Anders Flagstad's new novel Thad Says Parts Is Parts (And Thad Is Right) is a screwball comedy of errors straight from the vaults. Literally. It's an adaptation of the Roman playwright Plautus's comedy Epidicus, but set in 21st century LGBT San Francisco, and asking the often agonizing and perplexing question "Is it possible to be rich, gay, San Franciscan and happy, all at the same time?"Many are those who ask. Few are answered. Even fewer remember what the question was when the answer hits them squarely between the eyes with all the subtlety of a rapidly swung two-by-four. Eddie Stone - the hero of this and his own story - he happens to be one of those few people. Eddie ends up, as you can imagine, with a very sore head.Edward "Eddie" Stone is not a happy man - and he knows it.Eddie has embezzled, stolen, lied, repeatedly laundered stacks of well-worn twenty dollar bills and now local law enforcement is on to him and he's running out of places to hide and he did it all to save his 23 year-old son.Well, the boy's not really his son. Actually, they're not even related. But still, he did it for him. All of it. Honest.Paul Periphanitides, Mr. P., is Eddie's employer. He is also not a happy man. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't know that he's unhappy. Not yet. But he will. Soon.Ace Periphanitides, the young twenty-something Eddie's trying to save is pretty much always happy. He's rich, handsome, young, and goes through boyfriends like a sinus infection sufferer goes through boxes of Kleenex. Ace will end up very, very confused, very shortly.In this twisted and torturous tale of errors based on Plautus's favorite play Epidicus, sons are found and lost, love blossoms and then is rudely plucked, mother's hearts are mended and broken and mended again, much money changes hands, and destinies are chosen, sometimes involuntarily. There's also a couple of drunken brawls in some of the rougher neighborhood Lesbian bars.And of course, it all takes place in The City - the city by the bay, San Francisco. - The novel "Thad Says Parts Is Parts (And Thad Is Right)" is Book Two of the Principal Parts Series - Book One of the series is "Spare Parts", a collection of short stories to be out on Amazon in January 2014. Principal Parts is a set of interconnected books and characters about San Franciscans and how they got that way and what they do to stay that way and where they expect to go with all this stuff they're doing.
About the Author: Anders lives as does Thoreau's mass of men, a life of quiet desperation - sometimes less quiet, sometimes less desperate, but a life nonetheless. That's what you have to remind yourself, when you least believe it, that you are, actually, living your life, and that it is quite the accomplishment, in and of itself, and that you should give yourself a pat on the back occasionally for doing it as well as you do, for as long as you have. There are many who never will make it as far as you've gone, and none who have lived what you have lived, so every once in a while, remember, it's no sin to celebrate yourself, and give the desperation a rest. It will always be there. You can pick it up and shoulder it anytime you want and start walking again. Setting it down doesn't mean you're getting soft. It just means you're setting it down. Try it, you'll see. But maybe, one time, at a point of self-celebration, you'll put the desperation down, party, pick yourself up afterwards and start walking and realize you have more energy and more (to use a four letter word) hope - that you're walking with a spring in your step and you won't know why and you don't want to know why. It won't even dawn on you that you've left something behind, that you lost something you thought you were going to have to lug behind you for the rest of your life - yes, your desperation. You won't be desperate and it will feel strange - until you remember where you set your desperation down - and you go to retrieve it - but, with any luck you won't remember - and never will - and from that point onwards, or at least for a while, without your desperation, you'll no longer be one of the mass of men, you'll just be you, yourself, a woman or a man who is alive, in the universe and walking about, here and there. And that's all. That, at least, is the goal of Anders. Living in the first, frantically social and riotously connected decades of the 21st century, where the desperation flows as easily as the texting and maybe even easier, and is almost as unstoppable. Almost.