My Amazon Book Reviews: Douglas Whaley "Corbin Milk"

The Spy Who Fell In Love
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Corbin Milk has a dilemma. Well, several dilemmas. He's a top spy for the CIA, who have no qualms about using the fact that Corbin is a drop dead gorgeous gay man as sexual bait while working undercover. His new found lover wants Corbin to stop using his sexual prowess on his spy missions. And to top it off, his supervisor is a closet case who wants a night in the sack. These are the main twists turning about in "Corbin Milk," a thriller in three parts.

First is a mission to the Middle East, where Corbin must find his way into a super secure palace. Then a trip to Amsterdam, to take down a sadistic Russian into rough sex, and then the most tricky mission of all...making a secure relationship with the new love of his life, George Yancy. All the while, he has to fend off the snooping supervisor who is far too interested in Corbin's love life and makes Corbin's job all the more difficult on the home front.

"Corbin Milk" makes use of its characters and fleshes them out well. Corbin himself is a complex man, a superior spy who winds his way through difficult missions in realistic fashion, and the other folk play important roles without succumbing to cliché. Corbin works hard and plays harder, and all the other members of the story keep up with the book's pace. A thriller with romance at its core, "Corbin Milk" is a book I savored, one episode at a time.

Biker Bar: The Book

My good friend Thom Magister has just released a new book, "Biker Bar." Subtitled "Bikes Beer and Boys," its a playfully illustrated history of how men's biker and leather bars have changed through the ages.  You can check it out on Amazon by clicking the cover.

Here's what I had to say about it for the back cover:
“On back streets and down alleyways. In neighborhoods many feared to tread. Often behind doors marked so only those in the know could open them. That’s where you would find them: lone wolves, strangers, friends, and bikers, banding together with the smoke, the jukebox, and the beer at their bars. Join these men, comrades in arms, as they take us on a leather-jacketed ride through time. See the biker bar change through the decades as chronicled by Thom Magister, a man who witnessed these establishments come, go, and be reinvented.”
— Tim Brough, author of Skin Tight, First Hand, and other popular BDSM books

I am proud and feel lucky that I got to witness this book in it's gestation form. The finished work is wonderful, too.

The Rainbow Book Fair

This past Saturday, I overslept. This was not a good thing, as the rainbow Book Fair I've been telling everyone to come to was better than two hours away and I had two and a half hours to get there. I bolted from bed and ate a hasty breakfast, then hit the highway. I was smart enough to have loaded the books into the car trunk the night before. I still made it to the event in time, including picking up my friend and fellow author David Stein. A friend snapped this picture of the two of us.

Despite the minutes to midnight sort of arrival, we were set up well before patrons began arriving. In another break of luck, the table next to ours was a no-show, so I used it to spread more books out. Thanks to the Square device that turns a smartphone into a cash register, I did a brisk business, mostly on my new book. I was pleased. I got to see some old friends, and Thor stopped in for a visit, bearing bagels.

Now if you are wondering why I am wearing those groovy hippie glasses indoors, it was I forgot to change from driving with my sunglasses to my regular spectacles. Which was a mistake, as I left them on the passenger car seat. Which means that David, unwittingly, sat on them. Oh Snap was exactly what it meant in the literal sense. Driving home was a real trial, as I had to balance the frame on half of my head while adjusting the nose piece about every 5 to 10 miles. But I made it home safely, and my new book is already getting some very positive feedback. (Always good for the insecure author's ego.)

In less than two weeks I'll be headed for Cleveland's CLAW event, where I'll be moderating "Dirty Words: The Erotic Author's Forum." Everyone gets to do a reading, which is always fun, and the audience tends to be very responsive during Q&A time. With the new book to lead the vendor table, I am also hoping to do well sales-wise again.

I'm so pleased to have the new book out that I've started working on another. I've finally started the Amish Zombie novel I've been batting around in my head for a few years now. "Mennonite Of The Living Dead" is the working title (groan all you want to, but now you won't forget it, will you?).

If you're in New York City on Saturday...

Stop by and visit me at



I'll be promoting my new book...which is also now available for Kindle!

  

My Amazon Reviews: Soundtrack "The Hunger Games"

Songs to Kill People By 
4 Out Of 5 Stars

300 Years in the future and folk music is still high lonesome depression. Guess "The Hunger Games" thinks that - other than watching kids kill each other for sport - we won't be changing all that much. These songs (mostly inspired by the film/book as opposed to being featured in said film), stick mainly to acoustic guitars and the sad laments of the participants. I find it funny in the odd way that kids usually pounding their way to hip-hop and punk rock will be lapping up country waltzes ("Tomorrow Will be Kinder" by Secret Sisters) and Appalachian cries like The Carolina Chocolate Drops doing "Daughter's Lament."

