WadeRouse.com - Blog

Tips On Writing

2012-02-16T09:42:00.000-08:00

Wanna know how I started writing?
I made the horrific mistake at my rural middle school talent contest of singing Delta Dawn (while holding a faded rose, mind you) to a crowd that made the boys from Deliverance look like the Walton brothers. I was booed offstage.
I ran, stage left, directly at my mother and began to yell. “How could you let me humiliate myself like that?”
“You were only being true to yourself,” she said. “And no one should ever stand in the way of such honesty, or such fearlessness.”
She then presented me with a little, leather writing journal and a copy of Erma Bombeck’s “At Wit’s End” and said, “You will need both of these to make sense of your world.”
Writing– and humor – not only helped me make sense of the world but they saved my life.
I quickly learned, however, that writers – all artists really – aren’t ever really given the OK to write, or to create, no matter how much it means to their very existence. And, because of that, most artists start scared, defined not by inspiration but by fear.
Story time again.
Roughly eight years ago, I began writing my first memoir, America’s Boy. Check that: I
actually started it as a novel, as I was too afraid to tell my own story of growing up in the Ozarks. Luckily, I had a muse, an editor, a critic and a believer in the form of my partner, Gary. After reading what I had written, he said: “It sounds nothing like you.” I was crushed. But it was just what I needed to hear.
And so I started over, eventually visiting my family cabin and writing by long hand what would turn out to be the first chapter of America’s Boy while seated on a stoop with my feet in an Ozarks creek.
There was a point – finally, a point – as I sat with my feet in the creek when I was simply writing. Not thinking, writing. Writing as I had – before fear – when my mom gave me that writing journal.
And everything simply clicked. My voice, my humor, my tone, my narrative flowed from my soul. I wasn’t writing any longer. I was my writing. The transition from Wade the person to Wade the writer was seamless.
It came because I finally was able to overcome those fears that had shackled me my whole life:

What would people think?

Did I have the right to tell my story?

What if people hated what I wrote?

Am I good enough?

No one can make it as an author, right? What if I fail?

Who the hell do I think I am, calling myself “a writer”?

For a while, these fears paralyzed me again.
I made the decision – without Gary’s knowledge – to reach out to a number of authors I admired, whose work I loved. I wasn’t asking for a hand-out, or a connection, I was seeking the simplest of things: A response. A single line. “It’s gonna be OK, kid.” “You can do it, Wade.” They didn’t even have to mean it. I just needed to know that they had once been like me.
I just needed to know that it was OK to keep going.
That there was no “golden key to the kingdom.”
I got zero responses.
And, that’s when it hit me: Rather than be paralyzed by my fear, I decided to believe in my writing, I believed I could change the world.
I realized that all published writers were once unpublished writers.
I realized that writers are like babies taking their first steps: You have to do it by yourself, but it helps a whole lot to have someone helping you along the way.
I finished my memoir, I spent months editing it until I was moving around commas, and I did my homework. I spent months writing my query. I spent months researching agents. I spent months believing in myself, even though it seemed no one else – besides Gary and my mom – did.
One week after submitting 15 query letters to agents I admired, I had received seven offers to read my manuscript. Less than a week after that, I had three formal offers of representation.
I believe that if you have a unique voice, discernable talent, an incredible work ethic, amazing professionalism, skin of steel, a heart of equal parts stone, empathy and love, and a feeling that if you aren’t writing, you may just curl up and die – then you can make it as an author.
I believe that if you just want to write, without a goal of being published – to write a family history, to diary for yourself, to become a more powerful business writer – that you need a hearty, “YES! Good for you! Go for it!”
And that’s why I formed Wade’s Writers, and why I hold writing workshops. I am the guy who got no response and became a bestseller. I am the guy who decided if he ever had any level of success, he would attempt to help other emerging writers.
So here I am.
I can’t make you write. But I do think I can make you a better writer. More importantly, I can give you tools to succeed. I can give you inspiration and hope. I can help you crush those fears – in life and craft – that are holding you back.
If you want to write, I urge you to join me at one of my workshops or retreats. www.wadeswriters.com (Gary will be there to hold your hand, too!).
Remember, every published writer was an unpublished writer.
You just have to start.

The Go-To Gay....on Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T07:35:00.000-08:00

The Go-To Gay....on Valentine's Day

http://chicklitcentraltheblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/go-to-gayon-valentines-day.html

Wade Rouse was here back in November to share a "dude's" perspective on chick lit. We liked him so much (Amy was even lucky enough to meet him in person last year) that we invited him back again for a monthly column called "The Go-To Gay." After all, without gay guys, a lot of our chick lit heroines would be missing out on some awesome best friends! This month, Wade is
sharing why gay guys make the best dates for Valentine's Day.

The writings of bestselling humorist Wade Rouse – called “wise, witty and wicked” by
USA Today and the lovechild of Erma Bombeck and David Sedaris – have been
featured multiple times on NBC’s Today Show as well as on Chelsea
Lately on E! and People.com. His latest memoir, "It’s All Relative: 2 Families, 3 Dogs, 34 Holidays and 50 Boxes of Wine," just launched in paperback February 1st from Broadway, and he is creator and editor of the humorous dog anthology, "I’m
Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship: Hilarious, Heartwarming Tales about
Man’s Best from America’s Favorite Humorists" (NAL). The book features a
Foreword by Chelsea Handler’s dog, Chunk, essays by such beloved chick lit
authors as Jane Green, and 50 percent of the book’s net royalties go to the
Humane Society of the United States. For more, visit his website, or friend him on Facebook or Twitter.

"Valentine’s Gay"

My partner, Gary, and I keep two separate calendars, one work and one social. Our social calendar is filled with dates with our many “gurlfriends,” our besties who want to spend QT with us to try a new coffee spot, hip restaurant, or simply dish.

“We wish our husbands were more like you!” our gurls often lament sometime in the course of our date.

That got me thinking as we approach Valentine’s Day: Do gay boys (“GBs” in future references) make better dates? Would you rather spend a night with your husband or your gusband (gay husband)? Is our great date history myth or reality?

Let me lend some perspective: The first Valentine’s Day I celebrated with my partner, Gary, with whom I’ve now been with 16 years, I made the tragic error of turning to my married, straight fraternity brothers from college for romantic advice. I was recently out and very inexperienced with dating. “OK, dude, here’s the inside scoop,” one my best friends, who was recently married,
explained to me over beers. “I never buy my wife perfume, because it will conflict with her phermones, or something stupid like that. I never buy her clothes, because I’ll get her an 8, and she’ll be all, ‘What makes you think I wear an 8? Do you think I’m that big? Are you even attracted to me?’ So what I always do is take her to her favorite restaurant, like Applebee’s, and I always give her a sexy gift, like lingerie. In a small. She loves it. I love it. It’s a win-win. Just play it cool. Be quiet and mysterious.”

I left our brotherly beer bash totally confused, kind of like when I see a Coen Brothers movie.

Still, being new to the whole relationship game, I listened and made reservations to Gary’s favorite restaurant in the city. I wrapped Gary’s gift in shiny paper and dropped it off before our dinner so it could be “specially delivered.”

Despite all the planning, the evening unfolded awkwardly, like a cheap card table. Although the restaurant was romantic, I acted like Clint Eastwood all night. There were awkward pauses in the conversation, and none of the spark that accompanied our time together. Still, when the waiter brought over the dessert cart, with my gift, as instructed, already positioned in the middle of the tarts and brulees, Gary gasped.

I looked around the restaurant. People had stopped eating, and were staring, transfixed, women
nudging their husbands in that irritated manner which seemed to imply, “Thanks for the wrist corsage, you jackass. Leave it to the gays to always do it right!”

What amazing gift had this amazing man purchased for his sweetheart?

A ring?

An island getaway?

Suddenly, I felt this overwhelming pressure – like the emergency door on a plane had suddenly been thrown open mid-flight over the Atlantic.

Gary furiously untied my bow and unwrapped the tissue paper – dotted with hearts.

And then he pulled out a three-pack of Hane’s underwear.

“Hane’s?” Gary finally gasped, fuming, very loudly. “Hane’s Her Ways?! Are you kidding me? You got me … underwear?”

He yanked a sticker off the plastic bag. I had forgotten to remove the price tag.

“They’re boxer briefs,” I purred, trying to sound turned on. “In black. Your favorites. And
they’re very sexy.”

“Hanes ARE NOT SEXY!” he began yelling, standing up, knocking his chair over. “What this says to me is that you are the type of man who will buy me a vaccuum for Christmas, and a robe on my birthday. “You are not romantic!” Gary screamed, throwing his pack of underwear into my lap. “No, I take that back! You are not even … human! What happened to Wade?!”

And then he left. To a smattering of applause.

What had gone so wrong, despite, of course, the Hane’s horror, I fumed in my head as we drove silently home.

The next morning, I met one of my best girl friends for coffee and talked about our Valentine’s dinners, which had unfolded, eerily, the same.

“You know it’s not really about the gift, Wade,” she said to me.

“Really?”

“OK, it kinda is,” she laughed, “but it’s more than that, too. It’s about the date: The dinner, the conversation, the romance, the little things. My husband loves me, and I love him more than anything, but I don’t always get the emotional depth, honesty and resonance that you and Gary share. I don’t get the fun that you and I have when we go out. Just be yourself from now on.”

That’s when it hit me: I wasn’t being myself. I wasn’t being romantic. I was being a practical
romantic. I was acting like my dad, who often got my mother a trash compactor or dishwasher for her birthday or Christmas.

I don’t mean to stereotype men – gay or straight – but there are some commonalities that unite most straight males: They often don’t enjoy intimate conversations. They can be bad sharers. Some don’t love to dance, laugh, and compliment as much as the GBs. Most gay men, on the other hand, listen. Intently. We offer advice. We are romantic. We are fun. We compliment. And when we do, we mean it. Wear a great pair of heels, and we’ll notice. Trying a new lipstick color? We’ll gush.

Why? We pay attention. The reason is that we don’t take anything for granted. We celebrate life. Oftentimes, it’s because many of us went through difficult times in our lives: We were worried we might not make friends, or we were fearful our families might turn their backs on us. Most of us fought like heck to find partners with whom to share our lives. Thus, we give back to those who love us unconditionally – friends, family, partners – a torrent of spirit, a heaping dose of our unfiltered, unedited selves.I believe we do make better dates, if for any other reason than that we realize life is short and can often be very difficult, so we need to celebrate – in a big way – with those we love. For lack of a better phrase: Life is too rich to go cheap, to be all Hane’s.

