Aricia's Gay Book Blog

PAINTING STEPHEN by Jayne DeMarco

2010-10-04T15:33:00.004+10:30

Occasionally there's a story that comes along that crosses a line – and this one crosses two. Usually you can pretty easily categorize a work of fiction. Is it m/m? Is is gay? Is it mainstream?

And with PAINTING STEPHEN, which was Jayne DeMarco’s debut, you’d have to answer “yes” to all of those questions. I’ve read a lot of gay books … books written by gay guys, for gay guys, published and promoted by gay guys. They’re not often anything similar to the boy-boy romance that are so popular right now. There’s a certain brand of “nitty-grittyness” about gay books that gets to grips with the realities of being gay and just gets on with the process of living. On the other side of the fence, there’s all that deliciousness of discovery that makes m/m something of a joy! With m/m stories, you get the feeling that “the novelty hasn’t worn off being gay yet” …!

If this doesn’t make any sense to you, then read some of the great gay novels I’ve reviewed on my blog, and then read a rucksack full of m/m, and compare the two. Gay novels are fantastic because they actually feel like a slice of real life. M/m stories are fantastic, because it’s like the shine and glitter hasn’t worn off your Christmas pressies yet. And as a reader you get to love *both* …and ooooh, but you get to wish that there was something, some kind of story, that actually embraced both side of this literary coin!

PAINTING STEPHEN is just about spot on the target. It’s 45,000 words, which is a nice length for me to read. I don’t have a heck of a lot of time any more, and the spare time I do have is usually spent rocking around on a bus. I read on a palmtop device, with earbuds stuffed into both ears to kill the sound of the diesel engine…

And Jayne DeMarco came close to owing me a bus ticket, because I got so absorbed in the piece, I nearly missed my stop. It’s a very involving story, with some magically spicy bits, and some real thrills at the end, too.

In the first chapter you meet the hero, who’s an artist of 40 years old. He’s feeling his age, and his ex has not long before departed the scene, taking with her the bank balance. John’s bi, and he was married for about ten years. Right as the story starts, he’s in a deep blue funk about life … having a rough time, so he’s quite entitled to the funk!

His best friend is his agent, a gorgeous older man called Barry Provine. If anybody else likes old, old movies, you might known an actor called George Sanders. I would swear that the part of Barry was written for George Sanders. He’s lovely! He’s also smart enough to know what John needs. The best medicine would be something to snap him out of the Deep Blue Funk he’s in, and get his artwork away from the “too real” stuff he’s painting, and back onto something “semi-fantasy” and that Barry can actually sell through his galleries. Check.

The magic Barry works comes walking into the story on two beautiful long legs. His name is Stephen. He’s a knockout. He’s about 22. He’s a cross between siren and ingénue. He’s sexy as all get-out. He likes mature guys (thank God!) and he’s going to be John’s new model.

He’s also going to be the force of nature that rips John’s whole world to shreds like a tropical cyclone going through -- and John wouldn’t have it any other way. As the story progresses, you soon learn that Stephen is in big trouble, and by this time John has fallen for him, hook like and sinker. Of course he has to help! And Barry is right there to stand by them when the barrowload hits the fan in a big way.

This book isn’t very long, but it has a kick like a mule. The sexy scenes are delicious as well as being just a bit understated by today’s standards. The writing is expressive and emotional, but there’s nothing really sweet about it. The treatment of the Real World is *so* real, it puts you right there inside the artist’s loft, and in the street while they’ve being stalked by Stephen’s nemesis.

It’s the way the whole thing’s handled that makes PAINTING STEPHEN straddle the line between gay book and m/m … and -- at least for me -- it also crosses over into the mainstream as well. I say thing because the story is so “real,” and so strong, it stands on its own feet anywhere. Stephen could have been Stephanie, and it would work just as well without changing anything major. (I know that a couple of mainly-hetero readers Beta-read the manuscript before it was passed along to the publisher, DreamCraft, and the feedback was unanimous: terrific story.)

So, your bottom line is that this is something for *almost* everyone. It’s out in ebook format, and it’s going to be released in Kindle very soon. The price is between $3.99 and $5.99, depending on when and where you get it. Highly recommended, and I’m looking forward keenly to JDM’s next one. I also loved UMBRIEL, which was a co-work with Mel Keegan, and DreamCraft says JDM’s next one is an SF story. Great -- I have a passion for gay sci-fi. Aricia’s verdict: five stars and big fun.

Length: 45,000 words,
Format: ebook (PDF; Kindle due at this time)
Genre: m/m romance with a thriller's sting in the tail
Cover by Jade
ISBN: 978-0-9807092-3-0
Publisher: DreamCraft

Buy now, for $3.99, right here! (Also available at GLBT Bookshelf, Rainbow eBooks, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords, and soon at Kindle)

Mel Keegan's new one rocks: GROUND ZERO

2009-10-01T15:06:00.003+09:30

I'm lucky enough to be a proofie for DreamCraft, so I read this one a few months ago, long before the cover was painted ... before the web pages were uploaded ... before it tickled the Top 50 Techno Thrillers in the Kindle store -- and I can tell you, the ranking is highly deserved.

GROUND ZERO is one of Mel Keegan's best, and he's written some doozies. It's sorta-kind SF, yet at the same time it's close enough to the present day world for it to have a great contemporary feel. (In fact, I was at Amazon the other day and I noticed that a lot of users over there are tagging it "contemporary thriller" as well as SF. This shows you that the book is rooted deeply in the present, at the same time as having the SF "polish" that plunks it in the Techno Thriller bracket.

And "thriller" it surely is! Here's another one you don't want to start reading later in the evening, because you won't be getting a hell of a lot of sleep till you're done...! It's a page turner almost from the beginning. MK takes a chapter out to introduce us to the characters, the backdrop, the geography inside of which the story's going to be taking place. Then, Chapter Two starts ... and you're on a rollercoaster to the end.

It's also a damned hard book to review without handing out spoilers. So I'll describe it in broad terms and whet your appetite. It's set in Adelaide in 2048 (this adds extra zest for us, because Adee is hometown for MK and self, and the crew from DreamCraft), and it's set in the winter of that year, and in the hills east and south of the city. Those who know the landscape will find it so involving. Those who don't will find the descriptions evocative and visual. The big chances are in the tech that runs the world in this era. People haven't changed...

You're about to meet Brendan Scott and Lee Ronson. Two beauties, an established couple, hitched and all, who grew up in the decades *after* anti-gay prejudice died the death it richly deserves. They're gorgeous, and the book is a tad bit hotter than MK's usual. There's quite a bit of sex, and it's deliciously written.

The book also has a sharp sense of humor. There's a lot of chuckles and a couple of belly laughs. But the "thrust" of the story is the mystery ...

It’s winter when the city suffers a series of bizarre murders, robberies at high-tech labs – and a virus which sprang from nowhere. Every two days, a fresh body is discovered … entirely drained of blood. Every two days, a weapons research or energy technologies facility is robbed of a seemingly bizarre list of oddments. Meanwhile, the virus known only by a codename – 2048-3a – is so new, no part of the community is immune and the city is crippled. Murders, robberies and virus are intimately connected in a mystery that will astonish. Lee Ronson and Brendan Scott find themselves taking point in an investigation filled with unexpected hazard – and equally unforeseen reward.

Lee and Brendan work for a university department. They're the data analysis team in the Paranormal Studies department at the new (fictional) Franklin University. They're the ones who get to go into the field, "wrangle" data on weird, offbeat cases that often turn out to be the work of serial killers, loonies, cults. On rare occasions, the data turns up a genuine haunting or sighting, or an "out of place artifact."

So DCS Maggie Jarmin hands the latest too-weird case to her old mate, Doctor Robert Strachan, who's the head of Paranormal Studies. And Doctor Strachan assigns Lee and Brendan to git out there and do the sleuthing, find the data to prove (or dis) what the hell is going on in SA this winter...

It's a mystery which unfolds over the book's 105,000 word running length, and it gets progressively more thrilling as it goes, until the last segment will have your heart in your mouth. And I honestly, seriously, can't say anything else without handing you plot spoilers -- and in this case, guys, plot spoilers will be story ruiners. You have to READ this one, experience it "as it happens" to get the thrill ... and it'd be lousy of me to spoil that for you.

The ebooks are out right now (everything from Kindle to Blackberry, via everything in between), and the paperback comes out in October. Right now, it's $9.99 across the board -- for a good, solid read, and a story that you're going to remember.

Here's the book's own page: http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/ground-zero.htm

On that page, you can read the first couple of chapters, and buy it rafts of formats.

AG's rating: 5 out of 5, and a gold star for giving me an absolute thrill.

Mel Keegan: The Winds of Chance ... launching now!

2009-07-11T14:41:00.003+09:30

Welcome to the launch of

LEGENDS: The Fall of the Atlantean Empire

Book One: The Winds of Chance

At last ... fully edited, impeccably proofread, perfectly formatted for your ebook reader, desktop, laptop or netbook ... no typos, no shuffling from one blog post to another ... just read and enjoy, as a fully-featured ebook from DreamCraft!

In an era of storm and chaos, One will be born who will command the Power, but the ancient magic that flows in his veins like blood is his curse as well as his gift.

In this time of cataclysm and ordeal, the upstart Empire of Vayal has placed a bounty on the heads of all scions of the lineage of Diomedas, for the oracle foretold the doom of Vayal, and it rides on the shoulders of the One.

He lives and breathes already, hiding the old city of Zeheft and in the slowly drowning outlands. He is Faunos Phinneas Aeson, still dangerously young -- and he has one dread: the witchfinders of Vayal, who are charged with the hunting of those like himself.

Twenty years, Faunos has hidden and learned, until the gods of sea, storm and earth destroy Zeheft --and one night destiny brings Vayal's young witchfinder to the camps of the water gypsies, where a youth like Faunos should never have been. Galen lies dying; the City of the Sun is celebrating the coming of age of Soran -- althlete, hunter, beautiful as the night,  Vayal's heir and greatest witchfinder ...

The Empire of the Atlantan has one slender chance to survive, and its struggle will begin on this night.

Read the first four chapters, on GLBT Booshelf!

See the Legends art gallery -- art by Jade...

And save 30% ... indulge yourself in the "blog special," right on this page!

Published by DreamCraft
Ebook edition: July 2009
98,370 words
For PC, Mac, Laptop, desktop, netbook, BeBook, iLiad, Sony Reader, Palm Pilot, Kindle, iPhone, Blackberry, Microsoft Reader, smartphones.

Download the PDF for BeBook, Iliad, PC, Mac, desktop, laptop, netbook: $6.95 -- save $3!

Download the Mobi, PDB, epub and LRF files, for  Palm Pilot, Sony Reader, Kindle, iPhone, Blackberry etc., for $10.50

Like to see more of the Mel Keegan novels? Start here:

Blind and gay ... looking for a good read? At last, a Large Print Edition of Mel Keegan!

2009-04-01T16:32:00.000+10:30

Not a book review today (if only I had time...) but a piece of news which is great for blind and gay readers (or visually impaired readers who like a good gay yarn). I'll keep this brief, because Mel Keegan has said it all on The World According to Mel.

There's not -- yet -- any publisher who is providing great gay fiction in a format that visually impaired people can read. That's about to change. Mel's mother was recently diagnosed with advanced glaucoma. I have the privilege to know this lady, and it's a tragedy. Losing your vision is always one hell of tragedy. And I struggle to imagine being blind and gay.

Leave it to MK to "do something about it."

The Swordsman is the first title which will be available to visually impaired readers in a Large Print Edition. The font is around the standard 16pt mark, which makes the book 600pp ... but every word is there, and I can tell you that as of today, a copy is on its way to Aus as a gift for Mother's Day, in May.

For the whole story, visit here: Gay and visually impaired ... what are you reading, and how?!

And please do pass this along to friends who are in this predicament -- visually impaired, dying for a great gay read, while traditional publishers aren't willing to get involved. Please share the above URL of the page on MK's blog -- or this page.

At this time, Me Keegan is asking for participation from visually impaired readers. There's a download, a small PDF, that you're invited to print out, read, try for size on the eyes, and give feedback. Please help to make this project a success.

Here's the direct link to the download, which gives the first 10pp of The Swordsman in the next format.

Other titles which will be appearing in this range from DreamCraft: Windrage; Tiger, Tiger; Storm Tide; Aquamarine; Fortunes of War; The Lords of Harbendane.

Which titles are done first, and how long it takes to produce the range, depends on interest shown by readers. Thank you for help in spreading the word, and helping to "beta test" the format!

Gay vampires: perverse immortality in Lost Souls

2009-03-24T14:32:00.011+10:30

Love it or loathe it, you can't seem to ignore this vampire novel -- and it depends who you talk to, whether it's garbage or gold. Poppy Z. Brite has a writing style that's hard to compare to anyone else. The only other writer I can think of with something like this style is Taylor Caldwell (specifically, Captains and The Kings; not so much her other works), and once again, what you get out of it is down to your "ear," which is a very personal quality. I've heard PZB's writing called "lyrical," and "incredibly visual." I've also heard the same style, the same wording, called "bloated and boring." So the only recommendation I can make about this novel is --

75% of people either like or love it, and the top 10% think it's the most fantastic thing they ever read. However, at the other end of the scale are 10% of readers who think it's the most boring, immature load of twaddle that ever wasted printing paper! So, the bottom line has to be, make up your own mind about this one. I'll tell you what I think, and leave the rest to you!

From the first, I was impressed by Brite's knowledge of the region. It's all set in the south, in and around New Orleans, and the area is painted in technicolor phrases. I was blown away by the narrative detail depicting a real place. You feel like you've been there. The story starts with a prologue introducing three punk vampires. Nothing like Dracula, or Ann Rice, or Mel Keegan's Nocture, this. These vampires are out there, weird. It's all about booze and drugs and sex -- oh yes, and being immortal, and fathering a new generation of their kind.

Brite's vampires are contemporary descendants of an elder species that would have had to hide from the sun. These guys don't have to stay out of daylight; they merely cavort at night because they prefer to. They can also eat and drink like normal humans ... they just "suffer" a kind of bloodlust, a blood hunger. Are they true vampires? Possibly not, because necessity doesn't drive them to blood. They bite, and they suck, and they drink blood, because they like it and want to.

So you have a rather perverse bunch of characters to start with, and the plot thickens from there. It's a difficult plot to pin down; it does go somewhere, but it gets there by such a circuitous rout that some readers have just become bored. Others (and by far the majority) are fascinated by the skillful weaving of the place, the time, the psychotic characters, most of whom seem to have no grasp of right, wrong, mortality, rsponsibility or destiny!

I was one of the fascinated ones. The book is murky, it does seem to go in five directions before the threads start to draw together and you glimpse where it's going. You'll either be drawn into its bloodthirsty, perverse clutches, or ... you won't.

The story is about characters and relationships, rather than action. There's Nothing, who is half vampire, sired in the midst of a drunken orgy at Mardi Gras time, by Zilla ... and there's Zilla, who's drop-dead beautiful, bisexual, with confused and confusing gender identity. And Molochai and Twig, his two companions in eternity and night. And Christian, enigmatic, gentle, much more intelligent and refined than the rest. And ... so on.

The plot isn't about events, facts, places, incidents; it's about how people weave around each other, how relationships form and tear apart. It will either draw you in with fascination or it will bore you senseless by page 100 of its 359pp length. I was one of those who were caught on its hook, but I can more than understand the wails of complaint from the other side of the fence!

The book has several downsides. It is slow-paced. It is confusingly structured in places. The descriptive passages are lavish to the point of "one more syllable and this will be overdone." (But Brite always, to me, stops with that one syllable to spare.) The characters are weird and perverse. People are killing their mates; there is a foray into incest, plus domestic violence. And booze and drugs. And vampires.

But I would have to say, all of the above were Brite's intention. She never set out to write a linear, clean-cut storyline with the pellucid writing style of your Keegan, your Lanyon, you Charles Nelson. She fully intended to write a murky swamp of a narrative where sensuality is thick as mist, and "sin" is something you kind of wade in, up to the tops of your galoshes.

Did it work? Most people say "oh, yes." Some people disagree. Depends what you want from a book. The only other novel I know that has this formless ebb and flow quality ... where you can't pick the storyline to save your life, but fascination with the place, the time, the people, keeps you reading ... is Ann Rice's The Feast of All Souls.

The gay content is like a background buzz. It's just there. Brite makes nothing special of it, and there certainly isn't any specific relationship to focus on. The term I'd use is "omnisexual." (Yep, like Cap'n Jack himself.)

I have to recommend this book, because I've never forgotten it, and still relish the incredible richness of the prose, the sheer weirdness of the characters and the way Brite makes a plot come together somehow, from apparent plotlessness! But be warned: 10% of the folks reading this will more than likely hate the whole thing.

AG's rating: 3.5 or 4 out of 5 stars, depending on how I feel at the time. (Can't give it 5, because it's just so much of a challenge for so many readers).

Still in print, and readily available from Amazon. (You can buy some amazingly cheap copies, but consider doing the industry, and the author a favor: buy a new one!)

Gay romance meets gay mystery: The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks

2009-03-21T15:04:00.006+10:30

Josh Lanyon is in good form with this title ... and what a title! The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks. At a glance, I knew I had to have it. With a title like that, how could you go wrong?

Josh Lanyon is one of a comparative handful of writers who consistently delivers the goods -- and The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks is a great addition to my shelf. It has everything: a wonderful plot; two irresistible heroes; loads of general weirdness and eccentric characters; dead bodies; a haunted house; a quirkier than usual gay romance; and of course Josh Lanyon's style of putting words on paper (or into the computer), which is as important to the book as the characters -- at least to me.

The story begins with a familiar enough mystery: a "now you see it, now you don't" dead body. But this one is in the bath when Perry Foster all but stumbles over it! Perry's a librarian ... is it me, or does he remind you of Christian Anholt's character on the old Relic Hunter tv series? You know how I love to "cast the parts," and from the start of The Ghost... I was seeing Chris Anholt in this role. I'm probably dead wrong, but it was a load of fun anyway! All this aside ... Perry is very lovely, kinda shy, and the perfect partner for Nick Reno ... who used to be a SEAL -- as in, US Navy. Now, Nick is brusque, chilly -- the kind of iceberg you'd love to melt. And Perry is just the one to do it. Picture this! It's delicious.

One of the great charms of The Ghost is that it's 50% mystery and 50% character play. The first half of the book is about people, relationships, who's who, what's what -- backstory three feet thick. I like this. I like to know the characters and the "map" before the action gets into high gear. The characterization of the two heroes is full of very "human" detail that I appreciated so much. Nothing cardboard about these characters. For instance, Nick can be rather mean at times, and Perry gets asthma -- it's the flaws in the characters that make them real and endearing.

As the book starts, Nick is leaving and we have an understanding that the potential relationship between him and Perry is going to fizzle before it starts ... Perry (in his early-to-mid 20s) is extremely, uh, virginal. He also ain't ready to quit on Nick. The seduction scene is marvelously done -- and without spoiling the plot for anyone, it'd be a weird reader who didn't like the way the whole thing turns out.

You have to smile as the mild mannered librarian gets the bit between his teeth and seems to tow Nick along. Nick is definitely the muscles of this outfit, but Perry has the brains, and is the one who's determined to investigate the murder mystery.

Does the book have a downside? I don't think so. A few reviewers have whined about the length of time it takes Perry and Nick to get down to some serious seduction, but that's a subjective viewpoint. I enjoyed the pacing -- and from the get-go, you knew this was a romance and a mystery, not one of those novels where seduction is The Big Ticket item between these covers, and any romance and/or mystery follows on from there. As a mystery-romance, The Ghost... succeeds on every level and you won't put it down. So --

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Two versions have appeared, with different covers -- it's the Loose ID cover depicted above. The version currently at Amazon is wearing a new jacket, with an exterior shot of a creepy old mansion house...

Highly recommended!

Epic gay fantasy: The Lords of Harbendane

2009-03-13T12:49:00.009+10:30

This novel should carry a warning: do not start reading when you get home from work at 7:00pm, even if the book is sitting on your doorstep ... because you're going to look like a zombie tomorrow, after having read till four in the a.m. to finish!

There's a certain "something" we've all come to expect from a Keegan novel. I'm still not entirely sure what it is but I should think scientific research could quantify it. Whatever it is, The Lords of Harbendane has it by the truckload. This one is Keegan pure and simple, with qualities that remind you of Fortunes of War and The Swordsman, Nocturne and Dangerous Moonlight. What qualities? Truth. Passion. Intelligence. Vision. Lyricism. And the "A-list" quality of a writer who's been on top of this game for two decades.

Picture this: it's a dark, dirty night, bucketing down, muddy, cold. The quintessential tall, dark, handsome warrior (he's a knockout -- trust me) is on a mission, and when he gets waylaid in a nasty little town, and aided by one of the most enigmatic and irresistible of Keegan's heroes, well, the story explodes from a chance event to the fantasy-scenario equivalent of world war three.

"Tall, dark and smoldering" is Rogan Dahl, who's been a prince, a hostage, a soldier, a cavalry colonel. "Drop dead gorgeous" is Tristan Carlin, who's been a peasant, a warrior, a scribe, and a wedlocked husband. Life is a rocky road for each of these guys; put them together, and you get a inferno waiting to go up --

And Keegan is going to make you wait! Everything you can imagine (and a bunch of plot twists you absolutely can't!) gets between these two guys, and when they finally get it together it's as exhausting for the reader as for the characters. And Mel Keegan manages to do this while staying on "this side of the line" that divides Legitimate Fiction from erotica. Harbendane will stand your hair on end -- at the same time as being absolutely legit.

The backstory is huge. It spans centuries of history and generations of the Halloran family. The Hallorans are Rogan's adoptive clan. He was sent to them as a hostage when he was a small child (in the traditional sense of the word "hostage," which meant the guarantee of someone's good behaviour). The Hallorans are the clan at the head of the great kingdom of Harbendane -- and as the story opens, Harbendane is up for grabs. They're beleaguered, surrounded by enemies on three sides, with nowhere to run and no one to turn to. They're fighting at capacity in the north, and when the ambitious, murderous chief from the next neighboring "superpower" in this land takes them on, they're hanging by a thread. The freedom of a whole people depends on tactics, strategy, and the willingness to take outrageous risks.

And that's the backstory, the scenario, not the plot! Against this monster backdrop, Mel Keegan's story is about individuals, how their lives are being twisted by duty, how their dreams and desires are being wrenched away, how they're still struggling to make something of themselves, how they all interact as they play their parts in a strategy that just might keep Harbendane out of the hands of its enemies.

I can't say much about the details of those personal stories, because I'm in plot spoilers instantly, and most readers absolutely hate to be told, "Tristan's real problem is..." and "Rogan's plan is..." I can tell you that the book is written with a great lyricism, imagery that comes to life, characters you're going to love, others you're going to hate. Obviously I adored Rogan and Tristan. (It's huge fun "casting the parts" as if Harbendane were a movie. I play this game with almost every book I read. Adds to the fun.) But I also loved Damiel and Morgan Halloran, which is a bit unusual for me. I don't usually "identify" very strongly with the female characters. These two are just amazing -- particularly Morgan ... the character blew me away.

The book is thrilling in many places, intriguing in others ... and keep the Kleekex handy, because there's a couple of places where you might need them. Fair warning: one of the major characters gets killed. (NOT Rogan or Tristan; but MK will make you care a lot about most of these characters, and one of them at least doesn't make it through to the end.)

Does the book have a downside? If it does, I didn't find it. The cover art is the best DreamCraft has ever done. Jade must have been absolutely inspired. (You get used to digital "art" ... but this is a painting, the way books used to have real artwork covers years ago. You feel kind of spoiled at the luxury.) The production values are very high throughout, and CreateSpace does a fantastic job with the paperbacks.

You can get it from Amazon.com in paperback. The Kindle version should be available by the weekend (it's been stuck in "publishing" for days now, and an email was just sent to technical support to get it "unstuck"). You can order the Mobipocket format for your Kindle, smartphone, Blackberry, Palm Pilot, and many other devices. It's available as a PDF for your iLiad, Palm, PC and Mac. And if you're reading on an iPhone, get the Kindle for iPhone applet. A hardcover version is being planned, and will be available from Lulu -- it'll make a great Chrissy pressie when the silly season comes back around.

