Wednesday, May 19, 2021

These are my books

 

Books by Alec Clayton 

 

People have asked "What are your books about?" These are my books, so far, in capsule and in order of publication. As of this writing there are three more novels in the works. For more information on the books visit Mud Flat Press.

 

FICTION

 

Until the DawnA legendary artist vanishes at the height of his career – Red Warner, an artist from a small town in Mississippi, makes it big in New York and then vanishes following a wild party in his SoHo loft. To discover what happened and why, a childhood friend immerses himself in their shared history in a search that carries him back to his Mississippi home and a secluded fishing camp on the coastal bayous. Along the way we learn how a small town football player coming of age in the time between World War II and the sixties became a leading artist of his time and about the secret that has haunted him since he left the South.

 

Imprudent Zeal - From Mississippi to New York to Seattle, from the 1940s to the close of the twentieth century, five characters who come of age at different times and in different parts of the country are thrown together through happenstance in this saga of modern life.

 

The Wives of Marty Winters - Gay rights activist Selena Winters is shot in the head while giving a speech at a Seattle Pride celebration. She is rushed to the hospital where a blood clot is removed from her brain. She slips into a coma. Selena’s husband, Marty, and family members gather to wait and see if she will ever regain consciousness.

Family conversations lead back to old conflicts and memories of Marty’s first wife, Maria in the 1960’s.

Freedom Trilogy Book 1: The Backside of Nowhere - a drama of family conflict set in a fictional town near the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Popular movie star David Lawrence has not spoken to his father in more than twenty years. When the old man has a heart attack while driving drunk and careens off the top of a parking garage, David leaves his girlfriend and frequent co-star Jasmine Jones to go home to the little bayou town of Freedom to be with his family while the old man hovers near death. While there, he falls in love with his old high school sweetheart, confronts a lifelong enemy (the local sheriff), and discovers that his beautiful adopted sister, Melissa, is not who he thinks she is.

Freedom Trilogy Book 2: Return to Freedom -  the day of the hurricane that wiped out the little bayou village of Freedom, Mississippi. Malcolm Ashton’s wife and children and Sonny Staples are scrambling to get out of town, while Beulah Booker is riding out the storm with her boyfriend and other friends in the Lawrence family home.

Readers of The Backside of Nowhere will remember Malcolm and Sonny as the teenage hoodlums who looted an electronics store during a flash flood many years ago. They’re grown up now.

All of these characters and more end up living in the same condo overlooking the bay, and the ways in which their lives intersect are as stormy as the hurricane from which they are still recovering.

Freedom Trilogy Book 3: Visual Liberties - Molly Ashton is now a college student majoring in art. She is trying hard to grow up, find her way in the world, but it seems she does nothing but make bad choices … until she makes friends with Francis Gossing. Francis is Molly’s only friend in college. He is socially awkward but an artistic genius, and he is haunted by a frightening vision of his mother and a man with a gun. He can’t tell if the vision he’s obsessed with is a memory or a nightmare from long ago.

“It’s a great conclusion to Alec Clayton’s Freedom Trilogy. There are artists, lusty art students, horny professors, ordinary people in extraordinary situations, resonant passions. What’s not to like?” – Larry Johnson, author or Veins.

Reunion at the Wetside - Romance blossoms at Barney’s Pub between Alex, a left-wing Democrat, and Jim, a Libertarian-leaning Republican – old friends from half a century ago. Meantime, someone is killing off all the old drag queens, and Jim may be the only person who can catch the killer.

“The writer is clever and cutting-edge in tone, and the characters kept me hungry for their lives.”
Holly Hunt – amazon.com review

Tupelo - A tale told from beyond the grave by Kevin Lumpkin, youngest of a set of identical twins, Tupelo is the story of a small town in an era of reluctant change. as seen through the eyes of a white boy born to privilege who comes of age in the time of Freedom Riders, lunch counter sit-ins, civil rights marches and demonstrations.

 

“Alec Clayton is a true original, delivering his readers a fraught and powerful story of family and community laboring through the past decades of change in the South. Tupelo is a haunting and personal tale, reminiscent of the best of Pat Conroy. Highly recommended!” – Ned Hayes, author of The Eagle Tree.

“As much as I have enjoyed his other novels, I have to say this one may be his best. Perhaps it is the consistent through-line, the tight plot provided by his focus on the twins, Kevin and Evan, and their differing lives and behaviors: One grows gradually into the bigotry so prevalent around him, one becomes that dreaded southern phenomenon, a liberal.” – Jack Butler, author of Jujitsu for Christ and Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock.

 

This is Me, Debbi, David – Debbi Mason is a self-declared loudmouth, fun loving, rabble rousing, perverse woman. David Parker says he has always been something of a nebbish little mama’s boy who never took a chance on anything in his entire life. When Debbi breaks up with David and runs off with a man she thinks can provide wealth and security, Debbi and David each embark on adventures that are, in turn, romantic, funny, enlightening and scary—adventures that take them from the French Quarter in New Orleans, to Dallas, and to New York City’s East Village. And into their own hearts.

 

“Alec Clayton at his best. He presents the reader with two lead protagonists, each with a compelling account of the year after their break-up. Major dramatic questions emerge early on: 1. how will the beautiful and exotic Debbi survive a violent situation and why can’t she seem to escape her Texas entrapment; 2. will David be able to follow his bliss amid the bizarre, quirky, sometimes evil, sometimes lovable characters who give him a lift along his journey to New York; and 3. will Debbi and David ever meet up again? Try as you might to anticipate the answers, I predict you will be surprised. Truly a great read. Expertly crafted!” – Morrison Phelps, author of Bluebird Song.

 

NONFICTION

What is What the Heck is a Frame-Pedestal Aesthetic? - Alec Clayton’s 1970 graduate thesis at East Tennessee State University with the academic-sounding title, A Ground for the New Art: An Alternative to the Frame-Pedestal Aesthetic, analyzed what many at the time called the new art. This book is that thesis with a new title and updated materials. It is an examination of the multitude of new art forms that exploded on the scene in the 1960s, from Pop to Happenings to Color Field Painting to Earth Art to Photo-Realism to mail art and more.

 

“Alec Clayton’s refusal to hold an exhibition for his Master of Art degree from East Tennessee State University was a ground-breaking event in 1970. Now fifty-years later with a rich career as an artist, art critic, and novelist, Clayton revisits his master’s thesis, What the Heck is a Frame-Pedestal Aesthetic?,  a critical essay about the contributions that Cage, Duchamp, Johnson, Kaprow, Pollock, Warhol, and others made to move art forward through the use of new concepts, experiences, formats, materials, and spaces for art. I especially enjoyed learning about his collaboration in a mail art piece with Richard C. and Ray Johnson.” – Jennifer Olson Gallery Director and Art Historian Tacoma Community College.

 

As If Art Matters: Modern and post modern art reviews and commentary - A look at the essential elements that lift the best of fine visual art above the mundane, including reviews ranging from Vincent van Gogh to the New York School to contemporary video, film and installation artists such as Bill Viola and Sandy Skoglund, plus reviews of many artists in the Pacific Northwest who are recognized regionally but do not enjoy the wider acclaim they richly deserve.

 

“His interpretation reveals a breadth of knowledge that he generously shares without pretension, illuminating the art, the artists, and exhibits with a point of view that reveals his interest and curiosity in an honest and clear voice.” – Amy McBride, Public Arts Administrator