So, ladies, pass this advice on to your men: Although the National Retail Federation estimates
that – even in a recession – the average man will spend over $135 on gifts for his sweetheart, tell your husbands to act a little more like your gusbands. Tell them it’s OK to be romantic, to celebrate you, to talk, and laugh. Tell them it’s OK to gush, to compliment, and to cherish your alone time together. If they do, congratulations. If they don’t, be honest.

Go ahead, of course, and enjoy your Valentine’s gifts. I mean, I went ahead and bought Gary a trip to the Caribbean to make up for my Hane’s hell. And then, the next day call your gusband for lunch and tell him how it went. And if you don’t have a gusband, email me or Gary, and we’ll share an e-date to remember.

A special Valentine's thanks to Chick Lit Central and Happy Valentine's Day To All!

Musical Pairs

2012-02-09T08:32:00.000-08:00

http://metrosource.com.s123317.gridserver.com/2011/12/29/musical-pairs/

Wade discovers that his life-long loveof musicals isn’t compatible with his partner’s aversion to them, but wonders if his tune can be changed. The first musical I remember watching was Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. My mother sat down with me and some Jiffy Pop, and — in a matter of moments — this chubby, gay little boy from the Ozarks was transported to a more magical world. It made me want to dance while raising a barn (though both tasks would have been relatively impossible considering I was, at the time, roughly shaped like a Rubik’s Cube).More than anything, Seven Brides — along with West Side Story, Funny Girl and Hello, Dolly! — taught me that it was okay to express myself creatively and that escaping into a fantasy world, where love and happiness were just a song and dance away, was a way to survive.Personally, however, I was not gifted in the song and dance department. God knows, I tried. But I realized it was not for me when I was cast in a production of The Pirates of Penzance (solely because they “needed boys”). I ended up giving a performance that even a kind critic might describe as a nightmarish attempt to simultaneously channel Johnny Depp, Johnny Cash and Johnny Weir. But even if I wasn’t meant to be in them, I never stopped adoring the magic of musicals.I was under the impression that most people felt a similar appreciation until college, when I held a showing of Yentl for my fraternity and was nearly blackballed. But I chalked that up to the tastes of straight men. However, when I met my partner Gary, I was excited to share my love of musicals with the love of my life; so I surprised him with tickets to see Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. As we drove to the theater, Gary began to seem more and more visibly uncomfortable. Seconds before the show was about to start, Gary leaned over and confessed: “I hate musicals,” he whispered in my ear.I actually screamed.“Shh!” he said. “I just don’t understand why they have to sing everything. Why can’t they say it? It’s weird.”“It’s a fantasy!” I protested, standing for emphasis. But the show was starting; so I sat back down, stewing, wondering how the man I loved could feel this way. As I watched the show, I tried to see it from Gary’s point of view, actively asking myself, “Is this stupid?” But before long, the lights had come back up, and I was applauding wildly with the rest of the audience — still a confirmed musical theater junkie. I asked Gary if the show had changed his opinion. “I kinda nodded off,” he said. I briefly considered killing him — imagining myself acquitted by a judge (played by Alan Cumming) and a jury (of gang members from West Side Story). But, as I thought about it, I realized that Gary and I were both, in our own ways, hybrid gays. Gary hated musicals but he loved gardening and do-it-yourself home improvements. I liked musicals, but I also loved sports. Yes, it hurt that he couldn’t share something that I loved, but couples have survived worse. Flash forward to 2002, when the film version of Chicago, with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger, was hitting theaters. One weekend afternoon, I walked into the kitchen and said, “I know you hate musicals, but I have to see Chicago. So I’ll be back in a few hours.”“Can I come with you?” Gary asked.“You can’t ruin this for me,” I said.“I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”Nevertheless, I sat with my fists clenched through opening of the movie, tensely waiting for Gary to start rolling his eyes or snoring. But I noticed, as Catherine rocked “All That Jazz,” Gary’s foot began to tap. Next, he began snapping his fingers. Finally, a miracle occurred: jazz hands. Gary actually flashed jazz hands as the song climaxed.“I loved it!” he exclaimed, bouncing up and down as we left the theatre. Seeing an opening, I bought the soundtrack, and we played it endlessly. For the next step in Gary’s musical rehabilitation, I rented Moulin Rouge. It put Gary to sleep.“But it was brilliant!” I insisted.“It was weird,” he said. “And boring.” So it seems that — when it comes to musicals — Gary and I are, for the most part, destined not to see eye-to-eye. But at least we’ll always have Chicago. Wade Rouse

WADE & WINTER

2012-01-06T11:52:00.000-08:00

Some words just belong together.

Like peanut butter and jelly.

Or Captain and Tennille.

Wade and Winter, not so much.

We do not go together, to quote that song from Grease, like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong.

But I am learning.

I am not, by nature, “hardy.” I prefer to wear flip-flops instead of boots. I like tank tops more than sweaters. The only lake effect I enjoy is sand between my toes and a bronzy tan.

I grew up in the south and then lived in a city that had relatively mild winters.

As many of you know, I came unhinged my first winter along The Beach Coast. I yelled at the snow. I chastised the wind. I belittled blizzards.

It didn’t do any good. It still snowed. A lot. It was still cold. And, you know what, once I shut up, I realized winter here was not only quiet but also quite beautiful.

The hush of a world covered in snow.

A wonderland of white replacing the dead, brown earth.

The icy lake, the waves seemingly frozen in mid-air.

Red cardinals sitting atop icy branches, deer leaping over snow banks, snowball fights, cross-country skiing, long walks in our winter woods.

More than anything, I found great comfort and inspiration in the quiet and isolation.

There is a beauty, I learned, in this seasonal slowdown, if you can just learn to slow down yourself.

It took me a spell, but I finally did.

And when that happened, I found a calm in waking early in my winter world, relishing the quiet I once only dreamed I might have, making coffee and padding in thick socks up to my writing studio overlooking snowy woods, a virtual winter wonderland, a writer’s paradise.

Once I got the rhythm of winter, I could appreciate the glory of the snow as it piled up on the branches of the sugar maple just outside my window. My lunch breaks were walks in the woods with my dogs. I wrote until the sun set. I did the same thing the next day and the next.

By the time spring arrived my first winter here, I had nearly finished a book.

Winter had not only granted me peace and quiet but also a bonus gift of additional free time that I could now spend outside.

Don’t get me wrong: I still love spring, summer and fall more than winter. Gary and I still leave in the dead of winter and head to California for warmer climes (though more and more of that is now work-related and –required), but I have learned to be at peace with winter along The Beach Coast. Winter is like that family member that can drive you crazy, challenge you, get under your skin. He or she can be totally annoying, but is the person you secretly kinda like, the one you end up understanding, and respecting, after a long period of time.

And that, I’ve come to realize, is a great gift.

Winter and I may never be as close as M&M’s, but we’ve earned one another’s respect, and when we play nicely together, we make a pretty good team.

One Day

2011-11-17T10:22:00.000-08:00

It's a Gary blog day, and, yes, I know I need to create my own blog page. As you can see something is up with my face. It is one of those things, those vices, addictions, habits, escapes! We all have them, we all work on some of them, and others we choice to ignore. I have worked on my vices and addictions over the years. I no longer smoke that random cigarette in a bar. I am a recovering alcoholic and have now stopped drinking for over 16 years. So why can't I have something??

It's funny, if you smoke people will tell you that it is bad and you will get cancer. So many smokers say yes, I know, I will stop someday. Wade's Mom said that many a time and we watched her pass away with lung cancer from smoking.

I am sure we have all been lectured about something we over do. It is so easy to ignore and think that will never happen to me. Well for years I was a sun worshipper. I have olive skin and in my 20's and 30's my idea of sunscreen was a 4 spf and maybe a 6spf if I had been out all day. At the peak of my addiction to alcohol and clubbing I would go to 2 different tanning beds a day. One during my lunch hour and one after work. People would say you are going to get skin cancer, you are too tan! I listened to none of it and loved my golden brown skin. I guess then at 25, 45 seemed a lifetime away.

This past summer I had 4 red spots on my torso seem to get super aggravated. Wade had asked me several times to get them checked, but they had been treated before by the doctor and I thought they would get better. So a book tour later and super busy schedule July ran into November and I noticed they are still there. As a matter a fact these red spots are staring right at me! Finally I made the appointment and went into the dermatologist. I opened up my shirt to reveal my sun spots and before I could even point them out, the doctor said "I am sorry that is cancer". I kept explaining that I now use a spf 30 and I wear a hat and now sit under the umbrella. But she told me again just to really drive it home "It's cancer lets find out what kind." They screened my body with all sorts of lights and gadgets. Then they took Biopsies of each spot and explained that they would have the results in a week. Now the doctor wanted to look at my face! I thought well that is fine I know. I moisturize and always wear a hat when I go to the beach. As she scanned my face with a bright light like I was a piece of paper on a copying machine, I started to panic. What if there is more, what if they have to cut on my face. After a lengthy exam, the doctor explained that I had severe skin damage, likely from my earlier years and wanted to be sure that the irregular cells didn't get the chance to turn into skin cancer. She prescribed Carac Chemo Cream and I have to use it every day for one month. I was shocked but also ok with that because I knew it would prevent any future damage. I was told that the cream only targets irregular cells and they would turn red, crusty and peel or fade away. What I didn't expect was that on Day 8 of using the cream that over 40 percent of my face has sun damage.That was such a shock! Also, on day 8, I received a call from the doctor letting me know that the 4 spots that she took the biopsy from were superficial Basal Cell Cancer. The good news was if you are going to get skin cancer that is the easiest and quickest to treat. The other good news is that it was superficial and I do not have to have anything removed. I am able to use the chemo cream for 6 weeks and they will be gone!

I have searched on the web about skin cancer and also about Carac Cream. Many people said they didn't leave the house or explained to people they had a chemical peel. I am so, not that guy. I truly think that we are as sick as our secrets. I am always proud to talk about my alcohol addiction and recovery, because it is a part of me. I wanted to share what is going on with me today, because I am the lucky one. I am the one who is fixable.

I look back and think about Wade's Mom and I sure when people talked to her about smoking, she ignored the facts and swept it under the carpet. It was her vice, her addiction. I know she was shocked that it caught up with her.

I wanted to share my picture, to show that my years of sun abuse caught up with me. Mine is so visible it is on the outside there for all to see. So please use suncreen so you don't have to go down this road. I would hope that if someone showed me a picture of a 40 year old with a peeling face from past sun damage that I would maybe stop and think.

I also hope you stop and think about your vice, your addiction and think about what it is doing to you on the inside. Things you can't see, things you can ignore. I hope you all think about letting go and being the healthiest you, you can be. This had really got me thinking about the rest of my vices. I have one more to conquer and that is diet soda. We no longer have any in the house. Day 1 step 1 toward a healthier life.

