Man in the Crescent Moon, a Pirates of the Narrow Seas Adventure, Available in paperback and ebook

Man in the Crescent Moon, a Pirates of the Narrow Seas Adventure, Available in paperback and ebook

26 July 2013 — Perryville, Maryland

Keibooks is pleased to announce that Man in the Crescent Moon, the latest installment in the Pirates of the Narrow Seas series by M. Kei, is now available in trade paperback and e-book. Man in the Crescent Moon opens a new story as we meet Captain Isam Tangle as a youth of nineteen, just starting the career that will ultimately make him the most notorious corsair of his age. 

The adventure begins when a Turkish corsair, the Grey Wolf, under command of the short but fierce Rajet Rais, takes refuge in Isam’s hometown. Pursued by a Spanish frigate with guns blazing, the town must defend itself from the unexpected onslaught. Much to the young corsair’s frustration, his uncle is not the aggressive kind of leader he wants to follow. He is drawn to the fiercely effective Rajet Rais and joins his crew. Rajet promises to teach him everything he needs to know to be a successful corsair—including the ways of men between the sheets.

Meanwhile, Isam’s relatives are causing him grief. One of his female cousins runs off with an unsuitable man while Isam falls in love with the man’s Spanish slave. He and two of his male cousins, the clever but untrustworthy Samir and the loyal but dimwitted Umar, must pursue the runaway bride. Unfortunately, their adversary proves to be dangerous and resourceful. He ambushes them at multiple points along the trail, then bears false witness against them so that they are arrested by the local chieftain.

Meanwhile, the furious Spaniards have laid siege to Isam’s hometown and are shelling it to destruction. Refugees stream out of the city to be preyed upon by bandits as order breaks down. The sword and musket become the rule of the day, and where a bold frontal attack fails, the Spaniards substitute guile, sabotage, and assassination. Menaced from all sides, not trusted by his own government, Isam must use his wits to triumph over his enemies and defend his home.

Man in the Crescent Moon is a complete story that can be read separately from Pirates of the Narrow Seas, or in conjunction with it. Those who already know the characters will be pleased to watch the mighty Kapitan Pasha came of age, while those who don’t will enjoy the story of a young man with burning ambition. The adventure has all the hallmarks expected from Pirates of the Narrow Seas: diverse and engaging characters, storms at sea, desperate ship fights, hand-to-hand combat, captures, rescues, and escapes, all told with authentic detail.

Praise for previous novels in the series:

“A true literary first: a gay seafaring novel that’s every bit as good with the ‘gay’ stuff as the ‘seafaring’ stuff [...] Pirates of the Narrow Seas has thrilling action sequences, complex, conflicted characters, and a healthy dose of contemporary realism.”—Steve Donoghue, Open Letter A Monthly Arts and Literature Review

“A swashbuckling tale full of colour, adventure and romance – a good read!”—Gerry Burnie, Gerry B’s Book Reviews

“an action-packed swashbuckler of the Captain Blood tradition”—Nan Hawthorne, That’s All She Read

“well rounded individual personalities which it is a joy to follow” and “Recommended Reading”—Astrodene’s Historic Naval Fiction

“Please, Mr. Kei, write us another.”—Candice E. Frook, Amazon.com

The Sallee Rovers, the first book in the series, won a Sweet Revolution Award in the category of “best full cast” and “Judge’s pick”, and also won a 4th/Honorable Mention from the Rainbow Awards in the category of “Best gay historical fiction.”

Available in trade paperback and ebooks from: 

Keibooks

P O Box 516

Perryville, Maryland, USA

http://AtlasPoetica.org

Or CreateSpace <https://www.createspace.com/4308969>, or your favorite online retailer. 

Pirates of the Narrow Seas Now in Print

Keibooks

P O Box 1118 * Elkton, Maryland, USA * 21922-1118

Email: Keibooks@gmail.com * WEB: www.Lulu.com/Keibooks

Date: 25 January 2010

PRESS RELEASE - For Immediate Release

Pirates of the Narrow Seas award-winning novel by M. Kei published by Keibooks

In Pirates of the Narrow Seas, Lt. Peter Thorton of the 18th century British navy must struggle to come out gay while surviving storms at sea, ship to ship battles, kidnapping and more in his quest for true love and honor. Pirates of the Narrow Seas is an expertly crafted swashbuckler brimming with authentic detail and fully realized portraits of life at sea, written by a tall ship sailor and internationally acclaimed tanka poet, M. Kei. 

