The Carnal Desires of Helen: The Adventurous Romance Romp of a Dirty Detective (Love and Lust Advent

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Fiction , Gay fiction , Gay romance Leave a comment. His friends despair of him ever meeting someone, but despite his loneliness, Simon is cautious about looking for more. Then his best friends drag him to a party, where he barges into a football conversation and ends up defending the honour of star forward Declan Tyler—unaware that the athlete is present.

Like his entire family, Simon revels in living in Melbourne, the home of Australian Rules football and mecca for serious fans. There, players are treated like gods—until they do something to fall out of public favour. Nothing can stay hidden forever. Soon Declan will have to choose between the career he loves and the man he wants, and Simon has never been known to make things easy—for himself or for others.

Sean Kennedy was born in in Melbourne, Australia, but currently lives in the second most isolated city in the world although there still seems to be conjecture over whether it is actually number one. Living in such deprived circumstances can only affect his writing, which is published by Dreamspinner Press. The blurb synopsizes the plot quite well, and so I will concentrate more on what I liked and was reserved by in this book.

I thought the plot—although not particularly unique—was captivating with some nice romantic scenes, and enough angst to keep it interesting. I also liked how the author brought the two somewhat disparate characters together: The character development is well done, over all. I had a good visual sense of Declan, but not so much his thinking.

It also goes without saying the the writing is first rate. I did have some issues with pace. It seemed to drag in places—particularly in the first half of the story—and, as has been mentioned by others, this is partially due to the length. However, I do sympathize with the author on this point. I also hate to part with prose after I have laboured over it.

That said, I really did like the story and I think you will too. May 27, Posted by Gerry B. Fiction , gay athletes , Gay fiction , Gay romance Leave a comment. For Austin, the seclusion of fifteen hundred acres in the middle of Texas sounds like paradise. No more cameras, paparazzi, or overzealous media to hound him every day and night.

Little did the sexiest man alive know when one door closes, another usually opens. When his long time wet dream materializes as his a new neighbor it threatens everything he holds dear. No way the ranching community would ever accept him if he came out. With every part of his life riding on the edge, can Kitt risk it all for a chance at love or will responsibility to his family heritage cost him his one chance at happiness? The well-written story blurb covers the plot fairly well: A famous in-the-closet Hollywood star Austin Grainger suddenly hangs up his make-up kit for life on a fifteen-hundred-acre ranch located in his home town.

Unbeknownst, a fellow in-the-closet case Kitt Kelly owns the adjoining Ranch. However, when Grainger re-encounters Kitt they had admired each others assets in high school he sets out to get him into his corral. The inevitable happens of course , but to add some angst to the story the author employs a group of sleazy tabloid hounds who manage to out the two lovers to the shock and astonishment of their home town.

Will the two men be able to weather the outcome? Over all I liked the main characters—Kitt in particular—and for the most part the business i. The plot was interesting, although not unique in any way, and the ending was gratifying. Unfortunately, the shortcoming came at a most fundamental level—grammar and spelling.

I realize that professional editors are expensive, usually costing one or two thousand dollars for a good one, but spellcheck should pick up most typos, and a reasonably literate friend can pick up the simple grammatical errors—like tense. Visitor views to date — 49, [ we will surely reach a new milestone this week, i.

To view just follow this link. Thank you for dropping by. Why not leave a comment before you leave? May 13, Posted by Gerry B. Gay fiction , Gay romance , Hollywood , Homoerotic Leave a comment. Recently divorced and out of the closet, Noah Maitland is a regular-Joe, salt-of-the-earth guy who is newly navigating the world of dating other men. Noah is a father first — he has two teenage sons. As the owner of a handyman business in a small community, Noah wants someone to love who is also appropriate for where he is in his life.

Zane Halliday is a young man — much too young for Noah — who is struggling to take care of his brother and sister and meet his bills every month. Recently thrown out of his apartment, Zane stumbles on Noah, literally. Noah offers Zane a place where he and his siblings can temporarily live, and later gives him a part time job. Each man is dealing with his own set of problems, and both crave someone to talk to and trust. Soon a friendship between Noah and Zane blossoms. But Noah could never fall for someone so much younger than he is — not to mention Zane is not gay.

How will Noah be able to resist this much younger man once Zane figures out the only person he wants is Noah? I was drawn to it by the notion of a recently divorced, older man and a younger, straight man, finding common ground in a loving relationship. That juxtaposition made me curious as to how the author would handle it, and indeed Ms Dane made quite a good story out these disparate elements. Noah is moved to help by giving them a place to stay and Zane a part-time job, but otherwise he keeps his distance. There are some baddies, but these are mostly relegated to sub-plot status, and there is a HEA ending.

On the good side I thought the character development was very good, especially regarding Noah and Zane, and the kids and siblings were delightful too. The plot was innovative, and the balance between emotional highs and angst seemed quite natural. However, there were some drawbacks. As has been mentioned by others, the sex scenes were profusely detailed going on for pages , which only emphasized some anomalies that were questionable; i. Do men really do that much deep thinking when they are engaged and engrossed in sex? From my experience, I think not.

There was also a fair degree of word repetition, and some rather odd similes—i. Nonetheless the stronger points outweigh the weaker ones, so for a truly feel-good romance I can heartily recommend this one. Be sure to come back next week when I will have another interesting novel for your consideration. May 6, Posted by Gerry B. Coming out , Fiction , Gay romance Leave a comment.

