The deadline for the Stonewall Chapbook Competition is extended to October 15, 2017!
Stonewall, an imprint of BrickHouse Books, focuses on voices from the LGBTQIA+ community. The Stonewall Chapbook Competition offers authors a chance to have their short fiction or poetry published by Stonewall!
Head to the Stonewall Submissions page for more information on the competition, including a sample of Stonewall work from previous winner, Kathi Wolfe!
John Adam Wasowicz will appear at the Winchester Book Gallery in September to sign your copy of his latest release, Daingerfield Island!
Save the date!
Saturday, September 9th, 2017
11am – 1pm
The Winchester Book Gallery
185 N. Loudoun Street
Winchester, VA 22601
Daingerfield Island is available for purchase at the Winchester Book Gallery. You can also visit Daingerfield Island‘s BHB page for additional retailers.
Greetings, BHB friends and family!
Today begins a new trend here at BrickHouse Books. Every month, we’ll be bringing you excerpts of work from the BHB family, and what better way to kick it off than by celebrating our upcoming release, John C. McLucas’ debut novel, Dialogues on the Beach?
Dialogues on the Beach follows Jim, who’s been in love with his best friend, Tony, for years. When Tony marries Rachel, Jim finds in her another best friend, but he can’t shake his unrequited feelings for Tony. That is, until he meets Joe while vacationing at Rehoboth Beach.
This month’s excerpt begins at the start of Jim’s tale, way back in the ’70s.
Chapter 1 – 1970-1993 – College, Yale Graduate School, & home in Baltimore
Tony’s wife Rachel and I had become good friends over time, in spite of the obvious: I was in love with Tony, my best friend at college, for years. Initially this was supposed to be a profound secret. Of course Walter caught on, virtually from the moment he and I became roommates in the middle of freshman year. Walter’s gay radar was unmatched. No one else would have thought to call it love, though everyone knew that Tony and I were some sort of pair. Friends even joked about our being married. We were always together. If Tony or I was away for a weekend, the other got condolence calls, thoughtful invitations, kind distractions, from all over campus. Professors would give us each other’s papers if one of us wasn’t there when assignments were returned. I knew Tony’s moods, his early-morning look and the look in class that said he knew the answer and the one that said he didn’t. He knew me well, certainly. He was the all-time master of the butch straight-man bead-read: “I have my pride,” I said once, and he said, “And several other people’s too.”
There was a girlfriend. I knew that, but at first I didn’t worry about it much. Eventually, without rancor, that bond would succumb to distance and time. One day, our daily closeness, the shared books and midnight confidences, would become irreversible, and everyone would suddenly know that I came first with Tony.
Jim was…is? in love with his best friend, Tony, but Tony married Rachel, and she is…always was? a fantastic human being and a caring, supportive friend. Still, it’s unfathomable for Jim to think about loving anyone else the way he loved…loves? Tony, and next to impossible for him to consider loving himself.
Until 1993, when Jim joins Tony and Rachel on Rehoboth Beach. Metaphorical lines in the physical sand separate the gay and straight communities, but when Jim meets Joe, that line is erased and redrawn as a labyrinth. Misunderstandings and new perspectives arise at each turn, but one thing remains certain: Jim isn’t the same person he was when he first met Tony. And maybe that’s OK.
Dialogues on the Beach will be released September 10, 2017, and is available for pre-order here:
Dr. John C. McLucas has taught Italian and Latin at Towson U. since 1984. He has taught Italian language and repertory to voice students at Peabody Conservatory; he is a classically trained singer himself. Dr. McLucas has published numerous scholarly articles and translations as well as poetry and short fiction. Dialogues on the Beach is his first novel.
About the Cover:
A welcoming boardwalk bench and the gently rolling waves of Rehoboth Beach, painted by artist Minás Konsolas, invite us to settle in and join McLucas’ characters as they ruminate and reminisce about the nature of relationships and each other. Learn more about the artist at minaskonsolas.com.
Charles Rammelkamp, our prose editor here at BHB, recently reviewed Shirley J. Brewer’s Bistro in Another Realm. The review appears in the August edition of The Lake. Rammelkamp’s insightful review highlights Brewer’s masterful musicality and humor. You can read the review here.
Shirley J. Brewer is an accomplished Baltimore poet currently in residence at the Carver Center for the Arts & Technology. Bistro in Another Realm is her latest collection of poems.
The Stonewall Chapbook Competition deadline is fast approaching! Submit NOW for your chance to win your own chapbook, published by our Stonewall imprint!
Stonewall focuses on voices in the LGBTQIA+ community, and accepts poetry and prose submissions. You can learn more about Stonewall by visiting the Stonewall Submissions page, where you’ll also find a sample from Stonewall’s 2014 winner, Kathi Wolfe!
Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate (2004-2006) and founder of American Life in Poetry, recently featured BHB author P. Ivan Young‘s poem “Visiting the Neighborhood” in his weekly column. The poem was originally published by The Cortland Review in 2013.
Visiting the Neighborhood
The entrance at the back of the complex
led onto a road, where an upended couch
tilted into a ditch and a washing machine
gleamed avocado beneath pine needles.
[ Continue reading at American Life in Poetry ]
P. Ivan Young published his poetry collection, Smell of Salt, Ghost of Rain, with BHB in 2015, available now at major online retailers.
