Title: Waited So Long
Author: JM Dabney
Genre: M/M Romance, Daddy Kink
Release Date: June 18, 2019
Cover Design: JM Dabney
Cover Model: Caylan Hughes
Cover Photographer: Golden Czermak/Furious Fotog
What happens when your best friend’s son comes home and he’s all grown up?
Devon Hoffman has a secret. He’s wanted a Daddy all his own, but when you’re pushing fifty, you’re completely over the hill. Newly divorced and trying to be single again after an almost thirty-year relationship, he’s lost and needs someone to ground him. Except he’s anxious and his depression intensifies until Bern returns after leaving the service and the younger man suddenly takes an interest. Can he let his guard down and risk losing his best friend or should he do whatever is needed to keep his secret safe?
I locked myself in my house and went to take care of emails and study my itinerary. I could retire, but what would I do with myself? At least work kept me busy. It distracted me from the loneliness. I worked because I had nothing left.
I took a seat at my drafting table as I worked on the new design for my client. His steel monstrosity would clash with everything around the building. It was a showpiece that had no more value than broadcasting his wealth. Once again, my brain went back to wondering if it was time to retire, maybe working for myself, but I felt I was too old to start over. All I felt was doubt and insecurity.
When I was younger, I’d felt confident and fearless. Every day was ripe with possibility, and now I weighed everything by what was expected of me. I felt as if my life was over with; I wasn’t even fifty and hopelessness weighted me down. When I looked in the mirror, I could only see what I was and not what I could be. That, out of all the recent events, was the hardest reality to accept. I viewed myself through a skewed lens Lawrence had shaped.
My fantasies were still a cause of shame just as they were for the past thirty years. I’d forbidden myself from demanding what I wanted because what would people think when they knew the real me. The person who existed beneath the façade. The respectable architect in a small suburb who was just a shadow of his former self.
I was a middle-aged man with silver-streaked hair and a belly, who dreamed of the impossible. I tossed my pencil aside and got up. My mind wasn’t in it, so a shower and early to bed. Tomorrow was a new day.
I took a seat at my drafting table as I worked on the new design for my client. His steel monstrosity would clash with everything around the building. It was a showpiece that had no more value than broadcasting his wealth. Once again, my brain went back to wondering if it was time to retire, maybe working for myself, but I felt I was too old to start over. All I felt was doubt and insecurity.
When I was younger, I’d felt confident and fearless. Every day was ripe with possibility, and now I weighed everything by what was expected of me. I felt as if my life was over with; I wasn’t even fifty and hopelessness weighted me down. When I looked in the mirror, I could only see what I was and not what I could be. That, out of all the recent events, was the hardest reality to accept. I viewed myself through a skewed lens Lawrence had shaped.My fantasies were still a cause of shame just as they were for the past thirty years. I’d forbidden myself from demanding what I wanted because what would people think when they knew the real me. The person who existed beneath the façade. The respectable architect in a small suburb who was just a shadow of his former self.
I was a middle-aged man with silver-streaked hair and a belly, who dreamed of the impossible. I tossed my pencil aside and got up. My mind wasn’t in it, so a shower and early to bed. Tomorrow was a new day.
Most authors have a favorite character they've written, which of your's is one that never seems to quite leave your thoughts or heart?
I get asked this question a lot and the answer hasn’t changed even though I’ve written a dozen or more stories since, but Harper from Ghost (Executioners 1). The partial I wrote for her story was several years old before I found the perfect partner for her. Her HEA needed to be just right. The hell Harper survived made the worthiness of who I paired her with extremely important to me. Ghost built her up, showed her she could stand on her own, and that her pain had only strengthened her. In Japan there’s a process called Kintsugi, where pottery is fixed with powdered gold. It’s made more beautiful and unique by the seams of gold. Every character I write is special, because I write them with the same philosophy, Even the Broken are Beautiful.
If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
This is a tough one, but short answer would be that I could write whatever I wanted. That I’d find my happiness by writing outside the norm and readers would need stories about characters that looked like them. Who had the same troubles and that they could be any shape, size or shade. Needed to see that no one should settle for love that’s less than a hundred percent.
As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?
I would say a Sphinx Cat. They are evil cute, and always look cranky. I always say it’s like me in cat form. At least once a month I talk myself out of finding one just so I could be an evil villain as I torture my characters. But I haven’t really put much thought into it.
In films/television many scenes end up on the cutting room floor for dozens of reasons, once you/publisher hit "print/upload" do you find many scenes "left behind"? If yes, do you keep them as website/blog extras or do you forget and/or delete them?
I always see authors who have deleted scenes and I never have them, I’m the opposite. During rewrites I usually add chapters. When I write, I work my stories by breaking them down into chapters. By the end of the first draft it’s the bare minimum and when I go into rewrites I add several scenes or chapters, I continue to add until I send it off to my editor and even beyond that. I’m very much have a less is more belief system during the first draft process. After I’ve written the rough I feel that I know my characters enough to add the details in the following rounds. To me I find it odd when scenes are deleted, I always feel that if it was there I wrote it for a reason.
