CarlAccolla

Friday arrived like a dare. Not cruel, only inevitable—the kind of morning that didn’t argue, only waited to be survived. The week had collapsed into Slack threads and lukewarm coffee, blurring into one long grey scroll. Harry lay there, wondering if low moods ever left or simply learnt to pass as normal. He thought of Sam’s laugh from Monday. The way she hadn’t asked if he was okay, only known. It helped. Not enough. Not yet. He picked up his phone and started typing a message to Nath

Thanks for all the comments. Chapter 3 is coming today. ❤️

AI is ok for grammatical or spelling issues, or over use of phrases - but it's like telling someone to proof read their second language.

No, that's helpful, thank you. I think the problem is I’m 28 chapters into what should be 34 chapters, so I’m close enough to the end that I keep getting tempted back. I’ll suddenly realise something makes more sense now, then go back and add a bit, cut a bit, fiddle with a bit. I have also learned that if I can’t fix a passage in about an hour, it probably needs cutting, which is brutal but usually true. Anyway, I’ll suffer on. Harry does, so I suppose I have to. Three chapters being public is enough for now.

Yeah, I think beta readers probably would help. I’ve got 28 chapters written and 6 more to go and I keep editing them. I’m honestly not sure anymore if I’m making them better or just putting off letting people read them. I’ve posted three chapters publicly now with a 20% cut, which felt like a big step. Now I’m just braced.

I want to sound like I know what I’m doing, but honestly, I have no idea.

Does anyone else start editing one tiny thing and somehow end up doubting the entire scene? I’ll go to fix a clunky sentence, then suddenly I’m questioning the voice, the pacing, whether the scene even needs to exist, and whether I’ve made the whole thing worse. How do you tell the difference between actually improving something and just overthinking it? I’m trying not to edit the life out of my own work, so I’d be interested to know how other people deal with this.

His soul is crushed. Thanks for your comments.

Thank you for the tips!

He would be too self conscious 😬

The internal memo landed around two: sterile, somehow both condescending and bleak. Subject: Tone Consistency in Email Sign-Offs. Harry stared at it for a full minute, half-tempted to print it and eat it, just to feel like he’d won something. He resisted—barely. His attention went to Lewis’s empty desk. The afternoon had already arrived heavy and slow, settling over the office. Meetings he attended. Slack pings he definitely ignored. He’d spent ten whole minutes wondering whether

Hi everyone, I’m Carl, and I’m new to Gay Authors. I’ve recently started posting my first book here, so I’m still finding my feet — both with the site and with sharing my writing properly for the first time. I mostly write character-led contemporary queer fiction with messy feelings, complicated attraction, bad decisions, humour, and the occasional emotional gut-punch. I’m drawn to stories about people who want love, but don’t always know what to do with it when it appears. Looking forward to getting to know people, reading more stories, and being part of the community. Thanks for having me!

Harry was seconds away from finding out if his office crush had an OnlyFans when the other distraction walked in, all tattoos and dangerous grin. He told himself it was harmless. Office banter. Two supposedly straight men making trouble look far too tempting, and making Harry forget the one rule he’d learnt the hard way. But Harry has always been better at wanting than walking away. A slow-burn story about the kind of love that mends your heart and breaks it in the same breath.

Harry trusted Thursdays. They didn’t lie—they just turned up tired, grey, inevitable, and never pretended otherwise. Mondays were cruel. They dressed themselves up as fresh starts, whispering promises they had no intention of keeping. October made everything worse. At first the Edinburgh light looked cinematic—long shadows, crisp at the edges—but by noon it flattened into nothing. He wasn’t in the mood for a Monday pretending kindness. Sundays weren’t much better. He’d learnt that a fe

Harry told people he’d moved to Edinburgh for work. He didn’t mention the silence, or the fight, or the fact that he’d stood in the middle of a living room that used to feel like home and said, “I can’t do this any more,” even though he still wasn’t sure what “this” meant. He needed a change. A reset. Somewhere colder, lonelier, quieter. Somewhere he could disappear into the crowd and become no one in particular. Edinburgh obliged. It gave him rain that came in sideways, streets that climbe