Mother of Serpents

Brooklyn-based poet DuVone Mapley-Stevenson is already struggling with fragile mental health when his white husband Jack gets a promotion that means them relocating to all-white Kwawidokawa County, upstate Maine. At first it seems this could be a fresh start for the financially-stretched family, even if the house Jack has found them is suspiciously cheap.

Determined to make the most of the move for the sake of their young son, stay-at-home dad Vone is at once destabilized by the racial, cultural and geographic isolation. When strange

sights and sounds start to press in on him, he initially doesn't dare share with Jack what he at first assumes must be recurring delusive thinking. And then he starts to fear that the increasingly threatening uncanny phenomena are real.

As a series of terrifying events begin to tear apart the boundaries between sanity and reality, myth and science, Vone finds himself fighting a life-and-death battle with both the monsters who roam the mind and those that slither across the boundaries between their worlds and our own...

Fusing a convincing portrait of psychosis and its aftermath with occult and indigenous lore, the legacy of New England witch trials, gothic Americana and the lived experiences of a multi-

cultural queer family in a world of racial and social discord, award-winning John R. Gordon's new novel of unease will set your pulse racing and have you looking over your shoulder for

things glanced in mirrors.

John R Gordon lives and works in London, England. He is a screenwriter, playwright and the author of nine novels, Black Butterflies, (GMP 1993), for which he won a New London Writers' Award; Skin Deep, (GMP 1997) and Warriors & Outlaws (Millivres 2001), both of which have been taught on graduate and post-graduate courses on Race & Sexuality in Literature in the USA; Faggamuffin (Team Angelica 2012); Colour Scheme (Team Angelica 2013); Souljah (Team Angelica 2015). His historical epic of same-sex love in slavery times, Drapetomania (Team Angelica 2018) won the prestigious Ferro-Grumley Award for Best LGBTQ Fiction. His eighth novel was the Young Adult interracial romance Hark.John script-edits, executive produces and writes for the world's first Black gay television show, Patrik-Ian Polk's Noah's Arc (Logo/Viacom, 2005-6 and ongoingly). In 2007 he wrote the autobiography of America's most famous Black gay pornstar from taped interviews he conducted, My Life in Porn: the Bobby Blake Story (Perseus 2008). In 2008 he co-wrote the screenplay for the Noah's Arc feature-film, Jumping the Broom (Logo/Viacom) for which he received an NAACP Image Award nomination; the film won the GLAAD Best (Limited Release) Feature Award. That same year his short film Souljah (directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair) won the Soho Rushes Award for Best Film, among others. He is also the creator of the Yemi & Femi comic for adult readers, and their theatrical spin-offs.As well as mentoring, dramaturging and otherwise encouraging young LGBTQ+ and racially-diverse writers, John paints, cartoons and does film and theatre design. His website is www.johnrgordon.com.