The Author
Luis Martinez
Fiction · Short Stories · Nonfiction
Seeking literary representation for The Glue Boys, a completed novel about five boys growing up in 1960s Denver and the choices that bind them long after childhood ends.
Seeking literary representation for Almost Made, a completed novel spanning Venezuela and the United States.
Writing short fiction, including The Ditch Company and Bindweed, forthcoming in The Petigru Review, published by the South Carolina Writers Association.
Currently:
Luis Martinez was born in Venezuela and lives in Fort Mill, South Carolina. Before moving to the United States, he studied Linguistics and Philosophy in Venezuela. His fiction explores family, identity, ambition, consequence, and the complicated ways the past follows us into the present. His work includes the novels Almost Made and The Glue Boys, and the short story Bindweed.
The Novel
An upmarket literary novel about friendship, addiction, memory, and the things we carry with us long after childhood ends.
Denver, 1967. In the working-class neighborhood of Globeville, five boys spend the last days of summer doing what boys have always done—wandering alleys, hanging around garages, building models, and looking for something to do.
Then they discover something else.
What begins with model cement and gasoline becomes a private ritual, passed between them in garages and basements beneath the orange glow of the neighborhood smelters. At first, it is simply another way to kill an afternoon. A few strange minutes. A secret none of the adults know about.
But childhood ends. The boys grow up. And what they breathed in together doesn’t leave all of them behind.
Moving across decades, The Glue Boys follows five lives shaped by a friendship formed before any of them were old enough to understand what they were doing—or what it might eventually cost them.
At its center is a question that only becomes harder with time:
How long can one summer follow you?
The Glue Boys is a completed novel seeking literary representation.
Cover concept.
The Novel
An upmarket literary crime novel about inheritance, identity, and the cost of becoming the man your family expects you to be.
Antonio Lorante is three hours old the first time his father calls him a Lorante—and means it as both a blessing and a warning.
Raised in Caracas between his mother’s devotion and his father’s quiet, absolute authority, Antonio grows up in a family where the truth is understood but rarely spoken. When his father is killed and Venezuela begins collapsing around him, Antonio discovers that the inheritance waiting for him reaches back generations—through blood, through Calabria, and through a code older than the country he is forced to flee.
Across three decades and three countries—Venezuela, Florida, and North Carolina—Antonio builds a new life in the United States, even as the world his father once served pulls him back toward full initiation. As love and fatherhood begin to outweigh everything he was taught to want, he must confront the question at the center of every inherited life:
How much of what made you do you have to become?
Almost Made is a completed novel seeking literary representation.
Cover concept.
Inquiries
Connect with Luis
I’m currently seeking literary representation for Almost Made. For agent inquiries, press, or general questions, please reach out using the form below. I try to respond within 24 hours.