Dean Angeles (aka Elliott DeLine)
The Stars Below
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Tell your readers a little about yourself, where you grew up, where you live now, where you went to school, etc. Let them get to know the personal you.
What inspired you to author this book?
Mainly, I wanted to show how hellish addiction can be inspired by my own experiences. I portray a very flawed character and show how he recovers and becomes a better person. It would be great if the story gave people hope.
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Tell your readers about your book.
The Stars Below is about a man named Damien. He is transgender, female-to-male, and in his early 30’s. He has a drinking problem. He’s a writer, and he’s moved from living with his parents and working at a library to a farmhouse in the country to have solitude to work on his novel. When he gets there, he meets the various boarders: a woman named Michelle who is very sexually charged and seems to be constantly coming on to him. An androgynous goth named Alex. A friendly cowboy named Jesse with whom he starts a would-be-romance. A little girl named Ruby. And one starry night, a mysterious, handsome, cloaked man named Alexander. Damien gets hooked on a drug, ketamine, which is a psychedelic. He discovers eventually that all these people are actually one: a shapeshifter with multiple personalities. He begins a passionate Dom/sub relationship with Alexander, a demon who makes the shapeshifting possible. Damien’s drug use gets worse and worse, and eventually he has to decide between his new family and home with the shapeshifter or continuing to use ketamine and other harmful substances.
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More About Elliott
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Elliott
DeLine (born 1988) is a writer from Syracuse, NY. He is the author of the novel Refuse, the novella I Know Very Well How I Got My Name, Show
Trans: A Nonfiction Novel, and No
Poster Boy: Trans Fag Essays. In June 2021, he released his
first poetry chapbook, Lessons Learned from Chickens.
His essays and excerpts have been featured in The
New York Times, The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard,
Original Plumbing Magazine, and The
Advocate. He currently lives in upstate NY.
Praise:
“Elliott’s writing also helps people with similar experiences feel less alone… {He} honestly shares his struggles and his insights, and this sharing helps us all feel our common humanity beyond our gender identities or orientation.” -Dana Spiotta, Author of Stone Arabia and Wayward
“Like so many of the classic gay and lesbian novels from the earlier part of the 20th century, these works are sure, years from now, to enjoy wider readership and recognition as pioneering examples of transgender writing. Moreover, DeLine’s well-crafted storytelling and skill at cultivating voice prove that, far from being a niche genre, transgender narratives by transgender authors are a welcome and still underrepresented presence in contemporary fiction today.”-Jameson Fitzpatrick, poet, Kirkus Review.
“[Refuse is] a witty and provocative debut novel chronicling a young, intelligent, and deeply insecure protagonist, Dean, through his ambivalent attempts at securing love and connection within and without the transgender community.”-TT Jaxx, Lambda Literary Review
“Elliott DeLine is an ambitious, witty, self-deprecating, thoughtful writer whose debut novel Refuse could meaningfully be compared to the work of Dennis Cooper (with far less violence), Brett Easton Ellis (with far fewer chemical substances), David Sedaris (with not as many belly laughs) and Leslie Feinberg (with a much less mournful air). Conversant with the queer coming-of-age narrative, the disaffected-youth novel and the transgender memoir—as well as the feminist and gender theory that each of these literary genres has inspired—DeLine pushes back against the familiar, and safe, conventions of these sources to produce a captivating story populated by fully rendered, completely believable characters who, while not always likable, and never the objects of pity, somehow manage to make an affective claim on the reader. With this as his debut effort, DeLine, not yet out of college, is a writer to watch.”-Jerry Wheeler, Out in Print Queer Book Reviews
“Refuse is a stunning debut “novoir” about an over-observant young outsider with really great hair who is outside everything – including the transgender community – but keeps a great deal bottled up inside. Funny, cynical, tough, vulnerable, honest, deluded, sagacious, self-loving and self-loathing, Refuse is irresistible.”-Mark Simpson, author of Saint Morrissey
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