Oh wow, this SMiLE essay your friend wrote looks AMAZING and relevant--am really looking forward to diving in; thank you for directing my attention to it!

...and I managed to post this to the wrong "General Discussion" board...my apologies!

Hi, per mod advice, I am posting about this here. So my name is Jeanne Thornton, and I published a book this year through Soho Press called Summer Fun. It's about a trans woman named Gala who lives in the desert in New Mexico, and who's writing very long and intense fan letters to a musician named B--. B-- is the musical impresario of a band called The Get Happies, who vanished from the public eye after failing to release an album called "Summer Fun" in the mid-1960s. The book is told entirely in fan letters, some of which tell the story of Gala's life in the present tense, the rest of which tell the story of B--'s life and musical career in a suspicious amount of detail.

Here's the Goodreads page, with a pic of the cover: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52034695-summer-fun

I know it's a little self-promoy to post about a book I wrote here. But I think it's likely that the book has some relevance to this group, in the same way Paul Quarrington's Whale Music does, and that folks here may be interested? I will lay my cards on the table as a huge fan of the Beach Boys, and though the story goes off in a very distinct direction from the actual band's, I tried to weave in as much deep Beach Boys ephemera as I could fit for anyone who wants to look for it. (I also did thank the forum in the acknowledgements just for being a place to go to steep in the deeper mysteries of this band and its world, even well before I was writing the book.)

Would be interested to know any thoughts folks have, especially if you've somehow read it already! And thank you to everyone here now and over the years for creating this space--I have loved it. <3

Hi, my name is Jeanne Thornton, and I'm the author of a novel called Summer Fun, recently out from Soho Press. The book is about a transgender woman living in New Mexico in the early 2000s who's writing obsessive fan letters to a reclusive musician named B--, leader of a fictional 1960s band from California called the Get Happies, who largely vanished from the public eye after failing to complete a masterpiece psychedelic album called "Summer Fun." As a very big fan of an ACTUAL California band from the 1960s that folks here have certainly heard of, I think there is some obvious relevance to this forum, and I suspect that people here might enjoy it.

But I also don't want to be weird in how I post about my book. Is there any guidance from moderators? I'm not sure what the policy is for things like this and where/if this might be okay to post.

Thank you for any guidance you can provide, and thank you for moderating a forum that I've enjoyed lurking for some time!