a little fantasy * a little sci fi * a little love
Berlin in the 90s, but not as we knew it. This is one of those alternative history tales. In this story, gays and lesbians flock from all over the world to the safety of Berlin because they are accepted and celebrated. Several new residents include young couple, William and Gareth, who have escaped their homophobic …
Continue reading "Review: Proud Pink Sky by Redfern Jon Barrett"
Exploring 'what might have been' should make good fiction. Charles Dickens made Scrooge a better man just by showing him who he was, and what his fate would be if he continued to be the person he is. In the movie It's A Wonderful Life, kind hearted George Bailey gets to experience how depressing his …
Continue reading "Review: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig"
"We don't have the characters now that we had in the past." That was said by a work colleague back in the 90s who was talking about how younger generations didn't have adventures any more, like people had in the past. So, they were watered down versions of themselves. They hadn't built themselves to be …
This is a meditation on identity. Or perhaps it's a meditation on finding your identity. Whichever, it is a meditative experience. Omar Sakr's other published works are poetry. Son Of Sin is his first novel and his prose reflects his poetic style. For example, this is a description of a sunset: "...the sun was losing …
The author, Jeremy Atherton Lin, is ten years younger than me. Which made reading Gay Bar, Why We Went Out all the more interesting hearing from the perspective of someone who started his gay bar adventures when I was embracing a scene he was still navigating. Plus, his tales take place in LA, San Francisco …
This is not a book review. It's about what I learnt from reading this classic novel and has some elements of critique in it. A month ago I posted a blog about how anything you read influences your work in progress. My current project is written in third-person. All but one of my published works …
Continue reading "Thoughts on ‘Strangers On a Train’ by Patricia Highsmith"
I discovered 'youse' is actually a word! My parents used to use youse as in 'all of youse', and even wrote it in handwritten notes. And like Nino, the main character in They're a Weird Mob, my parents were born in Europe. Early in life I had to teach myself the difference between borrow and …
Continue reading "Book Review – They’re a Weird Mob – Nino Culotta"
I don't usually read Young Adult novels. This book showed up on my socials several times and I browsed, no, I glanced at a bit of information about it. I believed it was a contemporary novel about a rising ballet star who has an accident that changes his life. Well, the last part is correct. …
Continue reading "Book Review – Anything But Fine by Tobias Madden"
As the cover says, this is a short story. It is cheap or free depending on your relationship with Amazon. Petrina Binney read the opening of her story during the IQARUS online book conference, and on hearing it, I needed to download it. This is a tongue in cheek take on celebrity and obsession. The …
Continue reading "Book Review – Desperately Seeking Spinach by Petrina Binney"
Cath sets the bar high. She expects a lot from her partners, her friends and herself. This is what she learns to let go of in the enjoyable novel, Art Of Magic, by KJ. She also has trust issues as we find when she still doesn't have faith in her mother accepting her sexuality, or …
kevin klehr 