outinprint.net

Rob Byrnes is the author of five novels including the brand new release, Holy Rollers (Bold Strokes Books), which features gay criminals, Grant Lambert and Chase LaMarca.  Rob is originally from Rochester, New York and now lives with his partner in West New York, New Jersey where he has a view of the Manhattan skyline and the occasional jet plane that lands in the Hudson River. 

Hi, Rob.  First, from your books, your blog, and your Facebook posts, I have gathered enough evidence to know for a fact that you’re hysterically funny.  What early influences helped form your sense of humor?   Who or what (TV shows? Films?) do you find hysterical? 

I tell you this at the risk of sounding a bit too precocious, but, when I was growing up, I was a huge fan of silent comedians.  Especially Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.  To the extent my characters seem to always be in a “Huh?  What?  This is happening to me?” mode, those pioneers probably get some credit.  Or blame.  Your choice.

These days, I have nothing against TV or film – I will argue any day that some of the sharpest contemporary writing is on the small screen, and I only stopped going to movies when the VCR and DVD brainwashed people into thinking the theater was their living room – but I’ve fallen away from pop culture.  Still, my tastes in comedy are eclectic and erratic: loved Mel Brooks’s “The Producers” and “Young Frankenstein;” despise many of his other films.  Love the knife-sharp repartee of “All About Eve;” watch the low-brow “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” at least once a year.  Hell, I’m even one of the last people standing who laughs out loud at “Desperate Housewives”… although maybe not when the writers want me to laugh.

And if I’m ever paralyzed and can do nothing but watch TV from a hospital bed for the rest of my life, bring me DVDs of every episode of “The Match Game” and “Green Acres” – and a case of white wine – and I think I’ll be a pretty content paralyzed-in-a-hospital-bed kind of guy. 

Congratulations on your new book!  Could you tell us what you’d like readers to know about Holy Rollers and about your characters, Grant and Chase?  

Grant and Chase are a very committed couple with all the occasional baggage that comes with that.  But in addition to a bed, they also share a vocation: they’re criminals.  Not necessarily competent criminals, but they get by.

In Holy Rollers, they learn about seven million dollars stashed in the safe of a right-wing mega-church in Virginia, and decide that money should be theirs.  Of course, complications ensue. 

What do you enjoy about taking characters who should, technically, be the bad guys (since they’re criminals) and making them the good guys?   What kinds of reader reactions have you gotten about Grant and Chase?

I’m glad you mentioned that Grant and Chase are technically bad guys, because sometimes book publicists and marketing people skip over that.  They aren’t fun-loving scamps; they’re men who’ll steal your laptop or car – ideally both – without a second thought or a pang of conscience.  If your Christmas presents are in the trunk of the car, all the better.  They can put the loot on eBay!

I’ve long been a huge fan of Donald E. Westlake’s “Dortmunder” crime caper series and wanted to put a gay spin on the genre with my fourth book, Straight Lies, which introduced Grant and Chase.  The key to making it work – and making the reader root for the criminals – is to make their adversaries even more heinous than they are.  In Straight Lies, my criminals were up against a manipulative actor, a sleazy tabloid editor, and a pedophile cop; in Holy Rollers, they do battle with the leaders of the mega-church and officious suburban neighbors.   By comparison, they become the good guys.  If Grant and Chase were stealing from average people, they’d be unsympathetic.

I’ve been gratified by the reaction of readers, who appreciate both the gay twist on the crime caper genre and the fact that Chase, Grant and their gang are decidedly not the types of people typically found in gay literature.  They live in glamour-free neighborhoods, scrape by financially, suffer from an overload of bad luck… oh, and they steal for a living.

If Grant and Chase stole your car, and they checked your radio pre-sets, your glove apartment, your trunk, and so forth, what conclusions do you think they’d come to about you?

I’m sure they’d discover I’m very disorganized and eclectic, and I’d like to think they’d appreciate that.  All the way to the chop-shop.

Some of the last names of your characters, like Lambert or Cochrane, sound rather familiar.  Do you use the names of your friends mostly just for fun or does it help you anchor your characters in some way?  What are some of the reactions you’ve gotten from friends when they learn about the characters that share their last names?

As you know, writing can be a lonely activity.  To entertain myself and readers, I’ve borrowed the names of many friends over the years.  In the case of the writers whose names I’ve appropriated, it’s also my way of paying tribute.  That said, when I see Grant Lambert in my head, he looks nothing like the novelist Timothy J. Lambert; and Lisa Cochrane – the wealthy lesbian realtor who sidelines in crime for the thrills – isn’t the writer Becky Cochrane.

