My House Gathers Desires

Solidly in the New Wave Fabulist writing school that blends Fantasy, History, Horror, and Science Fiction with impeccable literary writing. Influences include Angela Carter, Isak Dinesen, and Edgar Allen Poe. In the tradition of Angela Carter or Kelly Link, these stories look for new ways to consider sexual identity and its relation to history. In "Sodom and Gomorrah," we encounter a subversive and ecstatic new version of the Old Testament story. In "The Re'em," a medieval monk's search for a mythic beast conjures forbidden desire. And in "Notes on Inversion," German psychiatrist Kraft-Ebbing receives a surreal retort to his clinical descriptions of same-sex desire.Much of McOmber's writing is an investigation into mythology, animism, and queer identity-disrupting conventional notions of both gender and Romanticism. Booklist says of his novel, The White Forest: "McOmber explores the nexus between the natural and the artificial, the intangible and the concrete....Commandingly erudite and imaginative, McOmber meshes myth, the occult, and 19th-century technological advances in an uncanny and captivating gothic tale."Uses historical figures and settings, and bends factual information with fantastical writing to create plausible alternative histories that ultimately comment on our own notions of modern life.Strong LGBTQ themes and characters.