Author: AX

Categories
fiction novelette spec fic Turkey

update update

Further to the entry of two days ago, I’m relieved to report the revisions to my summer story were less painful than I feared. Mr Berman’s editorial eye is keen and true: if I had but outlined the story in the first place instead of winging it (perish the thought) I might have known to do it his way from the start.

And so I am delighted to report the sale is confirmed: “Wheat, Barley, Lettuce, Fennel, Salt for Sorrow, Blood for Joy”* will appear in Boys of Summer, edited by Steve Berman, from Bold Strokes Soliloquy, next year—May, I now learn, not July.

* Possibly with a different title. We’re still wrangling over that. There’s plenty of time: Steve’s only settled on four stories so far.

I am less pleased to report that my prediction as to weather and ambient temperature in this neck of the woods was correct. While certainly not cold or even chilly, it has definitely turned cool and a whole spate of trees that were green on Sunday have since gone yellow and orange. I shall have to close my windows tonight. Pfaugh. This superannuated boy of summer is not pleased.

Categories
short stories Turkey YA

indian summer writing update

This afternoon, probably the penultimate warm day of 2011 if the long-range forecast and my hard-won knowledge of New England climatic patterns are to be trusted, I completed a draft of my third story for the year. Not a short story. At nearly 12,000 words, it’s about midway through the range defined by SFWA for award purposes as a novelette. A summer story.

Literally. The central notion’s been kicking around my head for a few years but I couldn’t find the right angle of attack until Steve Berman issued a call for submissions to an anthology of stories for gay youths to be called Boys of Summer. I commenced serious work in August.

It takes place on and off the Aegean coast of Turkey, where a teenager from Berkeley, CA—third wheel on his dad and stepmom’s midsummer honeymoon—becomes tangled up in the multiplicitous myths of Adonis and, naturally, falls in love with a handsome Turkish lad. At Sandra McDonald’s insistence, it has a happy ending. You don’t want to quarrel with Sandra!

I e-mailed the draft to Steve almost as soon as I could convert it from *.pages to *.rtf. Two hours later he called me. He sees some structural weaknesses and is not especially thrilled by my unwieldy (though justified!) title, “Wheat, Barley, Lettuce, Fennel, Salt for Sorrow, Blood for Joy”…but assured me I’ve made the sale. The Soliloquy imprint of Bold Strokes Books will publish Boys of Summer next July. Compassionate God willing, and revisions completed by 1 November 2011, “Wheat, Barley” will be part of it (if, grumble, under a different title), in time for my mumblety-fifth birthday.

In other news, I still don’t have confirmation of my plausible fourth story publication of 2011. There are rumors, wild dark rumors, but no unambiguous statements I’m willing to bank on. If it happens, it should happen next month.

But my other three 2011 stories are out there waiting—go get ’em (if you haven’t already)!

  • “The Arab’s Prayer” in M-Brane SF #24 (still available for free download) and the print Quarterly #2.
  • “Captain of the World” in Steve B.’s earlier queer YA anthology, Speaking Out.
  • “Liam and the Ordinary Boy” in Icarus #10, both print and PDF.

And two books, of course. I’ve said enough about those already. (The New People. The Abode of Bliss.)

Must lie down with headache. Massive amounts of copyediting to do tomorrow. And a long chilly winter to anticipate. How I hate being cold. Dread spoils the fleeting warmth.

Categories
Ivri Lider music The Young Professionals

listen

I have spent essentially the entire weekend (which, parenthetically, has not been a particularly good one) listening over and over to the exhilarating newly released first album by The Young Professionals, 9:00 to 17:00, 17:00 to whenever.

I’d been peripherally aware of T¥P all summer. One of its principals is Israeli superstar Ivri Lider, about whom I go on and on. But I hadn’t paid a great deal of attention as A) the project appeared to be directed toward an international—that is, English speaking—audience and a significant aspect of my infatuation with Ivri’s music has to do with my inability to understand the Hebrew lyrics; B) the first single was called “D.I.S.C.O.,” which, well, really? in 2011?; C) I had a lot of other stuff on my mind.

