My Firstborn

Execution, Texas: 1987 was my first novel. Some of the initial scenes that would grow into the book were actually written in 1987, but the bulk was written in 1992-96. You can pick up a copy (cheap!) from Amazon.

The hardcover came out in 1997 and paperback in 1999 (both from St. Martin's Press). If you're curious what was going through my head in those days (besides detesting alternative rock), you can read an interview with me from the old publisher's website, which some kind soul has archived. Chicago Outlines also interviewed me during the book tour.

Here are some review excerpts and other nice things people have said:

"D. Travers Scott's novel is, in turn, both funny and disturbing...captures the mystery and confusion of an American youth where the search for love is equaled only by the search for drugs. I applaud him." -- David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

"At turns funny, creepy, and frustrated, this book seethes with complex erotic tensions and highlights the strangeness of its middle-America setting." -- Village Voice

"Wonderfully evocative, and the characters are the book's great strength...probably the most interesting gay debut novel since Dale Peck's." -- Graeme Atkin, Melbourne Star-Observer

"Killer humor...Scott neatly but affectionately skewers the 1960s generation that raised those freaked-out kids...knife-edge balance between satire and soap opera, its humor and angst remain winning." -- The Seattle Times

"Beautiful...[an] elegance of writing that keeps sensory matter the fore, halfway between Flaubert and Straight to Hell...D. Travers Scott brilliantly delineates the most complicated of ages, when adulthood is a possible escape hatch, slightly out of reach, and the world is too big and too small." -- Robert Glück, The Stranger

"Excavates the spiritual life of kids from out of the crumbly, barren soil of the suburban Midwest...The book's pressured, hothouse energy is generated largely by Seeger's fumbling search here on earth for the perfectly observed world of [Marc] Almond's songs, and his inevitable failure to find it...an intriguing meditation on art and life." -- Matthew Stadler, Allan Stein

"Elegantly constructed and very smart, Execution, Texas: 1987 holds more crackly energy than a box of firecrackers. And Seeger, its nervy, sex-obsessed protagonist, is unforgettable." -- Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin, In Awe

"What's Travers Scott got? Energy, drive, a burning wit, and a supple, almost scary 'execution.' His story of relentless teens trapped in a small Texas suburb, dreaming of New York and the Warhol/Edie Sedgwick lifestyle, is like All the Pretty Horses meets 'All the Young Dudes,' shaken together in a box and spilled out over vast patches of Texas and Mexico. Underneath the familiar trappings of the bildungsroman, a great shuddery sadness and joy; underneath the Ecstasy, a coolly European interest in ideas of family, history, community, and desire." -- Kevin Killian, I Cry Like a Baby, Little Men

"Rowdy, openhearted Seeger King couldn't be too much more out of place in Execution, Texas, where is sexual verve and existential uncertainty make for one menacing hilarious situation after another. With wit and precision, D. Travers Scott makes each sentence ring with young Seeger's pain and his pleasure in this ambitious and frankly erotic first novel." -- James McManus, Going to the Sun, Positively Fifth Street

"Their alienation on the North Texas heath is palpable. Sterile corporate outposts and failing strip malls blight the landscape. Seeger's feelings of uniqueness, which he shares with his tight circle of friends--and the common thirst for experience that bonds them--elevate Execution from an ordinary story of coming of age (and coming out) to higher plains." -- The New York Post

"A coming-of-age tale with plains dust in the sangria." -- Booklist

"One of the best reads of the year. An amazing debut for the writer…. You must read it!" -- Seattle Gay News