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| Announcment 6/2004 All original preorders have been shipped. Book 2 is in production and should be ready to ship by July with book 3 coming in August. Arrangments for a signed copy can be made by emailing books@blacktoad.com |
Black Toad Books is proud to announce: I Only Smile in the Dark
- the debut novel from author Aaron Reardon. The story of a young man escaping his religious Nebraska family
to find refuge in the dark club underground of Boulder, Colorado. His
struggle for identity, love and direction will drive him to the edge of
suicide and force him to build a new family from the displaced misfits
around him. I Only Smile in the Dark takes a distinct look at the
Gothic/Industrial world from the inside, from the dark club nights where
the pretty pose and dancing is its own form of religion.
| ...It
was incredible, that dark little underworld. I walked down those dirty
steps several months before into a world of dark makeup, corsets and
striped stockings. In my life I'd never seen anything even close to
Ground Zero. The first time I witnessed two girls kissing was up against
the back brick wall during A Daisy Chain for Satan by Thrill Kill
Kult; it branded my brain, causing me an instant addiction. For
some reason, I needed to be here, forever. I needed to be in this
dream made of flashing club lights, of garter belts peeking out from
under lacy black skirts, macabre makeup and flame-colored hair. It
was some kind of carnival; I had no idea who these people were. They
were unpredictable, exotic, totally eccentric. During the day they
probably made coffee or pumped gas, but here, to me, to each other,
they were all something else... |
An
intense psychological coming of age I only Smile in the Dark travels
through the mingling of club life and reality .The lines of identity blur
and attempts at stability turn into a desperate search for consolation
and escapism.
| ...It
was a night that everything changed color, when everyone else had
lost their minds on various chemicals. I arrived at the club late
and everyone was swimming to the bottom of some kind of thick pool
looking for pennies. Talking was metered to small brief conversations,
you never wanted to approach anything too serious with people who
barely knew where they were. I took a seat alone in the back and watched
it all. It could be a little frightening to be sober around a group
full of temporary circus performers. Everything was grand when you
teamed up and did things together, but anybody outside the circle
of influences would be terrified by the shift in behavior. I'd seen
this sort of thing too many times to be thrown,... |
Set
among the urban landscape of Denver and Boulder,
I only Smile in the Dark paints a new mythos within the pantheons
of alternative subcultures.
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The
man in the handcuffs was hiding crack in his mouth.
He slurred his words around the little plastic bags as he tried
to answer the police's questions. Lights flashed everywhere, orange
brick on a convenience store, florescent lights mingled with red
and blue flashes. I stepped over a trampled sign reading: "Please
help I cannot speak, I cannot hear" while a woman with long
braided chestnut hair crossed my path. Statues against walls of
this cathedral, stained glass saints in concrete cracked panes of
sidewalk chalk art, mosaics painted by independent goth band hand
bills littering the windows of corner bars. If watched carefully
enough you could see the color wash out through the corners of my
life, leaving everything muddled tans, dusty, ghost town. Pulling
away small dead layers of skin with light delicate touches. soft
pink new skin underneath , a sliver moment of vulnerability. I wanted
to force some kind of spiritual chest spreader into my sternum,
crack my ribcage open and let all of the caged demons out to roam
in the light. I was down on 13th street in Denver, just up from
Café Netherworld. Kelly had moved into a one-bedroom apartment
off of Pennsylviania on Capital Hill. It had a dark varnished hardwood
floor the color of weak Turkish coffee, old sockets with only two
slots; her fuse box had four of the old glass plugs in them the
kind you had to screw in. She kept the black metal windows pried
open . There was something so perfect about the checkered bathroom
floor and the old porcelain tub with the makeshift ashtray and burnt
down candle stubs. A perfectly cracked and dripping sink in front
of a slightly dirty mirror, a small empty juice glass had snipped
and dried purple wildflowers, the soap dish piled with bracelets
and necklaces. It was more black and white than an old photo, no
greys, something clear. I wanted to live there, to put a towel in
the corner and go fetal, close my eyes and just make everything
stop...
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