I was wrong, okay? I even like “D.I.S.C.O.” although my favorite tracks, I think, are “Wake Up,” “Deserve,” “Dirty Messages,” and the cover of Suzanne Vega’s “Blood Makes Noise.”

I’m still waiting for Fly/Forget, though, Ivri.

Categories
Safe as Houses short stories The Abode of Bliss

reviews

In The Abode of Bliss’s first four – five weeks as an actual book, there have been a few.

The first I saw was from Bob Lind of Echo Magazine, published to a private Yahoo discussion group, then to Amazon.

It makes you think, which perhaps isn’t ideal for lazy readers who demand to be entertained, but is very rewarding to those who appreciate such writings.

Amos Lassen chimed in at his exhaustive site, Reviews by Amos Lassen:

Here is a book of stories in which each one is sheer perfection. The prose is sublime, the characters are beautifully drawn and we get a chance to see what the word literature means (as opposed to writing).

On the Edge Media network (I saw it first on the Boston-local site but now it’s everywhere), Katie Drexel wasn’t entirely convinced but said a few nice things:

The Abode of Bliss is written like poetry, a trip for the senses for one to enjoy from a distance.

Novelist Alan Chin, an indefatigable champion of my work, published an enthusiastic review on his blog, A Passage to Now, which has since memed out all over the internet:

I’ve long believed that Alex Jeffers is a remarkable talent. I regard The Abode of Bliss as his most impressive work to date. This is a book I will read, savor, again and again. I highly recommend this book to everyone who loves finely crafted prose, lush descriptions and gratifyingly deep characters.

At Impressions…of a Reader, Hilicia first teased the book on 1 August:

My top pick of the month [July] and an amazing contemporary gay fiction read.

Then, on 6 August, delivered her beautifully perceptive full review:

…what of my high expectations? I am happy to say that those were met, and then some. This is a fabulous work of fiction by Alex Jeffers and one I highly recommend.

Seen most recently (published today), a guest review by Sirius at Reviews by Jessewave:

The book asks questions about national identity, about what it means to accept religion and at the same time not to be a very religious man. It asks so many subtle questions that after two rereads I am still pretty sure I missed some of them.

A hearty thank you to all these fine reviewers.

Also of note, an encomium to Safe as Houses I somehow missed when it appeared on 2 January, in Indigene’s 2010 wrap-up at Indie Reviews:

The sheer beauty of Mr. Jeffer’s [forgiveable sic] writing and the emotional integrity with which the story is written made the reading of this novel an intimate and deeply moving experience for me so much so that I’ve had a difficult time in letting go of both the story and its characters. I have re-read this novel, in whole or in part, too many times to count over the course of 2010.

In other news, the second Liam story, “Liam and the Ordinary Boy,” will appear in Icarus #10 in a week or two, ornamented with this illustration of the ordinary boy in question:

Also in Icarus #10, if Liam isn’t enough for you, excellent stories by Lambda Award winners Sandra McDonald and Richard Bowes and an interview with Gaylactic Spectrum Award winner Ginn Hale.

Jerry Wheeler at Out in Print reviews [I have no idea what’s up with that URL] Steve Berman’s anthology of inspirational stories for queer teens, Speaking Out, also available in a week or so and containing my story of a conflicted Turkish-American soccer star, “Captain of the World”:

…anywhere you open this book you’ll find a story that affirms as it informs, good for both teens looking for other teens like them as well as parents trying to get a handle on their own queer kids.

And there appears to be a very strong possibility another story will be out before the end of the year, but further revisions may be requested and details haven’t been hammered out so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Finally, on a grotesquely personal note, those readers who have befriended me on Facebook may have noticed I vanished without warning last night. I’m not going to go into the why’s, complex and distressing. Enough to say the place became a locus of anxiety for me. I may return after a few weeks’ break, I may not. Meanwhile, there’s still e-mail and that nagging little Comment box below.

