Contact Information:
Email Address: vtmeis@sbcglobal.net
Books By Vincent Traughber Meis
Word Count: 100000
Character Identities: Information not available
Summary: Dawson Wozniak has lost both parents and a relationship in the same year. After working remotely in Mexico as an editor for a West Coast publisher during the Covid pandemic, he makes the big move to stay in the seaside town known for its beauty and festivities and pursue his goal of reinventing himself. He purchases a condo on the edge of the jungle and makes new friends. One night during a raging thunderstorm, he has an encounter with an iguana, engages in a stolen kiss, and witnesses a tragic death. The events are forever stuck in his head. Everyone around him wants to move on from that night, including Ivan, the divorced father with whom he shared the kiss. Dawson makes decisions that complicate his life and Ivan’s who finds himself in web of psychological and moral dilemmas. Despite the complications, Dawson believes there was something in that night that drew him to Mexico in the first place and he refuses to let it go. The enigmatic attraction between the two men finds its own tempo and they keep coming back to each other against all odds. In the quiet times they discover a refuge from the turmoil of their lives.
Word Count: 97,000
Character Identities: Gay
Summary: Nathan doesn’t know how to stop dwelling on the failures and tragedies that have plagued him since the last time we saw him at the end of The Mayor of Oak Street, a twenty-one-year-old happily in the arms of the handsome young doctor he had pined for since he was twelve. Many years later, what could mend Nathan’s heart after the latest tragedy and stop his deep dives into the past? Another handsome young doctor? Or would someone in the medical field do? After a chance meeting with ER nurse, Mateo, a lot of Nathan’s reminiscing is now devoted to that encounter and how it made him feel. Will he seize the day or continue wallowing in the past, having lunch with his best girlfriend from high school, and writing poetry? Nathan has lived through and had a personal connection to many of the crises that have plagued the LBGTQ+ community in the last forty years: the Up Stairs Lounge fire in New Orleans, the assassination of Harvey Milk, and the AIDS epidemic. He has lived in foreign countries, traveled the globe, and had lovers on every continent, all the while with a disease that people once thought was a death sentence. There are moments he is convinced that Mateo is the reward to all his suffering and loss, that his whole life led him to this great love. At other times, he’s so frustrated with Mateo, he’s ready to run as far away as he can get. Mateo, for his part, must take care of his ailing mother while he works full time in the emergency room. The practical aspects of starting a new relationship are challenging to say the least. The Long Journey to You is both a moving romance and a lesson in survival.
