New Release:
The Plain of Bitter Honey by Alan Chin
Published by
Bold Strokes Books
Bold Strokes Books released my latest novel,
The Plain of Bitter Honey, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. This story
represents a dramatic turn in my writing. It is a futuristic story of two
brothers, one straight and one gay, who battle a corrupt government and each
other. This is not a gay romance, although several characters are gay. This is
a tale of survival, of devotion, of finding deliverance and atonement.
This novel has was released only a few days
ago, yet it has already received four Five-Star reviews.
Blurb:
Twins
Aaron and Hayden Swann are fighting a corrupt government taken over by ultra right-wing
Fundamentalist Christians in 2055 America. Each brother fights in his own way,
Aaron with bullets, Hayden with words. Then one night their world is turned
upside down when they are caught in a government sting and they must both flee
north into the badlands between San Francisco and Canada, where the only safe
haven is a place called The Plain of Bitter Honey, a refuge where heads of the
Resistance operate. But the brothers don’t know that government agents are
tracking them to the hiding place of the Resistance. Can they find the inner
strength to survive?
Excerpt:
At last,
Aaron opened his eyes to find himself staring into eyes that were disturbing in
their clarity. Those eyes bored into his; they seemed to dissolve all questions
and all answers within their depth. They were the eyes of a man watching the
trajectory of a stag leaping off a cliff, with more amusement than horror, but
at the same time expressing sympathy for the stag.
“I’m sorry that I’ve put
you in danger,” Aaron said. “I’ll never do it again. Packs?”
“Because you’ll give up these underground activities?”
“Because I’ll keep this shit far away from you.”
“Okay, packs.” Hayden hooked his little finger through Aaron’s and
gave it a tug. He leaned forward and kissed Aaron on the lips—a loving, sensual
kiss. Aaron didn’t resist. Considering
our circumstances, Aaron thought, this
might prove to be our last chance to show affection.
Hayden
pulled back. “No matter what, I love you.”
“I know.”
“Yes, but I wanted to say it out loud, just
once.”
Hayden
squeezed Aaron’s hands with icy fingers. “What about this Julian fellow. Does
he make you happy?” Aaron asked, already knowing the answer.
“Brother,
have you forgotten the last chorus of Oedipus: Call no man happy until he is
dead.”
Aaron
nodded. “You writers are so full of shit.”
They kissed
again before Aaron led his brother back into the living room. All eyes turned
toward them.
“Listen up,
people,” Aaron said. “It’s time for a hasty retreat. We’ll go over the roof in
pairs, three minutes apart. Hopefully they’re not watching the alley. Stubbs,
you take Maggie. Hayden, you and Julian can leave the way you came, but you’d
better hurry.
We’ll meet
up at the safe house in the Castro in three days time.”
Stubbs and
Maggie checked their handguns; both clicked their safety off.
The Armenian
hissed, “Van coming. Looks like Marwick’s.”
Aaron rushed
to the window. A black van was too far down the hill to identify. He’s guessing, Aaron thought. He
snatched the binoculars and waited. Seconds ticked by like months until the van
moved close enough for him to check the license plate. His heart fell. He
turned back to the room to see Stubbs and Maggie still standing at the doorway.
“Go dammit;
go now.”
Stubbs took
Maggie by the arm. They disappeared into the hallway.
“Hayden,
Julian, change of plans,” Aaron said. “You both go over the roof.”
Aaron dashed
to Hayden, pulled a Glock from his belt and held it out. “Things might get
dicey. Take this.”
Hayden shook
his head.
They glared
at each other, and Aaron saw the emotions churning behind his brother’s eyes.
“Shit,”
Aaron hissed, returning to the window. He dropped the Glock beside the mirror
and his wallet. As he picked up the binoculars he wiped the sweat from his
forehead before training the binoculars down the hill.
The van
chugged up the street. When it reached the end of the block, the two Homeland
HumVee-Xs dashed out of hiding, again, to block the road. The van stopped as
four uniformed men jumped out of their vehicles. Two officers converged on the
driver’s door, one barking orders and the other standing off with his gun
drawn. The other two sauntered around the van, their M4s held at the ready. One
officer walked to the driver’s door and shined a flashlight on the driver, no doubt
asking to see I.D. cards. The driver’s window slid down; red flashes burst and
shots rang out. The van sped backward, spraying more shots. From the rooftops
on both sides of the street, spotlights sprang to life, casting theatrical
beams on the van. Machinegun fire cut the air, pelting the van with red tracers
from above.
There was no
way to help them. Aaron waved at his team still standing in his living room.
“Everybody! Go now, over the roof! GO!”
They all
rushed out the doorway, except Hayden.
“Aren’t you
coming?” Hayden asked.
“I’m right
behind you.”
“Brother,
I’m simple, not stupid.”
“Look,
dammit, they’ll be here any second. Now go. Hurry!”
A crashing
sound yanked Aaron’s head back to the window. The van spun out of control,
smashed into a parked car, and flipped on its side. Bullets peppered the van
for another half-minute. The noise sounded like a twelve-foot string of
firecrackers. Then it stopped, leaving a stunned hush. No sign of life
registered within the van. Two officers lay on the street, motionless. Smoke
rose through the beams of spotlights, a shifting pall between the borders of
light.
Suddenly,
another noise cut the silence—the throaty growl of an engine starting below
Aaron’s window. Aaron glanced down to see a man straddling his brother’s
motorcycle. The lean figure and dreadlocks were unmistakable. Hayden gunned the
engine to get everyone’s attention. The spotlights turned on him. He revved it
once more and flew up the street in the opposite direction.
