Meet Ken Bachtold, author of 'All By Myself'

Please welcome author Ken Bachtold to Books to Light Your Fire today. His decision to join the growing number of M/M romances stems from a desire to create a book that is more true to life than other contemporaries. He also has a varied background in theatre that makes his own story as interesting as the ones he pens. Get to know him and his books.

What is it that drives you to write?

I have read voraciously all my life. But, when I started reading MM books, I found that they were mostly written by middle-aged married women (with children, a dog, a cat, and a tank of fish, who were from the Midwest and loved gardening! To my dismay, I found that they featured endless sex scenes, described in minute detail to the very last drop of fluid. Usually these sex scenes lasted for six pages of more, not leaving a lot or space for the story. And sad scenes were virtually the same. The readers were mostly young girls! In reality, I found them to really be porn! And, these women got the whole gay relationship all wrong, from the silly to the serious (i.e. Gay men do NOT wear boxers, they were briefs, and one does not have to aim carefully at just the right angle to hit the other guys “gland”. NEWS: You can’t miss it!!!) I got so frustrated that I thought I should quit moaning, and write the kind of thing I liked (and would appeal to gay men instead of young girls). So I did. I feature strong stories with two equally masculine men (no whips) that are highly romantic. No lurid sex scenes. Once I got going I couldn’t seem to stop – new ideas all the time.

On what are you currently working?

Right now I’m just finishing my latest, Mood Indigo, which involves an amnesiac, and a piano player with a band, who also owns a club called The Treble Clef, and whose been bitterly hurt in the past, and is not about to let it happen again. This idea came to me when I wrote Blue Valentine Blues which demanded a color theme. I’d listed all the colors and an idea for each. When it came time for a new story, I chose indigo, and the song came to mind. When the amnesia walks into the club, he and the Pianist have what you might call a transcendental experience and feel a riveting connection. The pianist feels waves of sadness emanating from the amnesic and they seem to him to be indigo instead of blue. Without conscious thought, he slips into the song Mood Indigo, which he then plays every time the other guy comes into the club, until they finally meet. I also have three others in the works, Looking Back For Tomorrow, which goes back and forth between college days and the present, A Company Of Players involving a guy and friends who come to New York to start a theater. And It Began With A Rose Called “Love” which is set in a law firm.

What is it that drives you to write?

I have read voraciously all my life. But, when I started reading MM books, I found that they were mostly written by middle-aged married women (with children, a dog, a cat, and a tank of fish, who were from the Midwest and loved gardening! To my dismay, I found that they featured endless sex scenes, described in minute detail to the very last drop of fluid. Usually these sex scenes lasted for six pages of more, not leaving a lot or space for the story. And sad scenes were virtually the same. The readers were mostly young girls! In reality, I found them to really be porn! And, these women got the whole gay relationship all wrong, from the silly to the serious (i.e. Gay men do NOT wear boxers, they were briefs, and one does not have to aim carefully at just the right angle to hit the other guys “gland”. NEWS: You can’t miss it!!!) I got so frustrated that I thought I should quit moaning, and write the kind of thing I liked (and would appeal to gay men instead of young girls). So I did. I feature strong stories with two equally masculine men (no whips) that are highly romantic. No lurid sex scenes. Once I got going I couldn’t seem to stop – new ideas all the time.

Please tell us about your other published works.

I first wrote Love Like Lightning – Ten Stories about Love At First Sight – which I self-published because I was new, and was too timid to send off the big publishers. (It was not a happy experience, but the book was well received). Then I got courageous, and sent my next book, Seeing The Same Blue to what I considered to be top of the line, Dreamspinner Press, and they accepted it. I was thrilled. I sent off my next two books, Blue Valentine Blues, and my most recent All By Myself to the same place and they were accepted too! I felt I had “arrived.” 

On what are you currently working?

Right now I’m just finishing my latest, Mood Indigo, which involves an amnesiac, and a piano player with a band, who also owns a club called The Treble Clef, and whose been bitterly hurt in the past, and is not about to let it happen again. This idea came to me when I wrote Blue Valentine Blues which demanded a color theme. I’d listed all the colors and an idea for each. When it came time for a new story, I chose indigo, and the song came to mind. When the amnesia walks into the club, he and the Pianist have what you might call a transcendental experience and feel a riveting connection. The pianist feels waves of sadness emanating from the amnesic and they seem to him to be indigo instead of blue. Without conscious thought, he slips into the song Mood Indigo, which he then plays every time the other guy comes into the club, until they finally meet. I also have three others in the works, Looking Back For Tomorrow, which goes back and forth between college days and the present, A Company Of Players involving a guy and friends who come to New York to start a theater. And It Began With A Rose Called “Love” which is set in a law firm.

Who else should we be reading?

Almost no one! There are a few. Marie Sexton and Ariel Tracha. Also The Portrait Of series by J.B. Bowie, the three Finding books by Andrew Barriger, the Raised By Wolves quartet by W.A. Hoffman and especially the Scarlet And The White Wolf trilogy by Kirby Crow. Otherwise, I’m pretty much at a loss. Main stream I love Jonathan Kellerman and Dick Francis and all the Reacher books.

