What to do when your family wants to see your novel but you can't really show them...

For your next book, you can name all of your flamboyantly flaming, gay-pride characters after the most vocal of your detractors. Sort of a personal version of Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso trilogy But instead of making fun of local politicians, you can set your sights even closer to home

Not that I am saying you should do that. Just that it might possibly be extra fun to make old Uncle Bob into a caricature of a figure skating, sequined jumpsuit-wearing, lithping, hairdrether. And don't make him awesome. No...

Make him FAB-ulous.

 

Interesting idea. And it never crossed my mind either to maybe have my MC go to a gay organization where I could put a few gay men bearing the proper names... hmmm...

 

Have their LGBT meetings at Westboro Community Center or some such . At the very least you would chortle your brand-new evil laugh many, many times.

The angrier my family would get, the gayer their character would be. "Sorry Uncle Bob, your character just got a Pride Parade named after him because of the message you left on my answering machine last week... Now you gotta ask yourself, 'Do I really want to keep calling JetBlackGT's friends all those derogatory names?' because the parade float still needs a pudgy, hairy-backed someone to wear only the leather testicle cuffs and a thin, black policeman's hat. Should your character wear a 'Hello Kitty!' tattoo? Perhaps, on his lower back?"

My [limited... cough] experience with people who can't stand me is that it works best if I encourage them to simply wish to never contact me. Ever. I'm sure they occasionally deride me and all of my ancestors, to anyone who will listen, after my name comes up, but that's okay. By then, most other people would have read the scandalous, tongue-in-cheek book and thought... I think I found Uncle Bob!