Elisa - My reviews and Ramblings

Edward FitzGerald (31 March 1809 – 14 June 1883) was an English writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. FitzGerald's homosexuality has been well-known since at least 1970, when H Montgomery Hyde published The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name. An entire book documenting FitzGerald's passionate affair with a fisherman named Joseph Fletcher was published in 1908 (James Blyth, Edward FitzGerald and Posh). He was previously enamored, at 23, of a teenage youth named Kenworthy Browne, whose tragic early death while riding left Fitzgerald heartbroken. FitzGerald became a dedicated sailor, and his later years were passed among various fishermen and friends along the coast. It has to be admitted however that there remains some doubt as to whether FitzGerald's intense love for his various male friends ever found physical expression. (P: ©Eva, Lady Rivett-Carnac (died 1939)/NPG 1342. Edward Fitzgerald, 1873)

Edward FitzGerald was born Edward Purcell at Bredfield House in Woodbridge, Suffolk in 1809. In 1818, his father, John Purcell, assumed the name and arms of his wife's family, the FitzGeralds.

This name change occurred shortly after FitzGerald's mother inherited her second fortune. She had previously inherited over half a million pounds from an aunt, but in 1818, her father died and left her considerably more than that. The FitzGeralds were one of the wealthiest families in England. Edward FitzGerald later commented that all of his relatives were mad; further, that he was insane as well, but was at least aware of the fact.



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

Further Readings:

Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa Rolle
Paperback: 760 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (July 1, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1500563323
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
Amazon: Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time

Days of Love chronicles more than 700 LGBT couples throughout history, spanning 2000 years from Alexander the Great to the most recent winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Many of the contemporary couples share their stories on how they met and fell in love, as well as photos from when they married or of their families. Included are professional portraits by Robert Giard and Stathis Orphanos, paintings by John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini, and photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnson, Arnold Genthe, and Carl Van Vechten among others. “It's wonderful. Laying it out chronologically is inspired, offering a solid GLBT history. I kept learning things. I love the decision to include couples broken by death. It makes clear how important love is, as well as showing what people have been through. The layout and photos look terrific.” Christopher Bram “I couldn’t resist clicking through every page. I never realized the scope of the book would cover centuries! I know that it will be hugely validating to young, newly-emerging LGBT kids and be reassured that they really can have a secure, respected place in the world as their futures unfold.” Howard Cruse “This international history-and-photo book, featuring 100s of detailed bios of some of the most forward-moving gay persons in history, is sure to be one of those bestsellers that gay folk will enjoy for years to come as reference and research that is filled with facts and fun.” Jack Fritscher


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June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was a Caribbean-American poet, novelist, journalist, biographer, dramatist, teacher and committed activist. Jordan is regarded as one of the most significant and prolific black, bisexual writers of the 20th century.

June Jordan was born the only child of Jamaican immigrant parents, Granville Ivanhoe and Mildred Maud Jordan in Harlem, New York. Her father worked as a postal worker and her mother as a part time nurse. When Jordan was five, the family moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. While life in the Jordan household was often turbulent, Jordan credits her father with passing on to her a love of literature, and she began writing her own poetry at the age of seven. Jordan describes the complexities of her early childhood in her 2000 memoir, Soldier: A Poet's Childhood which she dedicated to her father.

In this short memoir Jordan explores her complicated relationship with a man who encouraged her to read broadly and memorize passages of classical texts, but would also beat her for the slightest misstep and called her "damn black devil child". In her 1986 essay For My American Family Jordan explores the many conflicts to be dealt with in the experience of being raised by black immigrant parents with visions of the future for their offspring that far exceeded the urban ghettos of the present.

In Soldier: A Poet's Childhood, Jordan recalls her father telling her "There was a war on against colored people, I had to became a soldier". While grateful to America for allowing him to escape poverty and seek a better life for his family, Jordan's father was conscious of the struggles his daughter would face and encouraged her to fight. After attending Brooklyn's Midwood high school for a year, Jordan enrolled in Northfield Mount Hermon School, an elite preparatory school in New England.

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

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Daniel P. Warner was the co-founder and executive director of the Los Angeles Shanti Foundation, an organization that provided care for people living with AIDS; and the program director of West Hollywood CARES. He also organized the National Candlelight March in 1983 and 1990 and served as a health educator for the City of West Hollywood. In addition, Warner acted as a consultant on two television movies about AIDS, Our Sons on ABC and the Emmy award-winning An Early Frost on NBC. In 1991, in recognition of his service to the community, Warner was given Los Angeles Shanti's first Daniel P. Warner Commitment to Service Award, Los Angeles County's Community Service Award, and a certificate of recognition from the California State Senate.

Daniel Warner was born on June 14, 1955 in St. Louis, Missouri. He moved to Los Angeles in 1976, where he attended the California Institute of the Arts and the University of California, Los Angeles. In the 1980s, Warner contracted HIV, and began writing extensively about his experience living with HIV/AIDS. In 1987, he moved to San Francisco, but continued to spend most of his time in Southern California. He returned to San Francisco permanently in 1991 and lived there with his partner, Matt Satterlund, until he died on June 14, 1993.

