Book Review: Shattered Wings by Bryan Healey

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: CreateSpace (April 29, 2011)
Pages: 249


John is confident, a bit cocky, and happy with his life. He and his lover, Charlie, are proud parents of a darling little girl. Charlie is a stay-at-home daddy while John brings home the bacon with his mid-level management position in an IT department. John is living the dream in their lovely suburban home. The only thing missing is the sheepdog.

And then an unexpected layoff shows John just how fragile a foundation his perfect life is built on. John’s search for a new job brings only emotional strain. He spirals into despair, which triggers a relapse into alcoholism, lies, and deceit. All it will take to recover his dream is a job—any job—but can he find one in this down economy before he loses everything?

I had a love/hate relationship with this novel. The story itself is simply terrific. It’s like watching a train wreck from close up, and knowing that at any moment the whole damned thing could explode, but there is nothing you can do, not even pull your eyes away. It is a gripping story, and John is a compelling character. He’s both sympathetic and pathetic at the same time, making all the wrong moves for comprehensible reasons.

This is a detailed study of a man slowly disintegrating. He keeps grasping for help, but at every turn, people turn their back on him until he is pushed beyond his endurance. It is a sad story, and bitterly real. I would love to award this tale a five-star rating, but I can’t overlook the numerous issues that annoyed me.

This story desperately needs a competent editor with a large red pen. The writing—with numerous typos, misspellings, bad punctuation, switching from past tense to present and back, and repeated phrases—make this one of the worst written books I’ve seen in print. The writing continually pulled me out of the story, and tainted an otherwise compelling read. It is the curse of self-publishing, and why I generally shy away from writers who publish their own work.

Although John’s character has significant depth, the other characters in the story have little or no depth at all. I kept wanting them to show more of themselves, but that didn’t happen. In defense of the author, this story is told by John in first person, and he is totally self absorbed through most of the story. Yet, I wanted more.

There is one other issue I’ll mention. It seems that half of the book is told in flashbacks. There is a pattern where every four or five pages the author cuts from the current storyline to give several pages of backstory. Back and forth, back and forth. My issue is that too many flashbacks kept breaking the rhythm of the current story. Normally I could overlook that, except that in this case most of these flashbacks did little or nothing to advance the storyline. They seemed to slow the story down for no reason.

My opinion is that this book is not ready for prime time. With significant editing, the rounding out of some characters and the deletion of several flashbacks, this could be a fantastic read.

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Monthly mini eBooks – Call for Submissions

I received the following note on a writting list I belong to. It's from an editor in the U.K., and I thought people could use this if you're looking to publish short stories.

Monthly mini eBooks – Call for Submissions
Editor: Barbara Cardy
barbara.cardy@yahoo.co.uk

I am putting together 3 mini eBooks every month for publisher Constable & Robinson. Each mini eBook will comprise four short erotic stories of around 2,500 words or one longer story of 5,000 words and two shorter ones of 2,500.

The three categories are:

Gay
Lesbian
Straight


The story should preferably be written in the 3rd person and should grab the reader's attention in the first few sentences and hit the ground running with a jolly good plot! I would prefer unpublished stories for the time being. Twosomes, threesomes, groups, spanking, BDSM etc are all welcome subjects.

I know what follows sounds a bit pernickety, but it really does help my time management if you could stick to it as closely as possible:

Please send me a maximum of two stories per genre – i.e. 2 Heterosexual, 2 Lesbian and 2 Gay would be fine, and each story must be in a separate email so I can divide them between email folders. In the email subject box please put either Hetero, Lesbian or Gay and attach your story as a Word document in an email. The title of the word document should be the title of your story.

Use a plain text such as Arial, Calibri or Times and no text boxes or special formatting etc. as it's a bugger to get rid of! Please start at the top of the page – no need to start half way down. Put your name, address and email address, plus word count. The title of your story should appear next along with your pseudonym (if you use one) underneath that, then start the story on this first page. I will put © 2011 against the story unless you specify otherwise. You don't need to worry about double-spacing between lines as I will only have to put it back into single spacing before I print it out. All speech needs to be in double quotation marks. I don't need your bio for these eBooks.

There are no deadlines as it is an on-going project, so submit stories when you are ready.