Cole Reid has been a social recluse since he was fifteen, when he was outed by his high school baseball team. I live and write in conservative, small-town America. Nevertheless, I love to write from my own real-life observations and experiences by expressing them through fictional characters and settings. And if you think a character sounds like someone you know, think again… All my characters are ME.

Unlike some authors, I have no huge background in writing. I hope you are touched by my stories. I have frequently bemoaned the fact that GBLT stories tend to be, for the most part, a gloomy affair, dominated by personal struggle and angst. So when I saw the off-beat title for this one, i. Now, contrary to the seemingly carefree nature of comedy it is difficult genre to write. It takes a combination of wit and cleverly devised circumstances to pull it off successfully, and happily Kelly does a fairly good job of bringing the two together.

The circumstances revolve around a nerdy and prickly physics student, Cole Reid, whose last choice for a college roommate would be, and is, a soccer jock. Nevertheless, through a set of perverse circumstances he ends up with just such a one in Ellis Montgomery, and not only him but his two jock-type friends as well. Cole and Ellis nonetheless come to an understanding, and eventually beyond as time goes by. He is in fact latently gay. However, their first attempt at consummating this new found love turns into a bit of a disaster.

There may be stories in which this has worked, but otherwise it is merely a distraction. Rob and Russell were likeable enough, and complimentary to the two main characters, but I found it just a little incredible that someone so seeped in religion could be so ambivalent regarding homosexuality. This is one of those novels for which there will as many opinions as there are readers, so I encourage you to decide for yourself. April 29, Posted by Gerry B. Coming out , Fiction , Gay fiction , Gay romance Leave a comment. Tiresias claims to be the orphaned son of a minor noble, but his secrets run deeper, and only Brutus knows them all.

Cassius, intent on protecting the Republic and his claim to Brutus, proposes a dangerous conspiracy to assassinate Caesar. Now Brutus must return to Rome and choose: Review by Gerry burnie. For example, Julius Caesar has been various portrayed as a capable leader and a tyrant, and his assassins as patriots and ambitious thugs at the same time. Philosophically, he believes Rome would be better off as a republic, free of the fickleness and excesses of dictatorships, and so he is willing to listen when his lover, Cassius, proposes a plot to assassinate Caesar.

Cassius is a complex character. He is less high-minded and idealistic than Brutus, but equally committed to the idea of a republic through his lover. And then we find Terisias. Whatever it is, he makes an interesting if unexpected personality. Holding all of this together is some first class writing, which makes the story very readable from start to finish. Although personally I am growing somewhat weary of stories set in Imperial Rome, I can recommend this interpretation as having an interesting plot and good solid journalism.

April 22, Posted by Gerry B. Then David meets Benjamin Killinger, and suddenly life stops being so dull. Benjamin is Amish, and cooling off in the swimming hole is one of the few liberties he and his brothers enjoy. Illness has forced me to be brief with my remarks this week. However, rather than disappoint my readers altogether, I have risen to the task with a truncated version.

David and Benjamin are two lonely boys who meet by chance, and in spite of some powerful forces against it they form a loving relationship. Amish, a strictly fundamentalist sect regarding most aspects of life, and especially sex and sexual orientation. It is, as one might expect from Mr. The pace is appropriate, given the immaturity of the boys as they set out to explore uncharted territory. April 15, Posted by Gerry B. In Victorian England Edward and Richard enjoy a blessed life at home and at their elite private school for boys, and with prospects of army commissions ahead.

Even though their love is forbidden, for Edward there is no other in his life but Richard, and for Richard a life without Edward is unbearable. Has fate determined that they must lead their lives apart? One an officer, the other a lowly cavalry trumpeter, both find Muslim allies willing to risk all to see them through… Two lovers far from each other in a hostile world of enervating heat, unforgiving sand, rocky wastes, but also burning passions—will the young men overcome the ordeal of a life apart to achieve their dream of a destiny together?

Front cover art and design by Oliver Frey. Kean has written about subjects as varied as the utilization of electronic publishing techniques for pre-press, video games, and gay life in London. He now divides his time between website design and writing gay-themed novels with illustrations by his lifelong partner, the artist Oliver Frey a. It is also a refreshingly different story set in an exotic and somewhat uncommon setting.

The story opens on Edward and Richard Rainbow, purportedly twin brothers, and also students at the prestigious Benthenham College in England. Skipping forward, Richard has received his commission to the army, and England has become caught up in Egyptian affairs to protect its financial interests and the Suez Canal.

After considerable bloodshed, the English decide to withdraw from the southern regions, including the Sudan, and Major-General Sir Charles Gordon is sent to oversee the evacuation of Khartoum. In the process, however, he becomes isolated and trapped by the Arab and Mahdist forces. At the same time, however, it is the perfect opportunity for fate to reunite Richard and Edward, and Kean takes full advantage of it. The writing is superb, the plot is refreshing, the description is vivid, and the history is bang-on.

The right person will always make the best decision regardless of gender. To appoint either on the basis of gender is not only contrary to common sense, it is also utterly stupid. I realize this crap sells papers to the non-thinking, but it is also an unmitigated bore to anyone who has moved past this manufactured debate. Please do move on! This is what Huffington post had to say: Most comments are removed because of an attack or insult on another user or public figure.

