James Pauley, Jr. surely keeps you turning the pages in Bumpy Rides and Soft Landings stories of coming out, flying high, and not learning how to play the piano. As someone whose innate filter doesn’t always work, Pauley says it exactly as he sees it. Written in his uniquely humorous, poignant, sarcastic, self-deprecating, honest, and mildly outrageous style, he recounts stories of growing up different, while learning important lessons from even the most unlikely of sources: a chili dog, a nasty queen, a cursing coworker, a Porta-Potty, a stranger’s judgment, a sore butt, a new piano, a tiny scar, a grieving widow, and a hateful bully.

Louis Flint Ceci introduce us to Jake, Joanie, and Randy who must navigate the minefield of their parents’ mistakes while building their own lives in Croy, a small Oklahoma town. Jake’s high school nemesis, Red, returns from Viet Nam harboring secrets that could make him an ally or a more dangerous foe. Joanie discovers a lost piece of town history, but a charismatic pastor immediately sets out to destroy it. Randy’s criminal father tries to reconcile with his wife and son, but risks losing everything in the effort. Past and present collide as old prejudices and new ideas vie for control of Croy’s future. Amid it all, two boys fall in love in a time and place that threatens not just their dreams but their very lives.

Both authors will read short excerpts from their books and discuss.

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James Pauley, Jr. grew up in Edwardsburg, Michigan, a small farming community located in the southwestern part of the state, and earned a bachelor’s degree from Albion College in 1978. With a double major in German and Spanish, he was fortunate to have studied in both Mexico and Germany during his junior year. This opened his mind to all things foreign and piqued his interest in travel. Pursuing a lifelong dream of seeing the world, he became a flight attendant shortly after graduating from college. He continued to love the job for almost forty-five years. In June 2023, he permanently hung up his wings to focus on writing and spending more time with Rich, his partner of four decades, at their home in Indiana.

Louis Flint Ceci was a high school teacher of English and speech in Benton, Illinois; an assistant professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley; a commercial actor and freelance science journalist in the Denver-Boulder area; and a software engineer for several companies, including Skype, where he helped design and implement a user interface for the blind and visually impaired.

His poetry is published in The Colorado-North Review and Impossible Archetype. His scholarly articles on linguistics and poetics have appeared in College English, Language and Style, and Literature in Performance.

His short stories have appeared in Diseased Pariah News, Jonathan, and Trikone Magazine, and in the anthologies Queer and Catholic, and Gay City Volume 4: At Second Glance. He has twice been a finalist in the Saints+Sinners: New Stories from the Festival short fiction contest, and was inducted into the Saints+Sinners Hall of Fame in 2017.

He is an avid U.S. Masters swimmer and won two gold and three silver medals at the 2020 International Gay and Lesbian Aquatics World Championships in Melbourne, Australia. He won the Gold Medal in the Poetic Justice Poetry Slam at the 2002 Gay Games in Sydney, Australia.

He lives in Nevada City, California.