The Inside Reader: Kirby Crow
Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends - Silas Weir Mitchell
I still remember when I first saw a book by Kirby Crow, it was Scarlet and the White Wolf and that pretty cover was like a jewel among all those other photoshopped ones. It was so pretty that I bought book 1 and 2 at the same moment, even if they were Fantasy and Fantasy is not exactly my genre. And I soon found out that Kirby Crow is a teaser! For all book 1 she made me eagerly wait for one kiss, and for all book 2 for a bit of action between Scarlet and his big White Wolf. But you know what? I read a very long fantasy without even realizing it, I arrived at the last page and I thought, "no, not yet! I don't want for it to be already at the end!". So yes, I think Kirby is a teaser but also a very strategic plot planner. Kirby is not even usual in her Inside Reader List, she asked me if it was all right to post "only" 3 books (usual authors tell me 10 is a too limiting binding...), but since she was very generous with her motivations, I of course told her that it was all right.
Kirby Crow's Inside Reader List:
This article took me a while to get to because, well, I was confused. I wanted it to be more than a “Here are some books I like, yay!” piece, and yet I didn’t want to analyze the books or pick them apart. Also, I didn’t have time to choose 10 books and write about them, but I did find time for 3. I decided to talk about the novels that contained the one element I enjoy the most in any book, any genre, no matter what: Romance! The musty, yellowed stack of stapled, pulp-paper magazines featuring prison sex and gay bathhouse gangbangs I found as a teenager (my initiation into gay fiction, alas) had little romance in them. I wish I could list those magazines (so I could find them again, if nothing else!) but I’m positive their titles are as lost to me as their flimsy newsprint is to the world.
I chose three GLBT novels that struck me as standing out from the crowd because of their widespread acceptance into their respective genres of horror, fantasy, and literary mainstream. They are not simply books that contain gay characters; they’re books that readers refer to properly by their genres, as well as the added virtue of a gay romance in the pages.
1) DRAWING BLOOD by Poppy Z. Brite. This is one of the first books to catch my attention as being solidly inside the horror genre and also containing a gay romance. First and foremost, Drawing Blood is spooky. Comic artist Trevor McGee and his fugitive lover Zach meet and fall in love in Missing Mile, North Carolina, where Trevor has returned to confront the memories of his murdered family and deal with the tormented shades -including his own- left residing in the lonely little murder house on Violin Road. So much about this book is iconic of the times and frozen there forever, and yet much more is timeless: being broken early in life, being lost and searching, of the definition of family, and of looking inside rather than out for your own meaning to life. Drawing Blood is for readers who want something a bit darker and more thoughtful, and the angst-filled, youthful relationship between Zack and Trevor is both piquant and profound. Because people tell me I should, I’ll warn you about Poppy Z. Brite’s graphic and sometimes gruesome level of detail, but you will like this book.
Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Dell; 6th THUS edition (October 1, 1994)
Publisher Link: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780440214922
ISBN-10: 0440214920
ISBN-13: 978-0440214922
Amazon: Drawing Blood
Escaping from his North Carolina home after his father murders their family and commits suicide, Trevor McGee returns to confront the past, and finds himself haunted by the same demons that drove his father to insanity.
2) LUCK IN THE SHADOWS by Lynn Flewelling. There is a story to why I like this book. I don’t want to get bogged down in details, but let’s just say I had a finished manuscript on one side, and a very knowledgeable literary agent who I respected on the other, and he was telling me I had to rewrite my manuscript and completely discard the gay lovers within if I ever wanted to sell it. And then, I found out about Nightrunner.
Handsome young noble Seregil and handsome young peasant Alec meet by chance and set off on a perilous adventure. At least, that’s the simplest explanation, but the myth cycle of the hero’s journey and epic quest is played out in the Nightrunner series on a grand scale. So grand, in fact, that you might forget that one of the main appeals to die-hard Nightrunner fans is that Alec and Seregil eventually fall in love. “Luck in the Shadows” is solid, enjoyable epic fantasy with engaging heroes and a relationship that romance lovers can become invested in. It doesn’t hurt that Flewelling’s prose style is pretty awesome either. She writes description and dialogue in a colorful and vivid way without once slipping into purple territory. This is one of the novels that inspired me simply by being on bookstore shelves. I’ve always loved fantasy, but Nightrunner was the first time I had seen a fantasy novel where the romantic element was exclusively between two men, and yet it garnered the same respect among its peers as any other fantasy novel. Authors have done this before Flewelling and they will do it after, but this is the story that convinced me I didn’t have to give in and begin writing heteronormative relationships if I wanted to be taken seriously. Thank you, Lynn!