March 25, Posted by Gerry B. William Young is an MI5 informant, using his working-class background to gain the trust of those deemed a threat to the Crown. Tiring of his double life, William travels to Dublin for one last assignment: As the crisis in Dublin escalates, William treads a dangerous path between the violence in the streets, the vengeance of the Crown, and the costliest risk of all — falling in love with the man he was sent to betray.

Available as a free download at: He does this successfully, posing as a barkeeper at the Flag and Three Pub. There—quite in pace with the story—he meets his intended target—Adam Elliot—who is described as:. He was cleanfaced and well-dressed, pale brown hair curling out beneath his cap and clear skin glowing in the smoky light.

Hands clapped him on the back as he approached the bar, and he smiled at each face in turn and dipped his head in greeting. I will also mention right here, I found it quite refreshing that neither spends much time worrying about being attracted to another man. Nonetheless it happened, and I thought it was quite in keeping with the characters. I was too busy trying to get them to notice me, or getting them off alone, so I thought the author handled this part very well.

The ending, although not overly dramatic, was quite satisfactory, and I was left satisfied. As a relative novice with only two novels to her credit Heather Domin is a writer with a maturity well ahead of her experience. Her style is well nigh flawless, and her plot and structure are a delight to read. However, it is her understanding of the characters—both primary and secondary—that adds the charm that should be part and parcel of any Irish novel.

A great Irish-themed gift. March 18, Posted by Gerry B. Sixteen-year-old Skylar is witty, empathetic, sensitive—and mute. And her murderer left behind a son. My best friend is Shoshone-Bannock. I mostly blog about the crap going on in Indian Country today. My grandpa was Saline Shoshone. Few things bother me more than racism. It is described as containing pages estimated but when the spaces are deducted—between the block-style paragraphs—it is probably half that number.

The story is told from the point of view of Skylar St.

Clair, a 16 y. Shoshone Native who has been mute since his throat was slashed during the murder of his mother some five years previous. From that time he had been living with his father until his father mysteriously disappears as well. He is then put into the custody of his estranged grandmother who resides on the Nettlebush Reserve, and from then on it is the story of adjusting to reservation life; including learning the traditions, and getting to know its cast of characters.

Yet, the two of them are gradually drawn together by both their commonalities and differences, and when they do finally unite it is like a blossom that blooms in the shadow of the forest; pure and fragile. I found very few quibbles to mention: The writing is strong; the characters engaging; and both the plot and pace kept me involved.

However, there were a few minor disparities that left me wondering. For example, it was never really explained how Annie Little Hawk learned to sign. ASL training is not universally available, and I would think less so on a remote reservation. February 18, Posted by Gerry B. He is all too aware of the tenuous thread that ties him to this earth—as he writes a letter home to his sister, he realizes he may be among the dead by the time she receives the missive.

His melancholy mood is shared by other soldiers in the campsite; in the cool Virginia night, the pickets claim to hear ghosts in the woods, and their own talk spooks them. The last time the two had seen each other, Sam had been heading west to seek his fortune, and had promised to send for Andy when he could. Then the war broke out, and Andy had enlisted in the Confederate Army to help ease the financial burden at home. Apparently Sam had similar ideas—he now wears the blue coat of a Union solider. Sam is severely wounded and infection has begun to set in. One of my favourite genre settings is the American Civil War.

This is the sense I found in J. It is a powerful opening, and true, for death was always just one breath away in this conflict. Snyder also does quite a fine job of capturing the tense environment of the encampment, frequently in sight of the enemies picket fires, and surrounded by the yet-to-be-retrieved wounded and dead. His men fear the voices of ghosts when they hear an enemy soldier crying out for water, but Blanks recognizes it as such and takes a lantern and a canteen in search of him.

The story goes that on hearing the cries of wounded Union soldiers: He ventured back and forth several times, giving the wounded Union soldiers water, warm clothing, and blankets. Soldiers from both the Union and Confederate armies watched as he performed his task, but no one fired a shot. At first, it was thought that the Union would open fire, which would result in the Confederacy returning fire, resulting in Kirkland being caught in a crossfire.

However, within a very short time, it became obvious to both sides as to what Kirkland was doing, and according to Kershaw cries for water erupted all over the battlefield from wounded soldiers. Kirkland did not stop until he had helped every wounded soldier Confederate and Federal on the Confederate end of the battlefield. Whether or not Snyder was aware of this story is immaterial. What is relevant is that it makes a most powerful device by which to reunite Blanks with his tragically lost love, Samuel Talley.

My quibbles are almost too trivial to mention, but at times I felt the coincidences were just a bit convenient. Sometimes a single letter can make all the difference. Thanks so much for such fantastic reading. Your words make the characters come alive and become someone we care about, and to me that is what makes a great author. Thanks ever so much for you dedication to these books, their research, etc.

Thanks ever so much again. February 4, Posted by Gerry B. Young drifter Buck, part Nasoni Indian, catches up to them on a roundup. After proving himself an expert sharpshooter, rider and roper, Buck celebrates his initiation to the group by luring one of their number, Red, into his bedroll. But Buck is really after Les, sandy-haired and significantly endowed.

