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Meet Nick & Greg! Young, fun and against the law…

Published by Editor on September 28, 2016 Respond

The Nick & Greg Books (Part 1)

Nick and Greg are two gay teens who meet in the park one day after school. It’s the start of an intense, passionate friendship.

Growing up gay in England in the 1950s is not easy, but there’s plenty of fun to be had for Nick and Greg. Brighton is their playground and they run through its streets, uncover its secrets and discover their passionate desires for each other.

Gay life thrives in Brighton, but homosexuality is against the law and exists largely behind closed doors, invisible and unspoken. Against this backdrop, Nick expands his self-awareness through books and a widening circle of friends. Greg though is constrained by denial, family ties, and a pattern of increasingly self-destructive behaviour that threatens to unbalance his mind.

In Nick & Greg, John Roman Baker gives a frank, witty and authentic portrait of the lives of two boys growing up in a period when gay liberation was just a fairy tale and Oscar Wilde was a name to be feared more than any monster on a cinemascope screen.

The author explains, “As a child I remember Brighton being a place of adventure and I wanted to capture and explore that through the eyes of two boys. They began life as a short story for my book ‘Brighton Darkness’ but as soon as I had written it I knew it was only the beginning. What started as one short story has become not just a novel, but a series of novels charting their lives and relationships against the changing attitudes and values of the fifties and sixties and who knows, maybe beyond.”

Nick & Greg is the first book in the Nick & Greg series. It is followed by Time of Obsessions and Dangerous Seas which will be published in December 2016 and February 2017 respectively.

Nick & Greg is available to purchase online and from highstreet bookstores worldwide.
The Kindle edition is available exclusively on Amazon and is free to Amazon unlimited subscribers.

Nick & Greg by John Roman Baker

Paperback
ISBN 978-1-899713-51-6
UK £14.99
US $19.99

Harddcover
ISBN 978-1-899713-52-3
UK £24.99
US $29.99

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Roman Baker is an author, poet and playwright who has lived and worked mainly in Brighton Amsterdam and Paris. In Brighton he was well known as an activist for gay rights through the 1970s and 80s. He was associated with the setting up of the Sussex Aids Helpline and created a unique cultural response to the Aids crisis through his theatre company Aids Positive Underground Theatre who were regulars at the Brighton and Edinburgh festivals and won awards including the Brighton Festival Award for Best Theatre in 1990. In 1997 he moved to the Netherlands where he continued his theatre work and wrote several novels. In 2014 he returned to his roots in Brighton.
More info: Wikipedia

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NEW BOOK: BRIGHTON DARKNESS by John Roman Baker

Published by Editor on July 23, 2015 Respond

Brighton Darkness (front cover)

Dark and light in a city of dreams

Brighton Darkness is a collection of short stories relating to that amorphous place known as the city of Brighton and Hove. The book is by Brighton writer John Roman Baker and is published this month in paperback by Wilkinson House.

The stories span the decades from the 1950s to the present day and explore the many contradictions and quirks that define the city’s unique character. The cover of the book reflects these contradictions. It depicts the façade of the city’s once elegant Astoria cinema which is currently the subject of controversial demolition plans. The derelict state of the building is offset by its glowing neon sign, a cheeky photobombing seagull and a bigger-than-life copy of Banksy’s iconic Kissing Coppers.

John Roman Baker explains, “The Astoria was a place of dreams, a place of beauty, where people of all ages could go and enter multiple different realities and even find love like two young characters in my book. Its impending demolition represents the loss of all those dreams as well as a great loss for this city which time and again seems to undervalue and destroy its architectural heritage. My book though is more about people than buildings.”

The stories in Brighton Darkness are as diverse as the city. From gay first love in the Astoria cinema in the 1950s, to the reminiscences of an elderly woman in Regency Square as she looks back on her turbulent past relationships and faces her current reality.

Gay life in the city runs as a theme through many of the stories, while the author’s experiences of other cities, Amsterdam, Paris and New York add a global context to the book. Another recurrent theme is that of return. The author himself recently returned to the city after 17 years living and working in the Netherlands.

“True Brightonians, can never really leave this place. You always have to come back, and the city with all its idiosyncrasies remains as troubled and as irresistible as ever.” – John Roman Baker

Brighton Darkness is available online and from highstreet bookstores worldwide. Ebook versions will be available from August 2015.

Brighton Darkness by John Roman Baker
ISBN: 978-1-899713-41-7

UK
£12.99 (paperback)
£4.99 (ebook)

US
$14.99 (paperback)
$5.99 (ebook)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Roman Baker is an author, poet and playwright who has lived and worked mainly in Brighton Amsterdam and Paris. In Brighton he was well known as an activist for gay rights through the 1970s and 80s. He was associated with the setting up of the Sussex Aids Helpline and created a unique cultural response to the Aids crisis through his theatre company Aids Positive Underground Theatre who were regulars at the Brighton and Edinburgh festivals and won awards including the Brighton Festival Award for Best Theatre in 1990. In 1997 he moved to the Netherlands where he continued his theatre work and wrote several novels. In 2014 he returned to live in his hometown Brighton.
More info: Wikipedia

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NEW BOOK: The Vicious Age – Sexuality, Transgression and Redemption in Amsterdam

Published by Editor on March 24, 2014 Respond

The Vicious Age

Sexuality, Transgression & Redemption

John Roman Baker’s new novel explores life, age and risk in Amsterdam.

