2013 Rainbow Awards Submission: L.E. Franks & Sara York - Prodigal Wolf

Prodigal Wolf (Wolves and Waves, #1) by L.E. Franks & Sara York
Published August 15th 2013 by MLR Press (first published August 1st 2013)
ISBN13 9781608208890

Carlo has a problem, after years away he's finally returned to his South Carolina roots - but instead of peace and quiet all he's found are nosy wolves, romancing twinks, an out of control roommate threatening to expose them all, and a demanding Alpha who just won't go away.

All his Alpha wants is to show Carlo who he really is, and where he belongs. But Carlo Montefiore is a man fighting his instincts, memories, and responsibilities. His beachside home was supposed to provide sanctuary, but pack politics, unruly roommates, and human neighbors at risk of discovering that shifters exist, are making life anything but peaceful. Twinks Kevin and Grady have their own problems. Two college freshmen are no match for a couple of hot wolves who like to play chase. If they don't stop playing games they'll miss the biggest thing to happen in their young lives---love.

2013 Rainbow Awards Submission: Angela Peach - In Reflection

In Reflection by Angela Peach
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Amazon Kindle: In Reflection

"My name is Aoife, and I want to tell you my story. It's not a love story, although there is love in it.
This is the story of how I found my inner self...and how she then took over my life.
Think you know your self? Think again."

When Aoife Carmichael is spiked with an hallucinogenic drug at a party, she suddenly finds she didn't know herself as well as she thought. After her 'reflection' convinces her to swap places, Aoife realises she is trapped inside her own body and unable to control anything she says or does. All she can do is watch as her darker self seems intent on destroying everything and everyone she cares about.
Only her best friend, Sarah, seems to sense something is wrong, but when Aoife sets about seducing her, it's clear she has other plans for her. Darker plans.
Will Aoife figure out how to swap back before there is nothing left in her life, or will she be trapped inside her own head forever?

2013 Rainbow Awards Submission: Trin Denise - Listen to Her Heart

Listen To Her Heart by Trin Denise
Paperback: 418 pages
Publisher: Ragz Books U.S.A. (November 30, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1938988000
ISBN-13: 978-1938988004
Amazon: Listen To Her Heart
Amazon Kindle: Listen To Her Heart

Two women who live very different lives meet due to unforeseeable circumstances, only to discover they were brought together because it was their destiny! Yalen Martinez is ex-CIA and a bestselling author of lesbian fiction with fans all over the globe, yet she is alone. Since the breakup of her ten-year relationship two years ago, no one special has been in her life. After countless attempts by her two best friends to set her up on blind dates, she decides to use the internet to meet women because she thinks it’s safe and she can do it anonymously. She joins a lesbian dating site where she meets Emily only to learn that Emily has sent her a fake photo of herself, she’s running an online dating scam, and Yalen is the latest victim. Yalen, though disappointed, becomes obsessed with exposing the con artist as well as finding out who the woman in the picture really is and she’s willing to go to any length to get the information. Armed with the woman’s name and address, Yalen boards a flight to Tennessee with no thought on how she plans to approach the woman in the photo: Briana Latham, a former Victoria’s Secret model. Yalen decides to just wing it and hope like hell that the woman doesn’t think she’s a psycho head-case and when they finally meet, the sparks fly. Determined to get to the bottom of the online dating mystery and against her better judgment, Yalen and Briana set out on a suspenseful, tension-filled adventure that will take them to New Camden Town, England. By the time it’s all over, they will risk their lives confronting the leaders of a multimillion-dollar, underworld Russian Mafia syndicate that specializes in human sex trafficking, computer viruses, and on-line dating scams—it’s a world where murder isn’t that big of a deal and true love really knows no boundaries.

2013 Rainbow Awards Submission: Trin Denise - Hallowed Be Thy Name

Hallowed Be Thy Name by Trin Denise
Paperback: 334 pages
Publisher: Ragz Books USA (May 6, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1938988191
ISBN-13: 978-1938988196
Amazon: Hallowed Be Thy Name
Amazon Kindle: Hallowed Be Thy Name