What I found was a pulp-style western, written for the most part in the classic vernacular. Moreover, Victor Banis has also done quite a good job of capturing the atmosphere and camaraderie of a 19th-century cattle roundup; ruggedly independent men, interacting man-to-man, and free from the disruptive influence of women. And, yes, there was sex between some of them [see: Queer Cowboys by Chris Pickard]. It was common for men in early Western America to relate to one another in pairs or in larger homo-social group settings.

At times, they may have competed for the attention of women but more often two cowboys organized themselves into a partnership resembling a heterosexual marriage. This is reflected in a poem by the renowned cowboy poet, Charles Badger Clark, i. Nevertheless, as can be seen from the above, it was seldom if ever overt, and this is where the story lost credibility with me. Buck was just a bit too out to be believable—or to have even survived, for that matter. These are not fatal flaws, just niggling drawbacks, so I want to stress that this is an enjoyable story with some really strong writing, and a bang-on style.

It has taken three years, pages, , words, and a good deal of sweat and tears. In fact, I have given it an un -dedication at the front of the book. To learn more, click on the above link or image. January 28, Posted by Gerry B. Love was the last thing Todd Webster Morgan expected to find while searching for gold in s California. Hardened beyond his nineteen years, Todd Webster Morgan is determined to find gold high in the Sierra Nevadas.

But his dream is violently upended. His invalid uncle becomes increasing angry. Todd seeks employment with little success. But their relationship is strained as anti-Chinese sentiment grows. The couple must risk everything to make a life for themselves. A life that requires facing fear and prejudice head on. As the years flew by, he wrote more, hid less not really , and branched out to Super 8 films and cassette tape recorders.

Most reviews I have read have dipped into the superlative bag for apt descriptors, and I must agree. Each character has a distinctive voice that sets him or her apart while contributing to the over all story. One of the regrettable aspects of frontier society was the degree of prejudice against certain ethnic societies, i.

The miners resented them because they saw them as competition, and distrusted them because they tended to stick to their own communities, which is not surprising since they were generally shunned elsewhere. As a result the Chinese were subjected to all manner of abuse, even murder, and Brennessel has done quite a credible job of portraying this. Coming of Age on the Trai l: A number of people have inquired about my forthcoming novel, and where they can find more information on it.

So, to Answer both queries click on the banner below to be taken to the new URL, and follow the links you will find there. Thanks for your interest. I will finish the pre-edit draft in about 2 — 3 days, and after one more re-write it will be on its way. Watch for it early summer See you next week. January 21, Posted by Gerry B. Daniel Allouez, whose father is French and mother is Ojibwe Indian, enters into the war not only to fight the enemy, but to discover who he is at the crossroads of race, religion, and sexual orientation. While these elements form the backdrop, and at times provide some exciting drama, the main theme here is spirituality—both Christian and Native.

Being part Ojibwe himself, the author has provided some fascinating insights into Ojibwe spiritual beliefs, including Two Spirit culture, as the main characters, Daniel and Rorie, come to terms with divergent beliefs and their sexuality. I was also struck by the way the author emphasized the reverence and respect Natives held for the environment around them without flogging the point.

For indeed, that is how it was. It was a natural as etiquette is today—or was. In a country with two distinct cultures, and an underlying current of nationalism, that is a big deal. That said, this is history as it should be told and taught: A history lesson that can be absorbed while enjoying a truly enjoyable story. January 14, Posted by Gerry B. Canadian content , Canadian frontier stories , Canadian historical content , Coming out , Fiction , Gay fiction , Gay historical fiction , Gay romance , Historical Fiction , Historical period Leave a comment.

His life is perfect until he gets a phone call that brings it all crashing down: During the funeral, Ben meets Travis Atwood, the redneck neighbor with a huge heart.

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Their relationship initially runs hot and cold, from contentious to flirtatious, but when the weight of responsibility starts wearing on Ben, he turns to Travis, and the pressure shapes their friendship into something that feels a lot like love. Will he learn to recognize that sometimes the worst thing imaginable can lead him to the place he was meant to be?

Brad Boney lives in Austin, Texas, the 7th gayest city in America. He likes to tell stories about the hot boys in his neighborhood near the University of Texas. He grew up in the Midwest and went to school at NYU. They tend to be little more than gratuitous romps in the sack, barn, hayloft, bunkhouse, or any other place where they can get horizontal, with a bit of narrative thrown in as a makeshift plot.

Oh, it is sexy enough, but it also has a plot and some decent writing going for it. That is, until tragedy calls him back as guardian of his three younger brothers—the youngest being in the midst of his difficult, teenage years. The plot then winds its way through some minor challenges until is arrives at a happy resolution. To that extent it is a nice story, and as a debut novel it is better than many: The writing is solid; the characters are interesting and well defined; and the plot and pace are both progressive.

In other words, it can take its place on bookshelves or in ebook libraries quite unashamedly. Nevertheless, I have some quibbles. For one thing the plot is far from unique. Off hand, I can think of half-a-dozen novels with approximately the same theme, so it is becoming just a bit trite. I also agree with some other reviewers who found it a little Utopian and short on angst contrast. On this point, however, I must admit that I hate to knock my characters around as well, but even taffy requires salt.

Besides, as I always say, your tastes may be different from mine.

