Welcome to the new Signature Feature where we feature one of our lovely Signature Authors with a site ad banner and signature graphic. This month's featured author is Graeme, and he chose to showcase his story, Heart of the Tree. Check out his ad banner that will run for the next month on the site as well as a graphic you can add to your personal signature if you want to help him share the story!

Length: 192,363

Description: The Tree is a local fixture in the rural town of Morton. When it starts to die, the whole town rallies around to try to save it.

Story Reviews:
Starboardtack
I am not sure how to contact the author directly, but perhaps this will get through. Thank you for an utterly delightful read. When I started reading the series, I believed this would be just another predictable gay love story. How wrong I was. The twists and turns in the plot were unexpected but most welcome. It is clear that you have a respect for your craft, your characters, and your readers. Again, many thanks.

Stephen
Graeme, you can guess by now how much I enjoyed this story, and may wonder
if I'd have anything else to say about this final chapter and the way you ended this
story. It was happy and real. But I was especially happy to see that you'd managed
to tie up all the loose ends. They were all tied up in neat, leafy boughs.

I love The Tree.

-Pardon that awful pun, but it popped into my head last night and...

uncle goodheart
Whew! That was quite a story! I just started it a couple of days ago, so I never had to wait for a chapter, though I did spend ALL DAY on January 1 reading. It may have been a great learning experience, too, as It was an introduction to life in Austrailia, a country I may never visit. I loved the characters, as they seemed to mirror those in rural USA in many ways, though true acceptance in the USA is much more an urban trait. I can generally relate each of the characters and their relationships to people I really know, so thay were all very real. Especially the NEGATIVE ones who try to spoil the happiness of others they refuse to know or understand.
I can say, too, that parts of the story caused me physical symptoms of grief, as well as moments of elation and joy. Yes, the story "got to me" in a very personal way. Further, I will say that this isn't the only story I've read by this author, and the author's name is precicely what caused me to pick this title, from a list of stories, to read. I am not the least bit disappointed in my selection.
Unfortunately, too few people (especially the young ones) are interested in reading stories anymore, but I think that's because they're just too damn lazy to put in the effort of excercising their immaginations. That's sad, because authors go to a lot of trouble to produce these stimulating treasures. Thank you for this one!

impunity
After several false starts (I had a little trouble getting past the prologue), I read this entire story in a couple of days. It was really engaging, and I found myself really caring about your characters. I like that your writing is not necessarily about gay people, per se, but about how they fit into society as a whole. And about how attitudes change as the idea of being gay becomes less "other". Thank you for a great read!