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Waiting in Vain
Colin Channer
  • Published: 15 December 2010
  • ISBN: 9780307775276
  • Imprint: RH US eBook Adult
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 416

Waiting in Vain

A Novel




"I'm a Jamaican. Yardie to de bloodclaat core. I love stout more than wine. I love cricket more than baseball. . . . I love Bob Marley more than Beethoven or Basie. . . . And I think that the fat on a woman batty and hips is sexy thing that they shouldn't try to lose at the gym. . . ."

As the clock nears midnight, a travel-weary man steps out of the New York subway where Chinatown collides with Soho and TriBeCa. He strides up West Broadway in his tough, scuffed boots past cafés and bars. Then he sees her, and a spark is lit. She walks like a dancer, and trailing behind her in the coltish breeze is a light silk scarf whose flutter he deems
romantic. . . .

Meet Fire--Jamaican born, charming, poetic, and talented--a man who's vowed to never play "love-is-blind" games again. Then he meets Sylvia, a beautiful magazine editor who keeps her passions under lock and key. Together they must choose between the love in their lives and the love of their lives.

Waiting in Vain is a sexy, hypnotic, and beautifully written novel of two souls who meet by chance--then fall hard and fast in a precarious world of hopeful dreamers. With an amazing gift for capturing the subtle Jamaican cadences of his characters' voices, in prose that drips of passion both carnal and pure, Colin Channer immerses us in the fast-paced, often cutthroat art world where sculptors, writers, poets, musicians, gallery owners, and benefactors all reach for success at the expense of themselves and the truth.

From the galleries of Soho to the brownstones of Brooklyn, from the nightclubs of London to the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, Channer takes us on a wild, soul-searching ride as Fire and Sylvia try to connect, disconnect, and reconnect amid conflicting desires and wounds from the past. But through intricate love triangles, skewed priorities, and crushing personal tragedies, Fire, Sylvia, and their friends must learn that some things in life are worth fighting for. If not, you're simply waiting in vain.

  • Published: 15 December 2010
  • ISBN: 9780307775276
  • Imprint: RH US eBook Adult
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 416

About the author

Colin Channer

Colin Channer is the author of two novels, a novella, and many short stories. His first novel, WAITING IN VAIN, was selected as a 1998 Critic’s Choice by the Washington Post. It was also excerpted in Hot Spots: The Best Erotic Writing in Modern Fiction. His novella, I’M STILL WAITING, was published in the bestselling volume Got to Be Real. Mr. Channer is founder and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, the only annual literary festival in the English-speaking Caribbean (www.calabashfestival.org). A naturalized American, he was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and lives with his family in New York. He has taught fiction writing in London and New York and is the bass player for the reggae band Pipecock Jaxxon.

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