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars, and a gold sticker added on for excellence of presentation: the cover is amazing.

PC/Mac ebook:
$9.95 -- and identical in every way to the paperback.298pp. (Permissions: no editing, printing, text or image copy/paste.)

Screenreader ebook:
US$9.95 -- properly formatted, complete with cover art and map; over 430pp.(Permissions: no editing, printing, text or image copy/paste.)

and,
BUY THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE FROM MOBIPOCKET

Author Interview: Talking with Mel Keegan

2009-03-05T10:27:00.005+10:30

First, let me apologise across the board … I’ve been buried in work. Blogging has had to be back burnerized and nobody is more aggravated by this than myself because for a week I’ve wanted to review The Lords of Harbendane and Legends! It’s incredibly annoying just not having the time to do this. I also want to review a couple of old favourites and some new ones, including Josh Lanyon’s The Ghost Swore Yellow Socks. Yet here I am strapped for time.

I did get the chance to talk to Mel Keegan a few days ago and since I’ve been promising a ten-minute interview, here it is. Hopefully I can get sometime over the coming long weekend (Adelaide Cup Day … big horse racing carnival) and will be able to get some reviews done then.

AG: How was the launch of Lords of Harbendane?

MK: Interesting! Successful, given the circumstances. The reading community isn’t as “socially secure” as it used to be a few years ago, and books have become more expensive. So has postage! When I began with DreamCraft, we could mail a book around the world for A$8 (about US$6). Now, it costs $16.04 (A$25.46) to mail the same book from Amazon to the South Pacific region. Has this killed local sales? Yes. Does this impact significantly on overall sales? Of course it does! However, if you remember that readers everywhere are struggling to cover their domestic expenses, it’s actually tremendously flattering when these same people pay what I, personally, consider an outrageous amount for a book. It’s US$22.50 for Harbendane at Amazon. That’s not a lot of money in Aussie terms, for a brand-new paperback, but in the States it’s way over the top. Also utterly unavoidable for a book of these dimensions.

AG: Prices are rising everywhere. I read on your blog that in a few years Amazon is expected to have taken control of the ebook market with Kindle and will start to hike the cost of ebooks…

MK: It’s been mooted, but on thinking it over I honestly doubt it’ll ever happen. I mean, they can charge US$30 (A$47.60) for an ebook novel which is, frankly, no more than a bunch of electrons, pixels, what have you … but no law says readers have to pay so much! Also, with POD publishing trending the way it is, the self-same book that would be wearing a $30 pricetag in the Amazon Kindle store would still be costing $10 via the author’s website. What kind of idiot would pay $30 for something you can get for $10? All they have to do is Google the author’s name and/or the title of the book, find the website and download the identical goods from Payloadz or whatever.

AG: I guess Amazon will find this out the hard way. You were angry and outspoken the other day on your blog also about the fact the Kindle Store is out of bounds to “foreign writers” …

MK: I was steaming mad at the time. In fact, I still am, on behalf of “foreign” writers everywhere. We don’t call ourselves foreign! Aussies and Kiwis and South Africans and so forth think of folks from North American as being foreign! But, whatever your perspective on geography, you get to a critical threshold in the Kindle publishing process where they ask you for your American mailing address and American phone number. This automatically shuts out 90% of the world’s literary voices -- which would be fair enough, if Amazon.com was not infamous for dumping cheap goods into the world marketplace! As I said on the post where I talked in depth about this, to make it halfway decent and acceptable, the conduit has to run in both directions. I might still be able to sneak into the Kindle Store by getting access to a proxy address, via family in the US. But ... it's the principle of the thing.

AG: Any chance of Amazon Kindle changing its way of working, do you think?

MK: Maybe. Kindle is very new, and everything needs a shakedown, but so far the development process has taken years and they’re still US-centric. Also, the second incarnation of the Kindle gadget it out, and they’re already in trouble with it. It works just fine -- in fact, it works to well. Apparently, the gadget has a text-to-voice feature which effectively turns every ebook into an audiobook … and it turns out the Kindle’s human voice algorithms are pretty good. Mellifluous and accurate in intonation. This is really rubbing the billion-dollar audiobook industry the wrong way.

AG: So Amazon isn’t out of the woods with Kindle yet. And let’s face it, writers -- like yourself and others I know personally! -- are always out there looking for alternatives.

MK: And finding them. I stumbled into the Mobipocket Store yesterday and found myself made as welcome as I was unwelcome (as a "foreigner") at the Kindle Store. Mobi is a very different kettle of fish. It’s not the hardware that's proprietorial, it’s the way the ebook files are registered … yeah, sure, I know, we’re getting into the area of DRM [digital rights management] here, which is a huge, swampy zone. But improvements are being made, and Mobi is far better in this region than other formats like the protected PDFs -- those are a nightmare, from what I hear. Also, Mobi works on Kindle … and you can get a free download of the Mobi reader for most platforms, and then you can go ahead and download your purchase multiple times -- for your desktop, laptop, netbook, screen reader, whatever. I’m interested … very.

AG: You’re also going to Smashwords soon, aren’t you? I have a couple of readers who’re into the iPhone thing, and they’re waiting for the phone versions of some of your titles. Any info?

MK: We tried the upload to Smashwords yesterday, but they were having server issues. If not for this, two or three books would already have been there! We’ll be trying again later today. Cross your fingers for us.

AG: Hey, consider them crossed. Which titles are going to Smashwords first?

MK: Fortunes of War, The Lords of Harbendane and Dangerous Moonlight.

AG: How soon can we expect The Swordsman and the NARC series to be ready for the iPhones?

MK: April or May … sooner than that if sales are really good. It takes about 2-4 hours to convert a single book over from the DTP files from DreamCraft to the stripped files needed to make the conversion to multiple ebook platforms effective. Being a working stiff with three blogs and some remote semblance of a private life, I can only do one or maybe two per week. Bear with me.

AG: They say patience is a virtue! How’s critical response to Harbendane?

MK: So far, so good. I’ve only had reader response so far, but it’s all in the five-star bracket. I’ve sent it to Rainbow Reviews, and am optimistic that it’ll be well received there too. I’ll be sending out several more review copies in March and April. So ... any idea when you’re going to get around to a review on this blog of yours? Hint, hint. Not to apply any pressure, you understand…

AG: aarrrgghh! As soon as I can get some free time from work.

MK: Tell me about it. Finding time to blog is difficult… finding additional time to promote the blogs is even more so, which is a principal problem with Legends. I’m having a hard time catching people’s attention! I’d hoped the “viral marketing” concept would have worked: word of mouth. People tell people who tell people that there’s a FREE MEL KEEGAN NOVEL out there. Free for the download, and so on. This didn’t happen, and since I can’t access search engine traffic, promotion for Legends is a question of applying to directories … and being rejected by more of them than will give Legends a listing.

Art by Jade, from LEGENDS: A digital novel by Mel Keegan ... are you missing the fun?!

AG: That’s bizarre. Why can’t you use the search engines?

MK: Think about it! Google or Yahoo, whatever, picks up on keywords. Say my characters are drinking wine during the m/m seduction scene. Google would very likely send visitors to the page, who’d been searching on wine, or goblets. Or silk bedsheets. Or scented candles. They land on a page where two guys are getting it on; someone gets a shock and complains -- big trouble.

AG: Oh … yeah. Right. Duh. That could get confusing for the engines and a bit nasty if the wrong people (maybe kids???) got into pages where they absolutely shouldn’t be.

MK: Exactly. So right now, here’s Keegan’s Master Plan regarding the Legends Project. The story breaks down into five major “books,” and I’ll complete the first. The site can sit up there at Blogger, looking gorgeous (and it does!), while I figure out how to promote it without paying megabucks for adverting. Meanwhile, I’ll be finishing Hellgate. By the end of the year, Legends will either be attracting readers … or not. If it’s not, the site will come down and I’ll go on and finish the whole project for issue via Mobi, Smashwords, Payloads, Amazon, whatever. The whole thing was an experiment, after all -- you have to remember that “negative data” is useful too. What I’ve learned so far is that not too many people are interested in following a serial! And/or they have no real use for ebooks, so reading fiction on-screen is anathema. Or, they don’t like the action broken up into daily doses. Or, they don’t care for fantasy. You add those things together, and you get a fairly small nucleus, or core, of readers who are enjoying it … just too few people to make the project a success.

AG: And are readers being supporting via the advertising?

MK: Not really -- and this is where I’m very surprised indeed. We had a flush of people supporting Legends in the first week, but right now we can go 1,000 page loads without getting a click on a Google ad, for instance … and the click, when you do get one, is worth about 15c. I understand about people not wanting to donate $1 (we’ve had the mighty sum of 7 of those clicks in a month -- I’m very grateful to those people who did indeed click!), and I also understand about people not shopping at Amazon, because folks are counting pennies -- myself included! But there are ways to be supporting that don’t cost the reader anything at all, and it seems that very few people are sensitive to this issue.

AG: In other words, they’re happy to swing by every day and get the fiction, but they don’t want to trade anything at all for it…

MK: Most people swing by once at week (at the weekend) and collect 10 segments at once, and vamoose till next week. I don’t at all mind people doing this -- it makes sense! But with one visit per week there doesn’t appear to be any impetus to offer some support, even be it just a click on some item that everyone in the world knows will vector a microscopic gratuity back to the host. It’s curious to watch what’s going on, and this is also a valuable part of the experiment. It’s just important to be patient, leave no stones unturned, give the project the full energy and creativity it was supposed to have, and allow enough time for it to “cook” properly.

AG: You’ve got a lot more patience and perseverance than I would have! Last question … what are you writing now?

MK: Obviously Legends, but unless there’s a miracle, I’ll be putting that onto hiatus at the End of Book One. I’m spending the rest of the year to finish Hellgate. Completely. Totally. Right to the end. Then we’ll relaunch the series in new venues, with a new campaign … and see what happens next.

AG: Thanks for your time, Mel -- I know you don’t have a lot to spare and I see you fidgeting in the direction of the door! Best of good luck with all your projects.

MK: Thanks -- and it’s been a pleasure.

***

Many thanks to Mel Keegan for this interview, which will “hold” this blog while I dig my way out from the pit of work that I’ve been buried in. Next review: Lords of Harbendane. Then, The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks. I’m hoping to get back with those next week.

Gay in a difficult future: China Mountain Zhang

2009-02-24T17:14:00.004+10:30

Maureen F. McHugh made her novel debut with China Mountain Zhang way back in 1992, and you can see what the cover blurb says! The New York Times: "A first novel this good gives every reader the chance to share in the pleasure of discovery." And back in those days, we were convinced Ms McHugh would be back with a new one just like it every year. This is very close to my kind of SF, and I was one of those hoping for a shelf of McHughs...

It didn't happen. There are still only four McHugh novels (sorry, folks: I'm not much of a fan of short fiction. I need something I can sink my teeth into) ... and the thing is, her novels sell so well, she probably doesn't need to write any more often than this! Here is her Wiki page on which her occupation is quotes as "writer, novelist" -- and this tells you how well her books sell. Four novels in seventeen years is a major success story.

And it all started right here: China Mountain Zhang, though if you take another look at it, it's not really a novel at all. It's nine segments that range in length from short story to novella ... and all of them twine around each other and around the main character of Zhang. It's an amazing framework for a novel, if you can call China... a novel, and I'm going to, because the whole thing harmonizes in my memory as a single work, 312pp long.

It's the 22nd century, and China dominates the world in population, culture, technology, the lot. The best of everything is in China and everybody wants to go there. The world is in the process of deliberately Chinese-izing itself, just as the 20th century was all about Americanization (due to the influence of Hollywood, I suspect).

Interestingly, 150 years from now, China is still a communist body ... and not one darned thing has really changed, culturally. Meaning, Zhang has big problems. He's gay.

(Right here, divorce yourself from the cultural developments of the last 17 years since the book was put out by Tor ... the fact is that by 2009 Chinese gays are coming out whether the government likes it or not. There are great big websites like Gay China -- the link I just gave you is to the English language page. Forget about all this when you read China Mountain Zhang -- or imagine that the current trend has been totally reversed, and by 2100 China is as dead-set against its enormous GLBTI community as it ever was. Not a pleasant thought but inside the parameters of this novel, I guess it happened.)

It's very hard to nail down what the storyline of China Mountain Zhang is! There are threads coming in from this angle and that angle ... it's not linear ... it doesn't follow a single plotline for long enough for this to be called the story of the book as a whole. However you can pick out the direction the book is moving in...

It's about personal development, and finding a way to integrate yourself into a whole that at first didn't seem to want you. How to overcome personal difficulties and make something of yourself in a world which seems to be against you. Zhang appears throughout, though is not the central character in a couple of the stories -- and this doesn't seem to matter: you'll be enthralled.

Each story offers a "slice of life," and they're all absolutely fascinating. The most fascinating, to me, were two segments entitled Kites and Jerusalem Ridge. The first is about pilots who fly hang-glider type kites that are powered from the pilot's own body. This tale was as far out and imaginative as some of the things you'll come across in the Jarrat and Stone books, and that is a compliment indeed. In the second story, Zhang has taken a job ... on Mars! Jerusalem Ridge is a colony. I'm never sure which of these two pieces I like the best out of the book -- but the other stories offer just as much, and you'll choose your own favorites.

The gay content in the book is most often of the "inference" type. In other words, you know Zhang is gay, and various things are alluded to in context. There's nothing steamy in it at all. In terms of sensuality, it would be readable by a 14 year old ... but I don't know of any 14 year olds who'd have the cultural, political, psychological "smarts" to get much out of the book. It'll enthrall twenty- and thirty-somethings, not kids.

Maureen F. McHugh pours color and detail and nuance into her work. You feel like you've been to the 22nd century! Highly recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5. Recently reprinted, I believe -- with a cover that's nowhere near as good as the 1992 Tor one; and you can get it at Amazon, naturally:

Gay mystery and ancient Chinese magic: The Jade Owl by Edward C. Patterson

2009-02-18T12:16:00.005+10:30

I was asked a while ago, will I review POD books ... and the answer to that is a resounding yes. I've said this several times before, and it's true: some of the best fiction being published today is coming out in POD form, where it's direct from the writer to the reader.

However, the first thing I need to do is make sure to qualify this statement! "Direct from writer to reader" does not mean the book hasn't been edited, proofread, labored over, illustrated, layout-designed and so on. The best POD books have had every bit as much work as a book issued from a traditional publishing house. Sometimes more.

I applaud when a really talented writer has the courage to go it alone, because it's going to mean work such as a non-writer can't imagine. (Mel Keegan states the case better than me in this post: POD Publishing: why do it? And why not?")

So I'm delighted to be reviewing The Jade Owl by Edward C. Patterson, which is available from Amazon. com as a paperback, and also in Kindle. It's also available from Smashwords in several formats. (I have the PDF for reading on my desktop because I haven't yet saved enough of my pennies to get an ebook gadeget. Soon. Very soon.)

The story falls into the same category as the "urban fantasy" novels of writers like Charles de Lint (Yarrow, Greenmantle and so on) and Jan Siegel (the Prospero's Children series). It takes place in the real world ... but one of the foundation stones of the book is, paranormal artifacts do exist, and the powers are real. (The same foundation stone is holding up everything from Indiana Jones to the Mummy movies. It's come to be a Hollywood staple.)

In this novel, the artifact is an ancient Chinese object, a six inch piece of Jade carved in the likeness of an owl -- and it's actually a key that opens a box known as the Joy of Finches. What's in the box? That would be telling! But everybody wants the key.

The first thing that impressed me about Jade Owl was how knowledgeable about Chinese antiquities the writer is, and about China itself. Shanghai and Beijing are described with the same amount of detail and enthusiasm as San Francisco -- and never having been to either China or the USA myself, I really appreciated the "local color." Many writers, when setting their plots in London, New York, what have you, seem to think that everyone's been there and knows intimately every secret of the city. Not true. So, the first level where Jade Owl succeeds is in "selling me" San Francisco, which is the setting for the first long segment of the book.

Then it's off to China, and in the second half of the novel the adventure really kicks in. The first half is more of an exploration of culture, personality, even history. There's not too much "action" in this part of the story, but I liked having the story built up properly from the ground up, so that all readers are on the same page when the knock-down-drag-out adventure begins.

The characters are, for the most part, excellently drawn, with only one or two of the lesser players falling back on "stock characterization." Edward C. Patterson's dialog is very believable, you can "hear" voices saying these lines. But it was the paranormal aspects of the story that hooked me ... I love this stuff anyway, and the Jade Owl does it well. I know a little bit about things Chinese, since I grew up with a huge crush on Bruce Lee and read/watched everything I could get my hands on over the space of about ten years! Jade Owl is a real treat.

It's a crying shame this book had to be self-published, and you have to ask yourself what the publishing world is coming to, when gifted writers everywhere are having to fly solo. Jade Owl is not just "competently" written -- it's only one thorough, ruthless edit away from being on a par with the top-notch writers who sell in the gajillions. (Trust me on this: I've been a pro "proofie" for decades and have seen the best and worst that professional writers can turn out ... and some long-time professional writers I could name churn out unpunctuated drivel that has to be bashed into shape by line-editors who get paid about $10 an hour!) There was a time, maybe 20 years ago, when a publisher would take in a manuscript from an inspired and gifted writer, and would assign an editor to do the final work, then the book would be jacketed and sent out there with posters and hype galore. (Doesn't happen now. A manuscript can be received that is absolutely gem-perfect, and it'll still get turned around and sent back unread ... sad to say, I've worked in the industry and seen what happens: it'd shock you).

But -- I digress! The Jade Owl is an extremely good read. It gets off to a slightly shaky start, but the style settles right down after a few pages and is very readable. You'll like the central characters of "Rowdy" Gray, Nick Battle and his partner, Simone. In fact, you ought to love Simone, who's a drag queen from the Castro, indomitable, very human, very "real." There's enough gay content to keep GLBTI readers reading -- and more than enough action of other kinds (sensual, paranormal, cultural, comedic) to keep straight readers reading.

It's also hellaciously good value for money, at $15.45 for the paperback, $3.19 in Kindle, and $3.99 from Smashwords ... and this is a major novel, over 200,000 words. And here is one of the great things about getting a book direct from the writer: because there's no publisher to accommodate, the price can afford to be much lower than you'd think.

Does the book have a downside? Well ... maybe, but it depends who you are, and what your "ear" is like! The writing style can be a little erratic at times, but many readers would also call this one of the book's charms. So there you are -- as with so many facets of so many books -- it's actually your call. I found the PDF ebook easy to read, but halfway through I longed for a "proper" ebook reader to get away from the PC -- not the author's fault! When I get myself an iLiad, or Bebook or something similar, I shall be reading Jade Owl a second time in the comfort of a hammock chair at the bottom of the garden.

I should also note that there are two more books following on from The Jade Owl , the first one of which is available now, the second, on its way. I still have to get to the second, so can't talk about it here.

Recommended on many levels. AG's rating: 4 out of five stars -- with a "gold star" added for incredibly good value for money.

Here is Edward C. Patterson's page at Smashwords, which you can get the ebook in several formats.

Gay science fiction, with the young-teen spin: Jumping off the Planet

2009-02-15T14:12:00.007+10:30

It's fairly easy to find gay novels suitable for teens these days. There are actually whole ranges dedicated to teen gay fiction, or "young adult gay fiction." For example, without hesitation I could recommend The Swordsman for sixteens -- and incidentally, if you're in a jam, needing to buy something and wondering where to turn, here's a very good starting place: Great Gay Teen Books ... good hunting!)

But what about books for a kid who's growing up gay and is maybe 14? 13? Now you're treading in ticklish territory, because you're really, thoroughly, in PG country. It's gets tougher to make the recommendation. But if the kid you need to buy a gift for was an SF fan (and which kid isn't?) you could think about Jumping off the Planet, by David Gerrold.

It's a book that can be read by anyone, anywhere, and unless the reader is hopelessly prejudiced, so homophobic that they belong in scripture class, it couldn't possibly give offence. It's also a book that will be appreciated on six different levels depending on the age of the person reading it. An intelligent 12 could read this: it's an easy easy with a clear writing style that benefits younger readers ... and a story that is deceptively complex. It sets out in simple style, and gradually becomes more and more intricate until it's a real Gordian knot by the end -- and even old Aunt Maud ought to enjoy it.

The "gay content" also sneaks up on you, and it's written so "naturally" that it's part of the landscape, part of the ambiance of the story. It's also very touching now and then.

The story concerns a father and his three sons who're making a journey to the ultimate elevator ... the elevator to space! Amazing technology surrounds the characters, and Gerrold is a master at depicting this kind of thing. (He cut his professional teeth on Star Trek, eons ago, if you recall the episode about the cute fuzzy little life forms that can eat a civilization into extinction in an afternoon!) The story focuses in tight on the middle son, Charles (his nickname is "Chigger"). He has a little brother, Bobby, whom he calls "Stinky," and a big brother, Douglas.

Charles is just pre-teen, and he's "the middle kid," always the difficult case. Stinky is just a little one, definitely his Dad's responsibility ... and Douglas is seventeen, absolutely on the brink of adulthood. And gay.

Jumping... presents the world through Charles's eyes. He's exasperated with his kid brother and all he can do is watch from the sidelines as Douglas struggles to grow up. The world these kids are growing up in, also, is wrecked. They come from a rat-hole called Bunker City in El Paso, TX, in an environment that's well and truly busted. Mankind is heading off the planet, people are trying their luck elsewhere -- hence the "elevator to space."

So, this dysfunctional family is headed for the space elevator, and the kids have more than their fair share of problems. First stop is Geostationary, the space platform at an altitude of several miles, which is also the departure point for the Moon and planets. The kids are excited about the trip; and Dad?

The father is hiding secrets. Nothing is what it seems to be. And Charles is a bright kid, up to the challenge of guessing that something, somewhere is wrong. Stinky is just along for the ride ... but Douglas -- seventeen, highly intelligent, gay and caught in an unenviable situation -- is about to grow up in a hell of a hurry.

The book is marvellous. Unless you're looking for gay content on every page (very few dedicated gay books offer this!), or steamy sex (there isn't any), you can't not love this book. (Well, not unless you really hate SF, I suppose! And such people do exist...)

Highly recommended. Would give this as a gift to a young gay teen without a qualm. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Good deals are available at Amazon right now...

Gay fantasy from the pen of the wizard

2009-02-14T16:47:00.008+10:30

This is not a book review, but rather, something of a Service Message ... you could say I'm blogging to tell you why I'm not blogging!

The reasons are numerous and I can't get around any of them. In the first week of February it was HOT, and then HOTTER, and after that everything else was just a blur. I couldn't work, so the work piled up around me, and how that it's "only" low-90s in the shade I have to catch up. I'm about to review JUMPING OFF THE PLANET, THE HUSTLER, THE JADE OWL, and a couple of others, plus --

I had wanted to take part in the book launch for THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE ... I missed out on that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity ... and the second launch, for the digital novel, LEGENDS. I missed that too, through having to work.

There's not much I can do to make up for either one, but I can certainly get my review of HARBENDANE online as soon as possible, and I can give a powerful "plug" to the digital novel right here.

This is the first Keegan book in a long time I haven't been a "proofie" on ... because it's going direct from MK to you, via the gorgeous webpage (designed by Jade at DreamCraft). Haven't seen it yet? Don't delay:

LEGENDS: The fall of the Atlantean Empire, a digital novel by Mel Keegan.

What's absolutely great for me about this project is that it's as new to me as it is to everybody else as I read it online. I never saw any of this before ... I don't know what's going to happen next. I'm back every day for my "next installment" and loving it. The idea is brilliant ... and incidentally, so is the novel -- which we expect from MK. If it wasn't brilliant, you'd wonder what was going on.