"Pirates of the Narrow Seas was a dashing good tale full of adventure and mayhem"~Sage Whistler, author of 'Broken'

Perryville, Maryland — 1 February 2010 — Pirates of the Narrow Seas  by M. Kei has been published as a trade paperback by Keibooks of Perryville, Maryland. Winner of a Sweet Revolution Award in the category of 'best full cast' and a special 'Judge's Pick,' it features the nautical adventures of Lt. Peter Thorton, a gay man struggling to serve with honor during the Age of Sail. Facing numerous perils, including his fellow officers, the enemy at sea, corsairs, storms, ship battles, duels, and kidnapping, Thorton is torn between being true to himself or true to his duty to country, god, and king. 

A fan of nautical fiction by Frederick Marryat, C. S. Forester, and Patrick O'Brien, Kei was frustrated by gay characters receiving short shrift in all their novels. "Every reader wants to find a character that he can identify with and dream of a world different and better than his own. Unfortunately, they simply didn't exist. So I decided to write one for my own amusement." 

Although the inventors of Horatio Hornblower, Jack Aubrey and Richard Bolitho are more famous than Kei, he has one unique advantage: he actually crews aboard 'wooden sail.' He knows first hand the perils of having his hand accidentally pinned to the samson post with the vessel swinging out of control in a raging current and pressing wind. His personal experience of the privations, dangers, and beauty of life aboard a wooden sailing vessel creates a rich resonance as he depicts the lives and duties of 'iron men and wooden ships.' 

With a keen sense of what heroism really is, his characters overcome great challenges—not with a magic compass or animal sidekick—but with a derring-do based on real courage, skill, and intelligence. Pirates of the Narrow Seas is a spell-binding adventure in the best tradition of the sea yarn, with a main character who also happens to be gay.

Winner: Sweet Revolution Award for 'best full cast' and a special 'Judge's Pick.'

"Pirates of the Narrow Seas was a dashing good tale full of adventure and mayhem, slaves and saviors, and the rigors and perils of life at sea. Pirates of the Narrow Seas follows the life of Peter Thorton and his journey as a poor lieutenant with little social influence and dangerous secrets. I found Thorton to be a well-rounded, likable character; at times courageous and admirable and in turns despondent and pitiful. Watching him develop throughout the story; finding his true self and place in the world, made for an engaging story."~Sage Whistler, author of 'Broken'

"I've read this book several times and each time has kept me spellbound. I am not gay and I found the romance handled with such class and sensuality that I was completely enthralled and became emotionally vested in seeing the men in the book form and live through their relationships. This is all set against a compelling and highly-detailed background of history, nautical derring-do and quick-paced action. I am desperate for additional novels in this series to be released!"~Chele Kraus

Available online at <http://www.Lulu.com/Keibooks> or your favorite bookseller. Price: $18.00 USD. ISBN 978-0-557-26719-4. Trade paperback, 280 pages, 6.14" x 9.21", perfect binding, 60# cream interior paper, black and white interior ink, 100# exterior paper, full-color exterior ink. Cover art attributed to Thomas Buttersworth, modified by L. S. Alexander. International buyers may wish to utilize Amazon.com or other major bookseller. 

About the Author

M. Kei served his apprenticeship aboard a skipjack, a traditional wooden sailboat used to dredge for oysters on the Chesapeake Bay. Most recently, he has become a crewman for a square-rigged tall ship which is a reproduction of a 17th century vessel, complete with lateen mizzensail, whipstaff, watersail, and a pair of ship's cats. An accomplished poet, he is internationally known for specializing in the short lyric form known as 'tanka.' He is the editor-in-chief of Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka and the author of Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, a log he kept in verse form while making several extended trips aboard a skipjack. Over 1500 of his short poems have been published in ten countries and six languages. He has published eight full-length books of poetry and fiction.

For media inquiries or to arrange and interview with the author, contact M. Kei through Keibooks. Email: Keibooks@gmail.com. 

