Martin Powers wanted an ironing board for Christmas. Instead, he got . . . Matthew Kieler, a non-returnable gift, but a gift that kept on giving. A powerful tale of survival, compassion and unapologetic love in the time of AIDS.
You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it. -Benjamin Mee
Background
Information
I grew up in a lower working class family in the 1980's with a very nuclear family. I was raised conservatively by a Christian stay at home mother and a blue collar father. Escaping into books and into my own writing was the only place I felt I belonged most of my life. Not realizing that I was gay until I was in my 20's- before that I could acknowledge to myself only that I was possibly bisexual- I always felt like something was missing and very, very wrong with me but I never knew what. I had been writing since I was 8 years old, stories filled with places and scenarios in which I belonged. It was 2005 when I participated in National Novel Writing Month and I wrote my first full length novel as an adult, Beyond the Rain. That novel, loosely based on my own coming out story, sat unpublished for nine years. Always seeing myself as a writer, I began to feel just an ingenuine to myself by not putting my work out there as I once did being closeted.
Now, an author and a out lesbian for many years, I finally feel true to myself.
Birth Place
Kansas City, MO USA
Accomplishments
Winner of NaNoWriMo 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2013.