When religion is responsible for breeding killers… …innocent people will die. Angie Hicks has dreamed of owning a Halloween store since she was a kid. When she inherits an old abandoned grocery store in Huber Heights, Ohio, she hits the ground running. With the help of her best friend and famous mask designer Derek Green, she sets up shop in time for the Halloween season. It doesn’t take long for the nightmare to begin, starting with Matt Campbel, a local newspaper reporter who informs Angie that the Dunnes, Ed and Eddie Jr., a father and son team who ran the store forty years ago, were executed in Ohio’s electric chair for butchering their customers. If that isn’t enough, local prostitutes are being murdered quicker than the coroner can autopsy them and the killer has a morbid fetish—the women’s face and hair are peeled off before their bodies are disposed of. As the investigation into the deaths escalate, a bigger mystery unfolds, revealing the true motivation behind the Dunne’s crimes, which links them and the modern day killer to an ancient form of ritual killing born from Catholicism and the Ancient Aztecs with the Illuminati thrown into the mix. Seventeen women will lose their lives before the killer makes the first mistake and Detective Bryn Oakley wants to know why every clue leads her and her partner back to The Halloween Store.

David Watmough & Floyd St. Clair

David Arthur Watmough (born 17 August 1926) is a Canadian playwright, short story writer and novelist. His partner of 58 years was Floyd St Clair, one of BC's giants of the gay liberation movement, died on January 4, 2009, at the age of 78.

Watmaugh was born in London, England, and attended King's College London. He has worked as a reporter (the Cornish Guardian, a 'Talks Producer' (BBC Third Programme) and an editor (Ace Books). He immigrated to Canada in 1960, to Kitsilano in Vancouver, British Columbia. where he lived for 40 years with his partner, ex-Californian Floyd St. Clair, a retired University of British Columbia French professor and opera critic. He became a Canadian citizen in 1967.

Watmough now lives in Tsawwassen, near Vancouver.

In 2008 he published his autobiography, "Myself Through Others: Memoirs".

"I've been very cherished by having Floyd's love poured over me," said Watmough. "He's the greatest thing that ever happened to me."

St Clair died as a result of fluidation of the heart, Watmough said. "He didn't have any strength to have an operation after that. He died in his sleep."

"His legacy, I think, is his absolute refusal to live in some little nook or niche," Watmough said. "He wanted the whole world."

"His other legacy is me and the 20 books that couldn't have written without him at my side."

"What an amazing person," said Little Sister's Bookstore manager Janine Fuller, who knew St Clair for many years. "I'm lucky to have known him and had him in my life."


David Watmough (born 17 August 1926) is a Canadian playwright, short story writer and novelist. His partner of 58 years was Floyd St Clair, one of BC's giants of the gay liberation movement, died on January 4, 2009, at the age of 78. "I've been very cherished by having Floyd's love poured over me," said Watmough. "He's the greatest thing that ever happened to me." "His legacy, I think, is his absolute refusal to live in some little nook or niche," Watmough said. "He wanted the whole world."

( Read more... )

Source: 'He's the greatest thing that ever happened to me': Watmough By Jeremy Hainsworth, Published Tue, Jan 13, 2009 7:00 pm EST (http://dailyxtra.com/vancouver/news/hes-the-greatest-thing-ever-happened-watmough)

( Further Readings )

More Real Life Romances at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance

Edwin Morgan (April 27, 1920 – August 17, 2010)

Edwin George Morgan FRSE OBE (27 April 1920 – 17 August 2010) was a Scottish poet and translator who was associated with the Scottish Renaissance. He is widely recognised as one of the foremost Scottish poets of the 20th century. In 1999, Morgan was made the first Glasgow Poet Laureate. In 2004, he was named as the first Scottish national poet: The Scots Makar. (Picture: Edwin Morgan by Alex Boyd)

Morgan was born in Glasgow and grew up in Rutherglen. His parents were Presbyterian. As a child he was not surrounded by books, nor did he have any literary acquaintances. Schoolmates labelled him a swot. He convinced his parents to finance his membership of several book clubs in Glasgow. The Faber Book of Modern Verse (1936) was a "revelation" to him, he later said.

Morgan entered the University of Glasgow in 1937. It was at university that he studied French and Russian, while self-educating in "a good bit of Italian and German" as well. After interrupting his studies to serve in World War II as a non-combatant conscientious objector with the Royal Army Medical Corps, Morgan graduated in 1947 and became a lecturer at the University. He worked there until his retirement in 1980.