Mass Market Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Spectra; 10th THUS edition (August 1, 1996)
ISBN-10: 0553575422
ISBN-13: 978-0553575422
Amazon: Luck in the Shadows (Nightrunner, Vol. 1)
"A new star is rising in the fantasy firmament...teems with magic and spine-chilling amounts of skullduggery."-Dave Duncan, author of The Great Game. When young Alec of Kerry is taken prisoner for a crime he didn’t commit, he is certain that his life is at an end. But one thing he never expected was his cellmate. Spy, rogue, thief, and noble, Seregil of Rhiminee is many things-none of them predictable. And when he offers to take on Alec as his apprentice, things may never be the same for either of them. Soon Alec is traveling roads he never knew existed, toward a war he never suspected was brewing. Before long he and Seregil are embroiled in a sinister plot that runs deeper than either can imagine, and that may cost them far more than their lives if they fail. But fortune is as unpredictable as Alec’s new mentor, and this time there just might be…Luck in the Shadows.
3) CRY TO HEAVEN by Anne Rice. I probably once considered this a masterwork of gay fiction. Years later, I realize it’s a masterwork exploration of male sexuality, manhood, and gender, and that the themes and concepts of homosexuality explored therein were an enforced part of the castrati way of life, as inescapable to them as breathing air, and as necessary. Set in 18th century Venice and the countryside and cities of Europe, “Cry to Heaven” is a big book (576 pages) and worth every second spent reading it. I could find no fault with the history or prose in this novel (Anne Rice does her research almost too well), but it’s a novel that leaves you wanting so much more on the romance side. Although Tonio Treschi- a noble Venetian castrated against his will to impede his inheritance of his father’s estate - and his maestro/lover Guido are both solid and well-rounded characters with great depth, their affair never quite hits the highs that are associated with the romance genre. Neither does Tonio quite hit that note with anyone. His affair with the older Guido is, in the beginning, strictly on Guido’s terms. Guido takes other lovers and refuses to stop, citing his own needs and saying Tonio will understand “one day”. Tonio swallows his pain and does seem to eventually come around to Guido’s point of view. In my opinion, that move truly killed the romance element of the book, for by the time Tonio comes into his own sexual power and can make his own terms, he has lost his passion (though not his love) for Guido, and though they still have a life together, it’s a bit crowded with the other loves they bring into the relationship. One of the things I learned from “Cry to Heaven” was how not to disappoint readers who pick a book up for its promise of romance. To this day, I stop re-reading “Cry to Heaven” at the part where Guido breaks Tonio’s heart.
Mass Market Paperback: 576 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books (April 1, 1995)
Publisher Link: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345396938
ISBN-10: 0345396936
ISBN-13: 978-0345396938
Amazon: Cry to Heaven
In this mesmerizing novel, the acclaimed author of THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES and the LIVES OF THE MAYFAIR WITCHES makes real for us the exquisite and otherworldly society of the eighteenth-century castrati, the delicate and alluring male sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voices brought them the adulation of the royal courts and grand opera houses of Europe, men who lived as idols, concealing their pain as they were adored as angels, yet shunned as half-men. As we are drawn into their dark and luminous story, as the crowds of Venetians, Neopolitans, and Romans, noblemen and peasants, musicians, prelates, princes, saints, and intriguers swirl around them, Anne Rice brings us into the sweep of eighteenth-century Italian life, into the decadence beneath the shimmering surface of Venice, the wild frivolity of Naples, and the magnetic terror of its shadow, Vesuvius. It is a novel that only Anne Rice could have written, taking us into a heartbreaking and enchanting moment in history, a time of great ambition and great suffering--a tale that challenges our deepest images of the masculine and the feminine. "To read Anne Rice is to become giddy as if spinning through the mind of time." --San Francisco Chronicle. "Dazzling in its darkness...Spellbinding." --The New York Times
About Kirby Crow: Kirby Crow is the author of the popular “Scarlet and the White Wolf” trilogy of novels (fantasy romance, Torquere Books) as well as “Prisoner of the Raven” (historical romance, Torquere Books) and the Epic Award Finalist “Angels of the Deep” (horror, MLR Press). She is currently working on a gay kaltpunk novel and a 4th book in the Scarlet series. You can find updates and links to Kirby’s work at her website: http://kirbycrow.com
Angels of the Deep by Kirby Crow
Paperback: 308 pages
Publisher: MLR Press (April 5, 2009)
Publisher Link: http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=ANGELS01
ISBN-10: 1608200264
ISBN-13: 978-1608200269
Amazon: Angels of the Deep
Becket Merriday is on the trail of a killer who is murdering beautiful young men in the small town of Irenic. What he discovers an ancient race of immortal beings hunted by an incredibly powerful adversary: the angel Mastema. Soon, Beck and his partner, Sean Logan, find themselves at the center of a deadly supernatural war.