About Keibooks

Keibooks is the small press founded by M. Kei to publish distinctive works of literature while allowing him full creative control. Keibooks' first project was the highly acclaimed anthology of tanka love poems, Fire Pearls : Short Masterpieces of the Human Heart, which became an instant classic and established M. Kei as an editor as well as poet of considerable ability. It was followed by his first collection of short poetry, Heron Sea, Short Poems of the Chesapeake Bay, sealing the poet's identity as a poet of the Chesapeake. Keibooks also publishes Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka, an international journal that focuses on poetry of place as rendered in tanka and related forms. 

Skip a Stone for the Poet of the Chesapeake Bay

The Heart of a Sailor, a tanka chapbook by M. Kei is available through the WCP Toolbar by World Class Poetry. These short online chapbooks are free to read and share using the WCP toolbar. Heart of a Sailor by M. Kei, blends his famous watermen poems with a tinge of homoeroticism as a sailor yearns for love amid the beauty and dangers of work on the water.

The introduction by Allen Taylor, publisher of World Class Poetry:

M. Kei has a distinguished following. His Japanese short forms are as extraordinary in their language as they are in their form. But even more extraordinary than his writing on the sailing life is his living it. A resident of Chesapeake Bay, he is as close to the beaches and the lifestyle that he writes about as a poet can be. A volunteer aboard a skipjack, he has learned firsthand how to catch the spirit of sailing. I suppose experience truly is the best mentor.

A lively voice on Twitter, M. Kei doesn't just post his poems. He engages with his followers on a conversational level as well. He is widely published and edits a tanka journal so he's busy in the literary world, not just a casual observer. These poems prove his worth.

The cover photo was snagged from gterez on Flickr and can be found at http://www.flikr.com/photos/pixel8ed/119252208/. The stones and the steps against the backdrop of weeds illustrates the rocky depths of a lonely heart and perfectly compliment M. Kei's final lines: "i don't want / to move heaven / and earth, / just the heart / of a man."

I hope you enjoy these poems from M. Kei as I have. And if you're ever at the beach, skip a stone for the poet of the Chesapeake Bay.

Allen Taylor
aka @WorldClassPoet
http://Twitter.com/WorldClassPoet

LGBT Bookshelf

Mel Keegan has launched a new website to promote Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender books. Inspired by the AmazonFAIL campaign in which LGBT books were omitted from Amazon.com's promotional practices, Keegan decided to harness techonology to circumvent traditional booksellers that are seen as less than supportive of LGBT works. The site is the joint creation of participating authors and editors who create pages to link to their own works. As a result, fans of LGBT books can search the Wiki-style website to find things of interest.

My Very Gay Wedding

Tanka poet 'Andrew' has established a blog that is one giant personal ad, tanka venue, and blog on gayness, love, and relationships. I admire his hubris, and the blog (unlike most) is actually interesting to read. I'm tired of 'gay blogs' that are nothing more than ads for porn sites, or else the rants of the political disaffected. Being gay means being more than a political penis. It means being human, and that means looking for love and having positive relationships, including the Big One: marriage. With all due respect for those who chose singleness, relationships matter. Humans are a social animal.

As for myself, I admit to having harbored the notion that somebody reading my blog might have liked what he read, drop me a line, we chat and find ourselves to enjoy it, and progress from there. Well, I have had some of those enjoyable chats, but we have not 'progressed from there.' Maybe I should be blatant about my desire to obtain a partner?

Here I am, all grown up, the various crises of life safely behind me. All thee things that sapped my energy over the years are resolved and cleared away. I'm comfortable with who I am and how I live. My health has never been better. My children are grown. (Maybe I shouldn't say that. I makes me sound so very old....) My car is paid off. My debts are paid. I'm decent in the looks department. I have a brain and I'm not afraid to use. I can construct a grammatical sentence. I'm employed. I have hobbies that don't involve embalming fluid or insurance waivers. If you're interested, or just morbidly curious, look kujakupoet at Plentyoffish.com

Good luck to us both, and everybody else looking for love in a wired world.

~K~

Amazon.com censors Gay books

Letter to Amazon.com:

So, let me see. You want me to publish my original (gay) material on Amazon.com, and pay whatever fees you deem fit to charge, BUT, you're not going to allow people to find my books? Why on earth would I allow you anywhere near my intellectual property if you're going to treat me like garbage and charge me money for it?

With the ban on LGBTQ material do I have to fear that Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka is never going to see the light of day at Amazon.com because amongst the nearly 400 poems deemed the best of their kind in the world, there happen to be some with a gay theme?

