“False Evidence: Murder Most Deadly 1″ by Jon Michaelsen— Romance and Mystery
Michaelsen, Jon. “False Evidence: Murder Most Deadly 1″, Loveyoudivine, 2012.
Romance and Mystery
Amos Lassen
One of the things I love about reviewing is meeting new propel even if only by their writing. Jon Michaelsen was kind enough to make a comment on a review I did of Lambda Award winner, David Lennon so I decided to find out more about him and sure enough, he is also a writer and has a new book coming out (which is the subject of this review). When you read as much as I do, it is always fun to read something from someone that you never have read before.
“False Evidence: Murder Most Deadly 1” is interesting in that it is both a romance and a mystery and Michaelsen has created a fascinating character in Kevin Mitchell, an accountant who is bored with his job. He dreams about and lusts after Tony, who lives in the building next to his and before Kevin realizes it, he is obsessed with him. Then Tony surprises Kevin by coming to his apartment, bruised and bloody. Kevin helps him and shows him to his bed. However, (there is always a “however”), something is strange and when the police arrive we learn that all is not what it appears to be. The police are searching for a violent murderer and here is where I have to be careful not to give anything away.
For whatever reason, Kevin feels like he is a nerd and can never find someone who is built and good-looking but of course he underestimates himself. In fact, I wanted to yell at him to get with it and that if Tony didn’t want him, he could come put his shoes under my bed (and then climb in).
I really like the way the erotic scenes were handled—they were just hot enough and were tastefully rendered and it is Kevin who propels this novel forward. We watch as he becomes more and more obsessed with Tony and as his obsession leads to danger. It seems as if his fantasy man actually possessed him and possession leads to danger in many cases. Kevin allowed this obsession to take him over completely. Michaelsen has written quite a book here and once I began I did not leave my chair until I closed the covers. I could not help but notice that this book is titled as “Murder Most Deadly 1” which means that there are more coming and I cannot wait to read them.
“BLUE BRIEFS”— Six Short Films About Relationships
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“Blue Briefs” Six Short Films About Relationships Amos Lassen I must start this review with a few words about the guy responsible for it. Rob Williams has come a very long way since I first reviewed him some five plus years ago when he released “Long-Term Relationship”. I remember thinking that this guy is going somewhere and he has done just that. Each and every film has been a success and he is one of the most important directors around today. He and partner created Guest House Film to release Rob’s opus but now they have expanded the company to the release of other films as well. Recently they released “Black Briefs”, short dark films and now follow up with “Blue Briefs”, short films about relationships. There are still more colors of the rainbow, so I am pretty sure that there will be more compilations. “Requited” (Sal Bardo, director) is about 20 year old Nicolas who has to make a decision—his best friend, Aaron, from high school is getting married and he has to decide whether or not to go to the wedding. Nicolas loves Aaron and in fact is in love with him but things went bad a few years ago when Nicolas kissed Aaron’s girlfriend. When Nicolas looks at Aaron, he sees who he remembers Aaron to be and not who he is today and in doing so Nicolas is destroying his own chance at happiness. Nicolas is faced with getting over something he never ever had. Nicolas has no idea of what to do and verbalizes how he feels. I wanted to tell him to shut up and think and begin to find a way to deal with the issue. “Boys Like You” (Daniel Armando, director) is about the boundaries of friendship. What does one do when he becomes intimate with his roommate—do things change or is the business forgotten? “We Once Were Tide” (Jason Bradbury, director) is a stunning short about friends and lovers, Anthony and Kyle, as they spend their last night together. Kyle moves away and Anthony is left to take of his mother who is terminally ill. Using the theme that we do not know what we have until we no longer have it, the film is an exceptional look at unspoken words and intimacy. The film is set on the Isle of Wight and it is almost claustrophobic as we spend their last twenty-four together with the guys. Looking after his mother has caused Anthony to become stressed and tense. Kyle, on the other hand, seems preoccupied with his camera and can’t be bothered with his boyfriend’s mother. We see the last moments of a relationship and what happens when boredom sets in. “Revolution” (Abdi Nazemian, director) is a coming-of-age story about Jack, a 16 year old Iranian who is growing up in Los Angeles. His traditional family will not be able to handle his sexuality and so he is left to deal with it alone and through his own revolution. “The In-Between” (Alain Hain, director) also explores boundaries. Jared has moved in with his boyfriend but is suspicious that he is not as loyal as he should be. Is he correct or is he dreaming is what is left for us to decide. “Frozen Roads” (Mark Panselli, director) tells of Balthazar, Christian and Lyla are best friends and they are facing adolescence in their rural Canadian town. It is their feelings for one another that could destroy everything and the theme here is what happens when we stop our hearts from running free. The film explores the emotional results of just that. Christian is beginning to accept his homosexuality while Balthazar is very uncomfortable with his own feelings. While at a local party, everything comes to a boiling point when the two find themselves alone together and can show each other how they feel. The question is how Balthazar will react when he acts on something he is afraid of. The problem is that if the boys allow themselves to partake of sex together, they know that there is no moral support for them as the town is very conservative. We move back to the days of childhood when sex was not an issue and happiness and fun were all that mattered and then forward to where the boys are now. There are numerous religious references here and Balthazar’s father is intolerant but voices no overt homophobia. The film does not end optimistically (but then life is not always optimistic). These are some of the most emotional short films that I have ever seen and the quality of the work is superior—each film is a gem and seeing them together is quite a treat. It has been quite a while since we have had a new compilation of short films and to me it is very important that we continue to do so. In my cases the only people who get to see sorts are those to go to festivals. We owe Rob Williams a great deal for making these available to us. I always feel that the director of a short film will one day give us the full length film that will define our lives and our lifestyle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmLia2xEjME
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The Not-So-Great ‘Dictator’— Sacha Baron Cohen’s New Film— Something to Offend Everyone
The Not-So-Great ‘Dictator’
In his Arab-despot farce, Sacha Baron Cohen tries too hard to get under the skin of Arabs, Jews, and Americans
Tasteless but by no means mindless, Sacha Baron Cohen is the most incendiary Jewish performance artist since Lenny Bruce. (You were thinking Jackie Mason?) Although his personal ideology would seem to be some form of left Zionism, his vaudeville travesties and gross-out pranks outrage nationalists of all persuasions and moralizers across the political spectrum.
The Nation’s film critic Stuart Klawans began his insightful review of Borat by comparing SBC (as the Brits refer to Baron Cohen perhaps to avoid the accidental conferring of a noble title) to “another English comedian sporting curly hair and a funny mustache,” namely Charles Chaplin. Vulgar and déclassé, popular culture personified, Chaplin was often mistaken for a Jew—not least by the Nazis, who used him as the poster child for the notorious “Ewige Jude” exhibit of 1938. The Dictator, which opens tomorrow, is in some ways, Baron Cohen’s version of Chaplin’s The Great [sic] Dictator, a remarkable would-be political intervention in which the world’s single most famous individual broke both Hollywood and political taboos to directly ridicule Hitler.
Yet SBC is a tough act to follow, even for SBC himself. Da Ali G Show was brilliant. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was pure genius, and Brüno extremely provocative. The Dictator, however, is merely—although at times very—funny. The spectacle of Admiral General Aladeen, the inanely grinning, alarmingly bearded “Mad Dog of Wadiya,” riding a blond camel down Fifth Avenue flanked by a Praetorian guard of militant houris is an image for the ages. Wadiya (as in “wadiya doin’?”), indeed.
The problem is that, unlike Ali G, Borat, and Brüno, Aladeen is less a force of nature than a scripted performance. Despite Baron Cohen’s insistence on giving interviews in character, The Dictator—directed, like Borat and Brüno, by Larry Charles—is entirely fictional. Da Baron has given up da shtick. Thus, save for a few quick shots in midtown Manhattan, he never mixes it up with unaware civilians and clueless celebs. The closest thing to a stooge in The Dictator is Anna Faris, required to play politically correct straight woman (a Williamsburg-living feminist health food advocate) to the antics of SBC’s wild and crazy North African tyrant.
An expert clown in her own right, Faris was expected to improvise in response to Baron Cohen’s behavior. The star never broke character during the shoot, she told the New York Times, although “I think he enjoyed playing the role.” Faris noted that SBC used his Aladeen persona to, in effect, direct her performance. Much of Baron Cohen’s “improv” involved bizarre insults (“hairy-pitted yeti,” “lesbian hobbit”) or threats of violence: “If I reacted in a way that displayed discomfort, it was like a bulldog with a bone, not letting go.” The strategy was to get under her skin—and to get under ours.
