Gay Westerns done right: Cap Iversen's Dakota trilogy

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...!

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

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):

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Gay in the wrong location: The Alexandros Expedition

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...

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

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.

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Gay Gothic: China House

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:

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