First Born Sons follows a group of Californians who live in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The story begins near Santa Cruz where the wildfires of 2020 are raging. We are introduced to Lamar and Byron who both have family ties to New Orleans and Mississippi but have made their homes in Oakland and San Francisco. George lives down the road in the area where wildfires threaten the redwoods. Augie, Ruben, and their mixed-race son, Colton, live in San Francisco. Other major characters AJ and her sister, M, (soon to become brother) live in Oakland. Most of the action takes place in San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Cruz County. When Byron goes back to take care of his mother in Mississippi, we learn about small town life there. Colton and his dads go on vacation to Thailand and the reader is treated to scenes of their trip, and important developments in Colton’s love life take place there as well. And AJ takes a trip to Mexico City for a romantic rendezvous while her relationship to Chato and the city grows. The domestic and international geographical locations cover great distances, but the focus is always on the characters and their respective crises.
It’s important that Oakland takes center stage in the book as one of the themes is racial injustice and the Black Lives Matter movement. Colton’s emerging racial identity reaches a climax when the family goes to a Black Lives Matter protest in Oakland. I love setting my stories in places where I have lived and hold dear to my heart.
What does your family think of your writing?
The short answer is that I come from a family of readers and writers, so they are very supportive and proud of my accomplishments. My parents, both deceased, were truly inspirational in my journey to becoming a writer. My father was a dentist but dabbled in writing his whole life, writing newsletters for different groups he was a member of, and in his later years, he wrote a column for a local newspaper in rhyming verse, commenting on social and everyday issues. He expressed how proud he was of the articles I had published in magazines while he was still alive, but by the time I had published my first novel, he had passed. My mother was an avid reader. I have an early memory of me walking into a room where she was sitting in a chair engrossed in a book. I’m sure I had some very important question or issue, but seeing how entranced she was, I couldn’t bring myself to speak. She had no idea of my presence just a few feet away. I backed out of the room and went on my way. I imagined what a great accomplishment it would be to capture a reader in that way. She lived to see several of my novels published and was my biggest fan. She read my books despite feeling discomfort with some of the content, e.g., depictions of gay sex, abuse, drug usage. She constantly encouraged me and expressed pride in my work. In the last year of her life when she was mostly bedridden, I read to her parts of the book I was working on.
My oldest brother has published a few novels and several non-fiction works as a co-author or ghost writer. My sister has published two novels. My nephew and his wife have both published books. My first few novels were published under a family imprint we created called Fallen Bros. I feel extremely grateful to come from a family that appreciates and engages in reading and writing.
A group of coastal California residents battle wildfires, racism, and their own demons in five distinct narratives set in late 2019 and 2020.
The book is populated by a cast of diverse LGBTQ+ individuals who struggle to find love, comfort, and fulfillment. As the novel progresses, characters interact across the separate narratives and are brought together for a birthday and a disastrous Black Lives Matter demonstration.
A man returning to the horrors that made him leave Mississippi, a blind gay man flirting with love, an FTM transgender starting hormone therapy, a woman struggling to protect her sons from her husband’s surge to right-wing politics, and a teenager with two gay dads searching for his Black surrogate mom paint a disturbing tableau of modern-day America.
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August 2020
A gust of hot wind rushed through the trees, and he heard the snap of a branch, followed by a thump on the ground. He picked up his pace, his breathing growing heavier, sweat trickling down his sides. He shifted the load again and hugged the equipment to his chest, things he couldn’t leave behind, the tools of his trade, his work, his life.
A few minutes earlier he had been in a groove at the desk in front of the window, headphones on, crafting a set for an upcoming Zoom dance party called Apocalypse. Making a killer set was essential for people unable to go out, afraid of the virus, surrounded by wildfires, and bored with political discourse. They longed to dance, move their bodies, get their sexy on even if it was in a little Zoom window. With outlets of entertainment shut down, people spent excess income on pricey headphones and ear buds. He took that into account as his fingers danced over the knobs and levers, adjusting everything by sound and feel, pumping up the bass to shake their brains, rattle their hearts imprisoned in ribcages of discontent.
