I NEED TO COME OUT OF THE CLOSET! ANYONE ELSE?

[ny2222]

So, this is really hard but I am going to do it. I HAVE KIND OF GOTTIN INTO GAY NOVELS. There I said it. WOW that feels good. Please don’t hate me for this. The last few years I needed a distraction and low and behold Gay Novels came along. Some thing where I really didn't need to engage the mind much. Most are pretty poor, short, and to the point so to speak and I think I have gotten over them….for the most part

There are some that I have kind of liked in a deeper way. No they certainly are not prize winning novels but they weren’t too bad.

Here are a few that I would put in that category.

 

Most recently re-read The Captive Prince 1 and 2 (third is on the way) by CS Pacat. Adventure type book ( I like advendure/Sci Fi stuff). Written pretty well. Good story line. Good characters.

http://www.amazon.com/Captive-Prince-Book-One-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00I3REIHI/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1453067747&sr=8-1

 

Then there are the “classic” King Series by Edward Manning, probably the best of this type of book

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007E558OW/ref=series_dp_rw_ca_1

 

And a third would be Thread of Deepest Black by Finn Marlow.

http://www.amazon.com/Thread-Deepest-Black-Finn-Marlowe-ebook/dp/B004G5Z6I6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1453068057&sr=1-1&keywords=ThreaD+OF+A+DEEPEST+BLACK

There are a lot of Gay shape-shifter books which I am not into but this one was unique. If BDSM was like it is between the two main characters in this novel, you could probably get me interested.

 

So anyone else going to come out of the closet?

Anyone else have a book they “would recommend” J

[+ friendofsheila]

The closest I can get is reading a few of those gushy, Gordon Merrick novels long ago. Inconsequential, but mildly fulfilling.

[amused1]

In the early 80s I read "The Movie Lover", a nicely written, romanic-ish, escapist novel with some lol dialog. Still remember a line "... whose voice on warm summer nights could call bats from miles around." I doubt its in print any more.

[MikeyGMin]

This is too funny. I have only owned up to this guilty pleasure to a few of my closest friends. You are right that they are completely light reading, but after a day of thinking, it's nice just to relax. I signed up for Kindle Unlimited because I was going through so many of them.

 

Yes, they are fluff pieces but I highly recommend the "Something Like Summer" series by Jay Bell. It's a good but fairly typical story of Ben and Tim's young love and difficulty coming out. It's told from Ben's first person perspective and Tim does not come off particularly well. He ends up breaking Ben's heart.

 

However, this is where it got interesting for me, the next book in the series "Something Like Winter" is the same story told from Tim's perspective. It's different enough that it doesn't get boring, but I thought it was really interesting to see where Tim went and what he struggled with.

 

I understand your shame. It's like stuffing your brain with cotton candy, but I always have had a thing for sweets.

[Kuriousity]

What frosts my weenie about a lot of Kindle gay fiction is that it is written by straight women....petty, I know.

[MikeyGMin]

Yes it is... And you can tell. Especially the sex scenes.

[Kuriousity]

They attempt to romanticize it up......we gay men do not do much romance when it comes to the Dirty Dirty Nasty Nasty--let's be honest....

[Bovary]

This is too funny. I have only owned up to this guilty pleasure to a few of my closest friends. You are right that they are completely light reading, but after a day of thinking, it's nice just to relax. I signed up for Kindle Unlimited because I was going through so many of them.

 

Yes, they are fluff pieces but I highly recommend the "Something Like Summer" series by Jay Bell. It's a good but fairly typical story of Ben and Tim's young love and difficulty coming out. It's told from Ben's first person perspective and Tim does not come off particularly well. He ends up breaking Ben's heart.

 

However, this is where it got interesting for me, the next book in the series "Something Like Winter" is the same story told from Tim's perspective. It's different enough that it doesn't get boring, but I thought it was really interesting to see where Tim went and what he struggled with.

 

I understand your shame. It's like stuffing your brain with cotton candy, but I always have had a thing for sweets.

 

I don't mind admitting I love Jay Bell, but he's pretty romantic. If you don't mind edgy but still romantic (and incredibly hot), you might try Santino Hassell's Sutphin Blvd. and Sunset Park.

