Cia

Did you catch Monday's feature? Have you read Krista's story? Raven1 said it wasn't spooky... but like many of Krista's readers, thinks her writing itself is enthralling. Is it her characters? The way she writes the scenes? What do you think? Read on and decide? (and share your thoughts!!) Want to read more? Click here

Today's Signature Feature is our last one for the 2025, and it just so happened to line up with Krista! One of GA's longest posting authors, no matter what kind of content you want to read, you'll probably find it in her author listing! I decided to slip back a bit from the happy holidays to a bit of a spook factor. Who doesn't like visiting gravestones in a ghost town during tinsel time??? Length: 39,193 Description: What else is there to do when your friends are having premarital sex in your car, then to visit the gravesite of a witch in an abandoned ghost town. What if ghost town wasn't actually a cliché? A reader said: Elias is a well written mystery and ghost story. It isn't a sad or scary story, but a very compelling tale that keeps you engaged. The characters are lovable and often fun. The ending will leave you hopeful and wanting to visit again. ~raven1 If you want to spread the word about Krista's story, download the graphic below and add it to your signature! Make sure you come back on Wednesday to see the excerpt I chose to share!

That's it, we've made it to the end of the road, the last month of 2025, and our final CSR feature of this year! Seeing as it's December, the holidays, and yadda yadda... I couldn't pass up finding a story that was themed, of course. Did you read this small gem last year? If not, don't miss it now! Darkest Days (The Wild Hunt) by @Jack Poignet Length: 10,399 Description: It's cold up here in the mountains. Elias mourns his lover, but in these darkest of days between the years, strange things ride on the wind and the old tales come alive. A reader said: This captivating story of love and loss weaves a thrilling tale! The author masterfully blends elements of folklore, fantasy, romance, and action. The world-building is rich and immersive, transporting readers to a realm where magic and myth intertwine. The characters (assuming the wild hunt is a character itself) are complex and compelling, Elias' struggles resonate with the reader. I really loved it! ~ rafy Don't forget to come back to comment on the Discussion day, Monday December 29th!

