Craig Laurance Gidney's Blog, page 64
February 21, 2013
Book Trailer for BEREFT
Photographer/ Filmmaker Ben Carver created this wonderful book trailer for Bereft. Please enjoy and share!
February 19, 2013
Bereft is now out!
My short YA novel is now out, a week early. I’m excited and nervous at the same. If you do read the book, please review it. It’s available at all the usual venues, and a Kindle/Nook version will be coming along shortly (and will be announced when it does). Thanks for your support!
(Promotional postcard attached).
February 10, 2013
Book Release Party for BEREFT is MARCH 3, 2013 (in Washington, DC)
BEREFT releases on February 26, 2013. A book release party will be held in Washington, DC on Sunday, March 3rd at my friend Thomas Drymon’s studio, Doris-Mae. More information is here.
February 6, 2013
Author copies of BEREFT have arrived
They look so new and shiny!
The cover was designed by Christopher Bauer and the photograph was done by Dan Brandenburg. I am so pleased the cover shows a young black man–so many YA book covers are “whitewashed.”
The official release date is February 26, 2013 and a release party is being planned in DC on the date of March 3.
Spread the word far and wide. If you know of venues for promotions–book clubs, blogs, schools, libraries–please do not hesitate to contact me with your ideas.
January 28, 2013
Interview with CrazyQuiltEdi!
Edi Campbell graciously interviewed me about my forthcoming book. Her blog focuses on YA book by and for POC.
You can read it here.
January 21, 2013
REVIEW: The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle
Pepper is a working class furniture mover who, through an act of misguided gallantry, and the laziness of the a trio police officers, gets thrown into a psychiatric unit in Queens. What is initially supposed to be a 72-hour hold turns into a months long stay, due to bureaucratic incompetence and Pepper’s foolish decisions (a failed escape attempt among other mistakes). After being drugged and reprimanded, Pepper finally acclimates himself to the ward, he meets his fellow patients/prisoners and learns their back stories. Loochie (or Lucretia), the nineteen-year bipolar young woman who’s been in and out of hospitals for most of her adolescence and has a wild temper and can kick ass if need be. Dorry, an old white woman who’s been in the ward for decades and is full of wisdom. And Coffee, a Ugandan refugee who is obsessed with contacting the president and letting the world know about the miserable conditions at the New Hyde psychiatric unit.
And miserable the conditions are. The building is in need of repair, there’s a rodent problem, the administrators are overworked, and code violations are routinely broken. Finally, there is a violent patient, whom the patients call the Devil, who picks them off one by one. The staff seems to be in some conspiracy with the Devil, and steadfastly refuses to do anything significant to stop the murders.
If all of this sounds grim and depressing, it’s not. Humor—sometimes gallows and sometime Keystone Cops like—suffuses the text. There’s suspense, yes, but it’s also backed up by mordant social commentary about the state of public mental health and touching back stories for all of the characters—including various staff members. LaValle has created a horror story, a Swiftian satire, and a black comedy of errors in one story. Imagine Colson Whitehead writing One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and you have some idea of The Devil In Silver. It’s a powerful novel, and I want to read more LaValle!
January 16, 2013
Blurbs for my forthcoming novel Bereft!
I got the go-ahead from the publisher to post these blurbs for BEREFT.
“Gidney has crafted a beautifully assured and insightful debut novel detailing the heightened surreality and emotionalism of teenage life. This book is full of heartbreak, humor, and most importantly a deep humane sense of empathy.”—William Johnson, editor, Lambda Literary Review and publisher of Mary Literary Quarterly
“Craig Gidney’s debut novel, Bereft, shows the vicious and often violent underside of junior high with boys being boys: hurting each other every way they can to see who survives and who doesn’t. Gidney gets it right–the sexual tensions, bullying, surprising friendships. Rafe is a character everyone can relate to.” –Greg Herren, 2011 Moonbeam Award Gold Medal recipient for Sleeping Angel
The publication has been slightly delayed–expect to see it in mid to late February.
January 9, 2013
Tanith Lee writing as Esther Garber
Fatal Women: The Esther Garber Novellas by Tanith Lee are finally out from Lethe Press. It was a pleasure to work with Ms. Lee and get these books back in print. The interiors, designed by Alex Jeffers, are exquisite.
These books are surrealistic historical lesbian fiction–kind of like Sarah Waters on opium, with Jeanette Winterson and Colette popping in as influences.
December 22, 2012
REVIEW: Errantry: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand
The devil is in the details in this collection of well-crafted short fiction that sits on the uneasy border of slipstream and horror fiction. The pieces in this collection are as dense as novels, filled with telling, carefully chosen descriptions and character-revealing dialogue. When the supernatural (or counterfactual) appears, it has a rich background to interact with. In the opening tale, The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon, the relationship between the middle-aged men who attempt to recreate a mysterious film that documents a flying machine is rife with details about and character sketches that are as important and enticing as the steampunkish ‘hidden history’ trope the story is built around. Hand weaves together such disparate strands, such as late 70′s life, working at the Smithsonian, cancer, and the pains of widowhood and single fatherhood, in such a natural way that the ‘strangeness’ of the story is , while essential, just another fascinating plot point. The spooky Near Zennor terrifies by insinuation as much as by actual incidence: Hand creates a fascinating red herring subplot about a series of creepy children’s books that aid and abet the disquieting denouement of the tale. The collection is mostly dark fiction, but it’s closer to the work of, say, Isak Dinesen or Robert Aickman than it is to Stephen King or Clive Barker. Part of has to do with the elegant way Hand constructs her tales; each small world is crammed with essential detail, like a motherboard. For instance, the use of Icelandic folklore in Winter’s Wife, or the character study of the titular Uncle Lou. And part of it has do with the craft its self: even on the sentence-level, each image is exquisite. The one outlier piece in the collection, the Jack Vance pastiche Return of the Fire Witch, adds humor to the mostly bleakly beautiful collection.
The Next Big Thing Blog Hop.
What is the [working] title of your next book?
BEREFT
Where did the idea come from for the book?
The book is an expansion of a short story I wrote for an anthology called FROM WHERE WE SIT: Black Writers Write Black Youth. The story deals the psychological effects of bullying and being in the closet and racism. So, in a way, the ‘idea’ of the book came from me re-visiting my 14 year old self.
What genre does your book fall under?
Realistic Young Adult Fiction.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Hmmm. Maybe Jaden Smith for the lead character.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
14 Year Old Rafael Fannen wins a minority scholarship to Our Lady of the Woods school, where he must deal with bullies, racism and homophobia.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
The book will be published by Tiny Satchel Press this January!
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
8 Months
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I would compare it to Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of A Mask and James Baldwin’s coming of age fiction.
What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
People who read genre fiction will like that my hero, Rafael, is a book nerd, and compares everything to the various fantasy books he’s read. Inside references to Game of Thrones series and the Narnia books abound.
Please check out the other folks who tagged me.