December 31, Posted by Gerry B. Forty years after the fact, Dutch choreographer Jeroen Boman recalls a wartime romance. During the Allied liberation of Holland, the eleven-year-old Boman entered into a tender relationship with a Canadian soldier. Back to the present, Boman attempts to incorporate his experiences in his latest ballet work, a celebration of the Liberation. Many of his ballets contain a strong thread of social criticism; he was not afraid to explore difficult subjects.

This ballet brought Van Dantzig international notice and was mounted for several major companies. He also had a second career, which developed later in his life, as a novelist. In he wrote an autobiographical novel, Voor een verloren soldaat , about his love affair while a young boy with a Canadian soldier, which became a great success.

It was awarded several times and a film was made of it. An English translation, For a Lost Soldier , was published in All I found were a couple of pages of outdated, academic, and even American offerings i. The Best American Short Stories The book and the film differ quite significantly, especially in the way the ending is constructed, but the basic story outline is the same. Near the end of the war in Holland, eleven-year-old Jeroen Boman is sent to live in the country due to a food shortage in Amsterdam.

However, despite a relative abundance to eat he is wracked with loneliness for his parents and friends. This is subject to change when the village is liberated by a group of Canadian Troops, and Jeroen encounters a something soldier named Walter Cook. Jeroen revels in the attention shown by Cook, and a relationship is formed between them that eventually becomes sexual in nature.

Even the photograph of him—the only token Jeroen has left—is damaged by rain. Eventually Jeroen is forced to realize that all he has left are memories. However, the sexual aspect in the novel is delicately handled, and in the film it is so subtle that one might actually miss it. What remains is a powerful story of coming of age, and the lifelong impact of first love. November 26, Posted by Gerry B. Devon Reid, veterinarian, had a partner of 2 years, a beautiful house, and a fantastic job. Then, life as he knew it, changed. With his constant absence from home, his relationship ends leaving him alone in one of the most emotionally draining points in his life.

When his mother passes, he is lonely and loses his zest for life. Leaving the city life behind and taking a job in a small town in Montana, was just what the doctor ordered. Then, he meets the hunky ranch foreman, Greg Elliot. Greg has lived most of his life on a ranch. While they try to resist the obvious mutual attraction, a fateful call during the night changes it all.

As an avid reader, Leiland decided one day to take a stab at writing a book. These days, when not writing something new, Leiland can be found reading a steamy romance shifters are a fav! The plot is rather simple. Devon Reid is an urban veterinarian, gay, and with a boyfriend. Tragedy strikes when his mother is stricken with a fatal form of cancer, and with her loss, as well as the break-up of his relationship, he decides to escape to the rural town of Bridger, Montana. Here he continues is veterinary practice, and one of his clients is a ruggedly handsome, ranch foreman by the name of Greg Elliot.

However, it is not until they are fortuitously brought together when Devon is called to assist the birth of a colt, and from there it is pretty well a situation of happy-ever-after. Nothing wrong with that. Everything was just too idealistic. It is not so much a credibility problem as a lack of colour and variation. The pace was also a bit frenetic at times—especially the opening scenes with the death of the mother and the alienation of the boyfriend.

Having said that, however, it is a good read for lovers of happy-ever-after romances. A star in the making. Click on the image to hear Etude, Opus 4, by Frederick Chopin. November 12, Posted by Gerry B. Grieving over the death of his lover, British flying ace Bat Bryant accidentally kills the man threatening him with exposure. The tale is set at an allied air base in France during WWI.

Captain Bat Bryant is a British flying ace with an Eton College background, and as the story opens he is being confronted by a potential blackmailer. At KB this ranks as a short story, which I tend to like because of their distillation of events. Author Lanyon appears to understand this appeal as well, for he has staunchly adhered to the three basic rules; i. There is no dallying here. The prose is spare but efficient, the characters tend to develop as they go along mostly relying on dialogue for their personalities , and the era and setting get a just-enough amount of description.

Having said that, there is very little missed. Nonetheless, this is a bang-up story that gets my enthusiastic recommendation. Just received notice of the Goodreads Choice Awards So best of luck, but no thanks. October 29, Posted by Gerry B. Trouble begins when the fat lady sings. Her triumph is sweet. But, only hours later, the diva lies near death in a hotel room upstairs, the victim of a vicious beating.

In Southwest Florida in January , almost anyone who wanted to have a little illicit fun put his—or her—life on the line. Dealing cards, serving untaxed mixed drinks and selling the services of escorts of both sexes, he acts as if he has nothing to lose. Bud, his secret lover, is a former Marine sergeant twice decorated for valor.

Strong and brave but deeply conventional, he lives with the uneasy knowledge that every time he and Dan make love they commit a felony according to the laws he is sworn to uphold. The Caloosa, exposed to the pitiless glare of a front-page homicide investigation, attracts unwanted attention. The mounting pressure, instead of forging a stronger bond between Dan and Bud, threatens to tear them apart.

As the jeopardy to both escalates, Dan realizes he may lose the one man who holds the key to the peace and harmony of his postwar world. As a very green second lieutenant he commanded a squadron of cooks and bakers, later achieving the rank of captain. He lives in Atlanta with his partner of 40 years. Review by Gerry Burnie http: Both are good strong characters, but it is Dan who is the stronger, mostly on account of being comfortable in his own skin. One of the areas that I thought Mackle captured very well was the schizoid thinking of the time, regarding homosexuality.

