Rodney Ross
Author of The Cool Part of His Pillow
Works by Rodney Ross
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Gender
- male
- Short biography
- Author Rodney Ross lives in South Florida.
'The Cool Part Of His Pillow', his debut novel, was the 1st Place Winner in the GLBT Fiction category from both the Indie Excellence Awards and the Next Generation Indie Book Awards; Silver Medalist in the 2013 Global EBook Awards; Honorable Mention in the 2012 Rainbow Book Awards; and was a 2013 nominee for a Lambda Literary Award.
Other works include 'Otis,' a short fiction about a Christmas Eve where lessons are taught and learned; 'Bended Knee', a short, bittersweet contemplation of same-sex marriage; and a non-fiction contribution to the 'The Other Man: Twenty-One Top Writers Speak Candidly About Sex, Love, Infidelity, Heartbreak and Moving On'. A trio of essays from this book are being adapted into a play for 2016 by Bernard Rice. Rodney's work is one of the three.
Past achievements include an optioned screenplay and play, both currently unproduced. Other screenplays earned Honorable Mentions or runners-up citations in the Monterey County Film Commission, FADE-IN and the LGBT One-In-Ten Screenwriting Competitions. Ross was also cited as 'Most Creative' in the Key West Mystery Fest Writing Competition.
He is a producer of the upcoming documentary 'The Little Firemen'. - Places of residence
- Florida, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- Florida, USA
Members
Reviews
A book seriously in need of editing, but a touching story with some good laughs.
2.5 stars. When I browse NetGalley, I search by genre - specifically, romance. So I thought this book was a romance about a guy whose husband has died. But it wasn't a romance. The book tracks a year in the life of Barry Grooms, from the day before his 45th birthday, to his 45th birthday (the day on which his husband Andy dies) to his 46th birthday. This book is a book about Barry's journey in grief and him getting to a place where he feels he can move on, at least, when the book ended, I show more thought that's where he was supposed to be. I wasn't 100% sure he was quite there yet. He has other difficulties and tragedies in the year of the book and it brought me to tears a couple of times. But, I'm a romance reader and the reason I persisted with the book was that I thought there would be a romance. Then, after 300 pages of the 330 odd page book, I thought maybe he'd just meet someone at the end and it could be a vaguely hopeful happy ending. But alas. So, I've graded it as a romance reader. I would not have chosen to read the book had I known it wasn't a romance. That's my reading preference talking and not really a reflection of the book. There are many great non-romance books out there I choose not to read every day, for the same reason. In terms of this book, there were parts of it that were very moving and well written and parts of it that I found confusing, with references I didn't understand and which were inadequately explained - like I was not in on the joke. The first part of the book, where Barry is snippily describing all his friends and his horrible nicknames for them predisposed me to think he was a bit of a dick actually. I did believe that he and Andy had a strong connection, but truthfully, in the book itself there weren't many flashbacks which showed me this - mostly the kind of things Barry shares are neutral or negative. But, the real and pervasive grief that Barry suffers shows me that there was more to that relationship and I would have liked to have seen a couple of scenes of very happy times to balance out the other. I'm not sure what I would have graded this had I gone in with only a "gay fiction" tag. Possibly around the same. But, be warned, this is not a romance. There is no HEA, there is no relationship - this is a stroy about Barry getting over the death of his spouse and moving on. But, it did make me cry, so there is that. show less
2.5 stars. When I browse NetGalley, I search by genre - specifically, romance. So I thought this book was a romance about a guy whose husband has died. But it wasn't a romance. The book tracks a year in the life of Barry Grooms, from the day before his 45th birthday, to his 45th birthday (the day on which his husband Andy dies) to his 46th birthday. This book is a book about Barry's journey in grief and him getting to a place where he feels he can move on, at least, when the book ended, I show more thought that's where he was supposed to be. I wasn't 100% sure he was quite there yet. He has other difficulties and tragedies in the year of the book and it brought me to tears a couple of times. But, I'm a romance reader and the reason I persisted with the book was that I thought there would be a romance. Then, after 300 pages of the 330 odd page book, I thought maybe he'd just meet someone at the end and it could be a vaguely hopeful happy ending. But alas. So, I've graded it as a romance reader. I would not have chosen to read the book had I known it wasn't a romance. That's my reading preference talking and not really a reflection of the book. There are many great non-romance books out there I choose not to read every day, for the same reason. In terms of this book, there were parts of it that were very moving and well written and parts of it that I found confusing, with references I didn't understand and which were inadequately explained - like I was not in on the joke. The first part of the book, where Barry is snippily describing all his friends and his horrible nicknames for them predisposed me to think he was a bit of a dick actually. I did believe that he and Andy had a strong connection, but truthfully, in the book itself there weren't many flashbacks which showed me this - mostly the kind of things Barry shares are neutral or negative. But, the real and pervasive grief that Barry suffers shows me that there was more to that relationship and I would have liked to have seen a couple of scenes of very happy times to balance out the other. I'm not sure what I would have graded this had I gone in with only a "gay fiction" tag. Possibly around the same. But, be warned, this is not a romance. There is no HEA, there is no relationship - this is a stroy about Barry getting over the death of his spouse and moving on. But, it did make me cry, so there is that. show less
Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 5
- Members
- 36
- Popularity
- #397,830
- Rating
- 2.9
- Reviews
- 3
- ISBNs
- 7