Dedicated to the late Kim Jung Il, haunted by the ghosts of Muammar Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein (whose alleged romance novel Zabibah and the King was at one point reported as the movie’s source), The Dictator seems, at least on the surface, a satire of oil-rich Arab tyrants. Admiral General Aladeen is an old school secular tyrant (what Marx called an “oriental despot”) and a Borat-style boor. He stages his own rigged Olympics (shooting rivals with the starter’s gun), wreaks havoc in Wadiya’s health clinics by changing the language such that his name becomes the word for both “positive” and “negative,” announces a nuclear weapons program, and cracks himself up when he insists that his enriched uranium is intended for peaceful “clean energy.” This last stunt attracts the attention of the United States, requiring Aladeen and his treacherous uncle Tamir (Ben Kingsley) to address the United Nations.
SBC gets maximum mileage out of a juicy Arab accent. But mainly he puts the “infantile” in the fantasy of infantile omnipotence. (Aladeen has a harem of paid super-celebrities—we see Megan Fox, who plays herself, leaving his bed, and refusing his offer to “cuddle,” because she has an early morning appointment with the Italian prime minister.) Just about every bodily function gets some airtime. Offensive ethnic stereotypes rule and questionable Jewish material is never far from the surface—first erupting when Aladeen amuses himself by playing a Munich Olympics videogame with sound effects that include shouts of “meshuganah” and “oy vey.” It’s a shocking joke that jolts one into realizing that the powerful opening sequence of Steven Spielberg’s Munich was also a form of entertainment and perhaps even inadvertent terrorist porn.
Although designed to offend Arab and Jew alike, The Dictator lacks the conceptual rigor of Borat or Brüno (which in its purposefully idiotic way attempted to negotiate the divide between Israelis and Palestinians). Borat, which allowed Baron Cohen to simultaneously play a crypto-Jewish outsider and a blithely offensive anti-Semite, managed to simultaneously exploit American friendliness and expose American nativism. Brüno burlesqued homophobia the way Borat did xenophobia.
Unlike Chaplin’s film, The Dictator is not really addressing a political crisis: The film has little relevance to either the Arab Spring or the conflict between Israel and Iran. Nor does Baron Cohen have any particular interest in employing the innocent double as a mouthpiece. Chaplin used the barber to deliver a sentimental anti-fascist speech at the end of The Great Dictator; in the The Dictator, it’s Aladeen who breaks (or at least cracks) the proscenium to make a blunt political statement—not about the Middle East but the inequities of American society.
SBC’s humor thrives on inadvertent disclosure and his essential subject is the Land of the Free. No less than the grotesque greenhorn Borat and over-civilized European Brüno, Aladeen is a stranger in our strange land. (“Twenty dollars a day for Wi-Fi,” he exclaims on checking into a posh midtown hotel. “And they call me an international criminal!”) Confined by a conventional narrative, The Dictator at times resembles the John Landis-Eddie Murphy fish-out-of-water comedies of the mid ‘80s, Trading Places and Coming to America—although SBC’s Aladeen is at once more hapless and offensive than Murphy. In the riotous aftermath of an anti-Aladeen demonstration, he’s rescued by fellow demonstrator Zoey (Faris) and taken to work in her Williamsburg organic food co-op. Patronized by self-important bobos and staffed by Third World political ’fugees, the place is basically a barrel full of fish for Baron Cohen to shoot at will. Alternately crude and clueless, Aladeen even enters into a sort of relationship with Zoey. Weary of his importuning, she encourages him to masturbate; the ensuing orgasmic epiphany (compete with interpolated shot from Forrest Gump) improves his personality … but only slightly.
The gross-out set pieces are memorable (Aladeen “helping” to “deliver” a baby on the food co-op floor, losing his cellphone in the birth canal and bellowing, “It’s a girl—where’s the trash can?”) But The Dictator basically exists as a frame for two notable dialogue-driven scenes. The first is Aladeen’s defense of dictatorship and explication of its benefits, in terms mirroring an Occupy Wall Street analysis of American society. The second, far trickier to parse, has Aladeen and his nuclear expert Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas) taking a tourist helicopter ride over Manhattan.
