- WINNER -

- FINALISTS -

My Hero: A Wild Boy's Tale
Tristram Burden - Bath, Avon, UK

In a post-apocalyptic America, 17 year old Joshua My Hero lives out a humdrum existence, struggling to find truth and sense in his parent's fundamentalist-Christian trailer park. His psychic powers and sexual tastes leave him an outsider of his community. When his father, Joe Hero, suspects Joshua of being gay, he tries to teach Joshua a lesson, but while his father tries to rape him, Joshua commits patricide in a desperate struggle for self-defence. Escaping into a wasted planet, Joshua searches for work, love, intimacy, and answers to the many questions he poses to the universe: armed only with an oracular penis, the patronage of an ancient God sent to rid Planet Earth of all of its ills, and the wisdom of the Tao Teh Ching. Settling in a town called Mortlake, Joshua meets a mysterious foreigner, William D'Reel. And while tragedy after tragedy strikes, Joshua falls victim to a range of ecstatic visions, discovers the mysteries of sex, death, and dreaming, gradually unveiling a secret conspiracy to sell the planet to an extra-terrestrial race which reaches critical mass right where Joshua has decided to find home. During his adventures, he meets Marlow, William's demon servant disguised as an owl; Michael of the Bone, hermaphrodite assassin and conspirator; Alice, an over-sexed but affable teenager; the mysterious Callum, a cyborg and ex-pupil of William D'Reel,who Joshua finds love and hate with. And the giant sorcerer, Moojaffa Marjook, who upon his mountain-top home teaches Joshua the secrets of sorcery, initiating Joshua into the ancient witch-cult that he and William belong to, introducing Joshua to great Baphomet himself...

Read an excerpt here.

Initiate's Rise
Debra Hyde - South Windsor, Connecticut, US

In a world where magic emanates from sexual energy, the relationship between an elder mage and his apprentice is tested when the primitive voice of a "caller" invokes an ancient, instinctive attraction that can neither be ignored nor controlled. Drawn to the caller's untamed power, Noth Hirat and Cam Ris undertake a journey rife with adversarial stumbling blocks and personal uncertainties, a journey in which the younger discovers the power of duty and loyalty.

Read an excerpt here.

Mono No Aware (The Sorrow of Things)
Bianca James - Chicago, Illinois, US

Mono No Aware (The Sorrow of Things) is queer samurai cyberpunk novel set in Kyoto, Japan in the year 2042. Seventeen year old Yuzu, the orphaned offspring of a Japanese woman and a member of the mysterious Albino "Shalan" cult, arrives in the big city wide eyed after spending his childhood at a rural labor camp. It's not long before he meets Tsubaki, a kimono-wearing shamisen-strumming temple sun, and they fall in love. Tsubaki departs for Tokyo after being scouted by a music producer, and his record goes to number one. But fame comes at a large price- Tsubaki's controlling manager Joey Takemura has forbidden Tsubaki from continuing his relationship with Yuzu, but not if Yuzu can help it. Yuzu embarks on a futile quest to get Tsubaki back--but not before encountering big problems with the Shalan and the Yakuza. Yuzu learns that his journey, and the people he encounters along the way, are as important as the final destination. Innocence is lost, and wisdom is gained.

Read an excerpt here.

The Fluidity of Angels
Jeff Leavell - Los Angeles, California, US

The Fluidity of Angels deals with the ideas of beauty and redemption. The novel struggles with the idea that no matter what we do, no matter how horrible or evil we are, no matter how ugly it all seems on the surface, that inside, deep down, we are all beautiful and that we were born to be redeemed. Nothing, no action, no movement towards cruelty or abhorrence can take that redemption or beauty from us. The characters of Fluidity move through a world of violence, extreme sex and desperation. Horrors become the norm and in those horrors they find beauty. Inside their desperation they find a way to be a part of a larger, mythic struggle towards an understanding of what it means to be human.

Read an excerpt here.

