To Be to Is to Was | Stephen C. Bird
Welcome to a collection of worlds that collide, collude, conflict, cooperate or exist in indifferent isolation. When a father abandons his son, the son has no other choice but to inhabit a world of fantasy to deal with the resulting trauma. A young gay male in the late 1970s named Sunnie Deelite, with one foot still in the closet, looks forward to living and loving among the brothers of his gay tribe, in spite of his doubts and inexperience. Isabella Gloucester dreams of finding love and success in Lost Angelist, Amourrica Profunda, Blue Green Planet. She finds out the hard way that a price must be paid for the fulfillment of her dreams. Isabella falls on hard times, forcing her to seek out her bad-boy collaborator Bobby Chooshingoorah. At the nefarious 3001 Ulysses Disco in Questioning Ridge, Nueva Jork, they host a show and end up starting a war between the club's red and blue state clientele. Baba Yaga emerges from the banks of a ravine to terrorize the bourgeois neighborhood of Drowsydayle in the city of Near-Wanna, in the province of Orckario in the country of Narniada. South of the Narniadan border, the Evilangelists of the nation of Mourrzicka-Isolamicka throw their full support behind their trillionaire leader Turmerico Inflammatorio, whose unstable temperament and Machiavellian governing skills create havoc on the continent of Pangolina. Outside of the city of Branighan, Missoolah, Isolamicka, Big Mama and her son Bobby grow zombies in specially designed greenhouses; the zombies are then trained to work for The Center for the Appropriation of Valuables in Branighan. On Planet Gorp, the descendants of refugees from the Blue Green Planet transcend hypercapitalism through their supreme dedication to practices involving synesthesia and chromesthesia. Bryanna Dolls, a young girl obsessed with the year 1967, gives birth by Immaculate Conception to her doppelgänger, Clawdeeya. Upon reaching adulthood, Clawdeeya finds success in a career inspired by Schadenfreude, terrorizing the city of Near-Wanna and eventually the entire Blue Green Planet. Her ultimate goal is to ruin the lives of entitled, privileged males; her ambitions are supported by her connections to the warlock Antithesis Reticence and Bastet the Egyptian Cat Goddess. Bryanna Dolls tunes out reality by embarking on an unexpected dream journey in which she encounters psychedelic bands, Eurasian witches and decadent Southern Gothic culture. But her dream turns into a nightmare when she finds herself in the dungeon of Luchadora Madrugadora, Queen of Stepford Ken and Barbie Westworld. Tommy Massageny leaves behind his hardscrabble roots in Bitoxia, Archaicka, Isolamicka to become an intergalactic emcee. His career reaches new heights when he hosts a highly anticipated contest in the Galatea galaxy, in which four renowned women battle for interstellar supremacy. Meanwhile back in Amourrica Profunda, opportunists band together to alternately celebrate and disrespect the fading corporate behemoth that is Fascibook. Despite the fact that Fascibook has stolen their souls and left them addicted to social media, they remain undaunted; they make the best of a bad situation and party on into oblivion.
To Be to Is to Was | 
