A Love Like Blood

Victor Yates was raised in Jacksonville, Florida and now lives in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in Windy City Times, Edge, and The Voice. His first novel, A Love Like Blood, won the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Debut Fiction. As a graduate of the Creative Writing program at Otis College, he is the recipient of an Ahmanson Foundation grant. He is the winner of the Elma Stuckey Writing Award (1st place in poetry) at Morehouse College. He received an Oprah Winfrey Scholarship and appeared on Oprah's Surprise Spectacular show. Two of his poems were included in the anthology, For Colored Boys, which was edited by Keith Boykin. The book won the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award. Also, he has taught writing workshops at the University of Southern California, Job Corps, Whaley Middle School, Bright Star Secondary Charter Academy, Camp Hollywood Heart, and Models of Pride.

"Half Somali and Cuban, 17-year old Carsten Tynes, deals with the intricacies of race, Americanism, syncretism, migration, and sexuality under his dying father's abusive hand in A Love Like Blood. Set in 1998, his family relocates to Beverly Hills, MI to expand their photography business. His father has lung disease and promises to give him the business if he marries his ex-girlfriend. Faced with an unwanted marriage and the slow death of his father, Carsten retreats behind his camera. His camera becomes the loose thread that slowly unravels his relationship with his father and reveals the unseen world of "men who move at night." However, it is his infatuation with his neighbor, Brett that severs the symbolic umbilical cord between his father and him. When death pushes his father and Brett together, he makes a dangerous decision to protect them."

A Love Like Blood forces readers to question the influence of race, religion, immigrant life, sexuality, and business and how those things can disrupt the father-son relationship.

A Love Like Blood forces readers to question the influence of race, religion, immigrant life, sexuality, and business and how those things can disrupt the father-son relationship.