This month I featured a story that I enjoyed reading by Thirdly, and I hope you did too! Odd, as I did not relate to the character (having married at 19) but I could just... get how intensely the characters were feeling at times. I always enjoy that and consider it the mark of a great writer. What did you enjoy about Ash's Marriage Trigger? Make sure you share your thoughts below, after you read this interview Thirdly did for me! Do you eat your fruits and vegetables? Mostly vegetables, as I’m at the age where all fruits are now just considered sugar. Learned that if you eat any greens before anything else, it helps buffer sugar spikes. I’ve been doing my best to stick to that. If you were an animal, what would you be? A hummingbird, flying eternally backwards at 25mph, and never knowing where I’ll end up. What’s something personal about you that people might be surprised to know? Soundtracks elevate everything for me: games, shows, anime, and movies. It could be the most basic, plain movie in existence, but if there is good background music or a solid playlist, it's going in my rotation of things to rewatch. Examples: Predator Badlands: Dek of the Yautja The Holiday: Maestro [and literally EVERY project Hans Zimmer touched, because his Chevaliers of Sangreal in the Da Vinci Code, his work on The Gladiator, Inception, the pirate movies, the Dune movies… I could go on forever.) Ferngully: Spirit of the Trees Deadpool 2: You Can't Stop This Motherf**ker Free Guy: Fantasy (Jodie Comer’s cover… and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you have GOT to watch this movie) Bad Company (2002): Main Theme The Beverly Hills Cop theme, the Mission Impossible theme, Indiana Jones, Eye of the Tiger… The OA theme song, The Mandalorian theme song, the Severance opening, the Game of Thrones main theme… Bratz’s Flash N Dash (from the first PS1 game), Super Mario Land 2’s The Star Maze, Megaman 3’s insane intro, Sonic 3’s Ice Cap Zone (actually, there’s always a song in every sonic game that’s catchy AF… and the Sonic Frontiers game has no right to have so many song slappers tossed in there), Ragnarok’s Rag All Night, Chrono Cross’s Time Scar, the entire Xenogears soundtrack… For anime BGMs, there’s a song called Frustration from Haikyuu that is gorgeous, Naruto’s ‘Main Theme’ with that one shakuhachi flautist’s soul never fails to impress me (the scatting no one can quite replicate), the entire Tsubasa Chronicle OST and Hikaru no Go OST… I’m not mentioning openings and endings, as there are far too many to list. Is there one location you’d love to go to research for a story? I suffer from Paradise Lost syndrome, in which my first 7-10 years of life were spent on an island in a shack built without the government’s permission, so they tore it down when we left. I’m talking “slum beach front property” where I used to catch crustaceans with my bare hands and walk for miles just to get to school. That small neighborhood of low-income locals is gone, replaced with tourist condos. That, and the people who once lived there have passed away. No amount of money can bring any of that back, so it would be the power of time travel that I’d really need in order to research a story in that location. If you could give advice to yourself when you first started writing, what would it be? Let’s see… 1. Never post anything incomplete. Ever. 2. Diverse and LGBTQIA+ friends are worth keeping, often over selfish straight friends (regardless of ‘seniority’ and years of friendship)… and they don’t hesitate to provide mutual help with projects. 3. Everyone has a different method of madness, but starting with a bang and escalating is a solid approach, regardless of the method used. Just beware of Deus ex machina and excessive predictability (a little predictability is fine, though, as there are only so many ways some situations can unfold… and I know some authors who can prove even this wrong and can find that 3rd unexpected path). What is the easiest part versus the hardest part of writing to a prompt? Ideas are an endless farm of fornicating rabbits in my mind. Whenever I read a prompt, it’s like shining a spotlight on a singular rabbit, which focuses my attention. For me, it’s easy to add a cast of bunnies to that prompt idea… what becomes difficult for me is knowing where to stop the story and just how far to condense it. If I’m lucky, the idea is simple and can be conveyed in a single one-shot piece. The minute I start creating charts to keep track of everything, though, that's when I start panicking. The most challenging part is wrapping everything up before the deadline. Your main character, Ash, feels pressured about relationships & marriage. Do you care to share your relationship status? My relationship status doesn’t exist right now. It turns out I was more gay than I thought I was and, unlike Ash, I’m attracted to women. My life is far stranger than the fiction I write. How did you come up with the character names in Ash’s Marriage Trigger? The name Ash was given to me by the prompt, as it’s what Aditus named the character (likely to more easily explain the prompt). I either look at the words floating around me to make some names up, or I research names that seem more fitting for characters. In this case, my nerdiness came out because the name “Ash” brought to mind “Barren” lands. I ended up naming that whole family desert-related names (Siena came from the hue “burnt sienna,” Sage came from the shrub ‘desert sage,’ Sandy from desert sand, Aster from Mojave Aster, which grows in some deserts…and their last name Barren from the phrase ‘barren desert’). The name “Cove” came from reading ‘Discovery Cove’ somewhere around me, likely someone’s pamphlet. Ashley, Cove’s daughter… her name was part of the story’s plotline. Do you have a favorite line or scene in the story? I have three favorite moments/lines, and they are all major spoilers: Can you share any of your current or upcoming work (published/unpublished/in planning stages) with readers? Published: Persistent Pheromones ( https://gayauthors.org/story/thirdly/persistent-pheromones/ ) Unpublished: My Younger Self Rect Our Story Endings (MYSROSE, the third and final WRECK world story. I finished Act 1, but still have Acts 2 and 3 to complete). Come Early, Come Often (CECO, which used to be a collaboration with Robin. Robin gave me full rein to finish it as I saw fit, and I’m working that out, as well.) Planning: Fowls Committed (my first bird-shifter story, and a collaboration with Luna, which involves an incompetent Viking leader and his quad of soulmates). Loving Sable’s Prime (my first story that features primarily straight couples). Training Toki (based on an old collaboration with Toma, a story featuring winged, gay fairies). I actually have over 8 more projects, but I don’t even want to think about them until some of my other tasks are completed: 1. A prequel spin-off to Crossing the Moon, titled Under the Same Moon. 2. An unnamed story of a shaman’s descendant, his narcoleptic brother, and Morpheus. 3. A feline shifter story featuring a nonbinary main character and a pair of twin mates. 4. Tulips and Roses, a (romantic comedy?) sci-fi regarding an outlaw and an enforcer joining forces to right certain wrongs. 5. Dying in 2005, a story written in honor of a close friend of mine who passed away before her time. 6. EPDA, a story of a pair of young detectives, which is both a crime novel and a romance? 7. Another unnamed story featuring seasonal elves. 8. Yet another unnamed story featuring an interesting take regarding souls and soulmates. 9. Kidnapping a Cuddlefish collab with Robin. 10. Borders and Bribery semi-collab with Robin.

