Hope everyone is ready to start another new week!  To help you get started off on the right foot, here's a review from Parker Owen's on AC Benus' story Becoming Real. Enjoy!

Becoming Real
AC Benus

Reviewer: Parker Owens
Status: Complete
Word Count: 55,531

In a series of chapters from a life, a young man’s knowledge about himself becomes a reality. He encounters people who help him along his way, some bearing their own pain and scars. Each successive episode leaves him a little wiser, and a little more whole.
Becoming Real revolves around Joshua, and the events in his twentieth year which impel him to act on what he’s known about himself for years. He’s gay, and he can no longer be a shadow of who he knows himself to be.
An evening hanging out with friends propels Joshua forward. He seeks out others, men who have made the journey into reality. He learns, experiences things common to so many of us, and learns again.
In the faces and words and lives of the men Joshua meets, I met a small part of the kaleidoscope of gay men; a portion of our wide spectrum. I met us. I heard echoes of words I hadn’t truly understood when I heard them, and reverberations of my own youth. What made this story so compelling to me was the author’s uncanny ability to describe the journey so many of us take, or could have taken, and to show us the whole map at the same time. I could pinpoint several places on that map that said: “You Were Here.” 
The development of Joshua’s character coincides with his deepening maturity and understanding. We know that as he connects to more and more of the gay community, the more himself he becomes. Joshua’s former tortured isolation gives way to something else: not the happily-ever-after of romance, but the confidence to live as the man he was born to be.
Although there are many common themes developed in Joshua’s tale, Becoming Real doesn’t give the reader the feeling the author is checking off boxes in the gay experience. It’s just one person’s story, intimately told. It could have been anyone's story; it could even have been mine.

This story inspired me to write and to reach out to others on GA, to tell my own tale and share it with others here. Its quality made me want to explore more of AC Benus’ fantastic catalog of writing.  I hope other readers will find Becoming Real equally captivating, and that it will inspire more of us to write, connect and grow.

Category: Fiction Genres: Comedy,Drama, Romance Tags: gay, coming of age, coming out, philosophy, love Rating: Mature