I can give you the "blurb" right here:

"In an era of storm and chaos, One will be born who will command the Power, but the ancient magic that flows in his veins like blood is his curse as well as his gift. In this time of cataclysm and ordeal, the upstart Empire of Vayal has placed a bounty on the heads of all scions of the lineage of Diomedas, for the oracle foretold the doom of Vayal, and it rides on the shoulders of the One. He lives and breathes already, hiding the old city of Zeheft and in the slowly drowning outlands. He is Faunos, still dangerously young -- and he has one dread: the witchfinders of Vayal, who are charged with the hunting of those like himself. Twenty years, Faunos has hidden and learned,until the gods of sea, storm and earth take Zeheft; and one night destiny brings Vayal's young witchfinder to the camps of the water gypsies, where Faunos should not have been. The Empire of the Atlantan has one slender chance to survive, and its struggle will begin on this night."

And after that, all I can do is encourage you to git on over there and download the parts that are online right now! It comes out daily, seven days a week, at a good-sized chunk each upload.

Better yet, it's FREE. You probably think you misread that, so I'll say it again, and elaborate a little! Free online gay fiction. Free Mel Keegan books. Free for the download ... save it to your device, print it out, go for it.

Right now your getting dizzy, wondering how in the heck this works, right? There's a message on the LEGENDS site, and I'll quote you a little bit of it right here.

Like the idea of free fiction, like free TV?

Then, simply “support your local” – and here’s how:

1. Tell your friends, get them on board … if you’re enjoying a great gay read with LEGENDS, then recommend it to others. Send the url to friends you know will enjoy the read and appreciate the pricetag! (For the same of sheer simplicity -- forward this whole message.)

And,

2. Notice the ads. Keep in mind that MK has bills to pay too, and … hey, you know how it works, right? You’re free to download, copy the novel to any device you like and read at your leisure; print it out, if you prefer. But –

Don’t just send the files to your friends. Send the the url! For the advertising to pay for the writer’s time, your friends have to actually be on the page – sending them the files will defeat the object. Just forward this whole message, and …

Enjoy!

There it is in a nutshell: get your friends in, help yourselves, understand that advertising on the site is paying MK's bills. That's all there is to it. Personally, I hope this works 100%, because I can't imagine anything better than being able to download the absolute best work from the really good writers who can make it available to me (free gay novels online!) at a price I can really, seriously afford. Uh, free.

I want to interview Mel Keegan about this (also about HARBENDANE) for my blog here, but it's tough getting enough of MK's time to do a proper interview, so ... it'll happen when it happens.

In the meantime, let me also give you the link to the booklaunch of THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE ... which is in my "top five Keegans" but please don't make me choose a favorite. It would change every day. Here is the link:

WELCOME TO THE BOOK LAUNCH.

Best I can do do, belatedly, folks, and my apologies to all for missing this.

Back tomorrow with another review!

Intrigue, mayhem and controversy: Hold Tight by Christopher Bram

2009-02-10T17:35:00.006+10:30

Hold Tight is one of my favorites from among Christopher Bram's books -- and I know I'm going out on a limb when I say this, because he's written some very good books, and readers and critics are very divided about Hold Tight.

I know of about ten novels by Bram, and he's one of the incredibly rare writers of gay fiction who's had a book actually filmed -- not "optioned" or planned, but actually filmed. (It was Father of Frankenstein, which was filmed as Gods and Monsters, starring none other than Ian McKellen and Brendan Fraser!)

Hold Tight was only Bram's second novel in print. The first was Surprising Myself, which came out the year earlier (1987). Readers and critics were in agreement on Surprising Myself -- it's a great novel. However, it's also another novel about a young man finding himself, discovering he's gay ... coming of age if not coming out ... which is not quite the kind of reading I most-often go for. I guess I surprised myself by liking Surprising Myself ... but I also think Christopher Bram himself would tell you, it was the "safe" gay novel, with "bulletproof" subject matter. A true-blue American coming of age novel. There was nothing daring or adventurous about Surprising; it was beautifully handled, but it covered largely the same ground that has been covered about a hundred times before. In other words, it was the perfect subject for a debut gay novel: nothing risky. All the author had to do was write well (which he did) and craft the novel like a professional (ditto), and he was home.

But Christopher Bram's next book, Hold Tight, took all kinds of risks -- and therefore got all kinds of response! The reviews are all over the spectrum, from two stars to five stars. So it's one of those books where you have to read it and make up your own mind. I liked it for several reasons, but I do also know that not everyone did!

It's a World War II espionage and intrigue story, for a start ... ie., it's different, which to me puts it ten points ahead at the get-go ... and the subject matter, and the way the subject is handled, has a daring that I admire.

Start with an utterly delicious hero -- a young sailor called Hank Fayette -- and land him in the world of gay hustlers, in 1942, on the orders of the secret service. He's doing undercover work on the orders of the US Navy (in today's world it would be the secret service; the FBI), working to catch spies.

So far, so good. You'll soon come to love Hank, and many of the other characters in the novel are well drawn. A couple are a tad bit stereotypical, but I didn't find this too jarring (some reviewers did though: again, make up your own mind). The plotline is tight-knit, involving spies, Nazis, murder, secrets -- the works; to me, it was quite the page-turner.

One of the things I liked most about Hold Tight was the way Bram evoked the 1940s. Now, this decade was way before my time, but if you press me, I'll admit the era fascinates me so much that I've not only seen a lot of movies set in the time of WWII, I've also watched a lot that were made in those years. And boy, did Christopher Bram get it right.

Another thing I genuinely appreciate about the novel is that Bram's writing style has a kind of "edgy" quality that brings to mind Daschel Hammet. It has the abruptness that makes you think of Sam Spade, Mike Hammer ... the "voice" of the times, perhaps? Being two decades too young to remember it, I know the era from movies and books!

(Some readers can't stand this. I've heard Hold Tight called trashy because of the "voice" in which it's written ... but the same reader/reviewer would tar The Maltese Falcon with the same brush, so I'd be cautious about awarding demerit points to Hold Tight because Christopher Bram used the same "device" of the '40s "voice" that worked for Daschel Hammet! Also I have a strong feeling that the reviewer who calls Hold Tight trashy probably doesn't even know who Daschel Hammet is, and has probably never seen a movie made in 1942 -- not the Hollywood reconstruction with the CG effects, mind you!)

One of the most difficult aspects of the novel -- and Bram handles it with aplomb -- is the 1940s attitude toward racial differences. The author manages to depict the period's racism with candor and without suggesting hatred, because in those days racial different wasn't usually about "hate" so much as about the white-fella's automatic assumption that he was on top of the pecking order and giving the orders, and belonged there, probably because God was Caucasian! (It's so difficult to define and describe here: I hope you follow me.) The racism of the era is unavoidable in context: you can't get past this point, and if you ignore it to make a book sound better, or more PC, to modern ears, you'll be rewriting history!

I also admire Christopher Bram for having the courage to tackle this because he must have known some readers would either misunderstand, misconstrue, or be ignorant enough of American history to assume the book is racist (which is sad). I would say Bram walks a very narrow tightrope with a lot of skill and delicacy.

As I said, reader response to this novel is all over the spectrum, and it does rub people the wrong way. For me, the supposed cliches didn't bother me, the "voice" entertained me, I liked Hank Fayette a lot, I know enough about American history to admire how the really delicate matters of racial differences were written; and the end of the book ... which is a big sticking point for some readers! ... didn't strike me as being unrealistic or "awful" at all. Dark, gritty, sure, and in the context, perfectly believable.

To me, the novel is irresistible for its sheer difference and audacity, and Christopher Bram deserved a round of applause for taking on something that was never going to be easy. The project was filled with risk, which the writer accepted. Did he pull it off? I think he did, which is why I'm listing Hold Tight among my favorite novels.

I'm not actually a writer myself (this blog is the most actual writing I've done since I gratefully walked out of college a very long time ago), but I know several writers and have learned a hell of a lot about writing from some very talented people. Hold Tight is a novel I have to admire -- though I acknowledge the fact you might not agree ... and that's your prerogative too! Relish the controversy ... as they say, "it makes horse races."

Recommended, because it's a challenge on many levels and it's good to get snapped out of your complacency now and then! I liked it a lot. AG's rating: 3.5 or 4 out of 5 stars depending on my mood. You can get good deals from Amazon ... and I recommend that if you're brand new to Christopher Bram, you also get Surprising Myself and perhaps In Memory of Angel Clare, which will give you a better look at his range and talent than just this one book.

Stonewall years: a dose of Real Life, gay style, from Edmund White

2009-02-04T14:54:00.006+10:30

Some books you just have to read, to be able to understand and appreciate them, and The Beautiful Room In Empty falls on this list. I could tell you what it's about (and will!) and for the majority of the plot you'd probably say, "So what?" Because this book is about life-as-it-is ... not as we wish it were. (The ending is a different matter -- I'm getting there, stay with me.)

If there are two writers who are absolutely diametrically opposed to each other, it would have to be Edmund White and Mel Keegan. White most often writes in autobiographical style, and so many of his works explore (in some way, even if it's through the medium of another character, not himself) who he is, what he is, what made him so, where he's been, where he's going.

Edmund White revels in the day to day business of being. (Meanwhile, Keegan confesses flat-out, without even being jabbed with a sharp stick, that every MK book is pure escapism -- Keegan is bored by everyday life and writes SF, fantasy, historicals, to opt out of the daily grind ... and the novels are always fun.)

Beautiful Room... is the middle book of a trilogy. I never did read the first volume (A Boy's Own Story), because to be utterly frank, I'm not interested enough in children to tackle a whole book about them. Any kind of children. A boy's eight or nine and starting to mature gay? Great -- he'll get interesting enough to read about in another ten years or so! I started with Beautiful... and I did get, and read, the third book, The Farewell Symphony, but I won't be able to review this. I lent it out and didn't get it back, and haven't read the book in about 20 years. I remember that it was good, but I need to replace it. (Something else I'll do when I get the proverbial Round Tuit. I'm not quite the last of the procrastinators, but ... I came in second.)

Beautiful... is suspended somewhere between novel and autobiography. If you were just handed the text to read, without blurbs and promos, you'd take it for a real autobiography. It's so skillfully handled and so real that "Bunny" (the narrator; what the heck is that short for?!) could easily have been Edmund White himself.

There's no element of the fantastic, nothing of the adventure or the violent or the outrageous. No punchups or battles, much less swordfights, plane crashes, gunfights, lost artifacts, treasure to hunt, mysteries to solve, murders to investigate, drugs changing hands, car chases --

All the elements that make novels "go" from the mysteries (like the Adrien English books by Josh Lanyon), to the gay science fiction works (by writers like Constantine, McHugh and our own Keegan), are totally absent.

In the hands of any other writer I can think of, The Beautiful Room is Empty would have turned into wall-to-wall soap opera! It didn't -- and nor did Edmund White let it slither down the greasy, slippery slope at the bottom of which are books like Jackal in the Dark (which in itself is a great book -- just a mile away from White's writing.)

It's some element in the writing style that stops the book morphing into something along the lines of Gordon Merrick. (I'll be getting around to Merrick later in the year ... bear with me). Where Merrick revels in the sort of plots that wouldn't be a whisker out of place on The Bold and the Beautiful, and The Young and the Restless, White rises above the swamp and takes material that's perilously close to far greater heights than soaps ever aspired to.

His writing is often almost metaphorical or allegorical. He seems to see through what you can perceive with your eyes, to some "reality" behind the mask of what we think of as being real. It's all very Jungian! As I began -- some books, you have to read in order to understand and appreciate, because if I give you the basic plot line, at its simplest, you really will say, "so what" --! And you'd be dead wrong in that conclusion.

Beautiful... is moving, and exquisite -- and I think it's also become a historical. It's set in the 1960s, ending with the Stonewall "uprising."

Personally, I have no memories of Stonewall. I was about seven at the time, and in Australia we didn't get a lot of American news. Even if we did, at the time, Stonewall would've been reported down here as "civil disobedience," just a bunch of people rioting against the authorities! (Yes, I know how horrible that sounds! But think: if the American authorities had to be rioted against before they'd change, why should the authorities 10,000 miles away side with the rioters against their opposite numbers? The truth took months, closer to years, to percolate out this far, and by then there were bigger local stories to overpower the news ... Vietnam ends and our soldiers come home, Cyclone Tracy destroys Darwin, the Federal Government gets sacked, the monstrous bushfires...)

So, the Stonewall scenes at the end are quite an experience, and I can honestly say I learned a lot. There was a sense of "unreality" about them, because I read the book in about 1988, when things had gotten much better for the GLBTI community, and reading this, one was stunned by the fact that something like Stonewall could and did happen.

This is also a "coming out" story, which makes it not my usual fare -- yet I can wholeheartedly recommend it. Why? Because it's done so well, and because it's a historical. Moreover, it's a 1960s book that was written by one who was there at the time. If a contemporary writer were to write about the period, anything s/he wrote would be "tinted" by the next forty years. Like a Hollywood movie that's made now and set in 1944, it'd look and feel different from a movie that was made in '44 ... and I don't just mean the difference in movie technology!

The Beautiful Room is Empty is about life, being young and gay in a culture that stigmatizes you, finding your courage, deciding to be what you are -- and then stand up for what you believe in. There's a lot we can still learn from books like this, because the struggle for equal rights isn't over yet for the GLBTI community in the States, Australia and other First World countries. And even when it's been won in these countries, many other nations are lagging a long way behind, so the struggle will go on for decades.

Wholeheartedly recommended. AG's rating: 4.5 stars out of 5. The book has been done in many editions. The one I have is the mass market paperback with the nighttime street scene in garish colors on the cover. Amazon has good deals at this time ... you can get very cheap used ones, but in the interests of propping up the ailing industry, I urge you to pay a few bucks and get a new one! Remember that buying a copy for 10c doesn't do anybody any good really (except the post office, which charged the full whack for delivering it).

Gay science fiction gets wet: Mel Keegan's drowned future

2009-01-31T14:58:00.008+10:30

What a joy and a relief this edition is! It's only the second time Mel Keegan's Aquamarine has been printed, and the DreamCraft edition is so far superior to the old edition put out by MPG (the Millivres Publishing Group), you will be astounded.

Quite a story is attached to the old edition. I don't want to type the whole thing here ... it's too hot and I'm too tired after the week-long heatwave that has another week to go, and besides that Mel Keegan and the guys at DreamCraft have told the story better than I'd be telling it. So I'm going to save time and sweat and paste in the relevant bit from Aquamarine's own page...

AQUAMARINE is once again MK's property, since the rights have 'passed back to the author.' This is tremendous news for DreamCraft, and also for readers who either haven't been able to find a copy of AQUAMARINE (it's been hard to track down recently), or ... readers who have been driven bananas since 2000, by the 'tatty' presentation of the MPG issue. If you've read the 'Keegan Speaks' page, you'll know that 'things went haywire' at the pre-press stage.

The book was never proof-read! MPG went to press off the 'raw' files which Mel had emailed from Fairbanks, Alaska. Now, normally a book will be proofread four or six times before being published. (At DreamCraft, all books are proofed five times by humans and twice electronically.) This means very few errors get through. No book is error free, but you can get close, and we do. For seven years, readers have loved AQUAMARINE even though they've had to grit their teeth to get through the typing hiccups ... they can't be called 'proofing errors,' because the book wasn't proofed! So we've invited MK to go back to the 'raw' files, the exact, same files that were emailed from Fairbanks, and not only will they be properly proofed by DreamCraft,but MK has the chance to take a 'second bite' here: rework, redevelop, re-edit. The story won't change, but parts of the narrative are almost certain to. The end product will be far superior to the MPG presentation in many ways. We'll have a full-color cover, with a genuine depiction of the characters and locations rather than a monochrome (blue) pic of a young man; the interior text will be thoroughly proofed and error free; and the narrative will have been re-reveloped. Any writer will tell you, good books are not written, they're re-written ... and we're looking forward to wonderful things with the DreamCraft edition of AQUAMARINE.
http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/aquamarine_dc.htm

There you have it, direct from DreamCraft and what more could you wish for! All that was promised was done. Beautiful new typeset, gorgeous cover, and it's been proofread to death. I oughtta know, because I did it twice myself. I'm a proofie for MK and DreamCraft; and sure, it's a lot of work, but it's also a hell of a lot of fun. How hard can it be to read a really good book? (Also, I get to write on Mel Keegan with a red pen ... evil chuckle. How many people in the world can say that?!)

The story of Aquamarine has always fascinated me. I love it. One reviewer at Amazon called it "the book Waterworld should have been." I'd go along with that. It takes place in a "drowned future," so it's another one of Mel Keegan's after-the-holocaust plots, but in this case it wasn't a nuclear war, it was a cometary impact that put the final kybosh on the world after we'd already done 75% of the job with global warming.

The story takes place about 80 years in our future, I think. You can easily recognize the remnants of our world and our society. As always in a Keegan story you have two gorgeous heroes in a romantic relationship. In this book it's Russell Grant, who's a genetic scientist, and Eric Devlin, who's a genetically engineered human -- "transhuman" is the term they're using now. (In fact there's a recent blog post on Mel's blog about this, well worth reading.) Eric has been designed so that he can live and breathe in the sea ... because the world is 90% underwater now, and future generations might depend on being "homo aquaticus" to have real freedom.

Eric and Rusty live on the floating city of Pacifica, which lives in the shelter of the converted monster oil tanker that serves as the mothership for the city ... and the whole project is the brainchild of a very old man called Gerald Duquesne, who had a vision and acted on it when there was still time, even though everyone thought he was mad. Pacifica is quite a great place to live and Eric and Rusty have good lives ... till they get complicated.

A bunch of mercenaries (very nasty characters) come in from Australia, wanting to hire Eric to do a job for them, and when he refuses they just nab him and force him to do the work. Now I have to be ultra-careful, because the plot spoilers are sloshing around your knees here!

Without wrecking the plot for you, I can tell you that what starts as a minor nuisance in a wharfside pub blows up into a possible nuclear war. There's 200 pages between these two events, and if you love science fiction, and gay romance, and thriller-type action, you're going to love this book.

It's one of the earlier Keegans, and you can tell: the plot is more linear and less tangled and interwoven. It's FUN, without getting into the deep dark places inside the characters' minds and hearts. If you want something dark and convoluted, then I really recommend you try the NARC novels, which will blow your mind. But if you want a fast-paced, linear, "sunny" adventure, which is perfect for a rainy day or a hot afternoon, you can't go past Aquamarine. I know that a few critics have said, "Not what you expect of Mel Keegan," because the style is light. But I have to ask the question, Why is there something wrong with the style being light? I'd guess MK felt like writing that way at the time, and for me (and for a lot of other readers) it works. It's all down to your preferences. I like it a lot, I find it fun and refreshing, so I can make the recommendation without hesitation. Want something dark that'll stand your hair on end? Go for NARC. It's Jarrat and Stone you're looking for, and you may never be the same again!

The only downside Aquamarine ever had was that the previous edition was so full of typos you sometimes cringed as you read it. Raw typescripts are like this. Trust me -- the word of God had to be proofread or you'd have ended up with The Book of Gemesod by Moshes, in which it says, Thou shalt now commute adultery, and Vengeance is mean, sayeth the Loud. Believe me ... they also serve who sit and proof. And I'm one of 'em. The DreamCraft edition has taken care of this problem and at the same time the book was beautifully rejacketed.

Highly recommended, without reservation. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars, and a gold stamp for having the determination to go ahead and do it.

Buy it brand new from Amazon -- and take care that you don't buy the old Millivres edition by mistake. It's a lot more expensive (because it's getting rare) and in the end you'll only wind up gnashing your teeth at the "tatty" job they did on the presentation. The old edition does not have the full color cover -- it's easy to tell them apart, BUT ... something weird is going on in the Amazon engine, and lately the DreamCraft edition isn't showing up in a "Mel Keegan" search. If you search on "DreamCraft Aquamarine," it shows up, but that's the only time you see it ... and if you don't see it, how can you buy it?? Jade (the cover artist and webpage guru at DreamCraft) found this out just a couple of days ago, and I heard that MK is going to be blogging about it soon.

Let me guide you through the minefield.

THIS is the DreamCraft edition -- new cover, all fixed, $22.50; this is the one you want:

This is the old version, "tatty" presentation by Millivres, spot color cover, and expensive because it's rare -- this is the one you would probably go past:

God knows, if you're a completionist, get both! But really, where's the decision?! Glad to be of help here.

Laugh a line gay comedy-adventure ... with camels

2009-01-28T14:13:00.004+10:30

Knights Press has been gone for a long time, and that's a shame, because they had access to a stable of writers whose work was very different from the norm of what was going through GMP, Alyson and so on, at the time. Back in the 1980s there were loads of small gay publishers, and always plenty of good reads, even great reads, coming along. That's all changed ... and I would say the world is a poorer place because of it. (If you're interested in this, I have a link for you now, and also, I just forwarded this same link over to Mel Keegan, and got a ping back. MK will be blogging about this tomorrow.) I haven't even been able to find out when Knights Press closed, but I think it would be about ten years ago, just before GMP was sold off.

Writer Daniel McVay is also very difficult to track down. He wrote several books, most of them out of print, one apparently still available (Fete and The Legend of Jasper Kell are available secondhand; The Vanilla Kid is still in print.) Of McVay books, the only one I've read is The Baggy Kneed Camel Blues ... and I keep telling myself to get the others, because if they're as good as this one --!

Once in a long long while you find a novel that's not just funny, it's flat-out hilarious. This is one of them. The whole book reads like a stand-up comedy routine, and you'll laugh out loud in places. The book is also very easy to read. You can almost read it in an afternoon, not because it's short but because it's ... easy. In fact, Baggy Kneed... is over 200pp, and it's a good "act" to be able to continue the joke through a whole book, and still be funny at the end.

The storyline follows the development of young Tad, who’s early twenties and looking to escape from what he thinks of as a suffocating job in a dead-end place. Having saved for a trip, he lands in the Spanish city of Barcelona ... but he’s dragged his feet too much on the way there and has run out of money long before he could reach his actual original destination, which was Morocco.

The book opens with Tad killing time and trying to get his act together in Barcelona ... and then, as a cruise ship arrives, he meets a girl called Stacy and catches a glimpse of a Viking God in human form, Gunther. Tad is very gay, which doesn’t bother Stacy. Stacy is one of those fast-mouthed, exuberant young women who could be compensating for being physically tiny by having a huge personality. She's bright, quick-witted and funny -- but author McVay was walking a tightrope with this character.

Stacy’s the kind of character who makes a story start by providing the grit in the oyster that turns into the pearl; she’s also the kind of character that can get annoying if she’s not handled right. Daniel McVay does a very good job of keeping the exuberant Stacy on a leash -- giving her enough rope to let her get Tad moving, get the story going, but not letting her cross the line and become annoying.

Tad, meanwhile is a curious character: young, bright, gay, smart, but he has a kind of "Walter Mitty" complex, where he has a hard time controlling his imagination, and his daydreams can be more real than reality. Anything and everything can spark runaway daydreams, and his fantasies go careening off by themselves like runaway trucks. This provides a lot of the comedy material, and is really where Baggy Kneed... is, in my experience, unique. I can’t recall another novel that ever used this device. Certainly not a gay one.

Then Tad actually meets Gunther, the Viking, and falls head over heels. Gunther is also headed for Morocco, and Tad goes with. It’s the start of a crazy trip, and with Tad as narrator, the whole story is a little bizarre and very funny. The action (and sex, and comedy) have more to do with what’s going on inside Tad’s head than in reality. It’s a device that shouldn't’t work so well -- but does. It works marvelously.

The book is long out of print, but you can still get used copies, and Amazon has a good deal on this item. Very recommended, when you’re looking for a good laugh. AG’s rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Gay romance on the high seas: The Buccaneer by M.S. Hunter

2009-01-24T14:45:00.008+10:30

At last, just when you thought the beast would never come along ... there it was! A novel that is at one moment an adventure, a romance, exciting, colorful, up-beat, well-written, well-researched, long enough to be a satisfying read, and ... gay!

Alyson Publications put out this volume in 1989, and I do not know why a raft of others answering the same description didn't follow it. They didn't all have to be historicals, like M.S. Hunter's The Buccaneer. They didn't have to be "gay pirate novels," like this one. So long as they delivered the goods according to the short list above, I'd have been happy to keep buying books as long as Alyson kept putting them out!

An exciting gay adventure romance that's well researched and written, at least 250pp long, and fun. What was so hard about that? Apparently it wasn't just hard, it was completely impossible. There's a handful of gay novels that I'd group in the same part of the bookshelf as The Buccaneer ... and I think most of them have been penned by Mel Keegan! I'm thinking about Fortunes of War, Dangerous Moonlight, The Swordsman, The Deceivers ...! They're all Keegans, and shelved with Keegan.

