Thank you to Benito and Zahrawithaz!

Blogger Benito Corral (on DirtySexyBenny) had lovely things to say about Sea, Swallow Me.

Blogger Zahrawithaz graciously included Sea, Swallow Me in the list of More than 50 books by Queer POC.

New review of Best Gay Stories

Richard Lablonte had this this say about Best Gay Stories:

Think of this annual series, now in year two, as a starter kit for readers of gay writing, fiction and otherwise, who might not otherwisehave access to the sources from which Berman culled 18 stories. Some are erotic, some are literary, some are romantic, some dabble with fantasy, some tackle coming out – a perennial of queer storytelling. There aren’t any duds, but highlights include Sam J. Miller’s on-target tale about racial insensitivity, “Haunting Your House”; Trebor Healey’s elegiac account of a young man memorializing hislover’s death; Christopher Schmidt’s trilogy of short-shorts observing queer life, “Three Scenes”; Craig Laurance Gidney’s recasting of French poet and libertine Arthur Rimbaud, “Strange Alphabets; and David Levithan’s charming account of a teen’s babysitting adventure and his encounter with “Starbucks Boy.” Anthologies promising the “Best” are entirely subjective; for every story included there are certainly three or four just as good that don’t make the cut. But Berman – founder and publisher of Lethe Press – has a good eye for queer prose, as this quality compilation attests.

Bibliophile Stalker (aka Charles Tan) interviewed both publisher Steve Berman and myself about Lethe Press.

Best Gay Stories 2009

Author Tom Cardamone gave a terrific review of Sea, Swallow Me on Amazon.com. In his words:

Anyone who caught Kara Walker’s retrospective at the Whitney was immediately challenged to think about race and art. Her surreal silhouettes carved meaning out of every room. Regardless if the viewer came away with a positive or negative impression, it was obvious that existing concepts had been broken, challenged, expanded and, as someone who was blown away by the show, I would add rightfully so. I discovered the same powerful intonations within Craig Gidney’s collection, Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories.
In the opening tale, The Safety of Thorns, the trappings of the plantation meld into the realm of myth and discovery with strong poetic imagery, yet the characters rise from up off the page with a stark realism. A slave boy is given a powerful elixir by a devil, but still has to find the strength he needs to grapple with reality from within. Equally impressive stories follow. It would be easy for the casual reader/reviewer to exclaim delight at discovering a gay black writer introducing gay black characters into the otherwise lamely heterosexual elf-white worlds of fantasy, but I found the author’s pallet much more assured than that; like Walker, his art is not only arresting, subversive and naturally erotic, it stretches boundaries and genuinely puts the speculative back in speculative fiction. Importantly, the stories are as engaging as challenging; no one will close the book thinking they’ve been slipped a thesis a’ la latter-day Delany.
The three best stories, the aforementioned The Safety of Thorns, the titular Sea, Swallow Me, and A Bird of Ice, respectively open, support the middle, and (nearly) close the book. Sea, Swallow Me allows the reader to swim within some spectacular writing and nearly drown in a feeling of otherness. A Bird of Ice takes place within the snowy confines of an ancient Japanese monastery. A young monk is courted by a member of the fairy folk and ends up confronting much more than the homoerotic awakenings of adolescence. Not that the remaining stories are by any means filler. The few pieces I suspected of being early work still possessed all of the strengths exhibited in the best work. All offered a diversity of setting and theme, making the book one of constant exploration. In fact, when not paying close enough attention while reading the story Strange Alphabets, I thought I’d caught the author making that obnoxious freshman blunder of naming a character after a beloved writer: Rimbaud. I was genuinely thrilled to realize my mistake as the story concerns the train-bound sexual (and quite sticky at that) adventures of the actual poet, a nice historical twist, which, like the exceptionally short Magpie Sisters, keeps the book off-balance. Meaning it surprises. This is not your comfortable Renaissance Fair of modern fantasy and that’s a good thing. Hell, it’s startlingly refreshing.
Fantasy is seriously lacking in gay fiction written by gay men. Funny, that in writing this review I was initially hesitant to bring up race, for fear that by implication I would give potential readers the impression that in some way the polemic (as if that’s somehow inherent to discussions of equality) shapes or invades these stories. Not so. The artist Kara Walker deftly works in black and white with obvious, evocative success. Craig Gidney wields a vivid rainbow of promise.

A quick note: Cardamone’s forthcoming book of speculative fiction, Pumpkin Teeth, is simply brilliant. I highly recommend it!

Finally, one of my pieces, Strange Alphabets, will be featured in the forthcoming Best Gay Stories 2009, ed. Steve Berman.

Literary Magpie

The blog Literary Magpie gave a fabulous review of Sea, Swallow Me.

Black Jesus on Velvet

You may read my prose poem/flash fiction piece Black Jesus on Velvet.

Dennis Cooper Inteview

I had the honor of interviewing the author Dennis Cooper for the website The New Gay.  You can read it here.

Ashe Journal reviews Sea, Swallow Me

Ashe Journal of Experimental Spirituality has some wonderful things to say about Sea, Swallow Me.  You can read the review here.

Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction

Lethe Press (where I work) has just released the debut issue of Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction. It’s a pretty handsome looking magazine. The designer Toby Johnson did a smashing layout job, and editor-in-chief Steve Berman assembled some great content, including fiction by the brilliant Joel D. Lane, an essay on the cult TV show Dark Shadows, and reviews. But don’t take my word for it: check it out here.

Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction

Weird Tales

My reviews of three novels will be featured in the next issue of Weird Tales 353:

Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

Tanith Lee, Tempting the Gods: Selected Stories

Catherynne M. Valente, Palimpsest