Lovell Holder’s debut novel, The Book of Luke, arrives at a precipitous moment for queer literary fiction. The heated tale of a handsome gay ex-athlete romancing a rival (or two) on a hit reality TV competition, the book seems custom-built to reach the ravenous audience that’s turned the Heated Rivalry books and TV series into a phenomenon.
Of course, Holder, who’s also a filmmaker, started writing The Book of Luke several years ago, with a different intention than riding the wave of a gay hockey hit.
Holder started the book, which chronicles the life and reality TV adventures of Luke Griffin, the soon-to-be ex-husband of a gay Republican U.S. Senator, in 2019. “I was really interested, at that time, in the idea of complicity and how underrepresented communities can sometimes oppress members of other underrepresented communities,” he says.
“I think in that moment at the end of the 2010s, I felt like we were coming off a particularly ruthless decade where everyone was kind of just out for themselves. It felt like wherever you looked in politics, in entertainment, in life, it doesn’t feel like a decade that was built around community.”
Holder, who resides between North Carolina and Los Angeles, was “chewing on that nugget” when COVID hit, and all of us, for a time, were cut off from community.
“And I am such a coffee shop writer that I had two-thirds of the book, and then when the pandemic started, it then took me, I would say, another 11 months to write the final third,” he says. “It was just like blood from a stone. It was so hard for me to write in the apartment.”
He took the writer’s block as a blessing, an opportunity to sit with his characters for a while longer. Crucially, he’s supplied the book with a collection of characters worth caring about, from its titular hero, to Imogen, his straight girl best friend-turned-frenemy and castmate on the fictional Endeavor (a cross between The Challenge and Big Brother), where Luke first meets closeted rival-turned-lover Arjun.
Set between D.C. and the far-flung locations of the globetrotting reality show, the book also adds another alluring love interest for Luke, plus a twist or two involving the right-wing senator, Barnes, fighting Luke over custody of their two kids.
With time to reexamine those relationships, Holder says, “I became much less interested in complicity and much more interested in the concept of forgiveness. So I think the arc of the book does reflect that, because the back half of the book was originally conceived as a much more punishing ending for some of the characters than what ultimately exists.”
Instead, the writer — who, this time last year, was preparing for the theatrical release of his feature directorial debut, the “gay Abe Lincoln” fantasia Lavender Men — plotted happier endings. “I think that sense of hope, that sense of coming together in [the] building of a community by the end of the story was very much impacted by the fact that there were so many things happening in the world that inevitably influenced me as a writer.”
The Book of Luke ($30, Grand Central Publishing) is available at Amazon.com and wherever you buy books.
Lavender Men is available for rent or purchase on AppleTV, Prime Video, YouTube, GooglePlay, and other platforms.
"This industry is all about relationships," says Danilo Gambini, the director and producer whose staging of Samuel D. Hunter's A Case for the Existence of God just opened at Mosaic Theater. Gambini is not merely repeating a show business adage, but offering one of his keys to working virtually non-stop, sometimes between multiple cities at once, living his dream as an artist.
"For me, it's really all about honest, truthful relationships people that I like and I want to be close with and want to be collaborating with, people that are writing exciting plays, or being exciting designers, or just great actors," he says, explaining how one spark leads to another.
Not since Hedwig and the Angry Inch have I so enjoyed a one-person musical about an internationally ignored female artist overshadowed by her famous male partner as much as I enjoyed Rebecca Simmonds and Jack Miles' enchanting In Clay.
Making its American premiere at Signature Theatre, following sellout runs in London, the jazz-infused portrait of early-20th-century French ceramicist and painter Marie-Berthe Cazin doesn't have too much else in common with hard-rocking Hedwig. Except that both shows are powered by a knockout batch of songs, and the galvanizing force of a woman reclaiming her time, her art, and her story.
Putting aside the curious question of why the Shakespeare Theatre Company has taken to staging musical theater -- this season it's Guys and Dolls -- the happy news is that director Francesca Zambello doesn't need to keep her day job (although let's hope she does).
She may be the artistic director of the Washington National Opera, but she's clearly got the eye, ear, and vision for a whole different kind of crowd. This is no-holds-barred Golden Age rom-com song-and-dance magic brought fully to life with some serious spectacle. From scenic designer Walt Spangler's mind-blowing industrial shop space, with all its peeling paint and careworn shop décor, to a live orchestra conducted with complete and utter flair by James Lowe, it's something to behold.
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