Now, MK didn't start publishing with GMP, and (you're going to shriek when you hear this) I missed the first few books entirely, they just blew by me. I used to get my books out of the Bulldog Books mailorder catalog in those days and my brain must have been out for pizza, because the first Mel Keegan book I saw, bought, read and fell in love with, was Fortunes of War -- which is a tale of gay buccaneers in the Elizabethan era, same time and location as the Errol Flynn movie, The Seahawk. (Oh ... joy of joys! Because Fortunes of War could easily have been a project written for Errol Flynn who would be playing Dermot Channon, and I still have endless fun trying to "cast the part" of Robin Armagh.)

But -- enough about Aricia and Mel and Errol Flynn.

Suffice to say, M.S. Hunter's The Buccaneer came along like a life-saver. I got this one when it was hot off the press and just arrived in Australia, late '89 or early '90 ... I remember it being hot weather, which to us means Christmas plus or minus a couple of months. It was love at first sight. First, I was enthralled by the fact that one of the characters in the main romantic pair was African.

(Do you want to "cast the part?" You couldn't go past Will Smith ... and I'm being wicked here; and I admit it; but with Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey on the big screen in a gay movie right now, I can't resist "seeing" movie versions of the really great gay novels!)

The romantic aspect is between Ozei (known as Ozzie) and Tommy Cutler (known as The Cutlass), and there are some steamy scenes as well as the romantic. The supporting cast in the novel is huge, and most of the characters are very well drawn, which is unusual in many adventure books. The novel is long, at 316pp of smallish type, and M.S. Hunter wrote extremely well.

Sadly, you'll notice the past tense there. M.S. Hunter is another loss to the art form of gay literature. He passed away some time ago, after having written only a little gay fiction ... and after a lot of digging to try to find some info on him, much less an obituary, I came up empty handed.

The Buccaneer is therefore his legacy to this art form, and I can only recommend it. The story is huge, and a bit rambling. It centers on Tommy and is told in the first person with Tommy as the narrator. It's a tough act, but Hunter makes it work superbly. You like the characters in this book, and the story of ambition, desire, derring-do, hazard and sensuality will keep you turning pages. Sometimes the plotline is a little bit easy to predict, but when you've read upwards of five hundred books, very little is going to take you totally by surprise, and that's not the writer's fault! What should amaze you is the research that went into this.

Does the novel have a downside? Well ... a little one, maybe. The author keeps butting in with short "documentary" segments, which you might find make it hard for you to keep your disbelief suspended. The first time I read this, I just skipped over them, didn't read them at all. The second time, the same -- but when I was done I went back and read the documentary parts separately. Nothing wrong with this, and you actually get two reads for the price of one here. The doco segments are set off into arial or some plain font, and are ostensibly about Hunter's personal experiences while researching the book. In fact, they're very interesting, it was just the interruption to the flow of the fiction that didn't quite work for me the first time through.

Highly recommended! AG's rating, 5 out of 5 stars. The Buccaneer is long out of print (god knows why) but you can get it from Amazon, and ... please do!

If you're into gay pitate novels don't miss Fortunes of War by Mel Keegan, and also have a look at this article: Were the Pirates Gay? by W. A. Hoffman, who's written a gay pirate novel called Raised by Wolves. I haven't read the novel, but I was impressed by the article, and will get to the novel in due course.

Gay and coming of age in '68: John Fox's Boys on the Rock

2009-01-21T11:44:00.005+10:30

First, my apologies to all regular visitors: I haven't been able to blog for about four days. It's just too hot! If you don't live in a part of the world that Lance Armstrong last weekend called "insanely hot," you might not be able to imagine trying to do anything at all in a room that's cooking your computer to death. So ... sorry for the delay. But I'm back. (Never really left, just couldn't blog!)

Today's review will come as a surprise to some of you. It's not my usual fare -- in fact, when I borrowed this book from a pal (a loooong time ago), I didn't expect to like it. I was in for an awakening, and I've had fond thoughts about John Fox's one and only book, The Boys on the Rock, ever since.

It's a damned shame that John Fox passed away, because he would ave gone on to be a remarkable writer with a lot to add to the corpus of gay fiction. Alas he was yet another AIDS victim, and his legacy is this one book, which was put out by Saint Martin's Press in 1993. A couple of editions have been done, and I'm fairly sure it's back in print right now. Copes are readily available from Amazon, with a different cover from the original; and I'm going to recommend it, even if it's not your "usual" thing in reading! Why would I recommend it for that specific reason? Because it'll stretch you, make you use your brain cells to see other people's points of view and appreciate different lifestyles. Which I think is important in a world that's still struggling to achieve freedom, tolerance and respect for all.

The Boys on the Rock is a coming of age story (which I don't usually go for because you can only read so many of them before they all sound alike), and a (teenage) love story. It's a very short piece -- I'd call it more of a novella than a full novel. (It's about the same length as something like Windrage or Tiger, Tiger.) The good thing about "short reads" like this is that you can finish them in a single bite. Also the author has the opportunity to tackle ONE subject, finish dealing with it and finish the novel. There's a lot to be said for the "singular voice" and the "singular theme."

John Fox certainly had a "singular voice." He managed to make The Boys... actually sound like it was written (sometimes gabbled!) by a sixteen y.o. boy who was just discovering his feelings, and falling in love. There's a massive skill in this. A fair few writers who're adults are in the business of writing "young adult novels," and I have to say, the kids in their books don't sound like real kids. Not even kids from 1968, which is when The Boys... is set. (It's a historical too, as you can see, which to me adds to its interest factor.) However, John Fox has the teenage boy of the late 1960s "voice" down pat.

Now, forty years later, younger readers might even have to work out what some of the slang means! For those of us who were there at the time (okay, I was six, but I as there, damnit) there's no problem.

Books about randy teens are not my usual fare, but this one is very good. I can usually take or leave this kind of book, but The Boys... is a young man's story, written by a young man, in a young man's voice. It has a power of Truth about it that made it wonderful to me. (As a woman, I found this story opened a doorway into the mind and heart of a teenage lad and showed me what they might be thinking and feeling. And yes, I realize a lot of readers would say, "I really don't care what a 16 y.o. is thinking!", but a lot more readers do care, or would care if they gave themselves a chance to find out.)

The storyline is fairly simple, or at least linear. Boy meets boy. Boys fall in love. Boys have sexy fling. Boys ... start drifting apart once again, when teenage love unravels itself, as if normally does at that age.

The novella doesn't have a traditional happy ending: the character of Billy, who's the narrator, is not ready to settle down into a long-term affair. Few kids his age are! But the book does have a sort of happy ending. Billy's coming of age affair was a learning experience with some emotional highs as well as the lows, and even though you can feel the sadness at the end of the book, Billy has grown so much as a human being and as a young man, that you end the book certain that he'll be able to make a good life for himself -- and find a long-lasting relationship when the time's right. I remember even wondering at the time I first read this, if Billy and his first love might be back together one day when they've, uh, grown up a bit. Nice fantasy!

Does the book have a downside? Well, it depends who you are. If you're a young gay gay guy, you should love this; if there's a boy left hiding inside you, you'll love it; if you're a friend, sis, mom, aunt or even gran of a teen just coming out, you'll take this book to your heart. If you're just plain interested in what might be going on in the mind and heart of a gorgeous young boy -- again, you'll probably love this! If the above have absolutely no interest to you (say, George Clooney in a tux, with a brandy in one hand, is more your style...) you won't get much out of it. Also, the book is very short (shorter than Jackal in the Dark), and if you want something longer, this one might disappoint. Lastly, it' set in 1968, which is now 40 years ago, and some younger readers might find it "obsolete" for this reason. I'm sure John Fox chose the time setting deliberately. To begin with, it was the era when gay Pride was really getting into gear. Second, it was just before AIDS sprang up and started taking victims in the gay male community. In 1968, kids could (and did) have wild affairs without thinking about the consequences, and most of them got away with it (except the gals who came home pregnant ... not that this was ever going to be a problem to gay kids, but ...!)

Recommended for a lazy afternoon's read -- or a rainy evening. AG's rating: 3.5 out of 5, or maybe even 4, depending on the mood I'm in at the time! Get a good deal on it from Amazon, and if you like this, you might also like Glamourpus. and Jackal in the Dark (follow the link above).

Adrien English takes on The Dark Side: Josh Lanyon's The Hell You Say

2009-01-16T12:09:00.007+10:30

I know, I know, I've been promising for weeks to get to my favorite of the Adrien English novels ... life has been "interesting" this month, which means blogging time has been hard to find. But here I am, and here's Adrien -- back in style, in the third of the novels, The Hell You Say.

Of all the series (there are four titles to date), why is The Hell... my favorite? To begin with, it has the paranormal plot line. The story involves a connection to a satanic cult, and I love this kind of thing ... the touch of the exotic, the creep-out aspect of "black magic." This installment in the series is also extremely funny, which gives the book a kind of "three pronged assault" on the reader. There's its dark occult side, its cuttingly witty side, and also the gay theme. All of which makes the novel irresistible.

As you'd expect, there's a killer on the loose, and he seems to be after a weird young man called Angus who works for Adrien at the bookstore. Angus is being threatened via the phone, and Adrien helps him get out of harm's way -- which may or may not be a good thing, because Jake Reardon (the LA cop with whom Adrien has a sometime and stormy relationship) is also being haunted by a serial killer with satanic-cult connections. Very dead bodies being found, and they are "marked" in ritualistic ways ... and now I have to be very careful what I say about the plot, or I'll be into spoilers!

This book is full of moments that are fascinating and amusing, emotional, even disturbing. Josh Lanyon writes a sparkling first-person narrative tying everything together with the personal observations and thoughts of Adrien, who is witty and smart, with a razor-sharp tongue.

And especially in this book, Adrien is a fully-developed personality. He's "off the leash" for the first time. This is actually very true in another way, because this book marks the start of Josh Lanyon self-publishing his novels -- a road he's sharing with top-name writers from Mel Keegan to Storm Constantine. (Readers need to get past the "stigma" and find out, and then admit, that great writers can publish their own work with tip-top results. The fact is, this book, The Hell You Say, was only going to be published if JL did it himself -- and it's better than the first two which went out under the GMP label! Time to get past the "vanity publishing stigma" thing, people. The industry's changed. When great writers get stuck on a sandbank, they rescue themselves and all of us profit from their courage).

During the course of a real page-turner of a plot, Josh Lanyon has Adrien interact with a cast of characters ranging right across the spectrum. There's the gorgeous detective boyfriend Jake, who is deeply "challenged" and breaking Adrien's heart. There's Adrien's mother (!) who is deliciously batty, getting married again, and presenting Adrien with not one but three step-sisters. Eegad. And there's also the Wiccan-pagan guru who appears late in the book ... and I'm so very pleased to be able to relate that this writer knows what Wicca is all about. It's such a relief when a writer possesses the facts and not the prejudices.

If you've collected all the Adrian English books, it's great to be able to watch Josh Lanyon mature, as well as his character. From the first book through to this one, the style, the storytelling, everything "fleshes out." Also, The Hell... is 230pp, a longer book with a lot more to get your teeth into.

Does the novel have a downside? Weeeeeell, maybe, if you were waiting for Jake to get his act together and figure out that he belongs with Adrien. Plot spoiler: not in this book, guys. In fact (stop reading right now if you don't want to know!!) Jake is getting married to his rather pregnant girlfriend, leaving Adrian high and dry. Hey, there's always a fourth book...

Highly recommended! AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars. You can read this one first if you're on a tight budget, but I think Amazon will combine shipping for you -- which is especially important, if you're in the South Pacific region. Give them a try, and see...

The gay SF trilogy that maps the future of all mankind: Wraethu

2009-01-13T12:03:00.005+10:30

It's impossible to believe that it's over 20 years since this book came out. It was the first of a trilogy ... and a debut novel ... and created quite a stir in the late 1980s. Even today it's one of the "weird ones," but it's also the best of the first-published Wraethu Trilogy. The second one (The Bewitchment of Love and Hate) was good too, and then the story somehow trailed away, didn't end with the wallop we'd all expected from The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire. You can actually ready this first one as a stand-alone novel without getting into the other two, and it has a lot to recommend it, without having to tow the rest of the trilogy behind it.

Storm Constantine looked like one of her characters, at the time: sort of goth-punk with electrocuted hair. 20 years on, she has the look of a wiccan practitioner -- which is close to accurate, since she's a Reiki master and publishes magic books. She's also written loads of SF and fantasy, but it all started right here with the first of the Wraethu books... which remains my favorite of her writings. The trilogy has been reprinted, but I'm lucky enough to have the whole thing in the original editions. It came out from Tor between 1988 and 1991, and as I said, raised quite a stir.

There's some disagreement even now, about whether these novels are actually gay SF or not. I'm not going to pass judgment! They're often listed as, and with, "Queer SF," so, what the heck? In fact, the characters are more of what you'd call androgynes. The Wraethu seem to be the next evolution of humans, where individuals have the characteristics of male and female, and can swing either way. At least, that's how it seemed to me ... it's complicated!

The story is post-apocalyptic. The blurb says, "the cities of the industrial north have become a wasteland," and there seems to have been a breakdown in the climate. We've caused a kind of runaway greenhouse effect, and mankind is evolving again, in order to survive.

There's no map in Enchantments... but if you stick around till the third book the map there centralizes on a land-locked sea, and anybody who knows a bit about the map of the globe goes "aha!" because you can easily recognize the Black Sea and the little Sea of Azov just to the north. In the Wraethu books, they're known as the Sea of Shadows and the Sea of Arel.

So the stage is close to set here. The world is a hothouse, the story takes place in eastern Europe, and concerns a new evolution of mankind ... and magic, sorcery, psychic powers, the foundation of a new race, new cities, the troubles between the Wraethu and the old humans from which they evolved.

The story follows several characters. You'll like Pellaz, a young man -- this is his "coming of age" or even "coming out" story. He and his strange new friend Calanthe trek south to find the Wreaethe and join them. They meet the tribe known as the Gelaming, who are peaceful and sophisticated. Other Wraethu are warlike -- it's said that they would exterminate humankind if they could -- but these are artistic and diplomatic. Calanthe is Wraethu already ... Pell will become Wraethu.

They're superhuman in many ways, and are probably some kind of mutation. Nobody seems to know when or how the mutation started, except that it began among young people ... and specifically young male gays, if I read the hints right.

Down in the south these new Wraethu have gathered to build their city. Cal is heading there to join them, since his own tribe has been wiped out in the fighting, in the north. Pell runs away from a village of huts where dirt-farmers manage to pound a living out of the sand and dust...

But what's he running toward?

There's a glossary of the alien language in the first book, but the map is in the third. You'll be glad of the glossary! I didn't have trouble remembering all the terms, but a lot of them are pronounced differently than you'd think ... which starts to make sense when you run into the map in Fulfilments... and you realize what part of the world this is.

The trilogy is huge. At 300pp of very small type, Enchantments is the smallest book. Both the others are about 400pp, so you have 1,000 pages of mind-blowing, gender-bending SF ahead of you! Storm Constantine has recently returned to this world and written another trilogy, which I believe is a prequel set, Wraiths of Will and Pleasure, Shades of Time and Memory and Ghosts of Bood and Inncence. I believe these were also done by Tor, but I've not yet managed to get them.

As far as I know, the Tor editions are out of print (nobody carries a backlist or warehouse stock anymore ... I did hear that it has something to do with rules regarding the "depreciation in value of warehoused goods" ... but this is OT), but you can get them from Amazon -- either the old edition as used books, or the POD reprints of the backlist direct from SCs company, Immanion Press.

Very recommended, but be warned these books are dark, intense and can be a bit weird! AG's rating, 4 out of 5 stars.

Here is Storm Constantine's website: a href="http://www.stormconstantine.com

Gay Westerns done right: Cap Iversen's Dakota trilogy

2009-01-10T12:25:00.008+10:30

You'd think the idea of the "gay western" was so obvious, this kind of book would be common, there would be plenty of these novels when you fancied a romp with gay cowboys.
Surprisingly, there's just not that many. The genre is usually traced back to a novel I've never read, but would if I ever found a copy -- Song of the Loon, by Richard Amory, published in 1966. It's been described as an "erotic saga," but how hot it would be, you have to wonder, because not only was it published in '66, but it was also so popular, Amory was either invited or allowed to do two sequels.

But the sluice gates did not exactly swing wide open on gay western novels. I've found it hard to track any more down before the 1990s. Then, you can hunt down books by William H. Henderson, Michael Jensen, Ken Shakin and Cap Iversen.

I'm going to look at Cap Iversen today for several good reasons: he writes a very good novel without getting at all "arty;" his books are the absolute archetype of the Western novel with one exception ... the orientation of the heroes; and he wrote a trilogy about a very good character called Dakota Taylor, so if you're in the mood for a gay western, you've got something to sink your teeth into!

The trilogy started off with Arson! and went on with Silver Saddles and Rattler! I have a copy of the first, read a borrowed copy of the second, and was never able to get my hands on a copy of the third. From a writer's POV I guess it's like the Law of Diminishing Returns. The more you do, the less you get -- the more books you produce, the less you sell, and then the publishers decide not to do any more, and what was billed as a "series" at first, turned into a trilogy. That's fair enough. The publishers know their business...

I'd love to show you the Rattler! cover, but I never did track down the book, as I said. I remember enjoying Silver Saddles a lot, but can't actually review it because it's got to be about twelve years since I read it and the details have slipped my mind!

However, I read Arson! again not long ago, and I'd forgotten what a good book it is. It doesn't attempt to be "arty." It is exactly what it is: a Western. Where the guys fancy each other.

The story is your "right down the middle" Western plot, about sheepmen on one side, cattlemen on the other, the little dusty town, the simmering heatwave, land rights, water rights, the gunfighter, the smoking Colt revolvers ... the works.

And Cap Iversen wove in the gay sub-plotline with a very very subtle hand. This book is NOT erotica. There's a lot of so-called "gay cowboy stories" out there, but when you get right down to it, it's just erotica about very young men getting down to business while wearing Stetson hats and chaps (or at least wearing them till some other young dude rips 'em off; which is cool in its own way). If you want a real, genuine Western, you'll look a long way...

CI's characters are the real thing, too. The central character is obviously Dakota Taylor, who's a big, rough, tough gunslinger with a heart of gold, a lot of courage and a fancy for guys. His best bud is Ryder, who answers to the same description. The two have been in bed together for years, though they're not in love -- the bond is "merely" friendship with sensuality as a side order. Then Dakota meets a lad called Bennie Colsen, who's grown up gay on the ranch and has no idea what to do about it. He's done his reading, knows what and who he is, but in that era, what did you do next? Dakota falls for Bennie like the proverbial load of bricks, and Ryder is skeptical, especially when Dakota gets "suckered" into working for the young man, who's running sheep, and up against the cattlemen. The plot thickens with a drought that's killing huge numbers of cattle ... and everybody knows that sheep can survive twenty times better in drought conditions than cattle ever will.

So, Dakota is working for Bennie while Ryder takes the skeptical high ground, and the cattlemen are losing stock; Dakota has fallen in love with his young boss, and ... suddenly the ranch goes up in flames, and it weren't no act of Nature.

Arson! is a very good read. If the book has a downside at all, it's that most readers today would have liked the love scenes to be more frequent, and a lot more steamy. They're "matter of fact" love scenes, along the lines of, "we made love and then made a fresh pot of coffee." Even so, for gay readers (and gay-friendly readers) it's so nice to have a proper Western with the gay orientation. Like a breath of fresh air.

The book was put out by Alyson Books in 1992 and never reprinted. They also did the two follow-ups that make the Dakota trilogy, and you can get good deals from Amazon.

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 4.5 outta 5 stars, gosh durnit.

Here's a good article on the development of the gay Western:
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/western.html

... ...Amazon does have Song of the Loon, as I have just discovered! The much better look at the cover is a scan from the History of Gay Publishing in America. I must see if I can get this.

Diesel Ebooks has a page of gay Westerns, but I have no idea of the quality, not having read any of these! Worth a look, though, if you're in the mood, but I'm certain some (most?) of what's on this list will be of the erotic variety, and when you're looking for an actual novel...!

Gay vampires -- as you never saw vampires before: Mel Keegan style

2009-01-06T09:09:00.007+10:30

If you think you know a thing or two about vampires ... how they sleep in earth-filled coffins, hang out in creepy old houses festooned with webs, can't see their reflections in mirrors, have giant canine teeth and rip the throats out of virgin girls in graveyards in the wee small hours of the morning ... think again. Mel Keegan's vampire (or vampyre, as it's spelt in these books) are different. Very different.

These people are immortals ... but they come in two kinds, or races, or strains. First, there's the vampire themselves. who are mostly thousands of years old -- these are the individuals who've managed to survive since the time of the Battle of Troy, against at least two thousand years of persecution. They're a gentle people, old, wise, and sad, because only a handful of them have survived. They live a different lifestyle; they do sustain themselves with blood; they do fear the daylight for medical reasons ...

Leave it to Mel Keegan to think the whole thing through and diagnose an ancient virus, transmitted exactly the same way as HIV, that makes people turn into vampires -- and this is where you get your second race. The vampires are an ancient race of humans who carry the virus, and when it's transmitted to normal humans, the human mutates, or changes, over the space of months, and becomes a changeling. The changelings also become immortal but they're sterile; they carry the virus and can pass it on to other humans if they're not damned careful, like HIV. What the virus does to them is, it makes them shun the daylight the same as the elder vampire, and makes it impossible for them to digest anything but ... you got it. Blood.

And then it starts to get complicated. Changelings are caught between two worlds -- the crass, callow human world they were born in, and the elegant, glittering, ancient world they aspire to ... but the humans hunt them down and the vampire (vampyre) won't accept them, because --

Hey, read the book. I have to stop right now, because if I even try to explain, the plot spoilers will be coming thick and fast. The story focuses on two gorgeous characters. The changeling is Michael Flynn, who's a "young" Irishman, an occultist and Tarot reader who's passing himself off in London high society in 1893 as the sufferer of a rare blood disease. He's also gay, by the way ... and beautiful. (Beauty is key to the plot of Nocturne ... like I said, read the book.) At a party one night he meets Captain Vincent Bantry, an army officer who was just retired from the service, badly injured. He's spent years in the Far East and seen all kinds of strange, weird things -- but nothing that prepares him for falling in love with Michael and stumbling into the vampyre world, and wanting desperately to become part of that world. The vampire characters are amazing. I absolutely fell in love with the vampire Chabrier, and the changeling Mario/Maria. The main romance is between Michael and Vincent. It will stand your hair on end. Trust me. The combination of the occult and the spice of a gay romance can't be resisted.

The story is set in England, France, Italy ... London, Paris, the Camargue ... and, well, the book makes you shiver, just thinking about it. It's 450pp of smallish type -- a huge book -- and you won't be able to get it out of your memory for weeks. You're going to want the second book (MK says there are more to come), and I'm going to do something I don't usually do. I'm going to continue right here and review the second book at the same time -- for a good reason. If you'll just trust me enough on this to get both at one time, you can combine postage at Amazon and save yourself some money!

(Incidentally, you can also throw in other MK books from DreamCraft on the same postage bill, because they're made and shipped by CreateSpace, which is one of Amazon's own companies. I looked into how much the postage is for folks downunder -- like self -- and it comes to a big saving. It costs $16.04 to ship one book, but only $32.10 to ship THREE. Every book you add to your order, they add $8.04, so if you can ship, say, four at a time instead of four separate packages, you just saved $24.12. That's nice. We like that.)

So, here we go with the second Keegan vampire book:

This story takes place about 12 years later than the first one and it's like an "episode" ... fully self-contained, no ends left dangling, has its own guest stars and all.

(I can give you a bit of insider information here. Being a proofie at DreamCraft, I've chatted with MK enough to know that Twilight certainly is an episode. There's another episode after the First World War, and another one in the 1930s (the Indiana Jones era), and then one in the 1960s, and one in the 1990s -- one in about 2030, and one in about 2050. The series has a plan to work to, it's going somewhere. All MK needs is the time to devote to writing the stories.)

