About This Blog ~ This blog is about a series of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) super-hero, sci-fi, fantasy adventure novels called Rainbow Arc of Fire. The main characters are imbued with extraordinary abilities. Their exploits are both varied and exciting, from a GLBT and a human perspective. You can follow Greg, Paul, Marina, Joan, William, and Joseph, as well as several others along the way, as they battle extraordinary foes or take on environmental threats all around the globe and even in outer space. You can access synopses of the ten books using the individual links on the upper, left-hand column.





The more recent posts are about events or issues that either are mentioned in one or more books in the series or at least influenced the writing of the series.










Sunday, December 3, 2017

RAoF Hero Cards

During the Palm Springs Comic Con this past August, we gave away post cards to anyone who wanted them.  Images of the heroes as well as the last two volumes in the series.  They proved to be very popular, especially among the younger attendees.  Below are the 10 superhero images, obviously, that we used.
The mysterious duo.
The second wave.
The original duo.
The rebellious four.

Who Has Dominion? cover change


This is the only other cover to have a significant alteration from the original.  The coloring of the center image is much more like the original artist's conception.  The printing process for the original cover tended to lighten, and make more pink, that artwork.  That is now corrected.

Olive Branch cover change

Brian, my new cover artist, altered the front cover slightly.  However, it still retains the spirit of Anita's original design, including the image of the dove I photographed, with the olive branch in its beak, that adorns the entrance plaque to the White Cloud, Kansas, cemetery on the hill above the town where my Grandparents, my mother, Anita, my Uncle Robert, my Aunt Doris and her husband, "Hap", and many more Nuzum, Breeze, and Hook great grandparents and great uncles and great aunts reside.

The novel itself partly takes place in White Cloud, Kansas, where the main characters are attending the funeral of Aunt Doris and Uncle Hap in 2003.

It is here where members of the Rainbow Arc of Fire team learn of a potential planetary invasion as first North Korea, then China and Russia, are being systematically demilitarized by a mysterious craft from space.

Shattered Dawn cover art change

Anita, who created the cover art for all of my novels except the first, died a year or so ago. With her death, I lost access to all of the artwork from the novels.  I was able to get help recreating all of the previous covers, but not this one or the next.  We were forced to change the cover of Volume 9, SHATTERED DAWN.  But at least we were able to put all of the LGBT characters on the front cover with their superhero uniforms.

Saturday, December 2, 2017

A House Divided now appropriate for a younger audience


The turquoise volume, A HOUSE DIVIDED, now has been severely edited for those three chapters.  It is now appropriate for a younger audience.

All titles now available as print-on-demand copies on amazon.com

The final two volumes in the series are now available in inexpensive paperback volumes ($4.50 to $7.00, depending upon the length of each book) on amazon as print-on-demand copies:


They have always been available as digital download Kindle editions for only $2.99 each, the cheapest amazon will allow.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Comic Con Palm Springs 2017


I attended the Palm Springs Comic Con over the weekend of 25-27 August, giving away over 1200 books from the series, to promote RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE as physical books.  Many adults, many adults with kids, and many kids stopped by and took full or partial sets of the books--it was hectic much of the time, with interest in the series and the lure of free books.  However, in re-reading A HOUSE DIVIDED over the past two days, I realize now that Chapters 33, 34 and 62 have explicit sexual content, meant to make a point in the novel but entirely inappropriate for younger readers.  I had not read any of my novels in more than a decade and had simply forgotten that these three chapters existed in A HOUSE DIVIDED, published in 2002.

If anyone is reading this blog and got full sets of the series, or knows of anyone who got this book, make certain that those three chapters at least are not seen by readers who would be offended or traumatized by strong language and extreme adult content.  Had I had the time before the Con to revisit the series, this volume especially, I would have warned anyone taking this volume about the content.  And I would certainly not have allowed any younger readers to have the book.

The remainder of the novel is fine for all readers, and I believe this is the most entertaining and expansive volume in the series.  (Rewriting that novel today, I would likely remove the adult content and make the point I was making in a different way.)

I deeply apologize for any problem that this might cause and hope that all parents do screen the contents of any books their children have exposure to.  

-Greg Sanchez

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

At long last happy

I am now 67.