Giving a character a name like “Mrs. Jarvis” or “Mr. Scribner” – to use two examples from Holy Rollers – does help bring them to life in my head.  I’m not a big believer in physical descriptions – for the most part, I try to write so the reader can conjure up his or her own mental image – but it makes it much easier for me to create a character when I have a model.

I’ve also created an alternative reality in which many characters cross over from book to book.  For example, gay FBI Agent Patrick Waverly appears in Holy Rollers, and was also a character in my first novel, The Night We Met.  Two characters – publisher David Carlyle and mystery author Margaret Campbell – have managed to work their way into all five of my novels, although sometimes only in passing.

What can I say?  It keeps me amused.

I lived in Virginia for six years and had Eric Cantor as my congressman, so I know can be a crummy place to be gay or liberal.  But what’s your take on the state, and what led you to choose it as the setting for the Cathedral of Love in Holy Rollers? 

For the past 16 years, my life has been centered around Manhattan, so that’s what I tend to write about.  Still, I have seen a little bit more of the world than that, and – really – my characters needed to get out more. Virginia was a good fit because I know it.  For years before he moved to New York, my partner lived in Arlington, and my brother has a home in Loudon County.  It was also the perfect location for a mega-church.

And if I joke about a proliferation of McMansions and Walmarts in Northern Virginia, it’s done with affection.  I actually like what I’ve seen of Virginia.  Of course, I don’t have to live there…

What parts of the writing process do you find the easiest or, perhaps, the least excruciating?  And which parts drive you craziest?

Here’s where a great Dorothy Parker quote is useful: “I hate writing.  I love having written.”  And I seriously hate almost everything about the act of writing.  I hate the blank screen in front of you; I hate the typing; I hate the mental blocks; I hate the discipline… or, in my case, lack thereof. I know a writer isn’t supposed to admit these things, but there you have it.

Obviously, I find some pleasure in the process, though, because no one has a gun to my head… and the financial rewards are hardly keeping me in this business. I enjoy the exhausted feeling at the end of a productive weekend when I’ve made real progress.  I love that “aha” moment when I’ve worked through a plot point that seemed unsolvable.  I love that moment when you’re surprised by your own creativity.  And as much as I loathe writing the first draft, I actually sort of enjoy the revision process.

Every time I finish a manuscript I tell myself, “Never again.”  And then that inner voice starts nagging me…

Which books have you read recently (or not so recently) would you recommend?  Are there any books you’re looking forward to?

I should take a pass on this question, because I could list recommendations for hours and not scratch the surface.  I’m also trying to write my next novel – staring at the blank screen, thinking of Dorothy Parker – so I’ve fallen a bit behind in my reading. But I’m very happy to tout my friend Jeffrey Ricker’s wonderful first novel, Detours, and anything by Greg Herren and Josh Aterovis. I recently read with Michael Graves (Dirty One) and Laurie Weeks (Zipper Mouth), and can’t wait to dive into their books.

For readers who are interested in the crime caper genre, I’d also recommend devouring the Westlake series.  He passed away a few years ago, so there won’t be anymore.  But what he left behind is wonderful. 

I sometimes ask interviewees what they would choose if a genie granted them a wish, but in honor of Grant and Chase, let’s say you get a criminal genie. (He wears prison stripes.) He says he has the power to let you get away with a high stakes crime scot-free.  Of course, you can turn him down, but what capers might you ponder?

I’d like to steal the next Michael Thomas Ford manuscript, please!

If there’s an interview question that you’ve always wanted to be asked, could you tell us what it is (and answer it, too)?

Q: Are you really as arrogant and self-involved as you seem online?

A:  I’m sorry, were you talking to me?

Thanks very much, Rob! 

Keep up with Rob at  http://www.robbyrnes.net/

Buy it now from TLA

I only know Bruno Gmunder’s output from those marvelously expensive coffee-table books of photography. Naked men in compromising positions always have a place in my living room, two-dimensional or otherwise. However, this Swedish novel is a little gem that deserves as much attention as Gmunder’s more skinworthy projects.

Jonas is a teenager intrigued by the presence of Paul, an older brother who died before Jonas was born. His investigation leads him to the discovery of a diary detailing Paul’s relationship with Petr, a Czech immigrant Paul met in school. Their love affair as well as some startling revelations about an older family friend named Daniel brings Jonas closer to his own family as well as the brother he never met.

