#186 (of 365) "Us Ones in Between" Sunset Rubdown

One of my favorite YA novels ever is "Clay's Way" by Blair Mastbaum, published in 2004, and a Lambda Literary Award winner. It's set in Hawaii featuring skate kids and gay love and it's just written so perfectly, it has definitely influenced my novel-writing style in a significant way. So to say I was excited by Mastbaum's follow-up is an understatement and when I found out it was titled "Us Ones in Between"--named after a song by my very favorite artist of all time, Spencer Krug's Sunset Rubdown, I pretty much lost my mind. The 2nd novel was different (about the terror of being pushed in front of a moving subway, among other things) and challenging but still really well written. In the years since 2008, he hasn't published another novel, but he did get caught in a journalism scandal in 2024, when a bunch of articles he had written for Atlas Obscura turned out to have been at least partly fabricated. These were quirky stories about local customs throughout Europe but he didn't actually interview the people quoted and made up other stuff. Very odd. I just learned about this while writing this post. I guess I'm unlikely to read another novel of his. Clay's Way was incredible though.

Oh, and this is an amazing song. I love the lyrics, particularly this part:

And I heard of pious men
And I've heard of dirty fiends
But you don't often hear
Of us ones in between

And I heard of creatures
Who eat their babies
And I wonder if they stop
To think about the taste

And I saw the sun go down
Outside of Arkansas
And I saw the sun come up
Somewhere in Illinois
And in the darkness
I taught myself to hate
But where were you, oh where were you?
And where'd the fucking sun go?​

"Us Ones in Between" - Sunset Rubdown // Shut Up I Am Dreaming (2006)