[MikeyGMin]

I don't mind admitting I love Jay Bell, but he's pretty romantic. If you don't mind edgy but still romantic (and incredibly hot), you might try Santino Hassell's Sutphin Blvd. and Sunset Park.

 

Thanks. These look interesting. I don't mind dark stories and there doesn't always have to be a happy ending. (But is preferred.) I just can't relate to BDSM, so anything along those lines just loses my interest. I'm always looking for an author that can walk the line between sex from a male perspective and pure porn. I love porn but would rather get it from a website.

[Bovary]

Thanks. These look interesting. I don't mind dark stories and there doesn't always have to be a happy ending. (But is preferred.) I just can't relate to BDSM, so anything along those lines just loses my interest. I'm always looking for an author that can walk the line between sex from a male perspective and pure porn. I love porn but would rather get it from a website.

That's definitely Santino Hassell. :-)

[Rudynate]

So, this is really hard but I am going to do it. I HAVE KIND OF GOTTIN INTO GAY NOVELS. There I said it. WOW that feels good. Please don’t hate me for this. The last few years I needed a distraction and low and behold Gay Novels came along. Some thing where I really didn't need to engage the mind much. Most are pretty poor, short, and to the point so to speak and I think I have gotten over them….for the most part

There are some that I have kind of liked in a deeper way. No they certainly are not prize winning novels but they weren’t too bad.

Here are a few that I would put in that category.

 

Most recently re-read The Captive Prince 1 and 2 (third is on the way) by CS Pacat. Adventure type book ( I like advendure/Sci Fi stuff). Written pretty well. Good story line. Good characters.

http://www.amazon.com/Captive-Prince-Book-One-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00I3REIHI/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1453067747&sr=8-1

 

Then there are the “classic” King Series by Edward Manning, probably the best of this type of book

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007E558OW/ref=series_dp_rw_ca_1

 

And a third would be Thread of Deepest Black by Finn Marlow.

http://www.amazon.com/Thread-Deepest-Black-Finn-Marlowe-ebook/dp/B004G5Z6I6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1453068057&sr=1-1&keywords=ThreaD+OF+A+DEEPEST+BLACK

There are a lot of Gay shape-shifter books which I am not into but this one was unique. If BDSM was like it is between the two main characters in this novel, you could probably get me interested.

 

So anyone else going to come out of the closet?

Anyone else have a book they “would recommend” J

 

A long time ago, when I was in graduate school, as a practicum, I did much of the cataloging of a major gift to the Gay and Lesbian Center of the San Francisco Public Library. The gift was the Barbara Grier collection. Barbara Grier was a co-founder of Naiad Press, a major publisher of Lesbian literature. This collection she donated comprised thousands and thousand of different items. Included in it were just about every piece of gay fiction that had been published up to that time - yes, every single one of the Gordon Merrick novels, etc. etc. Most of it was pathetic, it was so bad. I would sit there paging through these novels, wondering, "Who writes this stuff?"

 

To me, about the only pieces of gay fiction that were worth the paper they were printed on were "Faggots" and "Dancer from the Dance."

[+ glennnn]

I'm not the least bit guilty about my addiction to gay novels. I read all types and enjoy a good, historical, contemporary or mystery novel as long as the plot and writing are good and there are some hot, detailed sex scenes. Reading for pleasure is supposed to be enjoyable. Don't beat yourself up. Try anything by Josh Lanyon. He has an excellent mystery series that starts with Fatal Shadows. I've also noticed that many sexy gay romances are written by women, who do pretty well, actually. I always wonder how they do their research about how it feels to have a warm tongue slide across the head of a hard cock. LOL.

[Marlfox]

NY, I share your shame I've read the CS Pacat books and look forward to the third coming out in February. I like series and recommend Kora Knight's Upending Tad books (6 volumes), funny, romantic and hot, and KJ Charles A Charm of Magpies series. Not sure how many volumes, but fantasy based. And hot!

I was initially skeptical as these types of books seem to be written mostly by woman, but if they want to write dirty, why not? I just wish my prostate was as magical as the prostates of their characters are!

