Wayne Rouse is a columnist currently making a big splash in the book-writing world. He is a contributing humor columnist for Metrosource magazine, the largest gay magazine in NYC and LA. His essays and articles have appeared in numerous national magazines, as well as on CBC Radio One in Canada, Chicago Public Radio and Michigan Public Radio.
Rouse did not have any connections or any help when he broke into the world of being a published author five short years ago, and it has been a long hard climb, according to his partner, Gary Edwards. Rouse is now an acclaimed author, so successful he is teaching writing workshops to help other writers who are not yet published. He has spoken, lectured and taught writing seminars around the country.
Rouse’s fourth and latest book is called, It’s All Relative: A Memoir of Two Families, Three Dogs, 34 Holidays and 50 Boxes of Wine, published February 2011 by Harmony/Random House. Well-written and interesting, but different, it is probably not a book everyone will read, but it is a book everyone should read. Rouse provides a fresh, delightful and insightful look at a different lifestyle, with plenty of fun, jokes, laughter, and painfully honest emotion that endears the author to the reader in an unforgetable way. Rouse does not try to make a political statement, but the honesty with which he writes about his life says it far better than any sort of political statement ever could.
He tells his story by recounting holidays and how they are celebrated by his family, his partner’s family, and in his own relationship with his spouse, Gary. He talks about growing up in the Ozarks as an overweight, little gay boy, the way his parents and their values shaped his own outlook, and his feelings for the man who is the love of his life. There is humor, for example, the story of how Wade and Gary purchased a Barbie doll, the gift they always wanted but never received, and how they showered her with clothes and travel until they grew up and no longer needed a doll. He tells of adopting Marge, a puppy, who brought an element of unconditional love to their home and didn’t care whether a person was gay or straight, only how much the person loved her.
Rouse tells about the eccentricities of his mother and father , the brother he lost in an accident, and the kind of son he could never be, as a way of revealing truths that are a part of life and must be accepted because they cannot be changed. Most of all, the book shows how circumstances that might overcome a lesser person are met with deep strength of character and a sense of humor that carries Rouse through the trials of life with a smile. He gives us a lesson in how to cope with the adversity that challenges every life in some way.
Rouse has collected an impressive list of endorsements:
Wade Rouse is a “laugh-out-loud-funny” (NBC’s Today Show), “wise, witty and wicked” (USA Today) writer whose humor is successfully akin to suburban housewife Erma Bombeck (The Onion). Rouse “beautifully combines humor and pathos” (Out Magazine), and, in a short time has established himself as “an original writer and impressive new voice” (The Washington Post) whose “combination of honest emotion and evocative prose seems destined to be a hit!” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch).
Rouse is the author of three other critically-acclaimed books and is also contributor to a humorous dog anthology which will benefit The Humane Society of the United States and other animal causes.
