Vann Turner's Blog: The book jacket

Trilogy Complete!



To Grasp the Miraculous, AD 593 - 607
A Novella of the Dark Ages
Kindle: 0.99 for the month of October, 2020

Like all my work, To Grasp the Miraculous is a literary novella. That means it is not a genre work and does not follow a familiar story-line.

To Grasp is a dramatic exultation of the wedded life, gripping and emotive. It’s a short read, but a memorable one.

After you’ve read it, a review here and on Amazon would be appreciated. Thanks!
Vann

This is the link to leave a review on Amazon.

Twenty-seven years ago, under the title Ascent from Hell, Sometimes was completed. At one of the big-5 publishing houses, it got the attention of the first two sets of readers. They sent it up to the Editor, with their recommendation, “an important novel that deserves publication.” The Editor demurred, writing to me, “prodigiously inventive, just not my cup of tea.”
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Decades have intervened since then and attitudes toward the gay community have changed. On his Hospice bed my husband asked me to dust it off and publish it. The dusting wasn’t much, just a little reworking here and there. It took about three weeks and stands essentially as it was back in 1992 when it was inventive but not somebody’s cup of tea.
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In these pages magical elements pop up amid the realism:
+ A three-legged dog talks with God.
+ A naked hag swings on a golden chandelier.
+ A sainted mother prays that troubles might descent on her son that he might come to know what love is and call it by its name.
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The novel is an M/M Romance. But it is not a romance in the way people think about romances—it’s genre-breaking. This genre (in the male version) often contains multiple sex scenes. In Sometimes there is one sex scene (about 2 pages), and that one encounter severs a budding friendship.
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Romances always contain protestations of love, one to the other. In this novel there is no such protestation. But it is a love song. Bob’s sacrifice demonstrates the depths of their love, one to the other, straight and gay.
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It’s a love song to repressed love.
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I think you’ll enjoy it, gritty in places, lyrical in places. Explosive.
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— Vann

The decided uptick in sales, I think, is evidence that I’ve finally gotten the cover for Sometimes Lovin’ is Hurtful right. I think it is both true to the content and appealing to a wide readership—both men & women, straight & gay. I call it the jewel cover. (Look at it on Amazon, blowing it up in size, front and back. Perhaps you’ll agree.)


I retained the ethereal lighting, but incorporated Quasi, an important secondary character, into the design. He’s a gray dog and so that necessitated a dark border so that he’d stand out. And he’s not just Bob’s dog, but he plays an important role in the novel, appearing in the prologue, in dramatic moments and on the last page.

It has been a sixteen month struggle to get it right. That arose in that Sometimes is an m/m romance. But it is not a romance in the way you think about romances. There is only one sexual encounter between the protagonists—one straight, one gay—and that severs the budding friendship. Later on, you’ll find protestations of love, one to the other, are completely absent.

But Sometimes is a love song of sorts.
It's a rhapsody to repressed love.

These are the permutations the cover went through:

For the entire month of August, 2019, my novels (Kindle format) are discounted from the regular price of $4.99 (US) to 0.99 worldwide.

I wish you good summertime reading!

Set in Ancient Rome:
To Forestall the Darkness, AD 589
To Abandon Rome, AD 593
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Set in our LGBT Communities:
Sometimes Lovin’ is Hurtful

(On September 1, 2019 the prices will return to the pre-sale price, $4.99.)

The third book in the trilogy continues the importance of Adria as a central character. (In To Abandon Rome, AD 593 one third of the chapters were hers.) The novel starts with the return of Titus to his estate. Hundreds of Romans, fleeing the oppression of the Church, have accompanied him. The prologue presents a scene well into the novel:

PROLOGUS

IN CALEDONIA ANNO DOMINI 624

So many summers had passed, so many winters, since their departure from Rome. Yet still the disquietude Adria Tribonia had experienced outside the walls the Rome lingered, even here, in northern climes, on her deathbed.

