Stories

This is the story of two high-schoolers in the mid-70s growing closer and learning about life and love in rural Ohio. All songs and key phrases are linked to a video.

After attending the local Pride, will Eric Whitehouse reconnect with his old workmate, Rob? What might it mean to both men if he does?

Growing up happens differently for everyone. Finding yourself takes time, and for some of us it's not an easy process. Sometimes it can happen fast, all too fast. Sometimes we let parts of ourselves stray behind. Sometimes things must get worse before they can get better. Sometimes much, much worse. But these are the things that define us. That much, at least, St. John Allerdyce knows. But it's one thing to know something and another to live through it.

Fellow students of Brathay Stonearm consider him pleasant and harmless. Nobody guesses at his single-minded determination to become the best buildings expert of his generation.

Until Counsellor Brokerman offers him a challenge he feels compelled to accept.

Lord Leonmarkh, youngest of the DuMankin siblings, has a reputation as something of a spoiled wastrel and has been shipped off to Black Ice Bay to assume the role of Watchman of the North. Brathay is tasked with assessing the ancient keep and advising Leonmarkh on how to survive the long winter months.

If only the man would grant him an audience.

Some days go right

Some days go wrong

Some days don’t go at all.

Simon is sixteen and on the edge of everything changing, his world changing from adolescent to adult, to facing up to his sexuality and coming out, but not just yet.

Now, his boyfriend is late and he’s sat on a cold, concrete bench waiting, waiting, waiting…

Over twenty different days, during four weeks in spring, this story follows Simon as he navigates the difficult journey of his coming out. Like all journeys, this one will change him but in ways he doesn’t imagine, taking him places he didn’t expect to go.

For Ted and his collie, Sal, life secluded in the wilds of Yorkshire appears perfect. That is until one day when the world around him changes. What direction will Ted's life take now and how does Jase fit in?

It's 2010, and Peter “Trout” Spencer is thirty-two, living a gloriously gay one-night-stand life. That is until an instance of mishearing by his grandmother at her eightieth birthday party throws his world off kilter. What she hears as “I’m going to get married in June,”—to someone called Wendy—is in fact, “I’m going to get Marisse and June,” his stepsister and her girlfriend. When she offers her six bedroom Hamptons house as a wedding present, Trout has a dilemma; in the world of fake news, could he be forgiven for seeking out a fake wife?

Ember McCain is a mechanic in his late thirties, he's closed off and bitter about his teenage years. His biggest problem is not being able to let go of the anger he feels from the bullying he received in high school. Despite his own short comings he's managed grow a successful mechanic business, most of his employees are strong confident gay men. He's finally in a place in his life where he feels happy, confident, and content being himself. That is until Brady Douglass, his high school bully moves back to town and is everywhere, including his own workplace turning his world upside down.

Ben and Colin are comfortably in each other's lives, but the path of true love is never an easy one, and a mistake throws Ben's loyalties to the wind. Not only that, but the mystery behind the deaths of Denny and the rent boys remains unsolved. Carter only had a list of hits. Were Colin a different person he might leave things well alone. But the thing about sleeping dogs is that some people can never let them lie.

The sleepy village of Crumbington is about to get a wake-up call.

When the new chairperson of the Summer Fête Committee pushes to create a naked calendar of the Crumbington football team, mouths drop open. Her further pronouncement at having snagged a celebrity host for the fête—rising television and movie star Clifton O’Keefe, and ex-resident of Crumbington—is met with indifference.

Not by Nathan Fresher, though, local baker and captain of the football team. He had been Clifton’s boyfriend in high school, until Clifton and his family disappeared into the night over ten years ago.