Loop
Scott Waller - Little Rock, Arkansas, US

Luke is sixteen and lives in the rural isolation of Shakes, Arkansas. His mother, Nancy, is the town busybody and his older brother, Charles, is the favorite child, who is murdered. The suspect is the town eccentric, a semi-homeless, mentally deficient man, Catfish Catcher. Luke meets Catfish Catcher's youngest brother, Fishcat. Fishcat introduces Luke to a world of Internet-hookups, sex without social hang-ups and the joys of prostitution and thievery along their town's main road, Highway 82. Fishcat loves Luke and over the course of the story, Luke learns to step outside his unpleasant upbringing. Shakes is small and divided by race and income. The poor live on the good side of town and the destitute and hopeless on the other. The Catchers--Dahlia, the mother, is a whore, and the second oldest brother is a career criminal, while the younger sisters are the town sluts--are poor and live in the town dump. Luke's family live as well as they can. The area is haunted by ghosts and tall-tales of monsters in the woods and in the river. Southern-Gothic twists and turns change the narrative and give hope to some and despair to others.

Read an excerpt here.

- SEMI-FINALISTS -

The Shriek and the Rattle of Trains
Dominic Ambrose - Paris, FR

Rick, an American teacher, rushes back to Romania from an ill-fated trip to Hungary with two Romanian men. He is panicky about his sexual encounter with Nicu, because he now believes that Nicu is HIV positive. On his train ride through Romania he meets local characters, and introduces the reader to Nicu and Marius in flashback. In Bucharest he and his American colleagues prepare a training course for Romanian teachers. They travel to the Carpathian Mountains to conduct the course, but the supervisor is having an emotional breakdown, and the venture is unraveling. Rick barely notices, as he is engrossed in his own musings. He relives his affair, experiencing again the high points of his relationship with the two Romanians. Meanwhile, the course limps along, amid much rancor. At the end of the course Rick learns that he will not receive another contract for the coming year, considering his lack of interest and cooperation. He is surprised, bitterly assessing that he has been made a scapegoat because he is gay. On the way back to Timisoara, the town he lives in, he reviews the crucial last two days spent with Nicu and Marius in Budapest. He tries to understand what went wrong and piece together the puzzle of his disorganized life. He begins to understand how his own compulsiveness has been his worst enemy. In Timisoara he meets Marius. He realizes the relationship is a failure: no one had gotten what he wanted out of it. While returning to Bucharest for his flight back to the U.S., he has an intimate conversation with the train conductor. The conductor provides insight and closure for his Romanian experience. He has lost his job and the affection of his two lovers, but he has gained a healthier perspective on life.

Hi's Cool
Adam Henry Carriere - Las Vegas, Nevada, US

My novel, Hi's Cool, is a lyrical yet provocative mosaic that examines the psychosexual impact of the post-9-11 culture wars from the eyes of a contemporary American teenager, damaged yet gifted, filled with wonder while fraught with the tumult of our uneasy times. Narrated with visceral immediacy by the main character, Hi's picaresque journey begins at an exclusive inner city pilot school for exceptional, mostly affluent youth. The grandson of working class immigrants from a Chicago neighborhood since consumed in the racial whirlwinds of the '60s, Hi is merely among the talented. As a freshman, he finds not only first love but the proverbial tip of the prejudicial iceberg that threatens to overwhelm him. During his sophomore year, Hi's parents' marriage begins to violently unravel, putting their only child in the no man's land between them. Menaced by the strife, Hi falls under the spell of a college student, whose sexual manipulations weaken Hi's already marginal sense of place, being, and belonging. His mother now AWOL, his father alcoholic and abusive, and his junior year studies nose-diving, a combative Hi is put into his school's in-house rehabilitation, where a painful process of rediscovery begins. Fighting to avert a full-scale collapse in the beset teen, the school therapist tries to help Hi navigate a fragile armistice with his father and a cautious friendship with a classmate, whose recent suicide attempt masked his secret attraction to Hi. The dramatic passage reaches its climax when Hi learns the terrifying ultimate price he must pay for a chance love forged within the social and cultural Ground Zero of modern gay adolescence that, tantalizingly, offers him both identity and redemption.