Morgan first outlined his sexuality in Nothing Not Giving Messages: Reflections on his Work and Life (1990). He had written many famous love poems, among them "Strawberries" and "The Unspoken", in which the love object was not gendered; this was partly because of legal problems at the time but also out of a desire to universalise them, as he made clear in an interview with Marshall Walker. At the opening of the Glasgow LGBT Centre in 1995, he read a poem he had written for the occasion, and presented it to the Centre as a gift.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Morgan_(poet)  

( Further Readings  )

Herta Müller (born August 17, 1953)

Herta Müller (born 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Niţchidorf, Timiş County in Romania, her native language is German. Since the early 1990s she has been internationally established, and her works have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Müller is noted for her works depicting the effects of violence, cruelty and terror, usually in the setting of Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceauşescu regime which she has experienced herself. Many of her works are told from the viewpoint of the German minority in Romania and are also a depiction of the modern history of the Germans in the Banat, and Transylvania. Her much acclaimed 2009 novel The Hunger Angel (Atemschaukel) portrays the deportation of Romania's German minority to Stalinist Soviet Gulags during the Soviet occupation of Romania for use as German forced labor.

Müller has received more than twenty awards to date, including the Kleist Prize (1994), the Aristeion Prize (1995), the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (1998) and the Franz Werfel Human Rights Award (2009). On 8 October 2009, the Swedish Academy announced that she had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, describing her as a woman "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed".

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herta_M%C3%BCller

Further Readings:

The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Metropolitan Books; First Edition edition (April 24, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 080509301X
ISBN-13: 978-0805093018
Amazon: The Hunger Angel: A Novel
Amazon Kindle: The Hunger Angel: A Novel

A masterful new novel from the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize, hailed for depicting the "landscape of the dispossessed" with "the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose" (Nobel Prize Committee)

It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg to deport him to a camp in the Soviet Union. Leo would spend the next five years in a coke processing plant, shoveling coal, lugging bricks, mixing mortar, and battling the relentless calculus of hunger that governed the labor colony: one shovel load of coal is worth one gram of bread.

In her new novel, Nobel laureate Herta Müller calls upon her unique combination of poetic intensity and dispassionate precision to conjure the distorted world of the labor camp in all its physical and moral absurdity. She has given Leo the language to express the inexpressible, as hunger sharpens his senses into an acuity that is both hallucinatory and profound. In scene after disorienting scene, the most ordinary objects accrue tender poignancy as they acquire new purpose—a gramophone box serves as a suitcase, a handkerchief becomes a talisman, an enormous piece of casing pipe functions as a lovers' trysting place. The heart is reduced to a pump, the breath mechanized to the rhythm of a swinging shovel, and coal, sand, and snow have a will of their own. Hunger becomes an insatiable angel who haunts the camp, but also a bare-knuckled sparring partner, delivering blows that keep Leo feeling the rawest connection to life.

Müller has distilled Leo's struggle into words of breathtaking intensity that take us on a journey far beyond the Gulag and into the depths of one man's soul.

More Spotlights at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Lists/Gay Novels

Jack Spicer (January 30, 1925 - August 17, 1965)

Jack Spicer (January 30, 1925 - August 17, 1965) was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry.

Spicer was born in Los Angeles where he later graduated from Fairfax High School, and attended the University of Redlands from 1943-45. He spent most of his writing life in San Francisco and spent the years 1945 to 1955 at the University of California, Berkeley, where he began writing, doing work as a research linguist, and publishing some poetry (though he disdained publishing). During this time he searched out fellow poets, but it was through his alliance with Robert Duncan and Robin Blaser that Spicer forged a new kind of poetry, and together they referred to their common work as the Berkeley Renaissance. The three, who were all gay, also educated younger poets in their circle about their "queer genealogy", Rimbaud, Lorca, and other gay writers. Spicer's poetry of this period is collected in One Night Stand and Other Poems (1980). His Imaginary Elegies, later collected in Donald Allen's The New American Poetry 1945-1960 anthology, were written around this time.

In 1954, he co-founded the famous Six Gallery, the scene of the famous October 1955 Six Gallery reading that launched the West Coast Beat movement. In 1955, Spicer moved to New York and then to Boston, where he worked for a time in the Rare Book Room of Boston Public Library. Blaser was also in Boston at this time, and the pair made contact with a number of local poets, including John Wieners, Stephen Jonas, and Joe Dunn.

