Silence Is Multi-Colored In My World edited by Red Haircrow

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“Who am I?

I am G.Y.S., a profoundly deaf man. I have blue eyes and red hair, which I wear long. I am gay and Russian, and was born in 1978 in the Ukraine, but I moved myself to Germany when I was fourteen. You’ll learn how and why later.

My words are a mélange of impressions, memories and observations for I love many things and am distressed by many things. I have wandered to a number of countries and enjoy meeting people and getting to know new ideas and perspectives. I find the world both a fascinating and terrible place.

Photography, Nature, Overcoming Disabilities, Ending Homophobia, Being Deaf and Love are some of the topics that interest, concern and keep my attention. In writing about me I wish I could have said something clever, unique or witty, but this is simply me: sometimes I’m silly, sometimes I’m angry, sometimes you may find me annoying or overly sad but I’m always honest and sincere.

Flash bits about me? I have a beautiful pink “Grecian” style nightgown I love to wear. I once blew up a vacuum cleaner (not on purpose!). I prefer to sleep during the day but I’m not a vampire. Sometimes I hate being bothered to eat because chewing is usually necessary but can be so very boring.”

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The Long Road From Perdition by J.R. Stone

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“…It was then that I realized that my lonely childhood had come to a reverberating halt. This moment in time would forever be seared into my psyche, destined to become part of the psychological baggage that I would carry upon my shoulders for the rest of my life. That was how I spent my thirteenth birthday.”

I picked up The Long Road From Perdition with much interest given the story summary and I was not disappointed. In this novel author J.R. Stone has written a moving tale of the life of Nicholas Fontenot, a precocious yet sensitive teenager who lives in an abusive home and is suddenly thrust into a dangerous world, which he must navigate on his own.

On his thirteen birthday, Nicholas witnesses a horrific murder and his world is torn apart. Abandoned by his remaining family he becomes a ward of the state while awaiting news on whether he’ll be charged for the crime he witnessed, but did not commit. He is forced into the foster care system where he experiences even more misery, abuse and danger until he escapes at the age of fifteen. Nicholas draws his strength to persevere and seek a better life for himself from his older brother and protector Josh who is always with him in spirit.

On his journey to find safety, Nicholas meets a kindred spirit in Charley, a drag queen and owner of an off the beaten path gay bar in New Orleans. Charley and a host of colourful characters that work in the bar become Nicholas’ extended family. Yet, his troubled past continues to haunt him until he is tragically forced to leave Charley and New Orleans the only happy home he has ever known. Nicholas’ road from hell and his journey to find peace and his place in the world is a long and difficult one.

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Missing by Drake Braxton

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Blain Harrington and his husband Manny Madeira have travelled from Massachusetts to Culver Pines, Alabama to attend Blain’s twentieth high school reunion. During the banquette and slightly before midnight Blain realises that he’s lost track of Manny. While sitting at an empty table he finds paper cocktail napkins with homophobic and derogatory drawings of him and Manny. Now panicked, Blain begins to search for Manny, last seen talking with Patrick McMann an old classmate, but can’t find him anywhere. What he does find is Manny’s cell phone tossed in a tree planter at the hotel. By 1:00 a.m., Blain is at the police station trying to file a missing person’s report with a very uncooperative Culver Pines duty officer. On the advice of his best friend Michael, Blain enlists the help of Rich, a gay-friendly private investigator from Atlanta and the local gay organization to help find Manny. One week later with no news on Manny’s whereabouts, Blain returns home to wait. The dreaded news that he’s feared all along arrives – Manny was found dead in a ravine.

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Listening to Dust by Brandon Shire

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“…and if we could capture it, put it under glass, keep dampness from tamping its restless tranquility. What then? Every storm has brilliance, Dustin; has beauty when you look at it from a distance. It blurs all those incessant imperfections we seek to hollow out with each of our hopes. But when you step into its still center, when you see its fury and its power, you also see its beauty; its grace.

Five thousand miles away and I can still feel your turbulence on my skin, Dustin; your grit stuck in the chambers of my heart…and all the silence that has followed it.

Please write me back.”

Listening to Dust by Brandon Shire is a devastatingly beautiful and emotionally powerful love story of a magnitude that is at times overwhelming. It is not often that I find myself without the ability to articulate my thoughts in a review because the writing has rendered me so. This is such a story and I am not altogether sure if this review can or will do the writing justice.

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Reading Round Up: Road Trip and Book Shopping

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This summer’s road trip was not too far from home. In late July we headed to Toronto for about a week and then it was on to the Rez with a few side trips to Guelph, Paris (Ontario) and Fort Erie. Visiting with family and friends was our main activity, however, as always, I made time for some book shopping.

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Arthur Wooten’s Shorts – Stroke of Luck: a short story & The “Dear Henry” Letters by Arthur Wooten

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I will begin this review by getting directly to the point. Arthur Wooten’s Shorts is an intelligently humorous and often hysterically funny compilation of one short story – Stroke of Luck, and a short novella – The “Dear Henry” Letters.

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Taxi Rojo by Erik Orrantia

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Erik Orrantia is one of a handful of authors in gay fiction with whose writing I connected almost immediately when I read and reviewed his Lambda Literary Award winning debut novel Normal Miguel (Bristlecone Pine Press; Cheyenne Publishing, 2010) for Rainbow Reviews. His is an evocative and fluid voice and from this author I have come to expect good writing, an intuitive understanding of his adopted home of Mexico and always, always extremely well written and developed characters. Mr. Orrantia delivers all of this in his third novel Taxi Rojo a multi-layered “tale of triumph and defeat, hopelessness and perseverance, life and death.”

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Songs for the New Depression by Kergan Edwards-Stout

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“I’m leavin’ my fam’ly
Leavin’ all my friends
My body’s at home
But my heart’s in the wind
Where the clouds are like headlines
On a new front page sky
My tears are salt water
And the moon’s full and high”
(Shiver Me Timbers by Tom Waits, 1974)

Kergan Edwards-Stout’s debut novel, Songs for the New Depression, is the poignant and darkly humorous story of Gabriel Travers who is HIV positive and convinced that he’s dying despite his doctor’s proclamations to the contrary. His viral load is undetectable, his T-cell count is up, but according to Gabe one glance in the mirror tells him everything he needs to know. “His ass, once the talk of West Hollywood, now looks suspiciously like a Shar-Pei…” Faced with his own mortality, Gabriel’s first person narrative takes the reader on an emotional journey as he recounts his life experiences and relationships, reflecting on the choices that he’s made along the way and questioning his treatment of the people in his life.

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Dark Lover: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood (Book 1) by J.R. Ward

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There are probably only a handful of devoted readers of mainstream paranormal romance that have yet to read the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward. Although I’m not an exclusive reader of romance (whether paranormal or other), I began reading this series in 2006 and while I enjoyed the early books, my interest in the series began to wan and I easily let go of the series in 2008 following the release of Lover Enshrined (Book 6). But, with the recent publication of the tenth book, Lover Reborn, which features the story of Tohrment the last of the original Brothers, I’ve picked up the books once again to catch-up on the newer storylines and characters in anticipation of reading Book 10. As I’ve never reviewed any of the books in this series I thought it would be interesting to post my thoughts on some of the stories in retrospective, starting with the first book Dark Lover.

  As the first book in the Black Dagger Bortherhood (BDB) saga, I consider Dark Lover foundational to the series as a whole and the book upon which the author springboards the BDB world and introduces many of the characters that are set for stories in future books. While it’s not the strongest written book in the series, it is a solid beginning.

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