It would be really helpful as well if you could give me a two or three sentence teaser of what the story is about. This will be used to encourage a reader to download an eBook. If you could put this just under your pseudonym that would be a good place. Put a bit of humour in it. I have pasted here a couple that I wrote to give you an idea of the sort of thing I'm after, but I'm sure you could do much better!

THE MORNING AFTER by Jude Mason
Silly Nathan Steele thought it would be a good idea to masturbate over Ms Harden's desk. Not only that, he had the audacity to employ the use of her vibrator. Oblivious to the CCTV camera recording his every perverted desire, he is called to her office. Confronted with the evidence he is presented with two options: the police or being on the receiving end of a good whipping...

PARTY FAVOURS by Lynn Lake
Flower child, Saffron Miller, decides to organise a surprise party to celebrate her parents' 30th wedding anniversary. Calling in on her parent's various hippy friends, she finds them a very friendly bunch indeed! Seduced firstly by a husband and wife team, then by a two of her father's old football mates, will there will be red faces at the party...?


The fee is £25 for each 2,500 word story and £50 for a 5,000 word story. We are asking for non-exclusive world all-language rights so contributors are free to place their stories elsewhere. All successful contributors will be paid by either cheque or PayPal if in the UK or Paypal only for overseas writers. The Publisher will also need to have the option of releasing each story as an individual eBook, making each story available in audio form, both individually and as part of an anthology, and finally to include the story in a larger print anthology. It is not certain at this stage that any of these options will be taken, but by emailing a story to me you are consenting to any or all of these possibilities. It is far from clear at this stage if it will be possible to make much if any money from any of the options outlined above, but should we succeed, it ought to be possible to increase the fee for future stories.

I very much look forward to receiving your stories. Please email them to me at barbara.cardy @ yahoo.co.uk (remove spaces either side of the `@')

Many thanks again,

Barbara

Walking Away

For the last week I’ve not been writing. This is the first time in seven years that I’ve gone this long without working on a work in progress. And I must say, I’m experiencing all the symptoms of withdrawal. But I can’t decide whether it’s the lack of writing or the reason behind it that has my guts tied in knots.

You see, I’ve been spending my time painting and fixing up my house in order to put it on the market. Herman and I have decided to move to a warmer climate—the Palm Springs area. I’m actually quite jazzed about living in PS, but as I fix up this old house I’ve been living in for thirty years, the memories keep flooding back.

I’m finding that it’s not easy to walk away from half a life of memories. I’ve grown comfortable here. Most of the improvements to the house Herman and I installed together. We made this place our own. I hardly have any memories of the time before I first moved here. In fact, this house spans two long-term relationships for me.

But, as with most of life, there is the other side of the coin. Now that we’ve decided to move, I’m feeling anxious. I crave the change and can’t wait to be settled into a new house that I haven’t even laid eyes on yet. The human mind is a funny and fickle thing indeed.

In a few days time I’ll finish all the painting and scrubbing and repairs, and I’ll return to writing. And I’ll look forward to the time at the end of this month when we travel to Palm Springs to search for a new dream house, and a new dream. I anticipate frequent disruptions from writing for the rest of the year as we search, find, and move to a new location.

If I were a praying man, I would be on my knees asking that we are installed in our new house, our new life, by the end of this year. Not too much to ask, I’m thinking.

Book Review: QUEER: The Ultimate LGBT Guide For Teens

QUEER: The Ultimate LGBT Guide For Teens by Kathy Belge and Marke Bieschke

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Zest Books
Pages: 208

“It Gets Better” is a message that has wormed its way into mainstream media as a reaction to bullying and violence toward gay teens. And although this is a necessary message for young people who sexually identify as queer, or think they might be, there is not a lot of information out there telling them how to make it better. Until now.

This Queer 101 manual gives accessible and real-world advice, geared to teens, on a myriad of topics including:
- how to determine if you are queer, or are just curious,
- coming out to family and friends,
- navigating social situations and dating,
- standing up for your rights,
- information about safe sex,
- overcoming homophobia.

The authors, Kathy Belge and Marke Bieschke, draw from their personal experience and professional resources to present unflappable support and guidance to young people. Queer is a humorous, engaging and honest guide that can help teens understand what it means to be queer. It offers information focused on health, community, safety, political issues, and queer history. The authors back it all up with a reading resources list.