I still remember when I first saw a book by Kirby Crow, it was Scarlet and the White Wolf and that pretty cover was like a jewel among all those other photoshopped ones. It was so pretty that I bought book 1 and 2 at the same moment, even if they were Fantasy and Fantasy is not exactly my genre. And I soon found out that Kirby Crow is a teaser! For all book 1 she made me eagerly wait for one kiss, and for all book 2 for a bit of action between Scarlet and his big White Wolf. But you know what? I read a very long fantasy without even realizing it, I arrived at the last page and I thought, "no, not yet! I don't want for it to be already at the end!". So yes, I think Kirby is a teaser but also a very strategic plot planner. Kirby is not even usual in her Inside Reader List, she asked me if it was all right to post "only" 3 books (usual authors tell me 10 is a too limiting binding...), but since she was very generous with her motivations, I of course told her that it was all right.
Kirby Crow's Inside Reader List:
This article took me a while to get to because, well, I was confused. I wanted it to be more than a “Here are some books I like, yay!” piece, and yet I didn’t want to analyze the books or pick them apart. Also, I didn’t have time to choose 10 books and write about them, but I did find time for 3. I decided to talk about the novels that contained the one element I enjoy the most in any book, any genre, no matter what: Romance! The musty, yellowed stack of stapled, pulp-paper magazines featuring prison sex and gay bathhouse gangbangs I found as a teenager (my initiation into gay fiction, alas) had little romance in them. I wish I could list those magazines (so I could find them again, if nothing else!) but I’m positive their titles are as lost to me as their flimsy newsprint is to the world.
I chose three GLBT novels that struck me as standing out from the crowd because of their widespread acceptance into their respective genres of horror, fantasy, and literary mainstream. They are not simply books that contain gay characters; they’re books that readers refer to properly by their genres, as well as the added virtue of a gay romance in the pages.
1) DRAWING BLOOD by Poppy Z. Brite. This is one of the first books to catch my attention as being solidly inside the horror genre and also containing a gay romance. First and foremost, Drawing Blood is spooky. Comic artist Trevor McGee and his fugitive lover Zach meet and fall in love in Missing Mile, North Carolina, where Trevor has returned to confront the memories of his murdered family and deal with the tormented shades -including his own- left residing in the lonely little murder house on Violin Road. So much about this book is iconic of the times and frozen there forever, and yet much more is timeless: being broken early in life, being lost and searching, of the definition of family, and of looking inside rather than out for your own meaning to life. Drawing Blood is for readers who want something a bit darker and more thoughtful, and the angst-filled, youthful relationship between Zack and Trevor is both piquant and profound. Because people tell me I should, I’ll warn you about Poppy Z. Brite’s graphic and sometimes gruesome level of detail, but you will like this book.
Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Dell; 6th THUS edition (October 1, 1994)
Publisher Link: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780440214922
ISBN-10: 0440214920
ISBN-13: 978-0440214922
Amazon: Drawing Blood
Escaping from his North Carolina home after his father murders their family and commits suicide, Trevor McGee returns to confront the past, and finds himself haunted by the same demons that drove his father to insanity.
2) LUCK IN THE SHADOWS by Lynn Flewelling. There is a story to why I like this book. I don’t want to get bogged down in details, but let’s just say I had a finished manuscript on one side, and a very knowledgeable literary agent who I respected on the other, and he was telling me I had to rewrite my manuscript and completely discard the gay lovers within if I ever wanted to sell it. And then, I found out about Nightrunner.
Handsome young noble Seregil and handsome young peasant Alec meet by chance and set off on a perilous adventure. At least, that’s the simplest explanation, but the myth cycle of the hero’s journey and epic quest is played out in the Nightrunner series on a grand scale. So grand, in fact, that you might forget that one of the main appeals to die-hard Nightrunner fans is that Alec and Seregil eventually fall in love. “Luck in the Shadows” is solid, enjoyable epic fantasy with engaging heroes and a relationship that romance lovers can become invested in. It doesn’t hurt that Flewelling’s prose style is pretty awesome either. She writes description and dialogue in a colorful and vivid way without once slipping into purple territory. This is one of the novels that inspired me simply by being on bookstore shelves. I’ve always loved fantasy, but Nightrunner was the first time I had seen a fantasy novel where the romantic element was exclusively between two men, and yet it garnered the same respect among its peers as any other fantasy novel. Authors have done this before Flewelling and they will do it after, but this is the story that convinced me I didn’t have to give in and begin writing heteronormative relationships if I wanted to be taken seriously. Thank you, Lynn!