High above the city, the two Wadiyans engage in an extended conversation in their native language—translated in subtitles—that, replete with references to the Porsche model 911 and various New York landmarks, sends their fellow passengers into freak-out hysteria of immanent terror attack. Thus, only a few weeks after The Avengers orchestrated a comic-book version of 9/11 as its great finale to awesome success (and, as noted elsewhere, remarkably little comment), Baron Cohen evokes the catastrophe with a complex linguistic gag. The secret language Aladeen and Nadal are speaking is in large part Hebrew; the scene manages to parody both Arabophobia as well as the conspiratorial assertion that the attack on the World Trade Center was plotted by Jews. (Later, in case we missed the point, the two Wadiyans engage in a Yiddish slanging riff.)
Like all true stars Baron Cohen resolves contradictions: Brüno was at once a narcissistic celebrity and a frantic wannabe; Borat was both a crypto Jew and a rabid Jew-baiter. SBC himself could be described as an amoral moralist, a shy exhibitionist, and an equal opportunity bigot—although it’s worth noting that, like Borat, The Dictator is free of Muslim baiting. As a performer, Baron Cohen is more calculatedly offensive than Howard Stern and yet so stupidly “innocent” he manages to be lovable in a way that Stern could never be. In a final gag, Zoey turns out to be “Jewish” too. The joke’s on Aladeen—and on us.
“INVISIBLE INK”— Three Short Films– Exposing Secrets
“Invisible Ink”
Three Short Films—Exposing Secrets
Amos Lassen
Sometimes we think we know everything about pasts only to find out later that this is not true. This is what we see in the three interconnected short films here. The stories deal with love, art, family and how we live (although we see others’ lives, we can certainly identify with them).
Anna Brin is a designer who is obsessive compulsive and has a very interesting family history. Her gay brother is in the hospital dying and when she is not visiting him, she goes to a Chinese restaurant where she reads the fortune cookies and let them determine how she shall live. When the fortunes she receives begin to turn ominous, she uncovers family secrets that threaten her carefully constructed reality.
Catherine is an elderly writer and a widow who discovers that her husband might have had an affair that she knew nothing about. She is forced to decide which is more important — having been loved or deceived.
Justin has an advice column that he writes under the name Alice and he spends his life searching for truth and honesty in his relationships with others. He meets a nice and good-looking guy in a coffee shop and their first date went well. (We don’t see it). They end up in bed together and the two seem to get along well aside from the fact that the new boyfriend does not like public displays of affections. Then a bit later Justin receives a call for advice addressed to his real name that only a few people know. As an optimist, Justin insists the truth can fix any problem but when the letter comes, he ends up facing a more dangerous truth than he could have imagined.
While the script and the acting are not the best, we never really understand where this movie is going but the heart of the film tends us to overlook its faults.
Stacey D’Erasmo and Brian Leung named Lambda Literary Foundation 2012 Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize Winners
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – May 15, 2012
Contact: Tony Valenzuela, Executive Director (323) 366-2104
tvalenzuela@lambdaliterary.org
Stacey D’Erasmo and Brian Leung named
2012 Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize Winners
Los Angeles, CA – The Lambda Literary Foundation, the country’s leading national nonprofit organization for the LGBT literary community, is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2012 Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize. This year the prize recognizes Stacey D’Erasmo (A Seahorse Year) and Brian Leung (Take Me Home).
The award, made possible by James Duggins, PhD, consists of two cash prizes of $5000 and is unprecedented in its category as well as its value. To qualify recipients must have published at least three novels or two novels and substantial additional literary work such as poetry, short stories, or essays. The prizes will be handed out on June 4, 2012 at the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards ceremony in New York City.
This year’s judges were Kim Brinster, Michael Lassell and Rachel Pepper. Commenting on the 2012 prize recipients, they stated that Stacey D’Erasmo and Brian Leung “create lyrical and innovative works of fiction, often grappling with themes of identity, alienation, and family ties. Yet, both also create novels and short stories which are subtly understated works of excellence. We believe both writers are worthy of community recognition for creating works which incorporate multi-faceted LGBT characters and who are themselves often involved in the mentoring and teaching of a new generation of LGBT writers. We recognize D’Erasmo and Leung for their fine contributions to contemporary LGBT literature and encourage them to continue creating works which cross boundaries, yet remain true to the spirit of this prize by embracing and celebrating their own identities as LGBT authors and that of their LGBT readers.”
