Three years ago, I took my novel “Water Music” – the first in my series “The Games Men Play” – to the New York Rainbow Book Fair and had a blast.
The ninth annual Fair – held on Saturday at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice – proved no less exhilarating. (Pic at right, by Gina Gouveia.) ...
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Yours Truly (and Humbly) is excited to be back at the Rainbow Book Fair in Manhattan Saturday, April 29. The noon to 6 p.m. event, billed as “the largest LGBT book event in America,” is always a day of thought-provoking readings and absorbing encounters with readers.
Three years ago, I had a blast at the event with “Water Music,” the first novel in my series “The Games Men Play,” about power, dominance, rivalry and jealousy. The well-received “Water Music” (Greenleaf Book Group) tells the story of four gay athletes and how their professional rivalries color their personal relationships.
Now I’m back at the Fair with “The Penalty for Holding” (Less Than Three Press, May 10), about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for identity, acceptance, success and love amid the brutal beauty of the NFL. ...
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After participating in the 7th annual Rainbow Book Fair in Manhattan April 18, I now understand the meaning of the phrase “flush with success,” not just because I sold a lot of books and made a lot of contacts, but because I had an altogether enriching experience.
Fashionably “flushed” was the state of many of the faces as it was the first warm day of spring, and the Holiday Inn Midtown, site of the fair, was in the midst of making the change from winter heating to summer air-conditioning – no easy task for modern buildings. Fair co-founder Daniel Kitchen explained that the event is usually slated for cooler March. (Rumor has it that it was bumped to April this year for a previously slated bar mitzvah.) Kitchen suggested that March is a better moment for the fair, but this author, no fan of winter, was perfectly content to spend a beautiful Saturday in her favorite month of April indoors talking books.
It helped that I was accompanied by my dear friends Mary Azzuriti and Wendy Pandolfi – my “bookends” as Mary called herself and Wendy – dressed in yellow sweaters and blue pants to complement my tennis ball yellow-green and navy outfit. Colors, naturally, reflected the colors of this blog and my book series “The Games Men Play” and its debut novel “Water Music,” about four gay athletes – two swimmers, two tennis players – and the way their professional rivalries color their personal relationships with one another.
These hues become the team colors of the New York Templars in the second novel I’m now refining, “The Penalty for Holding,” about a gay, biracial quarterback’s quest for identity, acceptance, success and love amid the brutal beauty of the NFL. Chartreuse and deep blue then become the colors of Linwood Farms, which owns Criterion, the racehorse trying to win the Triple Crown in the planned third novel, “Criterion,” told in part from the horse’s viewpoint. (The fourth book returns us to the heroes of “Water Music” – older, sadder, wiser as they confront life’s greatest rival, death.) ...
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