Homophobia was very much to the fore, of course, but even those who were somewhat sympathetic i. Moreover, the over-the-top reaction of some homophobics made a nice bit of tension while the plot was unfolding. An aspect that is very often overlooked. My quibbles are minor. While persecution is an undeniable aspect of GLBT life that has existed since the advent of Christianity, the burden of this one particular theme is becoming repetitious.

Her submission is about her municipality of Richer. To cast your vote, go to: October 15, Posted by Gerry B. The Third Reich is on its knees as Allied forces bomb Berlin to break the last resistance. When Baldur narrowly cheats death, Felix pulls him from his plane, and the pilot makes his riskiest move yet. As the Allies close in on the airfield where Felix waits for his lover, Baldur must face the truth that he is no longer the only one in mortal danger.

Aleksandr Voinov is an emigrant German author living near London where he makes his living as a financial journalist, freelance editor and creative writing teacher. After many years working in the horror, science fiction, cyberpunk and fantasy genres, Voinov has set his sights now on contemporary and historical erotic gay novels. But it does make them wiser, and often stronger people. It is a natural outcome of my passion for history, and my self-identification with those who have faced the harsh brutalities of war. Courage like this should not be forgotten lest we make the same mistake again.

Two individuals caught up in the confict, Germans, seeing the evil regime of which they are part crumbling around them, and yet fighting on through a stalwart—but misplaced—sense of duty. Well … One of them is, anyway. Baldur Vogt, a Luftwaffe ace, bold, handsome and dashing, flies his missions because it is what he does.

On the other hand, Felix, a ground-crew mechanic does what he does to keep the man he loves Baldur as safe as he can make him, and with that simple revelation the whole perspective of war changes. But that is only one thread in this complex tapestry, for Felix despairs that Baldur will ever respond in the way he Felix has dreamed.

Nonetheless, fate will have its way, and when Baldur somewhat miraculously escapes a bullet that otherwise had his name on it, he celebrates by taking Felix away for a few days of relaxation. Indeed, when it happens one cannot imagine it being any other way. That remains for readers to discover, but it is almost a textbook example of the short story art; i.

Click on the banner to go to the site. October 8, Posted by Gerry B. Their story unfolds in the clandestine and precarious gay underworld of the time, which is creatively but vividly created. Through a series of encounters— some exhilarating, some painful, some mysterious—Tom matures, until an unexpected act of violence provokes a final resolution. His short fiction is set in New York City in the years Characters often reappear in other novels and, quintessentially, in poetry in the form of monologs. He has helped two aspiring authors, a Sister of Mercy and a gay inmate in North Carolina, write their memoirs.

I know almost northing about New York now or in the s, but after reading The Pleasuring of Men by Clifford Bowder [Gival Press; 1 edition, ] I am sure I have a fairly credible idea of what it was like. Indeed, we get our first impression from Tom Vaughan the protagonist and first-person narrator in the opening of Chapter 1, i. He came to us correctly dressed in a gray frock coat, fawn trousers, and bland pointed shoes, with a scarf pin and cuff links that glittered, and a boyish look that I, myself sixteen found stupendously appealing. However, as shocked as he might be, he decides that this is the life for him.

Being a quick learner Tom is soon out on his own, pleasuring the grey set with his charms, and being generously rewarded in return. Eventually Tom is sent to the townhouse of Walter Whitling, a formidable scholar in just about everything, including the Greek language, and after a rather tempestuous getting-to-know-one-another, the older scholar agrees to teach Tom Greek in the manner of an Erastes with his Eromenos. Altogether this is a tale encompassing both sophisticated wit and humour, and yet the subject matter is the grotty underbelly of society as enacted by its leading citizens—including the Reverend Timothy Blythe, D.

It is absolutely delightful. I had almost forgot about it until someone requested it, the other day. Something I found interesting was that the visitors count at that time was 13,! To see the report, click on the image or go to: All of my web pages now have new URL address. Gerry Burnie Books now resides at http: It can now be found at: Or click on the image. October 1, Posted by Gerry B.

After losing everything he held dear one fateful night, he decides to leave New York and his past behind, and joins the French Foreign Legion. A Timeless Dreams title: Learn more about Charlie and her writing at her website or visit her blog. Upon seeing that The Auspicious Troubles of Chance, by Charlie Cochet [Dreamspinner Press, ] was a story involving the French Foreign Legion—that romanticized bastion of rugged masculinity set in the middle of a desert—it peaked my curiosity. That said, it is a charming story populated with interesting, colourful characters. Chance Irving is an orphan dropped off at a New York orphanage when he was seven years old.

Subsequently he escapes to a life on the streets, and is thereby rescued by a young actress, who, along with her fellow thespians, give Chance a substitute family and home. Nonetheless, Chance is a rebel in the ranks until he encounters the commandant of an unusual company, Jacky Valentine. Valentine is a people person, gifted with insight and a disarming wit and charm.

It is a good story. The outstanding features are the effortless prose and the recreation of the period s. A nice bit of research has gone into describing the Foreign Legion as well, but here I would have liked to see more. The character development is also excellent: What took the top off for me was the beginning and end. However, the middle redeemed itself quite admirably, and held my interest until the end. The pluses outweigh the quibbles, though, so for an interesting, well developed plot I give it four bees. September 24, Posted by Gerry B.

