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  • wildone

    Weekly Wrap Up (Apr. 28 - May 4)

    By wildone

    Any and all spelling and grammar mistakes are fully mine and not the fault of my editors. Maybe I should think about getting an editor for once   Today, as in this afternoon I went to the Calgary International Beer Fest. Over 200 Craft breweries with over 700 types of beers, spirits, ciders and meads 😮 Oh my. Considered the largest in Canada and one of the top 5 in the world. Somehow I had a few shots of moonshine too!  I may or nay not be a bit tipsy  If I had the foresight, I could h
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Book review

Book Review: The Shielding of Mrs Forbes by Alan Bennett

Betty Forbes has a handsome and well-dressed new husband, Graham. The problem is that Graham would rather watch Footballers with Their Shirts Off, on late-night television, than go to bed with his new wife. Graham does not want anyone finding out that he “isn’t the marrying kind,” especially his wife or his mother. This all generates a plot of sex, lies and blackmail in West Yorkshire. This short story is Alan Bennett’s take on a sex comedy; unfortunately, it is low on sex and the comedy of
Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

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archives

Reading Through The Archives

I mentioned in a previous blog entry that I was reading my way through the archives and enjoying some of the previously written stories. I was going from present day backwards but decided to change tack and went back to day one, I'm now reading from the earliest entries working my way forward. This is turning out to be a great experience which I am really enjoying. We all know that there are a lot of really good stories currently being written, for example CDMX by @Carlos Hazday is a great
Mancunian

Mancunian in archives

5
Book review

Book Review: Summer Crossing by Truman Capote

In post-war New York, seventeen-year-old Grady McNeil is left alone in her parents’ expensive Fifth Avenue penthouse for the summer, while her parents holiday in Paris, before Grady’s season as a debutant. Once her parents are on their ocean liner to Europe, Grady ignores her older sister Apple and begins to run around New York as a free spirit. She has been carrying on a secret relationship with Clyde, a working-class young man from Brooklyn. Now her parents are gone she is able to turn up the
Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

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reviews

Review: Center of the World

“The Center of the World” is a tessellated coming-of-age youth novel, which is about the 17 years old Phil, who has a crush on Nicholas, who’s a new classmate. Phil and his twin sister Dianne experienced a very different parenting style, practiced by their mother Glass and her friend Tereza, and their mother is well-known to be quite promiscuous in their small town—a fact that doesn’t make life easier for the siblings. Phil’s father (“Number 3”) is somewhere in America and a huge variable in his
Zuri

Zuri in reviews

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My two cents

hetero-like: cis man and gay—burning questions and insecurities of gender expression

When I found out about my own homosexuality, I was thirteen. I didn’t want people to think, I was a certain way because of my attraction to other men. I insisted on being hetero-like (this concept is similar to cis passing for trans people, as far as I know). But as time went on, I realized that I realized that I had to stop worrying about what other people thought of me. Easier said than done, of course, but at least I took tiny steps in the right direction. Maybe, one day, I won't care about i
Zuri

Zuri in My two cents

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Book review

Book Review: Three More Nick Nowak Mysteries (Boystown #2) by Marshall Thornton

Nick Nowak is back in three mysteries that follow directly on from the first book. It is the second half of 1981 and Nowak has three new cases to solve. Firstly, he is hired by a defence attorney whose client is refusing to help in his own defence. Next, he is hired to find the killer of a porn star. The last story sees Nowak searching for the only survivor of that most American of crimes, a serial killer. These are tight and involving mysteries and on their own would be interesting reads,
Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

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My two cents

Coming-out—do we (still) need it and why it means more than to be true to yourself

The question, of why one should come out in the first place, is probably as old as the coming out as such itself. Similarly, the question of why LGBT* people still need their pride parades and other events. Sure, one could argue, that there are still here and their attacks on queer people in the US or people are killed because of their sexual orientation in other countries of the world. But my answer focuses more on the individual that makes the very decision: As privileged peop
Zuri

Zuri in My two cents

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thoughts and ideas

Why do some stories make us emotional?

Has anyone ever wondered why some stories make us emotional, you know what I mean it's when you feel choked up or the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, or maybe cloud your eyes with tears. That's not the only emotions that some stories make us feel emotions can be positive or negative, good or bad or any way you want to express the range of emotions.  I've just read a story that made me feel emotional, the truth is it actually made me cry. It sounds silly doesn't it and probably make
Book review

Book Review: The Long Firm by Jake Arnott

Harry Starks is the quintessential 1960s London gangster, an Eastender, thuggish, violent, sharply dressed and homosexual, but he also loves Ethel Merman, Judy Garland and opera music. This novel tells his story from the 1960s until the early 1980s, portraying the changing face of London’s organised crime. In the 1960s he’s a racketeer, running cons and criminal corruption, but he has a pathetic desire for respectability too, first through his nightclub, at the wrong end of Soho, and then throug
Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

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Book review

Book Review: Rag and Bone by Michael Nava

Back in 1986, Michael Nava published his first novel to feature the West Coast American lawyer Henry Rios. Over the years that followed, Henry Rios featured in seven novels and all of them have been highly readable and enjoyable. But Henry Rios is not the clean-cut, all-American male lawyer who breathlessly solves murders. Henry Rios is a defense lawyer who usually defends the underdog, but that is where the similarities end. Henry Rios is Mexican, from a forcefully working-class family and
Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

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Book review

Book Review: State of Independence by Robert Farrar

This is a gay comedy of manners and that can be a genre. It is the early 1990s and Lenny, in his early twenties, is trying to find his way through gay London. He lives in a gay house share; he works as waiter at a restaurant and dreams of finding a boyfriend and a better job. He has run away to London from his suburban Evangelical Christian home; unfortunately, he might not be in Kansas anymore but London is certainly not the Emerald City. Lenny, the narrator here, is a likable and eng
Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

