{"id":758,"date":"2012-09-18T18:41:21","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T16:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zahraowens.com\/?p=758"},"modified":"2012-09-18T18:41:21","modified_gmt":"2012-09-18T16:41:21","slug":"j-p-barnaby-almost-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/?p=758","title":{"rendered":"J.P. Barnaby – Almost Normal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year I met J.P.Barnaby in NYC at the Dreamspinner Press Author’s Workshop. We hit it off immediately, and when we started talking it turned out not to be much of a surprise. We both work in computer software during the day and write up a storm at night. She hangs around with porn stars and I get to drool over the pictures and watch from afar from Twitter ;-). Let’s say we have similar interests all around. So who better than her to lose my (guest blogger) cherry to?<\/p>\n

So without further ado, here’s my first guest blogger!<\/p>\n

*cuts rainbow colored ribbon*
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Almost Normal<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s amazing how much things change in such a short span of time. Driving to work this morning, I passed a marshy wasteland of overgrown grass, tangles of brush, and monstrous trees that just a few years ago used to be a golf course. After a massive flood, the owner decided that he was done, and just let it go. The clubhouse is barely recognizable now, but I can still see the mini golf windmill in my mind with absolute clarity. Just as I can see myself the way I was just a few years ago.
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J. P. Barnaby\u2019s very first author headshot<\/figcaption><\/figure> Trish Barnaby used to be scared of life. Lonely, overweight, with few real friends, and even fewer reasons to leave the safety of the insulated world she\u2019d built for herself. She worked, she watched TV, she declined any and all invitations, or worse she\u2019d accept knowing that she\u2019d later cancel. After a while, people stopped asking, and she figured that was just as well. One thing Trish loved, however, was to read. A big fan of Harry Potter, Douglas Preston, Stephen King, she loved nothing more than to escape into someone else\u2019s life. One day, her helpful little cousin came along and told her to read a book series just finishing up called Twilight. Really? Vampires? Werewolves? She tried to talk her way out of it, but her little cousin was rather insistent. So, she gave it a shot.<\/p>\n

What she found was not a great love affair with the series, but with writing.<\/p>\n

Breaking Dawn<\/em> infuriated me. I waited four damn books for them to have sex and got a complete fade to black. Yes, I realize that technically it\u2019s a YA book, but really? Married people have sex. Having been a huge Harry Potter fan, I\u2019d heard of fanfiction, but had never read anything. I wondered if maybe someone had filled in the gaps and wrote what happened behind Ms. Meyer\u2019s cock block. What I found was a wonderful world of decadent, erotic stories. During my reading, I stumbled across a contest for a Dirty Talking Edward, decided to write a hot little femdom story and J. P. Barnaby was born. Back then, my penname was DefinatelyStaying \u2013 from a random line in Breaking Dawn<\/em>.
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Fractured, a story of dissociative identity disorder in which Edward was an alcoholic doctor and Jasper, one of his personalities, walked the streets as a gay prostitute, won first place in the For the Love of Jasper contest<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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J. P. Barnaby with Devon Hunter at Market Days<\/figcaption><\/figure>I started talking to other authors and readers in chat, on Twitter, and through reviews. I started making friends. By the time my readers pushed me to take The Forbidden Room<\/em> and A House of Cards<\/em>: Desconstructing Ethan<\/em> to a larger stage, I felt almost normal. They had given me confidence and friendships, which I cherish. Not long after I started to publish, I decided to have gastric bypass surgery. The Little Boy Lost<\/em> series had been picked up by Dreamspinner Press, I\u2019d committed to GayRomLit in New Orleans, and I knew there would be more appearances to follow. It was around that time when I met Devon Hunter. Devon Hunter who didn\u2019t care that I was overweight, he didn\u2019t care that I was a geek, he just wanted to be my friend. Through his example, he showed me the kind of person I wanted to be.
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Drake Jaden, J. P. Barnaby, & Parker Perry at a private party in Chicago<\/figcaption><\/figure> When the weight started to come off, and I started attending functions\u2014both for writing, and for the gay porn industry, I found other friends\u2026 many many other friends. More friends than I\u2019ve probably had in my entire life. Suddenly I had to put my phone on vibrate at work because it made noise all day long, noise it hardly made before because I simply didn\u2019t get tweets, Facebook messages, emails, texts, or calls.
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J. P. Barnaby and friends presenting at the Grabbys<\/figcaption><\/figure> It\u2019s taken a year for me to finally get used to the way my life has changed since I started publishing. I\u2019m not the scared, timid wallflower hiding in the shadows anymore. I\u2019m the woman who got up on stage at the Grabbys (a kind of gay porn academy awards) and presented the award for Best Fetish Extreme. I\u2019m the author who gets her stories filmed by porn companies. I have 9 published novels. I have frequent flyer miles. I have a life.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Becoming an author changed my life, and I feel like the luckiest girl in the world as a result.
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Dalton Tyler, J. P. Barnaby, & Jimmy Fanz before a night out dancing in Ft. Lauderdale<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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About J. P. Barnaby<\/strong>
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J.P. Barnaby – NOH8<\/figcaption><\/figure> As a bisexual woman, J.P. is a proud member of the GLBT community both online and in her small town on the outskirts of Chicago. A member of Mensa, she is described as brilliant but troubled, sweet but introverted, and talented but deviant. She spends her days writing software and her nights writing erotica, which is, of course, far more interesting. The spare time that she carves out between her career and her novels is spent reading about the concept of love, which, like some of her characters, she has never quite figured out for herself.
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\nWebsite: http:\/\/www.jpbarnaby.com<\/a>
\nTwitter: http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/JPBarnaby<\/a>
\nFacebook: http:\/\/www.Facebook.com\/JPBarnaby<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year I met J.P.Barnaby in NYC at the Dreamspinner Press Author’s Workshop. We hit it off immediately, and when we started talking it turned out not to be much of a surprise. We both work in computer software during the day and write up a storm at night. She hangs around with porn…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[46,45],"class_list":["post-758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-blog","tag-guest-blogger","tag-j-p-barnaby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}