The triad of novellas which make up Crowder’s The City of NO take their protagonists, and the reader, on voyages of adventure, passion, tragedy, and self-knowledge. Like Ahab, Keller Hardy chases an aquatic monster of doom; like Odysseus and Jonah, Henry Gereighty roams the varied and perilous world to find a way home.  In language by turns surreal, mystical, ribald, analytical, and intimate, Crowder shows us the shattered inner landscape of gay men in the Deep South, survivors of dual devastations, the Genocide (AIDS and homophobia) and the Catastrophe (Katrina). The struggle between love and hatred is enacted in societal rage and in the tenderest human bonds. The epic quest may both exalt and ravage.

Louie Crowder is a Novelist, Houngan Asogwe (Vodou Priest), Intuitive Tarot, Energy Healer.

My current novel, “The City of NO”, is the product of a few years and a lot of motion.  I live on my sailboat on the Southeastern seaboard because the lifestyle resonates with who I am on a spiritual level.  I write best when I’m floating.  My connection to the spirit is strongest when I’m on the water.  My boat makes me feel safe and alive more than any place I have ever been or experienced.  Whether I’m reading cards, working on a story, or helping a client on the West Coast my boat is where I’m strongest. 

I am an initiated Vodou Priest.  None of my work happens separate from the rest: the tarot informs the energy work which informs the writing which informs the tarot...  It’s all connected.  I write with my guides.  I’m not at all fast and I think that has to do with the fact that several things are always happening at once.  There is always a bigger, hidden picture that’s privy to no one but the loa and I. 

My writing isn’t autobiographical.  It’s channeled as much as invented.  All artists are mystics and my experiences in both the mystical and the mundane inform my characters and the dramatic situations I find them in. 

“The City of NO” is a culmination of three novellas that weave a larger story.  I hope that I have listened to the ancestors well enough to do the characters justice. 

Louie Crowder’s enthralling novel about Gen X/Y in the South and the particular hardships they face there starts in New Orleans and moves from Florida to Tennessee; it’s a compelling story about two gay men that is lyrical, poignant, philosophical, honest, and earthy." -- Charles Rammelkamp, author of Mortal Coil and Catastroika