Signed: Fruit and Natural Order by Brian Francis

Brian Francis signed my copy of Natural Order at last year's Word on the Street festival. I knew he was a local author with a gay themed book and asked him to come to my book club, which he agreed. I had lost my voice that day, hence his comments on the book.
I got home and quickly devoured the book and it was the best novel I had read in years, a full story with fully fleshed-out characters, emotion, humour.  I loved it to death.

I then bought Mr. Francis's first book, Fruit, and read that almost as quickly.  I found several parallels to my own life in this book, a gay boy in small town Ontario, I really enjoyed this one too but in a different way.  It wasn't the tour de force that Natural Order is, but it is still excellent.

I had to wait from September when I asked him to the end of February when he finally came to my book club and the wait was AGONIZING as I respected him so much and couldn't wait to ask him questions. The event went better than I could have hoped with a super large turn-out and a great response from all.  I was amazed that in addition to being such a great author, Mr. Francis is also an excellent, engaging speaker, handsome, charming.

I am a little smitten.