Lamb
Two friends on different but parallel paths, from private school through college and their raging twenties, until the abrupt, mysterious end of their friendship.
Told through reminiscences, journal excerpts, letters, and short stories, Lamb is a snapshot in episodes of young men coming of age after the decimation of AIDS—a sometimes shiny, sometimes dark afterparty of gay awakening.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Episode 01 ♣ We Regret to Inform You
Episode 02 ♣ Poof
Episode 03 ♣ Eau de Lamb
Episode 04 ♣ Hope Gardens
Episode 05 ♣ We (1984)
Episode 06 ♣ Death and the Bird
Episode 07 ♣ The Stranger
Episode 08 ♣ No Man's Land
Episode 09 ♣ Burning Man (1994)
Episode 10 ♣ Count Crunchula
Episode 11 ♣ The Watch on the Wall
Episode 12 ♣ Lamb of the Flies
Episode 13 ♣ Mr. Perez’s Apartment
Episode 14 ♣ Crushing
Episode 15 ♣ Buck
Episode 16 ♣ He Said, He Said
Episode 17 ♣ Pump House
Episode 18 ♣ Sunday Morning
Episode 19 ♣ Room for Dessert
Episode 20 ♣ The Box
♣ Kind words for Lamb ♣
“.. fab.. just fab.. & totally WILD!”
“As I'm sure you know, this is brilliant, Troy.
I am excited and terrified by how much I've fallen for dear Lamb.”
“Oh-my-word-Troy-this-is-SO-GOOD!!!”
The Origins of Lamb
Looking to keep the ball rolling after the completion of my first novel, Watrspout, in 2022, I set out to tell a new story based on a friendship from high school which took a dark turn.
Around 2003, I received a note from our school that my best friend had died—it was a form letter, not personalized to me but sent out to all his classmates, and provided no details. He was 33 years old.
We had not kept in touch for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that we both were gay and in the closet—for me anyway, high school had been a painful, fearful time I was eager to put behind me. But the friendship had been close while it lasted, and for nearly 20 years, I wondered about him—how he had lived, how he died—and what might have happened between us if our parents, school, classmates, the world generally, had been more tolerant and accepting of our sexuality.
Through some online sleuthing I finally discovered his cause of death, but little else. I felt moved to examine the feelings and circumstances of our friendship, and began to draft a novel loosely organized around a couple of pivotal moments. Here was a mood board I drafted for that effort, working title According to Marc.
The whole thing quickly went sideways, growing unwieldy and overly complex as I tried to steer it into a thriller when ultimately it wanted be another one of my more character-driven stories. I abandoned the project after a prolonged effort to re-energize it—change of genre, change of perspective, change of characters. It dissolved into a lifeless mush after about 50 pages.
From that stalled project, however, Lamb the character sprang to life in my imagination. I had been wanting to start a serial fiction project, and the prospect of writing a series of self-contained but connected stories centered around this endearing misfit and his friend/narrator (neither of which, by the way, resembles either me or my friend in the least) soon generated a burst of initial episodes, some of them salvaged from that previous project.
I hope this tale might eventually find a wider audience beyond Substack and FORD KNOWS—with your help spreading the word to friends, family and acquaintances who might enjoy a queer story, that might be possible.
“That was amazing! Wow. That voice.”
“That's some seriously slick writing there, Mr. Troy Ford. Love it.”
“Brother, this is so good. I add a +1 to all of the well-deserved praise the first installment has received thus far in the comments, and eagerly await the next installment.”
“Great work and great read.”
“Brilliant writing, Troy! Looking forward to more!”
“I'm in, 100%. In this short chapter you've established Lamb so completely, I feel like he's someone I knew in childhood. Can't wait for next week.”
“Wow, dear Troy, what an incredible, riveting, captivating beginning. Lamb - what a character.”
Thank you so very much for your support!
THREAD: “What we talk about when we talk about ‘Song of Myself’”
SoM, v. 5 | “Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own...” | AUDIO
Thank you for sharing the backstory, Troy. It somehow makes the novel even more poignant.
I loved hearing the backstory, the grief, the build-up, the original direction, and then Lamb revealing his own story through the process. Almost feels like time needed to work on your insides for a bit, the loss too complex, too near, to write as non-fiction. I love it when creativity asserts herself and says, Hell no, we’re going this way buddy! So looking forward to learning more when we connect for an interview.