Author Name: Larry Benjamin
Book Name: Vampire Rising
Release Date: Summer, 2015
Blurb:
It’s the mid twenty-first century. Anti-Semitism, racism, sexism and homophobia have been consigned to the dustbin of history. The world is run by “the state,” and Christian zealots, whose chief governing tools are fear and oppression. It’s a wonderful time to be alive—unless you’re a Vampire. Vampires are despised, and feared, and subjected to discrimination and unspeakable violence.
Considered undead, unholy, without basic human rights, Gatsby Calloway lives on the fringes of society, avoiding humanity. Until he meets Barnabas, a young encaustic painter.
When Barnabas is mortally wounded during an anti-Vampire attack, Gatsby must forget everything he has known, and learn to trust.
Pages or Words: 67 pages
Categories: Fantasy, Gay Fiction, M/M Romance, Urban Fantasy
Excerpt:
“This here coming up is the stop for Chicksand Street,” the bus driver called out.
Barnabas stood and walked to the front of the bus. He peered out the windshield into the dark, then looked at the driver. “The schedule said you stopped at Chicksand Street,” Barnabas said.
“Not after dark I don’t,” the driver shot back. “This here is as far as I’m going tonight!”
Barnabas shrugged and moved to the door. The Mexican woman he’d noticed earlier touched his arm. As he turned to her, she drew a silver crucifix attached to rosary beads from around her neck and, muttering a prayer in Spanish, pressed it into his hands. He closed his hand around the offering still warm from her bosom and said, “Thank you.”
The bus slowed and the driver said, “This here road, about a mile on, becomes Chicksand Street.” He opened the door, barely stopping long enough for Barnabas to disembark. As soon as his feet touched the curb, the driver closed the door and sped away as fast as the bus’ ancient diesel engine would allow. As the bus passed him he saw the passengers with their foreheads and palms pressed against the windows, their eyes wide, and their mouths forming tiny “O”s of fright.
Sales Links:
About the author:
Bronx-born wordsmith, Larry Benjamin considers himself less a writer than an artist whose chosen medium is the written word rather than clay or paint or bronze. His debut novel, the gay romance What Binds Us was released by Carina Press in March 2012. His second book, Damaged Angels, a collection of short stories, is a 2013 Rainbow Award Runner-Up in the Gay Contemporary General Fiction category. His third book, Unbroken, was a 2014 Lambda Literary finalist, and a 2014 IPPY (Independent Publishers Book Award) Gold medalist.
He lives in Philadelphia with his husband and their two dogs.
Factoids about Larry Benjamin:
Make sure to visit all the stops of the tour to get all the facts!
35 – Most amazing place you’ve ever been?
The world in which Vampire Rising takes place. It is both the future and the past, both familiar and new, real and unreal.
36 – Have you ever had a character take off and go their own direction? If so, who was the worst?
Yes. Maritza in Unbroken. She was uncontrollable. Originally she had one small scene when Lincoln and Jose were at college. But, she kept nagging me, whispering, insisting. And her story was so amazing it became a major part of the book.
37 – Most memorable moment as an author?
When a 75 year old woman who read Unbroken told me she’d always loved and supported her gay son but she’d never understood what his journey had been like until she read Unbroken.
Where to find the author:
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorLarryBenjamin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WriterLarry
Website: www.larrybenjamin.com
Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5723405.Larry_Benjamin
Publisher: Beaten Track Publishing
Cover Artist: Natasha Snow
Tour Dates & Stops: June 3, 2015
Parker Williams, Multitasking Mommas, Divine Magazine, Bayou Book Junkie, Andrew Q. Gordon, Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words, Inked Rainbow Reads, TTC Books and More, Fangirl Moments and My Two Cents, Rainbow Gold Reviews, MM Good Book Reviews, Molly Lolly, Happily Ever Chapter, My Fiction Nook, BFD Book Blog, Mikky’s World of Books, Sinfully Addicted to All Male Romance, Havan Fellows, Vampires, Werewolves, and Fairies, Oh My, Hearts on Fire, Michael Mandrake, Elin Gregory
Rafflecopter Prize: 3 books from Larry’s backlist.
Unbroken
My parents, unable to change me, had instead, silenced me. When they’d stilled my hands, they’d taken my words, made me lower my voice to a whisper. Later I remained silent in defense, refusing to acknowledge the hateful words: Brainiac. Sissy. Antiman. Faggot.
Lincoln de Chabert’s life is pretty unremarkable until he comes home from kindergarten and announces he will marry his best friend, Orlando, when he grows up. His parents spring into immediate action, determined to fix him―his father takes him to baseball games and the movie “Patton”―igniting an epic battle of wills as Lincoln is determined to remain himself, and marry whom he chooses, at all costs.
What Binds Us
When 17 year old Thomas Edward meets the man of his dreams, he assumes they’ll be together forever. When their relationship ends abruptly, he learns that sometimes it’s in an ending that we find our beginning.
At 17 Thomas-Edward escapes southern New Jersey and the tyranny of his parents love thinking he is ready for his life to begin, thinking he is ready for anything. Anything quickly arrives in the form of one Donovan Dion “Dondi” Whyte, his freshman roommate at the University of Pennsylvania. Dondi, who is like no one he has ever met before, in his own words: “Dondi became my guide, my Virgil, on my personal odyssey of self-discovery.”
Dondi introduces Thomas him into “a looking-glass world in which everything was familiar yet larger, more exquisite, more precious than anything he had ever known.” Dondi is stunningly wealthy, sophisticated, passionate, urbane—everything Thomas has dreamed of loving. They fall in love but the relationship fails. They remain uneasy friends. Their fragile relationship is threatened when Thomas falls in love with Matthew, Dondi’s younger brother.
Damaged Angels
Damaged Angels is the first collection of short fiction by Larry Benjamin. The 13 stories in this collection give voice to the invisible, the damaged: the drug addicts and hustlers, the mentally ill, the confused, and the men who fall in love with them, all of them bravely trying to make a place for themselves in the world of unbroken men. Their worlds are sometimes the mean streets of decaying cities, sometimes the great beyond and, once, the earth itself. Often dark, always evocative and lyrical, these stories delve into the lives of men clearly less-than-perfect and explore love in the context of disease and oncoming death as in “The Cross,” drug addiction, as in “The Seduction of the Angel Gabriel,” and mental illness in “2 Rivers.” These stories explore the possibility that less-than-perfect is sometimes perfect.
congrats on the new release