More reviews and a Tallahassee recap

Two fabulous review of Conquering Venus posted online in one week! Huzzah! On Monday, Nanette Rayman-Rivera posted her take on Venus at Goodreads. Here's an excerpt:

Mr. Kelley does a wonderful job of creating the atmosphere of Paris in the 1990’s and Paris under siege during street revolutions in the 1960’s under DeGaulle. Mr. Kelley finds a compelling way to wind each character’s story around and back from the past to the present.

Yesterday, The Next Best Book Blog posted a lengthy review from Lori Hettler, who gave it three stars. Here's a quote:

Overall, an intense look at a world of which I was not overly familiar with. While I don't have much experience with Gay Lit, I do have a TON of experience with reading in general, and Kelley can certainly hold his own with the best of them.

Those reviews bookended my reading from Venus on Tuesday night at Tallahassee Pridefest. I was thrilled to be back (I read poetry there in 2008) and delighted to share the stage with my pal Terry Galloway, who read excerpts from her Lambda Award-nominated memoir Mean Little Deaf Queer. Seriously, folks, if you haven't read it, go to Amazon or your local bookseller and buy it. I hope she wins! We had a packed house at The Warehouse for the reading and I also got to have dinner with the reading's organizer, Patrick Patterson, a charming and dapper host.

And thanks as always to uber-mensch Ben Tanzer for his continued support of Venus. He recommended the novel to The Next Best Book Blog in the first place.