LOS ANGELES—August 30, 2019—ReQueered Tales is proud to announce it has formed a new publishing venture to re-publish older LGBTQ fiction—beginning with award-winning titles and acclaimed authors. Our seventh release, available worldwide on Amazon as a Kindle e-book, and at Kobo, Nook and Apple iBooks, is ONYX by Felice Picano.
Grady Harp, a prolific book reviewer, captured the essence of Onyx in his 2001 review: “simply lyrical prose becoming poetry. This novel is an elegantly written exploration of the quest of the individual in the 21st Century … Picano has created thoroughly 3-dimensional characters who leap off the page.”
Ray Henriques has success, love, friendship … but lately it’s not enough. Yet it’s not just Ray who is on a quest for deeper meaning. For Jesse, Ray’s lover of ten years, it is a quest accelerated by his imminent death from AIDS. And for young married father of two Mike Tedesco, it is a search for the heart of masculinity. The sexual exploration which begins when Ray and Mike meet awakens a restlessness in both men, which resoundingly alters their future paths. As Ray’s life begins to draw him increasingly into the future, a future without Jesse, he attempts to tether himself to the here and now with frequent visits to a past where life’s answers seemed simpler and more meaningful. But when Jesse’s fundamentalist Christian mother rolls into town to take charge of her son’s final weeks, he is yanked from his reverie to face an opponent unlike any he has ever known. Marked by shifting points of view, humor, descriptive brilliance and unexpected revelation, Onyx is a multifaceted exploration of inner lives, motivation, love, and the sometimes hollow center beneath a polished surface.
Greg Herren, in Lambda Book Report called it. “a complex tableau of life and death.” He went on to sum up how Onyx is such a powerful read: “Picano has always drawn his main characters as gay heroes, unashamed and unafraid of who they are and what life has to offer, whether positive or negative. This, ultimately, is the measure of Picano’s genius.”
Roger Durbin, in Library Journal: “[In Onyx], the author … creates an incredibly rich and densely textured world … It’s a raw journey through death and dying, unsparing in his take on how survivors cope. Highly recommended for general and gay literature collections.”
Felice Picano is the author of more than 20 novels and memoirs and editor of several anthologies relating to gay themes. His most recent novel, Justify My Sins: A Hollywood Novel in Three Acts, was released earlier this year. A founding member of the Violet Quill Club, he and fellow authors Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, Christopher Cox and George Whitmore inspired and mentored a generation of out gay authors following the early Stonewall years and in the terrifying years when AIDS first descended upon our community. Affectionately, Montreal journalist Richard Burnett calls Picano “The Godfather of Gay Lit.”
Onyx was first published to acclaim in 2001; this 2019 edition features a new foreword by the author. It is being reissued for the first time as an e-book. Onyx also marks our second ReQueered Tales release in print.
Available worldwide from:
Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/33Khh6s
Kobo: https://bit.ly/31U7itH
Nook: https://bit.ly/2NqKdux
Apple iBooks: https://apple.co/2Hnoyj9
Quality Paperback Print Edition: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1951092058
