Category: Lethe Press

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another

Belatedly (the book was originally scheduled for this past November), I’ve been informed the second of three stories I wrote last year has found its first home. “Ban’s Dream of the Sea,” a story I like better today than I did when I wrote it, will appear in Steve Berman’s anthology of marine fantasies The Touch of the Sea in July. I look forward to sharing a table of contents for the first time with my friend Damon Shaw (whom I told to submit, hah, many moons ago)…and the other contributors as well, of course, but Damon’s the only one I know about just yet.

I don’t off hand know the name of the cover artist (it’s possibly buried in my e-mail inbox), but layout and typography are mine. As will be the interior design.

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two things

A nice review of Dayna Ingram’s Eat Your Heart Out, the first release from BrazenHead (exceptional novellas of queer speculative fiction), posted two days ago on the Edge Media network:

Despite sounding like clichéd fanfiction written by a horny devotee, “Eat Your Heart Out” is tender yet ruthlessly gruesome.

Front cover design for Wilde Stories 2012, forthcoming in June from Lethe Press and including my short story “The Arab’s Prayer.” Concept: Steve Berman. Artwork: Ben Baldwin. Layout/typography: Alex Jeffers.

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best of the year?

Oh, unlikely. But still a flattery: my bite-size science fiction story of the very near future, “The Arab’s Prayer” (M-Brane SF #24, January 2011), has been selected for reprint in Steve Berman’s Wilde Stories 2012: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction. A book I will most likely copyedit, design, and lay out. Meta or what?

I will take the opportunity, as I do just about every time I mention “The Arab’s Prayer,” to embed the video for Israeli pop star Yehonathan’s anthemic “Waiting for You (Tel-Aviv),” which provided both inspiration and soundtrack.

 

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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!

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fiction Lethe Press SF short stories The Abode of Bliss Turkey

divers notes

Multiple Lambda Award-winning writer Michael Thomas Ford—most notorious, perhaps, for the essay collection Alec Baldwin Doesn’t Love Me and its sequels and the multi-volume Jane Austen-as-vampire spectacular commencing with Jane Bites Back, but treasured as well for many other books of fiction and non-fiction for adults and young people—has this to say about The Abode of Bliss:

Waiting fifteen years to read something new from Alex Jeffers was well worth it. This collection is a treasure chest of perfectly-polished gems, each one radiating an inner beauty brought out by evocative prose, rich characterizations, and a strong sense of place. A rare treat indeed, it is over all too soon and leaves you longing for more.

Can anybody see how hard I’m blushing?

Advance Reader’s Copies (ARCs) of Abode are beginning to be distributed. Maybe I’ll hold a competition to give one away to an adoring fan? Don’t all comment at once!

M-Brane SF Quarterly #2, the print compendium of issues 22 (November 2010), 23 (December), and 24 (January 2011) of the e-zine M-Brane SF, is now available, featuring some additional material not seen in the monthly e-issues. Now you can own your very own hard copy of my short science-fiction story “The Arab’s Prayer” from 24.

Elisa Rolle, a major opinion setter in the fascinating and occasionally terrifying (to gay male writers) world of M/M fiction, has posted a flattering (if slightly bewildered) review of Do You Remember Tulum?, for which I am grateful.

Those blushes may actually be fever. I have a miserable cold and must go back to bed with a posset or something. Whiskey, maybe.

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design news & reading recco

Jesse Bullington, author of The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart and The Enterprise of Death, has written a perceptive and complimentary review of Livia Llewellyn’s Engines of Desire for on-line ’zine Innsmouth Free Press. I’m particularly chuffed that Jesse begins his review with a shout-out to the fantastic imagery of cover photographer Katharina Fösel and to my interior design. Engines is about my favorite of the books I’ve produced in the last six months—vicious, haunting, erotic,  beautifully written—even though I’m not ordinarily a fan of horror stories. I urge you to buy it yourself or petition your local public library to add it to the collection.


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fiction Lethe Press short stories The Abode of Bliss Turkey

march writing update 2

It has been confirmed. This coming August, Lethe Press will issue The Abode of Bliss: ten stories for Adam, a book I wrote a very long time ago. The back-cover précis:

Explaining himself to himself and to the man he loves, Ziya tells Adam the stories of his life:

A bilingual childhood and youth in cosmopolitan İstanbul, city of the world’s desire, and the Aegean resort of Bodrum. A bewildering trip by ship and train and jet across Europe and the Atlantic to college in America, that strange and terrifying country. Friendships, passionate affairs, one-night stands, rape—a richly dissatisfying erotic education. A wedding, a death, an act of inexplicable violence—a meeting.

Intricate as Ottoman miniatures, Ziya’s stories reveal a world unsuspected: the world we live in.

Four of the ten stories have been published previously: “The World of Men”  in 1996; “The Strait” in 1998; “Kindness” in 1999; “Ramazan in the Gardens of Paradise” in 2002. PDF copies are available for download on the stories page. Cover and interior samples to be posted when finalized.

At some point, I will get back to work on The Gate of Felicity: ten stories for Ziya, the companion volume.

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More Design News

My second book design of 2011 has gone to press: Crossing and Other Plays by C.E. Gatchalian.

In process for Lethe Press’s Tincture imprint, Blame It on the Raging Hormones, a novel by Nathan Goh, coming in February.

Coming from Lethe in March, the latest title from legendary writer of homoerotic historical fiction Erastes, Mere Mortals, a Victorian novel set in the bleak landscape of the Norfolk Broads. Evocative cover art by Ben Baldwin, who also did the art for Wayne Courtois’s Tales My Body Told Me.

Also in March (finally), Lethe will issue Lee Thomas’s The German, Livia Llewellyn’s Engines of Desire, and Ed Madden’s Prodigal: Variations. The last doesn’t have a page here yet as the cover hasn’t been finalized although the interior is done. Due in February, On My Ro(a)d {retitled Coast to Coast as of 4 February} by François L’Érotique from Lethe and Slant by Timothy Wang from Tincture, but I haven’t received the MSs yet.

Arriving on my desk in the next weeks, books from two new clients, Chelsea Station Editions and Signal 8 Press. I shall have to remember to keep my design-diva outbursts to a minimum.

Meanwhile, I am trying very hard to complete a draft of at least one of three stories in progress before the end of January. And waiting patiently for submissions to BrazenHead. Hmmph.

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New Design

First design of the new year: Wonder, a novel by Dan Boyle, now available from Lethe Press.

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Happy New Year

I was pleased to learn, on the evening of the last day of the old year, that a little story I wrote last fall has been accepted for publication—another excuse to pop open the bubbly! “The Arab’s Prayer” will appear electronically in the second-anniversary issue of Christopher Fletcher’s ’zine M-Brane SF (#24), due around the third week of January, and, in print, in M-Brane SF Quarterly #2.

“The Arab’s Prayer” is near-future science fiction, set in Tel-Aviv in the year 2020, and was indirectly inspired by the video for gay Israeli singer Yehonathan’s anthemic “Waiting for you (Tel-Aviv).”

And as you recover from primal debauchery, keep in mind that the first reading period for BrazenHead, my boutique imprint at Lethe Press, opens one minute past midnight, Eastern time. Click the logo on the lower left of the front page or the last item on the navigation menu above for details and writer’s guidelines.