hy
Casey Charles - Missoula, Montana, US

In The Greek Myths, Robert Graves called it the first story of love between men. Hy is a verse novel that transposes this seminal narrative of same-sex passion from ancient Sparta to twentieth-century Montana. Told by Dr. Lucian, a frustrated Shakespearean, this blank-verse rendition of the myth of Apollo and Hyacinth begins with Hy growing up in rural Montana gay and estranged until he enters college and falls in love with Apollo, an international student from Greece. When Hy decides to leave Apollo for a local musician named Thamyris, jealous Apollo sets in motion a series of mishaps--an ill-fated battle of the bands between the Muses and Thamyris, an incident of gay panic that injures Tham, and finally the demise of Hy, when fundamentalists force his car off the road during a blizzard on MacDonald Pass. As Apollo and friends mourn, the narrator--in an Ovidian moment of metamorphosis--realizes that his own partner David is Hyacinth reborn. Part love story, part celebration of landscape, Hy depicts a new kind outlaw on the frontier, remaking the western into a tale of queer survival in the grand but rugged Rockies.

Jesus Remembers
Kittredge Cherry - Los Angeles, California, US

Jesus Remembers is the fictional autobiography of a bisexual-transgender Christ. Jesus, the narrator, has today's queer sensibilities and psychological sophistication as he lives out the Christian myth in first-century Palestine. He speaks in a contemporary tone to reveal his erotic relationships with John the beloved disciple (a sexually active gay man), Mary Magdalene (a highly intelligent survivor of sexual abuse) and the multi-gendered Holy Spirit. He leads disciples of both sexes into ecstatic union with God. He transcends gender identity, sexual orientation and ultimately death itself. The novel opens with Jesus in rural Galilee trying to unblock his prayer life while his disciples are away teaching. They return with news that his cousin, the Baptist, was executed for his outspoken beliefs. Grief-stricken, Jesus knows that the authorities will kill him soon, too. He reaches inside himself and finds the power to feed the crowds and raise the dead, but he cannot escape his destiny. Back in Jerusalem for Passover, Jesus seeks Mary's advice on facing violence, rants at religious leaders and shares long goodbye kisses with John. After an intense farewell dinner, Jesus argues with and then surrenders tvision of martyrdom. The disciples flee when he is arrested. Jewish and Roman leaders put Jesus on trial. Dramatic visions accompany his crucifixion and death. Jesus reenters his battered body and reconciles with all his disciples, including a lesbian couple. As the risen Christ, he and John are finally wed in erotic ecstasy.

Leaving Scars
Tab Curtis - West Dundee, Illinois, US

Lizzie's world is falling apart. The events of 9/11 have forced her Chicago-based employer, Concordia Airlines, to the verge of bankruptcy. Her chronically unemployed sidekick, Sam, has finally gotten a job and a serious boyfriend. Most importantly, she requires a period of around-the-clock care following spinal surgery. These events force her to consider the one thing she swore she would never do: move back home to her grandmother's house in rural Kentucky. Although the situation is temporary, Lizzie finds herself falling into all-too-familiar dysfunctional patterns with her extended family. She discovers that her stepbrother is engaged to Mickey, Lizzie's high-school crush, now a gym teacher at the local high school. Lizzie embarks on an ill-fated romance with her soon-to-be sister-in-law only to find her attentions drawn to Amber, a beautiful physical therapist with a devastating secret. Meanwhile, Lizzie struggles with both her own and her grandmother's burgeoning health problems. Lizzie breaks off her relationship with Mickey only to find that she and Amber hold very different views of the future. Lizzie then suffers the consequences of her indiscretion when her family discovers the truth about her relationship with Mickey. Lizzie returns to Chicago to face the first of many rounds of layoffs at Concordia, but finds herself unexpectedly employed, albeit with expanded responsibilities and a drastic pay cut. Frustrated at the prospect of working in such conditions, Lizzie resigns her position and heads back to her apartment to find solace in the one constant comfort of her life, the Batman TV series. When Lizzie is notified that her grandmother has suffered a stroke, she races back to Kentucky to care for her beloved grandmother and attempt to salvage her relationship with Amber.