The first book follows the protagonist Simon through childhood, growing up with a distant father and his developing friendship and eventual love affair with an older boy. This account is not suitable for those under 18 years of age or those who find explicit sexual narrative offensive. Patrick Notchtree now lives in the north of England with his wife and has his son and granddaughters nearby. Therefore, when I first saw the title and the evocative cover of The Secret Catamite 1: The Book of Daniel by Patrick C.

Notchtree [Limebury Books, March 19, ], I was intrigued to see how the author would deal with the subject matter. You see, most writers shun the topic of adolescent and teen sexuality, even though they know it exists from having lived through it. Therefore, to pretend otherwise is like ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room—the one with pink wings and yellow polka dots.

Fortunately, Patrick Notchtree chooses not to demure from it in characterizing the sexual relationship between Simon and Daniel as being both natural and wholesome. To them, it is the evolution of a friendship that includes both the emotional and the physical; no secrets withheld, and no holds barred.

But The Secret Catamite is so much more than just a story of physical love. Given these two bookends, it is not at all surprising that Simon finds solace, comfort and a measure of security in Daniel. These may not seem like notable occasions now, but in the late s, early 50s, these were as good as it got for simple folk. For a real-life horror story involving adolescent sexuality read the following. For the full story click on the title link. Gossip destroys a family. This is a bizarre and scary story, about how one family has been destroyed — ripped apart by a snickered conversation between two children on a school bus.

Based on that unfounded hearsay, the school bus driver spoke to the school principal, the school called Family and Child Services who called the cops. Their father had intervened and given them a time-out and told them to stop rolling on the floor. Shortly after, late one afternoon, the Smiths got a call from the Niagara Region police officer saying they were going to arrest Bobby at school the next day. Bobby was forced to move out of the family home — away from Mike. The visiting hours when Mary and John can see their son have been limited, and Bobby has limited access to other children.

I am always excited when I come across an extraordinary talent in any field, so do have a look at the remarkable work of Canadian photographer, Patrick Latter. It is absolutely breathtaking in its technique and creativity. To visit his web site, go to: Stories from the Range: Book Four Country singer Willie Meadows is a fake. No wonder Wilson Edwards, the real man in those fake boots, is suffering creative block. Determined to connect with the music, Wilson buys a ranch in Wyoming to learn the country way of life, even if he has no intention of running the business.

Luckily Wilson has a temporary solution: Steve can ranch-sit while Wilson does business in LA. But when he comes back, Wilson barely recognizes the place. There are trained horses in the paddock, and the ranch is in great shape. Suddenly he finds himself inspired not by the cowboy lifestyle but by Steve himself. Andrew grew up in western Michigan with a father who loved to tell stories and a mother who loved to read them.

Since then he has lived throughout the country and traveled throughout the world. Andrew currently lives in beautiful, historic Carlisle, Pennsylvania. To begin, I like the cover. It is evocative and sexy without being erotic; which to me suggests a plot-driven story. A must in my books. The story blurb summarizes the story fairly well.

He therefore buys a ranch, tells Howard bye-bye, and heads for Wyoming. Moreover, his appreciation extends to his hired on a personal basis, and things begin to heat up between them. It is a resolution of these that constitutes the ending. The plot is certainly pithy enough, and the main characters are both interesting and likable. In other words, it is easy to become invested in their welfares and want them to succeed.

I hasten to add these are personal impressions, and may not be shared by others. As their journey extends from the cramped and miserable depths of a prison ship to the vast, untamed Australian outback, Colin and Patrick must build new lives for themselves. After writing for years yet never really finding the right inspiration, Keira discovered her voice in gay romance, which has become a passion. She writes both contemporary and historical fiction and — although she loves delicious angst along the way — Keira firmly believes in happy endings.

For as Oscar Wilde once said:. In addition to the Canadian and American frontiers, the Australian outback is an equal favourite. Similar ingredients apply, of course: This story is slightly different inasmuch as it commences in England, but most of the other ingredients are there. Colin Lancaster is the privileged son of English gentry, and is thereby accustomed to the pampered lifestyle that goes along with it. On the other hand Patrick Callahan is an Irish stable hand, and under ordinary circumstances the two should never have found common ground apart from being master and servant.

However, at sixteen Colin witnesses a tryst between Callahan and another male servant, and the impact of it throws Colin into a turmoil. Nonetheless, Colin frequently dreams of being taken advantage of by the earthy Patrick Callahan. As fate would have it Callahan has the misfortune of being caught in the act of sodomizing another male, and is in immanent danger of being lynched. The real adventure starts the moment they board the prison ship—generally anchored offshore until a full load was achieved—and although Ms Andrews has done a good job of describing the harsh conditions aboard ship, the reality is they were frequently much worse.

During this voyage Colin is nearly raped and Patrick almost dies, but through it all Colin maintains a stoic optimism of starting a new life with Patrick. Patrick, on the other hand, is more of an enigma. We know he has been emotionally scarred in the past, and that he has steeled his heart on account of it; nevertheless, there is nothing that binds two males together like the sharing of adversity, i.

