Bøger af Chris Lewis Gibson

This is the end of this particular offering.Last summer, around this time, I began writing poems again, partly because someone asked me to, but also because I needed to make a very long offering, an act of contemplation and worship. After years of not writing poetry, four works, one for each season, would be offered up, and at last, this is done. I look for more to say, but most of what is to be said is in the pages beyond, so without further ado-I mean, who ever needed ado?-as I have offered the poems of the hot summer, the waiting autumn, and the strange winter, so now I offer this volume of the even stranger spring of the year two thousand and twenty in which not only did flowers spring and trees blossom, but riots, abuse and poverty, plague and all the fruits of our foolishness come to bloom, and all through it was the life and beauty and power of this earth that always remains and that shall remain even if we do not.

Rory, High Prince of Failmark, and his cousins Sir Gaheran and Sir Gowan arrive at the quiet home of Harlan Tamlinson and his sister Issenfray to call them back into the service Rhyan, High King of the Ten Kingdoms. Worried about the growing strength of his treacherous father-in-law, Markhan Corvailen, King Rhyan prepares to pit himself against his old enemy. Rhyan is not the only one with plans. As Brynn Ellisand prepares to marry the King's oldest daughter, Mellanie, he meets a love that will change his life. Princess Sendra, Rhyan's youngest child will do anything for freedom, even if it means running off to her grandmother, Arnave, the witch who launched a civil war that nearly tore the High Kingdom apart. Queen Alsyce strives to carve a place of power for herself between her warring husband and father while her brother, the one time beloved of Harlan seeks revenge for the abuse done to him long ago. Harlan and Issenfray, who sought to escape the glittering court of Clearstone Castle, and the sorrow they experienced there long ago are placed in the midst of intriguing kings and queens, scheming wizards and enchantresses, and in the end no one can escape the visions of fire which threaten to engulf the Ten Kingdoms of Failmark, The Hallowed Land.

BIRD CAME DOWN"Joey came to me crying cause somebody hurt him.""They're bound to," Felix replied. " He's a good boy.""I wanted to kill them. I feel violent all the time. If it's a jungle out there, and if I'm a jungle creature, and you're a jungle creature. If... we're so wild, then who's going to protect you from my claws?""Who's going to protect you from mine?"Scott said nothing at first. At last he said: "We'll have to protect ourselves from each other."Once Felix Owens loved a man, and once he let that man go and moved through life, counting on men for the pleasure they provided and nothing more. When Scott Flowers reappears after several years' absence, with an impending divorce, a history of violence, two small children, and a blackout drinking habit, neither he nor the sexually adventurous Felix are ideal for each other. Slowly, they approach each other again, hoping that the years and their own actions have not damaged them too much to make some sort of life.

"When it happened, all those years ago, when I knew what I had done I felt so sick. So dirty. There are moments now, years later, when the day is bright and everything seems so beautiful, and then I slip into that darkness. I'm in that day again where I did what I did. I want to die. So that's why I'm careful with us. That's why I walked away tonight and won't come back until after midnight. That's why I keep my distance, always try to check my emotions, my lust. That's why I always whisper, 'Are you okay? Are you alright?' when we make love. That's why we can be friends, friends who sleep in the same bed, but why I would never be your boyfriend again, not in a million years, Dylan Mesda." Dylan Mesda and Lance Bishop attempt to sustain a relationship whose trust was once so violently broken, but help is in the way in the form of young Elias Anderson. Brendan and Kenny attempt to keep their union alive while Sheridan comes to terms with the deepest love he has ever known while the second greatest love, Logan Banford, struggles to make a life as an aging escort. There are new people in Rossford as well: the dark and strange Maggie Biggs; young poet, Jonah Layton. Sean Babcock returns after a long absense to be reunited with the brother he harmed. Todd and Tara's daughter, Maia, is all grown up. Laurel Houghton, so steady in life, is about to be made unsteady in love, and the childless Will and Layla will have their lives permanently altered by a trip overseas.

We begin where we left off, at a Christmas Eve party full of presents. Tom now has a son, and Fenn has... a lot of explaining to do. Bryant, after years of lovelessness now finds the beginnings of love with Chad North though Claire Anderson may have something to say about it. Noah, to the surprise of Danasia, and everyone else, admits that a new arrival, his old friend James, is the love of his life and the one thing that could make him blush. In the conclusion of the Triptych, all must be resolved. Some relationships will be consummated, while others end, some virgins will be unvirgined and some whores redeemed, but others will stay just as they always were. A marriage is in the works and Nell Reardon, long kept from the world of romance will stumble into it again with the most unlikely of partners. Can a pornstar priest find peace? Will a lonely priest wish he was a pornstar, and is someone finally going to have to give an account for all of Ed Callan's money? Read, and find out.