Older Girls
Mary M. Davies - Northampton, Massachusetts, US

In 1970's Halifax, Nova Scotia eight-year-old Janet Richardson is molested by her mother. Janet's distant father and her volatile older sister Lisa are incapable of helping her make sense of the precarious world she is trying to survive. As Janet becomes a teen, observing life from afar, she is unable to receive the misguided kindnesses of her best friend Alana's family, and has no concept of protecting herself from further abuses at the hands of neighborhood boys. Her mother Emmy, married her father, David, and moved to Canada with him from South Carolina when the girls were small. Disillusioned with everything about motherhood, her husband's over-attentiveness to their older daughter Lisa, and Halifax itself, Emmy drinks heavily, flirts with other men, and alternates between rage and semi-consciousness. Patricia, a neighborhood tomboy, has a crush on Janet's older sister Lisa, who doesn't reciprocate. When Patricia goes to Montreal, a trip she was supposed to make with Lisa, she finds gay people, and plans to move there after high school. But her parents' divorce forces her to stay in Halifax for university, where she meets her first girlfriend. After several suicide attempts, Janet's sister Lisa is found dead. In the aftermath, Janet takes refuge in the kindness of her drawing teacher. David tries half-heartedly to relate to her as if she is Lisa, and Emmy's drinking worsens. Patricia, numbed by Lisa's death, falls into another relationship with an old Catholic school friend. Janet plans to leave for university in Toronto. Patricia's live-in girlfriend leaves her for someone else. Janet and Patricia meet again by chance and begin a short-lived, ambiguous relationship. When this too fades, Janet is left alone with her drawing, through which she expresses her confusion and longing for her dead sister and the home she is leaving.

So Much Better
Terri Griffith - Chicago, Illinois, US

Liz works as a loan officer at the Unified Telecommunications Credit Union. It's been a long, cold winter. Every morning after she turns on her monitor, the first thing she does is check the temperature in Los Angeles. Anyplace is better than this. Through neglect and attrition, Liz's world has grown devastatingly small. Her confidante and drug addict sister went missing five years ago. If she knew definitively that her sister was dead, then Liz could move on with her life. But as it is, she lives in the past, monitoring her ex-girlfriend's checking account and often finding herself standing outside her apartment. One night Liz attends a party thrown by Kim's boss, Cathy. She arrives to find Kim flirting with another woman, undoubtedly her replacement. Good thing Cathy's little sister Natalie is there, drunk as usual. This makes it easy for Liz to escort the 15-year old to the guest room, where she seduces her. Liz doesn't intend to take advantage of the girl, but she always feels so much better when she does. What Liz views as an isolated misstep, Natalie interprets as a relationship. The ensuing pressure pushes Liz to make even more poor choices. She starts calling in sick, has a one-night-stand with an ugly and unqualified loan applicant, but the worst mistake she makes is punching Natalie when the girl confronts Liz about her selfishness and inability to have a normal adult relationship. It's this ethical transgression which ultimately causes Liz to slip out in the middle of the night. With a duffle bag of business casual and an updated résumé, Liz makes a break for it. Wearing her best summer-weight suit, Liz heads to the airport where she catches a plane for Los Angeles--a city where no one is ever cold.

Enter Oblivion
C.M. Harris - Minneapolis, Minnesota, US

The year is 1984 and wounded thug Vince has decided to make something good from his life. When he meets gay entrepreneur Nigel, the man sparks conflicting emotions in Vince certain to change both their lives. On the lam from his homophobic street gang, Vince blindly follows the Englishman back to his homeland. Soon he is stomping through London's trendy society the way only an obtuse American can. Notorious gender-bender Jik O'Blivion arrives next, back from concert touring, to find Vince charming his best friends and stirring up trouble with the local skinheads. However, with more than enough problems on his plate-such as expulsion from his aristocratic family and punk record label--Jik is too busy with reinvention and evading the AIDS crisis to make the usual meal of this amusing irritant. While Vince navigates a new lifestyle, Jik struggles to locate what is left of his own principles. Through it all, their paths intersect with comical and dangerous consequences. While Jik's glossy New Romantic star clanks down from the heavens, Vince's gritty star ascends in the form of a post-Punk rock band and it is not lost on Jik that this young man clumsily trying to seduce him may also soon supplant him. However, Jik is not alone in his disdain for the obnoxious American. For the gang of skinheads--and even Vince's own Canarsie brotherhood--threaten to lure Vince back into a life of crime and payback. When one of their closest friends dies mysteriously, Vince and Jik finally unite, taking shelter in each other's arms. But now their flamboyant, close-knit community and dreams for happiness are threatened--as well as haunted. Through a violent confrontation with the skinheads, the novel's climax forces both Vince and Jik to face their demons and resolve their separate transformations.