Two days ago at her request, that bed had been lovingly carried outside and placed under the beech tree that had been named by their daughter—while still a child—the Wise One. Lying under it, watching, Adria longed to do the chores she could no longer do. She watched Titus doing them in her stead, the milking, the gathering, the feeding and the pasturing.

Never had God made a better man or better husband, she thought, stubborn though he is. For two nights he’s slept on the leaves here beside me, wrapped in the blanket I wove. I wish I could weave him another one to keep him warm in my absence.

She sighed as she watched the beech leaves overhead. They were already tinged with yellow and rustling in the rising wind. To the East the sky glowered with menace.

Soon Titus will cradle me in his arms to carry me inside. He’ll fetch Boastful from the neighboring farmstead for help in lugging the bed. In sooth I’ll welcome the fire, but still I’ll miss the intimacy of the Wise One.

She reached over toward the bole of the tree, so large that two men with arms outstretched could not encompass it. Even with fingers striving, she could not quite touch the gray bark. Continue, Wise One, to watch over my husband.


Vann Turner

*Sometimes Lovin’ is Hurtful* has great reviews, dismal sales. While the experts tell me that in the digital world it is the cover that attracts potential readers to look further, I don’t need the experts to tell me that. I know it firsthand from my own experiences.

The cover for *Sometimes* has posed distinct challenges. I’ve struggled to design a cover both appealing to readers, yet true to the story itself. The problem comes in that *Sometimes* is a M/M romance. But it is not a romance in the way you think about romances.

There are two central characters. Bob Newell is completely straight and Blaine Shirer totally gay. Early on Bob asks Blaine if he could spend the night. Blaine protests that it might mess up a budding friendship. Bob counters, "I want to hold and be held." That one sexual encounter severs the nascent friendship. It is never repeated. *Sometimes* is, though, a love-song.


The first cover I designed included three elements important to the story. There was the bare-chested hunk, the meme for a romance. There was the starry sky, suggestive of a transcendent element. And there was a watercolor, not a photograph, of swallows, suggestive of the extra-natural elements recurrent throughout the story. While I think it well captured the novel, the in-your-face male physicality shooed away a large portion of the intended audience: sophisticated, literate readers, man and woman, straight and gay. This cover, which gathered slim interest, went through a couple of permutations.


Then I tried a complete change with a dark, depressing photo of a dumpy room with a single bed. There was a little bird sitting on the windowsill and the two line epigraph from *Richard III*. I tried it both with and without the torso of the hunk. Neither version enticed the would-be reader.


The current iteration is light, almost ethereal which, I think, captures the transfiguration at the end where Bob and Blaine continue their lives and their work together on the other side. “Work?! Well that’s good! I couldn’t just sit around all day singing hymns. And besides, work makes a man feel good about himself.”

*Sometimes* is a difficult novel to characterize, and thus difficult to design a cover for. It is genre-bending. From its opening Prologue (a dog speaking with God), to its Epilogue (Bob’s father inquiring at the gates of Florida State Prison if there was anyone he could speak to about his son’s death), it is authentic fiction. Someday it’ll break through. It’s an explosive novel, highly dramatic and tackling the big issues. Societal, psychological and metaphysical. I just hope I’m still here to see it.

This novel was completed in 1992 and has gathered dust for twenty-five years. Back in those days publishing houses had staffs of readers who would sludge through hundreds of manuscripts in an effort to find one publishable. Also in those days an author could submit his/her manuscript to just one publishing house at a time and the manuscript had to have the words, "Not a simultaneous submission," on the title page. After weeks or months the manuscript would reappear in the author's mailbox--using the postage the author had included with the submission.

After gathering a fistful of rejection letters I received one that wasn't a rejection. It was a handwritten note from one of the readers. I was mightily encouraged. I don't recall his exact words, but he was forwarding the novel on up to one of the senior readers. Weeks went by and then I received a typewritten letter saying the senior reader had found it to be "an important novel, one that deserved publication." He was forwarding it up to the Editor himself.