Age remains a taboo subject in gay male culture. Youth and idealised images of beauty rule supreme in gay media while, in defiance of reality, the experiences of older gay men are side-lined and largely ignored. Now however, a new novel The Vicious Age dares to explore this paradox. The book’s author, John Roman Baker, whose work, whether in the theatre or in print, has never followed the gay mainstream, casts a perceptive, at times brutal, light on this contradiction.

Synopsis
In the alien environment of a foreign city, Amsterdam, Tim is adrift to the point of giving up. The city, which in recent years has adopted an obsessive path of rebuilding and renewal, presents a stark contrast to Tim’s own physical and mental stagnation and deterioration.

In the midst of his despair, Tim finds himself pursued by two very different men. Both come from the criminal and hard-edged margins of Amsterdam that he has for so many years frequented. Radek is Polish, 19 years old, selling his innocence but holding out for love. Klaus is a German who sells death to those willing to pay for it.

Can either of these men have anything genuine to offer Tim? Drugs and an ever-deepening cycle of sexual dependency provide him with temporary relief, but as his encounters leave him increasingly exposed to danger and violence, he knows he must break free and face the future without illusions, possibly but not necessarily alone.

About the Author
John Roman Baker is a British poet, playwright and novelist who has lived and worked mainly in Brighton, Paris and Amsterdam. His work is characterized by transgressive themes presented from a homosexual point of view. In 1975, his first play ‘Limitations’ launched Gay Sweatshop theatre company. Later, in response to Section 28 and the AIDS crisis, Roman Baker founded his own theatre company ‘Aids Positive Underground’ and in 1990 won the award for best theatre at the Brighton Festival for his play ‘The Ice Pick’. He continued working as a dramatist after moving to Amsterdam in 1997, but has recently returned to writing poetry and novels, four of which have now been published by gay publisher Wilkinson House.

Book data
The Vicious Age
by John Roman Baker
ISBN: 978-1-899713-34-9

UK £11.99 (paperback) £4.99 (ebook)
US $13.99 (paperback) $5.99 (ebook)

In stock at:
Gay’s the Word, UK
Les Mots à la Bouche, FR
Borkhandel Vrolijk, NL
Prinz Eisenherz, DE
Bookshop Darlinghurst, AU
BGSQD, USA
Amazon.com

Or order direct from Wilkinson House

 

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The Pebble Champion – life affirming, coming of age novel

Published by Editor on October 4, 2013 Respond

The-Pebble-Champion---kindle-paperback-epub-600px

The newest addition to the Wilkinson House catalogue of new gay fiction is now available – THE PEBBLE CHAMPION by A.D. Pritchard.

THE PEBBLE CHAMPION is a coming of age novel that captures the social, emotional and sexual insecurities of a gay teenager with a fresh voice that avoids sensationalism and stereotypes.

Haunted by the death of his mother and the loss of a childhood friendship, 15-year-old Chris moves to the Isle of Wight to begin a new life with his estranged father. There, alone on the beach, he deals with his grief and guilt by entering an imagined world where he competes to become the Pebble Champion, skimming stones farther than anyone else across the surface of the sea. With each pebble thrown, and with each new encounter, Chris gradually learns how to let go of the burdens of the past, how to hold on to what really matters, and how to embrace his own bewildering desires.

THE PEBBLE CHAMPION is available both as a paperback and in digital formats for kindle, e-readers tablets, phones and other devices.

Title: The Pebble Champion
Author: A. D. Pritchard
Publisher: Wilkinson House
List price: £11.99 (paperback) £4.99 (digital formats)
ISBN: 978-1-899-713-264

Kindle edition available from Amazon.

Paperback available online and at local bookstores including Foyles & Gays the Word (London), Les Mots a la Bouche (Paris), Prinz Eisenherz (Berlin) and Vrolijk (Amsterdam), BSGQD (New York) and The Bookshop Darlinghurst (Sydney).

For more information visit www.wilkinsonhouse.com

 

 

 

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G’day Sydney! (and London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, New York…)

Published by Editor on April 15, 2013 Respond
Ben fancies a good read - gay books from Wilkinson House at the Bookshop Darlinghurst, Sydney, Australia

Service with a smile: Ben, one of the friendly staff at the Bookshop Darlinghurst, Sydney, Australia

Earlier this month, the Bookshop Darlinghurst. Sydney’s foremost store for LGBT book lovers joined the growing network of independent booksellers stocking books from gay publisher Wilkinson House.

Wilkinson House is a relative newcomer to the gay publishing scene. Founded in 2011, it aims to add diversity to queer bookshelves and e-readers with quality titles that don’t necessarily fit the formulaic genres pumped out by larger publishers.

While many new publishers tend to focus exclusively on ebooks, Wilkinson House gives readers the choice of digital and printed versions and has successfully forged relationships with independent LGBT community bookstores around the world.

Rod Evan, the editor at Wilkinson House explains, “It’s 2013, so naturally our books are available everywhere online and can be ordered in any bookstore. But there’s nothing like browsing in your local store and finding the unexpected. No waiting, no shipping – and of course, service with a smile, and maybe a wink.”

Bookshop Darlinghurst
207 Oxford St, Sydney, NSW 2010, Australia
Ph – 02 9331 4140


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