Warlock

“There are people all over the world, Allen, who’ll sell anything to anyone. You must know that. We use those people; it’s as simple as that. . . . I can’t tell you any more.” from Warlock, a new novel by Perry Brass, author of Angel Lust, The Harvest, and How to Survive Your Own Gay Life. “Submission, passion, power, and the kind of unleashed gay sexuality that I like to write about — these were the elements I wanted in my new book, Warlock, A Novel of Possession,” says gay poet and novelist Perry Brass. “I also wanted to create characters that leap off the page. I think that’s one of the problems with so many gay books — the characters seem interchangeable. They never have to work hard at anything. Life for them seems like a big cocktail party, with a play room attached. I wanted to write about the struggle for survival that so many of us have — and that we try to transcend with the special gifts we bring to our own lives. I also wanted to tell a hell of a story, which Warlock does.” And what is that? “Two men meet under fairly common circumstances — in a popular gay bath house in Manhattan. One of them, Allen Barrow, is sexually inhibited, has a small penis that embarrasses him, is shy, soft-spoken, polite, and has a low-paying job in a bank. His whole life will change when he meets Destry Powars. “Powars is, indeed, ‘destiny’s child’: he is larger than life, a true urban cowboy, sexually wild, smart, uncouth, vulgar — from generations of footloose losers. He has reinvented himself over and over again and has become spectacularly rich and successful. He has learned the language that moves money, the language of power, force, success at any means. But who has taught him this, and at what price? The price is his own goodness, his own real soul – and he can find this again, only by merging with Allen.” Warlock is a book of hypnotic splendor and power, full of gorgeous eroticism and total suspense. If you ever wanted to find your own “man of destiny,” who will pull you away from the problems of your life, who will satisfy your every wish — Warlock will tell you how to find and recognize him, as well as make you see the ancient and hard work of warlocks. “I think,” Perry Brass says, “the message of Warlock is that the business of business is . . . often evil. Just how evil it is, I write about in Warlock. Many of the excesses of the last ten years are coming back to roost. I’m glad that I have published a very powerful gay book that deals with so much of what we have seen, but in a way that is both entertaining and very moving. The real message of this book is our own submission to love and sexual fulfilllment — how much we really want this and how difficult it is to achieve, as much as we want it. That is a message I have written about many times, but I’m glad to do it in this really unique way in this book.”