"The Orthodox celebrate this more than Catholics. Certainly more than Protestants. In the West we like bright lights and answers. At Epiphany we discover, and what it is we discover we are not entirely sure. The Wisemen see the baby in Mary's arms, but what it all means.... Who can really say?" The center of Brendan's story is his experience at the first Christmas party. The evening he and Sheridan have is, in some way, the crux of the whole book and the center to all the other strange events that happen. It is dreamlike, but it is also lifelike. We wish to judge life, to give it morals, to declare many experiences good or bad and ourselves good and bad based on them. While there are many things which are good and bad, many of our experiences, especially the way we experience ourselves sexually, are simply happenings which we are not entirely sure how to describe. Much of our life, in love and in religion, is defined by mystery and disconcertment, not moral and solution. This new novel is different from the other books. For this very reason, the reason of mystery, this novel is an unfinished story of sorts. Not all questions are answered and certainly all bows are not tied up. This may mean there are more stories to come, but what comes after will not be like what came before, and if that means anything it means that neither Brendan Miller nor myself will type in bold print the six letters which make up the phrase, "The End."

Poems for the Approach of SpringHere is the third cycle of poems.New Year's is the last sad grasp at Christmas. These days we have a hard time with happiness and celebration. The winter months stretching on are like the dogpissed and street grimed snow. We love to complain, and it can be hard to find beauty, especially if we are intent on not looking for it. Lent comes, Saint Patrick's Day comes with its plastic gold and shamrock shakes. Draped in red and purple, Passiontide comes. These are uneasy and ancient doors to resurrection and awakening if we accept them, and in this particular year, unexpected, comes from the East a plague which at first we watch from a distance until, at last, in engulfs the whole world...

"The thing is, I don't love a lot. I feel like the only thing in the world I really love is you.""That's not right," Jay said simply. "You'll always be unhappy if you're heart's that small."That surprised me and he said, "The heart is big. There shouldn't be only one person in it." He turned to me said, "Try to learn to love the whole world."I was going to ask him to come back to me. In bed he sat up a little straighter and pulled his knees to his stomach so I saw all of him, brown and soft, smooth and thoughtful and he said, "Don't come to me unless you have a full heart. I'm trying to get a full heart. That's all I'm interested in. You have to love things. You have to love this world. It is worth loving. You know?"After a decade together, the depression that dogged Jay Strickland and Michael Cleveland threatens to overwhelm, and so Michael sets out into the West for answers as to how to live again. But the sadness within reflects the madness without and working through their sorrow toward Joy, Jay and Michael learn they are not alone. Russell Lewis and an expanded portrait of the town of Geshichte Falls Michigan return. In Lassador a one time homecoming queen prepares for a high school reunion and in Rhodes, Ohio, Isaac Weaver and Efrem Walker learn the secret of joy.

"But you're leaving me. For him." Dylan shook his head. "It isn't like that. It's not him." "Then, I don't..." "I'm not leaving. I'm just not your boyfriend. And it's because we don't work. Not really. And we shouldn't work. It shouldn't be an issue.".... Dylan said, fighting it and pulling away. "I am too young to be this old... "It's about...how if I keep this up I'll be a senior citizen at thirty." Dylan Mesda is fifteen years old, and caught between two loves and an almost uncontrollable sexuality. But he is not the only one going through changes. Between Paul and Noah, long settled into relationships, a spark will be kindled. Meredith Affren seeks affection and adventure away from Mathan, and an old love tests the new love between Sheridan Klasko and Chay Lewis. Away from Rossford, Brendan and Kenny attempt to stay afloat and Brian Babcock returns to Rossford after a long absence only to meet the familiar specter of Chad North.

Fenn said, "You have a great musical gift and it comes from Tom. You think of him as a very sweet, very dear man, and he is. But he once composed an entire score in his head on a train ride. That's the thing about geniuses, they rarely know they are." Dylan asked his father, "Have you ever told Dad that?" "It wouldn't sound right. Tom has always had a hard time believing in his own brilliance. He never believed it when I told him how great he was. But... if he wasn't what I said he was, then why would I have loved him?" To come to the end, you must go to the beginning, and so the last Rossford book begins not some years after the last, but nearly twenty years before the first. The young characters we began with: Layla, Will, Brendan, Dena and Milo are entering their middle years and Laurel, Dylan, Maia and their friends are coming into the world of adulthood, but here is also the story of Fenn, Tom, Bryant, Todd, Adele and Nell and how they came to be the people we first meet in The Houses in Rossford.

