Chasing Danny Cover

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Chasing Danny Boy:
Powerful Stories of Celtic Eros

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PROGRESSIVE?
CONTROVERSIAL?
DIVERSE NEW IRISH STORYTELLING!
WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY!

CHASING DANNY BOY: Powerful Stories of Celtic Eros
(17 New Stories by 8 Writers, featuring Neil Jordan)
edited by Mark Hemry
Palm Drive Publishing
ISBN 1-890834-31-9. Trade paper. 220 pages. $14.95

NEIL JORDAN, the brilliantly-reviewed Academy-Award-winning author of The Crying Game, heads up 8 writers telling 17 stories in Chasing Danny Boy, the first-ever collection of Irish male love stories. Because Ireland, newly progressive in the EU, recently repealed the Victorian laws of sexual apartheid that jailed Oscar Wilde, history will count this millennium anthology important as a political and cultural "first" for publishing "the love that once dare not speak its name." Male eros is, in fact, a new Irish literary genre.

General readers fans of Frank McCourt (Angela's Ashes, 'Tis) and Roddy Doyle (The Commitments, A Star Named Henry) may find that comic 21st-century diversity trumps 20th-century controversy about these alternative stories of HUMAN LOVE. Joyously, coming in from beyond the pale, these long-oppressed Irish male voices, freed from censorship, JOIN RANKS with WOMEN'S rising erotic voices in Irish literature. This fresh, new breed of writers from Ireland, England, and the U.S. dares reveal the closeted literature of the Irish multi-culture of Dublin punks, students, ancient Druids, modern priests, IRA soldiers, American tourists, and edgy lovers!

Hotter than Riverdance? Well, Chasing Danny Boy is mildly sexy, in a non-threatening literary way, because American editor, Mark Hemry, keeps the human tone entertaining. The engaging stories feature strong characters, witty dialog, and plots that are mostly modern in time, place, and action. Some are archetypes of myth: Celtic warriors and IRA soldiers. Some are romantic: the Irish-American priest in "The Story Knife." Five charming stories by twenty-something Dublin writer, Michael Wynne, examine the family secrets shared by mother and son in "Me and Mam."

The young London-based Irish literary genius, photographer, and fashion model, P-P Hartnett, whose self-portrait is the photo on the cover of Chasing Danny Boy, writes a feisty story, that like all these stories, leaves no room for too-ra-loo-ra sentimentality. Only one story dares tell itself in "Joycean" drag equating the division of gender to the division of Ireland and, it rather works. Illustrations introducing stories are from the Book of Kells.

Readers needn't be Irish or male or parading on St. Paddy's Day to enjoy these stories. (This anthology's wickedly satirical portrait of American tourists traveling back to Ireland in search of "their own inner Danny Boy" may actually increase tourism!) Chasing Danny Boy is a book of timely pop-culture interest to readers and viewers of the book and movie versions of Angela's Ashes and Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, directed by Neil Jordan whose glimmering fiction in Chasing Danny Boy examines one of the alternative ways "the Irish saved civilization." This first international collection of sexy fiction out-of-the-closets of Ireland is fresh, clever, entertaining reading for coffee-house, commute, beach, or bedside!

Available at bookstores or on-line at AMAZON.

***REVIEW COPIES AVAILABLE***
PalmDrivePublishing.com
Fax 707.829.1568
mark@palmdrivepublishing.com
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"Everyone fascinated by Ireland and the Irish so tangled in passion versus repression will love this book illuminating aspects of Celtic culture usually left in shadow."
Edward Lucie-Smith, Author, Race, Sex and Gender, London

"Chasing Danny Boy is a wonderful book."
Marilyn Saye Lewis, President EroticBookSociety.com

"For I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow. O Danny Boy!"

Copyright ©2020 by Mark Hemry, Publisher -- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED