Self-publishing is really coming its own, as witness the Lambda Literary Foundation's new award for Self-Published books, of which I was a judge recently.

    I was really delighted to find two remarkable books that were entered for this award. Both of the books were first books by very talented writers, and both of them were "coming of age" narratives. The Tragedy of Miss Geneva Flowers, by the young writer Joe Babcock, who lives in Minneapolis and publishes through Closet Case Books, is the story of fifteen-year-old Erick Taylor, who makes that old, overused comparison "gay Holden Caulfield" glow once more. Erick is imprisoned in a Catholic high school, has a non-functioning father who's a psychiatrtist, and a Born Again mother locked in misery, guilt, and herself. Like Holden, Erick is filled with his own importance and his own quest for authenticity and a true self in a phony world--but unlike Salinger's creation, Erick finds his salvation in his deep love for Cloe--that's a man's name, in case you didn't know. Cloe manages a sunglass shop in a mall and is a "grandiloquent" drag queen. He is larger than life and a truly hot place in a cold Minneapolis winter. He is 26, ages older than Erick, and he becomes Auntie Mame to young Erick's "Eloise" in the Plaza Hotel of Minneapolis's not always fabulous gay life. He takes Erick to bars, gives him dating and mating tips, and shows him the deep, sweet, generous love that every fifteen-year-old gay kid wants.

    I know I certainly did.

    By the time Erick is 18, he will know more than I knew at 38--including witnessing Cloe's death. But I don't want to spoil this book for you. It's a joy to read because the writing is fresh, alive, and vividly real. In it, Joe Babcock brought me back to all the poignancy, freshness, and  hurt of being gay and fifteen. He does what good fiction does: making the past--and even the future--a part of the living present. You can learn more about The Tragedy of Miss Geneva Flowers at www.closetcasebooks.com. This is a book to read and love.

The second book was People Farm, an excellent nonfiction account by Steve Susoyev of his ten-year involvement with a Colorado/California "therapy cult" led by a charismatic, powerfully manipulative psychiatrist whom Susoyev names "Dr. Aaron," but whose menacing self-magnification reminded this reader of the (gratefully) dead Arthur Janov--one of those barnacles on the great ship of self-discovery. Dr. Aaron started a cult site on a huge spread in the wilds of Colorado called Rancho Vista. Under the guise of "therapy," he led his numerous followers into revealing every vulnerable aspect of themselves, sexually, psychologically, emotionally, until, in a state of complete nakedness, he was able to use, manipulate, and abuse them for his own purposes.

Most of his followers were young people whom Aaron, like a modern Fagin, was able to rescue from drugs, the streets, jails, and mental institutions. The time of People Farm was the 70s, when the pop lingos of Gestalt, Primal Scream, Nude Encounter groups, and other branches of the "Human Potential Movement" were being hyped by the press as a way to successfully "get into your head." Of course, what you found once you got in there is another story, and Steve Susoyev tells this very well. He begins as a gay teenager whose boyhood lover was murdered in a home for delinquents, and whose viciously homophobic parents have disowned him. He is working at a snake pit psychiatric hospital in Orange County California, and seriously contemplating killing himself. At the funeral of a young hospital patient who did kill himself, Susoyev meets Dr. Aaron and his beautiful young French-speaking wife Zoe; Steve immediately decides that he must do whatever he can to get the seductive Dr. Aaron to save him.

Aaron is only too willing to do so--but at the price of literally taking over Steve's soul.  This is a fairly long (408) pages, and at times, messy book--there are places where the narrative flow gets tied into knots.  But it is also a gripping tale--and, if you lived through this period, a total "blast from the past."  Who else remembers the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and their motto: "Dope will get you through times with no money, better than money will get you through times with no dope"?

Such innocence is no more, but then nether is Steve Susoyev's.  Susoyev  became a lawyer, and is now living in San Francisco.  You can learn more about Steve Susoyev and his book at www.peoplefarm.com. What both of these excellent books have told me is that there is a world beyond mainstream publishing that is telling the real gay stories, and I am very proud to be a part of it.