Palm Springs Pride Book Signing

Had a wonderful weekend in Palm Springs. My husband, Herman, and I drove down for the Pride parade and festival in the desert city. The weather was hot, which meant the men were wearing as little as possible. The gays and lesbians had virtually taken over the town, and the place was jumping.

I spent two days sitting at a long table with several other gay authors, all of us signing books while watching the colorful crowd stroll by. I had the opportunity to meet several charming people and even sold a few books.

The signing was organized by Rick, the owner of The Q Trading Co., the local gay bookstore in Palm Springs. Rick was utterly delightful, as were all the other authors. Most of the authors were local men, but one, Kage Alan, flew in from Detroit.

Kage and I have the same publisher and he and I have exchanged many emails over the past year, but this was our first face to face. Kage writes gay comedy, and true to form, he had me laughing all day on Saturday. We sat together and talked up a storm. It was too much fun. In fact, the next day we had to sit apart so that we paid more attention to selling books rather than having a good time.

On Sunday I sat next to Aiden Shaw, a porn star turned writer. He was outselling everyone else put together and had a line of people waiting. He not only signed books, I watched him sign a woman’s breast, and also an adoring fan’s butt. At one point he told me that he wasn’t much of a writer, but he had a big dick, so that made him popular with the older gay crowd.

I also got a chance to talk with Patricia Nell Warren, author of The Front Runner, who approached me to see how my book was selling. She is a grandmotherly sweetheart who you would expect to be handing out cookies to the children. I asked her if she would consider doing an interview for my Examiner.com LGBT Literature column, and she instantly agreed without batting an eye. So be sure to look for that in the coming weeks.

All in all, the PS Pride is an event I hope to return to year after year.

Book Review: The Golden Age of Gay Fiction Edited by Drewey Wayne Gunn

I recently had the huge pleasure of reading the book, The Golden Age of Gay Fiction Edited by Drewey Wayne Gunn. It's a compilation of 22 essays written by 19 different writers, recounting the early days of gay literature, from as early as the 1940s to the beginning of the AIDS crises in the 1980s.

I enjoyed these informative essays and feel that anyone who is interested in gay literature will enjoy them as well.

You can read my review at: http://tinyurl.com/yecldf8

Enjoy

Interview: Thomas Glave, author of The Torturer’s Wife

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege to read and review a collection of short stories by noted author, Thomas Glave, called The Torturer’s Wife. I was so enthralled by the depth and poetry of these remarkable, dark, stories that I tracked down the author and asked him to do an interview with me. He graciously agreed. You can read the entire interview by this truly remarkable writer at: http://tinyurl.com/ylfq4uj

Enjoy

I'm MIA While Proofing My Galley

If you've been check my blog the last week you will have noticed a decided lack of activity. I've been MIA. That's because I finally received the galley for my second novel, The Lonely War, and it's my job to crawl through it and proof-edit it one last time before it goes to publication.

That's what I've been doing -- reading, very carefully, my novel. Hopefully, I will be done tomorrow, and that means that the book could show up on Amazon within the next two weeks, depending on how long my publisher takes to incorporate the edits.

So this holiday season, I'm given everyone a chance to give a gift that has never been given to anyone before, a great read called, The Lonely War. This is a complicated love story that is set within a WWII Japanese POW camp. The POW camp was real, as were many of the situations that occur in the novel. Can't wait to have people read this one.

Two more reviews to share

Hi Everyone,

Wanted to share two more reviews that came my way this week. Victor Banis has begun sending his book reviews to post on my Examiner.com LGBT Literature column, and he's sent me a couple of winners this week.

MURDER ON CAMAC by Joseph R.G. DeMarco. A gay murder mystery.

Hidden Conflict: Tales From Voices Lost in Battle. An anthology of four gay novellas set in war.

So if you're looking for something to read, take a minute and check them both out at: http://tinyurl.com/d54rtd

Cheers

Book Review: The Torturer’s Wife by Thomas Glave

There are nine stories in this collection. The title story, perhaps the most striking, is the dark portrait of the wife of a prison camp commandant, who oversees the torture of political prisoners. She is haunted by the atrocities committed under her husband’s orders. In a slow and convincing way, she looses her sanity. She dreams of the mutilated bodies calling to her, sees severed body parts raining down from the sky, hears the agonizing shrieks. As her sanity finally crumbles, she decides on a heart-wrenching atonement. The reader never really meets the husband, and we never find out his name. He is always referred to as He, or Him, always capitalized, as if the author were talking of God. In fact, I took that to mean that the author was making a statement of why He (God) allows the atrocities to exist at all. And in the end, the wife attempts to kill Him (God) for the horror he allows. To this reader, it is a deep and compelling statement about war, religion, God.

Other stories in this marvelous collection are equally as deep, and equally as dark. “Between” delves into the profound ambivalence at the heart of an interracial couple barreling towards disaster. It is a study of men caught within the barriers of racial and class differences, while at the same time making sensual discoveries. “South Beach, 1992” explores the intensely-felt moments between two men as they discover they are HIV+. “The Blue Globes” tells the sad tale of two men, lovers since boyhood, who marry women and live as society deems, only meeting occasionally to celebrate their love via sensuality.

All these stories explore problems in relationships between man and God, between lovers, between couples and society. They are expertly painted portraits of the traumas of war, the devastation of homophobia, and the triumph of desire. They are dark, gripping, honest tales.

Glave’s prose is vibrant, and immediate. It carries the reader along as it delves deep into the grim places of the human mind. There are times when his prose seems to drag on too long, as if the reader wants to hurry beyond these stark images, but the author will not hurry, will not let the reader ignore the images and feelings his words create.

This is not a book for the faint of heart, or someone looking for simply an entertaining read. They are disturbing images, graphic, yet fascinating. As if one were looking at a train wreck. Putting this book down, I felt I will go back at some point soon and reread, in order to more fully understand and appreciate this beautiful and intriguing look at post-postmodern war fiction.

For information about this book, check out www.citylights.com

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Don't miss Rob Rosen's San Francisco book signings.

Rob Rosen, author of the new novel ‘Divas Las Vegas’ will be attending two books signings in San Francisco this month.

- 10/22/2009 Books Inc 2275 Market St, San Francisco, CA 19:30:00 415-864-6777 Amadeus amartin@booksinc.net

- 10/29/2009 A Different Light Bookstore SF 19:30:00 (415) 431-0891 Oscar Reymundo adlsfevents@gmail.com

What happens when you find out that Grandma's vase mistakenly sold at a yard sale is worth tens of thousands of dollars—and somebody else is about to cash in on it on Antiques Roadshow? Of course, you hop on a plane with your best friend and race off to Las Vegas to get Grandma's vase back! Filled with action and suspense, hunky blackjack dealers, divine drag queens, and sex in strange places, plus a Federal agent or two, Divas Las Vegas puts the sin in Sin City. A fun, new take on the murder mystery genre, Rob Rosen's Divas Las Vegas is a hilarious, touching, and compulsively readable page-turner!

ROB ROSEN is the author of Sparkle: The Queerest Book You'll Ever Love and has contributed to over sixty anthologies including Cleis Press's Truckers, Best Gay Romance, Best Gay Romance 2008, Best Gay Romance 2009, Best Gay Erotica 2009, Hard Hats, Backdraft, Surfer Boys, and Bears. His erotica is often found in MEN and Freshmen magazines. He has a popular website, therobrosen.com, and resides in San Francisco with his husband, Kenny.