Bøger af Mark Abramson

Mark Abramson writes: "I suspect that we might not always recognize when we're living in an historic time. The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown provided ample opportunity to contemplate my surroundings and life in America in 2020. I have often kept a journal for many years, so when the coronavirus forced us to quarantine at home, I used the method I know best to try to make sense of the situation by starting a new diary." Join Mark and his diary for Sex! Gossip! YouTube! Gay history! Pets! Laughs! Death! Neighbors! San Francisco! Television! Netflix! Jokes! Movies! Stories! Life! Google! Culture! Zoom! Celebrities! Ghosts! Sex! Love! Politics! Books! Death! Music! Scandal! Dreams! Ideas! Surprises!

The first book in an exciting mystery series!San Francisco has never been more romantic or adventuresome as portrayed by this debut novelist. A bit of magic and a lot of local lore makes for an exciting and fun read.Gay tourists are arriving in San Francisco by the planeload for the party of the decade at the Moscone Center, a tribute to a late disco star. On the same night as the dance festival, a infamous evangelist plans to bring his nationwide crusade against gay rights to the Civic Auditorium a few blocks away. Tim Snow finds himself caught in the middle when his activist friends plan a protest. For Tim, the fun and the intrigue are about to begin.

Mark Abramson was a bartender on Castro Street, Haight Street, and South of Market during the worst years of the AIDS crisis, roughly from 1984 to 1996 when new life-saving drugs came on the market. He was also involved in several of the major fundraising events of the times, from gay bars to the waterfront piers of San Francisco and theaters in between. For My Brothers is filled with true stories of encounters with Connie Francis, Johnnie Ray, and Christine Jorgensen, plus friendships with Al Parker, John Preston, and Sylvester and dozens of lesser known characters who deserve to be remembered.

Book 2 in the Beach Reading series. Tim Snow expected to show his visiting Aunt Ruth the wonders of San Francisco, but never expected one of the sights of the city would be the body of his ex-lover. A killer is on the loose in the Castro district. Meanwhile, Tim's cadre of quirky friends and neighbors makes life all the more interesting with their drama of weddings and lost (and found) loves. Cold Serial Murder continues the story of one of the Castro's most adorable characters. Can Tim and his Aunt uncover who the killer is before it's too late?

In this sequel to "Sex, Drugs & Disco," Mark Abramson's diaries begin on January 1, 1980 with optimism for the new decade. San Francisco was a beacon of freedom for gay men from around the world, and he was there to write down the details of most of his tricks, love affairs, and all the fleeting encounters in between. Like the denizens of pre-war Berlin, we were scarcely aware of how special were the times we lived in, nor that our hedonistic joy in the celebration of gay liberation would soon be cut short by the terrible scourge of AIDS.

Calfornia Dreamers is the sixth book in Mark Abramson's popular Beach Reading series. All the books feature mystery and romance with a taste of adventure, a touch of magic and lots of San Francisciana. Tim Snow is recruited along with other HIV patients for an experiment with Neutriva, an AIDS drug with the peculiar side effects of enhancing dreams and expanding latent psychic abilities. The team enters a trance-like state ostensibly in order to predict and prevent suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge. But is something sinister going on with these trials? Warnings come from all directions, including from an elderly fortune teller named Malvina who has been plying her trade from a storefront in the Mission District for decades. And who is the mysterious young man who saves the life of Tim's employer? In California Dreamers, the entire cast of characters whom readers have come to adore from the Beach Reading series finds themselves involved with strange and criminal affairs.

Mark Abramson, a Minnesota farm boy, moved to San Francisco from Minneapolis in 1975 and dived right into the debauchery of gay life in that pre-AIDS world, including many day trips and overnight stays at the Russian River, ninety miles north of the city. In 1981 he decided to join a group of friends in fixing up an old house south of Guerneville, California. He soon found a job at the legendary Hexagon House/Woods Resort, where he got to meet a plethora of boyfriends, tricks, and celebrities including Divine, Charles Pierce, Sylvester, and Etta James. This is his story of those magical years before the plague.

"I think you should write a book about that trip you took to Europe when you were right out of high school, playing your saxophone with that band, you know?" It started out with that phone call from my mother on her death bed, or so she thought. It turned into a longer story about college, being different, trying to fit in, and slowly coming out, in more ways than one. Then it turned into a story about love and longing and finally leaving Minnesota for San Francisco. This didn't exactly turn out to be the book my mother wanted me to write. If she were here to read it, she would say she was embarrassed because it was so dirty. I would tell her she was not the target audience and we would both have a laugh. I think she would still be proud of me and tell me, "Keep on writing, especially after I'm gone." And I would promise her that I will.

In the 1970s, thousands of young gay men flocked to San Francisco. Mark Abramson, author of the best-selling "Beach Reading" mystery series and the AIDS memoir "For My Brothers," was one of them. In a time and place where sex was free, drugs were cheap, and the driving disco beat felt like it would go on forever, he landed in the great gay Mecca fresh out of college, reconnected with his old friend, the writer John Preston and soon encountered such interesting people as Harvey Milk, Sylvester, Rock Hudson, Natalie Wood and Vincent Price. These are his raw, uncensored diaries.