Stories

Adam Walsh is a popular small-town Irish boy who gets paired with the new arrival in town. Ross, however, is a city boy, hailing from London. Being total opposites, they somehow manage to cross paths. What starts as nervous giggles and jittery speech turns into a bond that will forever change both teenagers, as they'll experience something more than friendship. How will the boy's parents, friends, and love for each other come together? Will it either work in their favor or wedge them apart forever?

593 Riverside Drive is a kind of drawing room comedy about the difficulty a woman living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1925 has in getting a divorce and the narrow-mindedness of one of the male lawyers in the subsequent trial. Still, there's a lot of humor in the rudeness, especially when Uncle Herbert's around. The book will serialize on Fridays, probably through November -- WELL, THAT HIT A MAJOR SETBACK WHEN I HAD A TRULY UNEXPECTED STROKE ON OCTOBER 2ND. NOW, I'M HOPING TO FINISH EDITING AND POSTING BY THE END OF FEBRUARY 2024.

The Boot three years on. There have been some changes and improvements to The Boot, partly thanks to fund raising and charitable donations, and in part thanks to Christian Edwards benefactor to The Boot. Some 'guests' have moved on, some remaining homeless, but others having been helped are now in independent accommodation either working or looking for work. This is the continued story of The Boot, it's staff and 'guests.'

It is not necessary to read The Boot beforehand but it may help to understand some of what is happening now and in its future.

Being the oldest and growing up in a large family can be hard, especially when you are gay and the family is extremely homophobic. You are constantly being compared to your deceased father. A man whose stature and deeds are always increasing, as time goes by, and are held up as your goals. Anytime you reach those goals, your mother moves the goalpost further away.

You never seem to measure up. You are always being told that you are worthless and will never amount to anything since you cannot measure up to your father. It never mattered that you were a straight "A" student and that you were an athlete.

The French Revolutionary War is finally coming to a conclusion, and after eight years of conflict, George Granger is going to have to adapt to a world at peace. While the conflict with France may be at an end, George has his own challenges to face. He has returned home to find himself richer, but estranged from his wife. His best friend and lover, Francis Calvert, has been wounded in the Caribbean and has not yet returned to England. Join George as he navigates this fraught era, which may be even more dangerous than when England at France were at war.

Fred Jamers has been falsely accused of killing his boyfriend, Stephane Thibedeau. Arrested, tried, convicted on circumstantial evidence, and sentenced to five to ten years in prison, the challenges he faces are more than the average prisoner.

The South Pacific, 1842. These are powder-keg times, and in the midst of French Imperial gun boat diplomacy, Redburn has had enough of the sea. He draws a reluctant Toby into an adventure, and in the process loses something more valuable to him than his own life.

Samuel, a best-selling author and prolific writer, gets reacquainted with his stepson David during a weekend that will forever change both their lives.

1845. In the spring Redburn leaves Peru for New York on a warship. He has nothing, and feels like a failure. Worst of all is the loss he leaves behind him in the Pacific – his husband is dead, and Toby is lost and presumably long buried. What awaits him in the fall when he arrives back 'home,' to a place he has not been for four years? There he must consider what his brother wants for him, against how Redburn might honor the noblest sacrifices of the men who love him have made.

Newly coming to terms with being gay, following an abusive childhood and a failed relationship with a girlfriend, electrician Keith meets Thomas, who runs a local arts charity. Despite coming from vastly differing backgrounds, the two discover much in common, not least the need to come to terms with complex relationships to their fathers. But they also learn to enjoy exploring life together.