Stories

At forty-two, Joe has engineered his body to dominate the factory floor and the baseball diamond. He commands respect from other men even as he feels invisible in his own home. But when a plan for a discreet hookup goes off the rails, Joe finds himself outplayed by the one person who sees him for exactly what he is.

James reunites with his ex, Evan, now a determined law student, and they slowly rebuild their relationship with new boundaries. While James is sent out of town to rescue a failing engineering project, his homophobic family crises erupt: his father’s cancer and death, and his brother Sam’s years of manipulation and financial abuse. Supported by Evan, James protects his mother, pursues justice, and begins to imagine a shared, hard-won future where love, not fear, defines the rest of his life, one cautious step at a time, finally choosing himself.

In a quiet Vienna gym at dawn, Patrick’s perfect routine gets disrupted by a rough, irresistible handyman.

After losing his twin brother in a violent tragedy, a former U.S. Marine returns to his roots in Bangkok, hoping distance might quiet the past that refuses to let go. Haunted by memory, guilt, and a love he was never allowed to name, Kent struggles to rebuild a life that no longer fits the person he used to be.

Across the hall lives Marvin—steady, observant, and patient in ways Kent doesn’t yet trust. What begins as proximity slowly becomes choice, forcing Kent to confront a different kind of fear: not losing the past, but moving forward without it.

Unicorn twins Iris and Roux flee through a portal to escape monstrous silver beasts, but the portal separates them upon arrival in the unfamiliar city of Carnelia, leaving their once-strong telepathic bond weakened to a fragile thread. Iris, wounded and stuck in unicorn form, is rescued by Angelo. Meanwhile, Roux encounters Jay, a young werewolf. Unfortunately, they are unable to sense any portals back. Will the twins ever find their way home?

A hopefully humorous look at places a golfball may wind up that wouldn’t be fun for the golfballs.

Once again we visit with Stanley and Addison. Addison appears to be as bad at golf as he was with duct tape.

Mickey Ryder is twenty-three, deeply in debt, and the captain of a barely-functioning mail ship held together by salvage tape and bad decisions. When a runaway cult boy named Isaiah hides in his cargo bay, Mickey does the one thing he never does—he says yes. Now they're running from New Eden, hauling mystery cargo, and trying not to kill each other. But between a dead exploration ship, a screaming alien in a crate, and a religious mandate that just dropped a nine-year-old son on his doorstep, Mickey's about to learn that surviving is easy. Living? That's the hard part.

When two hunters run afoul of a mythic figure, they have one chance to saved their hides. It's not the boys weekend either expected. (This takes place in the same universe as the story Sol, but both are stand alone tales, no other reading needed.)

What happened to his memories? Why is he imprisoned? Why is he being interrogated by a man of the cloth? And to whom belongs the beautiful elven face haunting his broken mind?

One week after their first encounter Leo meets up with the two brothers Sam and Kenny to escape to the lake in Hadley Woods. Leaving behind suburbia, and in a quiet secluded spot, they pass the day together sunbathing. The shared intimacy and shared secrets solidify what has become a "secret society of three."