So, what lights your fire?

Theater, theater, theater. It’s always been of vast importance to me, and nothing else can even come close. However, I do like writing very much also.

Tell us about your theatre experience. Are you still involved? Do you miss it?

I’ve had eleven years of college! I started out at U.C. Berkeley in engineering (my older brother was an engineer and it was expected in my family that being an engineer was the only profession one could have). Well, on day on a sandy hill surveying, I decided I hated engineering. I left school for a time. When I decided to go back to San Francisco State University, I thought I’d take on course in everything I liked and then go on to teach the one I liked best. So I took courses in photography, art, sculpture, ceramics and for character building (I was very shy) I’d take drama. The first scene I had in the class was the tack room scene from The Rainmaker by N. Richard Nash. I played Starbuck. When we finished the scene, I found two people crying. I immediately went up to the administration building and changed my major to Theater and ended up with a BA & MA and a minor in art. When I came to New York (the lure of the Big Time) I made the rounds for many years, had some close calls but nothing really happened. When I found out that most open calls were only to shut Equity up, and no one ever got a part that way, I stopped. Then I started my own company (Surprise: A Company Of Players) and I directed five shows in five years – but, alas, no being a good money man I ran out of same. Later I did many shows with a friend who produced the Spotlight On Festivals and I did six shows with him over the next several years. Then a great hiatus. Then I wrote a gay themed play called Staring Over for the Ninth Annual Fresh Fruit Festival. A few years later, I had to have an ankle fusion for an old break I got in college ice skating. It didn’t come out too well and I don’t know if I could bet another show together or not. We’ll see. I do miss it a lot. Both acting and directing.

What can we find you doing when you aren't writing?

After having my department (Word Processing where I did PowerPoint shows and graphs and such) evilly outsourced (after 25 years yet and there were only 10 of us) I started writing in earnest. I also read Daily KOS every night for my real news (forget the paper and TV which are all biased because they’re all owned by five big corporations and lean right too much). Then I add pithy (I hope) text and phots to my Tumblr site, do and read Facebook, Twitter and add photos to my Pinterest site. I still read a lot (on my Kindle) of main stream (mysteries and government intrigue) and MM books until I can’t stand it and delete them.

What is something readers may be surprised to learn about you?

I’m a bit of a clutter bug, I seem unable to resist laying things on flat surfaces and elsewhere. But, I’m reforming and I’ve been cleaning things out giving a lot away to two charity second hand stores, The Housing Works here in New York and Highways in Bayonne, New Jersey. Soon, I will be clutter free. 

I also totally loused up the one true relationship I had many years ago with a fantastic guy. At that time I was very closeted, and couldn’t handle being in a gay relationship. It lasted two years only and it was all my fault that it ended. I’ll regret that forever.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Only that this has been a highly interesting trip down memory lane, and I thank you profusely for the chance. It was great fun!!!!

Get Ken's books on Amazon

About the author:

BA & MA from San Francisco State University in Theatre (Acting and Directing) with a minor in Art.

My latest book (All By Myself) was just published by Dreamspinner Press and can be found on Amazon. This followed Dreamspinner’s publication of my last two novels (Seeing The Same Blue and Blue Valentine Blues).

Before that, Outskirts Press published Love Like Lightning – Ten Stories Of Love At First Sight, also on Amazon.

My original play, Starting Over (which I also directed), was just staged as part of the Ninth Annual Fresh Fruit Festival here in New York. Audience reaction was terrific. It was one of nine plays accepted out of 60 submitted. It was an MM romance. The blurb in the brochure for the festival read, "A play about love and loss. Griff has recently lost his longtime partner. Can he find happiness with Ben, the new neighbor down the hall. Supported by his sister and opposed by his widowed mother, now remarried to a homophobic preacher."

I've also written 5 musicals, book, music and lyrics.

Saloon (loosely suggested by the old melodrama The Drunkard) which opened The Gatetway Dinner Theatre in New Jersey to great reviews. It was subsequently optioned by Broadway producer Jerry Schloschberg (who, at the time was, producing the revival of On The Town with Bernadette Peters), but a show sluggishly following the old material opened and closed the same night and he backed off thinking there was now a "stigma" on the material.

The Facts Of Life (a musical about War, Prejudice and Aging, circa the ‘60s) was written at the BMI Music Workshop taught by Broadway orchestra leader Lyman Engle after several auditions before acceptance in the class. It was deemed worthy of a staged reading there.

Boo!, based on the old gothic novel The Castle Spectre was done by several regional theatres.

I was hired to doctor a musical based on Ephigenia At Aulis, called The Winds Of Aulis. I changed the name to Delimma! and wrote a subplot and mostly new lyrics. Although the play was fully backed, it never reached production and I never found out why.

I’ve written and staged numerous night club and cabaret acts and taught singing for the musical stage for 15 years.