HIM (NSFW)

by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy

Jamie Canning and Ryan Wesley are both star NCAA hockey players about to graduate and go pro when they meet at the Frozen Four. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since they graduated Elites hockey camp after six years of being best friends, only for Wes to torpedo their friendship over what Jamie saw as just some drunken idiocy and Wes saw as a selfish plan to manipulate the man he loved into bed with him.

Seeing Jamie again is like a hit of a drug Wes had been clean of for four years, and he can’t go back to being sober. So he signs up to join Jamie coaching at Elites over the summer and everything changes.

THIS IS ADULT EROTICA. You have been warned. Other CW include homophobia, hockey-typical misogyny, failure to pass the Bechdel test, and possibly a slight degree of difficulty with suspension of disbelief, depending on how much you know about hockey.

But it's so good. I listened to the Audible version in as close to one sitting as I could manage, and promptly bought the sequel on Kindle. It's very much like an E-rated Check, Please! fanfic, complete with porn with plot, the phrase "toed into my shoes", and friends to lovers. So much so that I had to carefully examine the personalities of Jamie and Wes for traces of the CP main characters, but there's insufficient anxiety. :p

Buy it on Kobo using this link to sign up for Kobo and you can support a gay bookstore with your purchase!

5/5

An Accident of Stars and A Tyranny of Queens

by Foz Meadows

Okay, screw that, this is my favorite author now. I found Foz through her fanfiction, which quickly became my favorite thing to read over and over, so much so that I recorded it so I could also reread it in the car and while falling asleep. And then she turned out to write published books, and goddamn her worldbuilding is amazing.

There's plenty more to read, but I started with An Accident of Stars and its sequel: Saffron makes a snap decision and jumps through a hole in reality, only to end up in Kena, where magic is real, long hair is political, marriages are polyamorous, and a political plot to depose the king ties together a frightened queen with a temper, a feisty apprentice with the key to salvation, and the weary worldwalker who put the king on the throne in the first place. Furthermore, it's linguistics geek wank and has a trans girl as the love interest.

I have the privilege of being friends with her on Discord, and she's a lovely person and also genderqueer.

A slam poetry chapbook about my story with mental illness. Trigger warnings for depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, abuse, dissociation, graphically described self-harm, suicidal ideation.

The Dark Lord Beethoven

Happy New Year, I dropped an album

"But Phoenix," you say, "You're a writer! Why are you investing time and energy into music?"
"Wrong," say I, "all I have ever claimed to be was an artist."
It's not a very long album, and it's not a very good one, but it's about how much 2017 has sucked and also been full of nazis and if I put it off any longer to get better or write more songs, I'm going to lose all my motivation.
Release albums song by song like a fanfic 2k18.

The Tracks

Dark Lord Beethoven
Inspired by my then-girlfriend when I texted them in excitement about how I had just taught myself to play Fur Elise on the guitar by converting the piano music to guitar music. They were watching Dark Lord Funk and were more focused on that. I said, "But Beethoven!" to which they replied, "Dark Lord Beethoven?" and the rest is history.
Well, not quite. The obvious rationale for Dark Lord Beethoven was a critique of intellectual culture and the impression that it's uneducated, stupid people who are the problem and not our peers. Okay, 'obvious' may be the wrong word here. Moving on.

The Saga of 2017
The title song of the album. "This is a hopeless rage of writing a song 'cause it's all you can do." #relatable, I hope. A list of complaints about bad things that happened in 2017. I think it's catchy, as it keeps getting stuck in my head.

Battle Dance
A love song to the most useful martial art I've ever seen, and also the hardest to find a teacher for, pentjuk silat tanjung sari, or silat for short. It's literally designed for war, and you'll find that dance is more useful for learning it than other martial arts are. It's soft, and subtle, and doesn't look like much, and it will fuck. you. up.

Coming soon

A National Chastisement
A parody of the National Anthem, with some O Beautiful For Spacious Skies thrown in for good measure. I cannot yet play it fast enough for the tune to be recognizable, and there's only so much I can improve my own playing through the miracles of technology.

Good Things
A response to The Saga of 2017. I depressed myself, and also it's a heavily biased song, so I then went looking for good things that happened in 2017 to balance it out and cheer myself up. Not yet written. It's harder to make good things catchy.

More??

Definition of a Queerplatonic Partner

Are you just friends, or...?

There is nothing ‘just’ about it.

I read a line somewhere[1] that went “I love you like a depressive loves hypomania,” and

I love some people like that,

like a craving,

a drug,

a need to be ever closer even when we’re right next to each other.

romantic love.

But em, em I love like

a cup of hot tea

after a long day of freezing with a

sore throat.

Ey loves me like

shutting the door

on a loud party

ey was kind of enjoying.

Things were all right before

but with me it’s

oh

thank heavens

here we are.

home.

To summarize:

Would I live with em? Yes.

Would I marry em? Yes.

Would I walk down the street holding hands with em? Yes.

Would I defend em in a heartbeat? Yes.

Would I drop everything for em? Yes.

Do I have romantic feelings for em? No.

Does ey take my breath away with sheer beauty and how much I love em? No.

Do I yearn to be always, ever closer, to touch, to hold, to kiss em? No.

Do I feel the need to ask eir permission to date someone? No.

Is ey the person I want to tell first when something good happens, and the first person I go to for comfort when something bad happens? Yes.

Is ey the person I call when I need help? Yes.

Is ey the person I have real, concrete plans not to lose after graduation? Yes.

Is ey my partner, in every important sense? Yes.

---

[1] “This is not a romantic poem” by Nimm, babyseraphim.tumblr.com

Gives Light

by Rose Christo

I have a new favorite author.
Skylar hasn't had a voice since he was seven. That was when a murderer entered his house, killed his mother, and failed to kill him, the incident that lead Sky to be raised off the reservation, away from his family, alone except for his father. But when his father disappears and Sky is placed with his grandmother, he befriends the son of the man who killed his mother and nothing will ever be the same again. This is a delicate weaving of morality vs legality, of sweet romance against the odds, of two lonely boys finding a home, of speaking without a voice.
Gives Light effortlessly evokes empathy for Native people and teaches the truth about the way the government treats them without ever feeling forced. It's not a history lesson, it's simply an irrevocable part of living on an Indian reservation, and of being a foster child. There's minimal angst derived from the relationship; it's mostly them against the world, against unjust laws, clinging to their family and sorting out complicated emotions.
I only heard of Rose Christo because she wrote the infamous My Immortal, but I'm so glad I did, because the Gives Light series goes up there with Matthew J. Metzger books. Yes, it's a series: the first of six. I read all of them within three days total. They're just that good.