{"id":1625,"date":"2012-04-21T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2012-04-21T19:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/?p=1625"},"modified":"2012-04-21T12:54:36","modified_gmt":"2012-04-21T19:54:36","slug":"lola-dances-by-victor-j-banis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/lola-dances-by-victor-j-banis\/","title":{"rendered":"Lola Dances by Victor J. Banis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m thrilled to have Victor J. Banis as a guest here today. He is a household name in gay fiction, author of over 150 books, even some het romance under a pen name! Here’s how one of my favorites, <\/em>Lola Dances<\/strong>, came about. Even if you think you don’t like historicals, you should not miss it!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A few years back, I was reading a piece about how tough life was in the old gold-mining camps for women, and I found myself thinking, \u201cYes, I\u2019m sure it was \u2013 but how much tougher must it have been for a gay boy? Say, a gay boy who liked to dress as a woman?\u201d<\/p>\n

I thought at the time that there was an interesting story there, but I didn\u2019t think I was the one to write it. For one thing, I know next to nothing about cross-dressing. And, anyway, who would buy it. Gay fiction and m\/m fiction is generally about big, gorgeous studs, and the young man in my mind was little, effeminate even. A sissy, to put it bluntly.<\/p>\n

Still, the idea wouldn\u2019t go away. It bugged me and bugged me. I even had a title\u2014Lola Dances. One scene in particular\u2014when the young man finally discovers his alter ego in a dress\u2014kept playing itself over and over in my mind, until finally, thinking maybe once I\u2019d written that down, the ghost would go away and leave me alone, I sat down and wrote the transformation scene in which Terry Murphy becomes, for the first time, Lola Valdez. But, for Terry, this is about far more than just donning a dress and dancing for the miners. This is a young man who has been abused, used by others for their selfish pleasure, the butt of a lifetime of jokes\u2014and, \u201cfor the first time in his life, Terry knew love, felt it sweep over him in great waves from those cheering, clapping shouting men\u2014all their loneliness, all the grubbiness of their lives in this dismal place, their affection and desire, their excitement, coalesced into a great bubble of happiness that enveloped Terry, and that it almost seemed he could float away in.\u201d<\/p>\n

At which point, I was hooked\u2014because of course, I had been wrong all along, this wasn\u2019t about cross dressing, it was about yearning for love, about the need for it, the need for acceptance. Something we all of us have in common.<\/p>\n

I finished the book, and sent it to MLR Press, and happily the publisher, Laura Baumbach, loved it immediately, and published it, and I\u2019m happy to say that plenty of others have come to love my little Terry and lovely Lola.
\nIt is a book that \u00a0holds a special place in my heart.<\/p>\n

Buy a copy from MLR<\/a><\/p>\n

Visit Victor online at his website.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m thrilled to have Victor J. Banis as a guest here today. He is a household name in gay fiction, author of over 150 books, even some het romance under a pen name! Here’s how one of my favorites, Lola Dances, came about. Even if you think you don’t like historicals, you should not miss […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,63],"tags":[254,280,271,281],"class_list":["post-1625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event","category-guest-posting","tag-backlist-strikes-back","tag-historical","tag-mlr-press","tag-victor-j-banis"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pzLgx-qd","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emlynley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}