Woke Up in a Strange Place by Eric Arvin is available on Kindle for $5.80.
Description:
Winner of One Perfect Note (Overall Honorable Mention) in the 2011 Rainbow Awards.
Joe wakes up in a barley field with no clothes, no memories, and no idea how he got there. Before he knows it, he's off on the last great journey of his life. With his soul guide Baker and a charge to have courage from a mysterious, alluring, and somehow familiar Stranger, Joe sets off through a fantastical changing landscape to confront his past.
The quest is not without challenges. Joe's past is not always an easy thing to relive, but if he wants to find peace—and reunite with the Stranger he is so strongly drawn to—he must continue on until the end, no matter how tempted he is to stop along the way.
Joe wakes up in a barley field with no clothes, no memories, and no idea how he got there. Before he knows it, he's off on the last great journey of his life. With his soul guide Baker and a charge to have courage from a mysterious, alluring, and somehow familiar Stranger, Joe sets off through a fantastical changing landscape to confront his past.
The quest is not without challenges. Joe's past is not always an easy thing to relive, but if he wants to find peace—and reunite with the Stranger he is so strongly drawn to—he must continue on until the end, no matter how tempted he is to stop along the way.
From the Reviewers:
"If this were a movie, it would be breathtaking—but Arvin’s skill as a wordsmith is almost as good at conjuring scenes that allow your imagination to run wild. I was recently asked my opinion of gay romances. I responded that I found them mostly assimilationist as their roots are in the larger, straight culture, and I was looking for something unique and uniquely gay. Woke Up in a Strange Place comes closer to realizing that than any other romance I’ve ever read. And the ending will leave you in tears—I guarantee. Woke Up in a Strange Place is a marvelous read—full of inventive flourishes that don’t lie in a bed of cold cliches like many other romances. This is Arvin at his best. Unless he’s got his shirt off, that is."
--Jerry Wheeler, Out in Print
"I loved this book so much for the breadth of scope it encompasses. It is insightful into the nature of celebrating life and honoring it in a way that includes honoring death as well, not as an ending, but as a transition from one form to another. The story was also hilarious at times, as Eric Arvin took real advantage of certain situations to show the difference between different periods of Joe’s life and how they manifest themselves after death — Joe’s childhood friend 3P, who teaches Joe how to regain his childhood; Joe’s grandfather, who in life was keeping some secrets of his own, but who, in the afterlife, has wings like an angel and loves to swoop through the pink candy clouds and roll and dive through the air, joyous in a way he never was in life; and also Guy, Joe’s vain best friend from college, who is more of himself in death than he even was in life, having made his body into a monstrous display of masculinity, a giant with a giant penis and the leader of a fraternity of men who spend the afterlife playing naked wrestling, having constant sex, and being a group of brothers in a glaring tribute to the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue scenes of frolicking half-naked men. These were only a drop in the bucket of the amazingly varied characters Joe meets in the afterlife, each a bit more magnanimous than they were in life. I particularly loved Phil and Mitch, the gay talking horses."
--Cole Riann, Reviews By Jessewave
--Jerry Wheeler, Out in Print
"I loved this book so much for the breadth of scope it encompasses. It is insightful into the nature of celebrating life and honoring it in a way that includes honoring death as well, not as an ending, but as a transition from one form to another. The story was also hilarious at times, as Eric Arvin took real advantage of certain situations to show the difference between different periods of Joe’s life and how they manifest themselves after death — Joe’s childhood friend 3P, who teaches Joe how to regain his childhood; Joe’s grandfather, who in life was keeping some secrets of his own, but who, in the afterlife, has wings like an angel and loves to swoop through the pink candy clouds and roll and dive through the air, joyous in a way he never was in life; and also Guy, Joe’s vain best friend from college, who is more of himself in death than he even was in life, having made his body into a monstrous display of masculinity, a giant with a giant penis and the leader of a fraternity of men who spend the afterlife playing naked wrestling, having constant sex, and being a group of brothers in a glaring tribute to the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue scenes of frolicking half-naked men. These were only a drop in the bucket of the amazingly varied characters Joe meets in the afterlife, each a bit more magnanimous than they were in life. I particularly loved Phil and Mitch, the gay talking horses."
--Cole Riann, Reviews By Jessewave
About the Author:
Eric Arvin resides in the same sleepy Indiana river town where he grew up. He graduated from Hanover College with a Bachelors in History. He has lived, for brief periods, in Italy and Australia. He has survived brain surgery and his own loud-mouthed personal demons. Eric is the author of THE REST IS ILLUSION, SUBSURDITY, SIMPLE MEN, WOKE UP IN A STRANGE PLACE, and various other sundry and not-so-sundry writings. He intends to live the rest of his days with tongue in cheek and eyes set to roam.
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