Categories
BrazenHead fiction Lethe Press novella short stories spec fic The Abode of Bliss Turkey

dispatch from the occult head of brass

Several months later than I expected, BrazenHead has signed up (well, the contract hasn’t been issued/signed, but I’m working on that) its first title:

Eat Your Heart Out

by Dayna Ingram

A breakneck tale of kick-ass, wise-ass, sexy-ass lesbians and ZOMBIES, Eat Your Heart Out opens on what promises to be another tediously annoying day at Ashbee’s Furniture Outlet. Then the strip-mall calm of Nowhere, Ohio, is shattered by the sudden, simultaneous appearance of Renni Ramirez—hyper-competent star of the beloved Rising Evil B-movie franchise—and actual ZOMBIES, leaving Ashbee’s hapless staff and Renni trapped behind an automatic door they can’t lock.

Can failed creative-writing student/apprentice store manager/eagle-eyed markswoman Devin escape the besieged furniture store to rescue her girlfriend? Will Renni’s experience slaughtering motion-captured CGI monsters save the day before the army bombs the town? Once bitten, how many zombies can a person expect to take out before succumbing to infection? Who is the mysterious Deus Ex Machina, and what is he doing with that bone saw?

All of these questions and more whisper behind the scream of the single most important thing Devin needs to know in order to survive: is Renni a top or a bottom?

Find out in November 2011.

Dayna Ingram, originally hailing from Ohio, currently relocated to the Bay Area because super-expensive rent super appeals to her, has a BA in Creative Writing from Antioch College and is currently studying for an MFA at San Francisco State University. Her work has previously appeared in the queer speculative-lit journal Collective Fallout. Eat Your Heart Out is her first book.

It doesn’t so much appear there will be two BrazenHead releases this year as I’d halfway planned. But there’s always 2012: Writers! Check the guidelines and send me your work!

Other, brazenly self-promoting newses:

New book! Somewhat prematurely, several e-book editions of The Abode of Bliss have been available for a week or so, including a Kindle version at Amazon and versions for different platforms at Smashwords. Presumably the B&N nook and Apple iPad editions will show up in due course. The print (preferred) edition should be out tomorrow. Some Amazon seller is claiming to have a used copy already—must be one of those rare, not-for-sale Advance Readers’ Copies.

I would remind you that PDF downloads of four previously published stories for Adam are freely available, should you wish to sample the book before buying: “Kindness”; “The World of Men”; “The Strait”; “Ramazan in the Gardens of Paradise.”

Story sale! “Liam and the Ordinary Boy” will appear in the Autumn issue (#10) of Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction around mid-September. The first of the Liam sequence, “Liam and the Wild Fairy,” appeared in issue #5 last summer. Who knows what will happen to the third…or the four more I have (not really) planned.

 

Story completion! The first I’ve been able to wrestle through to conclusion since “Captain of the World” in February. “Ban’s Dream of the Sea” is a secondary-world fantasy with no in-story ties to the world we know, something I don’t attempt that often—we’ll see if the editor I wrote it for thinks it works. I started four other tries at meeting the anthology’s theme, all of which died miserable deaths, but perhaps something from one of those corpses can be resurrected. Onward!

Categories
fiction football (soccer) short stories Turkey YA

praise from an unexpected quarter

Have just seen an advance review of Steve Berman’s inspirational YA anthology Speaking Out from Kirkus Reviews, notorious in book circles for brutal negativity. The one-paragraph review disappoints, not for its expected negativity (Kirkus doesn’t think much of the book) so much as errors of fact—the book has more than one transgender protagonist, Kirkus; the (slim but definite) majority of characters are female; and it’s the reviewer’s innate bias that reads most of the boys as white, not anything in the text.

