Stories

Owen has been hiding his whole life. Closeted in a Catholic funeral home family, fake-dating his best friend Margot for three years, headed to a college he doesn't want. Then Ryder messages him on a dating app and everything shifts. Ryder is rough, honest, reckless, and completely unwilling to be someone's secret. As their connection deepens over one Ohio summer, Owen finds himself caught between the safe lie he's been living and the terrifying truth Ryder keeps pushing him toward. Something has to break. And Ryder's determined to take him on the ride of his life before it does.

Following the death of his mother, fifteen-year-old Robbie is forced to move from England to start a new life living with his uncle’s family in Canada. Homesick, confused, and missing his close friend, it soon becomes apparent that Robbie is carrying a lot more baggage than he arrived with.

You never forget your first love.

Nor do you forget the traditions you shared.

Maybe that's all you need to bring you back together?

Or is it?

This is a collection of very short stories, that I had written over thirty years ago, when I first started to write, and they are recollections of real events that took place on the farm where I grew up in Western Australia.

Preston aka Quokka

It is August of 2004, the month that the Olympics were held in Athens. Will Schluter will be there, then he'll start his freshman year at Harvard with his cousin Marie. It's a bittersweet event because the man he loves, Travis Buck, has to remain in Hollywood to work on his acting career, and they'll have to deal with being separated by thousands of miles.

Meanwhile, Will's brother JJ is firmly established in New York City, trying to deal with the inevitable challenges life throws at him, while his father Brad will face a crisis that could ruin his marriage.

For Tony Scott coming home, five years since he left Thompsonville, to chase his dreams, is daunting. Five years since he has seen the only place he could call home, the only people he has been able to call family, and the only man he has ever loved!
If he is to find happiness he knows he must face the mistakes of his past and face those left behind.
What will he find there? Will the town have changed, or will it still be that sleepy seaside haven he had grown to love? Will he be welcomed back, or will he be shunned? All he can do is step off that bus and knock on that door. Only then will he know if he really is in a good place!

Leaving home for the first time and heading out into the big, wide world to forge a life for yourself can be a daunting thing for anyone . . . unless, of course, you have your best friends right there beside you, sharing the experience with you, the ups and downs, the highs and lows . . .

We first met Matt and Luke, Tim and Guy, and all of their friends in After We Danced, The Rip and Song For Guy. Now they are living together in the small town of Thompsonville, a place they had quickly come to love . . . and their adventures have begun!

For sixteen year old Danny Anderson life is about to change. School is out and summer is here and hanging with his friends is all he wants to do, but there are some things he just can't share with his best friend, Nate. And then a handsome young stranger, not much older than he is, arrives in town and his world is turned upside down. The summer was now turning into something he could only ever dream of as he begins a journey of self-discovery filled with new adventures and experiences, a new friendship and just a hint of danger.

The new kid in town was quite the looker, but for Tim Patterson: gay, seventeen years old and single, he didn't think he'd stand a chance . . . even with his best mate, Ben Walker doing his best to interfere! What he didn't count on, however, was that the new kid in town had a secret of his own, and that the two of them were more alike than anyone could realise. And so it begins. Boy meets boy . . . and everything that they both hoped for looked like it was falling into place. Can they truly make it work? Can they avoid the pitfalls that seem to come with young love? Will they be able to find a way to work it all out?

"My grand-father always used to say that everything that happens to us in life happens for a reason. And when we look back on our lives there are some moments that just seem to stick in our minds forever and I can now see what he meant by that."

For Scott Fraser there was one such moment that he remembers well. It was the time when, as a teenager, he saved the life of a young boy who was about to be swept out to sea.

What he couldn't have prepared himself for, however, was what would happen when that same boy comes back into his life some years later . . .