This deceptively simple and relatively short book is different from others I’ve read with similar plots in that Jonas does not use his brother’s sexuality to put his own into context. There is no indication here that Jonas is himself gay. Nor is he judgmental about Paul and Petr. He is curious about the brother he will never know, but his curiosity never becomes prurient. This seemingly small difference brings a refreshing objectivity to the situation and allows the reader to focus more on Jonas’ search and how he absorbs that information.

Jonas is fully realized as a character and even his parents become multi-dimensional—quite an achievement considering how sparely they’re drawn and how innocuous their conversations seem. The in-depth conversations are reserved for Daniel, a friend of Jonas’ mother. Only Daniel, who is gay and was Paul’s confidante, can unlock that part of Paul for Jonas. Although his version of the story is a bit self-serving, enough solid facts remain for Jonas to piece together what actually happened between Daniel and Paul as well as how his affair with Petr progressed.

The symmetrical storyteller in me wants Jonas’ parents to have this information, and I would have relished a scene in which he tells them what he’s found out. But perhaps symmetry would not work in this case. Jonas’ search is so personal and so private that keeping the result to himself is only natural. Revealing them might change Sara and Stefan’s perception of their late son, which is not his aim. One gets the feeling Jonas will take what he has learned to his own grave. An atmospheric and interesting read, My Brother and His Brother is successful on all levels—as art and as entertainment.

And it’ll even look good on your coffee table.

Buy it now direct from MLR Press.

You can take the boy out of the South, but you evidently can’t take the South out of the boy. After dalliances in San Francisco (Sparkle), Hawaii (Hot Lava) and Vegas (Divas Las Vegas), Rosen gets back to his collards-and-fatback roots in Southern Fried, his latest novel.

Orphaned Trip Jackson’s plantation-owning granny dies, leaving most of her estate to him as well as a mysterious brother he didn’t know he had—but the mysteries don’t stop there. How did his parents really die? What of the senator who shares his newly-found brother’s last name? And does Billy Ray really have the hottest, saltiest nuts in the state? Only Trip and his hot stable boy/boyfriend Zeb know for sure, and how they find out makes for some hot and funny reading.

Rosen has a knack for this light, frothy mix (no, no…not santorum) of sex, mystery and setting, and this outing is just as satisfying as the others. Rosen’s characters are always enjoyable, and he puts them through some very interesting paces here. And while Southern Fried can be characterized as a beach read, it’s far more accomplished than many entries in that genre. It never stoops to be cloying or cute, relying on a breakneck sense of pacing.

But Rosen also has a way with false endings—just when you think all the loose ends are tied up, someone else makes a confession or another shot rings out and yet another piece of the puzzle falls into place. The plots aren’t complex, but Rosen packs them with details that all need to be ironed out for the kind of smooth ending he’s beginning to be noted for.

So if you’re weary of the holidays and just want a little time away from the mistletoe, pick up Southern Fried and dig in. But don’t be surprised if your turkey comes out deep fried.

Reviewed by Jerry Wheeler

Buy it now from Rebel Satori Press

Unrequited love comes to us all at one time or another, but it’s particularly painful when you know from the get-go that it won’t work out. You forge ahead anyway, leading with your heart despite the warning signs. And when the letdown happens, the foreknowledge that it was inevitable doesn’t stop the hurt. That’s the fate of Harry Charity in Larry Closs’s novel Beatitude.

Harry Charity and Jay Bishop are office-mates at a New York entertainment magazine, but work isn’t all they have in common. Both of them are big fans of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and the whole Beat Generation movement. In fact, they bond over the Beat Holy Grail—the original scroll manuscript of Kerouac’s best known work. The problem? Jay really loves his fiancee, Zahra. And Harry really loves Jay—just like he loved Matteo, who was also unattainable but for different reasons.

It would be tempting to make Zahra the villain here, but Closs wisely avoids this trap, keeping her in the shadows for the first few chapters and making her appear somewhat inscrutable when she does show up. That gives her a distance that allows us to focus on Harry and Jay. Likewise, Harry’s relationship with Matteo isn’t shown in detail until about halfway through the book. Those flashbacks, however, are all the more revelatory for the delay. Their absence lets us see the patterns Harry establishes with Jay so that we can better see the similarities between the two relationships.