So take time to center, stay center and stay away from our unhealthy crutches. I hope your glass always stays half full! When we notice that it is half empty, that is when we try to escape and look for our vice. Take time for yourself and think of those around you who love and need you! It is never too late to stop and change a bad habit, so make today the day.

I am now entering week 3 with the Carac Chemo Cream and it is supposed to be the worst. After that I will be in the home stretch! So for the next few weeks, I will be out at events with Wade as the poster child for sunscreen. The doctor has promised that my face will be smooth and pretty again! So until them I will just shine as much as I can from the inside!!

I'M A 2011 GOODREADS CHOICE NOMINEE! VOTE NOW!

2011-11-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

I spit my latte this morning when I learned from my publisher that IT'S ALL RELATIVE: 2 FAMILIES, 3 DOGS, 34 HOLIDAYS & 50 BOXES OF WINE has been nominated by YOU, the fans and Goodreads members, as a 2011 Choice Awards nominee in "Humor." And I need your support!

Please go to the link below and vote for IT'S ALL RELATIVE (and, if you're not a Goodreads member already, it only takes a few seconds to register and vote). The Opening Round of voting goes through Nov. 13!

I'm up against some powerhouse authors and legendary funny folks, including Betty White, Albert Brooks, Chelsea Handler, Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon, so I am truly honored ... but I think you can see why mama needs to mobilize her rabid voting base.

All nominees were selected by the readers, i.e., YOU!, and nominations are based on book's total number of ratings and average rating as pegged by 6 million Goodreads members. So a nomination is truly an honor because it comes from readers! This year, Goodeads analyzed statistics from the 87 million books added, rated and reviewed on the site this year. Only a total of 15 books in 22 categories, for a total of 330 books, were nominated. THANK YOU!

GO HERE NOW TO VOTE! AND PLEASE TELL YOUR FRIENDS ON FB, TWITTER, YOUR BLOGS!

http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice/2011#55898-Best-Humor

You will have three chances to vote:

Opening Round: October 31 – November 13, 2011

Voting open to official nominees and write-in votes.

Semifinals: November 14 – November 20, 2011

We add the top 5 write-ins as official nominees. Additional write-ins no longer accepted.

Finals: November 21 – November 30, 2011

The field narrows to the top 10 books in each category

In advance, thanks for your support! (I'd say it's an honor just to be nominated, but we all know that's just BS!)

xx,

Wade

Halloween: Ubangi in the Ozarks

2011-10-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

Halloween: Ubangi in the Ozarks

There used to be a girl near my brother’s age in school who dressed as a cowgirl every single year for Halloween. She wore boots, a brown suede skirt with country stitching, a denim shirt, a cowprint vest, cowboy hat, and she carried a lasso.
After a few years, the costume began to look worn, yellowed, dirty, and by the time we reached middle school, the girl had developed a paunch and a slight moustache.
Being a cute little cowgirl just didn’t work anymore, especially since she looked like Hitler.

Worst of all, a few mothers in town would whisper viciously about the cowgirl’s mother.What kind of mother would send her daughter to school in the same old costume every year? was pretty much the running theme. Any good mother worth her salt made her child’s Halloween costume in the 1960s and 1970s. A great mother, in fact, knew the endless possibilities that an old bedsheet, empty egg cartons, wire hangers and her make-up could provide.

In small town America, the pressure to achieve Halloween perfection was even more intense, because everyone trick-or-treated at everyone’s house, so everyone knew which mothers could sew and, as a result, deeply loved their children, and which neglectful moms covered their kids’ left eyes in duct tape, called them pirates and sent them out with a steak knife.

Halloween presented an ethical dilemna for my mother, an educated woman who worked full time, watched the evening news and had the gall to question what she read in the paper. My mom was a nurse. She stitched people’s wounds. She didn’t hem.

While she enjoyed Halloween, I think she felt it was frivolous, wasn’t as important, say, as saving a life. Now, I always had nice costumes, considering my grandmothers were both accomplished seamstresses – I made an adorable little greenbean as a baby and a passable vampire – but my costumes always lacked a certain Ozarkian je ne sais quoi. Which is perhaps why I yanked on my mother’s blood stained scrubs one fall evening when she got home from work and begged, “You have to make my costume this year!” I think I knew she needed the challenge, and that I needed to take more of a risk.Now, I was certainly a boy with a high sense of drama. I mean, I gasped when a classmate mis-conjugated a verb. But I also felt like – for a boy with a tendency to wear too many ascots and starched pink oxfords – it was my responsibility not to stand out too much in a part of the world whose people, food and houses tended to be a bit too grey for me.

I guess I finally yearned for a costume that was me, a costume that would stun the crowd as I marched around the school gymnasium in our annual Halloween parade.
I wanted Wow! My mother seemed to sense this, and she thought long and hard about what to make for me. And then one evening, I walked into our den to find her lying on our chic, black-and-white plaid ottoman perusing the latest issue of National Geographic, a subscription to which she had received as a Christmas gift the previous year. Once my mother discovered she could learn about Venice and Machu Picchu, or read about Hindus and vineyards in France, she turned her back forever on Better Homes and Gardens. “Come here,” she said, wagging a nail.

She held open the magazine to display a shocking spread of frolicking nude black men and announced, “This is your costume. You will go as a Ubangi tribesman.”

I stared at the photo of a naked, sinewy black man with a schlong the size of our Oster blender and felt a twinge down south, in a place where I’d never felt such a twinge.My mother smiled. Even as a child, I knew her motives: Not only would she be able to show off her caretaking skills by making me a costume that would be the envy for years to come but she could also educate our local community about the world at large.

Although the sensible part of me screamed, Danger!, the dramatic part of me was fascinated with this option, knowing no other Ozarks child in his right mind would dress as a Ubangi tribesman for Halloween – much less even think of such an idea.
Based on the photo my mother showed me, I did, however, outline a few immediate costume demands of her: I would not, under any circumstance, go completely topless, considering I had ample boy-breasts instead of chiseled pecs; I would not stretch my bottom lip with one of my mom’s ashtrays; and, considering my love of candy, I had to carry a pillow case to haul my loot instead of the tiny, plastic skull she had originally suggested.

My mother and I spent the next few days scouring local stores for traditional Ubangi clothing, but it came as little surprise that there weren’t many places to find standard tribal wear in rural America, though cowboy boots and tube socks seemed more than plentiful. So my mother scoured her closet, where she found – in the back, tags still on – her inspiration: A Wilma Flintstone-esque dress she had purchased but obviously never worn.

I watched my mother pull out that dress and stare admiringly at it, giggling, remembering something long ago, almost as if she had once expected to receive an invitation to a Kwanzaa party that never arrived.

The dress’ pattern was more caveman than tribesman, but it featured a stretchy fabric that fit me surprisingly well, and it showed off my maturing curves. It also had an ample dart to hold my bosom.

My mother spent days perfecting my costume. She altered the dress, which was much too long, shortening the hem, cutting it above the knee on a bias, and then removing the left shoulder strap, before cutting the top at a diagonal, so that just a hint of my large brown nipple showed.

Days later, my mother received a delivery, and, much to my surprise, had somehow managed to locate – and I do not know to this day how or from where – a rubber Ubangi mask – a partial mask, to be accurate – which fit snugly over the top of my head, over my ears, and then around my jaw, encasing the bottom of my face. When I tried on the mask, it transformed my Anglo face into that of a Ubangi warrior. I now sported an Afro, a ridged forehead, overdeveloped jaw, gigantic, dangling earlobes and a Frisbee-sized lower lip that looked as if it had been stretched with a dinner plate.

My mother gave me a pair of her old black sandals, to which she fastened dog biscuits on the tops to mimic bones. Another biscuit was intricately secured (read: glued) into my nostrils, giving me the look more of a girl with a deviated septum than that of a tribesman who was to be admired for his prowess in hunting and bedding women.

My face and body were shoe-polished black.

A rubber spear was secured to the end of our fireplace poker.

I wore my mother’s wood and chain bracelets, as well as a necklace with yet another dog biscuit tied to it.

And I carried a pillow case.

It was so … not right.

So … not politically correct.

“You look just like the photo in National Geographic!” my mother gasped when she was finished, holding me at arm’s length in her bedroom. “Say Oow-wa-boo-ga! Say it!”
And then I caught the first full glimpse of myself – that initial moment when, as a child, you are supposed to be breathless with anticipation to see yourself as a creature, or a hero, as somebody magical for one day – replaced by, well, horror.
I looked like I was ready to attend a Klan meeting.

I leaned closer into the mirror over my mother’s vanity, a bright row of naked makeup lights illuminating my transformation, and, upon closer inspection, I instead decided I looked like a midget with a fetish for Afro-centric attire.

Think Billy Barty does Pam Grier.

When I scurried down our brown shag stairs to show my father, he popped open a beer, unwrapped a mini Hershey bar sitting in the giant bowl of candy we had waiting for trick-or-treaters, and shook his head.

“Honey, why don’t you grab the camera?” my mother asked my father, following me around, picking my ’fro.

“Why don’t we pass on pictures this year?” my dad said, returning to the local paper. “The boy will thank us one day.”

That moment was, looking back, a noble gesture on my father’s part, on par with dragging my lifeless body from a frozen pond, or giving me one of his kidneys.

I went to the Halloween parade filled with a combination of horror and excitement, and was immediately bombarded with the types of questions that only kids can ask.
“Are you George … or Weezie … Jefferson?”

“Are you one of the Jackson Five?”

“Are you Dionne Warwick?”

I’m carrying a spear, have a lip the size of a toboggan, and have a bone implanted in my nose, I wanted to scream, but I knew they just saw chubby Wade in black body paint, a dress and lots of jewelry. I was also showing a hint of tit. And carrying a pillow case.

We, thankfully, didn’t have any African-American kids in our school, or I would have gotten beat down.

I marched around the playground, where a neighbor’s dog ate the bones off my sandals, and then around the gym, where each grade marched in front of the crowd, one class at a time.

When it was my class’ turn, I stood at the back of the line, and waited until the very last minute, stopping cold, separating myself from my costumed competitors, turning toward the faculty judges who were sitting at the top of the bleachers and began to scream the lines my mother had helped me rehearse:

“Hello, Americans! Do not be frightened! I am a Ubangi tribesman. The Sudan is my homeland. My giant earlobes and lip are a symbol of beauty in my country. Do you have questions about me or my homeland?”

Imagine crickets chirping, followed by mass hysteria.

I sprinted to rejoin my class, humiliated, hiking up my dress to cover my exposed breast. While waiting for the winners to be announced, I mainlined Snickers to bury my pain, discovering it was difficult to eat anything – much less tiny chocolate bars – with a lip the size of a flying saucer.