Mass Market Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Spectra; 10th THUS edition (August 1, 1996)
ISBN-10: 0553575422
ISBN-13: 978-0553575422
Amazon: Luck in the Shadows (Nightrunner, Vol. 1)
"A new star is rising in the fantasy firmament...teems with magic and spine-chilling amounts of skullduggery."-Dave Duncan, author of The Great Game. When young Alec of Kerry is taken prisoner for a crime he didn’t commit, he is certain that his life is at an end. But one thing he never expected was his cellmate. Spy, rogue, thief, and noble, Seregil of Rhiminee is many things-none of them predictable. And when he offers to take on Alec as his apprentice, things may never be the same for either of them. Soon Alec is traveling roads he never knew existed, toward a war he never suspected was brewing. Before long he and Seregil are embroiled in a sinister plot that runs deeper than either can imagine, and that may cost them far more than their lives if they fail. But fortune is as unpredictable as Alec’s new mentor, and this time there just might be…Luck in the Shadows.
3) CRY TO HEAVEN by Anne Rice. I probably once considered this a masterwork of gay fiction. Years later, I realize it’s a masterwork exploration of male sexuality, manhood, and gender, and that the themes and concepts of homosexuality explored therein were an enforced part of the castrati way of life, as inescapable to them as breathing air, and as necessary. Set in 18th century Venice and the countryside and cities of Europe, “Cry to Heaven” is a big book (576 pages) and worth every second spent reading it. I could find no fault with the history or prose in this novel (Anne Rice does her research almost too well), but it’s a novel that leaves you wanting so much more on the romance side. Although Tonio Treschi- a noble Venetian castrated against his will to impede his inheritance of his father’s estate - and his maestro/lover Guido are both solid and well-rounded characters with great depth, their affair never quite hits the highs that are associated with the romance genre. Neither does Tonio quite hit that note with anyone. His affair with the older Guido is, in the beginning, strictly on Guido’s terms. Guido takes other lovers and refuses to stop, citing his own needs and saying Tonio will understand “one day”. Tonio swallows his pain and does seem to eventually come around to Guido’s point of view. In my opinion, that move truly killed the romance element of the book, for by the time Tonio comes into his own sexual power and can make his own terms, he has lost his passion (though not his love) for Guido, and though they still have a life together, it’s a bit crowded with the other loves they bring into the relationship. One of the things I learned from “Cry to Heaven” was how not to disappoint readers who pick a book up for its promise of romance. To this day, I stop re-reading “Cry to Heaven” at the part where Guido breaks Tonio’s heart.
Mass Market Paperback: 576 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books (April 1, 1995)
Publisher Link: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345396938
ISBN-10: 0345396936
ISBN-13: 978-0345396938
Amazon: Cry to Heaven
In this mesmerizing novel, the acclaimed author of THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES and the LIVES OF THE MAYFAIR WITCHES makes real for us the exquisite and otherworldly society of the eighteenth-century castrati, the delicate and alluring male sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voices brought them the adulation of the royal courts and grand opera houses of Europe, men who lived as idols, concealing their pain as they were adored as angels, yet shunned as half-men. As we are drawn into their dark and luminous story, as the crowds of Venetians, Neopolitans, and Romans, noblemen and peasants, musicians, prelates, princes, saints, and intriguers swirl around them, Anne Rice brings us into the sweep of eighteenth-century Italian life, into the decadence beneath the shimmering surface of Venice, the wild frivolity of Naples, and the magnetic terror of its shadow, Vesuvius. It is a novel that only Anne Rice could have written, taking us into a heartbreaking and enchanting moment in history, a time of great ambition and great suffering--a tale that challenges our deepest images of the masculine and the feminine. "To read Anne Rice is to become giddy as if spinning through the mind of time." --San Francisco Chronicle. "Dazzling in its darkness...Spellbinding." --The New York Times
About Kirby Crow: Kirby Crow is the author of the popular “Scarlet and the White Wolf” trilogy of novels (fantasy romance, Torquere Books) as well as “Prisoner of the Raven” (historical romance, Torquere Books) and the Epic Award Finalist “Angels of the Deep” (horror, MLR Press). She is currently working on a gay kaltpunk novel and a 4th book in the Scarlet series. You can find updates and links to Kirby’s work at her website: http://kirbycrow.com
Angels of the Deep by Kirby Crow
Paperback: 308 pages
Publisher: MLR Press (April 5, 2009)
Publisher Link: http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=ANGELS01
ISBN-10: 1608200264
ISBN-13: 978-1608200269
Amazon: Angels of the Deep
Becket Merriday is on the trail of a killer who is murdering beautiful young men in the small town of Irenic. What he discovers an ancient race of immortal beings hunted by an incredibly powerful adversary: the angel Mastema. Soon, Beck and his partner, Sean Logan, find themselves at the center of a deadly supernatural war.