Turkey and ham are the proteins of choice, but our turkey is free (from the hubby's company along with a pie each year) so I splurge on a small but high-quality spiral smoked ham. My little family of 4 just gets 'Thanksgiving lite', though, as I make the traditional sides like homemade rolls, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, corn, cranberries in the shape of a can, deviled eggs, along with slightly less traditional roasted green beans and roasted whole Japanese sweet potatoes. This still leaves me with 3-4 meals afterward for dinners. We have make your own leftovers plate, hot turkey gravy sandwiches on white bread purchased just for that (we usually have whole grain oat bread but NOT for leftover Thanksgiving sandwiches!) potato soup with chopped ham, and potentially either a dark turkey meat & rice casserole or cheesy mac & cheese casserole, depending on which protein captures the family's fancy for sandwiches (meaning I don't have leftovers to make into dinners). Yes, they do like their predictability. It's why I have a dry erase menu board each week on the fridge that sees a lot of repeats!

Did you catch Monday's feature of kbois story, When Opportunity Knocks? As we focus in on the holiday season, family can be what we lookforward to, dread, love and loathe... and sometimes all of the above for a variety of reasons. This story has love, drama, doubt, drama, friendship, and more. Have you read it? Want to read more? Click here

Once again, I'm featuring a story that brings up that topic we often think of this time of year, family and love. Why do we love our family? Do the people in our lives truly love us? What might that prompt us to do, or not do, for love, family, friends and more? When Opportunity Knocks has some hard topics, light moments, and a lot of great writing. Please take the time to enjoy it! Length: 96,473 Description: Jett Anderson and Kyle Benton are starting to build a relationship. Life decides to throw in some speed bumps and hazards to make navigating the road not so easy. Add in some unexpected family dynamics and soon enough things get challenging. Can they work it out? A reader said: Wonderful wrap up to this story. But you're not done with these characters. (That's not a question) I don't want to let go of Kyle and Jett and Kim and Bruce and Rosie and Tater and Bo and Noah and ... Great writing, as always. Whatever your next opus is, I look forward to reading it. Thank you. ~ Quixo If you want to spread the word about kbois' story, download the graphic below and add it to your signature! Make sure you come back on Wednesday to see the excerpt I chose to share!

Oh, November... that month we all love. It feels like it goes on forever, and can we just get to the good holidays??? For those of us in the U.S. it also includes the Thanksgiving and gathering of friends and/or family, and all that fun (or friction). In honor of the onus of family, as well as feature another great event GA hosts, I thought I'd feature a prompt response by one of GA's popular authors! Have you ever tried writing to the featured prompts? It can be fun, as Thirdly shows readers!! Ash's Marriage Trigger by @Thirdly Length: 28,449 Description: PT#84 (posted by aditus) In order to avoid the pesky marriage-soon-trigger, Ash doesn’t date, officially. Amid plotting the most outrageous excuses to tell his family, he is greeted with a splash of the past. A Reader said: It began with a tiny prompt and an amazing story rose from the ashes. ~Aditus Don't forget to come back to comment on the Discussion day, Monday November 24th!

Did you PM me? You've been a member/author for years, long enough to know that the help topics all say to send me a private message if you have an issue with the moderation queue and you've been waiting longer than 24 hours. That will get you a faster response.

Hello Lisa, Due to EU and some states online regulations, Mature content does require members to sign in to read. You just need to sign in once in the same browser window and not log out if you wish to continue to visit other areas of the site or multiple stories. At log in, you can also check the box to save your log in info if you are using a personal device and it is safe for you to do so. Are you using an Incognito browser or have your browser settings set to log you out if you navigate away from websites? Otherwise you should not be having this issue as GA does not require members to sign in multiple times unless you choose to do so. I hope that helps!

I do often use the phrases "Walking feet!" and "How do you think that made so and so feel when you did ....?" LOL

I hadn't quite left yet since I had laundry to fold (why can't the sock eating monster just fold the rest of the clothes in payment??!) I think I did the thing that lets everyone read the stories through the links @Valkyrie added here on the blog. I checked via a browser I'm not logged in (as a site guest) and I was able to access Aditus' story chapter text. Myr might need to make more things visible/accessible later, but hopefully that's a good start for everyone. Happy reading!