Twilight takes place in 1905 ... automobiles and telephones and the police starting to get much more scientific in their approach to detective work and forensics. The vampire are up against a tougher world now. They have to get smarter if they're going to survive and stay hidden in a world that's getting technological. But all the same old "drives" are still working, which makes life more and more complicated. Just before Twilight opens, there's been a series of murders out in the west of England ... or has there? Looking at the details of the crimes, in the newspaper, Vince and Michael think they can see a vampire or changeling at work, and people are dying out there. They go out to Devonshire and take on the investigation ...

And now, I'm about out of things I can tell you about the plot! Like any Mel Keegan book, it gets very complicated, very fast. It'll also keep you turning pages till four o'clock in the morning if you start reading too late, so -- consider yourself warned. Twilight is only about half as long as Nocturne, and it can afford to be shorter. The first book had to set up the whole world, backstory all the characters, and so on. This book is definitely an episode in the lives of Michael and Vince and Chabrier and the others. I loved it as much as the first.

Is there a downside to these books? Only the fact I wish Mel Keegan would get on and write the others. But I also understand that working a job takes time away from writing, and the books will come out when they come out. (They'd come out a lot faster if a major publisher picked up the contract and offered decent printruns and advances ... but that's every writer's dream.)

Right now, you can get these two books in one package from Amazon.com (not dot-co-dot-uk, though) for $16.04 on shipping to Aust and NZ (a lot less for shipping to US and UK obviously). And if you were interested, you can also chuck in The Swordsman for an extra eight bucks postage, and something like the new DreamCraft edition of Fortunes of War or Aquamarine for another eight bucks shipping.

Nocturne and Twilight are highly recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars on each one, and if you add them together, I'd award a 6 if I could.

And, in case you're building a parcel to save postage (esp. to Australasia region):

Gay in the wrong location: The Alexandros Expedition

2009-01-05T12:06:00.004+10:30

From memory, this was the first gay book I'd read that was written by a woman; it was also the first one that had a more or less "mainstream" plot. I got this book used in something like about 1987. It was put out by Alyson Books four years earlier, and I think its principal claim to fame is that it appears on the List of Materials Stopped by Canada Customs!! (You can see the whole list here: http://www3.sympatico.ca/toshiya.k.ncl/banned/list.htm)
...in other words, this book is banned in Canada. I have no idea why, but I do know that Canada has banned a lot of gay books.

However, I always thought that the Canadians banned books containing "nasties" such as underage characters and what have you. Intelligent reasons.

Then I found out that they "stopped" Harlan's Race by Patricia Nell Warren, which is of course the sequel to the bestselling gay novel The Front Runner ... and since I've read both of those as well as The Alexandros Expedition, and I can tell you flat-out that there is nothing in any of these books that an intelligent sixteen y.o. could not safely read ... I can only conclude that the Canadian Customs Department is off its noodle and needs to have its management looked into as soon as feasible. Some of the stuff on their banned books list -- sure. But there's a lot of titles on there that shouldn't be. And Alexandros is one of them.

It's well written. Well plotted. Well researched ... it also seems to be the ONLY novel on this author's byline. Which tells me that this was a pen name for a writer who was well established in another field, because you don't get this good on one novel. (Maybe PS only had one gay story to tell?? Maybe s/he is Canadian and was so angry at having the book banned in Canada that s/he quit in reaction. This would be a pity, because a lot more books by this author would have been very welcome.) I've tried to get biographical details, but have so far found it impossible ... it's as if the author doesn't exist.

As it is, this is IT, the one and only, put out once by Alyson and never reprinted. The story is a mainstream mystery/adventure thriller about a hero who is hiding a secret ... he's gay, but can't or won't show it, even though his best bud (with the unfortunate name of Hamish, which is the only Scottish name worse than Angus) is open about being gay.

It all hits the fan for our hero, Even, when his friend lands in prison in the Mid-East. He and Hamish are determined to bust him out of there, and they plan a rescue mission. The plot takes them to exotic locations and into danger. There's plenty of action, though the book is not in the least explicit, which is why I can't work out why it was banned in Canada. I lliked the writing style, which is sparse and yet descriptive. And I liked the characters. Some of the book is very sensitively written -- including some good female characters.

It's your real Old Fashioned Book: a good, solid novel ... that, by the by, has gay central characters as well as a mile and a half of story.

Recommended. AG's rating: an easy 4 out of 5 stars -- and there's a killer deal on this at Amazon just now...

Five gay heroes and a thrill every page: Fathom's Five

2009-01-03T14:26:00.000+10:30

I do believe this is Geoffrey Knight's debut novel, and if it is, I'm impressed. This one came out very recently from STARbooks Press (which bills itself as the "publishing leader for Gay literature" ... well, gay p*orn, maybe. There's not a lot of literature in their neck of the Internet, but there's a lot of, uh, action going on there), and it's a load of fun.

Someone was saying to me the other day, this blog needs to lighten up a bit and concentrate less on "serious" novels, and include some fun. The last out-and-out fun one I covered was Glamourpus, so I thought, okay ... "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue." A lot of the books covered in this blog are old -- that's the whole point of reviewing them. A couple are new: John Barrowan's Anything Goes, for one! Something blue ... well, how about China House? So that leaves something borrowed...

Right before Christmas I borrowed Fathom's Five: The Cross of Sins, and enjoyed the heck out of it. So our subject for today is ... fun. This ain't great literature, guys! This is thrills and spills, for just over 200pp, and some good, steamy scenes throughout.

If you took the clue-hunt from National Treasure, glued it to the quest for an ancient relic from Raiders of the Lost Ark, staged it in the over-the-top "impossible and I'm having far too much fun to care about it" disregard for physics and the consequences thereof, of Sahara, you're just about smack on target as a description of this book ... except for one important facet: the characters are gay.

What, all of 'em? Well, most! The premise starts with one of those Doc Savage type organizations, where a central genius (in this case Professor Fathom in the part of Doc Savage or Professor Xavier) has a group of brilliant, diverse, larger-than-life young associates who come to daddy at the gallop when another adventure is offered. The difference in this book (which is tipped to be the first of a series) is, they're all gay!

Like I began -- it's loads of fun. You just mustn't take it seriously, or even try to: it's like James Bond crossed with Tomb Raider ... if you take it seriously, you take the fun out of it. The five young tear-away adventurers are a Texas cowboy, a male model, a gridiron player, a troubleshooter, a genetics expert, and each one doubles as a specialist in maps, an ancient historian, a doctor, and so on.

Anybody remember Buckeroo Banzai --?! Leave your sense of reality at the door, turn on your sense of humor, and you'll enjoy this hugely. It's a complete romp, with colorful backdrops from Italy to Venice to Turkey. Indiana Jones territory, with Lara Croft action restaged for hunky young gay characters.

On top of all this, it even has a plot, believe it or not. Da Vinci Code-fashion, the Vatican is trying to destroy or cover up ancient truths or relics, but this relic has been well and truly hidden, like the treasure Ben Gates has been after all his life. Our heroes have to find it, and it ain't easy. Indie's adventures are in the same league -- you get the picture.

The plot has enough loops and switchbacks to keep you interested and even guessing in some places, and there's a good surprise when the villain is unmasked. You'll like the characters, who are properly written and developed for the most part. And as per the writing style, this might be Geoffrey Knight's debut on this pen name, but (s)he's been writing something, somewhere, to develop the full professional polish. Can't find anything biographical online, though, and I'm tempted to speculate that maybe this is the new pen name used by a "serious" writer who'd get stoned to death by his (or her?) peer group for writing pure escapist adventure fiction!

I'm not going to say more because plot spoilers get under my fingernails the same as yours. The book is in paperback, in print, still quite new, and available from Amazon.

Highly recommended for its total fun quotient. Just turn off your "disbelief master switch" and enjoy the ride. AG's rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Gay Gothic: China House

2009-01-02T15:00:00.000+10:30

Thank heavens Vincent Lardo wrote extensively. Under two pen names that I know of, he's done around ten books, and discovering either Vincent Lardo or Lawrence Sanders (the pen name) is a treat for a reader. According to the promos, under the byline of Sanders he has "more than 50 million books in print," which is amazing for any writer anywhere ... much less one who has four titles in the Alyson Books range.

Alyson did China House, The Prince and the Pretender, and The Mask of Narcissus, back in the 1980s, and they did it in an "edition" which offered the best-looking covers on gay books that were being done in that era. (GMP was around at the time, but they had a tradition of Really Terrible Covers ... "arty" kind of covers full of clashing colors and scribble-impressionism that didn't inspire you with much desire to order the book out of the catalog!)

China House was actually Lardo's debut novel in 1983, but you'd never have known it, because it's so polished. I don't think I'm wrong in guessing that VL had done loads of writing before getting to the "first novel" hurdle. The Mask of Narcissus was apparently the most popular novel from Alyson, but I'll be deadly honest with you ... China House is my own favorite. I like gothic novels, and China... is a very good one.

The first three thing I look for when I'm thinking about laying down good money and buying a book is, do I like the characters? (If you don't like the characters, you'll get irritated to death by a book that's 200pp long.) China... has fantastic characters. There are four that you meet in the first few chapters, that are crucial to the story -- Scott Evans and Mike Armstrong, who're friends and lovers, and Howard Roth, who's a kind of parapsychologist who's been called in to check out a creepy old house, and Howard's son, Ken.

The cover doesn't lie ... Scott and Mike are gorgeous. They're young, smart, sexy. And scared. The house, China House, is weird. You know that from the start. It's full of "atmosphere," and no secret is made of the fact that something very not-nice happened there about a generation ago.

As the story starts, Scott has just inherited the place, and rather than bulldoze it to the ground and start over (which I would be doing!) he gets in the psychic investigator (Howard) and determines to get to the bottom of what's "up" with the house.

The story is set on the east coast of the US, which has interested me since I saw Jaws in the theaters about 30 years ago. (The movie was set on a mythical island called Amity, but it was filmed in Martha's Vineyard, which is not far south of Cape Cod -- just up the road from the location of China House. So, if you've ever seen Jaws, the stage is set for the opening of the book. Then, take a swung over to Salem, MA, add in something like the creepy old house from The Changeling, and you're good to go.)

And this is the point where I have to start being careful not to give away plot spoilers. There's a dead identical twin ... and the house is seriously weird. And, is Scott haunted, or ill? Is Mike taking advantage of him? Why would be do that?!

Does the book have a downside? Not really. I kinda hoped it would turn out differently, but the ending is Vincent Lardo's prerogative, not mine! Still ... you could hope.

If you're looking for a book that's part thriller, part suspense, part ghost story, and with a great gay theme, you've found it. Marvelous reading for a winter's night, with the wood stove lit and a glass of brandy.

Still in print, with good deals available from Amazon. AG's rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Here's Vincent Lardo online: http://www.vincentlardo.com/

Keep your weather-eye open for the old editions, which are way better than the new(er) ones:

Anything Goes -- with John Barrowman and Torchwood

2008-12-31T13:30:00.000+10:30

Here's everything you ever wanted to know about John Barrowman -- plus a lot you couldn't have imagined, and a few items you probably could have lived happily without knowing, but hey, if you're broad-minded it's all a chuckle.

Name me someone, anyone, who doesn't love John Barrowman?! Most people, though, would be tightly focused in on a couple of aspects of JB. It's going to be either Captain Jack Harkness who's their fascination, or it's going to be the very gayness of a very gorgeous actor who's out and always has been, or it could easily be the lure of the world of live theater.

In this book, you get to pick what you want, like you're strolling down the buffet table. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones ... I'm interested in the theater, and I'm interested in JB for his own sake, and I've been watching Doctor Who since about 1966, so anything that has DW or Torchwood in it or on it will send my antennas up faster than Uncle Martin's. (I could tell you coming out stories. What, coming out as gay...? No. Coming out as a Doctor Who fan. It was a harrowing experience, but the fact the place had gone gaga just recently for Captain Jack made it easy. I never came out as a DW fan back in the days of rubbery monsters and $2 spaceships. No guts.)

Anyway -- Anything Goes is basically the story of John Barrowman: The First 40 Years ... without omission, and with boatloads of detail, especially about his early years. Those chapters are endearing and amusing. His family (and his father especially) seem to have been fonder than usual of practical jokes, and JB grew up with an, uh, broad sense of humor that knows no shame. If you're of a delicate nature: be warned!

The Doctor Who and Torchwood years are obviously the last few chapters in a bio that's telling four decades of story. (I've heard a few criticisms of the book for this, but I can't see a good enough reason for being critical on this. Anything... isn't "Behind the Scenes with John on Torchwood." It's the story of the man's whole life, of which Jack Harkness features in the last few years. Be reasonable, guys.)

I hadn't realized that JB only "officially" came out to the world at large about five years ago. He gives the impression of a guy who was never "in," so I never thought to question his "in or out" status. I have to confess, my first experience with JB was in the Chris Eccleston season of DW, and like everyone else I was bowled right over. Anyway, the coming out parts of the book are light and easy ... Anything Goes also isn't any kind of "coming out" story. JB had it easy, it seems. I actually wish he'd written a bit more here, but it's possible there isn't anything else to write! If one's life isn't screwed up and traumatized, you just get on with your future, like the song says -- "Don't worry, be happy!"

Anything Goes is a very happy book. In a couple of places the humor isn't the kind of thing you'd want your dear old mom and aunt to read ... and maybe someone's romantic illusions will get a fracture or two ... but this is also a very male book: it's by a guy, about a guy, and one of the best, most interesting things about it, is that it opens a doorway into the mind and heart of a gay guy who's happy and successful -- and invites you in.

The book has loads of surprises which I'm not even going to get into here. It'd be like giving plot spoilers for a fiction book. Just because Anything Goes is non-fic doesn't mean you want somebody to tell you all the best bits before you read it! And do read it --

You can get it in hardback and paperback ... loads of fun, highly recommended! AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Here's John Barrowman online: http://www.johnbarrowman.com/, and right now you can get very good deals on Anything Goes at Amazon:

(There's also a bunch of Torchwood goodies which I'm going to be naughty and link you to here, as well. I know I should concentrate on the review in hand but ... what the heck, it's MY blog, and I'm going to bend the rules because ... well, because it's Torchwood. So here goes... I'll link a few, but seriously, link on over to Amazon and drool for a while!)

LA's deep, dark heart ... Jackal in the Dark

2008-12-30T12:48:00.000+10:30

David Patrick Beavers is a writer I don't know much about beyond the standard bio (born in California in 1959 and so on). Jackal in the Dark was his debut novel, and he went on to do at least six others, one of which is a sequel to Jackal... which stands on its own plot-wise. (I was never able to get a copy of that one in the 1990s; you can get it now, but with the shipping and exchange rate it'd come out at about forty bucks, and ... well, another time.)

Jackal in the Dark came out in 1994, and you knew from the first few pages, this writer was on his way to great things. Or should have been...

I wish I could tell you more about this gifted novelist, but his in-print career seems to have hit the rocky shoals at the same at as Mel Keegan's -- and probably for the same reason. (Josh Lanyon was another casualty). What happened? Well, it's a long sad story!

GMP was bought out by Prowler, which was in turn bought out by Millivres ... and Millivres decided, around 2000, that they had no interest in continuing their paperback list, so authors like Keegan, Lanyon and Beavers found themselves in limbo. MK tells the story in a few places. (If you're interested to know what happened -- what landed at least three great writers in the realm of the POD People, have a look at this: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/07/blue-genes-and-gay-publishing.html.)

All three writers are presently marketing their own work, and I think they're succeeding. At least, I hope all three are doing fine, because they're all way too good to be stuck in this rut. Mel Keegan is online here, Josh Lanyon is online here; and I can't find a page for David Patrick Beavers anywhere, so I'm going to let Amazon take care of it for me:

Using those links as a start, you should be able to find DPB at Amazon -- but one could wish he'd get himself a website or a blog!

Jackal... is a deceptive book, just as DPB is a deceptive writer. It's a quick read (only 129 readable pages), and just right for a wintry afternoon, or maybe an interstate bus trip. It also has a sort of "neon art" cover which won't get anybody upset on a bus or train! The covers on a lot of gay books would easily get other passengers irate, but this one is okay.

The subject matter is ticklish. It about 1978 or '79, and this 19-year-old boy is running wild. It's all discos and drugs and sex. Retrospectively speaking, it's a wonder he survived, because AIDS was just showing up at the time, though it wasn't called AIDS yet. I recall it being referred to as GRD, which stood for Gay Related Diseases. Talk about passing the buck.

Jackal... is told in the first person by our 19-y.o. "hero" who is off the rails, and it can be a bit of a "weird read" for sober souls! But it's also funny, and sometimes touching, and the characters ring so true that what's really weird is that you feel like you've been there! The book is set in LA, which everybody on earth knows from tv shows. You also know the era from the same shows. If it wasn't Starsky & Hutch, it was SWAT or something. We all watched them.

So, this is the era and the place: the stage is set. Our wild hero careens through a lifestyle that's dangerous, and runs into some characters that show you just how dangerous it could get. Like Taylor, who's a barely-of-age hustler who's getting badly beat-up by his pimp. It's only a matter of time before our hero starts to wake up to himself. One day he starts to want love instead of sex ... he wants to belong, instead of drifting through an ocean of druggy parties and anonymous encounters.

Well, too bad: you can't always have what you want. Life isn't like that, and Jackal... is an up-close, in-focus look at the way it too-usually turns out. Unrequited love, callowness, fear, vulnerability, self-destruction ... death.

Jackal... sneaks up on you. At the start you think it's going to be a romp, an absolute blast that you'll enjoy with guilt because you know how dangerous all this is. By the end, you'll wish you had a tissue handy.

The writing style is so sparse, it's virtually bald, which is something you're either going to like or not. For me, it worked well. If the book has a downside, it's the baldness of the narrative (some people don't care for it, I know) and also the shortness of the book. It's only about 50,000 words.

The length of the story also makes me say, be careful what you pay for a used copy. The Millivres edition has been out of print for a long, long time, but copies are changing hands at alibris for $45! You can get it in a new edition from Lulu.com, published POD -- and I hope this indicates that DPB is going to follow in the footsteps of MK and JL and take charge of his backlist. I think the reprint from Lulu.com costs about US$17 ... but you can also get the original at a good price from Amazon.

Also, if you don't mind reading on-screen, you can get the ebook version of Jackal... free! There's a link through from this page: http://online-novels.blogspot.com/2008/08/gay-and-lesbian-novels-1.html. Scroll down to Jackal... and click onwards.

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Being gay was dangerous ... The Mayor of Castro Street

2008-12-29T11:52:00.000+10:30

Here's a book that's topical right now, because there's a major movie coming along ... it's also a very good book in its own right! The title tells all: it's the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay political figure in the US of A, who was shot dead by a rival political candidate, in 1978.

Correspondingly, Randy Shilts was the first openly gay journalist to make a place and name for himself in the US press (and have the nerve to write gay stories). He worked in San Francisco for The Chronicle (it took him six years to get hired on in a homophobic industry!) and from what I've read, he had known Harvey Milk personally.

So, no surprise that RS should have made the biography of this amazing, milestone figure his debut work. The book is a very good read. The style is practically what we think of today as "docudrama." Almost like a novel in large patches. It's like a great collection of dramatized "bites of life," that build up to make an overall picture of Harvey Milk in episodic installments. The writing style is very journalistic -- which works well, in the context of the book. I found the methodical, meticulous, leave-nothing-out approach very satisfying.

You could wish wholeheartedly that RS had written more books, but he only did three. He was an AIDS victim and passed away in 1994 at a tragically young age. Mayor... is the first of his books, and you can actually tell. The style still has to settle down a bit! Maybe he could have done with a bit of polish here and there. But actually I'd slap the editing hands away and tell people to "leave off," don't mess it about, because there's also a candidness about it that's accentuated by the less-than-perfect style. (You could say it was the literary counterpart to the always-moving, jiggly camera work you see on modern tv shows, where the director's trying to make his million-dollar show look like it was shot on a handheld camcorder like Blair Witch ... Hollywood currently believes this effect makes footage look "real" and "immediate" and "exciting." Well, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the damn' gander! In the literary world, editors need to learn when to leave well alone and let the "reality" and "immediacy" of slightly rough writing speak for itself. I'll probably get beat up for saying that...)

Back to the book! Mayor... is a truly marvelous portrait of time and place and people. The book was put out by Saint Martin's Press in 1982, and then fell out of print for eons. It was reprinted just a few months ago (August or September of '08) also by SMP, as a partnership for the upcoming movie. I read a borrowed copy back in the late 1980s, and just got the new edition. I read it again, and was just as impressed this time around. Yet...

The book is a strange mixture (not RS's fault) of the contemporary and the historical. Hard to define. You swing back and forth like a pendulum while reading, when "this" strikes a chord as being contemporary, then "that" strikes another chord as being a historical note, and you realize how much has changed in the world since the era of the book.

30 years later it seems so totally weird that somebody like Dan White, who had once been a policeman, could haul off and shoot a guy for being gay and having the audacity to run for public office. But it happened. It was a real event. Nobody made this up. The first thing that hits you as being "out of the past" is the weirdness of the fact this actually happened. (A few years earlier, Patricia Nell Warren had written of the assassination of a gay athlete in The Front Runner ... which shows you a little bit about what the state of things was like in the USA at the time. Thank heavens things changed.)

The second thing that hits you when you read Mayor... is even more sad. AIDS wasn't an issue in 1978 when Harvey Milk was killed. Mr. Milk would never have even heard the word. He represented the gay and lesbian community for one of the cities that was about to be hit the hardest. He could probably have made an incredible difference in the next thirty years, using his influence to get funding for research and support -- and public AIDS education. A lot of lives could have been saved. And Randy Shilts's life could have been one of them.

Don't let me give you the impression that Mayor... is a sad book, because it's not. It's vigorous and witty, clever and insightful. Does it have a downside? Yes and no. Yes, if you're one of those readers that needs a footnoted citation for every syllable that comes out of someone's mouth. You're not absolutely sure where "fact" blurs into "faction" (can't say fiction ... would have to be a cross between the two, with RS as the stable master). For myself, I'm not that all-fired bothered, because somebody who knew Harvey Milk personally (and did as much research as Randy Shilts did, to bring this book together) would know the truth of things better than anybody else. I'm prepared to take what RS writes on trust.

Great book -- very timely, with the movie coming out and also with the Proposition 8 travesty taking place in the same location. California again! Harvey and Randy are up there somewhere, shaking their heads over us. Highly recommended. AG's rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Here's Randy Shilts's page at Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Shilts

And you cam get great deals on The Mayor of Castro Street at Amazon right now:

Gay romance and fantasy come alive: The Swordsman

2008-12-22T16:10:00.001+10:30

If I had a wishlist, one thing that would definitely be on it is this: "Mel Keegan decides to write a sequel to The Swordsman." Because if there was ever a book that was crying out (screaming pitifully) for a sequel, this is it.

A few times across the years I've asked MK if there are any plans to write the book and I get the same answer. "A definite maybe." I've had thoughts about organizing a letter campaign, or a petition. Or maybe, if 250 red-eyed readers showed up on MK's driveway and made vague threats while waving their arms around ... pitch torches optional.

It's not that the story of The Swordsman ends unfinished or that The End is not satisfying. It ends beautifully. You just want more. There's so much that lies ahead of these guys, and as a reader I want those stories. So write to Mel and complain, people.

The book was put out by DreamCraft in 2002, with one of the best covers that's ever appeared on an MK book. The artwork was repainted for the version that is now printed in the USA, but nothing else was changed ... for which I'm glad. You don't change what's perfect already. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it.)

The story is a romance -- in fact it's two romances in one. On the cover you see Seb and Jack (Jack being the swordsman of the title), but there's a second couple, Janos and Luc ... the gypsy shaman and the captain of the guard. And unlike a number of other gay romances and fantasies, this one has some spice! At least enough to steam up your reading glasses -- though you could give The Swordsman as a gift to a coming-out late teen, without anxiety. In other words, when you get to the love scenes, they're real ones. Gay ones. [evil grin]

Jack Leigh arrives in the Riverlands of Rhondia as a soldier of fortune. He fights for money, which he needs to rescue his imprisoned father. The pickings are rich in Rhondia ... but street fighting (dueling) is illegal, so Jack has to be careful.

