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The Golden Age of Gay Fiction
By Multiple Authors edited by Drewey Wayne Gunn

It was the first great explosion of gay writing in history. These books were about gay characters. They were written mostly by gay writers. Above all, they were for gay readers. And, as this entertaining chronicle of the emergence of gay literary pride makes clear, it was a revolution that occurred several years before Stonewall!

Their characters were mostly out or struggling to get out. The books were definitely out — out on the revolving paperback bookracks in grocery stores, dime stores, drugstores, magazine agencies, and transportation terminals across the nation for youths and senior citizens, in the cities and the rural areas alike, to find and to devour.

Here 19 writers take you on a tour of this Golden Age of Gay Fiction — roughly the period between the first Kinsey Report and the first collection of Tales of the City — paying attention to touchstone novels from the period but, even more, highlighting works of fiction that have been left unjustly to gather dust on literary shelves.

Written by authors, scholars, collectors, and one of the publishers, their essays will inform you. They will sometimes amuse you. They will take you into literary corridors you only suspected were there. And the some 200 illustrations, chosen for their historical as well as their artistic interest, provide a visual record of why this was the golden age.

It is guaranteed that you will emerge from reading this book with a long list of good reads to request from your favorite booksellers!

Through the centuries, lives and loves have been lost to the shadows.  Stevie Woods brings redemption and a new love in DEATH’S DESIRE; Jardonn Smith has a frisky ghost showing two men the pleasures of love in GREEN RIVER; and Charlie Cochrane’s tale of future love is predicted by a ghost in THE SHADE ON A FINE DAY. In these three stories spanning from 18th century England to the Post-Depression Ozarks, love shines through the shadows.

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Chapter One

1785

Hugh leaned out of the carriage window and looked up the drive to the large house on the rise. It was quite an eyeful, a big sprawling house that had obviously been added to over the generations. Surprisingly, the mismatch of styles created a whole that was warm and inviting.

It had been three years since he had last seen his Simmercy relatives, though that had been in London before his cousin-in-law, William had inherited the Hall. He had never been to their country estate before and, though he sometimes felt out of place with the rather stuffy William, his wife Alicia had always been most welcoming to Hugh and his mother. He did want to see their son, Charles again; if only to discover if his inappropriate reaction to his young cousin was still in evidence. He had convinced himself he was over it, but that was when he was nearly a hundred miles away, and there was no immediate possibility of seeing the man.

The driver pulled the carriage to a halt in front of the wide stone steps and Hugh opened the door before the footman could do so. As he stepped down from the carriage a happy sounding voice called his name.

“Hugh! It’s been too long,” Alicia said as she hurried down the steps. (continue reading…)

Raised in a strict religion that forbids association with foreigners as well as love between men, Arieh Sef’ea cannot imagine a worse fate than to be sold as a love-slave to a Keshen soldier. Both men must learn that bodies may be purchased, but hearts must be won.

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Chapter One

The sun beat down on the dusty city square, drawing up beads of sweat on the flesh of the men and women shifting uncomfortably in their chains. They were waiting to be slicked with the golden oil that would make their skin gleam attractively, showing more clearly the contours of their bodies and muscles as they were paraded before the crowd.

Arieh Sef’ea, chains heavy around his wrists and ankles, burned with more than the afternoon heat. Hatred, anger, embarrassment and terror squirmed in his belly, making him glad he hadn’t had the appetite for the meager breakfast the slavers had provided that morning. He had offered his portion to the slave beside him, a quiet girl from the western desert province of E’ea who did nothing but cry softly from morning to night, but the blue eyed barbarian across from her had stolen it instead. The girl hadn’t seemed to notice.