I believe this is a fabulous resource for any teen. I remember, over forty years ago, feeling that I was the only queer in my school. And if there were others, I didn’t have a clue how to find them. The feelings of loneliness, shame, and confusion often became overwhelming. I wish I could have had this little gem of compassionate intelligence to help me along that path of discovering the fabulous, perplexing, often times scary, world that is queer life.

I believe this is a must read for all teens who identify as gay/lesbian, and also for the parents of these special young people. I think this book should be taught in high schools across the country. But don’t wait for that to happen. Grab a copy or two and give them to young people and parents who can benefit.
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Print Book Sales Continue to Plummet

The information below was gathered via the Sisters in Crime listserve. I'm not so sure that the lesbian or gay publishing realm is actually represented here. I think PW tends to survey big press/NY-type publishing, but I have a hunch that the data about print books and e-books is somewhat similar. Here are the figures for the first half of 2001:
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Sales of print books dropped 10.2%.
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Mass market paperbacks took the biggest hit, decreasing 26.6%. Hardcovers lost 9.5%. Trade pb were down 6.8%.
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Adult fiction overall fell 25.7%. Adult nonfiction dropped 2.7%.
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Juvenile fiction fell 7.4% and juvenile nonfiction sunk 6.7%.
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E-book sales have continued to rise, so it's not as if the above figures indicate people are buying and reading fewer books. PW notes that "mass market paperbacks' most popular genres -- romance, mystery, and science/fantasy -- are moving rapidly to digital," which accounts in part
for the decline in print sales.
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Book Review: Harlan’s Race by Patricia Nell Warren

Reviewer: Alan Chin
Publisher: Wildcat Press
Pages: 325

Years after the shooting death of Billy Sive, Harlan Brown is faced with the arduous task of coming to terms with the loss of his lover. While trying to be a father to Billy’s son, Vince Matti (Billy’s best friend) drifts back into Harlan’s life, and the two struggle to form a troubled relationship. Each person in Harlan’s life—Billy’s son, Vince, Billy’s Father—keeps Harlan tied to his tragic past.

Then the unthinkable happens. Another shooting at another race, followed by a note from the shooter letting Harlan know that the shooter is stalking him. Harlan hires two gay, Rambo-like bodyguards, and their investigation reveals that the killer pursuing Harlan was also involved with Billy’s murder. Harlan goes into hiding, but finds himself constantly looking over his shoulder, waiting for the next bullet.

If all this weren’t bad enough for Harlan, it’s the late ‘70s and he finds that many of his friends are dying of a mysterious new disease that is affecting gay men. Caught between a tragic past that won’t let go of him and a future that holds only death and sorrow, Harlan Brown must find a way to survive the violence and challenges of changing times.

Harlan’s Race is Patricia Nell Warren’s long awaited sequel to The Front Runner.
The author mentions in the forward that she intends to write a third installment in the story featuring Falcon, Billy’s son, when he reaches his teens. Harlan’s Race is a dark bridge between Billy’s and Falcon’s stories.

This is a very dark and moody story. With Billy’s death haunting Harlan, and nothing to look forward to but the AIDS epidemic, there is little to feel good about here. The plot follows Harlan, Vince and others, as they all seem to self-destruct after Billy’s death.

Although the book is superbly written, I closed the book feeling disappointed. This is a murder mystery where the stalker/murderer is revealed at the end, and it is meant to be a shocking disclosure. I, however, figured out who the murderer was halfway through the story, so the ending fell flat for me. Not only was it flat, much of the plot felt too contrived to be believable. Although I must say that there were moments in the romantic bond between Harlan and Vince that were touching and rang true.

Although Harlan’s Race can be read without reading The Front Runner, I think that would be a mistake. Harlan’s character is well developed, but many of the supporting cast are not, and one needs to read TFR as background to these characters in order to fully appreciate the depth of this story.

I have enjoyed reading several Patricia Nell Warren books and think she is a terrific talent, but Harlan’s Race is not a book I can highly recommend. I am, however, looking forward to reading the third book in the series, Billy’s Boy.

