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  • Cia

    Weekly Wrap Up (Sept. 20 - Sept. 26)

    By Cia

    While the Wildone is away, you get Cia to play. Okay, so I'm totally not playing. Saturday was my day of getting stuff DONE. Chores, laundry, errands, kidult stuff, the hubby took his dad to a funeral 2 hours away and had my car, it's fall so I made homemade chicken pot pie and then there was a SPIDER on the CEILING and my son told me to get it. I almost had to kill him. It. I mean it. The spider. Then he did it like a good son who is NOT afraid of his mother. 😇 Sunday is for fun though. My daug
    • 5 comments
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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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Health

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good: I've booked myself in on a residential writing course at Arvon in mid April. It's not because I lack inspiration, I just want to get better at what I'm doing. Plus, there hasn't been much opportunity for travel these past few years and it'll be good to get away. The next story I'm working on is set in Yorkshire, not too far from Lumb Bank where the course is being held, so I can do some research at the same time. The Bad: Bloody health again. Had an expected call from the hospital
Mawgrim

Mawgrim in Health

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Blogs

Bah! This Thing's Dusty...

Jesus... I need my Swiffer duster. When was the last time I wrote in this thing? June of last year? Forget the duster; I need a car-parts cleaner. Hi! How do blogs work again?  ... Okay, just went back and read every entry of this thing. Why didn't anyone tell me I was a rambling, little snot with no sense of punctuation? Heck, all I did was complain about my job.  Who am I kiddin'? I'll still complain about my job. It's so much fun to vent! But we gotta switch things up a bi
astone2292

astone2292 in Blogs

1
writing

A New Story

At last, Hidden Secrets is ready to read. I've spent a long time editing, tweaking and getting it just right (hopefully). It's a paranormal mystery, set in a cinema. The story originated as a NaNoWriMo project, but as part of the process it has been altered and extended. Before I began, I never realised writing a mystery was such hard work. In order to keep track of all the threads, I found I had to make much more detailed notes and outlines than usual. I certainly couldn't have written just a f
Mawgrim

Mawgrim in writing

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random

Inadvertent (?) Homosexual Love Songs

There is something about Indian poetry and music and it's the fact that there are so, so many men writing about men. And it's always been this way. This is especially prominent in the Punjabi language, and now that Punjabi culture is so trendy in the rest of north India, it's becoming increasingly prominent in Hindi-language music.  If you look back at Indian poetry, in any language, men have written about their love for men, but, for the most part, they used feminine verb conjugations to r
small mercy

small mercy in random

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Writing

Winter Ghost Story

During these dark, short winter days, the possibility of ghosts rises to the surface. On a bright, warm, summer day, it's easy to put our fears aside, but on a foggy December afternoon, as the light fades, they rise out of the shadows. Our ancestors used to gather around their fires as the snow swirled outside and tell ghosts stories. Nowadays, we can just post them on the Internet. Here's my latest spooky offering: Bad Vibes - Shortly after moving in to new offices, Luke and his staff
Mawgrim

Mawgrim in Writing

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Doodle

Doodle

I won’t say I’m much of an artist but drawing the characters is certainly a lot easier than writing about them lol
small mercy

small mercy in Doodle

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Writing

Resonance in Writing

"Drawing On the Power of Resonance In Writing" by David Farland is a quick read.  As I continue my tour through books on writing by other authors, I stumbled across this one.  It makes a pretty good point with several modern examples.  Such as how Fantasy novels tend to resonate on Lord of the Rings.  Pretty much all of Dungeon and Dragons and rooted there.  Avatar has echos of Dances with Wolves. Everything we do builds off the zeitgeist, so to speak.  This book is a nice look that gives y
Myr

Myr in Writing

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entry

Real Admiration

This week I read for what must have been the fiftieth time Jorge Luis Borges's "Garden of Forking Paths." Like a lot of people on this website, I am an aspiring creative type. When I'm in the heat of a project, I often revisit certain artistic touchstones. They are reminders of what can be done and even guidebooks, if one knows how to read them, on how to do them. So, knee-deep into a new project, I revisited the Borges and was again dumbstruck. The story is only a little north of four thou
Z.A.N.M.A.T.O

Z.A.N.M.A.T.O in entry

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