Clayton Littlewood’s “Dirty White Boy - Tales of Soho”

Is it appropriate to speak to television personalities when they’re buying underwear? How should you react when a transsexual wants to show you her latest surgery? What is the correct etiquette for visiting a brothel?

These are the questions that matter in London’s Soho neighbourhood, where Clayton Littlewood and his partner Jorge Betancourt run a designer clothing store called Dirty White Boy. From his window on one of the busiest street corners in the world, Clayton watches the daily parade of fashion queens, prostitutes, gangsters and celebrities that make up the population of this strangest of villages.

His Soho diary is a snapshot of modern London, caught between the ghosts of the past and the uncertainties of the future. The cast of characters range from Sue and Maggie, the girls from the brothel upstairs, to Angela the feisty trannie, to Pam the Fag Lady, begging for money and cuddles and Chico, the campest queen on Old Compton Street. Not to mention cameo appearances from stars (Kathy Griffin, Janice Dickinson and Graham Norton).

And amidst all this madness occurs one of the strangest and most touching love stories you will ever read.

EARLY REVIEWS:

“Like the queer descendant of Samuel Pepys, Clayton Littlewood captures the day-to-day drama of his London in all of its demented glory.” —Michael Thomas Ford, author of Alec Baldwin Doesn’t Love Me and Last Summer

“Clayton Littlewood recreates the real Soho, from its beauty to its underbelly…insightful, humorous, heartbreaking.” —Arthur Wooten, author of On Picking Fruit and Fruit Cocktail

“When writers try to make art that is universal and not personal they always fail - it’s being personal which makes it universal in the end. Clayton Littlewoods book is tender, warm and full of humanity. Soho is like an upturned dustbin and he like a drunk rummaging through it. He shows us all that glitters is not gold. And all that smells is not garbage. Living in Soho is like coming all the time. Reading his book is too.” —Sebastian Horsley, author of Dandy in the Underworld

“A hilarious and poignant fly-on-the-wall view of Soho. Clayton Littlewood is the wisest fly you will ever meet.” —Josh Kilmer-Purcell, author of I Am Not Myself These Days

BIO:

Clayton Littlewood grew up in sunny Weston-Super-Mare and moved to London in his teens to join a band called Spongefinger as the lead singer. After being rejected by every record company in the UK (and many in the US), Clayton turned to pirate radio, hosting a comedy show where he posed as a female West Country aromatherapist by the name of Doctor Bunty. This led to an MA in Film and Television and writing a tv comedy script, which inspired one agent to say ‘This is the most disgusting piece of filth we’ve ever read. Don’t ever contact us again.’
Clayton’s latest incarnations have been running the shop Dirty White Boy in Soho, writing the Soho Stories column for The London Paper and being a regular contributor to BBC Radio. This is his first book.

Gay on the Range: An Archive of Gay Art

History is written by the victors. They choose what will be remembered, and what covered up. So it has been with male eros. Looking at any history textbook, one would think that never has a society praised love between men, never has a painter, a poet or a pope shared his bed and his heart with another male. Evidence of same-sex love has been either quietly suppressed, as with the Greeks and Romans, or quickly destroyed, as is still done with newly unearthed Inca and Mayan art. The result of this deception has been a needless polarization of society and untold suffering for those people who happen to fall in love with others of their own sex.

Uncensored, the historical record reveals an opposite reality: the male love instinct is a universal constant.  Only society’s attitude towards it has varied. All cultures have regulated male love, weaving varied tapestries of ritual around it. And a few have tried - to no avail - to regulate it out of existence.

Yes, and even here, in the U.S.A., and even back in the 50’s and 60’s when women still were considered best as housewives and people of color were segregated from the white, there was a collection of gay reading.  Small as it was, it was there…check out some of the covers here.

You can also read more of the above article at androphile.org

Gay Authors Get a Break & Get Published

There are more and more self-publishing companies to choose from these days, however, now gay and lesbian authors finally have a publishing site devoted to their work, www.rainbowauthors.com. RainbowAuthors.com, a Chances Press LLC website, affords GLBT authors an opportunity to publish their own work as well as other publishing, editing, designing, publicizing, and distribution options, including a free publishing and sales option. All publishing packages utilize Wordclay’s breakthrough and user-friendly do-it-yourself publishing technology.

RainbowAuthors.com also offers free publishing and resource links specific to marketing a GLBT title and have partnered with Gaybookstoreonline.com who provides authors with an additional possible promotional opportunity.

Michael Holloway Perronne, a novelist and RainbowAuthors.com founder, is a no stranger to taking risks. In 2004, he developed his own marketing plan and self-published his first novel, “A Time Before”. His book has sold thousands of copies, and won the Bronze Award in Gay & Lesbian Fiction in the ForeWord Magazine 2006 Book of the Year Awards.

It was his success with self-publishing that inspired him to start RainbowAuthors.com.

“I realized that through my own publishing experience I had begun to build a valuable database of publishing contacts for gay and lesbian authors,” Perronne said. “It was then I began to think about providing other gay authors who were looking to go “indie” with a publishing outlet tailored to their needs. A partnership with Wordclay proved to be the perfect opportunity.”

Perronne also stated “Gay authors may have access to fewer traditional routes to publish their writing, and RainbowAuthors.com provides another format for these important voices to be heard.”

In addition, writers who register on the site by 9/30/08 have the chance to win a one year Wordclay ISBN and Channel Distribution package for their book.

Gay Black Author Goes Straight

Best selling writer E. Lynn Harris can still remember the first time he realized he was poor. His family had been invited to the housewarming of a well-to-do family in his hometown of Fayetteville, Ark., and Harris, then a young boy fresh from an afternoon of playing outside, was sitting in the living room when another guest remarked on his appearance.

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