which I got a nice sum. I don’t talk about the play or movie! Over the years I have written many articles for newspapers, magazines, untold amount letters to the editor and for awhile I was writing columns for 3 different local papers one being a dining column, another essays for the largest gay newspaper at the time in Fort Lauderdale and the third a gay bar guide for South Florida. Currently I am writing reviews of touring Broadway shows that play in Fort Lauderdale and Miami for broadwayshowbiz.com
When I was working for/with Weight Watchers and when I opened my own organization called Our Weigh I wrote cookbooks, motivational books and each organization’s monthly newspaper.
With all this, except for the 10 years in the weight reduction field, I didn’t make a living writing but being a professional waiter, which I really loved doing but more about that another time.
When it came to writing I always wrote too much and that’s what the next part is about!
