This Week's Guest: Andrew Wheeler
How do you awaken your own untapped courage? This week's guest is Andrew Wheeler, writer of adventure and intrigue novels featuring defiantly gay characters. Though his stories are swashbuckling, Andrew tends to live a quiet, more domestic life than his globetrotting heroes. It was through his books that Andrew was able to explore beyond the town where he grew up -- in literature and eventually in real life.
Thanks to everyone who joined us for the Sewers of Paris livestream last Saturday to share stories of the entertainment that changed YOUR life! If you missed the stream, you can watch it on my YouTube channel -- I've also posted a link to it on Twitter, @sewersofparis. And we'll be back next month for another, so mark your calendars now for our next video livestream on March 10!
A huge thanks to everyone who makes The Sewers of Paris possible with a pledge of a dollar or more a month on Patreon. There are brand new rewards for patrons who support the show, including early access to content, a signed copy of my book, and Sewers of Paris buttons. It's easy to sign up -- just click "support the show on Patreon."
If you're not able to support the show financially, there’s other ways you can contribute -- just by listening, tweeting about the show, following The Sewers of Paris on Twitter and Facebook, and by writing reviews. All of that is a huge help and I'm very very grateful. And I love to get your feedback on the show -- follow @sewersofparis on Twitter or write to sewerspodcast@gmail.com.
Thanks to those Patrons supporting the show, I'm able to release new videos and podcast episodes. Check out the video I posted this week about Blanche's gay brother on The Golden Girls. You can find that on the Matt Baume YouTube channel and there's also a link on the SewersOfParis twitter feed.
And I'm going to be sharing some big announcements very soon about our show Dungeons & Drag Queens. If you're into drag queens playing a super-queer Dungeons and Dragons adventure, head over to dungeondrag.com to sign up for the mailing list -- you'll be the first to find out when we're bringing the show to you.
This Week's Recommendation: Barbarella
Big thanks to Andrew for joining me. Check out his Valentin and the Widow books on Amazon, and his new book The Twilight Prince on Wattpad. And for even more fantastic adventuring, my recommendation this week is to watch the spellbinding 1968 cinematic masterpiece that is Barbarella.
Jane Fonda plays the extremely titular character, a 5-star double-rated Astro-Navigatrix dispatched by the President of Earth to locate a positronic ray stolen by a scientist named Durand-Durand who is hiding out in a city populated by leathermen, floating above a Matmos, and besieged by a resistance fighter named Dildano.
Based on a comic book, the film is extremely stupid, and I love it with all my heart. Barbarella careens through her voyages with more extravagant outfits than an entire season of drag race, and her approach to adventure is to greet the unexpected with an unconditional "yes." Despite facing dangers too bizarre and convoluted to comprehend, she charges into action with little more than her wits, her charm, her fantastic costumes, and legs that appear to be longer than her entire body.
As a role model, you could not ask for better: Barbarella is brave, compassionate, curious, and above all eager to share pleasures of the flesh. In other words, she embodies that values to which, as far as I'm concerned, all gays -- whether at home or in space -- should aspire.