“What the…?”
Aaron whispered to an empty room. On a hunch, he glanced at the coffee table,
and his heart imploded. His brown wallet, which held his I.D. card, was
missing. In its place was Hayden’s calf-skin wallet.
The screech
of tires whipped Aaron’s head back to the street. Two HumVee-Xs now blocked
Hayden’s exit. Uniformed men leaped from the vehicles with rifles drawn.
Hayden slid
into a tight turn and gunned the engine, rocketing him the opposite direction.
He bent low over the handlebars. But now he was barricaded in from both sides
of the block. Hayden came to a dead stop in the middle of the block. The
searchlights zeroed in on him, yellow and brilliant, catching him like Bambi in
the headlights. Someone shouted in a throaty voice. Two officers on each side
of the block dropped to one knee and raised their M4s to a firing position.
It appeared
to be a stalemate.
Aaron knew
his brother was drawing all the attention on himself to give Aaron a clean
getaway, but before he could move the front door burst inward. Officers rushed
in with weapons held at the ready.
“Freeze,
motherfucker!”
The
apartment lights were still off, but the glow of the spotlights outside, like
artificial moonlight, filled the room. Aaron could see them clearly, five rifle
laser-beams aimed at his chest. He slowly raised his hands.
Two of them
held their weapons on him while the others searched the apartment.
Aaron didn’t
hear the car as it pulled to the curb below his window, but he did hear the
double thud of an expensive car door opening and closing, and the quick
footsteps coming up the stairs. A man—designer-dressed in a black,
double-breasted suit, hand-stitched cowboy boots, and a cartoonishly large,
silver cross at his throat—strolled through the doorway and moved toward Aaron.
Emblazoned on this lapel was the insignia of the Christian States of America,
the red circle encompassing white stars and a blue cross, which never failed to
turn Aaron’s stomach. The man’s Ray-Ban sunglasses riveted on Aaron, moving up
and down as if he were measuring him for a coffin.
“Aaron
Swann?” he demanded.
Aaron
recognized his sleek and undertaker-pale features: Deputy-Chief Whitehall, head
of Homeland Operations for the Western Division, and junior member of the Holy
Council. Maggie had assembled a dossier on Whitehall with his photograph on the
inside cover and details of his meteoric rise to power. So, Aaron thought, the big dogs
are here. That’s a very bad sign. Rumor had it that Whitehall always came
in on huge successes. His forty-year-old face was scrubbed, shining and as
animated as a Broadway actor. He pushed his shades up to rest in his
platinum-colored hair. His eyes glowed with excitement, and his voice resonated
a confident chill.
“No,” Aaron
managed to say, having no idea of how he would pull off the bluff.
“Very
slowly, show me your I.D. card.”
That’s when
it hit him. He swallowed. “In my wallet, there on the coffee table.”
Whitehall
picked up the wallet, removed Hayden’s I.D. card, and scrutinized the picture
and the information it held. A flashlight illuminated Aaron’s face; he couldn’t
see anything.
“You’re
Hayden Swann?”
Aaron
swallowed again. He had religiously lived by the motto of ‘look out for #1,’
but his brother was the sole exception to that rule. They were two halves of
the same person, linked by an indefinable force. The decision seemed to flicker
before Aaron like a candle-flame held close to his eyes, and in spite of the
fact that he knew he was putting a noose around his brother’s neck, he
whispered, “Yessir.”
A silence
followed, as if he had caught Whitehall off balance, which was surprising that
anything could do that. Whitehall had a reputation of being the rock on which
his church was built.
“Am I led to
believe that that would be your brother, Aaron, on the motorcycle?”
Alerted by
his use of the passive voice, Aaron hesitated. He felt a cold drop of sweat
slide from under his armpit and meandered down his flank. He closed his eyes.
“Not to
worry,” Whitehall said, “Jesus protects us all.”
Aaron opened
his eyes, blinked twice. Had he heard right? The silver cross ticked at
Whitehall’s throat as he swallowed.
“Yes,” Aaron
said.
“Where are
the others?”
“What
others?”
“Stubbs,
Maggie, The Armenian? And your boyfriend, Julian Stoller?”
Aaron
supposed he should have been surprised that Whitehall knew them all by name,
even the fact that he knew Hayden’s boyfriend’s name when Aaron had only
learned minutes ago, but he wasn’t. Whitehall and his team had obviously had
them in their sights for some time.
Whitehall
used his flashlight to illuminate the Glock sitting beside the cocaine. He
seemed on the verge of saying something else, but changed his mind. He flipped
open his communicator and barked a coded order Aaron didn’t understand.
At that
moment a shot rang out in the street. Aaron half-turned to see his brother jerk
forward. The officers were firing quite carefully. The second shot thrust
Hayden backward. But he still moved, still straddled the bike. He gunned the
engine and the bike leaped forward as officers fired more rounds. Hayden sagged
over the handlebars. The motorcycle went down, sliding before an array of
sparks.
When Hayden
tumbled to a halt, the spotlights bore down on him again. His body lay
motionless in the cheap yellow light. Aaron’s insides felt like a windowpane
that had shattered, and through the shards of what had once been his life—his
orthodoxy—he mumbled a bewildering cry.
For Hayden’s
sake, Aaron prayed to God that his brother was dead.
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