I had already given up hope of winning anything, considering the reaction I had gotten from my peers, until I heard, “Ummm … the tribal bride … umm … tribesman … second place … nice job.”

I gasped.

You could sense that the faculty judges were searching for words. But you could also sense that they felt compelled to give me some sort of public acknowledgement for taking a risk, for trying to educate the masses. But mostly it was a sympathy vote, as my elders wisely realized I would probably be candy-jacked and gang raped later in the evening by a group of older boys who were confused but enticed by my costume.

I don’t even remember what I won.

All I know is that it felt great to be a winner.

And I know my mom felt the same: She not only proved her mothering skills to the our town but also showcased her vast knowledge of foreign affairs and her quest for racial harmony.

Still, the next year when my mom pulled out her National Geographic ready to top her previous year’s costume, I told her Thanks, but no thanks.

I was still being called Weezie by a few classmates.

I couldn’t take that chance.

“You always need to take a chance in life,” my mom told me, nodding her head sadly. “You have to think beyond the walls that confine you, Wade; use all your imagination. That’s why God gave it to you.”

But I couldn’t.

So I played it safe.

I went as a vampire.

And didn’t win a thing.

For a very long time.

http://www.waderouse.com/content/buy.asp

Silly Dog Photo Contest- Bad to the Bone!!!

2011-08-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

Photo Contest!!!! Send in your super funny dog pictures to gary@waderouse.com and he will post them on my Facebook Fan Page! Friend me on Facebook and also become a fan on my FB Fan Page too!! Wade Rouse

http://http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150267492852539.323875.86031327538&saved#!/media/set/?set=a.10150267492852539.323875.86031327538&type=1

We will pick a winner this Friday and they will get a signed copy of "I'm Not The Biggest Bitch In This Relationship"

http://www.amazon.com/Not-Biggest-Bitch-This-Relationship/dp/0451234588/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

Home Wrecker Barbie

2011-06-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

It's Gary and I have added a new Barbie to our collection.

Home Wrecker Barbie!

She is the kind of Girl all women hate. She really wants to have girlfriends for the sole reason to steal their men. Women are always amazed that their husbands have to check her out. The wives see a bad dye job, fake boobs and a trashy dress from TJ Maxx and the men see a sweet smile, no brain and a nice rack.

This Barbie works for Today's Temporaries and is always on the look out for fresh meat! She is the kinda girl who makes out with the boss at the Christmas Party with hopes of getting a raise and a new Pandora Bracelet. Both her handbag and boobs are fake and she is always looking to go bigger with both.

So ladies keep your man close because this Barbie is on the prowl. She acts sweet but remember she thinks Washington is just a street and chlamydia is a flower.

XO,

Gary

ME & MICHIGAN PUBLIC RADIO!

2011-05-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

I am thrilled to announce that I've been asked to be a regular contributor to Michigan Radio, the nation's 8th-largest public radio station. I will be contributing essays from my latest memoir, It's All Relative, which coincide with our holidays, in addition to special segments such as MPR's "Life Before Technology" summer series (my essay, entitled "Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto," will kick off the series; air date TBD).

My first essay for Michigan Radio -- excerpted from It's All Relative -- aired Memorial Day weekend, and was a powerful and heart-tugging remembrance of Memorial Days past and present. I truly hope you enjoy, and share, this story, and all of my holiday pieces, and that -- if they call to you -- you share them with your own, local NPR stations, too. The reaction to my Memorial Day essay has, to date, been humbling and overwhelming.

Here is the link to the story on MPR:

http://www.michiganradio.org/post/author-wade-rouse-remembers-memorial-day

To say I am thrilled to be part of Michigan Radio -- and a small part of NPR -- on a regular basis would be the equivalent of saying, "I kinda like lip shimmer." These pieces not only showcase my combo of humor and poignancy but also my work on a larger basis. (And I always like to think I have a great reading voice, like Morgan Freeman ... but I think that's my med's talkin').

An author is constantly asked to build his or her "platform," meaning getting exposure for your work, yourself, your brand. That's where a writer often finds himself at a disadvantage to celebrities or politicians who write (Tori Spelling, Chelsea, Sarah Palin), because we don't have the exposure they do, and, as a result, our sales lag behind them, though we are often expected to achieve similar levels.

This is a huge step in that direction, and I give huge thanks to Jenn White (host of MPR's "All Things Considered") and Zoe Clark (a producer and host at MPR), for giving me the chance.

My essays will be appearing on www.michigan.radio.org in the coming months. For those in the Mitten, you can listen to 91.7 FM in Detroit/Ann Arbor, 91.1 FM in Flint, and 104.1 FM in West Michigan. Everyone can listen online at michiganradio.org ... and, again, you can share my essays with your local NPR stations and tell them you want Wade. (And, really, who doesn't?)

Happy Memorial Day!

Mother’s Day: The Priveleged Few

2011-05-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

My Grandma Shipman used to install 20-foot inflatable reindeer on her roof, wrap our gifts in velvet bows, and bake and hand decorate hundreds of Santa Claus cookies, whipping and dying the icing so that Santa’s coat looked red and velveteen, his beard white as snow, his eyes glistening from just that little extra coating of sugar.

Birthdays meant homemade cakes with mile-high frosting and colorful balloons filling the kitchen; Halloween meant carving pumpkins and laughing at witches that had flown directly into my grandma’s lightpole outside her home.

But when my grandmother became ill, and her health slowly and methodically began to decline, our holidays became more minimalistic.

It was too difficult for me to see my grandmother as some sort of ghost of Christmas past, so I began to stay away more and more during the holidays while she lived in a nursing home. What I missed during this absense, I would later discover, was the fact that my mom had taken on my grandma’s role. In fact, my mother spent inordinate amounts of time in my grandma’s nursing home room recreating those cherished holidays for her: She lavishly decorated her tree, she helped my grandma carve a pumpkin, and she walked into her room – ignoring all codes and regulations – with sparklers ablaze on the 4th of July.

One spring evening, after I had not visited home in a particularly long time, my mother called and said, simply but directly, “I think it’s time you visited your grandmother in the nursing home. I expect to see you here on Mother’s Day.”

“But …” I started.

“No ‘but’s,’” my mom said.

“But, she’s not my mother, mother.”

And then my mom hung up on me.

I cussed my entire five-hour drive home, lamenting a lost weekend.

As a young man, I had so many better things to do than visit my grandmother in a nursing home. I had more important things to think about, other things to occupy my time and mind than the very real fact that my grandmother was dying and that youth was fleeting and that, sooner, or later, this would eventually be my fate.

When I returned home that Mother’s Day, I walked in to find my mother a changed woman.

She seemed harder, tougher, but more resilient. She didn’t gush over my return, like usual. She said, very directly, “It’s about time.”

That Sunday, my mother and I went to visit my grandmother on Mother’s Day, bringing her a vase of hand-picked peonies from her garden, a heart-shaped box of chocolates and a stack of elaborately wrapped gifts – ones that looked as if they might be photographed for a style magazine – hauling them into the very nice nursing home and past a few patients, some of whom sat motionless, wheelchair-bound, in the throes of dementia.

As we made our way past, a couple of the patients began to wail and flail, just like babies, unable to convey their emotions that visitors had come to call.

When I passed an ancient woman with a shock of white hair who was eating her lunch off the tray of her wheelchair, she suddenly stuck an arthritic hand into her compartment of corn and tossed a handful of kernels at me and said, in a disturbingly matter-of-fact way, “Well, look who the dog dragged in. If it ain’t Sonny, home from the war.”

And, just as quickly, she began screaming.

And crying.

Yelling, “Sonny, my baby!”

She was coughing up corn and ghosts from deep within her body.

I crumpled against my mother, and we made our way to my grandma’s room, which was marked simply and sweetly – like a kindergarten teacher might designate her room on the opening day of school – with only her first name – “Viola” – drawn in purple Crayon, just like her floral namesake.

“I’ll go in first,” my mom said, taking all the presents. “I want to prepare her. It’ll be easier this way, OK?”

There was something about the word “prepare” – prepare my grandma for what, I thought – that made me highly uncomfortable, made my teeth begin to chatter, which I tried to blame on the chill in the nursing home.

I waited outside the door a minute or two, until my curiosity got the best of me, and then I peeked my head around the frame, and saw not my grandma, but a nearly unrecognizable version of her – bloated, pale, a mass of white, brushed-out perm’ed hair, no make-up, no dentures.

My mother was hugging a ghost.

I retreated, standing flat against the blandly cheery wallpaper in the hallway. I tried to grip something to keep myself from falling, and finally managed to grab the safety bar that served as the home’s functional dsaachair rail before I slid all the way to the linoleum floor.

I shut my eyes, to stop the spinning, and tried to remember my grandmother as she had been.

My grandma’s sole dream in life was to be a mother and a grandmother. Happiness pulsed from her body, joy radiated from her soul, when she engaged in the simplest of daily pleasures, the ones that made her family smile: Frosting a towering, three-layer cherry chip cake; making homemade pie crusts; pulling sugar cookies out of her oven; giving hugs; decorating for the holidays; simply listening to her family tell the tales of their lives.

My grandma was a simple woman, and – as I grew older and more bitter about my course in life, the fact I was gay, the belief I might never find happiness – I equated her simpleness with naivete.

That was a mistake.

And when I longed to tell her the story of my life – to have her sit and listen to me around her Formica dining room table like she did when I was young – it was too late.

“Wade?” I heard my mother say. “Wade, do you want to come in?”

I stood, rounded the corner, and my grandma looked at me, rather blankly, like a babysitter might look at a child they once cared for, with vague familiarity but no emotional ties.

“Mom? It’s Wade? It’s James Wade. Remember?”

I approached her bed gingerly – as if I were walking around landmines – and she looked at me, trying to fit the pieces together somewhere in her head, and when she did, she began to bawl, to caress my face like it was a baby rabbit, as if I were the most tender and precious and beautiful thing she had ever seen.

And then she started screaming.

Always an emotional woman, my grandmother’s illness had made her even more emotionally vulnerable, and my mother told me she would now start crying without reason at any minute of the day, unable to put into words her feelings of loss or fear or happiness.

I took a seat in one of those nursing home chairs that looks inviting but is not comfortable, that beg you to sit but not stay, and listened to the roar of the TV infomercial my grandma had going.

My grandmother never watched TV.

I stared out the window, and watched it rain, watched the wrens collect at the little feeder my mother had hung just outside of her window. My grandma’s world was now this window.

My mom clicked off the TV, silencing the incessant noise and bringing blissful quiet to the room. A sense of calm seemed to envelope not only me but also my grandmother.