Meanwhile, almost a prisoner in the citadel, Michael Sebastien d'Astaghir is in mortal danger. Somebody's trying to kill him, and they come so close to succeeding that his friend, Luc Redmayne, reckons he needs a bodyguard. So, when Luc is privileged to see Jack fighting -- and is amazed by the swordsman's skill -- he recruits Jack as the bodyguard. It's Jack's job to see that no harm comes to Seb ... which means Jack is going to get very close to Seb.

Are you drooling yet?! Don't drool too soon, because MK makes you wait for it. Seb starts out as a gorgeous, haunted, troubled, hurting ... bastard, you'd like to kick his shins. Till you realize what's going on. How he has been, and is being, abused. It takes Jack to get through his armor, and then it all happens at once.

The love story runs side by side with a tale of dark magic, horrifying revenge, and mythical creatures that turn out to be real. It's very hard to say anything about the plot without blowing it. I can tell you, it's intricate, fully developed in the Mel Keegan style ... nothing left begging, everything rich as technicolor.

The landscape of The Swordsman is dark forests, stone castles, deep caverns and the river, the canals. This fantasy world is filled out with a history, even a kind of genealogy. The one thing it doesn't have that I wish it did is a map. (I like fantasy maps. Call me weird.) The action of The Swordsman is Gothic and intense: it's like being inside a place, and you know something is out to get you, but ... what? And I really, seriously can't even hint at what it is without telling you the plot, for which Mel Keegan and DreamCraft will excommunicate me!

Does the book have a downside? Only the fact there isn't a second one! As I said before, let's get up a petition.

Highly recommended, and then some! AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

You can read the first part of the book online as a PDF. I'll link you through right here:
http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/swordsman_samp.pdf

And the book is currently available from Amazon:

You can also buy it in hardcover, from the Lulu Online store:

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Small town romance ... gay style!

2008-12-21T14:56:00.000+10:30

One of the best questions you can ask yourself would have to be this: "As a concerned and helpful adult, when you know a kid is growing up gay, what books would you recommend for him/her to read by the time he or she gets to maybe 14 or 15, and deserves to be treated like an intelligent person who knows where his/her sexual orientaties lies?"

It's not an easy question to answer. You have to choose books that have something positive to say ... but they have to say it in language that's suitable to somebody who's hovering between the PG and MA-15 audience.

If you were a writer, you'd probably find this was one of the hardest of all age brackets to aim for. Write too simply, and kids will chuck the book away for being childish (or even childlike). But step over some line that somebody drew in the sand, and you've written an adult book, not a "young adult" book.

I really don't think Patricia Nell Warren wrote The Fancy Dancer for a teen audience! There's no teeny-weeny stuff in it. No Prom night angst, and gym class jitters, and your basic schoolie plotting that kills teen books stone dead for anybody who's "put the high school campus to their rudder" with no intentions of ever going back there. In fact, Fancy... is about grown men, Real Life ... a gorgeous hunk called Vidal, and a young Catholic Priest, Father Tom ... and, oh yeah, about being gay.

It's been said that PNW wrote this as a "follow-up" to The Front Runner (I reviewed that one a while ago, here: http://ariciasgaybookblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/gay-edutainment-way-out-in-front.html), but I seriously doubt it. Fancy... has nothing whatever to do with the other book. The only two things they have in common are, 1) they have gay central characters, and 2) they were published by the mainstream press at a time when gay books were like hens' teeth. Rare. Some critic somewhere probably figured that for the same writer to write yet another gay book, it'd have to be a follow-up.

In fact, PNW was writing these books at the same time as Mary Renault was doing the Alexander books ... and both these authors were writing gay guys, and writing them well -- with a big BUT dangling off that sentence. Here it is: they were writing gay guys well, but they weren't allowed to write sex scenes that got even mildly spicy, because mainstream readers (publishers, editors, critics...) at the time would have thrown a hissy.

The Fancy Dancer was put out in 1976 by William Morrow, who took a bit of a risk on it because The Front Runner had been very successful. Yet, as a gay book -- well, it's a lovely little piece that's the gay equivalent of a Harlequin romance!

If you have a 14 or 15 y.o. kid who's growing up gay, and you wanted to give him a bunch of books that would help, not hurt or hinder, Fancy... would be in the list.

But the "teen rating" the book gets today is contextual. We rate movies and books for their crude language and nudity and explicit sex. If there ain't none of these goodies, the movie gets a PG. This is where rating gets pathetic. You can have a movie or a book that grapples with the most adult of adult content, but as long as it minds its language and doesn't show much skin, fine. (I can think of quite a few "old movies" that tell stories about rape, mutilation, slavery, terror, revenge, drunkenness, murder, lust, war ... but because they were made in the 1950s or 60s, they're not foul mouthed and full of nudity, so ... PG it is, even though an impressionable 9 y.o. could be scarred for life by the concepts expressed!)

And this is why The Fancy Dancer would be classified as a "gay Harlequin" today! The fact is, the book has a lot more to say about being human, being gay, being a hellraiser ... and a Catholic priest, and working to reconcile your spirituality with your sexuality.

When I read the book (I got the GMP reprint, about 1988 or 1990) I had a few reservations at first. I wasn't that keen to read a book about a priest! I have to tell the truth here: I have no vaguest interest in the church. I honestly don't. So I was amazed by how Patricia Nell Warren actually made a lot of the book interesting, when I'd expected to be skipping over 10-page-chunks. I think it's the way it's written that makes it interesting ... like The Da Vinci Code, sure, it's about the church in a way ... but it's more about the people in, and behind, the church.

The conflicts of interest, the clashes of ego, the arrogance of some, the ambition of others. This is what makes the book tick. Father Tom is a very young priest who's working in a little town in the Rocky Mountains. The location fascinated me at once. He's doing community work, and finds himself trying to drag a gorgeous half-caste Indian (Blackfoot) called Vidal back from the brink of self-destruction. The Native American aspect of the story was the second thing that got me interested. Cottonwood is an interesting town, with well-drawn characters, and Vidal is the most "living" of them all.

Turns out, Patricia Nell Warren is from Montana, so her depiction of the region is spot-on for those who live there, and very evocative for the folks who'd just like to visit. I often wonder if Vidal was based on someone she knew. He's very ... real. And he has even more to teach Father Tom than Tom has to teach him...

Because it turns out, Tom is gay as well as Catholic, and a priest to top it off. (You'd think it was an impossible, suicidal combination, but in fact there's a lot of gay priests. I don't actually understand what would inspire a gay boy to enter the priesthood, but -- hey, it's their lives to live, they know best.)

The story concerns the town, the people ... the priest and the tearaway gay Blackfoot dancer. It's a love story, and a good one. You like this book. You like the characters. For example, Vidal's parents -- his father, who is a cop, with a sharp sense of humor ... and the contrast between these people and Father Tom's parents.

When you finish The Fancy Dancer, it's going to be the characters you remember. And the fact that the book has a lot of good things to say -- about being human, and gay, even Christian, and a priest. And finding ways to be "good" in each one of those categories. No surprise that this book turned out to be a bestseller in hardback before it went into paperback!

Highly recommended, especially for teens. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Still in print, in something like the tenth edition...

Greek guys and ... Persian lads

2008-12-20T11:15:00.000+10:30

This is the most popular book of the "Alexander Trilogy" by Mary Renault ... but it's the fact it's become a cult-followed gay book that's made it so popular. Scholars don't like it too much! (And literary fiends don't like the first one, Fire From Heaven, too much; and gay fic fans can't seem much point in the third one ... so with this series, you really have to take what you want and leave the rest behind. If you're a Greek scholar, you'll go for the first and third. Literary fiends will go for the third. Gay fic fans will pick the second.)

The truth is, the so-called "Alexander Trilogy" isn't really a trilogy at all. It's actually three separate books that are loosely associated because they're set in the same approximate time, and some of the same characters run through the narrative...

The first one, Fire From Heaven, was about Alexander and Hephaistion growing up in the long shadows of Philip of Macedon (Alexander's father) and his weird, shrewish mother, Olympias. (If you saw the movie, Alexander, you know them: Val Kilmer and Aneglia Jolie played thm. I wrote about Fire From Heaven yesterday. Here is the post (or you can link to it from the title in "Books Reviewed"): http://ariciasgaybookblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/legend-boys-men-alexander-and.html. The third book takes place after Alexander and Hephaistion are dead -- Funeral Games is about the political wrangling following Alexander's demise. The great leader left a vacuum behind him, and about fifty different people figured they had a chance of filling it. The first book and third book are told in third person narrative, but they are utterly unconnected, except by the time they take place in. And as for he second part of the trilogy...

The Persian Boy is told in the first person by the character known as Bagoas. He was a eunuch who fell in love with Alexander and traveled with the army on its march into India. So, if you're looking for a gay read, The Persian Boy is your title -- but you should at least know what the other two books are about, so as to put this one in context, otherwise it really seems like it's hopping about on one leg.

The story really is about Bagoas. You're about ten chapters in before be meets Alexander ... but the early part of the story is one of the most interesting segments of the book. You see the world through the eyes of a young man who's being groomed into a courtesan for the king's bedchamber. You watch the process of the grooming...

This is a very different story from anything Ann Rice had to say in Cry to Heaven. In AR's book, Tonio Treschi was almost full grown and wanted women. In The Persian Boy, Bagoas is not too unhappy to be made a eunuch and serve the king. (Here's Cry to Heaven: http://ariciasgaybookblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/gay-novel-with-history-music-blood-and.html)

The depiction of Persia, before Alexander arrives and during the war in which Persia fell, is amazing. By the time Alexander arrives, Bagoas is grown and mature enough to be interesting, and when he enters the Greek camp it doesn't take too long before Alexander notices him. Bagoas is besotted with the general, and remains devoted to him for life.

The whole story of the campaign you saw in Oliver Stone's movie is told through the eyes of this eunuch courtesan ... which puts a spin on the material which is totally different, unexpected. To me, it was brilliant to tell it this way, because it made the story fresh. It's a tale that's been told so often, it's like the Arthurian story ... everybody knows how it turns out and there's always a major challenge thrown out to new writers who have to figure out how to make it fresh.

A fair number of reviewers have problems with The Persian Boy. I can see their point some of the time ... but I don't actually agree with them. The narrative sounds like Mary Renault is so obsessed with Alexander, she only knows how to worship him. Is this so -- or is it Bagoas who worships him? I think it's Bagoas. In his world, he understood "god kings." You did worship the king. MR wrote this into his thoughts and behavior.

Other reviewers have problems with the fact she has Alexander fancy Bagoas and be seduced by him. There's still a strong movement that wants to "defend" Alexander against the charge of being gay! Mary Renault was a "gay advocate" at a time when you were a voice crying in the wilderness if you wrote positive material abut gay people, or put them in heroic roles. I guess this is what reviewers and critics mean by her having "gay agendas." Writing in 2008, it's all a bit sad now.

The book is vast in scope, and yet is only about 350pp long, which means you don't get a fully developed examination of any particular event. You're like Bagoas, drifting through history, touching down here and there on a mighty journey. This is probably a good thing, because readers today don't have that much time or attention!

I want to say, "the book could have been steamier," but it was published in 1972. Any more explicit than this, dealing with gay characters and situations, and it'd have either been banned, or classified as porn. So you do have to use your imagination a good bit ... and it helps if you've seen the movie, Alexander, because a lot of the background and details of "things" will be easy to visualize. MR doesn't spend a whole lot of time describing what things actually are, or look like. You're supposed to know. Well ... watch the DVD, and then you will!

Does the book have a downside? To me, yes -- but a lot of people will tell you this 1) doesn't matter, or 2) what are you talking about?, or 3) what are you complaining about? Here's my own problem with the book: when I think about Alexander, I'm always drawn to the relationship between him and Hephaistion. But in The Persian Boy this relationship seems to have disappeared. Alexander goes with Bagoas instead, leaving Hephaistion I'm-not-sure-where. It's a very difficult question. Scholars will tell you flat out, it's only an assumption, an educated guess, that there was anything between Alexander and Hephaistion anyway! And if you're not at least a bit of a scholar, you don't know enough about this to care one way or another.

The other thing is, Mary Renault probably wanted to write about Alexander's gay aspect, and in 1970ish it might have been too controversial to write about him having a relationship with another guy who was older than himself by a small amount. It was safer to sneak the gay scenes in, if she wrote about Alexander and a eunuch. This, I understand. But wouldn't it have been nice to have a depiction of the real thing, the relationship between Alexander an Hephaistion? You can dream...

The Persian Boy is highly recommended. A great historical, even before you look at it as a gay book too. You can get multiple editions and most of them are available through Amazon. AG's rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

The legend, the boys, the men: Alexander and Hephaistion

2008-12-19T11:29:00.000+10:30

Some of the real ground-breaking fiction that had a gay "aspect" came out in the early 1970s, and it's gone down in publishing history as a classic. It's Mary Renault's "Alexander Trilogy."

I want to look at the first two of the books separately ... because they're so different ... and because the name of this blog is 'Aricia's Gay Book Blog,' I'll probably skip over the third book. The last part of the trilogy certainly ties off the story of Alexander neatly, as it needs to be tied off, but since Hephaistion an Alexander are dead, and Bagoas (the Persian boy himself) is now an old man, there's not enough -- to my way of thinking at least -- in Book 3 to qualify it as a "gay book."

In fact, there's actually not much in Fire From Heaven to qualify it as a gay book, either! But you need to read this if you're going to make much sense of the second one, so you're compelled to plow through it ... so, you might as well know what you're getting yourself into!

Fire... might not be a hot-blooded gay book (and I wish somebody would write one about Alexander and Hephaistion!) but it's still a good book, although I don't rank it among the "classics of modern literature." What hits you between the eyeballs is MR's research. I'm no kind of a specialist, but it seems to me that what she doesn't know about the history, region, people etc., isn't to be known. I've heard that a few of the details are wrong -- but I've also heard that the research was state of the art when the book was written, something like the late 1960s (published 1970).

The first book in the trilogy tells the tale of Alexander's boyhood and growing up. MR gives the youth homoerotic tendencies which will become more apparent in adulthood, but the extent of the relationship between Alexander and Hephaistion in Fire... is a great fondness between two boys, and Hephaistion's total devotion to Alex. But ... but ... but ... you have to hunt for the characters among an enormous narrative with a cast of thousands and a million details and location shifts and changes of backdrop. Eventually you can't get past the fact that the characters get lost in the panoramic drama. You just go with the flow, and end up using your own imagination to bring the relationship between Hephaistion and Alexander to life.

Fire... is a lot less specific about anything that passes between them than the movie, Alexander, was. This sort of "handle with tongs and talk in riddles" treatment was typical of MR in general. Also typical of the way gay subjects were handled in mainstream fiction at the time. So you really have to use your imagination, fueled by images drawn from the movie with Colin Farrel and Jared Leto.

If you love ancient-world historicals as a genre, you'll enjoy this. If you know a bit about Greek history and religion, you'll also enjoy this -- you don't have to be a scholar, but it's probably a good idea to watch the movie first! The book is fairly easy to read. MR's writing style is plain enough to be readable by modern people, but still has a bit of the poetic flair of classic fiction. The narrative is a long way from what I'd call 'technicolor,' but it's evocative enough to carry the book.

If there's a downside, it's that the characters get hopelessly lost in the scope of the book, and you wish there was more about individuals, esp. Alexander and Hephaistion, who are probably the main reason you're reading it in the first place. There are some very nice "moments" featuring them, but you do have to hunt them down. Also, the book seems to be a lot longer than it is (up to 450pp depending on the edition) for some reason.

But you won't get to the "gay book" part of the trilogy without reading Fire From Heaven, so tough it out, fill in the blanks with your imagination and images from the movie!

Recommended for the research and the fact it puts in the foundations for The Persian Boy; also recommended as a purely historical novel, if you discount the under-written, understated gay aspect. AG's rating: 3.5 stars out of five.

You can get the trilogy under one cover, but if you're looking for a gay read, you can probably concentrate on The Persian Boy and skip the others, so I'm giving the links to get the three separate books at Amazon ... and I'll write about The Persian Boy tomorrow.

There's a couple more reviews on line at these urls, but the reviewers are NOT tackling these books with any interest to the "gay aspect." They're a lot more interested in the historical accuracy and literary merit of the work: http://myweb.unomaha.edu/~mreames/Beyond_Renault/renault.html

http://www.bookspotcentral.com/2008/09/book-review-fire-from-heaven/

Gays at war -- again: Quince

2008-12-17T12:45:00.000+10:30

If you wanted a book that was 150% different from Glamourpus (the last one I looked at), this could be it. David Rees is a novelist I don't know much about. It's hard to find him on the Internet because there are so many people with the same name ... and because the English novelist by that name (the correct David Rees) died in 1993 so obviously isn't keeping an online presence for himself. Which is a shame because he's written quite a few good books.

The David Rees book I enjoyed the most is The Milkman's On His Way, but I can't review it because I don't have a copy! I read a borrowed copy back in the 1990s, which is (I think) when it as nominated for a literary award; I can't find any current info about this.

(To show how hard it is to get info, follow this link to Rees's page at GoodReads -- and then click on "...more" to try to get to the remainder of the abbreviated bio. You run round in circles going nowhere! Here's the link: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/861857.David_Rees)

Quince is a very good book ... but it's clearly a book written my a male, for males, about males. The romantic angle you get to expect when you're reading a book by a female writer (the feel-good sensation, even when the material is a long way from "fluffy bunny") isn't there. Quince does not have a happy ending. Two people do not settle down to a life together.

In fact, the opposite is true. The central character (you have a hard time saying "hero") is Stephen Faith, a young gay guy who goes out to Spain to teach the English language to a kid called Pablo, the son of the local mayor. He falls in love with Pablo, but when the Spanish Civil War breaks out he gets caught up in the meat grinder ... Pablo betray him, which lands Stephen in prison ... and he doesn't just fall out of love with Pablo, he falls out of love with love.

This is the exact opposite of a novel that's about a guy's journey from the promiscuous sleep-around to the love affair and the settling down. Stephen goes the opposite route. After Pablo, betrayal and some bad experiences in prison, he becomes the promiscuous sleep-around guy. And with the "epilogue" or tag taking place in 1986, about 50 years after the main body of the story, you know he never found love again. Never found a person to settle down with.

Quince is gritty but at the same time it's casually under-written. Nothing much is detailed. In some places (esp. the prison scenes) it reads like Rees's notes. A thread of storyline is jotted down and not developed. This is how Rees manages to skate or skip over a lot of material that would get heavy if he wrote it properly. Stephen is tortured in prison, but you can read it without much hardship, because it's done as a series of bald statements.

It's also a short-ish book, something like 70,000 words, max. You can read it in one sitting. The characters are drawn in shorthand, but they "ring true," and it's set in a time period and place that are so unusual. Everything I know about the Spanish Civil War comes from reading this book.

For this (the research and unusual nature of the "where and when"), and for the absolute challenge it presents to the reader, I recommend it. Things don't come out right in the end. The book does not recommend falling in love and settling down. Nobody comes along and rescues Stephen, and he apparently spends the rest of his love life in public loos and so on. It's sad in many ways, and yet even while it's being sad the book has a reality that's almost alien. Hard to explain ... you'll have to read it for yourself.

Recommended for the above reasons: it's good to stretch yourself occasionally, not just read the easy stuff. AG's rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars ... because it's a difficult book as well as being unforgettable. You can get it at Amazon. Not sure of the edition. The only I have (I scanned to cover) is from Third House, put out in 1988.

Bits and pieces

2008-12-16T11:14:00.001+10:30

Today I'm flying flat out and seriously doubt I'll have the time to review a book, so it's going to be news and trivia.

The big news is that THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE is launching today -- as an ebook. If you're waiting for the paperback you have to wait a while longer, and then you'll be able to order it from Amazon direct. This will be better for everyone because of the postage rates and printing quality. (Seems like Lulu has done something with its postage rates and things are expensive there -- I don't know the whole story, but I do know Amazon looks like a better deal now.)

The HARBENDANDE ebook is available from Mel Keegan's blog. Go right here:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/lords-of-harbendane-ebook-online-and.html

I'll be reviewing this book very soon ... I was one of ITS proofreaders, so I have a vested interest in it! Also, if you find typos (and you shouldn't!! It was proofread a total of 12 times by three readers plus the computer) you know who to blame!

I love the book ... don't miss it!

Terrific news on the blogging front here: this blog is starting to win Google searches, so people are finding it in places like France, New Zealand, Turkey, the USA, Scotland, Ireland. This is great. Looks like we're on our way.

I actually had two people asking if I would consider reviewing a certain book. The answer is -- sure; but I have to have READ it first! Unfortunately, I haven't read either of the two books that were suggested, but one of these days someone will ask for something I HAVE read, and then -- sure.

Right now, the list of books I have in my stack to review in the days and weeks to come include, The Buccaneer, Hold Tight, The Hustler, Street Lavender, Fortunes of War, Arson!, Edward, Edward, Lords of Harbendane, Gaveston, The Persian Boy, Windrage, China Mountain Zhang, The Charioteer, and ... a whole lot more. The stack's about two foot deep. Also, I want to look at some new(ish) books too.

In these times of economic distress, who isn't looking to get more for less? It doesn't get much better than free ebooks from good writers. Check this out: http://sharrow.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/free-christmas-goodness/

...and for those folks who -- like me -- haven't gotten into ebooks yet because we haven't bought a screen reader ... well, I followed links off the above page and got here:

http://www.ebookwise.com/ebookwise/ebookwise1150.htm

This gizmo -- the eBookwise -- doesn't have the brains to open a PDF, but here's the info from the manufacturer's page:

The eBookwise-1150 can display premium content from eBookwise.com, including best-sellers from major publishers, with more signing on all the time. See our home page for major best-selling authors and titles, or browse our extensive catalog for details. In addition, the eBookwise-1150 can display your own personal content in the following file formats: plain text (.txt), rich text format (.rtf), Microsoft Word documents (.doc), HTML (.htm or .html), and Rocket eBook Editions (.rb). There are several ways to transfer personal content onto the device; for more information click here.

And a lot of the ebook stores are selling html versions lately. This will be why. (In fact, if you've been keeping up with Mel Keegan lately (http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/) you probably know MK is getting into the digital novel idea next year. The idea seems to be -- and I'm quoting here, so don't blame me! -- you give the fiction away and make your money on the advertising. MK has crunched a lot of numbers, and it looks like being an ultra-viable alternative.

The thing that worried me was, how the %@*! do you read a huge novel on the PC screen? And I can't afford one of the fancy schmancy ebook readers. The price is my groceries for three months!!! But I could probably take a look at the eBookwise without going belly-up financially.

Now I have to run off and take care of STUFF that must be done today, which is the whole reason I'm sure a book review will have to wait till tomorrow!

PS: did you get the DreamCraft newsletter? I know Dave was sending it out this morning (Aussie time). You can actually subscribe off MK's blog page ... I'm thrilled because I have a really nice "plug" in this newsletter!

Murder and mayhem with a gay spin: Adrien English

2008-12-15T12:44:00.004+10:30

I read this one for the first time way back when ... in the days when it was a GMP title with a purple cover with scarlet lettering -- clashing colors that didn't do anything to make you want to buy the book! (GMP had a long track record of tacky covers. They almost made a tradition of it. I'm glad I did order the book, because if I hadn't, I'd have missed a damned good one.)

Fatal Shadows is #1 in the Adrien English series of mysteries ... meaning, it's the first in the series, not the best. This one is a very good book, but others are better -- the series gathers momentum as it goes.

I think it's Josh Lanyon's style of writing that hooked me into the series and kept me there; and his characterization. He's brave enough to take risks with his characters ... for example, our hero, Adrien, is "bookish," with a gay bookstore; he's a cute (also mature, intelligent, and funny) young gay guy, but there's more to him than all this.

JL also takes risks with other characters, such as Jake, who's gorgeous, and a detective, and isn't shy about making his homophobia known. (The only other time I recall where one of the main characters in a drama is both a homophobe and a nice guy (you'd think it was mutually exclusive) is in the Midsomer Murders series in tv, where DS Gavin Troy is both a nice guy and ... has a big problem with gays.)