One of the differences between them, however, is the danger factor. Jay is far more laid back and less explosive than Matteo. Their outings are more intellectual and less fueled by alcohol—still, at the end of the night Harry finds himself sleeping alone, emotionally unfulfilled by either of the men he’s fallen in love with. His dalliance with Matteo, though, eventually reaches an end when he can no longer stand the pressure. He (and we) hope his connection with Jay will not be severed as gruesomely.

Closs definitely knows his Beats, drawing an interesting portrait of Allen Ginsberg—including a fictional (I assume) interview with the poet as well as featuring two previously unpublished Ginsberg pieces. Ginsberg was a peculiar person; distant and mistrustful or warm and approachable depending on the minute you caught him in. Having taken one or two of his classes at the Naropa Institute, I can vouch for the veracity of Closs’s characterization. 

My only quibble with this interesting and heartfelt examination of the differences and similarities between friendship and romance is Harry and Jay’s final telephone conversation—well, the one that ends the book anyway—in which they address each other as “bro.” A perfectly acceptable sobriquet these days, I suppose, but one that to my mind, tags their relationship as more superficial than I think Closs intends. But perhaps that’s my own prejudice.

Beatitude is a fine, poetic book, full of insight and sumptuous writing—perfect for meditation on love and friends.

Buy it from Skylight Books

First, an anecdote—then, the review. They’ll link up, I promise.

In early 1975, I was a second-semester freshman at the University of Colorado, and I was enthralled by my first lesbian, a marvelous teaching assistant I’ll call Grace. She introduced me to some of my favorite books, taught me much about critical thinking and even gave me the courage to go to my first “gay mixer” at the nascent Gay and Lesbian Club (not yet affiliated with the university).

As one of her three or four acolytes, I was invited to an end-of-semester party at her apartment on the Hill in Boulder. Bellies full of some vegetarian dish, we commenced talking, smoking weed and drinking red wine made by her sister and some friends at the Duck Lake Commune up near Ward. Suddenly, she got up and went into a closet/darkroom off the living room (she was also an amateur photographer) and retrieved a black and white 8x10 of a woman sleeping on the very floral print sofa we were sitting on. The face was familiar but still it took a few minutes for us to realize the napping figure was Patty Hearst, kidnapped newspaper heiress turned revolutionary bank robber and the object of a nationwide manhunt. We were properly awed. And one of us must have been a snitch.

Three days later, our grades had still not been posted. We went to Grace’s office to see why, but she was gone and her office had been cleaned out. So had her apartment. In fact, no one wanted to talk about what had happened to her, and we were warned by everyone we asked not to get too nosy. We finally got grades for the class a year later, but we never saw or heard from Grace again.

Thankfully, L.A. Free Press reporter and Lesbian Tide founder Jeanne Cordova did not meet the same fate, though her testy meetings with American Nazi Party head Joe Tomassi brought the FBI close to her door. Cordova’s memoir When We Were Outlaws captures the politics of the tumultuous lesbian feminist 1970s and casts some fascinating light on Tomassi as well as the Weather Underground, Angela Davis and, yes, Emily Harris of the Symbionese Liberation Army, Patty Hearst’s kidnappers.

Cordova also details the labor strike against the L.A. Gay Community Services Center, including her betrayal by Morris Kight, her political mentor and founder of the GCSC. The relationship between these two is intense, and Cordova pulls no punches when dealing with either her admiration for him or her scorn. This is one of the most interesting relationships in the book—and one of the saddest, especially when one finally realizes what Kight thought of lesbians in the first place. I would have hoped for better from a gay brother.

But When We Were Outlaws is not all politics and polemic. Cordova’s shrewd observations are most astonishing when she’s looking at herself and her own love life—particularly her stormy relationship with Rachel, a woman she meets at the GCSC. Rachel comes between Cordova and her wife, BeJo, more than any occasional lover of Cordova’s has before, bringing a dynamic tension to their life as well as the book. Painfully honest and brilliantly written, her personal revelations carry even more urgency and importance than her political leanings, never letting us forget that activists have hearts as well as minds. And they sometimes lose both.

In a lesser writer’s hands, the sheer size of the cast involved in the rallies, meetings, marches and strategy sessions would be confusing, but Cordova knows just when to rein it in. She gives the reader an idea of the scope but keeps her eye on the key players at all times so her narrative never bogs down in extraneous detail. A tricky balance, to be sure, but Cordova’s experience in walking tightropes shows in both her pacing and her prose, which is at once journalistically objective and personally relevant.

