New York Stories - Stories

Seth and Asher are two boys growing up on New York's Lower East Side. Nearly finished with their first year at Stuyvesant, one of New York's elite public specialty high schools, they’ve become inseparable as boyfriends. Asher dreams of opening a restaurant and looks forward to helping his father open a new Cajun place. As the son of a politician, Seth helps to find a prize location for the restaurant nearby that they can afford. When tragedy strikes and faced with the possibility of it closing before it even opens, the young teens take over and manage the restaurant by themselves.

Jake and Ken are getting married, and then they're taking their sons, Roger and Kyle, on a ten-week European vacation. Francis (Freck), Kyle's boyfriend, will be going with them, but he has a history that includes drugs and a suicide attempt when he was only eleven. On top of that, Freck, a freckle-faced redhead who was raised Catholic, now has a Jewish boyfriend and has come to realize that he's one-quarter Jewish. Naturally, he's curious about what it all means. But what will happen when his life hits a minor bump in the road?

Seth Moore grew up on New York’s Lower East side, the son of a New York State assemblyman. He loved his dad and admired his dedication, but then his dad was arrested on federal charges of corruption. It couldn’t be! When the Feds moved against his boyfriend’s family and seized their restaurants, their only means of support, something had to be done. Would Seth’s dad cop a plea to insider trading and go prison for a crime he didn’t commit, all for the sake of his son and the boy he loved?

For the residents of New York City, the Covid-19 pandemic took most by surprise. Schools closed and teens and preteens, used to seeing each other everyday, found themselves instead with parents and siblings. Online conferencing was a poor substitute for human touch and nothing could replace the kiss of a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Dave had enough to worry about with his mother being as a nurse, but when she was admitted to the ICU at Bellevue, his uncles from Seattle and his boyfriend became his lifeline. He couldn't help but wonder, though, what would become of him if she didn't make it.

It was a very restless time for the boys in New York City. Forced indoors by the pandemic, the school year was coming to a close in name only, as much felt left undone in the paradigm of remote learning. Then on Memorial Day, a black man in Minneapolis was lynched by a white police officer who strangled the man with his knee, touching off a firestorm of pent-up rage. Naturally the boys had to get involved in the protests. They had to, but then one of their own fell victim to police use of excessive force

When Josh and his family moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he knew he'd be helping his dad to renovate their new apartment. It hadn't been touched since the building opened in the mid-1950s and it needed a ton of work. Even so, it cost as much as they got for their old matchbook house in Brooklyn - close to a million dollars - and the only way they could afford it was to gut it and renovate it themselves. Josh was no stranger to handiwork, having helped rebuild after Hurricane Sandy, when he was just seven and could barely hold a drill. Little did they know that this time they'd face a hurricane and a global pandemic.

Asher and Seth just graduated from New York's top public high school. With so much to celebrate, their parents throw them a surprise party, where they meet new friends. The son of a black Creole father and an Asian American mother, Asher has developed his own style of Cajun-Asian fusion that has earned him a reputation as one of New York's top chefs. The son of a politician, Seth plans to follow in his father's footsteps. Both boys will begin college in the fall, but first there is an opportunity to help Asher's parents realize their dream of opening new restaurant.

While attending a Memorial Day 18th birthday party, Seth is asked by a friend's brother about being interviewed for his high school newspaper. The interview brings back vivid memories of serving as a Congressional intern and being trapped inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The invitation to spend a week of sightseeing in Washington, D.C. seemed like a great idea to Kyle. With his good friend, Seth, interning in Congress, it was a great opportunity for him and his boyfriend to see things most tourists didn't see. Kyle thought he'd fully recovered from the injuries he’d sustained three years earlier, but then a series of encounters forced him to recall a time he’d long thought he'd put behind him.

The impact of the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 was felt around the world, but in few places more than in New York City. Not only is New York home to the second-largest Jewish population in the world, but it’s home to peoples of many cultures, including a large Arab American population. In my New York Stories, New York Holidays and New York Anthologies series, I’ve introduced characters who might well have been in Israel at the time of the attack. October Fire is a 6-part story about Jewish and Palestinian New Yorkers who persevered in the face of hate.