[+ Gar1eth]

I don't make a habit of it-really I don't. About the only author I've read is Poppy Dennison. She has 4 full length novels in series about wizards, weres, and vampires. They are called The Triad Series. Here's the entire collection on Kindle.

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01A50F39W/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1453093230&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=poppy+dennison&dpPl=1&dpID=513RNBnzMSL&ref=plSrch

 

 

And then she has two or three other short novels about a different set of weres.

 

The weres are all hunky in these novels and the vampires ain't half bad either.

 

But I haven't searched out any other gay authors. Reading about hunky guys for me just makes the torture of not having a hunky guy even worse.

 

It's the same reason I don't really watch gay themed movies/TVand never wanted to watch Looking or Tales of the City. I'd rather watch a straight love story. Then I can be upset about not being straight which is different than the upset I feel about not having a hot guy of my own.

 

Gman

[swallows22]

Always the "Front Runner".

[rvwnsd]

There was that series of gay detective novels back in the late 1990's/early 2000's. I think the protagonist was an LAPD detective, maybe an LA Sheriff's detective. They weren't too bad. Can't get into the gay romance. I tend to read mostly non-fiction, anyway.

[+ Gar1eth]

Anyone ever read anything by the author Peter McGehee? He was originally from Arkansas but eventually moved to Canada and then San Francisco. He died in 1991 from AIDS. I've never read any of his books. But I was acquainted with a few members of his family back before I was anywhere near the opening of a closet doorframe.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_McGehee

 

Gman

[ny2222]

Thanks for reply’s guys. I don’t feel so alone now. It is good to come out lol. And appreciate some of the suggestions and will have to try them out

Agree with the “written by women” thing. For me the best ones are written by men. I kind of get turned off by the “babe” thing. I don’t think I have ever called a guy “babe” but that could be a topic for another thread lol. One female author that does pretty well is Amy Lane. A few of her books are pretty good, with a good story line and characters and she writes better than most.

 

MickeyG: I totally agree with you about the cotton candy/fluff. But sometimes that is just what you need. I find my taste in movies has gone that way also. Too much drama in my life as it is. Kind of look for fluff on my off time lol. Will look into the "Something Like Summer" series by Jay Bell series.

 

Yea Marlfox I really am looking forward to that last book in the CS Pascat series. You just really want to see how the author is going to make it turn out cause it really doesn’t look like it is going to go well for those two. Will look into the others you mention also. Thanks

 

RV: I think the ones you are thinking of might be the Josh Lanyon that others were talking about. Pretty good reads although I haven’t gotten into them too much….YET

 

Just one other I forgot about. The Cranberry Hush by Ben Monopoli. For me a really good read as it seems I have surrounded myself most of my life with straight guys. Again written by a guy. Bittersweet in a way but well written. Although I have been smart enough not to pine over my straight friends, this was a pretty good read. Re-enforced that it is ok to be really close to straight friends.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QZ9OWA?keywords=the%20cranberry%20hush&qid=1453105555&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

 

Dang it feels good to be out of the closet and among fellow readers lol

[+ Gar1eth]

Thanks for reply’s guys. I don’t feel so alone now. It is good to come out lol. And appreciate some of the suggestions and will have to try them out

Agree with the “written by women” thing. For me the best ones are written by men. I kind of get turned off by the “babe” thing. I don’t think I have ever called a guy “babe” but that could be a topic for another thread lol. One female author that does pretty well is Amy Lane. A few of her books are pretty good, with a good story line and characters and she writes better than most.

 

MickeyG: I totally agree with you about the cotton candy/fluff. But sometimes that is just what you need. I find my taste in movies has gone that way also. Too much drama in my life as it is. Kind of look for fluff on my off time lol. Will look into the "Something Like Summer" series by Jay Bell series.