I should think it's very, very hard to write this kind of characterisation well enough to pull it off, esp in a novel where you don't have the natural charm of a young actor working for you. JL does it very well indeed. The character of Jake is one you definitely remember -- which is true of many of JL's characters. Jake develops along the way ... I don't want to give the plot away, so if you hate spoilers don't read the rest of his sentence! ... and becomes intimate with Adrien. Turns out, Jake is gay and his closet door is painted shut!

The plot of Fatal Shadows is a pretty straightforward murder mystery. What makes it delightful is the gayness, the great characters and witty style of JL, and ... Adrien himself. He's a really fascinating character, what with the cardiac complaint, the bookstore, the authors' group he runs, and all. Then the murders start, and an unusual character rises to several challenges -- of which Jake is a major one.

If you get to the end of Fatal Shadows and think it seems like the start of something,you're right. It's part one of a series that has run to four books to date. The whole series (so far) is: Fatal Shadows; A Dangerous Thing; The Hell you say; Death of a Pirate King.

You can now get the first two books under one cover, which is good because the series gets better as it goes ... and it's cheaper to buy two books under one cover!

The first two books were done by GMP. The third one was done by JL himself after GMP melted down and rights reverted. In the last few years, it's been an impossible battle for gay writers to find conventional publishers (have you heard Mel Keegan on the subject?!) so JL went his own way. Bravo.

Does Fatal Shadows have a downside? Only the length. It's just 150pp, which is a very quick read. When you're used to meatier, heavier mysteries, this one comes off as a bit lightweight -- but for me this is more than made up for by the characterisations (which I loved) and the street-wise wit of the style (hits the spot).

Also, the fact the book is short is made up for by the series ... there's four now, and since they're starting to come out in anthologies, you don't get hit so hard with purchase and shipping. Every little bit helps these days.

My favorite of the series so far is The Hell You Say, but I'm not going to get into that one right now, because this is more a review of Fatal till get I around to it: http://www.who-dunnit.com/reviews/326/

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 4 out of 5 stars for this book ... 5 out of 5 for the series as a whole, because it starts well and gets better as it goes!

Gays in Hollywood: Glamourpus

2008-12-14T10:29:00.000+10:30

And now for something completely different. I only know of two titles by Christian McLaughlin (the other one being Sex Toys of the Gods), and I wish he'd written -- or would get on and write! -- more, because Glamourpus was one of the funniest books I ever read.

It was done originally by Dutton but the edition I have (I scanned the cover) is the Plume/Penguin one put out as a reprint in 1995.

This was CM's debut novel and I think we all expected him to go on and write a slough of books, hopefully with gay twists and great gay characters. Well, 13 years after I bought the reprint of Glamourpus, we're still waiting!

I guess CM's life took him in different directions -- and that's fair enough too. (Life usually takes us in directions we never guessed and for writers this is going to get worse in the near future. Have you been keeping up with the publishing industry news?!!)

Glamourpus is about Hollywood having a laugh at itself. It features daytime soapie TV ... you know, things like The Bold and the Beautiful and The Young and the Restless. (At least Keith Hamilton Cobb is in The Young...! Him you could watch all day ...). In the novel the show is entitled Hearts Crossing, but if you see one of these things, you've seen 'em all.

One of the stars of the show is a new actor called Alex Young who plays a cute sociopath named Simon Arable, the son of a mad scientis. And Alex has a major secret.

He's not a sociopath. He's gay. When the books starts, his fans don't know. Yet. He has a boyfriend who's just way too hard to get -- Nick. And he's trying to keep his love life under wraps.

Then a nation-wide gossip rag gets its hooks into Alex and runs a story that blows his secret, and ... suddenly Alex is not that popular in Hollyweird. His fans are dead nuts, and his part in the show doesn't look too secure, and to top it off he's got a stalker. The story takes place in 1990-1991, when there was still a lot more homophobia than you have today. I today's movie and TV industry you have hunky young actors like Neil Patrick Harris, and John Barrowman, who're out and proud of it, and beloved for it. Not the case in 1990 ...

The plotline of Glamourpus could also have been done dead-serious as a thriller. It would have worked if CM had played up the fear and dread aspect ... though he'd have had to write a different ending! But CM picked the right way to go and did it as a sexy gay comedy -- right down to the last line in the book, which makes anybody who knows anything about romance novels break a rib.

Let me explain. Mills & Boone (Harlequin) actually run night school courses in how to write the glop they publish. The DIY romance of the month course is called, And Then He Kissed Her.

The last line in Glamourpus is, "And then he kissed me." I laughed and laughed.

In fact, I laughed right through the whole book. I'd recommend this for anybody who's looking for a funny, sexy gay read; anybody who knows for a fact Hollywood is gay-controlled and wonders why there aren't more gay TV shows; anybody who likes contemporary books; and anyone who enjoys those movies where Hollywood makes films about itself (Hooper is still the best one I know).

The characters are numerous and well drawn. The book is written in the first person ... which is a neat trick, if a writer can pull it off. CM does, and the first person style gives him the opportunity to keep up a banter between writer and reader that far outstrips anything that can be done plausibly in third person.

If the book has a downside, it's only that the narrative is VERY American. If you're a fan of all things USA, you're going to lap this up. If you're not that far into American culture, you might find the narrative a bit abrasive. I don't call this a downside ... because it's a story about Hollywood, and how are you going to tell it without Americana? (Some critics and readers are not so understanding. Example: the stupidest criticism I ever read of the Lord of the Rings movies was that all the characters have English-type accents. How ludicrous would an American or French or German accent have sounded in Middle Earth?!) Personally, I don't have a bone to pick with Americana. I like reading about other people's cultures.

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Here is CM's website: http://www.christian-mclaughlin.com/ -- you can get copies of his two books via the site. Unfortunately they don't seem to be available at Amazon right now, so I can't make it "one click easy" for you!

Gay historical fiction at full throttle: Mel Keegan's DANGEROUS MOONLIGHT

2008-12-13T11:04:00.002+10:30

You think "Mel Keegan," and you probably think "science fiction." MK has published more SF than any other genre. But what you don't know if you're not "behind the scenes" is that MK has written more fantasy than any other genre (it just hasn't been put between covers and stuck to a webpage yet), and there are also loads of historical novels that have yet to see print ... and a gorgeous collection of historicals that are in print already.

Till recently my favorite was Fortunes of War. First off, I like pirates, and second, the book has absolutely everything. I will be reviewing it soon, but to fill in the blank till I get round to it, there's a great review of FOW on Squashduck so I'll put the link in here: http://www.squashduck.com/ltd/reviews/fortunesofwar.htm

But in the last year or so, my favorite MK historical (or anybody's historical!) has been Dangerous Moonlight, and I can't fathom what MK would have to write to change this around. The book is that good. About once a year you read a book that blows your mind. Usually it's SF that blows my braincells across the bus, but I also like historicals, and this one ...!

First, it's a BIG book. It's about 450pp and the type is not padded at all with whitespace. It's the length of two or two-and-a-half ordinary books, so it's not just "bang for your reading buck," it's a BIG bang, esp if you get the ebook which is about ten bucks for how much reading?

The story follows the adventures of Harry Trevellion (highwayman and smuggler) and Nick Grey (bastard son of a rich businessman). One night, Harry holds up Nick's coach -- sparks fly, it's high-blood-pressure time! But Harry robs him, so Nick is more furious than romantically inspired even though he fancies Harry ... a lot. The plot thickens with Nick's legitimate brother, Paul, who's a demon in human skin, and their frail aged father. Knowing what the legit son is like, the old father changes his will to favor the bastard ... and All Hell Busts Loose.

It's highway robbery, storms at sea, pistols and swords, noble houses, London brothels, casinos, fortunes changing hands in card games, wrongful arrest, murder, prison ... and if you've been looking for a book that gives some great steamy scenes, this is the one you want!

The book is Keegan at full throttle, and it's been getting great reviews everywhere. Check out The Rainbow Reviews one: http://rainbow-reviews.com/?p=552, and there's also a great one on Speak Its Name: http://speakitsname.wordpress.com/2007/08/22/review-dangerous-moonlight-by-mel-keegan/.

I was privileged to read Dangerous... about three months before anyone else, because I'm a proofie at DreamCraft. I read it three times "for work" and -- here's the ultimate compliment for a book! -- it was thrilling every time. A lot of times, you start to get bored by the time you finish the last proof "pass" ... not with this one.

Does the book have a downside? I haven't found one yet. The dialog is NOT written in that kind of hokey fake-Shakespeare style a lot of writers adopt, forsooth. The sex scenes are hot enough to steam up your glasses, but delicate enough to not get anyone upset (unless they should have been reading a bible and picked this volume by by mistake). The characters are so well-drawn, you seem to have a movie playing in your head.

And the research into the time of the novel (set in 1727) is amazing. I'm positive MK has a tardis parked somewhere, and jaunts back to a certain time, and then returns to the present and writes the book.

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars!

Note that the Amazon version is wearing a smart new cover:

You can now buy this title in paperback, hardcover, and ebook version. The hardcover is only available from Lulu ... Aussie and New Zealand readers: if you order from Lulu, your book will be manufactured in Australia and you'll have it in about a week. Northern Hemisphere readers -- it's your call: Lulu or Amazon, as suits your whim, for the paperback.

Or,

Order the Paperback:

Order the Hardcover:

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(Versions for the iPhone and Omnia are in the works. I'll update this page when they're available.)

Gay fantasy: Swordspoint

2008-12-12T10:39:00.000+10:30

Here's another very good read that came out in the mainstream press in the late 1980s. It was published by Arbor House in 1987. Ellen Kushner was out on a limb ... her bio says she was very well connected in the industry she could probably afford the risk. Also, Ann Rice had "broken trail" with the vampire stories and Cry to Heaven, but EK was going in different directions. Gay fantasy fiction.

There's a real shortage. Have you ever tried to track down something like Lord of the Rings, but where the book's love interest is between the two heroes? It's hard to find a book like this. Like a gay version of Conan the Barbarian, or Ladyhawke, or similar. You'll have a long search!

(I can only think of a few gay fantasy novels. It's as if professional gay writers have no affinity with fantasy worlds. (Though, if you get on the internet and look around, you'll find loads of amateur fiction written by fans of the LOTR movies, where the characters are "paired." It's often poorly written, and sometimes looks like it hasn't been edited ... but at least it's something!)

So, Swordspoint was unique in two ways when it came out. It has overt gay relationships -- gasp! In a book released my a mainstream publisher! -- and its story is set in a fantasy realm.

(Other gay fantasy novels I'm thinking of are The Swordsman, by Mel Keegan; The Last Herald Mage series by Mercedes Lackey; the Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling ... and so on. You can get a lot of these at Amazon ... but you soon get into SF, weird, erotica, vampires, anything but "real" fantasy.)

So it was a nice surprise when Swordspoint came out. It's a "literary" kind of fantasy, so if you were hoping for a "down and dirty, raunchy, sword-swinging, dragon-slaying gay romp", this isn't the book you want. Swordspoint is like Sixteenth Century Europe (court of the Medici kind of thing), with Oscar Wilde style dialog, and a sophisticated fantasy backdrop, and characters whose sexual preference leans toward the m/m.

It's not explicit, but it is delightful. The plot is all about intrigue, courtly characters, menace and danger. The central character is the gorgeous Richard St. Vier, who's a duellist, and there's enough action, drama and derring do to satisfy someone whose guilty pleasure is, uh, Errol Flynn. (In fact, Gene Wolf said in his review of the book that this is "the book we might have had if Noel Coward had written a vehicle for Errol Flynn." Cool.)

If the book has a downside, it's that it's sometimes inclined to get a bit too clever with the repartee and witty, Coward/Wilde style dialog ... and in today's world that tends to make the book sound "stilted" -- people just don't talk like that. (You wonder if they ever did.) This can make the book hard to get through in patches, and can also make it hard to identify with the characters, who sometimes seem a bit "artificial."

If you can get past this (the problem being, if you skip over whole pages you'll miss the details that drive the plot), the book has some great characters -- like Richard's boyfriend, Alec, and Lord Horn, who loves to party. The story will hold you, from the real, honest, "once upon a time" beginning to the "feet on the fender" comfortable ending.

The book is literary; and if you were hoping for some steamy scenes -- sorry to disappoint. However, Swordspoint is delightful as well as subtle, and if you like Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward, the dialog does sparkle.

Recommended. AG's taing: 4 out of 5 stars.

A gay novel with history, music, blood and revenge: Ann Rice's CRY TO HEAVEN

2008-12-11T14:53:00.001+10:30

When anybody quotes you Ann Rice's sorta-kinds gay fiction, they always talk about the vampire books -- and that's fair enough because those are great books too, and I'll talk about them in due course! But the one everyone overlooks, or forgets, or never even knows, is this one. Cry to Heaven.

Okay: some folks are asking already ... "Yes, but it is a gay book?" Well, yes it is, and no it isn't. But then again, the same could be said for the vampire novels. Are they gay books or vampire books? There's loads of hetero romance in there as well. So, where do you shelve Cry...? With your gay books, or with your historicals?

The story is set in Venice and other parts of Europe, way back in the 1700s, when music was maturing, and at the exact same time the authorities still embraced the, uh, well, the mutilation of children. In other words, castrating pre-teen boys for the cathedral choirs. Until Ann Rice did the research, most or even all people assumed that when the male gets castrated he's never going to feel anything sensual ever again. Not only does this turn out to be wrong, it turns out to be extremely wrong! The castrati, or eunuchs, were philandering and promiscuous -- and it gets "better." Because they'd been deprived of their gonads, the Vatican no longer recognized them as men.

Yeah. This mean homosexual relationships were "on," and Very Senior Priests could get romantically entangled with castrati without committing much of a sin. Okay. The stage is set.

Entering at Stage Right is Tonio Treschi: 15 y.o., too beautiful for his own good and annoying all the wrong people. They could have assassinated him, but they didn't. You guessed: they have him abducted and castrated. He'd had a glorious singing voice before being kidnapped, and at 15 his voice hadn't broken yet (which is probably stretching a point ... but Ann Rice didn't have a choice about stretching it. Tonio was having romantic liaisons -- which was the whole reason someone somewhere was furious enough with him to have him abducted and castrated in revenge. And if AR had made Tonio any younger than 15, modern day audiences would have had a big, big problem with the book ... we have terrible problems these days figuring out where the p*orno stuff starts when young people are concerned. There's a lot of books that are walking on a tightrope, and you could say Cry... is one of them because of Tonio being only 15 y.o. To read more on this difficult topic, I'll link you through to the new intro to MK's White Rose of Night. MK had the exact same problem with the character of Paul, in a (fantastic) 12th century novel about knights and squires and Saracens. Here's the link, go get it: http://www.dream-craft.com/tenthdimension/intro4wr.htm).

Anyway -- get past this. Understand that it's a historical. Times were different. People grew up faster. Girls were married at 11 etc. etc., and in about 1750 nobody gaver a fying f*** if a 15 y.o. was getting randy. They probably all did.

And here's the big debate: is Cry to Heaven a gay book -- or not? Because it centers on a boy who's been emasculated. In 1750, the Vatican sure didn't see the emasculated male as a man. Do we today? I think of Cry... as a gay book because there are loads of relationships and incidents between castrati and "full" males, as well as a hetero romance, which Rice seemed to throw in there to make the story resolve properly (ie., happily). Also, the hetero romance (Tonio and a young woman who's an artist) might have been added to make the book more swallowable -- or even plausible! -- to the mainstream publishing industry in 1982. It was published by Alfred A Knopf Inc., which made it as much a milestone as The Boy Who Picked The Bullets Up.

I definitely call it a gay book, because there's a whole lot more gay encounters than there are in other books that are categorically gay ... and Rice's writing is a lot more frank about them (meaning, explicit) than the writing you find in other gay books.

And as per gay books, it's got to be in the Top 50 because it has so much: fantastic research, great writing, 532pp of all this -- a complicated plot that keeps you reading, characters that come to life. (A large slice of gay literature is actually not very well written. Other books are anorexic in terms of plot. Or else they're so well written and plotted, they forget to be gay -- you go for 50pp without stumbling over an element you could call "gay enough" to call the overall book a "gay book." I'm sure you know what I mean here.)

Cry to Heaven is about personal survival and, eventually, revenge. It's also about music, singing, European history, and human nature. I must have read it four or five times since I was loaned a copy back in the '80s, and it's always the "darkness" of the theme that pulls me in, and the richness of Rice's writing than keeps me there. This book is better written than the vampire novels, esp. the later vampire novels where ... is it me, or does the writing get rather slipshod? And much more readable than The Feast of All Souls, which came out in 1979.

Copies are absolutely, positively available from alibris and Amazon.

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Here's Ann Rice at Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Rice

Gay edutainment, way out in front

2008-12-10T10:35:00.001+10:30

I thought everybody knew this book ... until I was talking on some website somewhere, and mentioned it ... and it turned out I was talking to a Twinkie of about 20 years old, who said "What's The Front Runner?" He or she had never even heard of it. They could quote me Captain's Surrender (Alex Beecroft), My Fair Captain (J.L. Langley), Eclipse of the Heart (Emily Veinglory - seriously, that's the pen-name), Bareback Mountain (Frank Sol), and basically anything that's doing the rounds digitally (this whole list and maybe 250 more and available at Diesel Ebooks), but if it was printed on paper ... "What's a paperback?"

Grrrr. So, even though I might be preaching to the choir in a lot of cases, I'm still going to talk about The Front Runner, because the book was published in 1974, which is 34 years ago ... maybe 16 YEARS before some of today's readers were even born!

It's possible some very young readers might have a problem with this book. The reason I say this is because PNW's fiction is about the anti-gay prejudice of the 1970s, and things have lightened up so much lately that kids who're just coming out now might find it hard to believe crap like this happened. Or else, they know it happened but they can't relate to it.

Well ... that's not good. The Holocaust happened over 60 years ago now, which is a long time before most readers looking at this page would have been born. And we'd all better find a way to relate to the Holocaust, quick, because somebody very wise once said, "Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it." I'd love to know who said that. They were so right.

So ... if you had an 18 y.o. who was just coming out and saying, "What am I supposed to read?" I'd be recommending The Front Runner. PNW's book sits right on the fence where two zones are divided. One one side you have entertainment. On the other side you have education. Front... is like a cross between the two.

(I actually went into this in a comment on someone's webpage a couple of months ago, and Mel Keegan took up the thread, and Dusk Peterson got into commenting, and quite a discussion was going on this subject -- http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/gay-fiction-edutainment-or.html. It all started with something I'd said on a page at Speak Its Name: http://speakitsname.wordpress.com/about/ ... so there's food for thought for you. If there was ever anything in reality where gay fiction could be called "education" I think I'd nominate The Front Runner... but it's also a really great novel.)

The story is another "gay sporting tale" so it has something in common with Out of Bounds, which I blogged about a few days ago. It also features a relationship between a very young guy (in this book it's Billy Sieve, who's an endurance athlete, a long-distance runner) and his coach/trainer, Harlan Brown, who's about 40, and thinks he's too old for Billy ... fortunately Billy has other ideas.

The book has a LOT about running, but PNW manages to make it really interesting. You'd have to be seriously allergic to sports to not find something interesting here. The relationship between Billy and Harlan is very well drawn ... but there's also a lot of very very angsty material. Reading it back in the 1980s, I really did feel keenly for the characters. Reading it in 2008 -- you are very aware that it's a historical. But at the same time, the recent Proposition 8 situation in California makes you realize gay rights are still delicate. Which makes The Front Runner poignant all over again.

The book has an extremely sad ending. Billy does get to run in the Olympics, but as the first openly gay gold medal winner, someone in the grandstand has a big problem with him ... and a high-powered rifle.

Again, you have to remember: The Front Runner has turned into a historical. In the days of the "War against Terror" where you get to walk through metal detectors and get frisked on your way into a footy game or cricket match, and you're under the eye of CCTV everywhere you go, younger readers would probably find it utterly unbelievable that anyone could get into the Olympic stadium with a rifle.

But in the 1970s the security wasn't there. It could happen. No gay athletes got shot, but it definitely could have happened. Very nasty events took place at Munich in 1972, where people weren't killed for being gay ... they were killed for being Jewish. In fact, they made a movie about it a couple of years ago. (Drat. I'm old enough to remember watching Munich '72 on the news as-it-happened.)

So... The Front Runner. Great book. Historical. Highly recommended. Is it edutainment? Read it and make up your own mind. I love the book, because it's not "just" a gay love story where everything turns out right in the end ... everything doesn't! The book is a gay love story where everything goes wrong. It's a story about freedom, gay rights, human rights. Oh, and long distance running. You can definitely, positively get copies from alibris or Amazon.

Highly recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Gays at war -- Vietnam, that is

2008-12-09T16:00:00.000+10:30

Whenever I reread this novel (or parts of it; you can read a few pages here and there, jump ahead, turn around, or leave it) I still can't believe it was published 27 YEARS ago by a mainstream publisher. It was done in 1981 by Avon, and re-re-re-reprinted. I think I have a 10th edition paperback. You see the cover scan right here.

THE BOY... is diarist's dream. It's told journal-style, in the form of letters to a variety of people. The whole thing revolves around Kurt Strom, a young gay guy from Detroit and parts south-east, who enlisted in the US Army to go to Vietnam as a medic. It would have been a hell of a book, even if Kurt wasn't gay.

But he is, and the book is amazing. It's not just gay, it's very gay. It's explicit, never pulls punches, says it all ... in 1981, in the mainstream press! I don't know how writer Charles Nelson and/or the publishers got away with it. But I'm glad they did.

There's an ultimate novel for every war. Or maybe for the whole "genre" of war. You can name books like THE CRUEL SEA, and RED BADGE OF COURAGE and so on. The "ultimate" novels are not stories about derring do and glory. They're usually about the evils of war. Or at least they tell the story of the people, not the action, and what it costs human beings to do the things that look heroic and glorious in the newspapers.

If we were talking about movies, I'd name GALLIPOLI right here. (It's actually been called a gay movie, but the jury is still out on that score. Watch it yourself, make up your own mind!)

But we're talking books. And there's just not that many books about gays in war. (I'm going to be reviewing and recommending a couple in weeks to come...)

THE BOY... is also close to unique because it's set in the Vietnam War. Everything else I know is set in WWI and II. And here's where it crosses over a line from "good" to "great." Because it not only tells the story of a gay guy in the Army, in the field, under fire ... it also tells the story of real people in the Vietnam war.

It's a fantastic book if you're in the mood for something different. It's also funny and moving at times. You'll learn so much about war in general, and the Vietnam war in particular. And the gay content has such a "real" feeling about it that this could actually be a problem for some readers.

Loads of readers of gay books are women, and their preference is often (but not always) for a sort of soft-edge fiction that's written by a lot of gay writers (male and female). THE BOY... doesn't have this soft-edge romantic approach. It's a slice of life. In fact, it's a slice of life that's still bleeding. Charles Nelson tells a guy's story, from a guy's POV, in a guy's language. The realism is 120%. So, if your favorite gay read is something more like Mike Seabrook or Chris Hunt, you might find THE BOY... too raw.

But even if you find it too raw, read it anyway, because I think of it as an absolute milestone. You may not end up loving it, but you're not likely to ever forget it. And that's another mark of a really great novel. Highly Recommended. AG's rating: 5 out of 5.

What's in a name?

2008-12-09T10:21:00.000+10:30

I think it's interesting that the new vampire movie, TWILIGHT, has the exact same title as the vampire novel, TWILIGHT, that was published three years ago by DreamCraft!

TWILIGHT is going to be a good movie (there's nothing gay in it, that I can see ... it's PG-13, so it'd be difficult to have a gay element in something aimed at a very young audience), but if you want the "gay vampires" spin on this whole genre, it's the book you want -- which has nothing to do with the movie.

Here is where you want to be: http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/twilight_dc.htm

...but also remember that Keegan's TWILIGHT is the sequel to the first book, NOCTURNE, so I guess I should be pointing you at the first one! Here's a link:
http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/nocturne_dc.htm

(Speaking of gay vampires, has anybody seen THE LAIR? I haven't. But I just saw copies for sale at JB Hi-Fi. I'll see if I can rent it.)

