Book Title: Atonement Camp for Unrepentant Homophobes
Author: Evan J. Corbin
Publisher: Atonement Book, LLC
Cover Artist: The Book Cover Whisperer
Release Date: September 3, 2020 for the print book and September 17, 2020 for the eBook.
Genre/s: Contemporary LGBTQ Fiction; Speculative Fiction; Humour
Trope/s: Fish-out of water comedy
Themes: Coming out, cultural assimilation
Length: 70 600 words/ 283 pages
Buy Links – Available in Kindle Unlimited and Paperback
Atonement Camp.
Pastor Harris is only going to save his career.
But while he doesn’t want to be there, a change of heart may be just what he needs…
Blurb
The oldest translation of a Gospel is returned to the world by a secret society long dedicated to its preservation. In it, Jesus explicitly condemns bigotry and homophobia. In a new world in which LGBTQ passengers receive preferential boarding for flights and the United States has elected its first lesbian President, Pastor Rick Harris is stalwart, closeted preacher who doggedly holds onto his increasingly unpopular convictions.
When an incendiary sermon goes too far and offends an influential family, Rick makes a painful choice to keep his job: He attends an atonement camp run by drag queens for society’s most unrepentant and terminally incurable homophobes.
Atonement Camp is immersion therapy for Pastor Harris, and it might be working. An open bar with pedicures, a devastatingly attractive roommate and an endless supply of glitter help him manage to make new friends. Soon, Rick and his cohorts learn the camp may hold its own secrets. Amid the smiling faces and scantily clad pool boys who staff the camp, a clandestine group plots to discredit the New Revelation and everything it stands for.
If Rick has the conviction to confront his own hypocrisy, he might be able to uncover the conspirators with help from his adopted flock—and find new truths within himself.
“Let me be upfront, Rick. My boy is gay. Hell, we’ve always suspected it, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.”
Rick shook his head. “I’m sorry to hear that, John. But don’t give up just yet. We can pray on it.”
John laughed until it turned into a cough. “Rick, I think it’s too late for that. Times have changed. I have to change with them is all, I guess.”
Rick bowed his head. “Heavenly Father, we call on you during this dark time…”
“Enough,” John said, gently resting his hand on Rick’s shoulder. “We have homecoming this weekend. I’ll bring out the food truck and people will love it after church, just like usual. We’ve been friends a long time. Just promise me you won’t preach on the gays this year. Maybe preach on evolution instead, no? People like that sermon. You tell it well.”
Rick met the man’s eyes and feared his own would betray the sting of John’s patronization. You tell it well, he repeated to himself, hearing John’s mockery in his mind. The moment passed as quickly as it came. Rick regained his composure and forced a smile. Both of them were sons carrying on their fathers’ legacies, and Rick understood that pragmatism was often the temporary victor over principle. Victory doesn’t always have a direct path, he assured himself.
Rick stood and extended his hand once more. “If it provides you and your family any peace, I will gladly defer to your judgment. I’ll keep you and your family in prayer, my friend.”
Rick dutifully took two pounds of BBQ and a side of biscuits with him as he marched back to his truck. If only I could talk to Ryan, he thought. Sitting behind the wheel, Rick barely took note of the ride home, his mind fixated on rehearsing that conversation. Rick was an expert on the topic, but Ryan would never need to know. While Rick had no desire to date women, he was confident that he’d like it just as much as any other man. Perhaps one day, he thought. One day when his mother didn’t need his constant care and his flock was well tended to. Until then, he assured himself there was no time for such things. Obligations to faith and family were supposed to be joyful endeavors, but Rick felt shame with each passing year as they began to feel more like chains. Friends dated. They married. They moved and then moved again. The more the world changed around him, the more earnestly he devoted himself to the obligations that would justify why he hadn’t changed with them.
Long nights in his study surrounded by scripture would occasionally find interruption by a worn poster of his savior shirtless on a cross. How wicked of the serpent to use that image to tempt me to sin, he would think in guilty revulsion. He recalled the first time he stained that image in perpetuation of the humiliation brought by the crown of thorns. In doing so, Rick recalled crucifying him again and again, each time feeling less guilt in the moment, but ever more over time.
Other occasions, he would succumb to those temptations and find his way to sites on the internet that would ease the passage of time late at night, after his mother went to bed. For those brief moments, he would indulge in the illusion of companionship with men in chat rooms. Their fleeting conversations were his only windows in the jail cell—serving as light into a world he both feared and envied.
Other times, the mere image of a man acting as proxy for his fantasies would be enough to meet that moment’s need. Guilt would always follow. The guilt reminded him of his sin and emboldened him to fasten his chains ever tighter the next time, however weak the links always seemed to be. He decided that if Ryan could only be made to understand that pain was not worth the seductive lie of pleasure’s consummation, perhaps he would have a chance to save both the young man’s soul and spare his parents the shame before he suffered the same fate. Once temptations were given the air to burn, the fire would always grow, he considered. Dim recollections of his own past were the caged demons that once had license to torment him, but no longer.
Evan is a member of the LGBTQ community who fancies himself as a playboy socialite, living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Between work and lucid moments of sobriety, he writes a little. His debut novel is a light-hearted work that still manages to confront religious hypocrisy and contemporary LGBTQ struggles to balance their loss of culture with new-found civil rights. His friends say the book is great! Hopefully, you will as well.
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