His goal was to make them feel something, and he hunted for songs allowing extreme panning, mixes that bounced the sounds back and forth from ear to ear, playing with space and width as the music traveled through their heads. Getting them on their feet and shaking their asses made him happy, gave him a reason to go on when the darkness around him pressed in.
The odor of burning, pungent and slightly sweet, had wafted in the open window, filled his nostrils, and snapped him out of the trance he fell into when manipulating pitch, timbre, texture, volume, and duration, pushing one up, another down. He removed the headphones and through the lingering pulsation in his ears heard the incessant chirp notifications from his phone. Five messages. They all told him the same thing. The fires were getting close. Get out. He unplugged his headphones and the controller from his laptop, gathered everything in his arms, felt his way to the door, and negotiated the steps to the ground.
A car approached, still a couple of hundred yards away, and his panic subsided. As it was the last house on the road, someone had to be coming for him. He breathed easier, and the playlist returned to his head, the order and choice of songs. The gravel crunched under his feet to the beat of the extended dance mix version he had found of the R.E.M. song, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” a trite but obvious choice for the set. The car got closer. He tilted his head. Though his ears recognized most of the cars that came down the road, this one was different, heavier.
The vehicle stopped. Two doors opened, and the sounds of unfriendly steps, the vibration of danger ground toward him. Two men, he guessed. His spine tingled with the all-overs as Granny used to say.
“Stop right there!” a man shouted. “Put your shit on the ground and raise your hands.”
The command brought a brutal end to the tunes in Lamar’s head like a needle scratching across a record. “What? Who are you?” Lamar continued his trudge forward.
The two cops turned to each other with confused expressions. The older officer with a thick mustache that hid his upper lip on a round face and a rookie who looked as if he spent way too much time admiring his blond good looks in front of the mirror at the gym unsnapped their holsters and put their hands on their guns. The senior cop growled, “I said stop. On your knees.”
Lamar’s spirit tumbled into a muddy hole of fear. It had been four years since he had nearly lost his life, attacked by men with guns and robbed of his laptop with all his stored music. This time his files were backed up, but he wasn’t about to lose the couple of thousand dollars’ worth of equipment in his arms without a fight.
“I don’t know who you are.” A murder of crows cawed a bitter song high in the trees above them. They could see what he couldn’t, looking down on the classic scenario of a Black man facing the police with their guns drawn, barking orders that made no sense.
“Stop where you are. Are you deaf?”
The birds cawed panic and flew away.
“No, but he’s blind,” said a voice from behind the officers. The younger one swirled around and pointed his gun at a man walking up the road. Byron’s long hair blew wild in the wind and his beard was thick from not shaving since the beginning of the shutdown. He liked to joke that he now looked like the Unabomber. When Lamar hadn’t responded to his call, he had rushed out of the house in a dirty T-shirt and sweats and jumped in his car, a disheveled cavalry to the rescue.
Vincent Traughber Meis grew up in Decatur, Illinois where he got his start writing plays for his younger sisters to act in for a neighborhood audience. He graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans and worked for many years as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area, Spain, Saudi Arabia and Mexico, publishing many academic articles in his field.
As result of his extensive travels and time abroad he published a number of pieces, mostly travel articles, but also a few poems and book reviews, in publications such as, The Advocate, LA Weekly, In Style, and Our World in the 1980’s and 90’s. He finally arrived at his true writing love: novels and short stories.
Five of his six published novels are set at least partially in foreign countries and his book of short stories focuses on countries around the world. Several of his novels have won Rainbow Awards, and his most recent novel, The Mayor of Oak Street was awarded a Reader Views Silver Award. He has published short stories in a number of collections and has achieved Finalist status in a few short fiction contests.
When he’s not writing, he works in the garden and travels with his husband. He lives in San Leandro, California.
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