Current mood:	tired
Current music:	Neutral Milk Hotel, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"

Nick Hornack: Walking Higher
It’s always a shock to hear of someone’s death, but when I learned, last night, that Nick Hornack had died--from injuries sustained in a car accident, at the very young age of 38--I went numb.

Writing under the name Alexander Renault, Nick had been a fixture on the gay literary scene for years, publishing erotica, essays, and interviews. His dream project was the book that became Walking Higher: Gay Men Write about the Deaths of Their Mothers. After many publishers rejected his proposal for this book, claiming that it would be too depressing, Nick decided to publish the book as a print-on-demand volume from Xlibris Press.

If Nick had known how much work it was going to be getting this book done, he might have given up at the start. But he worked tirelessly, even though he was sometimes frustrated by the demands of the job. His call for submissions for WH received a good response, but he agonized over having to reject some of the manuscripts. How, he asked me, do you send a rejection notice to someone who has poured his heart out to you?

I should mention here that I was one of the contributors to the book. A writer would have to be an idiot to respond to a call for submissions with a manuscript that exceeds the requested word limit nine times over; but because I am an idiot, that’s exactly what I did. I figured that the worst he could do was shoot a nasty note back to me.

Much to my surprise, Nick responded instantly with a very kind interest in my work. After exchanging a few emails, he came up with this proposition: would I consider cutting the manuscript of about 45,000 words down to 10,000? If so, he would be glad to use it. Now I was in a similar position to his: I didn’t know how much work it would be to cut a manuscript by 75% and still leave it more or less intact. So I said, “Sure!”

Somehow I managed to make a long story short—never an easy task for me, as anyone who reads my blog has noticed. Nick was incredibly supportive through it all. And after several agonizing delays, he finally saw his beloved book become a reality, in September of 2004.

I think Nick was disappointed that Walking Higher didn’t receive more attention than it did (though it's still too soon to tell what eventual impact it may have). He certainly took on the unfamiliar role of publicist with the same energy he devoted to his editorial tasks, never missing an opportunity to schedule a reading or interview. One reading took place at the Philadelphia bookstore Giovanni’s Room in November of 2004, with 11 of the book’s 30 contributors participating. I will always regret that I couldn’t make the trip, and so was not able to meet Nick in person.

One of the last messages I received from Nick began this way: “I always feel better when I hear from you!” The feeling was mutual. Now Nick is Walking Higher, and if there is a Heaven, then he’s negotiating a book contract with God. Let’s hope so!

Here is the bio of Nick that appears in Walking Higher:

Alexander Renault has published in multiple genres from pet magazines to
feminist newspapers, on philosophical issues from freedom of speech to the
intersections of religion and sex, on human subjects from survivors of
the holocaust to popular music’s rock goddesses. His journalism has been
published in the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. Born on
his mother's birthday, Renault is a tenacious Gemini with penchants for
feminism and psychology. He has been working in the mental health field for 15
years. Renault lives with his partner in a little ranch house in Bellefonte,
Pennsylvania, with their two Boston terriers, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

And here is a link to the book's page at Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1413456030/sr=8-4/qid=1141876525/ref=sr_1_4/104-8713317-6991136?%5Fencoding=UTF8