And then, out of the blue, my grandma began pointing at pictures on her wall and nightstand, at a photo of her husband, her daughters, her grandchildren, of those who had died before her, or those who rarely came to visit, and my mom would give one to her, and she’d hold it closely, hugging the picture like it was the person, closing her eyes and remembering something from long ago.

My grandma would look at my mom, struggling to lift her hand to her mouth, and then point at the picture she was holding. She was asking my mom to speak for her. We sat for hours that Mother’s Day, my mom telling stories of our family, for my grandmother, and, then, at the very end, my grandma pointed at me and then at a picture of me she had beside her bed, one of me when I was very little, dressed in a tiny bow tie.

“My baby!” she moaned, managing to find words – from somewhere deep inside – words which I thought she had lost long ago. “My baby Wade!”

And then it was me who began to cry, to bawl, my false bravado shattering, my gasps causing the wrens at the window to stop eating and take notice of the commotion.

My grandma lifted her fists and dabbed at my face, wiping tears, and then put her hands to her mouth, asking me to talk.

I scooched my chair up to her bed and held her hands, and it was then I knew that she knew me, truly knew me, because she just stared at me, smiling, like a baby at its mom, watching my every move, listening intently to my every word, like she did when I was young and we sat at her little kitchen table.

So I sat for an hour and finally told my grandmother about my life.

When we left her that day, I asked my mom on the ride home, “How do you do it? How can you do it? Every day? It’s such an obligation.”

“The question is,” my mom answered, “‘How can I not do it?’”

Her voice got a little shaky, and she said, “Do you know I visit nearly every person there? Their families and friends no longer come, because everyone is too busy to be bothered. Your grandmother spent her whole life sacrificing for me, so I could be the first to go to college, the first to have a career, so I could have an easier life than she ever had.”

And then my mom slowed the car, her hands trembling on the wheel.

“And it’s not an obligation, Wade. It’s a privelege.”

There was an awkward moment of silence. I looked down at the speedometer and noticed my mom was driving 20 mph. Joggers were passing us.

And then my mom, the lifelong nurse who retired and became a hospice nurse, said, “When parents and grandparents age and become infirmed, families no longer want to deal with it. They visit in the beginning, out of guilt, and then it becomes a hassle, something they have to do between soccer lessons and work. People see these as ‘the bad years,’ but this is simply our time to take care of our elders, just like my mother cared for me when I was a baby. Those weren’t such great years for her, I’m sure. She struggled to put food on the table. And I certainly couldn’t talk. I could only tell her what I was thinking or feeling through my emotions. This is the same thing. She is the baby now. And I am the mother. It is my time to care for her, let her pass onto God with dignity and love, let her know during every single moment I spend with her these final days that it has been my privelege to be her daughter.”

It would be the last Mother’s Day of my grandmother’s life.

And, as I learned that day, it was my privilege – not obligation – to spend it with her.

Why are you waitng to write?

2011-04-18T15:12:00.000-07:00

Let me cut to the chase: All published writers were once unpublished writers.

Writers are like babies taking their first steps: You have to do it by yourself, but it helps a whole lot to have someone helping you along the way.

Roughly eight years ago, I began writing my first memoir, America’s Boy. Check that: I actually started it as a novel, as I was too afraid to tell my own story of growing up gay in the Ozarks.

Luckily, I had a muse, an editor, a critic and a believer in the form of my partner, Gary. After reading what I had written, he said: “It sounds nothing like you.” I was crushed. But it was just what I needed to hear.

And so I started over, eventually visiting my family cabin and writing by long hand what would turn out to be the first chapter of America’s Boy while seated on a stoop with my feet in an Ozarks creek.

There was a point – finally, a point – as I sat with my feet in the creek when I was simply writing. Not thinking, writing. Writing as if my life – every breath – depended on it.

And everything simply clicked. My voice, my humor, my tone, my narrative flowed from my soul. I wasn’t writing any longer. I was my writing. The transition from Wade the person to Wade the writer was seamless.

It came because I finally was able to overcome those fears that had shackled me my whole life. I lived my life with shame: I was gay. I was scared. I was overweight. I was wrong. I was bad.And though I wanted to write – and did write – my whole life, questions haunted me like ghosts:

What would people think?

What would my family think?

Did I have the right to tell my story?

What if people hated it? Me?

No one can make it as an author, right? What if I fail?

Am I good enough?

Who the hell do I think I am, calling myself “a writer”?

For a while, this fear paralyzed me again.

I made the decision – without Gary’s knowledge – reach out to a number of authors I admired, whose work I loved. I wasn’t asking for a hand-out, or a connection, I was seeking the simplest of things: A response. A single line. “It’s gonna be OK, kid.” “You can do it, Wade.”

They didn’t even have to mean it. I just needed to know that they had once been like me. Unpublished.

I just needed to know that it was OK to keep going.

That there was no “secret, golden key to the kingdom.”

I got zero responses.

And, that’s when I had my second epiphany. Rather than be paralyzed by my fear, I thought – and this is so not literary – “Screw ‘em!” I believed in my dream, I believed in my writing, I believed I could change the world.

I finished my memoir, I spent months editing it until I was moving around commas, and I did my homework. I spent months writing my query. I spent months researching agents. I spent months believing in myself, even though it seemed no one else – besides Gary and my mom – did.

One week after submitting 15 query letters to agents I admired, I had received seven offers to read my manuscript. Less than a week after that, I had three formal offers of representation.

I believe that if you have a unique voice, discernable talent, an incredible work ethic, amazing professionalism, skin of steel, a heart of equal parts stone, empathy and love, and a feeling that if you aren’t writing, you may just curl up and die – then you can make it as an author.

And that’s why I formed Wade’s Writers, and why I hold writing workshops. I am the guy who got no response, and I decided if I ever had any level of success, I would attempt to help other emerging writers.

I can’t make you write. But I do think I can make you a better writer. More importantly, I can give you tools to succeed. I can give you inspiration and hope. I can help you crush those fears – in life and craft – that are holding you back.

And if we can do it over wine, and in the one of the most inspirational, picturesque settings in America, even better.

If you haven’t looked into my May 12-15 workshop in Saugatuck, Michigan, I urge you to do so right now.

Every published writer was an unpublished writer.

You just have to start. www.wadeswriters.com

Much love,

Wade

Audrey-Hepburn-Wrists

2011-04-15T09:09:00.000-07:00

My tell all about my weight loss of over 100 pounds.http://www.thismamacooks.com/2011/04/wade-rouse-guest-post-audrey-hepburn-wrists.html

2011-04-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

Though my heart aches – feels not just broken but smashed into bits – and I cry at the drop of a hat whenever I see a piece of Marge's reddish fur floating around, look down expecting to see her at my feet, or still call for her to go on a walk – I try to remember what author, icon, animal lover and my friend Rita Mae Brown told me once again when I visited her farm – which was filled with dogs, kennels, horses and cats – last fall.
"Dogs don't know how much time they have left; they live in the moment. And what a blessing that is. Humans spend so much time fearing death, fearing the end, that we lose sight of the now, this very moment. If we could only be like dogs, even for a day."
I think of how blessed I was to have Marge for nearly 14 years. She changed me for the better. She taught me to love without abandon, to hug tightly, to live in the moment. Because that’s all we have.
I’ve been overwhelmed by the support Gary and I have received this week. Hundreds of you have reached out to us to express your condolences, your heartbreak, your sadness, your own stories. And, for that, I am thankful. We are linked not only by our love and kindness but by our pets.
I was struck by a number of stories this week, including a woman who lost her fiancée suddenly and hadn’t been able to laugh until she read one of my books. And there was a woman who expressed her sympathies about Marge and stated she wanted to attend my May writing retreat but was terrified to do so.
To her – and in honor of Marge – I say: LIVE IN THE MOMENT!
Life is short. Our time here is precious. An important part of our journey should be taking risk, tackling our fear, challenging ourselves, running – with wild abandon, as Marge used to – toward the future.
Right now, I am scared.
It has been a brutal past two years. First, my mom. Now, my Marge. My two best girls are gone forever. Why would God take my two best friends so soon? How could He test me so harshly and frequently?
I have lost so many, that I have become guarded. I worry that as soon as I become close to someone, I will lose him or her again.
But, I know I have to take that risk. It’s what makes life precious and special.

My mom and Marge were two of the few I could talk to without fear, knowing I would receive unconditional love. Take that away, and what are we left with?

I learned from my mom -- a nurse and woman of great faith -- that is the nature of unconditional love.
You take the good with the bad. Death is simply a part of life. Only by risking your heart, your soul, can you find true love, true joy, true happiness.
And, that’s what I hope to give back to aspiring writers coming to my workshop in May.
Only by risking your heart and your soul can you find true joy and happiness.
I can’t wait to lead my writers through exercises that will force them to tackle their fears, face their own discomfort, and unearth that unique voice that can change the world.
Risk.
That’s what writing and loving is all about.
But it’s worth it. No matter how hard it is sometimes.
There is still time for you to take a risk, and live in the moment.
Wade’s Writers (www.wadeswriters.com) kicks off its initial, intensive multi-day writing retreat in less than a month (May 12) in Saugatuck, Michigan, my stunningly beautiful little resort town.
You will write. You will laugh. You will cry. You will become a different person.
You will write. You will eat amazing food. You will drink amazing wine. You will site-see. And you will take a risk.
I urge you to join me. As I learn to risk my heart again, I urge you to risk yours, too.
Let’s live in the moment.

XO,
Wade

Marge R.I.P 7/16/1997 - 4/11/2011

2011-04-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

Our beloved pet Marge left us yesterday at 13 yrs and 9 months.
7/16/1997-4/11/2011

14 years, 15 states, five books, three major life changes, two of the world's softest ears, thousands of walks, millions of kisses, zillions of snuggles, infinite belly rubs, laughs and treats … and two men whose lives have forever been changed by one rescue dog’s unconditional love. You helped teach us both it was OK to love again, with wild abandon, hearts be damned. Ours may be broken now, but you mended them once, and you will once more, when we see you again. I know you'll be waiting for us, head always turned, looking back, to see if we're coming. And we walk. Forever.

APRIL FOOL'S DAY: "Joke's on Me!"

2011-04-01T07:55:00.000-07:00

“Beggin’ for blurbs,” as I call it, is the author equivalent of a wedgie: You know what’s coming is going to be painful, but you can’t stop it.

My last “official” wedgie occurred on April Fool’s Day decades ago when our rural Eddie Haskell asked, “Knock, knock? Who’s there?”, and before I could reply, said, “Your underwear!”, before lifting me into the air by my Hanes. It’s a punchline I still don’t get, considering the comedy was entirely physical.

