Description

Sex, Drugs and Spiritual Enlightenment (but mostly the first two)

By Karuna Das

ABOUT THE BOOK

COLORADO INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER ASSOCIATION 2023 EVVY AWARD SILVER MEDALIST IN LGBTQ FICTION (NO GOLD MEDAL AWARDED THAT YEAR)

and

INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD 2024 DISTINGUISHED FAVORITE IN NEW ADULT FICTION

On the cusp of turning eighteen, it’s time for Drew Lovell to become a man.

But deep within, Drew has questions-ones he doesn’t know how to phrase-about what that means and how to go about it.

During three intense stretches between 1985 and 1993, taking him into his mid-twenties, Drew undergoes a series of profound experiences-often wild, sometimes painful, and always revealing-that force him to rethink his current assumptions. Only after nearly dying from trying to conform to conventional models of masculinity does he begin to become the man he wants to be and not the one he thought the world required him to be. Still, he’s unable to live with full integrity until interaction with a pair of awakened humans inspires new awareness that helps him at long last embrace the truth of who he is.

Author Karuna Das (Sanskrit for “servant of compassion”) was born in Wisconsin, grew up in Massachusetts, and presently resides in Pennsylvania, but lives wherever he happens to be at that moment, feels at home everywhere in the universe, and steps through almost any door that opens to him. He holds a BA in English (UMass), an MFA in Playwriting (UW – Seattle), and a PhD in Theatre and Dramaturgy (FSU). His short piece “Irony of the Second Degree” appears in 24 Gun Control Plays (NoPassport Press) and has been performed around the world. His full-length play Pyramid Builders received its world premiere production by Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company in April 2023. In addition to his playwriting, he’s published the novels Sex, Drugs & Spiritual Enlightenment (but mostly the first two) and Kat’s Cradle: Webolution Book One, short fiction in Meat for Tea, Catalyst, Pif Magazine, and ActiveMuse, and creative nonfiction and poetry in The Wayfarer, with a story in the upcoming B Cubed Press anthology Alternative Leadership. Works-in-progress include Solar Max: Webolution Book Two and a fictionalized version of the lives and deaths of his maternal grandparents and mother called Playing By Ear. He and life partner Ti share their house with five wonderfully wacky cats.