But nothing encapsulates either Cordova or the times better than the front cover photo—Cordova wearing shades and leaning on a rail, her arms crossed, wearing a leather wrist strap and an armband, her hair wild and unruly, with a name tag on her chest and a Mona Lisa sneer on her lips, clutching a pack of Kools as if the smokes are all that’s keeping her still enough for someone to snap the picture. I kept going back to it whenever I closed the book to absorb what I’d just read. Clearly, a woman not to be fucked with.

But just as clearly, a woman with incredible stories to tell—and we can only hope that When We Were Outlaws is the first of a series of memoirs. If you’re at all interested in activism or our struggle for freedom and equal rights (and you should be), you owe it to yourself to read this and learn. 

And if you’re out there, Grace, I’d love to hear from you. 

Buy it now from Lethe Press

The day I’m writing this—December 4^th—is my late partner’s birthday, always a time of bittersweet rememberance for me, as is the whole holiday season. I try to participate, but my heart simply isn’t in it anymore. Perhaps this wasn’t the best time to read Robert McDiarmid’s The House of Wolves, which sees the two main characters suffering from the same inestimable loss.

David and Roy have both been damaged by the loss of their respective partners. Roy immerses himself in teaching fifth grade while David turns away from the belief system that had sustained both his partner and their housemates. But the five men who lived with David and his late partner Richard are more than housemates—they are essential parts of each others social, physical and emotional beings, taking their philosophy from the Saanich, a Native American tribe. And they must accept Roy as one of their own if he and David are to have a successful relationship. 

Make no mistake, this is an interesting read, if for nothing else than the Native American philosophy and its approach to end of life matters—highly ritualistic with honor and respect for both the departed and those remaining, all about animals and spirits and nature and man’s interconnection with his surroundings. And McDiarmid does an incredible job of making this complex value system understandable to readers who don’t have prior experience with that culture.

However, if you’re looking for a traditional storyline with conflict and resolution, you won’t find it here. We know from the beginning that the others in the house will accept Roy. In fact, the entire plot is built around bringing him into the fold, so there is no real threat that the expected outcome won’t occur. There is no conflict to resolve, but that appears to be the author’s intent. And that doesn’t mean it’s boring. The focus is on the process, the ritual, and the examination of a communal, non-monogamous lifestyle that, in many respects, should be a model for all gay men. Because when all is said and done, no one is going to look out for us except us.

I wish, though, that McDiarmid would have fleshed out some of the minor characters in the house a bit more. Roy and David are certainly well-done, as is Marlin—also a teacher and, perhaps, the one in the house closest in character to Richard, their late leader. And occasionally (to be expected when dealing in philosophical matters, I suppose), McDiarmid lapses into lecturing. Too much telling instead of showing. But those are very minor quibbles when considering the work as a whole.

Despite my personal poor timing with reading The House of Wolves, it’s an absorbing study of Native American culture as well as an interesting, if slightly idealized, look at the relationships between men.

Reviewed by Jerry Wheeler

Buy it direct from Lethe Press

I think of myself as someone who doesn’t like short stories. When I want to scratch the itch to read fiction, I am more likely to pick up a novel by an unknown author than a collection of stories by one I like. After reading Daniel M. Jaffe’s recent collection, Jewish Gentle, however, I realize this is not an accurate self-perception. (I’ll add it to the list.)  It isn’t short stories I dislike, but poorly crafted ones. And Jaffe’s tales are a far cry from the latter.

Jaffe’s collection of stories exploring “gay-Jewish living” covers a wide range of events—from coming out to hooking up, to meeting lovers, to mourning them. His narrators span a wide range of identities—across age, sexual orientation, gender and, in one less successful tale, species. What is most striking about Jaffe’s writing is his capacity to take the most time-worn tableaux and breathe new life into them. With only one or two exceptions was I surprised by where one of his stories went or how it ended; in most cases, by the third or fourth paragraph, I was fairly clear how each narrative was going to unfold. But Jaffe’s gift with language, with voice, with temporality, with suspense, with humor, with character, with mood made each of his tales utterly engaging. Never has the familiar felt as fresh as it does in Jaffe’s stories.