His papers are held at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives: Diaries, correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, videocassettes and personal information, 1980-1994, of Daniel P. Warner, AIDS educator and co-founder of the Los Angeles Shanti Foundation. Materials in this collection primarily concern Warner's experience living with HIV and AIDS from the 1980s to the time of his death in 1993.


AIDS Quilt

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Source: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8v125jm/

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I asked to all the authors joining the UK GLBTQ Fiction meet in Manchester in July (http://ukglbtfictionmeet.co.uk/2013-event/2013-attendees/spotlight_authors-2/) a personal favor, a special Ebook Giveaway: twice a week I will post 1 book from each author, and among those who will leave a comment, I will draw a winner. Very easy and very fast ;-) I will send a PM to the winner, so remember to not leave anonymous comments!

And the ebook giveaway goes to: frigus_et_nox

Today author is Aleksandr Voinov: Aleksandr Voinov is an emigrant German author living near London where, after four years in financial journalism and investment banking, he is now making his living as an editor at a ratings agency, publisher and co-owner of Riptide Publishing. At 37 years of age, Voinov has written more than a dozen novels and commercially published five print books with German publishers. After many years working in the horror, science fiction, cyberpunk and fantasy genres, Voinov has set his sights now on contemporary and historical erotic gay novels.

Scorpion (Memory of Scorpions) by Aleksandr Voinov
Paperback: 234 pages
Publisher: Riptide Publishing; 2 edition (May 27, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1626490147
ISBN-13: 978-1626490147
Amazon: Scorpion (Memory of Scorpions)
Amazon Kindle: Scorpion (Memory of Scorpions)

Never stop fighting.

Kendras is a casualty of war: injured, penniless, and quite possibly the last surviving member of the only family he's ever had-the elite fighting force known as the Scorpions. When a steel-eyed mercenary offers him medicine and shelter in exchange for submission and a secret task, Kendras has no choice but to accept. He is a Scorpion; he'll do whatever it takes to survive.

But his true goal is to rebuild the Scorpions. Neither Steel's possessive nature nor Kendras's shattered foot can keep him from finding the last of his brothers, or the mysterious leader of the Scorpions, the man who held Kendras's heart long before Steel tried to take it for himself.

The goal is simple, the situation anything but. To rescue his leader and escape from Steel for good, Kendras must fight through a morass of politics and intrigue where enemies may be allies and even allies have hidden agendas. But Kendras isn't only fighting for his lost lover and tribe-he soon realizes that nothing less than the birth of an Empire is at stake.

(Note: This is a revised edition of Scorpion, originally released in May, 2011.)

This title is #1 of the Memory of Scorpions series.

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This novel was submitted to the Rainbow Awards in the Gay Erotic Romance category, and while I completely agree there is a component of eroticism that is well played in the plot, my first impression upon ending the book was that this is more a mainstream novel, and that it could have competed even in the Contemporary General Fiction.

Where There’s Smoke is a political romance, setting is the year before the California governor election, and of course the hidden scandal is that the candidate is gay and in the closet. The common and used plot of having Anthony Hunter, starry eyed campaign manager with an ethic code and strict principle, falling in love with candidate Jesse Cameron and convincing him he can come out of the closet, winning the elections and they can walk hand in hand towards the horizon, is soon destroyed by clever Witt. She makes Hunter older and wiser than Cameron, sure with principles, but in any case his job is to win the campaign; when he finds out that Cameron’s marriage is a fluke, and that his candidate is gay, Hunter is more worried of a possible impeachment, than of misleading the electors. And moreover, the same Hunter is more or less in the closet, not living openly his being gay, not actually denying it but still… so when he discovers that his attraction to the younger Cameron is mutual, Hunter doesn’t worry much that Cameron is married, that his wife is fighting with an eating disorder, and that, above all, if the media find out, the campaign is over.

I liked the interaction between Jesse and his wife Simone; the author didn’t underplay the effect it can have on a wife to find out her husband is gay. Simone is not homophobic, and for that reason she doesn’t hate Jesse, but at the same time it’s not easy for her to admit their marriage is at the end. Maybe if Jesse was destined to remain single, unhappy like her in their fake marriage, she would be more at ease. Simone unfortunately has other issues other than their marriage, and all of them together are destroying her mental stability. She is absolutely a positive character, only that she is fragile. In a way I like her better than Jesse and Anthony.

That is probably the reason why I think this novel was good, that nor Jesse or Anthony were flawless romance heroes, but more realistic men involved in politics, that, as we all know, is far from being the place where to find idealistic heroes.

Amazon: Where There's Smoke
Amazon Kindle: Where There's Smoke
Paperback: 428 pages
Publisher: Loose Id, LLC (February 20, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1623003016
ISBN-13: 978-1623003012



Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle

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