My first young adult novel, Little Brother, tells the story of a kid named Marcus Yallow who forms a guerilla army of young people dedicated to the reformation of the US government by any means necessary. He and his friends use cryptography and other technology to subvert security measures, to distribute revolutionary literature, to liberate and publish secret governmental memoes, and humiliate government officials. Every chapter includes some kind of how-to guide for accomplishing this kind of thing on your own, from tips on disabling radio-frequency ID tags to beating biometric identity system to defeating the censorware used by your school network to control what kind of things you can and can’t see on the Internet. The book is a long hymn to personal liberty, free speech, the people’s right to question and even overthrow their government, even during wartime.

Marcus is 17, and the book is intended to be read by young teens or even precocious tweens (as well as adults). Naturally, I anticipated that some of the politics and technology in the story would upset my readers. And it’s true, a few of the reviewers were critical of this stuff. But not many, not overly so. What I didn’t expect was that I would receive a torrent of correspondence and entreaties from teachers, students, parents, and librarians who were angry, worried, or upset that Marcus loses his virginity about two-thirds of the way through the book (secondarily, some of them were also offended by the fact that Marcus drinks a beer at one point, and a smaller minority wanted to know why and how Marcus could get away with talking back to his elders).

read, read, read!

because they fear nothing more than a freethinking youth

Rarely has a book for young adults been so eagerly anticipated as Tricks of the Trade, the third book by the popular young author Floortje Zwigtman. She understands better than anyone else that adolescents aren’t looking for a neat book of instructions for the future. These are stories that tell it like it is, historical novels about surviving in conditions where the laws and morals of polite society no longer seem to apply.

Adrian Mayfield is born in the poor East End of Victorian London, the son of a pub landlord and a seamstress. However, a different career lies in store for him. It’s not a scenario that the street-hardened lad could have envisaged: a wealthy older gentleman falls in love with him and takes him home. The man is Augustus Trops, a second-rate artist from Flanders. He introduces Adrian to the flamboyant circle of Oscar Wilde, where he meets other men like Augustus and finds work as an artist’s model. The work pays well and he meets the most interesting and powerful people of his time. Adrian is very pleased with his new life at first. Everything appears to be going swimmingly.  Until, that is, London’s beau monde decamps to Europe for the summer holidays, as happens every year. Adrian, by now accustomed to luxury, ends up without any income.

In a male brothel he discovers the flip side of his new life in the twofaced London of the nineteenth century, where gossip, blackmail and brutal police violence make homosexuality a highly dangerous way of life. Then he faces the choice of whether to put his integrity and his friendships on the line so that he doesn’t have to live in a mouldy, cockroach-infested garret.

Tricks of the Trade is an intense book that is difficult to put down. It draws the reader in without resorting to cheap sensationalism. This is a result of Zwigtman’s unique ability to combine critical distance with open intimacy. The raw, breathtaking writing of this sharp, historical portrait really makes the reader think about life. Zwigtman is one of the great modern writers of books for young adults.

This is the first book in a series of three and was published in Dutch under the title “Schijnbewegingen” and in German as “Ich, Adrian Mayfield”. There is no English translation yet because all interested publishers asked the author to removed some of the detailed sex scenes considering the age of the target audience but Zwigtman refused to do so.

Steinhöfel’s greatest accomplishment is that he portrays homosexual relationships as the equivalent of heterosexual relationships. By demonstrating that the journey toward self-discovery of a young gay man is the same as that of a young straight man, Steinhöfel shows that discriminatory views on homosexuality are completely unfounded. In addition to vividly depicting Visible’s breathtaking surroundings, his crisp and graceful prose provides insight into Phil’s complex thoughts and emotions. Satisfying the reader with Phil’s self-discovery, Steinhöfel does an excellent job of balancing the scales between satisfaction and misery, having and wanting. By the end of the novel, one aches with a confused combination of happiness and grief. Steinhöfel and his novel deserve every word of praise!

English ISBN: 0440229324 | German ISBN 3551353158
English Version at Amazon | German Version at Amazon

Eddie, the great
Edgar Allan Poe

[You can buy this pendant & other cool stuff at tartx.com]

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,
doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

The POEt

Although he saw himself as primarily a poet, Poe’s gothic tales of the grotesque and dark side of life have also been the subject of immense critical scrutiny; some critics have claimed him as the originator of the detective story, others as an early forerunner of the science fiction genre. However the critics divide, one undisputed fact is that Poe is a master storyteller.

Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in January 1809, the second son of travelling actors. There is no record of his father after 1810 and his mother died a year later from tuberculosis. Edgar, split up from his elder brother and younger sister, was taken into the household of a Virginian tobacco merchant, John Allan, whose name Poe adopted from 1824 onwards. He went to England with the Allan family in 1845 and while there attended a school in Stoke Newington. Poe’s relationship with his foster father, uneasy at the best of times, was put under great strain when they returned to Richmond, Virginia, and in 1826 Allan refused to support Poe financially at Virginia University. Poe resorted to gambling in an attempt to try and support himself, but was forced to leave college. After a violent quarrel with his foster father over his choice of career, Poe left Virginia altogether and went to Boston. While there he published ‘Tamerline and other poems’ anonymously and at his own expense, but it was not well received. In 1827 Poe entered the US army under an assumed name and was posted to Sullivan Island; his time there gave him material for later stories such as ‘The Gold Bug’.

Poe was always very close to Mrs. Allan and it was her dying wish that her husband and foster son be reconciled. For a brief time this worked and Poe entered the military academy at West Point in 1830, living on a small allowance from Allan. The truce did not last long and Poe deliberately got himself dishonourably discharged in 1831. He then lived with his aunt, Mrs. Clemms, in Baltimore, where he began to publish stories in magazines. When ‘MS. Found in a Bottle’ won a short-story competition one of the judges helped secure him a job as an editor on the Southern Literacy Messenger. During his time with the periodical he did much to increase its readership, but was later sacked because of his excessive drinking.

In 1836 he married his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia Clemms. Much of his early work went unnoticed and it took until 1840 before Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in 2 volumes. This included the famous story ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. Plans for starting his own magazine did not lead to much and he continued to work as a magazine editor for various publications. His ‘Tales’ and ‘The Raven and Other Poems’, published in 1845 did bring him some recognition but unfortunately it was not enough to sustain his family financially. Mrs Clemms and Virginia nearly starved to death one winter. After his wife’s death in 1847 Poe became increasingly unstable and his dependence on drink and drugs increased. Depressed and erratic he attempted suicide in 1848 and tragically died in 1849, five days after being found in a delirious and semi-conscious condition in Baltimore.

His reputation as a writer has grown steadily since his death and he has been admired by the likes of R.L. Stevenson, H.P. Lovecraft, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Baudelaire. [Source]

The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe was seriously struggling. He had quietly published a few books of poetry (one credited simply to “a Bostonian”) which no one read, he was broke, his young wife had recently died and his creative writing prospects didn’t look too good. To make ends meet Poe was working as a literary critic, moving back and forth between Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City and making literary enemies all along the way. He was also drinking… a lot. He did however have a new poem. He called it “The Raven.”

It almost didn’t get published. It was rejected from the first journal he submitted it to, but Poe hit gold with the Evening Mirror. Edited by Poe’s friend Nathaniel Parker Willis, who had often encouraged Poe to “be less destructive in his criticism and concentrate on his poetry” the paper published an advance copy of the poem with the glowing recommendation that it was “unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification… It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it.” Willis was right, and within a few months the poem was published in numerous journals, and was a high society sensation. Poe had had his big break. [Source]

The Toaster

For over 50 years since 1949, on the night marking the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth, a mysterious man-in-black has entered the cemetery where the master of the macabre lies buried, and, making his way through the dark shadows to Poe’s grave, he places a partial bottle of expensive French cognac and three blood-red roses there, presumably as tokens of admiration and in tribute to the great author. This ritual completed, he then slips away into the night as quietly and as mysteriously as he came. The identity of this dark stranger (dubbed the "Poe Toaster" by observers) has never been revealed. And out of respect to the memory and legacy of Poe, and with a desire to preserve the sanctity of the performance of the ritual, no attempt has ever been made to stop or hinder this enigmatic admirer. [Source]

The Movie

is the world’s first feature film on the life of mystery and horror writer Edgar Allan Poe. Hollywood has produced over 30 feature films on his works, but not one on his fascinating life. Poe was raised as a backstage theater baby, and his early days in England, and afterwards, on the docks of Richmond, were fertile creative ground that spawned one of the most unique imaginations in history. You can watch the film for free only today!

Steve Berman’s Vintage: A Ghost Story combines the vibrancy of the contemporary YA fantasy novel with the atmosphere of the traditional ghost story to produce a work reminiscent of that of Robert Aickman or Algernon Blackwood, where the ghosts exist both as manifestations of tragedies from the past and as echoes of modern loneliness and social isolation.

The protagonist of Vintage is himself initially a somewhat ghostly character: for instance, the other characters in the story rarely, if ever, speak his name. After being outed as a gay teen in his old neighbourhood and viciously accused by his parents of being a "sick child," he has run away to live with his aunt. He has stopped going to school and has instead fallen into a pattern of drifting aimlessly between his job at a local vintage clothing store and the rundown diners where he eats in order to avoid his aunt’s horrible cooking. When the protagonist meets Josh, who turns out to be the ghost of a gay teenager from the past. The protagonist is thrilled, believing that he has finally met someone he can talk to and have a relationship with. He soon discovers, however, that the secrets of the past can also endanger those who live in the present, and that it is not just Josh but his own personal ghosts which must be laid to rest if he is to have a future.