Gotta admit, I'm a little bit partial to vampires. Specially gay ones.

Same story everywhere!

2008-12-08T14:50:00.000+10:30

Not a book review or recommendation today, folks, but a gotta-quote line from an interview in The Columbus Dispatch.

Here's the whole interview -- http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/life/stories/2008/12/07/2_KEENAN.ART_ART_12-07-08_E2_BJC44IH.html?sid=101 --

But the quote I wanted to pull today is just this:

Q: How do you react when you read a newspaper story that begins with the words, "The state of gay and lesbian publishing . . ."?
A: [...] I can say that I was slightly disgruntled when the publisher of my first two books mainly confined their advertising to gay publications, as if no straight people could possibly enjoy them.

Now, how many times have I heard the same thing from MK?! Small world, Mel.

And I'm thinking right now ... how many straights read gay stories? Because if you're gay and you're looking for something major to read, it's gonna be straight books 75% of the time, cuz there ain't enough gay stuff to go around ... well, not really good gay stuff. There's loads of gay fic, but if you want "great fiction" instead of erotica, your options are a bit more limited.

This is the whole reason for this blog.

A gay novel with a cricketing twist: OUT OF BOUNDS by Mike Seabrook

2008-12-07T10:28:00.001+10:30

Summer's coming on in this country (Australia) and with the cricket on the tv and a whole cricket season in front of us, I had a hankering to read a gay cricket novel.

You think no such thing exists? Luckily, you'd be wrong if you think that! OUT OF BOUNDS by Mike Seabrook is a nice afternoon read for summer, north or south of the equator.

There's just enough cricket to make it a 'cricket novel' without the book getting so 'crickety' that a footy fan couldn't read it (or an American??). The story is also angsy ... quite rich with the paranoia about getting "found out" being gay. It was written back in the 1990s, and the edition I have is the one you see right here -- the GMP issue, with a much nicer cover (for me) than the other edition (see below).

Some readers are going to have a problem with this book because it features a school teacher of 29, and a kid just turning 18 who's fallen in love with him. Personally, I don't see a problem. At 17 or 18, people are driving cars, getting snockered, getting married, making babies, going to war and using machine guns, committing felonies, getting tried as adults, and being banged up in prisons. So what's so outrageous about a guy turning 18 having a proper love life?

And, assuming you don't believe that people should be forced into celibacy till age 21 ... and/or that it's morally bankrupt for a late-teen to fall for a guy of 29, there's nothing else in OUT OF BOUNDS to grate on your nerves. (If you have a problem with a teen falling for a guy of 30ish ... what about the 14 year olds who drooled over Han Solo? Harrison Ford was 34 when the first movie was filmed in 1976. The wicket gets a bit sticky around here!!)

OUT OF BOUNDS is about the relationship between a kid from a home controlled by religious nutters, and a teacher at his school. Cricket is their common ground at first, and when they fall in mutual lust, they find out they have a whole lot more in common! Then there's trouble with the school, and a blackmailer -- and the kid's parents turn out to be Christian above and beyond the call of intelligence ... complete morons.

The book is very romantic and not at all sexy, so if you're looking for something that's heavy on plot and sort of skirts around the tricky issue of gay sex on paper, this is a good book to start with. (Personally, I could've stood a lot more graphic treatment of the love scenes, but on the other hand the book is very romantic, and author Mike Seabrook definitely wrote what he intended to write. His love scenes are the kind you find in some romance novels where the characters slide into each other's arms, their lips meet, then there's three dots, two blank lines, and the next scene starts. Writer's prerogative, I reckon. For me, he could have jazzed it up more, but, there you go. That's just me.)

If I had any kind of a problem with OUT OF BOUNDS, it's the resolution ... and again, this is totally subjective on my part. The characters basically run away from the problem of getting caught being gay. They go to Paris -- which is fair enough. The French make a heck of a lot more sense on subjects like the Age of Consent, and being gay in general. But then you have this highly intelligent young man who's going to go to Paris to be a 'boy toy.' I don't say it doesn't happen! It does. But ... I have a slight problem with an intelligent young person letting their education go, not building a career, their own life, etc. etc.

(Why? Well, because it comes back to bite you on the ass when you're 35 or 40 ... about the time middle age sets in, your looks are past their use-by date, and maybe you're divorced or widowed, and suddenly you have to go get a job, and you can't, because you're unqualified for anything. Life is like that. It bites, if you don't stop it.)

But you can also accept OUT OF BOUNDS as a kind of fantasy in which the two handsome princes escape to the magical kingdom and live happily ever after. And if you like cricket (I do), there's a lot in this novel for you.

AG's rating: 3.5 stars out of five. Recommended.
Mike Seabrook's page at Library Thing: http://www.librarything.com/author/seabrookmike

Copies of at least one edition are available at alibris:
http://www.alibris.com/booksearch.detail?invid=9392949466&browse=1&qwork=4926633&qsort=&page=1

Mel Keegan's NARC series: the Backstory

2008-12-02T13:55:00.000+10:30

Mama Google is probably going to hate me for doing this. I think they call it "duplicate material" or something ... in the Real World, we call it "cross posting," so right now I'm going to grit my teeth and just go ahead and post this ... because I wrote it, I have permission to use it, and there's no way I can rewrite this whole column! (I just found out I have a few RL problems to take care of ... bang on cue, soon as I started this blog. It'll be maybe a week before I can post again -- sheesh -- and I have to make even this one quick.) So I'm about to cross-post (with permission!!) my feature article from the NARC website. Here is the original URL: http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/narc_jarratandstonefile.htm, and if you suspect I've done something disgusting and "scraped" it, contact Mel or DreamCraft direct and they'll tell you I'm innocent!! Here's their contact page: http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/contact.htm

Backstory biographical information compiled from the all five books, by ARICIA GAVRIEL. Note: some comments below are cross-referenced with HELLGATE, which takes place in the same universe, two centuries after the NARC stories. Excerpted from Aricia's webpage and used under association.

NOTE: this fact-file has been updated to include information revealed in SCORPIO and STOPOVER. Be aware of plotspoilers!

Kevin Jarrat and Jerry Stone are around thirty years old and are of un-genetically engineered human stock, though only Stoney was born on Earth.

Jarrat began life on a 'halfway world' called Sheckley, and does not even know who his family is. He was only three or four years old when a man who was probably his father left him behind on Sheckley ... luckily for the child,because the man who seemingly abandoned him, one Keith Jarrat, was killed along with all other colonist son the Lombard Explorer, which was outbound to start a new colony.

If the child had been aboardwhen the ship left Sheckley station, Kevin Jarrat would have been dead at age four. In fact, he was raised in a hospice for foundlings and orphans, and as soon as he was old enough joined the Army as a means of escape from a 'nothing' world.

Sheckley was built as a refueling station for the huge colony sleeper ships that were heading out to build new worlds in the days before the powerful, fastdrive engines that are more common in Jarrat's and Stone's era.People who know Sheckley call it a 'gas can with lights.' It is not a planet, but a hollowed-out planetoid, and it looks a lot like a cross between an oil rig and a launch gantry! It is very far from a place one would want to grow up ... and it was already full of Angel when Jarrat was getting into his teens. We visit Sheckley in STOPOVER.

Jarrat says atone point, he was probably lucky to not become a user. Many of his friends were not so lucky, and one friend (a teenage lover) died of Angel. Losing this friend was Jarrat's inspiration to enter NARC and play his part in the drug war.

But first, to escape from Sheckley, Jarrat enlisted in the Army at age 17. The arrival of a Service recruitment ship was timely, and Jarrat never looked back. He made good in the Service, though his Army career was a little patchwork. At least one promotion came as the result of a personal relationship with a senior officer (!) &#151 but Jarrat 'paid' for that promotion time and again in the field,when only his own wits, courage and his ability to 'think outside the square' won the day. (A story told by Jarrat to Stoney, in Death's Head.)

His unorthodox 'result getting' capabilities soon came to the attention of NARC, and when his Army hitch was up, Jarrat applied to NARC and switched Services.

He took with him into NARC all his Army skills, probably most notable among which is his ability as a combat pilot &#151 though all NARC officers as flight trained as a matter of course.

Kevin Jarrat is described as tallish, though not especially tall (one guesses, about five-eleven to six-one), and his hair is light brown and sun-blond. He works hard, trains hard, and also plays hard.He was able to undertake the undercover assignment into the Death's Head Angel Cartel ... he was able to survive (albeit with a lot of help!) the ordeal of being beaten almost to death, and come back fighting, though he did suffer some post-traumatic stress.

Part of the key to his survivability is the hot temper for which Kevin Jarrat is well known. But he is also physically very tough,as you would expect of any kid who grew up on Sheckley.

By contrast, Robert Jeremy Stone ... 'Jerry' to his family (which he hates), Stoney to his friends (which he prefers) is a lot more mellow and laid-back, though he gives the impression of just being a slower-burning fuse that might even lead to a bigger charge of explosives in the end! (Officially, the Service knows him as R.J. Stone. The computers know Jarrat as Kevin J., but the 'J' doesn't stand for anything. The machines simply stumble if there's no middle initial! Harry learns this from Jarrat when he's completing the treatment papers for Stoney in the unabridged version of DEATH'S HEAD.)

Stone was born in London on Earth, but he spent a lot of his youth on the east coast of Spain, where his family own a massive house in the hills above Barcelona. His passion was for flying, and when he was a kid he flew ultralite planes over the Spanish hills.

The Stone family has money. They were once obscenely rich. One of Stoney's ancestors was a building contractor who figured out how to 'winterize' existing houses in the Mediterranean region, fitting insulation, triple-glazing and solar powered heating, to counteract the effects of the 'sudden climate change' (who hasn't seen The Day After Tomorrow?! The scenario won't be as bad as that, but we know the Atlantic Ocean heat conveyor will stop, and when it does, Europe will begetting very cold.)

The Stone family fortune was built on quick-fix winterizing,and they banked about two billion dollars! Most of it was lost by the next generations, but when Stoney was in his teens the family was still very rich ...and they had young Jeremy's whole career planned out for him. He was going to be a leading scientist and then flow on into politics...

In fact, when he left college (Floyd Webber Polytechnic in Paris),Stoney enlisted in 'Tac.' (Tactical Response has replaced the police forces on Earth and across the colonies. Tac is something like a little brother of NARC; it's paramilitary, same as NARC, but definitely a few rungs higher up than any police force known on Earth today.)

The story of Stoney's enlistment in Tac is a whole tale in itself. During his college years he lost some friends to Angel and was motivated to go get revenge for them, by joining Tac ... this did NOT please his family! When he joined Tac,their plans were derailed.

But Stoney went ahead with his choice, though the cost of this was high. When the books begin, he has been estranged from his family, and also, though they have money, he doesn't benefit from this. Everything he has at the time of these stories, he has earned by himself.

The hunger for revenge has worn away with the 12 years of service in Tac and NARC, and now, like Jarrat, he's a thorough professional in a tough trade.

He went through the full Tac training and apparently did well. One of his instructors while still on Earth was Victor Healey Duggan, who would become Tac Colonel Vic Duggan, in command of Tactical in the city of Elysium, the Zeus colony. Duggan was always very impressed with the young Stone, and expected him to go far. He kept tabs on him, when Stone transferred from Tac to NARC, and it was not long before Jerry Stone was promoted to Captain.

Stoney has considerable piloting skills which go back to his teens, when he used to fly sail planes (gliders). He is described as tall and broad, built like an athlete (one imagines,six-three or four); his hair is dark, or almost black, and his eyes are an amazing shade of blue. His temper is not as quick as Jarrat's, which may only mean he reaches flashpoint slower!

He is equally as tough as Jarrat. While Jarrat was 'beaten to death' in a backstreet in the city of Chell in the first book, it was Stoney who had to survive a forced-addiction to the deadly designer drug, Angel.

In tandem, these two share command of the carrier Athena.

So, who's in command?!

It might be thought a little odd at first, that the carrier should have two captains ... but after a very little thought it starts to make tremendous sense. Only the captain has the rank to make life-and-death decisions that might affect a whole colony or a trillion-dollar spacecraft, and those decisions might have to be made on-the-fly, in the field or on the ship, at a moment's notice. The work these NARC agents perform is incredibly hazardous. On almost all 'away missions,' there are times when they almost don't come back alive; they can be out of touch with the carrier and still have to make pivotal decisions involving the future, and survival, of vast numbers of people and massive amounts of real estate.

It's often absolutely necessary to have the command rank officer in the field, buried in a deep-cover situation for weeks at a time ... but it's also vital to have a command rank officer on the ship. Solution: have a pair of command rankers (in this scenario, captains) who work as a team. (The concept is revolutionary and daring, but it's the logical answer to 'the Star Trek paradox:' in the original series they had Jim Kirk off the ship every episode, in unbelievable peril, often leaving command of the ship to junior officers ... in Next Generation, you had the captain's executive officer always telling Picard he's too valuable, too vital to the ship, to be allowed out on 'away missions,' yet in a lot of instances, a command rank officer was actually desperately needed in the field. The solution has got to be, have TWO command rankers who work in partnership. Two captains. But since the Trek universe is soundly based on contemporary military hierarchies (in fact, the Navy), Mel Keegan's elegant answer to the age-old problem isn't available to the screen-writers. NARC, however, is NOT the military, and it isn't based in 1960s hierarchical thinking. If you come forward to Stargate SG1 in 2003-2005, they have a unit comprised of a civilian scientist, plus two rankless alien mission specialists, and TWO COLONELS. Good golly, has somebody in Hollywood been reading Mel Keegan ... or do brilliant minds think alike?! I should think Gene Roddenberry would be spinning in his grave, but the solution is simple, elegant ... and works. On an OT note, if you're wide awake when you watch Firefly, you would swear Joss Whedon has read MK! And that's very cool indeed.

Jerry Stone was already aboard the carrier when Jarrat arrived to replace a captain who had been killed in the field. The Athena's other captain was terribly injured on the same assignment. Jarrat and Stone were a new partnership, just promoted and teamed up ...

And it didn't take long for the sparks to fly between them: it was instantaneous attraction, but the regulations of the Service forbade personal relationships between the ranking officers, for good reasons. As it's explained in the books, it would be perfectly possibly to have a billion-credit operation destroyed becauseone officer 'pushed the panic button' to save his comrade who was in jeopardy.It's important to note, though, that the Service doesn't have any problem whatsoever with a gay relationship. It's the context of any relationship that gives them the chill shivers!

NARC regulations aside, Jarrat and Stone were deeply attracted to each other at the get-go, and it was only a matter of time before something happened which ignited the explosive relationship between them.

The NARC universe is four centuries in our own future. On the many worlds which have been colonized by humans, every problem humans ever had seems to have gone out into space with us! We've taken our pollution, our overpopulation, our violence and partisan tendencies ... and our thirst for the extraordinary, even if it carries with it a certain danger.

Such as the suite of designer drugs available in the Twenty Fourth Century. Most of the drugs are made virtually harmless by the blocker shots, the 'come down' drugs which act like an instant-sobriety shot. In EQUINOX we see a young man who's taken something to help him get over the shock of a car blowing up on his driveway, killing his lover and almost killing him. The young man is able to come down quickly and easily using the blocker shot given to him by a Tactical officer who is his friend.

Therefore, most recreational drugs are street-legal in this century, even though some of them are well-known for rotting your brain. They're no worse than cigarettes in our century.

The one that is different is Angel ... it's highly addictive, there's no blocker for it ... in fact, it's utterly lethal.You use it once, and you're on a death sentence.

One way or another the Angel gets into a system, when the per capita usage of the drug is reported to have reached the 10% line, NARC involvement is automatic. A carrier is assigned to that colony, and a planet-sized investigation starts.

The investigation can end in all-out war, and while on the one hand NARC seems to be armed to the teeth like the Army,the Air Force, the SGC and Starfleet all rolled into one, on the other hand the Angel Syndicates are so well armed, at the end of EQUINOX, SCORPIO and APHELION it's touch-and-go whether NARC will be 'totally blown away.'

So what's NARC? It's an acronym that stands for Narcotics And Riot Control. They're paramilitary ... they run the biggest carriers in space, loaded with gunships and fighter planes, squads of really BIG dudes, the 'riot troops' who jump out of the gunships right into the middle of a streetwar where the bad guys are shooting the kind of ammo that knocks down buildings.

The carrier has a Starfleet crew that looks after running the ship ... the chief carrier pilot is Colonel Helen Archer, who lost her son to Angel ... but everything else in the operation is down to NARC.

Decisions are made on the fly, and the captains in the field are answerable to a command hierarchy that's strung out through the colonies all the way to Earth. But it takes so long to get a message out and back, most of the time, a NARC captain has to take the initiative himself, runs the risks, make the hard decisions, and put his neck on the block, to get something done fast. And if they moved any slower (ie., waited for orders from back at base!) the Angel syndicates would slip through their fingers like warm oil

This is where Jarrat and Stone come in. Hardware and software aside, NARC is about people. And Jarrat and Stone were provided with one of the best crews in the Service to back them up, including the Canadian engineer,Karl 'Bud' Budweisser, and the Chief Medical Officer, 'Kip' Reardon. (I asked Mel in a recent email, what 'Kip' is short for: It's Kipling. There was a scene in the original version of DEATH'S HEAD ... pre the butcher-job that got DH down to a length GMP could deal with ... where Reardon was backstoried, and you got to know some about his family, and where the name comes from).

The crew of the Athena also includes the glamor-boy pilot, Curt Gable and the carrier's XO, the Russian, Petrov.But my personal favorites from the 'supporting cast' are Gil Cronin and Joe Ramos, the two giant Marines-type troopers from the Raven units.

For more on the other crew members, Click here to Meet the Characters ...

However, top-notch crew or not, Jarrat and Stone were going to get into big trouble sooner or later and one way or another. They take it in turnsto do the deep-cover assignments ... off the ship, spending weeks in the field where their only contact with the ship is a secret transmitteror a public vidphone!

And it's dangerous. Extremely. So there was no surprise when the whole thing went bad one day. This is close to the start of DEATH'S HEAD. In fact, a lot of the first book is based on the opening segment when Jarrat is literally beaten to death in a backstreet in a super-city called Chell. Then he vanishes off the face of the planet, and Stoney (who's been hiding a burning passion forJarrat for a long time) hunts him down across half the world, while in the background an Angel-war is breaking out in Chell and other places.

The tracking-down of Jarrat is a great story in itself, but about the time Jarrat gets himself back onto an even keel and, like E.T.,finally calls home ... the Angel-war has exploded and it's Stoney who is in the *&@! up to his eyeballs.

In fact, Stone gets forcibly addicted to the super-drug, leaving Jarrat with a puzzle he can't solve by any legitimate means. Very soon, Jarrat is in the street, breaking every law you can imagine, and, as anyone who's read the book will tell you, the only way he can find to get Stoney's life back is to put his own life &#151 andhis own sanity &#151 on the line.

At that point, we'd already met the miracle-worker, a 'healer' called Harry Del.Harry is back in all the subsequent books. His story is hugely compelling.He works with Kip Reardon, but he's almost at war with NARC's Research & Development division ... and it all comes to flashpoint in APHELION.

In DEATH'S HEAD we saw Del do something weird and wonderful, with nothing to do with conventional medical skills and surgery, to save Jarrat's life. But when Jarrat flies Stone back to Del, to ask Harry to do the magic for him, he soon learns it's different.

There's a huge personal sacrifice to be made ... and out of this sacrifice comes the empathy that makes Jarrat and Stone as extraordinary as they are in EQUINOX and the other novels

They're empaths, not telepaths. There's a difference. Telepaths can read thoughts. Empaths can 'only' read feelings &#151 and Jarrat and Stone can read each other so clearly, one knows when the other itchesor sneezes or laughs.

On one side, you can easily surmise what thisbodes for their sex lives! On the other side, NARC's R&D people soon got hold of thereport on their empathy, and immediatelywanted to see if the empathy could be turned into weapon.

This is where the second book opens. At the start of EQUINOX, Stoneyand Jarrat are sweating their way through an exhaustive series oftests being run by NARC, to see exactly what the can do. Throughout theseries, Harry Del is fighting off R&D, while Jarrat and Stone endure a testprogram that comes to its own flashpoint in APHELION.

The empathy gets them into a lot of trouble ... it also saves theirlives ... and it makes possible jobs that would otherwise be totallyimpossible. Without the empathy, Jarrat and Stone are already crackagents, but with the empathy, they have abilities that blow the doorsoff their rivals.

PICTURE CREDITS: all artwork on this page is by Jade and used by permission. Featured images are slices of the 2008 edition NARC paperback covers

NOTE: at the time of this uploading (middle of 2008) my webpage is offline. I haven't been able to update it for a long time (too long) because Geocities wouldn't give me access (even though I'm 100% sure my password was right. Go figure.) I want to update the whole shebang before I put it up again. So right now, the only segment of my site that's online is right here. I'll post here when I get my own site back online. Sorry for the inconvenience, guys. -A.G.

Credit where it's due...

2008-12-01T09:02:00.000+10:30

Credit where it's due, first: the blog LOOKS amazing. You'd almost never guess it for a plain old Blogger blog -- and I want to thank Jade for rewriting the template.

Before anybody asks: don't ask. I have no idea whatever what was done or how you do it. The folks at DreamCraft are way out there when it comes to computers. I'm still a bit of an Internet moron.

But I want to thank Jade from DreamCraft for all the work that was done to get this blog looking like this. Also for giving permission to use artwork to doll it up. Like this...

I need to scan a lot of book covers to illustrate the editions and novels I'll be talking about. I also need to pick a place to start ... and I think it's probably going to me Aricia's Number One Favorite, the NARC books. Sorry, guys, but I just love these books, and you'll have to put up with me talking about them now and then. I'll try not to ramble too much too far.

Mission Statement

2008-12-01T09:00:00.000+10:30

This blog is going to be something I've wanted to do for a long time ...a site about gay books, gay writers, gay stories. My favorite books and writers. Not just the new books which are coming out now (the books that get reviewed everywhere because they're new), but the books that were great 10 and 20 and even 30 years ago --

Because, let's face it, you can go to Amazon or alibris or eBay or somewhere, and search on the titles of these books, and it's a dead certainty you'll be able to get a used copy. You might even be able to get an ebook. A lot of these writers are taking responsibility for their own books these days. They do their reprints at companies like Lulu, or else they do ebooks.

So I'm going to be talking about my favorite gay books from all eras, not just what's coming out now, because you can order a used book off alibris or something just as easily as you can order a new book off Amazon or B&N.

And the fact is, a lot of the really good gay reads came out years and years ago. They shouldn't be forgotten -- but they WILL be if nobody talks about them, because (it's no secret) the publishing industry is lobotomizing itself, it's melting down. The chances of these really great books being reprinted is zip. So, unless they're going to be forgotten, folks like ME have to tell folks like YOU what they are, and where to get them.

(It'd be way too much to dream for that publishers somewhere would be reading this, and might give these great writers, and great books, a reprint. It might happen with ebooks ... gives you something to hope for.)

So I'll be back in my next post ... and I'll get started!

Hello World ... as they say

2008-11-30T17:29:00.000+10:30

Aricia's online at last ... and not before time. I've been getting flak from all sides for languishing, but doing a whole webpage is huge work for which I don't have the time. The solution was to blog -- but I've never had much luck with blogs because I couldn't get the templates to work. You know the ones: they look fantabulous, but when you try to get them to install in Blogger, the cough up some weird-ass error message, or else they won't "parse" or some other such drivel. On other words, nothing works, even though the professional programmers who wrote the templates swear blue in the face that they do.

Then I thought, "Hang on, why shouldn't I ask somebody at DreamCraft for an assist?"

You see, I'm a proofreader for Mel Keegan, so I swing by DreamCraft once or twice a week, and sometimes get to use their computers (which are a whole lot more powerful than mine).

So I talked to Jade about it, and she said, "Sure, I'll take a look."

And here we are. It turns out, it's not all that difficult to rig a new design for an existing blogger template ... and all the "parsing" rubbish you get when you try to install the fancy new templates from the design studios don't seem to happen when you do it yourself.

So here I am, saying "Hello World," and the next thing I'll do is explain what this blog is supposed to be about -- and where it's going!