Nothing too extraordinary in that except, as a human being in the epoch of the speedy automobile in America, as a man of draft age during the Vietnam War era, and as a gay man during the age of AIDS in the world, survival was still not as easy to come by.

I now find myself surprised to discover, most fortunately indeed, that I am--at long last--happy. 

Not like Goethe's FAUST happy, where I have ruined the lives of one or more others to get to where I am.  Or having wallowed for long stretches in the deepest pools of the most putrid stench in life and been forced to shower myself off before I was able to gladly move on, enlightened.

No.  It's more like that child-like innocent happy when you ask the universe for a few specific--and realistic--presents at Christmas, and then found every single one of them wrapped in a colorful bow under the tree.  With your name on each one.

Everything has come together after so very many years of searching and not finding.  The path I have taken is, indeed, littered with countless--and I do mean countless--disappointments and defeats.  You get knocked down so often and so hard, sometimes you believe you will never get up again.  Never succeed.  Never find true love.  Never be truly contented and, yes, especially happy.  Bitter at times though not given over to lasting bitterness.  Sad and sorrowful, of course, for the many friends and family who are gone at this stage of one's life; but who have left you with a burnished trunk, filled with good and glorious memories.

I am once again living in California. 

After spending over four years in North Dakota, and then settling in for over three cantankerous decades in Colorado; at my age, the snow and cold finally drove me from the state that I had come to adore as a second home.

I have a solid and lovely new home, one that, except for the more traditional shape, is even more advanced and dazzling than Disney's Monsanto house of the future would have anticipated.

I work from home.  My salary is not lavish but decent, especially for these times.  The job isn't bad at all, just tedious now and then.  (I didn't plan for my financial future, so I really cannot retire and be comfortable.)

And after all of these Quixotic years of self-discovery but also increasing discouragement, I have found the man I love.  The man who loves me unconditionally and whom I love with all my heart.  I cannot emphasize this triumph too much, despite the clichéd terminology.  He has been my goal for my entire adult life.  And charging into each decade of my life, I fully expected to find him, only to eventually cross another ten years off of my life without success.

I certainly experienced a few near misses over the past several decades. 

To this day, I remember the sunny afternoon in 1970 or 1971, when I was driving south on the Harbor Freeway (I know California freeways are now numbered instead of named, but this is how I knew them then), having merged from the Santa Monica freeway with a clear path ahead of me.  Suddenly, a car tire still in its rim sailed up and over the center barrier and seemed to hover above and ahead of me and my '66 Mustang.  I instantly gunned the engine as the tire's forward momentum stalled; and I actually held my breath as it slowly disappeared above the closed convertible top.  Time had slowed as I finally saw it reappear just beyond the trunk and bounce harmlessly on the pavement I had just passed over.

In the early 1990's, living in Denver but still teaching night classes in Colorado Springs at Fort Carson, I was driving my 1991 Hondo Civic sedan on I-25, through the most congested bend of the freeway through Denver.  Always in the fast lane so I could reach the base in time, I found myself beside a massive and looming semi, also driving fast.  The passenger window was down on this warm day and I was beside the truck's wheels, appearing taller than the car itself.  Was it a sixth sense?  Or was it just paranoia or good planning when I gunned the engine to pull ahead, only to hear a loud explosion.  In the rearview mirror, I saw not only the tire explode into large and dangerous chunks that flew into the space on the freeway that I had just vacated, but the giant mud flap also shot directly into that space as well.

And then there was the war.  At first I was too young to fight.  But when I graduated in June of 1967, I would have been drafted or would have had to enlist; but I was saved by Miss Fouch's insistence that I, along with my best friend, Mike, see the guidance counselor a few weeks before graduation and at least get into junior college.  From East LAJC, Mike and I transferred to Cal State Dominguez Hills and did not graduate until December of 1971.  My draft lottery number was 119, and I had to report for a draft physical.  I enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve now that they were vacating Vietnam.  As I have already recounted, I was persuaded to sign up for Marine OCS in the Spring of 1972.  And by 1973, I attended Air Force OTS, was assigned to missile in North Dakota, and missed serving in the war entirely.

The 1980's began with me already out of the Air Force and forced to find a new career path, probably the lowest sustained period of my life.  I had given it all up for love, and then did not have love or money.  I had come so very close to losing it all.