“I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.”
—Peter de Vries
On Queue
These works came to us initially as manuscripts submitted for a Q‑Critique. Their merits led our editors and Advisory Board to award them a place on The Queue’s publication lineup. Some have already been published or contracted; others are still available for acquisition.
Greater Trouble in the Lesser Antilles
Charles Locks
Author contact: chasman@grantsburgtelcom.net
Acquired by Scarletta Press
Published March 2007
The first Queue book has it all: mystery, romance, and an exotic locale. Most people go to a tropical paradise to escape their problems. Unfortunately for Captain Brian, part-time sailor and full-time hedonist, trouble has a way of finding him… A novel of love and murder amidst a lush community of locals and ex-pats in the Virgin Islands.
A Willow In The Storm
James Peter Taylor & Kathleen Murphy-Taylor
Author contact: kcmurphytaylor@aol.com
Now blogging at willowinastorm.blogspot.com
Acquired by Scarletta Press
Published September 2007
In this compelling memoir of survival, Jim Taylor, a victim of childhood abuse, unintentionally kills a man during a botched robbery. What follows is Taylor’s 40-year odyssey through some of the harshest institutions in the U.S. federal prison system.
Mornings Under Lake Street Bridge
David Johnson
Author contact: mtncanyon@msn.com
Available for acquisition
Todd Hummel is a sensitive young man and possible Asperger’s syndrome sufferer, a former champion swimmer and cyclist whose achievements in the worlds of business and love always seem to come up short. In an effort to assuage recent failures and turn his life around, he moves to Minneapolis. There, he joins a rowing club located under the Lake Street Bridge and soon meets Nancy, a waitress at a local café. The question is whether a new place and new passions are enough to help Todd work his way out of a dangerous existential spiral…
The Shady Elders of Zion
Robert Gilbert
Author contact: shadyrealm@aol.com
Available for acquisition
Recently deceased, Ivan Kalinsky is a former Bolshevik and Jew who migrated from the Soviet Union to northern Minnesota, where he lived as a Gentile. From the Realm of Shades, he searches out the only local Jew he knows, Joshua Bronstein, to help fulfill the destiny foretold to Kalinsky back in Mother Russia: he was to lead a revolution in heaven. This work, whose themes will be familiar to readers of Michael Chabon’s recent The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, is filled with dark comedy, high parody and a colorful cast of small-town characters. Woven into this rich tapestry also are some big ideas: communism, revolution, Judaism and American cultural ideals.