Maybe it was my way of catfishing readers to the CSR blog this month, LOL!!

Hi all! How many of you have taken the time (or have been on GA long enough) to have enjoyed some of the earliest anthologies? As readers and authors gear up to enjoy all the amazing entries to this year's event, I thought I'd feature a few of the past Hallow-spooky themed events to both fit the season and get you ready for these themed reads! https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/category/10-2006-fall-halloween/ https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/category/20-2008-winter-ghosts/ https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/category/28-2010-winter-haunted/ https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/category/134-2019-fall-fall-from-grace/ https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/category/63-2013-poetry-anthology-whispers-in-the-dark/ Enjoy and don't forget to comment!!

Did September last eleventy-millionth days for you as well this year? I swear, it just gets longer and longer. Hopefully that just means you got a ton of great reading time in, though you shouldn't have needed too long for this gem. Also, Altimexis shared an image they had on another site for Cliff's Pendant, so I wanted to add that here for you along with the Author interview. Enjoy and don't forget to share your comments below! Are you a person who makes their bed in the morning, or do you not see much point? Growing up, my room was messy, but there were two things my mom wouldn’t tolerate. Firstly, clothes were never to be left out — if they were dirty, they needed to be dropped in the hamper and if they were clean, they needed to be hung up in the closet. Secondly, I was never to leave my room without my bed being made. It wasn’t that she was strict, but she was firm about keeping my room clean, if not neat. To this day, the first thing I do when I get up is to make the bed. If you were an animal, what would you be? Technically, we are animals. That said, my avatar at AwesomeDude is a crow I photographed while hiking in Bryce Canyon. My avatar for Zoom is a pair of doves I photographed on our terrace in New York. Whether it’s a conscious choice or not, apparently I’d be a bird. What’s one location you’d love to go to research for a story? If there are no limits, I’d say Mars, with the Moon being a close second. If I’m limited only to places on Earth, it would probably be Cape Town. I’ve traveled extensively and been all over North America, including 49 of the 50 states. I’ve been to Cuba, Argentina, Japan, Taiwan, China and Australia. I’ve been all over Europe, both east and west, before and after the fall of communism. I’ve been to Russia and to Turkey. I’ve yet to get to Portugal or Spain, which are high on my list. Likewise for New Zealand. I’ve yet to get to Southeast Asia, a place I’d very much like to visit. I had planned a trip to Antartica, but was hospitalized the week before we were to go and never made it back. The most glaring omission, however, is the entire African continent. I’ve heard the Cape Town is exceptionally beautiful and of the places I haven’t been, it’s probably the best setting for a story. What’s something personal about you people might be surprised to know? Although I consider myself a rather private person, I’ve not been shy about my background. My early history is covered in the Introduction to Naptown Tales, and other aspects of my personal history, my religious and political philosophy and my professional life have made it into my stories in one way or another. Perhaps the most surprising things for a prolific writer of gay-fiction is that I’ve never been in a gay relationship. Growing up as a teen in the Midwest, I thought that homosexuality was a mental illness. I did my best to ignore my feelings. Once when I was twelve, I convinced my best friend to get naked with me, but that was as far as it went. Finally, at the age of 29 while doing a residency at Stanford in the San Francisco Bay Area, I acknowledged I was much more attracted to guys, but I went to see a psychologist who told me it wasn’t a good time to be gay! That was in the Bay Area, of all places. In his defense, we still didn’t know the cause of AIDS yet. However, he also said something of much more significance – that I shouldn’t worry about my sexuality. The main thing was to meet people. Less than a week later, I met a woman who blew me away. Forty years later, she’s still my wife. Do you have any writing rituals? The only rule is that I never post a story until the first draft is complete. Nothing frustrates me more than a story that’s left unfinished, or one with obvious inconsistencies. My stories are character-based and I like to develop my characters over time, which is why I favor story series. Some of my series have lasted years, during which my characters may grow from early adolescence to young adulthood. When I write a new story, I start with a premise and a character or set of characters. I usually have an idea of how I want the story to end and what sort of things will happen along the way, but I don’t work from an outline. I give my characters defined personalities and the stories pretty much write themselves. That said, I love to leave clues of what is to come, and nothing is more fun than using deception or distraction to keep the reader off base. Because I get frequent migraines that can last for weeks, I don’t like to write