Do you even READ the books you ban?

Why do books like the Anarchist Cookbook remain ranked on the site? According to the author, "The central idea to the book was that violence is an acceptable means to bring about political change...I consider it to be a misguided and potentially dangerous publication which should be taken out of print."

Do you even READ the books you continue to sell (and sell very well: Anarchist Cookboook Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,323)

Apparently Amazon.com is more worried that people might enjoy gay sex than that people might blow each other up.

God forbid that taking a stand on these issues should cost you money--let's ban the books that don't rank very high so we can appease the Moral Minority by appearing to care without sacrificing much in the way of money.

If you really want to take a principled stand, quit ranking Playboy.... Playboy: Redheads Amazon.com Sales Rank: #107,685 in Books.

~K~

Pirates of the Narrow Seas

As a few of my friends know, I have been writing a novel, entitled Pirates of the Narrow Seas, a historical nautical adventure set in the eighteenth century and featuring a gay protagonist. I'm a fan of nautical fiction, but being gay myself, I got rather tired of all the heterosexual heroes. Churchill is said to have named "rum, sodomy, and the las"' as the traditions of the British naval service, and the Articles of War, which governed naval conduct at sea, prescribed the death penalty for "unnatural and detestable sin of buggery and sodomy with man or beast" . You don't outlaw things you think are irrelevant.

Besides, gay men have always existed, and they had to make a living somehow. At the time gentlemen had to purchase their ranks in the army, but a man with no money could, with a little effort and modest funding, obtain a position as a midshipman in the navy and thereby hope to work himself up through the ranks based on a combination of merit. His rise was more certain and more rapid if he had political influence, but competence and valor could provide a man with a successful career without it.

It also struck me that a gay protagonist had a built in set of challenges that would make his life more difficult and more interesting, and give a fresh approach to a rather hoary genre. Reading the series featuring Jack Aubrey, Horatio Hornblower, Richard Bolitho, and other 20th century nautical series, I was struck how alike they seemed -- due, no doubt, to the authors' -- and audience's -- endless fascination with men like Cochrane and Nelson. I found the works I enjoyed most to be the older works, such as Mr. Midshipman Easy by Marryat -- which is a both a parody and reinforcement of the navy of the early 19th century, and the even earlier Adventures of Roderick Ransom, a picaresque dating to the middle of the 18th century, in which our feckless hero parodies various employments, ranging from gentleman to scholar to doctor to naval officer.

Startlingly, it was in Roderick Ransom that I came across the only gay character I've encountered in the genre. While serving as a surgeon's mate at sea, Ransom serves under tyrant of a captain, who is then replaced by a puffball of a captain. The pouffe show that the stereotype of the effeminate, histrionic gay male was established very early in the West. On the other hand, he is a captain, and although he's suspected of having an affair with his doctor, the doctor at least is portrayed in neutral light and neither of them are censured or punished. Other works from the middle of the 18th century include vignettes with gay characters, but they vanish by the end of the century. One wonders why . . .

Quite aside from that tiny glimpse into the subject of gay men at sea, I found Roderick Ransom to be a very useful reference work with regards to the morals, livelihood and especially the profanity of men on the bottom edge of the middle class at the time. There is comfort in knowing that 'son-of-a-bitch' has been a choice epithet for two and a half centuries. In the whirlwind of the 21st century, some things remain the same.

So, one day in March of this year, I through down the book I was reading, and said, "Bother, I'll write something for my own entertainment." The character, Peter Thorton, a very junior lieutenant in the British navy of the mid-18th century, sprang full grown from my head like Athena leaping from the brow of Zeus. I had only a vague idea where he was going when I launched him. With no goal in mind, content to write whatever tale happened to emerge, whether long or short, I figured I might get a story of some five or six chapters out of him. 130,000 words and forty-six chapters later, we have a novel.

I realized the story had legs somewhere around chapter ten when Thorton, aboard His Britannic Majesty's frigate Ajax, encounters a Spanish galley founding in a storm in the Bay of Biscay. Chained on board was a rogue of a corsair captain, one of nearly two hundred slaves being left to drown as the panicking Spanish abandoned the galley. Released by Thorton, and commanded by Isam Rais al-Tangueli, known thereafter to the English as 'Captain Tangle', the slaves save the galley and promptly begin raiding the Spanish, with Thorton stranded aboard.