He returned to San Francisco in 1956 and started working on After Lorca. This book represented a major change in direction for two reasons. Firstly, he came to the conclusion that stand-alone poems (which Spicer referred to as his one night stands) were unsatisfactory and that henceforth he would compose serial poems. In fact he wrote to Blaser that 'all my stuff from the past (except the Elegies and Troilus) looks foul to me.' Secondly, in writing After Lorca, he began to practice what he called "poetry as dictation". His interest in the work of Federico García Lorca, especially the canto jondo, also brought him near the poetics of the deep image group. The Troilus referred to was Spicer's then unpublished play of that name. The play finally appeared in print in 2004, edited by Aaron Kunin, in issue 3 of No - A Journal of the Arts.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Spicer  

( Further Readings  )

Michael Klein (born August 17, 1954)

Michael Klein (born August 17, 1954) is an award-winning poet and author. His poetry collections 1990 and Poets for Life are winners of the Lambda Literary Book Award. He lives in New York City and teaches memoir writing in the summer program at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

“I am a writer and a teacher. I've written two memoirs: "Track Conditions" about me and the Kentucky Derby winner of 1984, Swale, and "The End of Being Known" which is a book of linked essays about sex and friendship. My new book of poems is "then, we were still living". I live in New York City with Andrew Hood and the young cats Caleb and Cyrus and teach at City College in New York City and in the MFA Program at Goddard College's Port Townsend Campus. I also teach and spend a lot of time in Provincetown, MA at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.”

Michael Klein, 1988, by Robert Giard (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/brbldl_getrec.asp?fld=img&id=1121506)

American photographer Robert Giard is renowned for his portraits of American poets and writers; his particular focus was on gay and lesbian writers. Some of his photographs of the American gay and lesbian literary community appear in his groundbreaking book Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, published by MIT Press in 1997. Giard’s stated mission was to define the literary history and cultural identity of gays and lesbians for the mainstream of American society, which perceived them as disparate, marginal individuals possessing neither. In all, he photographed more than 600 writers. (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/giard.html)

Further Readings:

The Talking Day by Michael Klein
Paperback: 70 pages
Publisher: Sibling Rivalry Press, LLC (January 15, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1937420272
ISBN-13: 978-1937420277
Amazon: The Talking Day

Fire Island, Bette Davis, reincarnation, the movies, Henry James, the Russian baths, being lonely in public, following strangers, washing a corpse, the FDR Drive and the racetrack all figure predominantly in Michael Klein's The Talking Day - a talking book of poems that speak to the terrible beauty of the world we live in and the world we live without. "I'm dumb about the world. To me, it always looks haunted" is the first line of the first poem in this book and by the end, that haunting has turned fear into grace.

More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices

Rachel Pollack (born August 17, 1945)

Rachel Pollack (b. August 17, 1945 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American science fiction author, comic book writer, and expert on divinatory tarot. Pollack has been a great influence on the women's spirituality movement.

Pollack's work 78 Degrees of Wisdom on tarot reading is commonly referenced by tarot readers. She has created her own tarot deck, Shining Woman Tarot (later Shining Tribe Tarot). She also aided in the creation of the Vertigo Tarot Deck with illustrator Dave McKean and author Neil Gaiman, and she wrote a book to accompany it.

Pollack is best known for her run of issues 64-87 on the comic book Doom Patrol, on DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, which became a cult favorite under Grant Morrison. A comic fandom legend has it that Pollack was assigned to write the series after writing persistent letters to the editor. Although the letters are a matter of record, it's unknown if they were actually the cause of her employment. During her tenure Pollack dealt with such rarely addressed comic-book topics as menstruation, sexual identity, and transsexuality. Pollack's run ended two years later, with the book's cancellation. Pollack also wrote a Brother Power the Geek one-shot, and eleven issues of a New Gods series for DC Comics (the first five co-authored with Tom Peyer). Author Neil Gaiman has sometimes consulted Rachel Pollack on the tarot for his stories. Pollack created an actual tarot spread for one of Gaiman's books.

Her magical realism novels explore worlds imbued with elements pulled from a number of traditions, faiths, and religions.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Pollack

( Further Readings )

Tommy Nutter (April 17, 1943 - August 17, 1992)

Tommy Nutter (17 April 1943– 17 August 1992), was a British tailor, famous for reinventing the Savile Row suit in the 1960s.

Born in Barmouth, Merioneth, he was raised in Edgware, Middlesex, where his father owned a local High Street Cafe. After the family moved to Kilburn, Nutter and his brother David attended Willesden Technical College. Nutter initially studied plumbing, and then architecture, but he abandoned both aged 19 to study tailoring at the Tailor and Cutter Academy.

In the early 1960s he joined traditional tailors Donaldson, Williamson & Ward. After seven years, in 1969, he joined up with Edward Sexton, to open Nutters of Savile Row at No 35a Savile Row. They were financially backed by Cilla Black and her husband Bobby Willis, Managing Director of the Beatles' Apple Corps Peter Brown, and lawyer James Vallance-White.