 

Yea Marlfox I really am looking forward to that last book in the CS Pascat series. You just really want to see how the author is going to make it turn out cause it really doesn’t look like it is going to go well for those two. Will look into the others you mention also. Thanks

 

RV: I think the ones you are thinking of might be the Josh Lanyon that others were talking about. Pretty good reads although I haven’t gotten into them too much….YET

 

Just one other I forgot about. The Cranberry Hush by Ben Monopoli. For me a really good read as it seems I have surrounded myself most of my life with straight guys. Again written by a guy. Bittersweet in a way but well written. Although I have been smart enough not to pine over my straight friends, this was a pretty good read. Re-enforced that it is ok to be really close to straight friends.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QZ9OWA?keywords=the%20cranberry%20hush&qid=1453105555&ref_=sr_1_1&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

 

Dang it feels good to be out of the closet and among fellow readers lol

 

 

I'm a reader. Just not particularly a gay fiction reader. I mean I'm gay. But not most of the fiction I read. Right now I'm re-reading some Anne McCaffrey books. I'm not sure I noticed it so much as an adolescent. But in many of her books, woman are 'taken' against their will. They are often virgins and either in love with the guys who did it beforehand or fall in love after. And we all know how true to live those scenarios are.

[+ Gar1eth]

They attempt to romanticize it up......we gay men do not do much romance when it comes to the Dirty Dirty Nasty Nasty--let's be honest....

 

While I'm not saying I'd (always:rolleyes:) light candles or throw around flower petals, if I ever had a real relationship I think I'd be more on the romantic side. That being said-I can barely get laid-or do tops lay others? I always get that confused. Grammar aside for whatever tops do, the chances of me ever having a significant relationship are in the realm of slim and none. And with my increasing age they are becoming even slimmer and none-er.

 

Gman

[LADoug1]

You might be interested in author David Leavitt especially "A Place I've Never Been" and "The Lost Language Of Cranes".

[+ poolboy48220]

What frosts my weenie about a lot of Kindle gay fiction is that it is written by straight women....petty, I know.

On the flip side, there was gay man writing romance fiction for women (the racks and racks of books that featured Fabio or some clone on the cover). One of his editors, reading one of his sex scenes, had to take him aside and tell him women do not have prostates.

[+ poolboy48220]

The closest I can get is reading a few of those gushy, Gordon Merrick novels long ago. Inconsequential, but mildly fulfilling.

I read a lot of the Gordon Merrick novels before I came out. I mentioned somewhere else that "An Idol for Others" was in the (small) book section at Hudson's (a somewhat-swanky Detroit department store that's been bought and renamed so many times I don't know what it's called any more), and I'd hang out there & read them while Mom & the sisters were shopping. I bought a few for myself once I had my own place. I read a few of them all the way through, but most, I've just skimmed through and read the sex scenes. Peter & Charlie's first encounter and the "measuring session", and a couple of the scenes in "The Great Urge Downward" are still favorite reads.

[+ quoththeraven]

What frosts my weenie about a lot of Kindle gay fiction is that it is written by straight women....petty, I know.

 

1. If it's well-written and reasonably accurate as to physiology, why does it matter? (I acknowledge that there are sometimes reasons to quibble with some of the psychology and ways in which romance is thought of, but it's also true that not all men are unsentimental and unromantic, just as not all women are sentimental and love traditional romance.)

2. The female readership may be predominantly straight, although there are no good or definitive studies, but a not insignificant number of the most well-known, prolific authors identify as queer (bisexual, lesbian, trans or genderqueer, if the specifics matter). Ones I can think of off the top of my head:

 

K.A. Mitchell (lesbian)

Harper Fox (lesbian)

Josephine Myles (bisexual)

Alex Beecroft (genderqueer)

Erastes (bisexual)

Aleksandr Voinov (trans)

James Buchanan (trans)

 

I haven't read all these authors, and I don't feel the same about all the ones they've read, but Mitchell, Beecroft and Fox are among the best there are. I enjoy Myles' stories, just not as much as the others; Beecroft writes mostly historical, while I prefer contemporary, and leans toward the more descriptive/flowery end of the spectrum of writing style.

 

CS Pacat is a woman. So is Josh Lanyon.

 

But an even more important point is this: there is no longer an impenetrable barrier between gay and straight love stories. Increasingly, romance novelists are writing so-called "mixed" series: ones where some of the couples are m/f and some are m/m or f/f. Where one character is bisexual and doesn't feel that changes because of the gender of the person they're with. They are writing trans characters in relationships with cis characters, both same and oppsite sex. They are writing asexual characters. They're writing genderqueer characters.