Flash forward twenty years to the publication of my first memoir. One of the initial media interviews I conducted was on April Fool’s Day, a week before America’s Boy was set to publish.

I felt ready to conquer the world.

But the DJ asked what it felt like to be compared to Augusten Burroughs and Haven Kimmel, the two memoirists mentioned in my jacket copyd, as well as David Sedaris.

It was then I knew I was damned.

“Have you met them?” the Morning Zoo asked me. “Are they as hilarious in person?”

The closest I have ever come to Burroughs, Kimmel or Sedaris is “beggin’ them for blurbs.”

In fact, I spent weeks crafting a pitch letter to these writers I’d never met but long admired. I perfected prose that was complimentary, but not stalker-ish; hilarious yet poignant.

Then I spent hours staring at the “Send” icon, wondering what these authors were doing at that very moment.

Was Burroughs between pieces of Nicorette and, if so, be irritated when he opened the e-mail?

Was Amy Sedaris making a bologna casserole for David? And would my e-mail be funny enough to make him go, “Get over here, Amy. This Wade Rouse is funnier than Two and A Half Men. We must blurb.”

Of course not.

Burroughs’ assistant kindly said he no longer provided blurbs.

I tried for six months to contact Sedaris, which proved more painful than giving myself rhinoplasty.

Kimmel kindly agreed to read my manuscript, if she had time.

I never heard from her again.

I assumed she despised the book, and, thus, opted not to send, “This Is the Worst Piece of Crap I’ll Ever Read in My Life!” Which is a shame, because my publicist could easily have edited that to read: “This Is the … Piece … I Will … Read [All] My Life!”

I harbor no ill-will. They’re busy, trying to lead normal lives, and I realize they’re overwhelmed by such requests.

I guess I’d just like to see some publishing evidence that blurbs really help sell books, or if they are simply internal ego-boosters, like literary Botox.

Ironically, moments after my April Fool’s media debacle, a well-known author I’d asked for a blurb e-mailed – a year after my request – with a catty note, the basic sense of which was, “Do you know who I am?”

Yes. Which is why I had asked in the first place.

My April Fool’s joke was no longer funny. Which is why my partner, Gary, dragged me to a psychic.

To undo the blurb curse.

Now, I don’t believe in psychics. They are the equivalent of Ron Popeil in a turban.

However, Gary adores one particular back alley medium, who wears a pound of purple eyeshadow and has more feral cats than teeth.

“She has ‘the gift,’” Gary told me.

It cost me $50 for a half hour, roughly what my dentist charges, money I’m convinced he doesn’t spend on cat food and vodka.

When we arrived, the psychic led me to a dark room, incense burning, pushed me into a rickety chair in front a cloth-draped table, and stared into a glass ball I’m convinced she bought at Spencer’s.

She leaned dramatically across the table, grabbed my hands, shut her eyes.

“I can feel your stress,” she said. “I see great things in your future, if you can just transcend your doubt.”

Gary whispered, “Concentrate, Wade. Unchain your baggage. Release the image of Augusten Burroughs. Let go of Haven Kimmel. Set the Sedaris spirit free.”

Just like that, the psychic dropped my hands as if they were made of concrete, and screamed, “Oh, my God, you know them? They’re my favorite writers! Are they as funny in person?”

I clamped my eyes shut, and concentrated. In fact, for once I swore I could hear the spirits talking, telling me something very specific:

“Start writing fiction. Perhaps novelists blurb.”

"Spring Baby"

2011-03-30T07:48:00.000-07:00

My mother was always proud I was her “spring baby.”

Born March 30 (I used to be an Aries), I do seem to come alive as the ground begins to thaw, and everything and everyone begins to emerge from their winter hibernation.

My partner, Gary – the avid gardener and his mother’s “summer baby,” born July 6 – also finds a new spirit as winter marches away.

When the last snows begin to wind down and the first Snow-drops begin to appear – their drooping white flowers attached to a stem of deep green – Gary begins to burrow into his beds, even though the final frost day is many weeks away. He will turn his face to the strengthening sun – like his flowers soon will do – and say into the heavens, “It’s nice to see you again, buddy.”

One of my first signs of winter’s end (when we're not out in Palm Springs) is a long run along the lakeshore. I run unencumbered – no earmuffs, no facemask, no longer worried about slipping on the ice – the air still cool but refreshing to my lungs. Many March days – before the Beach Coast resorters return – a few young deer will often prance alongside me in the woods as I run, sometimes for as long as a mile or two, excited kids happy to be able to play again outside with a new friend.

I, too, will call to them, as Gary does the sun: “It’s nice to see you again, guys!”

Every March birthday reminds me I’ve aged another year, but I welcome it because it also reminds me that it’s time – like nature – to grow again. It is a time of rebirth.

My birthday ritual always involved calling my mom to wish her a happy birthday, even though it was mine.

“I wouldn’t be here without you!” I’d yell, always believing that it is the mothers who really should be celebrated on birthdays, instead of the kids.

“My spring baby!” she’d always reply.

Now that my mother is gone, Gary planted a memorial garden in her honor. In the winter, it is covered by snow, save for the top of a cross that always peeks out from under the white. But, when the Snow-drops begin to bloom, I walk out and take a seat on a newly positioned Adirondack chair we perch next to my mom’s garden.

Even though there are March days when it’s still bitterly cold, or some where I have to brush the snow from the chair, I shut my eyes, lift my face to the sun – whether shining or hidden – and yell to heaven, “I wouldn’t be here without you!”

And the March wind, and all the happy birds will exclaim, in a voice I know is my mother’s, “My spring baby!”

I will smile, have the courage to stand, and continue to grow – be reborn again – as winter marches away.

Ramblings with Gary

2011-03-20T17:28:00.001-07:00

It has been a fun, but long, tour, and Wade and I are truly blessed that we get to take a break out in stunning Palm Springs, CA. We have met so many beautiful people along the way and are so thankful. I love being able to be still for a while and enjoy my time with Wade.

This is Wade’s 6th year now writing full time, and this is the year that I finally took the plunge to work with him full time. It has been a wonderful transition, other than the first few weeks of panic.

What have I done?
How will I book his writing workshops?
What if I fail?
What if I let Wade down?

I have had had some great advice from some wonderful friends. I also learned I need to believe in myself and also to take my own advice. Wade and I, we can do this. Yes, I can do this. The sign we have in our kitchen resonates with me: “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” How true, and how true it is that this life is already plotted out for us. We can’t control it, all we need is to be kind, compassionate and work hard. Being happy, joyous and free is really life’s master plan.

As I have now passed my 16th year of sobriety I remember back to what grounded me, what made me connect with life again. It is the strength of the friends that lifted me up and dusted me off, a belief in something greater than me, and also learning -- every now and again, but as often as possible -- to slow down to the pace of nature. Looking at what God created, not what man created. Watching nature’s gentle flow, listening to the hum of a humming bird and the whisper of a pine.

So, as I take a break today and slow myself down, I remember how graceful life is and how, if we stop controlling it and just relax, it will all work out.

Wade and I have a few weeks before we start our tour back home, and as I shopped in the store for tonight’s dinner I was reminded of that. I saw an expiration date and thought we won’t even be here when that expires. I was filled with panic realizing how fast time goes by and remember being at the store a few years back when Wade’s mom was dying of cancer. Looking at an expiration date and thinking: Will she be here? Life is so fragile and goes by so fast. So, on this Sunday, take the time to slow down, breathe, and give someone you love a hug.

Ramblings from Gary,
XO
G

Winner-Winner-Chicken Dinner

2011-03-12T11:53:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who played with us?? Well ok, who sent pictures and essays in to the Horrible Holiday Picture Blog. The winner is Sabina Lynne!!!! Congrats, please e-mail you address to Gary (gary@waderouse.com)and we will send you out a autographed copy of "It's All Relative"

ASH WEDNESDAY: (NOT THE) SON OF A PREACHER MAN/IT'S ALL RELATIVE EXCERPT

2011-03-09T07:15:00.000-08:00

One of the new ministers at our little town church had a wicked penchant on Ash Wednesday of making his more infrequent parishioners resemble Al Jolson.

Unfortunately, my family was among those who attended church only on the “important holidays”, like Ash Wednesday, Christmas and Easter, the holidays when, as my dad liked to point out, “God was paying particular attention and truly taking count.”

Which is why instead of tracing dainty little crosses on our foreheads, like was done on the foreheads of the church deacons and Bible Study leaders, our minister made our family look as if we had just been pulled free from a collapsed coal mine.

I wanted to believe, like any person of faith, that our minister had giant hands, or a touch of Turrets, or simply – like an untrained singer – bad technique, but I realized, the older I got, that he simply had a vicious streak.

I remember one particular Ash Wednesday when I was in junior high, and my mother returned to the pew, looking as though she had just crossed Oklahoma in a covered wagon.

“Are you going to work like that?” I had asked her, the contrast of her white nurse’s uniform and ashen face making her look like a photo negative.

“I can’t wash it off!” she said. “That’d be blasphemous.”

What was blasphemous, however – after years of watching our minister work – was his evil ash-decorating techniques. For the truly devout, he would always keep his left hand clean, using it to hold their holy faces steady while his right index and middle fingers swept shallowly through the ashes and then softly but deftly formed a cross on their God-fearing foreheads. He would smile proudly as they left the altar.

But with heathens like the Rouses, the minister used both hands freely, as though he were in a schoolyard fight and his mission was to blind his enemies with as much dirt as he could possibly toss.

And I swear that the man of the cloth would always smirk as my family walked back down the aisle.

What was even a bigger and dirtier slap in our faces, though, was the fact the minister always had a perfectly formed cross on his very own forehead, almost as if he had stood for hours in front of his little mirror in the rectory next door and etched it with a well-sharpened eyebrow pencil before outlining it in mascara.

This ongoing Ash Wednesday debacle was particularly difficult for me during my overweight youth because I always went to school resembling the spawn of Fat Albert and Tootie from Facts of Life.

Moreover, this seemed to create a chasm between my mom and dad.

Whereas my mom loved to attend church – she enjoyed the pomp and circumstance of dressing up, dressing her boys up, having breakfast out, the ritual and order of worship – my father never generated much interest in the notion, until later in life.
It was my understanding that he felt church was more for those who needed forgiveness, much like a shower was for those who were dirty. If you were somewhat clean – physically and spiritually – you were good to go.

My father also frequently had to work on Saturdays, thus leaving only Sunday mornings open to enjoy a big breakfast, work in the yard and complete projects around the house, before watching pro football. Church was another commitment – another meeting, if you will – to which he just didn’t want to commit.

