Atlanta resident Doug Jones (above) will be releasing his debut novel, “The Fantasies of Future Things,” this spring. The book is set in Atlanta in 1996. Photo by Kerri Phox/The Atlanta VoiceAtlanta resident Doug Jones will be releasing his debut novel, “The Fantasies of Future Things,” in the spring.“The Fantasies of Future Things” is a powerful debut reminiscent of Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight,” where two Black men, Daniel and Jacob, in Atlanta reconcile their human divinity against the price of their professional ambitions working for a real estate development company displacing Black residents in preparation for the 1996 Olympics.Jones says he hopes his target audience, which he describes as “Black, same gender loving Gay/Queer men,” enjoy the book.“I hope my target audience loves it as much as I do, and I hope the people who love us, love it,” he said. “I hope people who want to understand who we are and what some of our challenges are and how we’re living our lives, love the book as well.”Also, he said the book is not just a love story to and about the Black LGBTQ+ community, but a love story to the present-day times people are living in striving for a better way of life. Atlanta resident Doug Jones will be releasing his debut novel, “The Fantasies of Future Things,” in April 2025. Photo by Kerri Phox/The Atlanta VoiceInspirationOriginally from Brooklyn, New York, Jones grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, or more popularly known as “Bed-Stuy.” He says as Bed-Stuy has been changing, he believes this is happening to other “inner city” neighborhoods, or “formally undesirable neighborhoods” across America.“I was interested in the people who didn’t have the capacity to own the places they’re living in, and where they’re going,” he said. “What are they doing? That’s kind of Daniel’s [one of the main protagonists] story and the overarching story. That’s how these people come together because the Olympics is coming and it’s moving everything.”He recalls questioning “where are these people going,” and “what motivates Jacob to get involved with the kind of work he does?” and the layers of lives under it. Due to working in real estate and economic development, Jones said he saw firsthand what kind of effect gentrification can have on people.“I was interested in the story of who these people are, how their lives are impacted, and how they move on/beyond, or live within the movement of all this that’s happening,” he said.The novel, Jones said, has been in the making since 1998 from starting and stopping, and has taken many different forms since starting it almost 30 years ago.While authoring the novel, Jones said turning a few pages, to a few chapters, into an entire novel was surprising. Jones says when he first started out, an entire novel of the depth he has now wasn’t something he envisioned.“I wrote this book because I wanted to go on a shelf and wanted to see a story about Black men,” author Doug Jones (above) said about his debut novel. Photo by Kerri Phox/The Atlanta Voice“I discovered I could sustain that story, sustain that momentum, and interest,” he said. “It was good to fall in love with written words all over again, because I never started out in life wanting to be a writer, writing is something I stumbled into during graduate school.”Throughout the novel, the protagonists cope with accepting their sexuality, navigating through Atlanta with their own ambitions, dealing with grief, father/son relationships, black manhood, brotherhood, and how black men take care of each other.Jones says the importance of having these ongoing themes and discussions is because as Black queer men and same-gender-loving men, they’re unknown.“We’re unknown. Black queer men and however else someone defines themselves, know each other, however, do our families know us? Do the communities in which we live know us? Does America at large know us? I don’t think so,” he said.Jones quotes American Novelist and Editor, Toni Morrison who says, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” He says it’s important to have images and media like his novel and Moonlight because it’s a form of representation through the eyes of someone in the community.“I wrote this book because I wanted to go on a shelf and wanted to see a story about Black men,” he said. “Now, are they two black men who fall in love with each other? That’s the question. Do they fall in love with other people? That’s another question, but I wanted to read a book centered around us, our lives, who we are, and where we’re going.”A father and his son, advice, & moreJones dedicates his debut book to his late father who was a southerner, very conservative, and did not agree with his sexuality, but was down for his son. They went through a period of not speaking when Jones first came out to being best friends.“It wasn’t easy, but we traveled that course,” he said. “One of the things he made me understand was he raised his sons to be who he thought he knew black men had to be in America as a southern black man that grew up in the Jim Crow South, he didn’t raise them to fall in love with other men.”After not speaking for a while, Jones and his father had a two-hour conversation one Sunday night after his dad picked him up from the airport while he was coming home for the holidays. In this conversation, Jones was told he had other gay relatives.“My father told me he thought from a very young age, I was going to be gay, and my question to him was, ‘why didn’t you help me’, and he said, ‘help you not be gay’, and I said, ‘no, help me better deal with myself’,” Jones said. “It was in that moment only for a split second, I saw my father’s face riddled with utter helplessness that somehow he didn’t do something as a parent.”However, he said his dad always read a lot and encouraged his sons to read and be adventurous without education. “My father may not have been a proponent of what I was writing about, but he wanted me to write and tell my stories,” he said. “He read incredibly early drafts of a novel I was working on in other formats.”Jones said although his dad told him he didn’t understand certain things, he challenged him as an early writer to hone his craft. During a time in graduate school, Jones was questioning where the modern-day Black men authors were and his father told him, “He’s at the tip of your pen.”“He always encouraged me to write and my dedication to him is in respect and out of love for the spirit of him pushing me along,” he said. “My father’s illness was a large part of rewriting my novel and some days were difficult because I didn’t have that touchstone to talk to, but I know he’s proud of me.”Additionally, Jones spoke about the importance of trying to mend a broken relationship with a parent, in particular a father and a son, even though sometimes, it may not be possible.“Find that bridge in terms of repairing the bonds of parent and child. Sometimes it’s hard and sometimes it’s irredeemable,” he said. “However, if the relationship is important to you and you feel as though it can be healing, because sometimes it may not be, you have to ride through that pain.”He says to stake a claim to the love you have for your parents and parents must stake a claim to the love they have for their children.“We have to find different iterations of what it means to be parent and child,” he said.For the next four years, certain communities in America are facing uncertainty and as advice to other Black queer men, Jones says to find community and figure out how to support one another.“Take stock in your friendships and one another,” he said. “God falls in love with himself, but also if you can build a relationship and/or a family unit, however that may look, build community within our generations.”He also says, “people aren’t interested in Black folks it seems” and the lower someone gets away from being “what’s normal,” challenges become increasingly difficult.“The heterosexual family model is seen as the ideal, so the closer you are to being that the better your life seems to be,” he said. “The further away, the more difficult your challenges are, so we must figure out how to support one another within the various identities we have that deviate away from what’s considered ‘normal’.”As far as advice to aspiring authors in the making, Jones says to stick with it and not give up.“It took me 30 years to become an overnight success, you can never give up,” he said. “If you have something to say you have to dig in and be committed. I’d tell any aspiring author to pay attention to your craft, get better, and find a mentor, someone you love and whose work you love and respect.”Additionally, Jones says after reading the novel, he wants readers to leave with “the love that we need to have for one another.”Furthermore, Jones encourages people to join him alongside the Counter Narrative Project for a book signing event on April 23 at the Auburn Avenue Research Library at 6:30 p.m.“The Fantasies of Future Things,” which is published by Simon & Schuster, will be available for purchase April 22, 2025. To pre-order a copy, visit https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Fantasies-of-Future-Things/Doug-Jones/9781668016282.The post Love and Understanding: Doug Jones’ debut novel is not just a love story appeared first on The Atlanta Voice.