Writing for my own entertainment I didn't worry too much about historicity. The first draft came out in a rush in a mere ten days. But as I shared chapters with friends who enjoyed it, I realized it was a romping good tale and there were probably other people that would enjoy it too. That meant I had to address the issue of history. I have great respect for history; I enjoy it. But I didn't want to let the facts get in the way of a good tale, either. Thus my history deviated from the actual history of the middle of the eighteenth century.

I also had to deal with the fact that I was depicting Muslim characters and a Muslim nation with what I felt was a less than thorough education in the subject. I read the Koran and consulted it frequently, and also researched Muslim jurisprudence, discovered that the Maliki school dominated thought in North Africa, and considered my options. I finally decided to make a fictionalized country drawn from historic material. There are a great many fictional countries in literature, but none in the canon of British naval fiction. The British tales are almost always set during the Napoleonic Wars, with excursions into areas and times around that. I was tired of Napoleonic Wars and the rather predictable course of events. For a while I thought the War of Jenkins Ear might suit my purposes, but it didn't, quite, whereas the Seven Years War was immensely longer and more complicated than I really wanted to deal with. As a consequence, the political events of the novel are drawn from a variety of things that happened in the seventeenth century, but chart their own course to serve the purpose of the novel.

I also deliberately kept the scale small, ship-level, with much emphasis on the daily/weekly life at sea. This suited the complicated relationship between Thorton and Tangle, while still providing plenty of scope for individual peril and heroism, storms, duels, battles at sea, and the other action and nautical procedures expected of the genre. It even admits a certain humor, as when the excessively tall Captain Tangle is obliged to go to battle dressed in a pair of pants made from a tablecloth, there not being any trousers aboard to fit him.

I had a great deal of fun writing it, and I'm happy with the way it turned out, while being well aware of some of the criticisms that might be leveled at it. I must say I was very heartened when reading a Hornblower novel I detected an error that made me realize C. S. Forester had never gone to sea -- rising storms do not blow hot, no matter how sweltering the day is: they announce themselves with a clammy heat that chills the sweat on the skin. Hornblower has been turned into numerous movies and even a mini-series in spite of his author being an armchair captain. Maybe my readers will be kind to me.

Once I decided I had a tale worth sharing I had to figure out how to share it. I didn't bother to offer it to any of the publishers of the usual nautical adventures as I figured they wouldn't be receptive to a gay protagonist. Maybe that is small-minded of me. The usual gay small presses don't publish such things unless they are erotica, which Narrows Seas isn't. Oh, there are some steamy scenes in which Tangle does his best to seduce Thorton, but Thorton's too busy being British to succumbed entirely to his blandishments. Thorton's struggle to cope with his sexuality given the extreme repression on one side and potential license on the other side is one of the subtexts. That makes it a 'coming out' story, albeit a very different one than is usual.

It was my daughter that suggested I use the site she enjoys, fictionpress.com. I have some qualms about using an amateur site, but it's free, and although they don't support Macs, they do support RTF, so I was able to convert my work and get it uploaded with only a moderate amount of hassle. My goal is to be read, so giving away something for free on the Internet seems the cheapest and easiest way to get a readership. I hunted for other sites out there on which to publish a novel length work, tried some of them out and abandoned them, and was annoyed by the pesky sites searching for the naive to con into shelling out hundreds of dollars to get published and 'advised'.

All of which is a long-winded way of suggesting that you give it a read :)

~K~

Love Letters : Homoerotic Tanka of Love and Friendship

M. KEI : LOVE LETTERS

One of tanka's most distinctive and passionate of voices makes his return to 3LIGHTS this Summer with an exhibition of homoerotic tanka of love and friendship. Although many would associate M. Kei's poetry with images of the ocean, the coast and his native Chesapeake Bay, this latest exhibition from the editor of such publications as Atlas Poetica, Fire Pearls and author of Heron Sea, homes in on tanka of a more personal nature. We are proud to present this exhibition and delighted to welcome back a good friend of the Gallery.

M. Kei: Love Letters: Homoerotic Tanka of Love and Friendship
3LIGHTS Gallery, July 1st - September 31st 2008

http://www.threelightsgallery.com/foyer.html