Stories

Poem written for the 2024 Poetry Antho.

My Best Friends Wedding and a Day I would remeber.

London, 1939. War with Germany is approaching and a snow storm rages as an elderly Scottish politician boards the night sleeper train. But this is unlike any other journey he's ever done, or will do again!

Two Sami boys, living in a small town in the extreme north of Norway, become friends while in primary school. They remain friends for years, but both discover, independently from each other, that they possess a trait, that will never be accepted by their people. But that is unacceptable for them. Which only meant, that the fight is on!

No, I'm not writing that fast. Actually, this story was planned to publish around this date, until I spontaneously decided to put "Pedik Russkiy" on line first. Since I've worked ahead I plan 1 part per week.

My first novel, previously published in Dutch but now translated.

It is the story of three gay travellers in Scotland, immediately after the Great War.

It is about double discrimination, about flowering and gradually subsiding love, of exploitation of tenants by the local gentry and of over-zealous clerics, but also about the development into adulthood against the background of a slowly changing society.

"We look at each other for the longest two seconds, a knowing look, communicating something beyond the restraints of speech but to which we are both finely attuned; a common language...which, in its evolution, had turned our signals into pictures so vivid we were terrified of giving anything deeper than superficial away, and so we turn our heads, almost simultaneously, focusing our attention elsewhere."

When Stan's friend offers to be his personal trainer, the offer is too good to refuse. But the experience threatens to transform the pair in ways neither could have predicted.

A brief encounter at the park and a saying becomes true to life.

A novel in fifteen chapters.

Fourteen-year-old Daniele Ferrero and his best friend Giacomo are finally finishing middle school. As they embark on the endless summer holidays amidst the mountains and olive groves of Italy’s Amalfi Coast, they begin to grow closer. But will Giacomo prove worthy of Daniele’s affections?

Meanwhile, Daniele’s other best friend Marco is waiting in the wings, and he suspects that Giacomo’s motives are anything but selfless.

After a tragic accident brings his old life in London to an end, shy teenager Gianni is sent to live with his estranged grandparents in the beautiful surroundings of Italy’s Amalfi Coast.

There, he meets the irrepressible Angelo, who promises to show him his world and, as the long, hot summer days unfold, slowly helps Gianni to heal.

Gianni’s new life in the sun brings him friendship of a kind that he has never known and, with it, important discoveries about himself. But what will the future hold when the summer of the firefly comes to an end?

A short novel in ten chapters.

As Ravello slumbers under the grey skies of winter, Gianni and Angelo try to come to terms with looking after their new foster son Sami. Gianni is trying his best, but Sami seems more attached to two local boys who took care of him in the summer.

Meanwhile, teenager Marco’s carefully controlled home life unravels when his father uncovers a truth he has been trying desperately to conceal.