And they did survive, in my mind, as life-long mates. I got to know these two characters, not only as I created them the first time, but as I wrote the sequels. My characters became as real to me as my cousins might be if I had not seen them for 10 years. I knew my cousins were real; I didn’t need to see them to confirm it. That’s how I felt about my characters. Only I became closer to them than I was to my real-life extended family, and maybe even my immediate family.
A series entitled: Common Threads in the Life
I wanted to write about these two men from the time they met until they grew old together. It has taken ten years to get most of the way there. Another book in the series is called The Blind Season, set in 1970, only five years after the first story. I set it in time close to Common Sons to resolve many of the issues that arose from that story. How would the twins and the other two children from the Stroud family adjust to their new lives with the Reece family, which adopted all four of them? What psychological scars did they carry with them into their new life? How will Tom adjust to living with the Reece family and with his mate, Joel? How will he survive being disowned by his own father and mother, since losing his mother was probably Tom’s greatest loss when he decided to live with Joel as his mate? Will he come to realize that his mother was just as much a prisoner of her husband, the preacher Allen, as he was? That her slavish obedience to him prevented her from accepting Tom as her gay son? The sequel builds a firm base for further stories of these characters. I want to know how it turned out for them as we move into a new millennium.
Part of that future is included in a third book called The Salvation Mongers. Although this is not the Reece-family story or even a further story about Tom and Joel—they do appear in this book. The main character in The Salvation Mongers is Kelly O’Kelley, who is grieving over the suicide of his lover William, and is headed for a retreat run by one of the ex-gay ministries. There, Kelly hopes to discover what it was about this program that caused his own mate to kill himself less than a year after he “graduated” as a new Christian. On his way to the retreat, Kelly meets Tom and Joel when he passes through the town of Common, New Mexico. It is here in the story where readers of Common Sons will learn much of what Tom and Joel’s future has become. When Kelly attends the retreat, he meets another character from Common Sons. But The Salvation Mongers is also meant to stand alone as a work, and readers unfamiliar with the series will still be able to read it without having first read Common Sons.
The fourth book in the series, entitled The Gathering, is set in 1999 on the cusp of the new millennium. The setting is the Reece farm outside the town of Common, New Mexico. The long-scattered members of the various families are brought together again—including Tom and Joel’s biological daughter and her mother. How Tom and Joel came to be biological fathers is briefly explained in The Salvation Mongers, but is fully developed in The Blind Season.
With the publication of these four novels, the series will end; and though I do not intend to write any more of their story, I am sure Tom and Joel are still with us in this new millennium.
Ronald L. Donaghe
—Las Cruces, New Mexico
March 18, 2000
About the Author
Ronald L. Donaghe lives with his mate in a turn-of-the-century adobe house in a historical district in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He has kept his day job, where he is a technical writer and office manager. His daytime writing career and that of authoring his own work, spans twenty years.
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Table of Contents
Part One
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
Part Two
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
Part Three
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
Common Sons Page 36