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Book review

Book Review: Make Death Love Me by Ruth Rendell

It is 1979 and Alan Groombridge, the manager of a small, provincial town bank, has a fantasy. One day, he’ll steal all the money from the bank’s safe and run away from his suffocating life. A life with a wife and children he no longer loves and doesn’t even like. But he only gets as far as taking the money out of the safe, when he is alone in the bank, putting the money in his pocket, fantasying about where that money will take him, before putting the money back. Then one day, as he holds the mo
Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

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Book review

Book Review: Heterosexism in Health and Social Care

Homophobia is a word used frequently in our media, but what is meant by it? The dictionary definition is fear of someone homosexual, but Julie Fish (senior lecturer and research fellow in social work at De Montfort University, Leicester) doesn’t think it goes far enough to define the discrimination faced by lesbian, gay and bisexual people. This is the argument behind her book. In her opening chapter, Fish argues for the use of the term Heterosexism for prejudice/discrimination against LGB
Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

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thoughts and ideas

Looking for something good to read on GA

I'm sure that most of us at times are looking for something good to read here on GA, I know that have been. What I decided to do about it may help others, some may already be doing this. When I click on the stories tab I then click on the filters tab that appears, from that drop down menu I click completed stories. This brings up all of the completed stories from the GA archive, it's helpful because then I'm not waiting for the next chapter of a story to be published. I've been working my way ba
Book review

Book Review: True Confessions of Margaret Hilda Roberts Aged 14¼ by Sue Townsend

Sue Townsend rightly has the reputation as one of our finest comic novelists. Adrian Mole is one of the great comic characters and Sue Townsend did the most refreshing of things, she allowed him to age naturally. What we often forget is was what a good satirist she was too. This book steals the format from her other creation, Adrian Mole. This is the secret diary of Margaret Hilda Roberts, aged 14¼, living above her father’s grocer's shop in Grantham. This is Margaret Thatcher as a girl, lo
Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

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thoughts and ideas

Why I joined GA and remain

When I joined GA it was as a result of an upsetting event in my own life and GA helped me to process that to a degree, I'm not going to go into any detail at this time but I may do so at some point in the future. I originally joined to read some of the stories that had and were being written at the time and I enjoyed doing just that. Soon I had a thought pop into my head which I decided to post as short story. I wasn't brilliant or researched but very spontaneous and received mixed but main
writing tips

Part 2

Hero’s journey In the last part, we talked about it seeming to be difficult to tell origin stories that inweave new concepts. Apparently, there’s something like laws of nature that apply to writing. Let’s have a look at the hero’s journey. Most of you should be familiar with this. In its beginning, the hero (or heroine) lives in their own world until something happens with an impact that changes the hero’s worldview and sets everything into motion—something that makes the hero and their men
Zuri

Zuri in writing tips

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Book review

Book Review: The Dressmaker by Beryl Bainbridge

Beryl Bainbridge, at her best, always had a dark view of life. It wasn’t just the unhappiness of life she wrote about so well but the pain and regret under that unhappiness. This novel is a fine example of the darkness she found in ordinary people’s lives. It is set in Liverpool in 1945. The war is finally turning and the city is awash with American GIs, but this is still the world of ration books, shortages and make do and mend. In this cold and austere world, naïve and immature Rita lives
Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

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Writing

Character Development

I've been away on a writing course this week and would like to share some of the exercises we did. Much of it was concerned with character development. Here's one of the first ones we did: Close your eyes. See a character walking towards you. At first, they are indistinct, then as they come closer, you start to pick out some features. What are they wearing? What do they look like? As they come closer still, notice their face and hair, the texture of their skin. Closer still, what do they sm
Mawgrim

Mawgrim in Writing

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writing tips

Part 1

When writing, there are rules based on the experiences of countless authors from several literary periods on one hand and the expectations of readers that are somewhat trained in what stories look like. While it’s never bad advice to play along, for the most part, good writing oftentimes resorts to some unusual surprises. That’s where stories might shine. Don’t always tell the same old story and dare to break some rules https://gayauthors.org/story/sammy-blue/gemini/ is partly a very c
Zuri

Zuri in writing tips

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Book review

Book Review: Somewhere This Way

Anthologies can be interesting reads and, in the past, have introduced me to writers I might not have found in other ways. If it’s by one author then it can be an interesting introduction to an author’s work or else it is a way to see how an author handles writing short stories, which are different form from novel writing. If it’s an anthology of different writers then there is a chance to discover new authors. Unfortunately, this anthology did not provide any of this. I found this antholog
Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

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Writing

Writing Course

Tomorrow I'm off on a week's writing course. I'm really excited about it. There's nothing like immersing yourself in a writing environment and talking with other people who are on the same wavelength. Getting out of the usual routine is also inspiring and visiting a new place always gives me lots of ideas. For anyone who is following my stories 'To the Weyr' and 'Hidden Secrets' don't worry - they will be updated on Monday and Thursday as usual, although I may be slower replying to comments
Mawgrim

Mawgrim in Writing

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Book review

Book Review: Living Upstairs by Joseph Hansen

It is Hollywood, Los Angeles, 1943 and 19-year-old Nathan Reed’s life is turned upside down. Nathan, an innocent who has recently moved to Los Angeles, has everything changed when Hoyt Stubblefield ambles into his life. Within a week of their first meeting, in the Hollywood Boulevard bookshop where Nathan works, Nathan is living with Hoyt in Hoyt’s run-down upstairs apartment and sharing his bed. This marks the start of a whole new life for Nathan, an adventurous roller coaster ride of expe
Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

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