T-Bone Burnette, as executive producer, allows for few curve balls. Kid Cudi gives the disc its heaviest and most ominous song with "The Ruler and The Killer," which sounds more like the oppressive state that would find a real life version of "The Hunger Games" to be a day's TV dinner. Adam Levine is pulled away from his comfort zone, as Maroon 5 pick up a mandolin and ditch the synths for "Come Away To The Water." Taylor Swift sounds all grown up as she teams with the Civil Wars for "Safe and Sound" then The CW gets their own chance to shine with "Kingdom Come" ("Don't cry my dear, it will all be over soon").

The Alt-Rock crowd gets two dollops from Arcade Fire and The Decemberists. AF pounds out a militaristic drum tattoo on the threatening lullabye "Abraham's Daughter," while Colin Meloy keeps the Decemberists in REM territory for "One Engine." It also happens to be the most propulsive song on the disc, so maybe life in District 12 won't be so sad after all. It used to be that you couldn't turn on the radio without being pummeled by songs from a film, be they good or bad. Since that has changed and the deluge slowed, good soundtracks are harder to come by. "The Hunger Games" is one of the better one and hits more than it doesn't.

     

I join the Kindle Age!

I am joining the Kindle age with this new Collection: Brutality! It's a pun on that it's the totality of my work and the correct pronunciation of my last name, Brough,  Gor for it, Kindle readers. It's better than 50 Shades of Grey.

Click on the image for more info.

Mennonite Of The Living Dead - Help my newest book project!

More info on how you can help is Here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1368490769/mennonite-of-the-living-dead

Thank you and share away!

New York City Book Boys. Never Have a Dull Day

Saturday AM, I hopped bright and early into my car with three boxes of books for the annual Rainbow Book Fair, which Daniel Kitchens has been doing a great job of running these past few years. It's always an enjoyable outing, and - like last year - David Stein and I split costs on a table. As lucj would have it, the vendor next to us failed to show, so we expanded our space.

Perfect Bound Press is David's company, I list mine as Black Leather Bookshelf. There were an awful lot of folks there this year, including this year's "get," Samuel R Delaney, Sci-Fi and kinky writer. (You think I'm kidding? Read "Hogg" someday.) he has a new novel about Rural Gay America out, which I picked up and had autographed.

Another author friend was there, Christopher Trevor.

As per usual, lots of friends arrived to say hello and pick up some books. My buddy Colonel Al propped in to show off his workout improved figure. 

All in all, a good day. I think that David and I sold enough to have made some profits, but I was ready to head for home. I'm psyched to catch the premier of "MadMen" later this week (it's on the DVR waiting for me).

Have a Great week, all.

     

My Amazon Reviews: James Lee Stanley "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues"

Soundtrack to a Novel
4 Out Of 5 Stars

James Lee Stanley was so enamored of Tom Robbins' novel "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" that he created an album based on the individual characters. However, the man was hampered by the fact that a big screen adaptation, starring Uma Thurman, was being released to theaters with a major label soundtrack featuring the music of KD Lang. Stanley had a secret weapon in his pocket, and that was Robbins himself. Robbins co-wrote the title track to the lonesome, harmonica driven title song. While Lang's movie soundtrack moved from the rodeo to the electric disco, Stanley's felt like a trek across the prairie.

James' CD also sounds like it should accompany the book. Where the movie soundtrack played like an accompaniment to the visuals, songs like "Racing The Moon" or "Open Your Eyes" made more a theater of the mind as you recall the book. Even the cover of "I Only Have Eyes For You" feels properly placed. James Lee Stanley may not have been the the music on the silver screen, but it ultimately is his version/vision of "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" that has the musical staying power.

   

My Amazon Book Reviews: Max Brooks "World War Z"

"What if the enemy can't be shocked and awed?"
4 Out Of 5 Stars

This review is from: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (Mass Market Paperback) Author Max Brooks almost pulls off a pretty neat trick in "World War Z." Borrowing liberally from George Romero and Studs Terkel, he casts himslef as the intrepid journalist traveling the globe in an effort to get first person histories from survivors of the great Zombie War that almost wipes out the human race. He sits down with the Chinese Doctor who was there when "patient zero" was discovered to the CIA agent that came to the realization to late that what the US thought was just crackdowns on Chinese dissidents was really cover-ups of the spreading plague. There's more than a little political allegory involved, with everyone from the president of the USA's Middle Eastern Policy to the state of relations in Iran, India and Pakistan.

Since most of the "interviews" are brief, the book keeps a good pace. Brooks wisely separates the book into segments; the beginning, the battles, the aftermath. The only, minor, flaw is that some of the interviews bleed together, as if Brooks forgot that all the characters might have different voices. This doesn't happen very often, but it is noticeable as the book goes on. However, "World War Z" is an inventive, novel take on the whole Zombie Horror genre as well as a darn good read.