The business was an immediate success, as Nutter combined traditional tailoring skills with innovative design. He designed for the Hardy Amies range, and then for the man himself. His clients included his investors, plus Sir Roy Strong, Mick Jagger, Bianca Jagger and Elton John. Nutter himself was most proud of the fact that, for the cover of The Beatles' album Abbey Road in 1969, he dressed three out of the four: George Harrison elected to be photographed on the road-crossing in denims.




1969, Trouser suit. Jill Ritblat,who was already devoted to Yves Saint Laurent's unisex style and 'le smoking' discovered that Tommy Nutter would provide her with man's-style tailored suits with dandified overtones. She wore this adventurous three-piece only in the evenings, with navy patent moccasins by Charles Jourdan. An interplay of checked and plain worsted,the suit has a single-breasted jacket,straight-cut trousers and a fitted waistcoat. Yves Saint Laurent's silk blouse with stock-like neck tie provided the final flourish. Given by Mrs Jill Ritblat. Exhibition: Sixties Fashion (V&A 06/06/2006-25/02/2007); The Cutting Edge: 50 Years of British Fashion 1947-1997 (V&A 06/03/1997-27/07/1997)


AIDS Quilt

( Read more... )

In the 1970s his bespoke business became less successful, but he branched out into ready to wear clothing, marketed through Austin Reed. He also successfully expanded into East Asia, establishing the Savile Row brand in Japan. In 1976 Sexton bought Nutter out of the Business. Nutter went to work for Kilgour French and Stanbury, managing his own workroom. Sexton continued to run Nutters of Savile Row until 1983, when Nutter returned to the row with a ready to wear shop: "Tommy Nutter, Savile Row". (This new venture, which traded at No 19 Savile Row until Tommy's death, was backed by J&J Crombie Limited, who continue to own the "Tommy Nutter" trademark.) At this time, Sexton set up a business in his own name.

In the 1980s, he described his suits as a "cross between the big-shouldered Miami Vice look and the authentic Savile Row." He created the clothing of The Joker worn by Jack Nicholson in the 1989 film Batman.

Nutter died in 1992 at the Cromwell Hospital in London of complications from AIDS.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Nutter

( Further Readings )

More Fashion Designers at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Art

Blog Tour: “My Cowboy Heart” By Z.A. Maxfield

Today I'm hosting my old friend Z.A. Maxfield with her new release, My Cowboy Heart. ZAM is also hosting a giveaway, please follow this link for a chance to win: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/YjRjMDAwMWQ0YTk5ZGQyZmI1YmFhOThlNDc4OWIwOjU0/

Grand Prize: 1 winner will receive a $50 Gift Card to either Amazon or B&N (winner’s choice) and an e-copy of “My Cowboy Heart”.

Additional Prize: 3 additional winners will be selected to receive e-book copies of “My Cowboy Heart”

Z. A. Maxfield started writing in 2007 on a dare from her children and never looked back. Pathologically disorganized, and perennially optimistic, she writes as much as she can, reads as much as she dares, and enjoys her time with family and friends. If anyone asks her how a wife and mother of four manages to find time for a writing career, she’ll answer, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you give up housework.”

Her published books include Crossing Borders, Drawn Together, and the St. Nacho’s and Brothers Grime series from Loose Id, ePistols at Dawn and The Pharaoh’s Concubine from Samhain Publishing, and Notturno, Vigil, Stirring Up Trouble, and All Stirred Up from MLR Press.

Author Links:
Website/Blog: http://zamaxfield.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZAMaxfield
FB Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/ZAMaxfield/165809416786338
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2738500.Z_A_Maxfield



My Cowboy Heart (Intermix) by Z.A. Maxfield
Publisher: InterMix (August 20, 2013)
Amazon Kindle: My Cowboy Heart (Intermix)
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17898625-my-cowboy-heart
B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/my-cowboy-heart-za-maxfield/1113985536?ean=9781101633489

A cowboy's heart has room for anything…

J-Bar ranch foreman Malloy pretty much keeps to himself—slinking around the edges of everybody else like an old coyote, doing his job and staying private. That is until Crispin Carrasco shows up.

Lean, muscular, and with a motor mouth that won’t quit, Crispin sparks something in Malloy—something the foreman didn’t know was there. But how does a lone coyote approach the warmth of a fire? And more important, what would happen if that fire burned?



( Excerpt )