Stories

The continued adventures in sex and friendship, online and off, of Alan Damschroeder, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, high school teacher.

Alan says, "Sometimes I think it takes a triumvirate of saints to keep me out of trouble."

These stories are written as exchanged e-mails and reading this way is an acquired taste. But the first book of this series, Web Guys, has a small, loyal following, so here's the second.

These are the original, annual, New Year's letters that I sent to my friends from 1993 to 2001. That was from two years after I moved into the building to a year-and-a-half after I left.

As mentioned, the letters were the basis for the book, and they often overlap the same material. But they cover more time and more characters, and are sometimes funnier because they're more compressed and somewhat more rude.

Jake's adventures continue in this funny book about the small Los Angeles apartment building he lives in. It's full of hot young people who spend a lot of time nearly naked around the pool. But they're often bonkers.

This introduces Jake, the narrator of Moorpark Palms, a funny book of stories about a small Los Angeles apartment building in the 1990s. Jake & Conor is a light little romance, once intertwined with the longer book. I broke it out because it distracted from the apartment stories.

Jim Blazak lives in a terrifically accepting world. If only his boyfriend would cooperate. Yeah, there are a couple of other problems. But Jim's bright. And funny. And he looks pretty hot without a shirt.

The adventures in sex and friendship, online and off, of Alan Damshroeder, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, high school teacher.

Says Alan, "Sometimes I think it takes a triumvirate of saints to keep me out of trouble."

Note: These stories are written as exchanged e-mails and reading this way is an acquired taste.

Harry Sussman is a perfectly nice guy in his early 30s. He's a successful architect who lives in western Massachusetts. He's intelligent. He's stable. He's reasonably good-looking. He just wants to meet a nice guy to marry. Now how hard can that be?

Phil Weber, a Iowa college math teacher in his mid-twenties, heads off to Mexico for the summer, to try and forget his ex-lover. He's looking for an adventure, and he finds a couple he hadn't expected.

The 23-year old son of a small town, gay police detective in western Massachusetts disappears in Los Angeles while working in the film industry. And the detective -- recently divorced and in a new relationship with a terrific guy -- reluctantly goes to investigate. Along the way, he learns some surprising things about himself.