My dad grew up going to church, every Sunday, if not more. His father was a deacon in a local church, and a much beloved member of a nearby small town community. My grandfather loved to go to church, put on his suit and talk with the townsfolk. It was an extension of his job, and one he relished. While my father loved and respected his dad greatly, I think – like most of us do as adults – he simply enjoyed a bit of distance, to walk outside of the shadow his father had created.

My father was also an engineer with – though it was never formally diagnosed – what I would term today as ADD. He used to become distracted and irritable in church, like a petulant child.

In fact, my father and I were similar in this way, though polar opposite in our obsessions. Whereas I would become riveted by women’s dresses that would flare dramatically as they sashayed down the aisle or by a beautiful bonnet (I always believed the world was an “Oh, I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet!” away from turning into a nonstop musical), my father was distracted by the noisiness of the church’s HVAC system, or whether the trusses supporting the soaring roof and steeple were structurally sound. Whenever we would begin to fade away, forget to stand, open our hymnal, my mother would often whisper our names – “James Wade!” or “Ted! Pay attention!” – in a way that sounded like sheets drying on a clothesline in a harsh spring wind. We would snap to attention for a few minutes, before I would again catch glimpse of a pretty orchid and my father would notice a gap in a window frame.

It was after one of our Ash Wednesday tire fires – perhaps our third in a row – that my father finally seemed to realize, as the white-bread Rouses jammed into an IHOP, that his family looked just like the one on Good Times.

That’s when I decided to test my theory, as my mom excused herself to the bathroom, and as my brother crammed a mile-high stack of Belgian waffles and whipped cream into his mouth.

“He’s doing it on purpose,” I said, wiping my face clean. “’Cause we don’t go enough.”

His eyes twinkled. “That’s an interesting theory,” he said.

My father loved theories. He loved to test them. It’s what his career in engineering was all about.

Which is why my dad announced – as we yanked the foil off our TV dinners the next week, my corn embedded in my Apple Brown Betty – that he had invited the preacher over for dinner the following Tuesday.

As my mother aspirated a kernel, my father winked at me.

Our preacher, a middle-aged man with hair that looked like it had been made from modeling clay, arrived on a cold February night, carrying a Bible and a long box I know my dad hoped was wine.

“What have we here, minister?” my dad asked, before pulling out a pillar candle we all instantly knew he had simply “borrowed” from the church.

“Just a little gift,” the minister said. “A token of appreciation. I have to admit, I was just so surprised to receive this dinner invitation from … you know … the Rouses. I see you so … infrequently … Easter, Christmas, Ash Wednesday.”

And it was here – when he said “Ash Wednesday” – that he let out a boisterous belly laugh, a guffaw more devilish than godly.

My father smiled like the Grinch. He knew instantly my theory was right.

Game on, my dad’s eyes seemed to say.

“Wanna help me get this fire started?” my father asked the preacher, laughing. “I always have trouble getting one started. I think I need an expert on fire and brimstone.”

The minister chuckled heartily, and slapped my dad on the back.

Now, my dad was an expert fire-builder. If Survivor had been on back in the day, my dad would have kicked Richard Hatch’s big behind. And yet, he stood back as the preacher lowered himself in front of our massive stone fireplace, with a hearth big enough to serve a picnic on and a grate large enough to hold a pickup. Within minutes, he had built a roaring fire, and also inhaled more smoke than Susan Blakely in the Towering Inferno.

“I’m so sorry!” my dad said. “I must have forgotten to open the flu.”

The minister turned and coughed. He looked like Nipsey Russell.

“Could you point me to the bathroom?” he asked.

My father winked at me.

My mom, a very smart woman, already knew what was happening. “Ted!” she whispered, as she did in church. When he walked away, she turned to me. “James Wade!”

But the minister walked out with a freshly washed face, and my mom had no choice but to serve the pot roast, carrots and potatoes she had carefully prepared.

“I’d be honored if you would say grace,” my mother said to the minister.

But before he could open his mouth, my dad said, “I’ll do it!”

“That would be a nice change of pace,” the minister said.

“Good bread, good meat, Good God, let’s eat!” my dad said.

My mother gasped, and stared at my father as though Linda Blair had rotated her head and puked pea soup on the preacher.

“Does the job, doesn’t it?” my father said, nudging the minister.

“Well, it all smells so wonderful,” said the minister, adding something along the lines of, “I just love a slow-cooked pot roast on a cold winter’s night.”

As my mom served the minister, my dad followed up with, “And who can eat pot roast without ketchup?”

The poor preacher didn’t stand a chance, as my dad handed him an upside down bottle. “Hit it smack-dab between the ‘5’ and the ‘7’! That’s how to get the goodness out!” my dad commanded.

Smack!

Plop!

Scream!

As planned, the preacher looked as if he had been shot, as if Damien himself had exacted revenge with an iron gate.

“Excuse me, folks,” he said once again, heading to the bathroom.

“Ted Rouse!” my mother whispered.

“An eye for an eye!” my father replied.

“Oh, Ted!” my mother said, strangely excited. “You do know your Bible!”

“Nobody screws with our family,” my dad said.

It was all very Mario Puzo in the Ozarks: Family came first.

We attended a bitterly cold Easter sunrise service a month or so later, and our family was among the first to receive blankets from the minister. My dad wrapped his arm and the blanket around me, happy our theorem had been tested and proven, and it was then I realized I’d just had a religious experience, a higher calling, if you will, a moment in my life that that bonded me to my father more than church, or watching football or Three Stooges movies.

Nobody screws with our family, I thought as the sun rose over the little park.

And, though it was frigid, I felt very warm indeed.

IT'S ALL RELATIVE LAUNCHES!

2011-02-02T13:12:00.000-08:00

Blizzard Charlie Sheen, as I've named this MF of snowstorm that's trying to steal the media thunder of my latest memoir, IT'S ALL RELATIVE, has already wrecked my kick-off event and signing. But, that's the only thing in my life I'm going to have Blizzard Charlie Sheen take from me. Get online, if you're stuck at home, and download a book today. Or, snowmobile your ass into your favorite local bookstore and pick up a copy to keep you laughing through this Snowpocalypse.

I've had some great early media hits so far, and I wanted to share those. The links (or, The Art Link-Letters, as I like to call them) follow. Enjoy! Buy away! And, check out my "Appearances" page for where I'll be next ... snow, or not, it's likely I'll be coming to your town soon! (I'm posting tour/media photos on my Facebook fan page!)

And, send your Horrible Holiday Photos and stories TODAY! Contest has just kicked off ... look to the left the of this page (those with a wandering eye might need to steady it a bit), and enter now. Great prizes! Fun site! Join me in my holiday dysFUNction!

WINDY CITY TIMES

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=30414

EIGHT WEST (Grand Rapids Morning Show/NBC)

http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/eightwest/Wade_Rouse_is_West

FOX MORNING NEWS (Grand Rapids)

http://www.fox17online.com/news/morningnews/
(Scroll at bottom of segment info for "Local Author Wade Rouse")

ON-THE-TOWN (Entertainment Magazine)

http://www.mlive.com/onthetown/index.ssf/2011/01/west_michigan_author_wade_rous.html!

MEGA IT'S ALL RELATIVE YEAR-LONG PROMO: SUBMIT YOUR HORRIBLE HOLIDAY PHOTOS & WIN BIG-TIME STUFF!!

2011-01-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

I'm back! Yeah, I know: It's been, what, nearly three months since I last blogged. I appreciate the numerous emails that went from kind to prodding to bitchy to, "Umm, are you dead?"

Not dead, really, but Zombie-esque. Between the holidays (Gary and I suffer from what I term "gay guilt" and must celebrate every holiday at least TWICE, once with my family, once with his, sometimes with friends) and a recent boating trip to the keys with my family (more on that later, including some amazing dolphin video and some amazing footage of me laying out), I have been working my a-hole off completing edits to, finalizing my tour for, and promoting my upcoming memoir, IT'S ALL RELATIVE, as well as completing edits to my hilarious dog anthology, I'M NOT THE BIGGEST BITCH IN THIS RELATIONSHIP! (out November 1 from NAL; proceeds to benefit the Humane Society). In addition, I've been writing two columns a month, working on my next memoir and my first novel (yeah, you heard me), and obsessing over old oldest mutt, Marge, who is now a miraculous 13 /12 but, sadly, battling kidney disease. She's doing OK, actually better than I am ... at least she can hold her urine. But, please keep the old gal in your thoughts and prayers.

I've also been revamping my web site, which now features a new addition and mega, yearlong contest/giveaway:

HORRIBLE HOLIDAY PHOTOS!

Since my upcoming memoir is all about the yearly celebrations that bring out the very best and worst in our nearest and dearest, and also features some truly disturbing holiday photos of me, Gary and the entire Rouse House, I felt it was only just to also invite you, dear reader and fan, into our House of Horrors.

So, since you're obviously reading this right now, go back to the home page when you finish and click on the Horrible Holiday Photos link that appears just above the rotating Rouses. That will take you to a Tumblr page, where you can WIN HUGE PRIZES (including my books, some of my best friends' -- who just happen to be mammoth, NYT bestselling authors -- books, as well as holiday-themed prizes tied to each month!).

Below is the 4-1-1 about the site (... and, whenever, I hear or say 4-1-1, I have to sing, "Andy Cohen's got the 411 ... ", which is the Bravo TV Clubhouse WATCH WHAT HAPPENS! theme song) ... We'll be posting the deets on FB, Twitter (not Myspace, though, because, well, I'M NOT 12!) ... so, post your best and worst holiday photos and stories (they must parallel the holidays found in IT'S ALL RELATIVE, as well as the particular month we happen to be living in), and you could win. A panel of huge names will judge!

So, here's the deets from the Tumble site ... enter ... laugh ... cry ... and, maybe, even win!

About Horrible Holiday Photos

How Come the Only Thing My Family Tree Ever Grows Is Nuts?

That’s the question my new memoir, It’s All Relative: Two Families, Three Dogs, 34 Holidays and 50 Boxes of Wine, attempts to answer, and the question we all ask ourselves, no matter the holiday. It’s All Relative celebrates the yearly celebrations that bring out the very best and worst in my nearest and dearest.

And, the one thing my family gifted me with — in addition to the ability to laugh at myself — was dysfunction. For instance:

VALENTINE’S DAY: I’m what I like to term a “practical romantic,” which is why my first V-Day with my partner, Gary, I presented him with a three-pack of Hane’s underwear over a romantic dinner. He stormed out of the restaurant. To applause.

EASTER: My father, the engineer, buried our eggs.

HALLOWEEN: My mother once dressed me up as a Ubangi tribesman — in blackface and carrying a pillow case — in the rural Ozarks, because she had just become a National Geographic aficionado and wanted to use me to demonstrate her knowledge of international affairs/culture to our community.