In the conclusion of the Lake Cycle, two years have passed since the death of Donovan's mother and the time of the Plague. Don, writing more than ever, but more than ever in search of gainful employment and re entry into the real world, wonders what's next, as does is goddaughter, May, who's fled her house and come to live at 812 Pine Street. Donovan Shorter, Cade Richards and Simon Barrow are getting married, and the simplest process in the world, when turned into a union of three, necessitates reinvention and calls into question commonly held thoughts. Living together, Javon and Pat Thomas's love deepens the present as they look into their pasts, and in Ely, Cade confronts the recent death of his father as well as a choice he made long ago. Simon is entangled in politics when he joins the campaign to put his friend and mentor Brendan Miller in City Hall as the first openly bare-chested and shade wearing mayor of Rossford, Indiana.

At the end of a wicked winter, two years into their life together, Freddy Richards bursts into the home of Donovan Shorter and his love, Cade Richards to announce their father's sudden illness. As Donovan and Cade are drawn back to the small Michigan beach town where Cade's life begin, both of them must come to terms with things left long behind. Beside them will be Rob Dwyer and Isaiah Frey, first encountered in Eden, along with their untraditional family, and the fallout of their untraditional ways. As the mystery of Easter approaches, new characters and old characters come together on the edges of the thawing Lake Michigan to fuel a light that finds its fuel in the darkness, and a love that withstands all fear.

In Chicago, Owen Dunharrow arrives at a strange building with his nephew Uriah. After a snowstorm, a mysterious woman appears at his door. At Long Lees, the secluded and haunted desmesne of Augustus Dunharrow, Seth Moore's abilities increase while Marabeth concludes the journal of her great aunt Pamela. But she, Jim and Kris receive new gifts that will unlock old secrets. While Lewis and Chris Ashby remember secrets lost in another lifetime, Dan Rawlinson and Laurie travel with Myron and Tanitha to meet Rosamunde, the red gold vampiress who made him, and has been holding on to her own imformation for centuries. What will be discovered in visions and dreams, notebooks and old magics will not only illuminate the Strausses, but the Dunharrows and even the Drinkers in the house of Kruinh as our tale, begun in The Old, winds to its end. Everything is linked, all are connected, and the binding tie between them all is: THE BLOOD

Well, when last we left off Noah Riley was being held at gunpoint in Fenn Houghton's house over some money that he had stolen, only he hadn't stolen it and it was drug money anyway. Not that they were really doing drugs. Well, they were, but the drugs were being done at a party for a pornstar and Todd, Fenn's significant other was filming it. That's because Fenn and Todd were running out of money and Fenn's sister was finding out that her husband was not only cheating on her, but had a secret family, with her secret sister. See, Adele had a sister she never knew about who turned out to be her husband's mistress, which meant that her daughter Layla, Fenn's niece, had a brother she never knew who is now dating Claire, the sister of Paul who she never knew used to be Johnny Mellow, a gay pornstar, which leads us back to the party, which makes things very confusing. And we haven't even gotten to the DVD Brian Babcock made which ruined Paul's relationship with Kirk and made Brian so ashamed that after a decade of wreaking havoc on Rossford, he fled and Todd-Fenn's Todd-went after him. All with Fenn's permission. See, Brian broke up Fenn and Tom, his ex lover, who is currently dating his cousin, Fenn's cousin, who is a playwright, who... oh... it starts to get confusing right about here...

As his sophomore high school year begins in the late 90's, Russell Lewis can't get out of a depression that paints his entire life and his parents, Thom and Patti, are on the edge of divorce. When Chayne Kandzierski returns from out east this heralds the beginning of good times, but soon to Chayne and Russell it becomes apparent that everyone they know is looking for a better way to live. The Lewis family, Anigel Raez, Gilead Story, Rob Keyes and Bradley Long are just some of the residents of Geschichte Fall, Michigan desperate to make sense of this blue season.