How my heart fluttered in the weeks of waiting and then it came. These were the Editor's exact words: "While prodigiously inventive, it's just not my cup of tea." (I may have his letter up in the loft. I searched in vain for it in my important papers. It doesn't amaze me that it wasn't there because I don't generally keep mementoes of rejection--I've had enough of those throughout my lifetime.)

When my husband-to-be retired and moved in with me in St. Petersburg, FL, he wanted me to quit my job and write full-time. "We'll have enough to live on with just my pensions," he said. I would have none of it. "I'm not having you support me! I'll--I don't know--I'll sell something on the internet and that'll give me ample time to write." How wrong I was! Creating, marketing and supporting the medical transcription software I developed usurped all my time and all my creativity. In the years of having the business I wrote not a word.

When I sold the business in 2012 Bob asked, "So what are you going to do with your time now?" I told him I was going to write. "Great! What are you going to write?" I told him a novel set in Ancient Rome. He asked me to just polish up this novel, and I told him I have other stories to tell as well.

When Bob lay under Hospice care in the hospital bed in our great room, unable to rise from that bed, he asked me to publish *Ascent from Hell*, this work's original title. Well, here it is, beloved, all dusted off.

To Forestall the Darkness: A Novel of Ancient Rome
Viktor posted a review of To Forestall the Darkness a couple years ago on Amazon. I responded to it today (11/16/2017):

Viktor,

It’s not my habit as an author to comment on a reader’s review. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and entitled to express it. But in your case I will comment because you spurred me on to do something that innately I knew that I needed to do.

You wrote, “Also, the narrative is sluggish and repetitive in places and the manuscript generally suffers from inadequate editing.” Spot-on right, guy!

It has taken me a while to return to Forestall because I was the principal support in a loved one’s declining years, and then the principal caregiver in the hospice months. And then, of course, the grief that follows. But what you wrote years ago has been percolating all this time.

What I’ve done in the THIRD EDITION (Nov 2017) is I’ve excised the boring parts.

At one point a character says to Titus that he analyses things, is a thinker and a dreamer. I excised 10,000 words of his analyses. It wasn't really needed for the story and became deadwood to the reader. And I also found I repeated prior information. That's gone, too. The novel is now tighter, but longer in page count because of the improved typography.

What I couldn't change, is what you refer to here: “I was disgusted by some of the explicit violence and obscenity, however realistic the scenes may be.”

Yes, it gets gritty. It would not “do” in a Victorian parlor.

The castration and cauterization scene is horrible. The slave purchase is horrible. The primeval pagan rite is horrible. The murder of the lepers is horrible. The explicit sexual talk among the Lombards is horrible.

They all must stay, Viktor.

It was a different time, a different world. They had different sensibilities and a more visceral experience of life. But we today share with that different world our common humanity and those horrible strains you object to still lurk within us.

The novel juxtaposes the gritty and the noble. Each of us shares that admixture. We are all shades of gray.

Viktor, I thank you for your considered review. Your feedback helped me grow as an artist. I’m indebted.

Vann

9/16/2013
Jefferson County Post
Jake Depew, Reviewer:

“If you follow my reviews, then you know that I love historical fiction. That being said, it is rare that I find a historical fiction book that diverges from a few of the genre's archetypes. Vann Turner's new novel To Forestall the Darkness, the first book in The Tribonian Trilogy, was a breath of fresh air...

Turner has chosen his setting well. The characters are vibrant, yet beautifully, terribly realistic...

The character of Titus is almost certainly Turner's greatest accomplishment...

Despite the detail woven into the story, it is never a dry read, as the mystery, violence, and betrayal will almost assuredly keep eyes glued to the pages and the pages turning. I honestly can't think of anything this book won't have to keep adult readers of various genres hooked...It has mystery, drama, some dark humor, and may just change your mind on historical fiction."To Forestall the Darkness: A Novel of Ancient Rome