“We couldn’t be more pleased to honor these two stellar writers,” said Tony Valenzuela, LLF’s Executive Director. “We’re tremendously impressed with the novels that D’Erasmo and Leung have already published and enthusiastically look forward to their future works.”
To learn more about the Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize visit LLF’s website.
STACEY D’ERASMO holds a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.A. from New York University in English and American Literature. She was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University from 1995-1997. She is the author of the novels Tea, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; A Seahorse Year, which was named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday, and won both a Lambda Literary Award and a Ferro-Grumley Award; and The Sky Below, which was reviewed on the cover of The New York Times Book Review. She is the recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. Her essays, features, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Boston Review, Bookforum, and Ploughshares, among other publications. She is an assistant professor of writing at Columbia University.
BRIAN LEUNG is the author of the short story collection, World Famous Love Acts (Sarabande, 2004), a Lambda Literary finalist and winner of both the Mary McCarthy Award for short fiction and The Asian American Literary Award for Fiction. His novels are Lost Men (Random House, 2008) and Take Me Home (HarperCollins, 2010) winner of the 2011 Willa Award for Historical Fiction. His poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction appear in numerous publications, including the essay, “The Seismology of Love and Letters,” forthcoming in Who’s Yer Daddy? Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners (University of Wisconsin Press, Fall 2012). Leung currently serves on the LGBT Advisory Board at the University of Louisville where he is the Director of Creative Writing.
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The Lambda Literary Foundation nurtures, celebrates, and preserves LGBT literature through programs that honor excellence, promote visibility and encourage development of emerging writers. LLF’s programs include: the Lambda Literary Awards, the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, LGBT Writers in Schools, and our web magazine, The Lambda Literary Review, at www.LambdaLiterary.org. For more information call (323) 366-2104 or e-mail admin@lambdaliterary.org.
“Voices Drifting from the Wilderness” by Walter Beck
“Pride, Walter.”
“Running in Bed” by Jeffrey Sharlach— New York City, 1977
Sharlach, Jeffrey.“Running in Bed”, Two Harbors Press, 2012.
New York City, 1977
Amos Lassen
There was a time, in the 1970’s, after Stonewall, that gay men ran almost wild. They were full of youth and exhilaration and freedom was theirs. But then, there was a price to be paid and it is a price we are still paying. The 70’s were filled with highs and lows. It was then that being gay was considered a disease but the attitude was that if we were sick, we were going to enjoy it. Then came the 80’s and AIDS and everything changed.
For those of us who lived through the two decades, this is a very personal book and we can find ourselves in the characters here.
We meet Josh Silver, a recent college graduate who goes to his first job at a prestigious advertising agency on Madison Avenue where he was presented with his own office and secretary and a good. Gay life in New York was like a smorgasbord for him especially since he had convinced himself that once he got into the “real” world, he would stop dreaming about men and lead a “normal” life. He even went to a psychiatrist to become “reprogrammed” but there was too much temptation and he finally decide that it was time to accept himself for who he was. Being gay was one thing but Josh wanted more—he wanted to be in love but to reach that point he had to go through a good many men. When he does find love, he does so just as the 80’s ushered in the age of AIDS and ended the promiscuity of the prior decade. Suddenly everything seemed so temporary and fragile with lives cut short and at their prime.
There are not many of us left who can remember what it was like back then as we were on a tightrope between life and death.
This is Sharlach’s first novel and it is a beauty as it takes us to a time that will never be again. In the beginning, Josh was fine—a co-worker and his partner mentored him and he even met someone for a serious relationship. When AIDS came into his life, it took away many of his friends and here is the strength of the book. Using the themes of love and loss, we see a community (and individuals) at the crossroads. Many today do not understand what it is like not to accept yourself because you are gay. Today it is so easy to be gay and the only ones that have troubles with us also have troubles with everyone else.
Once Josh accepted himself, he jumped right into gay life—visiting bookstore and bars, cruising Christopher Street and going to Fire Island. The men came and went until a hunky hustler by the name of Tommy Perez came into is life and stole his heart. This is our story and the story of New York although the very same story happened everywhere. What sets this apart from other similar books is the way the story was told. The characters are so real that I expected to look up from the pages and see them in my living room. I actually missed them when I finished the book.