Still, my pleasure in the following line is not diminished:

In Alex Jeffers’ standout “Captain of the World,” a gay, Turkish Muslim goalie fights back against both racial and sexual harassment on the soccer field.

Bold Strokes Books will release Speaking Out in September.

Categories
BrazenHead design fiction short stories The Abode of Bliss The New People

sundries

A few things going on.

Seem to be in the process of making BrazenHead’s first acquisition, a little book the choice of which may surprise some people who know me. It surprises me. More dirt when the contract is issued/signed.

Trying to complete a short story for an anthology whose editor has graciously extended the deadline for me. But I don’t know, possibly I’ve forgotten how to write short stories. Ergh.

Possible sale of a different, older story, but only have verbal commitment at this point so don’t like to post details.

Latest design project, a reissue by Bear Bones Books of Jeff Mann’s 2006 Lambda Literary Award-winning (for Gay Erotica) A History of Barbed Wire, went from determining page margins to production in an unprecedented three days. One of those days involved a fourteen-hour stint with Adobe InDesign that I should, for my health, have broken up over two or three days. I’m too exhausted to prepare screenshots for the designs page. Print edition should be available via the usual on-line booksellers within the week, e-books when the e-bookmeister can get to it.

The New People / Elegant Threat, an M-Brane SF Double by Jeffers & Bell, is out there, waiting for you to buy it. If you already have, Thanks! I’d love to know what you think.

The Abode of Bliss: ten stories for Adam by Jeffers will go to press in two weeks or so. Official publication date 1 August 2011. You should pre-order it.

Jane and Charlotte will celebrate a (courtesy) birthday this coming Thursday, along with the French Republic. They will be ten. Also my birthday. I will be mumblety-four.

 

Misses Jane Austen (front) & Charlotte Brontë (rear)
Categories
novella Rahab SF The New People

freshly hatched

All new and…well, not shiny, new and matte!

 

AX has a novella to read. Aside, that is, from the BrazenHead slushpile.

A minor note: Through some eminently forgiveable oversight, the acknowledgments I meant to append to The New People were left out. So here they are:

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Betty Harrington for a sensitive, insightful, tactful reading of the first draft.

Thanks to Christopher Fletcher for publishing this later draft, to Jeff Lund for the artwork, and to Brandon Bell for sharing the covers.

Thanks to the late Terry Carr and to Robert Silverberg who, eons ago, rightfully declined to publish the first attempt at wrestling some of these themes into submission.

Thanks especially to Ivri Lider for the music that inspired and soundtracked the work, notably the exhilarating CD Ha’anashim Ha’chadashim and the blistering singles “Rak Tevakesh” and “Hasadot Ha’adumim.”

 

Categories
design

newish designs

Hmmm. I notice I haven’t updated the designs page since March. And yet I have not been idle on that front in the intervening months. So here are five:

Several others are more or less done (Coast to Coast by François L’Erotique; my own The Abode of Bliss; Wilde Stories 2011, edited by Steve Berman; From Macho to Mariposa, edited by Charles Rice-González & Charlie Vázquez), but I shall wait to post them until they go to press.

Categories
fiction novella Rahab SF The New People

glimpsed in the wild

In its native environment, on the virtual shelves at barnesandnoble.com, the rare and elusive M-Brane Double:

Evidence of its passage has also been discovered in the Amazon basin:

And the Double has been sighted in pampered captivity, on the St Louis, MO, deck of M-Brane publisher Chris Fletcher and cover artist Jeff Lund (Jeff, let it be noted, is more elusive than the Double and is not seen here):

 

Intrepid naturalists may read Chris’s introductions to my and Brandon Bell’s novellas here (as well as order the Double direct—Chris has indicated he will keep the Special Bonus Lots of Extra M-Brane Goodies Offer open indefinitely). Brandon has a number of posts about his Elegant Threat on his own blog. I have the first chapter of The New People posted here and a page on the work’s inspirations and composition here.

What off earth are you waiting for?