DeVante's Children
Sheri Johnson - Superior, Wisconsin, US

Welcome to the world of DeVante's Children! It's a vampire tale, but let go any preconceptions you might have about vampire tales because this is a homoerotic story about love and power and...blood. (Well, what did you expect?) Join the adventure of how the vampire DeVante, who is always in control, and his silly impulsive fledgling Roderick, work together to turn the mortal teenager Daniel into a vampire. Roderick has fallen hopelessly in love with the boy and is terrified that he will die during the change. DeVante has his own turmoil. He has been courting a mortal woman, Emily, who refuses his offered gift of immortality to live out her life human. Throughout these two story lines a scheming vampiress, Katarina, plots Roderick's demise, thinking that if Roderick were gone she would be able to enslave DeVante. She has misguided aspirations. DeVante has been her lover in the past but he has never been her slave. This is not an epic vampire novel that spans the centuries heavy with description and the sense that time no longer exists. It is but a snapshot of a few months in the lives of some interesting characters. For Emily it is a healing time. For Daniel it's about "coming of age" as a young gay male who's grown up in a straight society without a single role model. For Roderick it's always all about having fun. And for DeVante, the elusive, hard-edged, non-compromising DeVante, it is coming to acknowledge the part of himself that is still human, still able to feel compassion, even love, for mortals.

A One Man Guy
L.D. Knight - Columbia, Missouri, US

Theo, the main character, and his family are in a period of adjustment. Fifteen months prior to the beginning of the novel, Theo's father suffered traumatic brain injury and multiple body injuries in a car accident. Through a series of coincidences and naïve mistakes on Theo's part, his mother discovers that he has been sexually active for several years, and both his parents suspect that he has had sexual contact with one of the father's colleagues. Theo is sixteen, so it would be normal that he is sexually active, but because he is gay and he has been telling them for years that he isn't ready for relationships with any guys, his parents are shocked, a response intensified and complicated by the father's recent injuries. Throughout the novel, Theo struggles with his father's return to "normal" functioning, his feelings about his dad's colleague, his boyfriend Jonathan's recent interest in casual sex with other guys, and his friend Toni's confession that she is a boy locked in a girl's body and is planning to have surgery. By the novel's end, Theo has redefined his place within his family and his relationships with Jonathan and Toni, and he has come to terms with the consequences of having had sex with an older man.

The Next Thing That Kills Me
Jillian Lauren - Los Angeles, California, US

The Next Thing That Kills Me is a story about love and drugs; summer camp and sex work. The novel jumps between three highly contrasting time periods in Jane Sussman's life: her erratic childhood, a vital but rapidly spiraling recent past, and a paralyzed, drug-addicted present. Her trek takes her from the Jersey suburbs through the strip clubs and escort services of New York and San Francisco and finally to the drug dens of LA. The Next Thing That Kills Me is a character-driven story about Jane's alternately connecting with and disconnecting from the often-surreal moments that define her journey.

These Mundane Freaks
Deb R. Lewis - Chicago, Illinois, US

Lula Bleeker escapes Papa's lusty hands and southern Indiana for the 1920s Chicago streets, where she's forced into prostitution. Lula bears Beug with Olaf, a heartbroken manufacturing magnate, in exchange for security. Meanwhile, her abandoned younger sister, Nettie, poisons their deserving parents to secure insane tyranny over the gardens and her Papa's get, Earl. But Olaf's money runs out, post-Depression; Lula returns home "to tend mad Nettie," initiating a power-struggle over wealth Papa hid in the house. When Hades dies, Lula locks with Nettie into a death dance that destroys the gardens and consumes their lives. Japan bombs Pearl Harbor and Earl--grown--reluctantly joins the Army. He lands in the front lines, where WWII unhinges him. He returns home, marries Frances. He wakes from war-drenched nightmares strangling her and fears, with a small thrill, that he's killed his wife, but when she comes to, a sexual game commences with slow, terrible consequences. Beug joins the Navy, and falls under the spell of a salt, Sterns, who mentors him in a seadog's life. When Sterns is lost at sea, Beug, taking on his sea-daddy's persona, forswears love. After making discontented rounds in the seedy, post-war circles of Chicago flits and the bastards who use and despise them, Beug cycles west, landing among queer San Franciscan bikers--the Minotaurs. On a solo run, Beug finds Pedro, a misfit Penitente seeking a miracle in New Mexico, and introduces him to the Minotaurs. Pedro's submissive gift for anticipating Beug's needs is astounding; however, Pedro responds not only to the shadow-of-Sterns Beug but to the inner Beug who still grieves. The pain is too much; after Beug bolts, legends grow around Beug's disappearance. Finally, Beug listens to Earl confessing to Frances' death, offering dubious absolution.

