Book Title: The House with a Thousand Stairs
Author: Garrick Jones
Publisher: MoshPit Publishing
Cover Artist: Garrick Jones
Release Date: March 18, 2020
Genre: Historical gay novel
Tropes: Rekindling past friendships; the connection of spirits.
Themes: Cross-cultural relationships; connection through the love of the land; rebuilding lives after conflict; Indigenous beliefs and spirituality; farmer and policeman; Australian Outback.
Length: 353 pages
It is a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links
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Blurb
Warrambool
In Gamilaraay, the language of the Kamilaroi peoples of north-western New South Wales, it’s the word for The Milky Way. It’s also the name of Peter Dixon’s homestead and sheep station, situated in the lee of the Liverpool Ranges.
In 1947, Peter returns from war, his parents and younger brother dead, the property de-stocked and his older brother, Ron, having emptied out the family bank account and nowhere to be found.
The House With a Thousand Stairs is the story of a young man, scarred both on the inside and the outside, trying to re-establish what once was a prosperous and thriving sheep station with the help of his neighbours and his childhood friend, Frank Hunter, the local Indigenous policeman.
Enveloped by the world of Indigenous spirituality, the Kamilaroi system of animal guides and totems, Peter and Frank discover the true nature of their predestined friendship, one defined by the stars, the ancestral spirits, and Baiame, the Creator God and Sky Father of The Dreaming.
Maliyan bandaarr, maliyan biliirr.
How many years ago was it he’d first touched another older man, one other than his three mates? He remembered him vividly. Sandy Thompson, the local copper’s nephew, who was an itinerant shearer. One cool night during shearing season, he hadn’t been able to sleep. It had been a night like tonight—the stars bright enough in the sky to almost be able to read by their light. All of seventeen years old, he’d gone for a walk in his long johns to have a smoke in the dark at the top rail of the house yard. He’d seen the glow of a cigarette, walked up towards it, and then stopped. The man had been right where he was standing now, doing what men did when the need was upon them. A soft voice had called out, “Up here!” It had been followed by a soft chuckle.
“What are you up to, Sandy?” Peter had asked.
“Apart from having a quiet durry, what’s it look like, Pete?”
“What’s wrong with the bunk house?”
“I like to get my pants around my knees and feel the air around my balls, don’t you?”
Peter’s mouth had been so dry he couldn’t answer. The shearer had given him a lopsided grin. “Come here, mate,” he’d said, beckoning Peter with a toss of his head. Peter hadn’t needed to be asked twice and moved swiftly to lean against the railing next to him. Sandy had reached across and started to slowly and deliberately unbutton his combinations.
“I dunno if I should …” Peter had mumbled hesitantly, his reluctance betrayed by the tumescence that had sprung out of his undergarments as they’d fallen to the ground around his ankles.
He’d been no stranger to playing around—he and his mates had done it for years—but when Sandy’s mouth had sought his out, nibbling gently at his lips and then inviting him into a deep, sensuous kiss, it had been something unexpected, something totally new, and so incredibly erotic the world had disappeared for him for the next ten or fifteen minutes while he and Sandy had got to know each other in the dark.
“I’ve never done that before,” he’d eventually gasped out to the tall, twenty-something-year-old with the short, blond, curly hair.
“Sure you have,” Sandy had whispered back, panting, but smiling into his eyes.
“No, not that,” Peter had said, laughing softly. “I’ve done that plenty of times—and more beside. But not the kissing thing.”
“You liked it, then?”
“You bet I did,” Peter had answered.
“I guessed you’d been fooling around with Tommy Fairburn and Mick Jullian … and Rick Williams, too. Am I right?”
Peter hadn’t answered; he’d snorted softly and then rested his head against the shearer’s chest. “What makes you think that?”
“Don’t worry; no one’s said anything. It’s the way you boys look at each other—those glances down below the belt and the smiles and winks that go with them. I’m not stupid. I see the way you carry on when you think no one’s looking—and you’ve always got a pat for Rick’s arse. You like that, mate? His bum?” Sandy had run his hands around Peter’s buttocks, stroking them and then squeezing them gently. “Does he like it when you do this to him, hm?”
“Dirty mouthed bugger,” Peter had said and then sighed, moving his hips against Sandy’s hands. “Hey, can we do this again? You and me, I mean … what we just did. Sometime again before the end of shearing?”
“Too right, we can,” Sandy had said and then kissed Peter, removing one hand from his backside and then running it down between their bodies. “Especially if you want to show me what else is in your bag of tricks. We might even squeeze in a couple a day if you’re up for it?”
“Up for it?” Peter had said, chuckling softly and then glancing down. “Looks like I’m already up for it, wouldn’t you say?”
“And it was you called me a dirty bugger, Dixon,” the shearer had said before pushing his own strides down to his ankles once more.
After a thirty year career as a professional opera singer, performing as a soloist in opera houses and in concert halls all over the world, I took up a position as lecturer in music in Australia in 1999, at the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music, which is now part of CQUniversity.
Brought up in Australia, between the bush and the beaches of the Eastern suburbs, I retired in 2015 and now live in the tropics, writing, gardening, and finally finding time to enjoy life and to re-establish a connection with who I am after a very busy career on the stage and as an academic.
I write mostly historical gay fiction. The stories are always about relationships and the inner workings of men; sometimes my fellas get down to the nitty-gritty, sometimes it’s up to you, the reader, to fill in the blanks.
Every book is story driven; spies, detectives, murders, epic dramas, there’s something for everyone. I also love to write about my country and the things that make us Aussies and our history different from the rest of the world.
I’m research driven. I always try to do my best to give the reader a sense of what life was like for my main characters in the world they live in.
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