My short story, Haji's Exile is now available

Haji’s Exile, a short story by Alan Chin

This is a bittersweet coming out tale that follows a young rancher training his new horse for a handicap race. Like many of my stories, it is a yarn of two different cultures coming together, teaching each other, supporting each other, and eventually loving each other. I originally wrote this story to be a give-a-way on my website, but then Dreamspinner Press suggested I let them publish it, and I did. You can download the entire story, thirty-three pages, at: http://tinyurl.com/3okkmlj

Blurb:
Nathan has cared for horses all his life, but Haji is the first he’ll train on his own. When the Arabian stallion arrives at the Bitter Coffee ranch, Nathan thinks he is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. And then he lays eyes on Haji’s handler, Yousef. Nathan has much to learn about horses, about pride, and about love, but with the ranch’s hopes riding on Haji, he’ll also learn that all things have their price.

Excerpt:
To an owl or an eagle or even the lark, man must seem a rather pitiful and forlorn creature; he is condemned to crawl the earth alongside only two friends. The dog and the horse are the only exceptions to man’s universal unpopularity. Man points with pride at these two contrarians and naively believes that both are equally proud to call him friend. “Look at my two companions,” says man, “they are dumb, yet loyal.” I have always maintained that they are tolerant at best, and if man didn’t feed them, they would quickly join ranks with the majority.

I have nevertheless depended on the tolerance of horses and dogs since my childhood. I believe with all my fiber that until a man has loved an animal, a large part of his soul remains unawakened. Even now at my advanced age if I were deprived of the gratification of caring for either dog or horse, I would lose all that I hold dear. I should feel as adrift as a Muslim who had lost touch with Allah.

Horses in particular have been as much a part of my history as breathing. I define every phase of my life by which horse I owned then, or ones my father owned. Some were intelligent, some valiant, while others were rogues. None were alike. Some won the big handicap races and some won the smaller unimportant races. My family’s red and blue colors have swept past grandstands from Santa Anita to Bay Meadows. Some horses my father brought from the Eastern Seaboard, where old money and long bloodlines defined the sport. But one horse my father brought all the way from North Africa.

That stallion’s name was Haji.

When he came to the Bitter Coffee ranch, I was a straw-haired boy who had recently graduated high school, with a lanky body and wide, blue eyes. He was an Arabian stallion, part royalty and part desert whirlwind. I was awed by his self-possession, and I couldn’t help wondering what he thought of me.

He arrived at daybreak, descending the ramp from a two-horse trailer with the slow and dignified steps of Bonaparte in exile. With his head held high and nostrils flaring, he breathed the thin air of the Nevada high desert for the first time. Like me, he was a bit slender in the chest, but unlike me, he had strong legs as clean as limestone.

Sword Bearer, out of Cairo, had sired him, and noble blood flowed through his arrogant veins.

He was a sorrel, and his reddish coat gave off a golden sheen in the strong morning sunlight. Once his hooves stood on solid earth, his body shivered and his lungs let out a rush of air, as if letting me know he craved the freedom of open space again after being cramped in a ship’s hold and then in that trailer for so many thousands of miles. I heard a ring of certain gratitude in his undulant murmur.

Then I laid eyes on Haji’s handler. He had made the long voyage with the horse. The dawn’s rays lent his flowing white robes and tarboosh a shimmering orange-yellow hue, and I found myself momentarily stunned with a frozen gaze. Was it the splendor of the light reflecting off his flowing gown that dazzled me, or simply that this young man would wear a dress in broad daylight? Or could it have been his face, that porcelain-smooth skin the warm color of creamed coffee, accented by pitch-black eyebrows? His coloring was similar to the Mexican ranch hands who worked for my father and yet somehow softer. Whatever the cause, my compulsively chattering mind gave pause, and I was mentally whisked into a space of pure silence, broken only by the pulse beating at my temples.

My father walked to the thoroughbred and held the animal’s head steady, gazing into those large moist eyes. It was clear to me that the horse knew men. In his three short years, he had probably been around more men than his own kind, and from the bold stare he gave my father, I sensed that Haji understood that men were there to serve him, that we were his servants.

A tremor ran through the stallion, and he grew impatient. He shook his head free of my father’s grasp, bent the sleek bow of his neck, and kicked at the ground with a hoof. I instinctively knew that it was not that my father was a stranger but that Haji didn’t trust a man who did not smell of the earth. Even though my father owned a seven thousand acre ranch, he was a businessman and spent his time in his office or traveling.

My father stepped to the handler and laid a hand on his shoulder. “You must be Yousef. Welcome to the Bitter Coffee. Nathan will show you to your quarters. Come up to the house for breakfast after you’re settled.”