To my eyes, Jaffe’s most successful stories were those that wove together Jewish and gay identity in meaningful, but not heavy-handed ways. For example, “At Blumberg & Fong’s,” my favorite in the collection, brought together the pain of coming out with the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a burgeoning American-Jewish identity with religious questioning in a way that allowed each dimension of the tale to refract through all the others beautifully. Similarly—and perhaps it struck me since I teach on a college campus and often assist with LGBTQ student programming—the struggle faced by the narrator in “Finding Home” as he juggles attendance at the Hillel meeting and the queer student gathering seemed quite poignant. And, for all its specificity, the story had something universal about it, as it sketched the nervousness that accompanies one’s first public encounter with other queer-identified folk. “Strawberry Mousse” meditated on food regulations and their importance to identity in a captivating manner. And the titular “Jewish Gentle,” which explored a couple’s foray into leather play, focused attention on the complicated relations between ethnic identity and desire by troubling associations between Jewishness and submission.

Jaffe has a particular gift for capturing the complicated emotional currents swirling around coming out. While “Kaddish” seemed a bit too obvious and heavy-handed, “Telling Dad” had just the right mournful air, as well as the hint of compromise that comes with age. “Happy Birthday to . . .” showed off Jaffe’s facility with voice in a stunning fashion. Jaffe also displayed his talent for capturing affect when he evoked AIDS in his stories. Far from being too sentimental, too maudlin or too matter-of-fact, he moves with great care and a gentle touch to reveal the on-going pathos around the disease.

The only place where Jaffe strayed were the stories that seemed to have little connection to gay-Jewish living, but where Jewishness seemed forced in somehow. (As a goyim, I may have missed the subtleties of some stories. Another reader, another reviewer might have a different experience.)  In two stories, for example, the circumcision of a penis marked it as Jewish, and this was the Jewish detail in the story. This was especially unsettling in “Bless the Blue Angel” and “The Four of Us,” given how well-crafted and evocative they were otherwise. These stories would have been much better if Jaffe hadn’t tried to force their relation to the collection’s subtitle. (And given the latter’s allusion to a Freud quote, he might not have needed to follow the strategy he did.)  And, Jaffe certainly knew how to sprinkle details of Jewish identity without marring a tale:  “That Boy This Day,” for example, my second favorite story from the collection—a beautifully rendered, perfectly voiced story about young gay desire and a widow’s attempt to make sense of his marriage to a transgendered man—refers to rabbis and religious customs quite naturally and seamlessly.

Jaffe was also quite smart to sprinkle a handful of very brief vignettes into his collection. These 1-2 page interludes were fully realized stories, but they broke up the pace of the collection as a whole and left me wanting more. And that, I suppose, is the brilliance of a well-rendered collection of short stories like Jewish Gentle. By telling such well-spun tales with such well-crafted characters, Jaffe has left me wanting more . . . but in the best way. I don’t feel cheated of the longer, fuller tale; I feel charmed by these people into whose world I’ve been invited, and wistful that I couldn’t stay longer.

Reviewed by Kent Brintnall

Buy it now direct from Lethe Press.

Jeffers tells us that he began writing these stories in 1994, and through “…fitful intervals…” gave them a “…final burnish in Spring 2011.” Most authors have similar experiences; there is always that work that nags completion, a final burnishing, regardless of how many years it has begged attention, unfinished, but, nevertheless—in the author’s mind, soul—worthy of an end, a pat on the rump that sends it off into the world to stand on its own, revealed, shamelessly exposed to the readers’ scrutiny.

I thank Jeffers for sticking with this one through all those years.

This is superb storytelling, shared with a vague presence—not identified as Adam until the last entry—that eloquently and informatively describes the protagonist’s, Ziya’s, travails as a Muslim, growing up in Turkey in a fairly well-to-do family, and destined to fulfill his parent’s plan that he eventually go to Harvard, to America where his mother was educated (a physician).  But America looms, for Ziya, as not the promised land  but, rather—through his sense of history and experience—perhaps a land too recklessly taken for granted by Americans themselves.

Ziya shares with Adam a telling juxtaposition between his sense of himself and his and his country’s history, and that of America and Americans: “Imagine this, though: imagine Vietnam was not a hot little country halfway ‘round the world but an island just off your coast—in the Gulf of Mexico, say, near Florida. Not even as far as Cuba. Nor are your allies there corrupt little yellow gooks fighting an ideological and economic war against their own people, but our own people, English-speaking Americans… Ah! the metaphor becomes unwieldy, breaks down. These things cannot occur in America. All your wars happen far away—on TV; and you, my good friend (this phrase he said Turkish; iyi arkadasim), you do not own a televison and could scarcely comprehend my impatience with you, only three years ago, because it would not make sense in your head that my county shares a border with Iraq.