THE BOOK OF THE BLESSED King Anthal came to the throne of Westrial vowing to protect magic, and all the ancient ways. But now he lies dying and witches, weather workers and Blue Priests alike fear the changes a new king will bring. From out of obscurity, the sorcerer Ash returns not only to aid the dying King Anthal, but to revive his bond to Prince Anson, who will be the first to suffer under the coming reign of his brother, Prince Cedd. Meanwhile, Myrne Herreboro, a lady of the North schooled in the magic of the South, sets out on her own journey, soon met by the roguish Wolf, while a young hustler called Pol finds affection with a crossdressing noble. The modern politics of a kingdom begin to touch the legends of its ancient land, and reawaken magic long forgotten.

Lewis Dunharrow Arrives at 1948 Dimler on the day of Nathan Strausses funeral. As the Keller family and the Dunharrow clan meet is increasingly clear that answers to all of their questions will be found down south at Long Lees, the home of Augustus, the patriarch of the Witch Clan. Marabeth delves deeper into the journals of Pamela while Lawrence Malone, Daniel Rawlinson and Kruinh's Drinkers are brought deeper and deeper into a story which they never knew had anything to do with them. Everything is linked, all are connected, and the binding die between them all is: THE WICKEDNESS

Fenn Houghton and his significant other, Todd are quickly going broke. That's the bad news. But they find half a million dollars; that's the good news. It belongs to a drug lord who will do anything he can to get it back. Bad news again. Fenn's sister, Adele doesn't know what's worse, learning of her husband's cheating ways, or learning who he's cheating with, and for how long. A young boy is sent to live with his grandparents in hopes that he will give up his criminal ways, but no one knows of his grandparents' all too criminal past and occasionally risky present; and while two girls deal with their fathers' sins and their own mistakes, a young porn star decides its time to turn his life around and become a serious actor. With guns in the cookie jar and condoms in the collection plate, no matter how ordinary this Indiana town may appear from the outside, inside the houses in Rossford, there's never a dull day.

"I just want you to know whatever happens I love you.""Uh... alright," I said, and felt like an ass because in my head I was always waiting for someone to say something like that, and I figured I would have something profound to say back. I was sick of people never having anything real to say, but now I understood why they never did."No, I'm serious," Michael said, "No matter what happens-""Why would anything happen?"Jay was fear prone. The littlest thing could set him off, and here they were, on Friday night, after a long week in the first year at junior college, sitting in the semi darkness of his family's den, and Michael turned and said some shit like that."Nothing," Michael said. "It's just... people should say that. They need to say it."The next day Jay and Michael receive horrifying news that leads them to recall their former years of high school angst and debilitating depression. The news Jay receives at the beginning of "What Didn't Happen" is far less staggering than the news he gets at the end, and so begins the collection of stories called If Anything Should Happen: Now, Then and the Glory to Come. Through twelve stories we meet Russell Lewis, Jill Barnard, Anigel Raez, Brad Long and the other citizens of Geshichte Falls Michigan. Along the way we meet old characters from other stories, like Paul Anderson in When he Remembers Joy, and Noah Riley in The Only Beauty. Jinny, Isaac, and Efrem of Rhodes, Ohio, all known earlier in The Colossus of Rhodes tell a cycle of stories which, in the end, spiral back to Jay and Michael, stumbling out of the darkness of the first story into the revealed light in the last.

This is a story about the skin of things. This is the story of the love of Donovan and Cade. This is the story of meeting the person you've longed to meet and not knowing what to do about it. This is a story about the pain therein. This is a story about loving who you are before you can love someone else the way you must. This is a story about learning to accept what you've done long before you ask anyone else to. This is about the lies people tell. This is a story about trying to get to some form of truth. This is a story about the desperation we feel and the desperate things we do. This is a story about sex. This is a story of loving the body and remembering the flesh. It is a story of lust and a story of innocence and how things which seem innocent on the surface are full of demons under the crust and then, in the center, wholly innocent again. This is a story about getting beneath THE SKIN OF THINGS

THE CITY OF ROSSFORD The night of the gang rape, Chay got the call, and all the days around that time people would shake their heads and say, "Things like this don't happen in Rossford. Things like this never happen." So begins the fourth Rossford novel. Nearly ten years have passed since Fenn Houghton and his lover Todd made off with Ed Callan's money, and on the night we return to Rossford it is haunted by an attack on an innocent, young girl. In a story darker that the previous triptych, while old characters and old joys remain, a new darkness and new people come into the story of Rossford as its citizens come to grips with the traumas of life and tragedies from which even the city of Rossford cannot escape.