on a deadline. Indeed, the migraines forced me to retire early, leaving more time for writing. I write when the urge strikes me, which may be at home or when out and about – even while riding the bus. I’ve written entire stories on my iPhone. How many stories have you written? Do you have a favorite and why/why not? That depends on how you count my stories. My series may include stand-alone short stories, multi-part novellas and full novels. I’ve been writing for about twenty years and have written dozens of short stories. I’ve written four full-length novels: Love in a Chair, which was my first story and an embarrassment, Legacy, which is a Naptown Tales sequel, Conversations With Myself, which is a sci-fi thriller, and Brilliant Boy Billionaire, which is nearly a half-million words in length. My favorite story is Conversations With Myself, even though it didn’t seem to get much traction with readers. The premise was of a government scientist who develops the technology to communicate with himself in the past, but through his dreams. However, meddling with time is serious business and to avoid it falling into the wrong hands, he does much of his work in secret. Then he makes a critical error. As a test, he contacts his past self on the night before September 11, 2001. It was only supposed to be a proof of concept, but his past self acted on the information, preventing the 9/11 terrorist attack. Things spiral out of control as he goes farther back into the past to try to fix the problems he creates. It was the most challenging story I’ve written because there were seven periods in the main character’s life that were involved and each time he made contact with a past self, it affected events in all timelines after that. Presidents changed. History changed. It was lot to keep track of. I ended up creating a graphic to keep track of the seven timelines as they progressed simultaneously. Of course there are aspects I would do differently if writing it today, but I’m particularly proud of how well-it turnout in the end, in spite of a two-year hiatus in writing it. When writing Cliff’s Pendant, did the idea for the character or the plot element of the pendant come to you first? Because the theme of the anthology was the gift, it was the pendant that came to me first. A lot of the characters in my New York Stories series are Jewish and so I imagined a Star of David, inscribed with the Hebrew word for ‘life’, with a rainbow background of iridescent glass. My next door neighbor’s kid, who’s currently a student at the University of Michigan, attended Brooklyn Tech High School at the time, so I conceived of a kid of similar age and wrote the story about Zach. To make the gift unique, I came up with the story of Cliff. Is there a particular line or scene in the story that you love the most? That’s easy – the scene in front of the Stonewall National Monument. Zach’s father hadn’t given him the gift yet, but the way his parents let him know how they felt still brings me to teas. Coming out stories can be very popular on GA. This is a very personal event that can go very different ways. Do you want to share your choices on the plot development for Cliff’s Pendant for that? I think the main reason Zach was still in the closet was because his parents, both emergency medicine physicians working staggered shifts, just weren’t around. I think the real coming out story was that of the father’s best friend, Cliff. After all, it’s Cliff’s name in the title. Cliff grew up in a much more restrictive environment, in Indianapolis in the 80s, and he led a double life. Zach’s dad didn’t even know his best friend was gay until he developed AIDS. However, out of the tragic story of Cliff came the pendant – a beautiful symbol of love between friends – which became a symbol of love and acceptance between a father and his gay son. Then when Zach made a duplicate, it became a symbol of shared love with his boyfriend. Can you share anything about your current or upcoming works with readers? My current story, A Summer in Iowa, is in progress right now. It’s a prequel to one of my New York Stories, and it’s partially autobiographical, based on when I was sixteen and spent the summer at the University of Iowa. The characters from Cliff’s Pendant have appeared in two subsequent New York Stories, most recently in October Fire, which is about the Hamas attack on Israel of October 7, 2023. I’ve been planning a sequel ever since, but then the world went off the rails. For a while, I wasn’t sure where to begin. My next story doesn’t have a final title yet. The working title is Fallout. I’ve written two chapters so far and there will probably be a dozen or so. Rather than focus only on the aftermath of 10/7, I’m going to try to tie up most of the loose thread in the New York Story series. Whereas October Fire involved multiple primary characters and was written in third person. Fallout is told in first person by Zach’s kid brother, Jake, who’s now sixteen years old, and he’s straight. Jake is a budding journalist who’s given the chance to take a summer trip in the American West with a group of his friends, most of them older, established characters from the NY Stories series. A number the kids are victims of 10/7 and two of them are in wheelchairs. Jake will go, hoping to write a story about the survivors of 10/7, but he’ll come away with much, much more. He’ll experience personal loss and the triumph of the human spirit.