The book even celebrates non-traditional holidays, like National Pez Collectors Convention (I collect Pez) and Barbie’s b-day (Gary believes Barbie is his baby).

We’ll be posting Horrible Holiday Photos of our happy hellidays throughout the year … AND I WANT YOU TO BE PART OF THE PAIN, TOO, BY SENDING US YOUR HORRIBLE HOLIDAY PHOTOS AND STORIES! Every month for the next year, my team of drunken elves and I will pick out two winners every month and give away signed copies of my bestselling memoir and the Today Show Must-Read At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream as well as signed books from surprise, huge bestselling authors (INCLUDING BESTSELLERS JEN LANCASTER AND SARAH PEKKANEN) PLUS PLUS PLUS special holiday gifts that correspond to the helliday of the moment (be it Valentine’s, St. Patrick’s or 4th of July!).

What we want is either:

Your worst, hideous, awful, drunken, dysfunctional holiday story OR photo,
Or, your best, most touching, loving, sentimental holiday story OR photo
The stories MUST coincide with the current month and its holidays, as well as those holidays detailed in It’s All Relative (i.e., for Febuary, send us stories about Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day, or Oscar Night, and we’ll post all entries on this web site that aren’t too deplorable, disgusting, or disturbing (OK, we’ll post those, too), and then pick TWO winners (a best and a worst holiday story/photo), which I’ll announce the last day of every month.

The goal is to make this a viral site, similar to Awkward Family Photos but for the holidays.

Start writing, or searching for that perfect (or better yet, perfectly awful) photo and submit it. Good lucky, happy hellidays, and may your jingle balls never get itchy!

xx,

Wade

Wade's Week-Ending Words of Wisdom: Random Friday Thoughts

2010-10-15T05:33:00.000-07:00

As I sip on a quad-shot, no-fat, no-whip white chocolate latte -- the sun rising over our beautiful woods, the sugar maples drenched in color, the fog sitting over our neighbor's blueberry fields and pond -- I realize I'm not wearing pants. That I need to let the caffeine fully drench my cells and veins before I start writing anything coherent. So, I start with incoherence ... and without pants. Thus, Wade's Week-Ending Words of Wisdom:

If David Blaine looked like Jon Lovitz (college kids, insert Jonah Hill here; older generation, insert Jack Elam here), would anyone give a damn? (And just admit it: Didn't we all kind of just want him to stay frozen in that block of ice?)

Hollywood, how come every time we start to make out, you grab your gum right back out of my mouth?

DWTS has jumped the shark. But, Hoarders. O, to the M and then the G. And, to the woman whose toilet broke in, like, 1984, so she started pooping in trash bags and threw them in a closet, and said, when they were discovered, "I guess it kinda got outta hand ... but is it really that bad?" ... YOU WIN, OK? And what kind of Glades Plug-In were you using, 'cause I'll buy it, alright?

Social Network is amazing: Not sure of its overall truthiness (I will read the book), but a fascinating portrayal of how Facebook started, and a lasering look at how the world's biggest "social gathering" has really just isolated our society even more. (And, O!M!G! to Jesse Eisenberg. Never doubted I was watching a real guy. I'm sure he'll be overlooked come awards season, though, as he doesn't scream, yell, devolve into histrionics, he just acts his really skinny ass off. Just look at his eyes when he's confronted by his best friend at the end of the movie. Amazing stuff. And hollah to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who has so much smart, quick dialogue flowing from the mouths of the actors from second one, that it takes a while for your ears and your brain to catch up to it.)

My Halloween costume has been a month in the works. Suffice to say, I have killed myself to fit into a junior miss size 7. (Yes, it's stretchy material, you catty bitches!)

FOX NEWS ALERT FOX NEWS ALERT BREAKING NEWS BREAKING NEWS!!! I nearly had a stroke -- after being forced to watch Fox News yesterday at the gym as I burned up the elliptical -- believing something awful kept happening in the world, as every five seconds these blazing news alerts -- in bright yellow -- flashed across the screen FOR NO REASON OTHER THAN TO GIVE PEOPLE LIKE MY FATHER A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN AND TO KEEP THEM SCARED FOR THEIR LIVES. Here's a FOX NEWS ALERT: Megyn Kelly should be ashamed of herself, conducting "interviews" as she does. So, had to check out her background: Yep, she's a lawyer.

I think I'm in love with RHofBH ... kicks DC to the curb. Although, I must say, this whole miner soap opera might be the best of them all.

Finally, a serious note: The suicides over the past weeks of youth bullied for being gay -- coupled with the ongoing hate-speak and hatred in our country -- continues to push me to a precipice of uncontrolled rage and overwhelming sadness. My partner and I would not be here today had we not had the strength to see, somehow, someway, that there was a future. I will blog more about this next Wednesday, October 20.

Happy Friday, happy fall, and keep reading!
xx,
Wade

My F'ed Up Little Family

2010-10-13T05:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Gary and I didn't get dressed.

We weren't sick.

We weren't depressed.

We were working.

From 6 a.m. until 7 p.m. in my writing studio in the carriage house attached to our house. We woke up, started working and never stopped. And, the fact that Gary was still wearing yoga pants and I was wearing flannel PJ's (yes, I'm a 1950's sitcom character) emblazoned with dancing pine trees (yes, I'm a modern-day gay man), and that neither of us had washed our faces, brushed our teeth, or touched our hair, too, didn't totally dawn on us until the lawn service arrived to mow our yard and blow our leaves. When one of the men rang the doorbell to get the check, our little family rushed the door, and he asked, "Are you sick?"

"No."

"Are you cleaning?"

"No."

"Are you -- you know -- working?"

Silence.

"Did you lose your jobs?"

I felt, for an instant, like I'd been punched in the gut.

I should have appreciated the man's concern, but my first instinct -- like most of mine are -- was anger. In fact, I was about to get mad at his insinuation, but when I started to speak, I looked more closely at Gary, who had cookie crumbs in his beard, and what looked like applesauce smeared across a lens of his Italian glasses. He was wearing his beloved slipper socks, which had turned about 90 degrees, making him look like he had leathery webbed feet.

I caught a reflection of myself in the reflection off a window in our living room, and my hair looked like it should have had moons rotating around it. I had hunks of chocolate chip cookies in my teeth that made me look I'd been in a hideous bar fight, and flecks of anti-aging cream dotted my face and earlobes.

I glanced down at our dogs, who we'd recently festooned in their Halloween "drag": Marge was wearing a candy corn bandana, and Mabel was sporting a headpiece ala Steve Martin's axe-in-the-skull.

My little family looked totally Macy Gray meets Mel Gibson and has Danielle Staub as a baby crazy.

And that made me blissfully, gleefully happy.

It was a beautiful fall day, our woods were aglow in color, and we were all together, working our insane little asses off because I was inundated with projects and deadlines. It was what I'd always dreamed of. Just, you know, with more of a Cribs feel.

I let out a little chuckle, the creepy kind killers on CSI do right before they bludgeon someone to death.

Before I could say a word, the man from the lawn service backed away from my little family -- creeping down the steps of our front porch like Snoopy -- and said, "No charge this time. OK? OK? No charge! My gift to you!"

And, like that, he was gone. Vapor. Thankful to be alive, I'm sure.

I shrugged my shoulders, and we all started running back to my office in the carriage house to continue working.

But not before I could pants Gary on the way up the stairs. And celebrate our hard work and free lawn care by watching Hoarders later that evening.

Because that's how we roll. And I couldn't be prouder.

WRITER'S DIGEST SEPTEMBER COVER FEATURE!

2010-08-30T06:37:00.000-07:00

I was thrilled and honored (CLICHE-FEST OFFICIALLY OVER NOW) to be included as part of the cover feature in the September issue of the esteemed writer's magazine, Writer's Digest. The magazine did a themed "BIG 10 ISSUE," which asked 10 bestselling authors to share their top 10 secrets. I was part of that elite TOP 10, along with Sherman Alexie, Mary Higgins Clark, Jodi Picoult, Erik Larson and Chuck Palahniuk. I answered the question (each author answered a different question), "Top 10 Ways to Stay True to Yourself in Publishing."

I, of course, answered the questions like a semi-jackass, completing them while I helped my father convalesce after shoulder surgery at his house, where happy hour started right after the Folger's. The result? Here's a peek:

10) Do Not Try to Write Mary Potter & The Half-Price Rinse & Set, or Twilight: But with Zombies!
Listen closely to this, if nothing else: Write what you know, what you feel, what you believe, what needs to come out, not what you think you should write, or what you feel might sell. Writing anything other than what you have a passion for, anything other than that story that burns to be told, and you’ll be a sellout. And you’ll know it. And everyone will know it. And you’ll feel hollow, because what you’ve written is hollow. Follow your heart. Don’t let the market dictate your art.

For my entire list, you can go to the link below, or not be a cheap-ass and actually buy a copy (it's a fabulous issue, really ...):

http://www.writersdigest.com/article/rouse-top10/

Sadly, I was most thrilled to be included in the editor's and staff list of "TOP 10 WRITERS, DEAD OR ALIVE, WE'D LOVE TO HAVE DRINKS WITH" ... I was (drum roll) NUMBER FREAKING TWO, behind only Ernest Hemingway and ahead of Hunter Thompson (and I think I was the only living writer named to the list), all of which means I'm either a drunk, insane, violent, or an insane, violent drunk, which doesn't seem so fun when you work it out in your head. Whatever: I'm thrilled. It's like being Playboy Bunny of the Year, but way better. Drunk. And still fully clothed.

When stuff like this happens, it's still strange, because all these thoughts start popping in my head (though that could be the effect of decades of gel and Rave). I still too often still think, "Me? Did they e-mail the wrong person?" when I get asked to be a part of something like this, or lecture at a major conference/event. As I wrote for Writer's Digest, this is part of the "Fear Factor," which, sadly, defines most Americans. All of us, especially writers, are defined by our fears.

"Am I good enough?"
"Can I make a living at this?"
"Who really writes for a living?"
"Who does what they love?"

Fear strangles us. Prevents us from finding our voices, and pursuing our passion. From, like I still too often find, feeling we're good enough. That we belong. That it's OK to be happy.

All I can tell you is this: Turn FEAR into "Free Every Artistic Response." Let your creativity and calling guide you. Listen to it. Follow it. I guarantee, when you do, your true voice will be unleashed ... and happiness will follow.

And, when you get there, to that little corner bar called "Happiness, Success and Fulfillment," let me know. We'll drink to our success.

And we all know I'm pretty damn good at that. So, be prepared for a Hemingway-esque night on the town. All you need to do is get out your cash, ID and lip gloss, and put away your handguns.

xx,
Wade