After 18 months of go-slow due to COVID-19 and the impacts on publishing and retailing, we came roaring back in January 2022.
More books, new authors, old friends.
It was an incredible year for ReQueered Tales. A small enterprise, we rely on our authors, contributors, and readers … for everything. A big year-end THANK YOU to one and all.
So how SPECIAL was the year? Let us count the ways …
… twenty-seven unique new titles, thirty new print books, seven new authors …
… please help us spread the word.
2 ReQueered Tales Original Publications
Felice Picano: A BARD ON HERCULAR: City on a Star III
- final novel in the celebrated trilogy, 5,000 years in the future
- multiple civilizations battle for the ultimate prize
Grant Michaels: A DO-SI-DO WITH DEATH
- the seventh, never-before-published Stan Kraychik adventure
- Stan has hung up his scissors, now an official Gay PI
2 Updated Editions, New to ReQueered Tales
Philip Gambone: SOMETHING INSIDE: Conversations with Gay Fiction Writers
- new introduction marking 30 years since original publication
- photographs by Robert Giard
Charles Silverstein: FOR THE FERRYMAN: A Personal History
- new chapter for this Second Edition
- the author’s life with William Bory and his professional achievements
6 Great Reads in Print for the First Time
All of our books are available as ebooks at Amazon. Many are also found at Kobo, Apple and Nook. And many are available in handsome print editions. In 2022, we brought to print several titles originally in ebook only. These included:
Edward O. Phillips’ Geoffry Chadwick, an out gay lawyer in Montreal whose misadventures with social comedy and brushes with criminality are terrific by-the-fire reads. SUNDAY’S CHILD, the series debut in which a young hustler has an unfortunate accident on New Year’s Eve, and BURIED ON SUNDAY, which won a Crime Writers of Canada award for Best Novel, are now in print.
Brian Bouldrey’s acclaimed coming of age novel, THE GENIUS OF DESIRE, and LOVE, THE MAGICIAN which follows a young man into the Arizona desert in search of his recently dead lover’s family, join our print line-up.
And Grant Michaels’ Boston hairdresser Stan Kraychik stars in the first two books of the series, A BODY TO DYE FOR and LOVE YOU TO DEATH, in print for us for the first time. STan travels to Yosemite National Park, find a shifty real estate developer and hangs out at a chocolate factory over Valentine’s in these witty action tales.
3 More 1980s Fiction from Members of The Violet Quill
Among the most rewarding streams in our republishing venture has been restoral of several titles from The Violet Quill. This was a group of seven New York writers who consciously set out to write gay fiction for gay men. Some if it appeared in small press editions, but many books arrived from mainstream publishers. Felice Picano, Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, George Whitmore and Christopher Cox would meet in their apartments and critique each other’s recent work.
Felice Picano’s first book of short stories, collected from various magazines in the 1970s and early ’80s, SLASHED TO RIBBONS IN DEFENSE OF LOVE is a lovely time-capsule of gay life mostly pre-AIDS.
The Ferro-Grumleys, as they were known, did not survive; they died in 1988 and are buried together. An annual literary award is named in their honour. Robert Ferro’s SECOND SON, his final novel, was published shortly before he died in June 1988. Tom Cardamone has provided a new introduction. Michael Grumley’s only novel, LIFE DRAWING, completed just before his death, is a coming of age tale of an 18 year old who falls in love with a black man, a card shark in New Orleans, and later explores the underbelly of Los Angeles. Edmund White’s original foreword is included as well as George Stambolian’s afterword.
8 Mystery Crime Series in Kindle Unlimited
A staple of our releases since our beginning are series mystery novels released in subscription-based Amazon-exclusive Kindle Unlimited (many in print as well).
This year Nikki Baker’s four book series starring Chicago-based African-American lesbian financial analyst Virginia Kelly concluded with THE ULTIMATE EXIT STRATEGY in which the Firm surrenders to a corporate buyout.
Lev Raphael’s Nick Hoffman and life-partner Stefan are university professors in Michigan suffering the woes of academic life and frequent murders. BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE introduces the strife of “white diversity studies” being introduced into the curriculum; TROPIC OF MURDER a much needed Caribbean vacation.
New for 2022 is a new edition of Richard Stevenson’s Don Stratchey, an out gay PI based in Albany, NY and co-starring his lover Timothy Callahan. A total of 16 books were published over forty years and cover many issues of evolving gay rights as backdrops to the mysteries. DEATH TRICK, the debut, highlights conversion therapy; Michael Nava provides an introduction. ICE BLUES features a political murder including a body found in the trunk of Strachey’s car.
Also new are the wonderful adventures of Alex Kane, John Preston’s six novels starring an avenging ex-Vietnam vet who rights wrongs that aren’t addressed through normal channels. Philip Gambone wrote a foreword to the first book. These separate ebooks are also sold in two-fer print editions. SWEET DREAMS, about a criminal Boston high school sexploitation ring and GOLDEN YEARS, about seniors being defrauded in a “retirement” facility in Arizona, kicks off the series.
3 More Novels from our Award-Winning Authors
Brian Bouldrey’s THE BOOM ECONOMY is an extraordinary journey. For an HIV-positive gay man like Dennis Bacchus, living an active life in early 1990s San Francisco, life was a race against time. New friends were made as quickly as old ones died; it was exhausting and exhilarating until a drug break-through changed everything – the last decade of Dennis’ life, turns out to be the first decade of the rest of it.
In the sub-genre of coming-of-age novels, Lev Raphael’s WINTER EYES stands out. Booklist said “one of the most affecting, absorbing, and quietly powerful American coming-of-age novels.” Brian Bouldrey provides a thoughtful introduction.
Our complete Stan Leventhal edition now includes SHORT STORIES 1988-1991 from A Herd of Tiny Elephants and Candy Holidays. Sarah Schulman, longtime friend and New York writer, activist and educator, shares her thoughts. The stories originally appeared in several gay magazines of the 1980s, some of which Stan was editor. A rich collection of genres, from sci-fi to humor to contemporary everyday gay life.
A Cross-Border Trilogy: Boys Like Us
On the 30th anniversary, BOYS LIKE US returns to print and first-time in ebook. Peter McGehee built a career as a writer, performer and activist. When he met Doug Wilson at an Gay Rights conference in San Francisco in the late 1970s, it was love at first sight. Later resettling in Saskatoon and then Toronto, Peter and Doug became fixtures in the local gay scene. McGehee’s screwball comedy outlook skewers family relationships in Arkansas and highlights the antics of friends and fellow-activists in Toronto. In a story arc centered on the life, loves and death of Zero MacNoo, you’ll laugh and cry, and hold the characters in your heart long after the last page is turned.
SWEETHEART was completed before his death from AIDS; Doug picked up the threads and produced the final volume, a roadtrip for the ashes of MacNoo to an Francisco, across Canada and finally back home to Toronto in what is a literal and wondrous LABOUR OF LOVE. Scholar Raymond-Jean Frontain as well as friends, and fellow performers Fiji Robinson and Jeffrey Canton add their insights into these must-read, remarkable tales.
Thank you again for being part of 2022. Stay with us for an incredibly exciting 2023 (more on that next week). And … buy our books! Tell your friends. Share our story. There’s a lot of fabulous reading in your future.
Order Direct from ReQueered Tales Bookshop
Also available from Amazon and many indie bookshops.
Most ebooks also at Kobo, Apple and Nook.
