HOT OFF THE DIGITAL PRESS! 

After some thirty years in the writing and re-writing, I’m inordinately proud, not to mention vastly relieved, to announce the electronic publication of my (autobiographically based) gay novella BAT IN A WHIRLWIND.

For FREE download as a pdf file, right click here and select “Save Target (or Link) As.”  I hope in the near future to figure out how to offer it to you in Kindle format.

This little book is probably of most interest to the gay and/or literary reader, but the themes are appropriate for wide general interest:  life in the rural South in the Rock’n’roll Fifties, sexuality of adolescent boys, child abuse, religious oppression, race relations, and nature.  For the squeamish, I should advise that it involves a good deal of fantasy (innocent) and dreams (Freudian).

The novella is not so much a coming-of-age or coming-out story as the intimate personal account of a confused country boy who discovers love and himself.  Covering the senior year of two best buddies in high school at the end of the 1950’s, this all happens in backwoods Arkansas, mostly at a remote truck stop café called Piney Hill, where young Ben is virtually a prisoner.  The boy is swept up in an emotional whirlwind, besotted by a quixotic passion for the TV star Annette Funicello and at the same time bewildered by confusing feelings for his best buddy Danny.

Give it a read and get a laugh or two. After all it’s a no-risk, free gift. Go for it!