Is there a book from your childhood/teen years that influenced you as both a reader and a writer? Perhaps not influenced so much but no matter how old you get you'll always have a copy in your bookcase?
I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was eight and I wrote the worst poem in literary history. It wasn’t until my early teens that I figured out what kind of writer I wanted to be. The story that stuck with me was Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. He was one of the members of the Beat Generation along with Ginsberg, Kesey, Kerouac, and Cassidy just to mention a few. There was a grittiness and insanity to it. It was the first time I recognized Queer characters in a book. It was fearless and a fuck you to the establishment.
Something in me wanted to be that fearless to write what I wanted. To not care that I wouldn’t conform to some standard or formula. I wanted to make people feel and find acceptance. After Naked Lunch I read everything from him and the rest of the Beat Generation. Today none of those books would fly, the frenetic pace and lack of modern editing. The coarse language and the subject matter, but it made me realize that I wanted to be a storyteller that made people think and view themselves differently. That you didn’t have to be conform to the status quo to be acceptable - that being different wasn’t a sin.
I get asked this question a lot and the answer hasn’t changed even though I’ve written a dozen or more stories since, but Harper from Ghost (Executioners 1). The partial I wrote for her story was several years old before I found the perfect partner for her. Her HEA needed to be just right. The hell Harper survived made the worthiness of who I paired her with extremely important to me. Ghost built her up, showed her she could stand on her own, and that her pain had only strengthened her. In Japan there’s a process called Kintsugi, where pottery is fixed with powdered gold. It’s made more beautiful and unique by the seams of gold. Every character I write is special, because I write them with the same philosophy, Even the Broken are Beautiful.
If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
This is a tough one, but short answer would be that I could write whatever I wanted. That I’d find my happiness by writing outside the norm and readers would need stories about characters that looked like them. Who had the same troubles and that they could be any shape, size or shade. Needed to see that no one should settle for love that’s less than a hundred percent.
As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?
I would say a Sphinx Cat. They are evil cute, and always look cranky. I always say it’s like me in cat form. At least once a month I talk myself out of finding one just so I could be an evil villain as I torture my characters. But I haven’t really put much thought into it.
In films/television many scenes end up on the cutting room floor for dozens of reasons, once you/publisher hit "print/upload" do you find many scenes "left behind"? If yes, do you keep them as website/blog extras or do you forget and/or delete them?
I always see authors who have deleted scenes and I never have them, I’m the opposite. During rewrites I usually add chapters. When I write, I work my stories by breaking them down into chapters. By the end of the first draft it’s the bare minimum and when I go into rewrites I add several scenes or chapters, I continue to add until I send it off to my editor and even beyond that. I’m very much have a less is more belief system during the first draft process. After I’ve written the rough I feel that I know my characters enough to add the details in the following rounds. To me I find it odd when scenes are deleted, I always feel that if it was there I wrote it for a reason.
Is there a book from your childhood/teen years that influenced you as both a reader and a writer? Perhaps not influenced so much but no matter how old you get you'll always have a copy in your bookcase?
I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was eight and I wrote the worst poem in literary history. It wasn’t until my early teens that I figured out what kind of writer I wanted to be. The story that stuck with me was Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. He was one of the members of the Beat Generation along with Ginsberg, Kesey, Kerouac, and Cassidy just to mention a few. There was a grittiness and insanity to it. It was the first time I recognized Queer characters in a book. It was fearless and a fuck you to the establishment.
Something in me wanted to be that fearless to write what I wanted. To not care that I wouldn’t conform to some standard or formula. I wanted to make people feel and find acceptance. After Naked Lunch I read everything from him and the rest of the Beat Generation. Today none of those books would fly, the frenetic pace and lack of modern editing. The coarse language and the subject matter, but it made me realize that I wanted to be a storyteller that made people think and view themselves differently. That you didn’t have to be conform to the status quo to be acceptable - that being different wasn’t a sin.
J.M. Dabney is a multi-genre author who writes mainly LGBT romance and fiction. They live with a constant diverse cast of characters in their head. No matter their size, shape, race, etc. J.M. lives for one purpose alone, and that’s to make sure they do them justice and give them the happily ever after they deserve. J.M. is dysfunction at its finest and they makes sure their characters are a beautiful kaleidoscope of crazy. There is nothing more they want from telling their stories than to show that no matter the package the characters come in or the damage their pasts have done, that love is love. That normal is never normal and sometimes the so-called broken can still be amazing.
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CRIMINAL DELIGHTS WEBSITE
PINTEREST / HOSTILE WHISPERS FB
B&N / HOSTILE WHISPERS TWITTER
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