OUT NOW! Visiting an Old Friend by Eva Hore
It was almost a year since we saw each other. When she heard I’d be visiting, she said she was looking forward to entertaining me.
When I arrived, she was waiting for me by the pool and I offered to rub tanning lotion onto her. I hoped we could continue where we’d left off the year before, but I got more than I bargained for. Not only was she ready, but she was still a virgin!
OUT NOW! Drummergirl by Kim Flowers
Seventeen-year-old drummer Amy Parks has been in band since fifth grade, is now the percussion section leader, and belongs to a garage band called The Maniacs. After her first crush on another girl at the age of ten, she swore to keep that part of herself hidden, even from herself, and never let it out again. Her band director is rumored to be gay, but other than that, Amy knows no other gay people, and thinks the word “lesbian” can’t possibly apply to her, even though her younger sister Erin constantly calls her gay and Amy has a half-naked poster of JLo on her wall. But still, she can’t be gay, right?
Then Amy meets the new girl, fellow band member Becca.
Amy is afraid of the thoughts and feelings she experiences, and thinks if she gets a boyfriend, maybe she’ll stop being so attracted to Becca. When the first boyfriend doesn’t work out, she jumps to the next guy, but is still unsatisfied. Amy begins to go to the lesbian chat room online and befriends a mentor named WhiskeyMind, who tells her for the first time that being a lesbian is about love.
When Amy finally decides to tell Becca how she feels, she must face the choice of being true to herself and losing everything, or hiding in the closet just to keep her friends and her position in The Maniacs. Is coming out the right thing to do? Is Becca really the girl of her dreams, or is there someone else out there for her?
OUT NOW! To the Ends of the Earth by R.G. Hendrickson
Joe is alone in his Brooklyn apartment, which he can’t afford now. The pandemic complicates his plan to get a roommate. If only Michael could have stayed. Joe would join him on the west coast but he likes his job in NYC, in medical billing and coding. He does it online at home, at least for a while, but now he has to go back to the office and work in a plastic tent.
Vegan chef Michael detests meat, cooking it as well as eating it. Due to the restaurant where he works closing, he has to take a job cross country, leaving Joe behind. This happens before the pandemic, so his new job, cooking vegan takeout, becomes all the more necessary to keep. He lives with his sister in LA until he gets on his feet.
Joe and Michael find ways to stay connected over the phone, but it isn’t the same. Should they try to make it work, or just give up now that they’re so far apart? Joe’s friend Cindy shares with him the romance stories she reads, but it takes a real-life love story in the hospital to help him decide.
Taking Stock is a 35,415 word gay romance set mostly in rural England. It’s set on Webber’s Farm, which I first wrote about in Inheritance of Shadows. Inheritance is set in 1919 and is part of my spooky paranormal universe. I based the farm on somewhere I used to know as a child on the Quantock Hills in Somerset and didn’t want to leave after Inheritance. Taking Stock is the result. Although it’s set in the same universe as my other books and some of the same background characters are there, there’s nothing paranormal or suspenseful.
Instead it’s a gentle story about two people who are hurt and angry and tired, who find their way toward each other and help each other heal.
Initially Laurie was going to have a similar chronic condition to me … I have fibromyalgia and seizures … but then just before I actually sat down to get the words out of my head and on to the page, my mama had a very severe stroke. She is in her eighties and has been more or less working her seven acre smallholding singlehandedly for years. Her frustration and anger at her situation translated directly into Laurie as I was writing. So he’s a combination of both my own feelings about my lack of agency through my disability, and hers.
It was a very emotive story for me to write and I hope you enjoy it. Here’s a little deleted scene for you!
“What do you mean, I can’t go home?” Laurie was almost crying with frustration. “I can go home if I like!”
Sally glared at him. “And how are you going to get up and down the stairs? Or even down the hall to the bathroom?” she said. “And wash when you get there? And turn over properly in bed? And what happens if you actually fall out of bed in the night and can’t get up? And come to that, who’s going to take you home, you idiot? You can’t drive!”
He glared back. “I thought that you might!”
“No! Not me!” her glaring was so much better than his.
He pushed against the pillows, but because he was unable to brace properly with his weak leg, he couldn’t make himself sit up any further. She stood up and hauled him forward with competent strength, shoving more pillows behind him to support his bad arm and shoulder. Damn her.
When she sat back down, he lowered his gaze to his lap. His hand lay across his legs, curled and useless. He imagined moving his fingers and he felt it happening in his head. But in his lap, they lay dead and still, obvious betrayers of his helplessness.
“Laurie …” Her voice was kind. “You need to stay in here for a bit and let them help you. They say at least some of the use of your arm and your leg should come back quite quickly, specially if you work at it. And then we can get you back home.”
OUT NOW! Taking Stock by A.L. Lester
It’s 1972. Fifteen years earlier, teenage Laurie Henshaw came to live at Webber’s Farm with his elderly uncle and settled in to the farming life. Now thirty-two, Laurie has a stroke in the middle of working on the farm. As he recovers, he has to come to terms with the fact that some of his new limitations are permanent and he’s never going to be as active as he used to be. Will he be able to accept the helping hands his friends extend to him?
With twenty successful years in the city behind him, Phil McManus is hiding in the country after his boyfriend set him up to take the fall for an insider trading deal at his London stockbroking firm. There’s not enough evidence to prosecute anyone, but not enough to clear him, either. He can’t bear the idea of continuing his old stagnating life in the city or going back to his job now everyone knows he’s gay.
Thrown together in a small country village, can Phil and Laurie forge a new life that suits the two of them and the makeshift family who gathers round them? Or are they too tied up in their own shortcomings to recognise what they have?