 

One New York Times and USA Today bestselling writer is currently working on a manuscript about a character who heads a tech firm remarkably similar to Apple who is as irascible as Steve Jobs and as gay as Tim Cook but who has a son and is closeted. She's already written a secondary f/f romance in one of her historical novels set in Victorian England. She has tweeted her support of gay rights, an analysis of the opinions in the Obergefell case (as a former clerk to Justice Kennedy, she has insight into this most of us don't have), and told people that if her stance on social issues bothers them, they would not like her books.

 

This expansion is driven by female and trans male writers, editors and publishers, not by cis men. I think it constitutes social progress. Maybe you don't.

[+ quoththeraven]

To answer the question:

 

There's general gay fiction that skews literary with mostly unhappy endings and not a lot of on-page sex and then there's gay or m/m romance wth happy endings (both kinds) and a predominance of on-page sex. I've read more of the latter and tend to prefer it if for no other reason than symbolism: see, queer people can have and are deserving of love and happiness, too. That's still something of a fucking revolutionary message and is part of the reason I prefer to read female writers. They're committed to the happy ending. So far, too many of the male writers I read seem defensive or brittle or write in an unadorned Hemingway-influenced style that gets boring after awhile.

 

That said, here's a smattering of both, starting with cismale gay men:

 

Tales of the City and sequels, Armistead Maupin

Boystown and other books by Marshall Thornton

Afflicted, Brandon Shire

Victor J. Banis, who wrote a lot of pulp of varying quality back in the day

Jeff Earno (don't remember titles)

Anything by Eric Arvin

Wade Kelly

 

Of literary novels, I tried reading Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming Pool Library but didn't like it well enough to finish.

 

There are other men like Rick Reed, TJ Klune, Sean Michaels and Damon Suede who write genre but whose books I haven't read. (I read a sample of Suede's Hot Head and decided not to buy the book; Klune was accused of plagiarizing his first novel from a movie, fwiw.)

 

Women:

 

Jordan Castillo Price, my favorite gay romance/fiction author. The first couple of books in her best-known work, the Psycops series, are weaker because they're among her first pro novels. (She started out writing fanfiction.) But the rest of the series doesn't nake sense without them.

K.A. Mitchell - don't read if you don't like reading explicit sex; however, her books are far from stroke fiction.

Amy Lane - queen of angst. For me, the quality of her books varies, but Chase in Shadow, whose depiction of how gay porn is made may be as fictional as all depictions of sex work in romance novels (for one thing, the performers all live in the same geographic area), is one of the most emotionally intense books I've ever read. There are others I like too.

Harper Fox

J.L. Merrow

P.D. Singer

Josh Lanyon (quality varies, but the best books are among the best in the genre. I'm not as fond of the Adrien English series as everyone else is.)

Kaje Harper

Heidi Cullinan, although I find her ambition/good intent often exceeds her reach.

Tamara Allen (historical, no explicit sex).

 

Ouside the romance genre, I recommend Cecilia Tan's coming of age series about an 80s rock musician, Daron's Guitar Chronicles. This also has no explicit sex, which is weird, because Tan mostly writes m/f erotica and erotic romance.

 

Litfic/gay fiction: Anything by Mary Renault, herself a lesbian. I've only read The Charioteer. That Renault is welcome and is thought of as an icon of gay fiction (just as Radclyffe is an icon of lesbian fiction for and by lesbians) whereas later female writers are not welcome says something.

 

The ladies write about group and multiple sex (there's a subgenre called menage that is mfm (no sexual contact between the men) or mmf (sexual contact between everyone)). While most books end with a committed couple or trio without suggesting that other people might be welcome to join in on occasion, that's as much a function of a desire for narrative finality as an adherence to monogamous norms. The sex in their books is sometimes awkward but is mostly joyous and transformative. There is less of a disconnect between the physical and the emotional than I see in books written by men. (Also true in the mystery genre in my experience.)

 

Also see these posts in the Book Forum? thread. I particularly recommend Joseph Hansen (excellent writer, interesting and well put together mysteries) and Richard Stevenson (laugh out loud funny and more sexual content than is the norm without being anything like a stroke book).

Edited January 18, 2016 by quoththeraven