Down in Cuba
Vincent Meis - San Francisco, California, US

Down in Cuba is a tale about love and longing, bittersweet like so many of the stories out of modern day Cuba. It is full of heartfelt moments and sensuality, but ultimately the narrator realizes that the price of love across cultures and ambiguous sexual persuasions is too high to pay. Martin, a fifty-year-old American, has all the trappings of a successful life, but he is emotionally numb. Haunted by his memories of the pulsating streets of Havana, he returns to the place that makes him feel alive. Set against the harsh realities of Cuba's gay underground, Martin's emotional journey begins one balmy night on Havana's seaside promenade, where he meets Leo, a seductive young Cuban artist, who dreams of a better life. In Leo's arms Martin soon finds all the affection and sexual satisfaction that was missing in his life. Martin begins to peel back the layers one by one of his new lover, and is both appalled and enticed by what he sees. Martin discovers and is fascinated by Leo's eerie paintings and learns about secrets from his past. After a motorcycle accident lands Martin in the hospital, Leo in turn discovers Martin's secret--that he is HIV positive. Rather than flee, Leo draws closer to Martin and promises to take care of him. Martin comes face to face with all the realities of Leo's double life including the fact that Leo is going to be a father. Martin struggles with the idea of having to share Leo and wonders if Leo has the capacity to love him in the same way. Though Leo insists that Martin is the one he really loves and openly draws him into his family circle, his erratic behavior and all-night binges makes Martin doubt that Leo can fully handle the pressures of a double life. Martin reaches a breaking point and finally breaks free of the corner that he has allowed himself to be painted into. He returns to his solitary but stable life back home, having no regrets about following his heart. He knows that he has changed someone's life, setting Leo on the road to pursue his art, and in doing so has changed his by allowing himself to feel.

Bohemian Acts
Jeff Solomon - Los Angeles, California, US

Bohemian Acts is an operatic adventure of queer bohemians in four acts, an intermission, an overture, an underture, two Christmases, an Easter, and a miasma of hot summer nights. Ralph Von Why hates being a "rich spoiled fuck" from Newport Beach, so he runs off to Los Angeles and falls in with a group of bohemians: sculptors who fashion Swarovski crystals into minaudières of rotting fruit; experimental porn artistes now filming Yeshiva Hustler!; and other servers of coffee caught between the rigor of artistic creation, the constraints of the marketplace, and the demands of an "artistic" lifestyle. Do Ralph and his friends want to make or be art? Is ethnicity something they are or something they wear? Can they pick and choose their sexuality, or are they stuck at birth--and is sex an art form or an expression of emotion? Is poverty fun when you really have no money? And if bohemians run off to the city, do their family and familiar culture stow away like plague-ridden fleas? Bohemian Acts puts these traditional questions into a sweeping, lyrical epic with strong and unusual passions; exciting, musical language; and a uniquely operatic format that offers its audience the same fresh experience of art, love, and aggression that Puccini offered when opera was the punk rock of the 1890s.

How to Rape a Straight Guy
Kyle Michel Sullivan - West Hollywood, California, US

Told in first person, this is the story of Curt, an ex-con who spent six years in prison for drugs. He now lives with his wife, works a nothing job and sees his choices in life vanishing to nothing. Until he meets Wayne and Lenny, two middle-aged men who buy him a few drinks, talk with him, and "take him home." It's not Curt's first time at this; after all, in prison you learn "a mouth's just a mouth." Plus it's an easy way to get some cold beers and extra cash. But during their chat, Curt reveals he figured out how to force the men he "punked out" to have an ejaculation, and he used that as a method of getting even with the world, "one asshole at a time." Including against a prison guard. Not believing him, Lenny eggs Curt into a bet. He will hire a "gay for pay" escort and, if Curt can force that "straight" guy to "fire his load" he will give him a car and a lot more money. If he can't, he lets Lenny and Wayne have him for one night. Curt agrees, despite Wayne's resistance. So a few nights later, an escort is invited over. But before they can get started, the man reveals he is an undercover vice cop. He tries to arrest them, but they make him back down and he leaves. But then he stupidly calls Curt a "faggot" as he heads out the door. Furious, Curt suggests the cop would be the perfect man for the bet. And Wayne agrees. To Lenny's stunned surprise, they make plans to grab the man. But that is when things begin to spiral completely out of control and, to Curt's growing confusion...and horror, head straight towards disaster.

