Drew Payne - Stories

Some days go right

Some days go wrong

Some days don’t go at all.

Simon is sixteen and on the edge of everything changing, his world changing from adolescent to adult, to facing up to his sexuality and coming out, but not just yet.

Now, his boyfriend is late and he’s sat on a cold, concrete bench waiting, waiting, waiting…

Over twenty different days, during four weeks in spring, this story follows Simon as he navigates the difficult journey of his coming out. Like all journeys, this one will change him but in ways he doesn’t imagine, taking him places he didn’t expect to go.

Modern gay life is hard enough, with homophobia, bar culture and dysfunctional relationships, but how do you navigate it carrying the baggage of the ex-gay movement?

Chris was involved with an ex-gay organisation as a teenager, after a breakdown he broke away from them. Now, as an adult, Chris is trying to live as an out gay man but the baggage of his past keeps pulling him back.

So often the damage does not stop when the abuse does.

This six-part story asks how does someone come to terms with the aftermath of the ex-gay movement.

The journey of a lifetime starts with one train ticket.

Owen, nineteen and single, is finally making his journey to coming out, but this is far more difficult and complicated than the train journey he has to take from his small home town to London, the only place where he feels he can come out. What has led him to such an extreme move and what will he find when he arrives?

When I first started writing I wrote in long-hand, and wrote my stories on pads of lined white paper.

I now mostly write straight onto my computer or laptop, but I still have found memories of filling up those empty white pages with my sprawling handwriting and tales of other people’s lives. So happy reading, I hope.

A funeral is the end of a life and the start of grieving for many of us. But what do you do when your emotions don’t fit into this? The narrator of this complete short story asks this question.

One evening, in one man’s life when everything will change.

Shaun’s disabled leg has affected his entire life, causing a downward spiral he neither likes nor can live with. It is not just that his life is on hold, it is now falling backwards. On holiday in Scarborough (A northern English seaside resort), he finally faces the realities of his life and decides to take matters into his own hands. A walk along the town’s promenade to clear his thoughts and to help him make up his mind, if only the town’s numerous seagulls would stop following him.

This is a collection of my flash fiction, stories looking at modern day gay life (and life from a few years ago). Each chapter is a different story.

So sit back, put your feet up, and read some of my “case studies”.

The ex-gay movement has hit the headlines recently with the films The Miseducation of Cameron Post and Boy Erased, but what is it like to live by that belief, what price does it demand of an individual?

The story, in four chapters, set 1991, looks at how difficult it is to live a life denying your sexuality, and the cost the ex-gay life takes from a person.

It is Sunday morning. Liam sits alone in his room, at the top of the building, and hides himself away. The world outside has suddenly become a dangerous place and he must stay away from it, and he must also remember that his name is now Leo.

This story follows Liam through one fateful Sunday and, through flashbacks, tells the story of how he came to be there.

Things that go bump in the night, voices that scream in the dark, sounds when no one is there or the silent figure when there should be no one there.

Horror and ghost stories have always held a fascination for the LGBT reader, just look at the popularity of American Horror Story and the writing of Clive Barker and Anne Rice. In horror/ghost stories so many LGBT themes can be explored, they are far more than screaming women and camp villains, well the good ones are.

This collection will feature some of my LGBT horror and ghost stories. So, sit back and make sure all the lights are still on…