“I saw none of this on TV and so I remember it.

“—Am I speaking to you? Personally? This with an odd, diffident smile. No, no. You are my friend, my good friend, America, I fear is not.”

Ziya, again a Muslim (blue-eyed, like his mother who was “…of the line of Osman. …[a] hapless Ottoman…sultan… The sons of Osman never condescended to impregnate women of their own nation: all their concubines were foreign slaves—pale-skinned, paled-eyed…”), who, even at Harvard shaves his underarm hair and pubes, and still engages in the ablutions necessary prior to the rite of praying to Mekke,  provides a fascinating insight into what I found to be a cursory, even dismissive regret or shame or momentary afterthought about engaging in sex with men. Ziya appears quite ambivalent about any Muslim prohibitions, or teachings, or admonitions with regard to homosexuality. Indeed, it appears Ziya’s upbringing in Turkey gave him a sense of that country’s, that empire’s acceptance of men-on-men, or more precisely, men-on-boy relationships.

Another quote: “My uncle cannot  countenance my refusal to marry and breed but he would not be especially perturbed to know I enjoy fucking other males. That I prefer full-grown men, muscular and hairy, to lissome boys would be puzzling but within the realm of possibility. Men like to fuck, he would say—need to fuck, are made to fuck. Unlike a western man, he’s not disgusted by the simple idea of sex between males. What a man fucks is not so crucial as that he fuck, and I use the word what rather than whom deliberately. What my uncle would not comprehend is that I also enjoy being fucked—and enjoy oral sex, given and received, mutual masturbation, endless necking and foreplay—that orgasm (my own) is nice but not the only goal and pleasant to postpone, that my partner’s orgasm can please me no end. But here I am sounding like an American homosexual—a gay man.

“The notion of sexual reciprocity would not occur to the general run of Turkish men—the idea, you see, is ludicrous. As rule, Turkish men are lousy lays.

“…if women are not available but a boy or ibne is: what the man fucks is immaterial, that he fuck imperative. The pederast, moreover, is a pervert.”

Ziya, in his youth, raped by his uncle, and further used (willingly) by encounters with other men,  discovers notions of man-on-man sex refined by a chance meeting with an old school chum, ĺhsan, who has become—his hair bleached, his clothing seductive to provide the illusion of youth—an ibne, working for a pimp. ĺhsan teaches Ziya that man-on-man sex need not be peremptory, incidental only to just getting your rocks off. He teaches Ziya that sex is so much more than friction.

Ziya, throughout his storytelling to Adam, struggles with Western notions of religion. He was “…perversely amused…” by “The bravado of those [Western religionists] who attempted to represent God Himself…revolted [him].” His first view of Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam, saw him laughing aloud: “Santa Claus in a nightgown!” Indeed, he reveals that, “The first thing I discovered myself to be, at Harvard, was a Muslim.” Then again, his first roommate, an Arab from Kuwait disgusted him. “Turks and Arabs seldom [got] along.” He enjoyed encountering fellow Turks at a mosque in Boston, but became uneasy with encounters “…in the basement meeting room the campus Islamic Society, frequented by fierce-eyed men whose piety made me flinch and women, defiant rather that demure, wearing chic, updated form of yaşmak.” More grating for Ziya, perhaps, was the American notion that all Muslims were Islamic fundamentalists, and all Arabs to boot. “They were not to be argued with, these Americans[,]” who believed, incorrectly, that Turkey and Iran, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania were Arab states where Islamic fundamentalism festered hot and heavy.

Ziya’s observations—from the viewpoint of a confirmed Muslim—of the American psyche, the American way of life are sardonic, so revealing, so intensely insightful. Staying overnight at a friend of his mother’s home, the teenage son stands from the dining table, “…yawned alarmingly and lifted his fists overhead, punching at the ceiling. The t-shirt rode up his concave belly, above blue jeans that were slung deliberately low, making of his high-riding boxer shorts a part of speech, a conjunction.”

“Americans,” Ziya later observes, “men and women both, were always showing themselves off, as if by reflex. Seduction seemed to be the great public pastime, although I couldn’t see that it had any object behind it, was meant to carry through. Appearing desirable was effect and cause both, a closed system.”