“Yousef,” I repeated in my head several times as I moved forward and grasped Haji’s halter. I felt foolishly happy at how the sound of it tumbled through my head. The stallion did not flinch at my touch, and as he took in my smell, he blew a snort into my straw-colored hair to warn me he felt nervous. I laughed, a low gentle sound which seemed to set him at ease.

The handler pulled a carpetbag from the horse trailer and stood beside me. As I glanced into Yousef’s cautious eyes, I inhaled his spicy fragrance, a mixture of horse and something else I could not identify, something vaguely like toasted sugar.

I tugged at the halter and both Haji and Yousef followed, flanking me all the way to the stables where I had already prepared the stallion’s stall. Haji stared straight ahead, glancing neither to one side or the other as if he were walking alone, like abdicated royalty, and we were merely servants trailing in his wake. He must have felt forlorn in this country of different sights and smells. It would be my job to manage him, and that included making him comfortable in this new environment. I felt much pride in that. Haji was my first horse to train. All my life I had cared for horses, learning their needs and habits, but always under the guidance of the foreman until now. Because of financial hardships, my father had let the foreman go. Haji was my responsibility, and Yousef would answer to me.

I could tell the stallion found the stall to his liking. The stable harbored a dozen other horses in a long row of stalls, but Haji’s quarters were separate from the others and twice as large.

Yousef seemed equally pleased with his own quarters next to the tack room, and though he didn’t say a word, he seemed surprised that he was given a room to himself. When he slid the tarboosh from his head, I realized he was much younger than I had first thought. I now guessed he was only a few years older than me, perhaps twenty, twenty-one at the most. And right then, he looked far more beautiful than moments before and seemed in desperate need of a friend.

I told him my name: Nathan. He repeated it twice and told me his name in broken English: Yousef Ruta. I knew then that it would be my job to teach him how to speak my language, which would be no small task. With hands waving and pointing to my own pants and shirt, I indicated he should change into more suitable work clothes and join me for breakfast at the house. It took several attempts, but he finally smiled and began to pull the white robe over his head. Much as I wanted to stay and see if the rest of his skin had the same warm coloring as his face, I turned and hurried out, giving him his privacy.

Later, after Yousef had changed into working clothes which included a shirt with flaps that hung to his knees and we had feasted on flapjacks, Yousef and I returned to Haji’s stall. While Yousef separated the good straw on the floor from the straw already soiled with urine and manure, I began to brush the stallion with clean, even strokes from mane to tail. As I worked, I felt anger rising within Haji, but I was not prepared when he bent his neck around and gripped my arm above the elbow with his teeth, biting down with enough force to make me yelp before flinging me against the wall.

I crumpled to the ground and lay in the trampled bedding for a moment, looking up into Yousef’s dark eyes. A wave of shame washed through me. I scrambled to my feet and marched to the tack room, selecting a riding crop that I had never needed before now.

I approached the stallion with a brush in one hand, the crop in the other. I spoke to him in soothing tones, telling him that he might have Sword Bearer’s blood, but I had a whip and I knew how to use it.

I began to brush him again while continuing to use soothing tones. But once more, I felt his anger swell. His hooves stomped, and his head turned with teeth bared. This time, however, I was expecting him. I struck his muzzle with the whip, hard and without mercy. I think he was more startled by the act than by the pain. The alchemy of his pride transformed the pain to rage that must have blinded him. He tried to bite again, and I struck his soft muzzle with all the force I could muster. He tried to whirl away from me but Yousef jumped to help and we held him firm. He reared upward, cutting the air with his hooves. Plunging, he felt my crop bite his muzzle again and again.

At that point, Yousef pushed me back toward the far wall and began to sooth the horse with caressing hands. The stallion slowly calmed under his touch.

When Haji became composed, Yousef lifted my brush from where it had fallen and began to brush Haji’s withers with a kind of intimate knowledge of how this horse wanted to be treated: that is, without any sense of possession.

I felt the sting of resentment, but then, more slowly, comprehension took its place.

Yousef waved me over. With he on one side of Haji and me on the other, I mimicked his strokes with my bare hands. The horse now accepted the soothing touch of my hands. Across the horse’s back, Yousef smiled at me in a way that made my stomach do a slow somersault.