We have had a great many books about life in the time of AIDS so do we need another? I say there are never too many well-written books and here is one that ranks with the best of them. For those of us who lived through this period this is both a joyous and sad reminder told beautifully and realistically.
“STREET DAYS” (“QUCHIS DGEEBI”)— Drugs in Georgia
“Street Days” (“Quchis dgeebi”)
Drugs in Georgia
Amos Lassen
In Tbilisi, Georgia, Checkie, a 45 year old heroin addict is arrested and given two days to take Ika, a 16 year old into the world of drugs so that the police can blackmail his politician father. If Checkie agrees to do so, he will be paid and if not he will go to prison. Checkie’s life continues to get worse daily and now he has to decide if he is willing to sell out the son of a former classmate. Checkie has not much of a life; he loiters on the street in front of the school where he was once a student and where his son now studies. His wife struggles to make ends meet and she tries to understand her husband and his lack of interest in the family. However when the police tell Checkie their plan, husband and wife come together.
It seems that everything in Georgia has a price including relationships between people. Checkie does not want Ika to get into the kind of life he has led even though he needs the money he would make selling him drugs. Directed by Levan Koguashvili, we get a look at the absurdity of life as well as at its dangers. He sees the humor in the extremes to which young people will go and this provides some really funny sequences.
The film is presented in documentary style and we feel the worlds colliding. The nature of forgetfulness is emphasized. There is little history in the countries that were once part of the Soviet Union so there is nothing from which the citizens can draw inspiration. The youngsters look to the west.
The acting is overall excellent and the film keeps the viewer mesmerized. This is an interesting introduction to life and Georgia and this is a film you do not want to miss.
“THE TENANTS” (“Or Inquilinos”)— Tranquility Gone
“The Tenants” (“Os Inquilinos”)
Tranquility Gone
Amos Lassen
Three very mysterious men move into a suburb of Sao Paolo and couple that live there soon are obsessed with their activity and the violence that begins to occur on their home turf. The movie looks at fair and fascination and how the two intertwine. The performances are uniformly excellent.
Valter is a night school whose life was okay until the three young criminals moved in next door to him. He began to feel like a prisoner in his own home and Valter realized that he was not alone in the way he felt and tension arose throughout the neighborhood. Director Sergio Bianchi shows what happens when there is urban violence and how a peaceful atmosphere can become one of destruction.
Valter tries to improve himself by going to night school and when his wife tells him that the new neighbors do not work and that they are probably criminals who bring women home all of the time. Then the neighbors want to fight with Valter who works all day long and studies at night so that he can take care of his wife and two children. He has not been able to sleep since the strangers moved in.
“The Tenants” is an original movie that shows the life of poor honest people that have to live with criminals in their communities. The film is both an ironic and acid exposition of this social problem that seems to go unresolved without any help from the government. Valter is comes close to a nervous breakdown with the problems created by his new neighbors while he is exploited by his boss and tries to improve his life through the studies. Further, he has bonded with his house, which was built with the work of his parents and therefore is of a great importance for him. The conclusion is cruel and it is impossible not to feel sorry for the family.
”Wilde Stories 2012: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction” edited by Steve Berman— Our Annual Paranormal Anthology
Berman, Steve (editor).”Wilde Stories 2012: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction”, Lethe Press, 2012.
Our Annual Paranormal Anthology
Amos Lassen
I always look forward to “Wilde Stories” because it is always such a pleasure. Bringing together established and new writers, the anthology always has something for everyone. This year’s book includes Alex Jeffers (Author), Justin Torres (Author), K. M. Ferebee (Author), Richard Bowes (Author), Sam Sommer (Author), Ted Infinity (Author), Nabil Hijazi (Author), Joel Lane (Author), Mat Joiner (Author), Kristopher Reisz (Author), Tom Cardamone (Author), Richard E. Gropp (Author), Lee Thomas (Author), Stellan Thorne (Author), Chris Barzak (Author), Ellen Kushner (Author), Steve Berman (Author, Editor).
I love that the diversity of our community is reflected in the diversity of the stories and we have a story about the Tel Aviv of the future to one about hitchhikers, another about dragons and yet another about a spambot. Whether the story amazes or just pulls us in, each of the fifteen entries entertains. The one thing that they all have in common is that they all deal with remembering the past through the eyes of gay men.
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