I find myself wanting to share so much more of this sublimely eloquent work. I’ve probably shared too much. I want, I suppose, for you, the reader to love this book as much as I did; the storytelling is as engaging as anything I’ve read in a very, very long time. And, too, I hope you (like me) will find the introspection urged by Ziya’s storytelling not so much as an explication of the ugly American, but rather a worthy reflection on who and what we, Americans, have become.

Alex Jeffers, through a decade and half, has spun gold here. Thank you, Alex. 

Reviewed by George Seaton   

Buy it now. 

If you follow Xavier on Facebook then you know about his passion for cooking and food. If you have read any of his previous works, then you also know his passion for the written word. In “The Birches,” he combines his two passions for one delectable read.

Here is the publicity blurb…”Perfection isn’t everything, although it’s everything Leo wants. His desire to become the perfect chef may keep him at the top of his class, but it drives his friends and family crazy while keeping love and passion on the back burner. That is until he meets Dock, owner and chef of the new and popular restaurant, The Birches. Although Dock isn’t a trained chef, Leo finds the food he cooks delectable and the man behind the food irresistible. The lessons taught at the hands of an untrained cook may be just what this uptight chef needs to let go.”

I used to do some catering, some were small dinner parties friends ask me to cook for, others were a bit more cocktail’ish in their setup. I’ve even taken classes at the local culinary institute. Those times were some of the most stressful, yet enjoyable and rewarding experiences of my life. Xavier has captured these emotional ups and downs with perfection. To this he adds likable characters, and mixes it all up with some hot erotic content. 

Xavier may not be a chef, but he knows what ingredients to use to make a thoroughly enjoyable story and “The Birches,” is exactly that.

Reviewed by William Holden

Buy it now from Lethe Press.

Bears don’t scare easily. However, their intimidating appearance and ferocity is no match for the supernatural, which is what makes R. Jackson’s Tales from the Den: Wild and Weird Stories for Bears work so well. This stellar collection from Bear Bones Books is the latest—and possibly the most intriguing—of Jackson’s anthologies under this imprint.

The first tale, Larry C. Faulkner’s “Daddy’s Gift,” sets up the traditional vampire myth but goes conventions one better with a neatly turned ending that sees our bloodsucking hero not only sparing his prey an untimely end but giving him some sage advice as well. Indeed, many of these stories will knock your expectations askew. Jeff Mann’s “Saving Tobias,” for example, also takes on vampirism but has an added political element as a conservative, homophobic senator’s fundamentalist chickens come home to roost. We might well revel in his fate were it not for the knowledge that there are many more just like him. His comeuppance makes us squirm as well as cheer—just the sort of thing Mann does so well.

Similarly, Karl von Uhl’s “Hide from the World” brings us a love story between an  Afghanistan war vet and…well, a seal. A seal named—wait for it—Finn, who morphs into human form once he takes off his removable skin. This wonderfully odd piece blends love story and wildlife conservation in a satisfying blend of fantasy and harsh reality. Jackson, however, balances his table of contents with some well-done conventional ghost stories (Hank Edwards’ fully-realized “Laid to Rest,” Nicolas Mann’s “The Ghost of Dark Oak Cottage,” and the Grand Guignol gothic of Jay Neal’s “The Lighthouse Keep”) as well as wizard-and-warlock inspired tales (“Champion of the Cross” by Jay Starre and the kinked-out master and apprentice of Cynthia Ward’s “The Dragon-Bone Tower”).

The three pieces which have stayed with me the longest, however, are anything but balanced. Randy Wyatt’s “render,” explores a tense, creepy love affair between a bear and his secretive cub and details what obsessive jealousy can lead to. Styled as a series of Tweets and blog posts, Wyatt’s story is both modern and ancient and will have you shuddering in broad daylight. Not as scary but even creepier is Daniel M. Jaffe’s “Confessions of a Naughty Dreamer,” whose ending shocks you open-mouthed even though you can guess what’s coming.

Finally, Lee Thomas weighs in with “The House by the Park,” dedicated “in deference to the Italian masters.” More properly, this tale of love, human sacrifice and a big, black stain should defer to the singular H.P. Lovecraft, whose creeping molds and dark blots kept popping into my head as I read this. The wickedly prosaic suburban setting only adds to the fun.

Jackson has rounded up a perfectly marvelous collection of bear-scares sure to curl the fur of any ursine acquaintances. I sincerely hope there’s a second volume.

Reviewed by Jerry Wheeler