Mail Order Bride
Rakelle Valencia - Barnstead, New Hampshire, US

Mail Order Bride captures 1860's American frontier history with its fictional characters and setting. A return to the era of the dime store Western novel, Mail Order Bride begins the saga of Blaire Austin; who is an orphan, a rancher, a cowboy, and a woman passing as a nice young fellow in a man's world. Austin, as she's known, lives alone on the fringes of the frontier and the tiny tent town of Molasses Pond, protecting her identity in a world where women are second-class citizens and are not expected to own land or struggle for survival by pecking out a working ranch from some of the most rugged land in Arizona. Women in or near Molasses Pond are typically the "working" kind for gold-miners, and grubby barflies, expected to lie on their backs to collect what petty amount they are awarded for services rendered. Not Austin. Town-folk with the wrong impression of Austin and, some, for the wrong reason, pool their money to send it East in order to secure the nice young man a mail order bride. The bride's arrival and Blaire Austin's situation set the stage for a western drama of rogues, rustlers, secrets, lust, gunplay, and frontier justice.

Jupiter Spoke
J. Warren - Bloomington, Illinois, US

Jonah Verge is an almost-thirtysomething openly gay science fiction writer who returns to his hometown for his 10-year high school reunion. He hopes to reopen some old wounds in order to clean and then heal them. Along the way, he meets Wil, a younger man with a terrible past. Jonah begins to see that his own history, while still hurtful, is nothing compared to what might have happened. Like his namesake from the biblical story, Jonah goes into the belly of the whale and learns the power of his own voice, pain and all, and returns to the surface stronger. The question is, can he heal his past in time to make a future with Wil?

Writing Cunningham Believe!
Charles Wesley - Jersey City, New Jersey, US

The novel starts out as being a story of a young man who has grown up in a difficult family and is now living in the same city, Berkeley, as his mother who has come out as a lesbian and is in a relationship with a woman. In the alternate chapters, the author describes what is going on in his own life and why he makes various aesthetic choices as he writes. But soon the author himself is overwhelmed by his own difficult relationship and he no longer can control either the story he was writing nor the parts in between where he intended explaining his method, but can only write about his own situation.

The Edge of the Earth
Patrick Youngblood - Washington, DC, US

The Edge of the Earth is narrated by Paul Hopkins, a gay man in his mid-30s who has recently returned to Nantucket after a visit to Key West, where his involvement with a younger man led to unforeseen consequences. Paul has come back to Nantucket to try to make sense of the confusion and unhappiness of his recent past and to reflect, for the first time, on the forces that shaped him. But just as he begins to settle into his cottage on Nantucket Harbor, two men intrude into his fragile existence. Fred, who runs the video store on Main Street, unsettles Paul with his profound beauty, while Val, a petty hustler, charmingly insinuates himself into Paul's life and wallet. As Paul examines the carefully concealed truths of his childhood, he finds himself drawn into an increasingly complex relationship with Fred and Val that eventually erupts into violence. Delving deep into the mind of its narrator, The Edge of the Earth minutely explores the themes of isolation, guilt, and redemption.

- HONORABLE MENTIONS -

Beach Reading by Mark Abramson
Free to a Good Home by Lisa Bishop-Hook
In His Hands by Patrick Bonomo
He's a Doll by Ken Cimino
Far From Happy by Jeni Decker
A Simple Heart by Alex Gomez
Justice in Love by Rogelio Gomez
The Acolytes by Rainer J. Hanshe
Unlikely Queers by Ross Mactaggart
A Nice Dream by Doug Mcclure
Scabies Erotica by Roxy Monoxide
A Very Foolish Dream by Eamon Somers