The slave caravan had been large enough before Arieh was added to it, and in the three days he’d been traveling with them, they had picked up several more slaves about his age, some younger and several older. There were a few exotic, light skinned girls who had joined them at the last stop. Arieh had understood enough of the slavers’ rough tongue to know they were prisoners from the war in Agul to the north, captured by soldiers and sold to the caravans after a thorough sampling. Others, like himself, were native sons and daughters taken as payment for exorbitant taxes their parents couldn’t afford. (continue reading…)

Title	SS Mann Hunt
Author	William Maltese
ISBN#	978-1-60820-060-3 (ebook)
Release Date	June 2009
Cover Artist	Deana C. Jamroz
Paperback:	174 pages
Available At:	MlrBooks (ebook)

FATHER. FIEND? SCIENTIST. BUTCHER? PATRIOT. NAZI?

Sebastian S. Mann, prominent member of post-WWII U.S. rocket development, has gone missing with other expedition members supposedly caving in South America. Having done so just days before revelations that he may have been responsible for the deaths of over two-hundred thousand gays, Jews, gypsies, and Romanian freedom fighters.

Years later, the male heirs of three missing members of Mann’s lost expedition meet up in deep Brazilian jungle to explore evidence finally turned up of their fathers’ possibly last campsite.

Brad Lexly and Kurt Mann, childhood friends and lovers, rekindle their previous passionate relationship but know its success, beyond the isolating jungle environment, depends upon an acceptable explanation for Sebastian Mann’s disappearance. More dangerous people than they, though, seek answers, too, and also provide definite possibilities for this expedition ending up just as missing as the one gone before it.

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Chapter One

Concern dilates my blue eyes as I glimpse snag-like treetops perilously close. Absentmindedly, I run my fingers through the unruly strands of my short-cropped, sweat-saturated blond hair. I swallow hard, and my mind flashes visions of horrendous disaster; no matter Jim Kenner has already proven his worth at the controls of this small single-engine plane. My stomach churns, giving rise to the nausea I’ve barely controlled throughout most of this wild roller-coaster-like ride through the turbulence percolating upward from the horizon-to-horizon South American jungle, and from the up-thrusts of ragged stone amongst all the greenery below us.

“Jim’s landings here are always a bit hairy,” Kurt Mann confesses, nervously chewing his lower lip. His violet eyes, purple against the mahogany tan of his face, are dark with concern, and the deep dimple in his right cheek isn’t punched there by amusement. Anxiously, he runs his large and well-formed fingers through his thatch-short curly black hair and, in doing so, contributes to the tousle of interlocking strands. (continue reading…)

The Battle of Hadrianopolis, 378 AD, Roman legions versus Gothic warriors — ancient historian Ammianus called it the worst defeat in Roman history since Cannae. Theologian Rufinus said it was the beginning of evils for the Roman Empire then and thereafter.

Fifteen thousand Romans, two-thirds of the Eastern Empire Legionary forces, lay dead or dying on a Thracian plain, but for four men on opposite sides of the battlefied, no conflicts of cultures, religions or territorial boundaries could keep them apart. Nor could the mighty river that separated their homelands — The Danube. Despite all obstacles, these men will find their way to conquer the Danube Divide.

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Perspective

It is a stench like no other: the foul odors of the battlefield, the end of it, the dead and the dying. Sights and sounds are equally gut-wrenching, but unlike the smells, they don’t stay with a man. It is the stench that permeates his being forever, constantly returning to haunt him, rekindled by the most common of unrelated aromas-meats raw or cooked, fruits fresh or rotten, flowering plants pleasant or pungent-all are channeled from his nose to his brain, reminding him of what he saw, what he heard, and what he did.

The scope of this battlefield is unimaginable. Fifteen thousand Romans lay dead or dying. Had the sun not set, another five thousand would have joined them. Only darkness prevented their Goth combatants from slaughtering those few who did escape.

Under a twilight sky shrouded in fire smoke, the aftermath and its smells and sounds create nightmares. Some of the cavalry horses continue their struggle to stand, with hooves and legs severed, with arrows imbedded in their flanks, gashes from swords and spears penetrating deep into their breasts. And in their struggles they mercilessly, and mercifully, kick and crush the men laying all around them, the dying. Screeches of animals are equaled in volume by the gasping groans and pitiful pleadings of humans begging for medical assistance or death, but powerless to bring about either. It is the Germanics, the victors, who will end their misery, if and when they choose to do so. (continue reading…)