In the aforementioned, the characters are social opposites with the baser character taking the lead. In this story, however, it is Colin who possesses the inner strength. The juxtaposition works, but the result is that Patrick is not as well developed as he could be. Nevertheless the description is first rate, and it is this that keeps the rating well up there. An outstanding plot, likeable characters, and a first-rate adventure. There will also be 3 copies available for giveaway on Goodreads http: I will post direct link once it is active approx 2 days.

Giveaway will last until 3 Oct September 2, Posted by Gerry B. Horses, love, and the tang of thyme and honey….

In Classical Greece, apprentice sculptor Philon has chosen the ideal horse to model for his masterpiece. Sadly, the rider falls well short of the ideal of beauty, but scarred and tattered Hilarion, with his brilliant, imperfect smile, draws Philon in a way that mere perfection cannot. After years of living among the free and easy tribes of the north, Hillarion has no patience with Athenian formality.

He knows what he wants—and what he wants is Philon. Society, friends and family threaten their growing relationship, but perhaps a scarred soldier and a lover of beauty are more alike than they appear. Elin Gregory lives in South Wales and has been making stuff up since However, there are always new works on the go and she is currently finishing a novel about pirates, planning one set in 6th century AD England and contemplating one about the British Secret Service between the two World Wars.

Heroes tend to be hard as nails but capable of tenderness when circumstances allow. Historical subjects predominate but there are also contemporary and historical paranormals, science fiction, crime and a Western. His character is rounded out be his fellow apprentice, Anatolios, a precocious thirteen-year-old. This is a sweet, uncomplicated story that focuses on romance in a romantic setting. In fact they are rather standard fare. Philon is the struggling good boy, Aristion is the spoiled rich kid, Anatolios is the impish-catalyst, and Hilarion is the mature kid who is attracted to the good boy.

Altogether, Alike as Two Bees is a happy-ever-after story that will pleasantly fill an afternoon at the beach, or an evening curled up in your easy chair. This is my experience: I wrote with my concerns to the email address provided, but I have yet to receive an acknowledgement or response. So judge for yourself. August 26, Posted by Gerry B. Published well ahead of its time, in by Greenleaf Classics, Song of the Loon is a romantic novel that tells the story of Ephraim MacIver and his travels through the wilderness.

Along his journey, he meets a number of characters who share with him stories, wisdom and homosexual encounters. The most popular erotic gay book of the s and s, Song of the Loon was the inspiration for two sequels, a film of the same name, at least one porn movie and a parody novel called Fruit of the Loon. Unique among pulp novels of the time, the gay characters in Song of the Loon are strong and romantically drawn, which has earned the book a place in the canon of gay American literature. Imagine, therefore, that the Song of the Loon , by Richard Amory [re-released by Arsenal Pulp Press, May 1, ] was first published three years before Stonewall, and 16 years before the Bathhouse Raids.

That make it a true artefact, and as an unapologetic homoerotic novel, it is also somewhat of a legend. However, they were generally badly written, and could only be purchased through P. Although I was aware of Song of the Loon , and remember the making of the , motion picture version, starring John Iverson, Morgan Royce and Lancer Ward, I never got around to reading the novel until now. The plot and style are noteworthy, as well.

I'm curious if, with his large-ish cast, Atkins can also capture some of the epic scope of Dante's Inferno. I've tried to incorporate the scale with a couple of large numbers with the entire cast of Dale Hubbard's musical score for the work is as rich and varied as the visual influences from Dante's poem, from swamps to flaming deserts to ice cold wasteland. The Inferno will be performed in the heritage-listed Old Museum Building in Bowen Hills, Brisbane offering the audience a distinctive journey through the circles of Hell.

And the art scene here is very vibrant, young and very inclusive and accepting of new ideas. I'm having a fantastic time working with the company and we look forward to a very long relationship. Miles Davis—Prince of Darkness. Melbourne International Jazz Festival, May , www. Remember to Forget the Congo is a five-day gallery performance also webcast by Australian artist Adam Geczy in Belgium. In a blackened room, he will write in white paint the entirety of Andre Gide's Voyage au Congo, an early 20th century text exposing the iniquity of the Belgian imperial exploitation of the Congo.

The consequences live on. Geczy says that although Gide's text has been little remembered it was quite influential when published. I asked Carbee to detail the evolution of the film and to place it in the context of his career as an actor, dancer and choreographer and how those roles have influenced the way he writes for a film and collaborates on its making. Carbee moved to Sydney in and made In Search of Mike, a minute dance theatre piece which he adapted into an eight-minute film see RT44 directed by Andrew Lancaster.

He created Glory Holy! Its genesis was an exploration of language in the relationship I had with my mother. At that point it was a duet with a choreographic and a large textual element. I have a background as an actor. So over the years I started to develop work that incorporated text because that was another skill I had and it was really interesting melding the two. It started to morph into various other forms.

I did a bit of the material as stand-up once. I moved to Sydney in I was new here and I just wanted to land on something I felt secure with. So I made it into a solo and expanded the choreographic element and kept much of the textual component. Andrew Lancaster was in the audience one night—one of four. But he was serious, though it took us quite a while, til , to make In Search of Mike. Up to that point Andrew had made short films, using sound and movement, and music videos and he wanted to branch into dramatic storytelling.

He liked the material and thought this would be an interesting way to go. He hooked me up with a computer for the first time and I wrote a script. In Search of Mike was a big hit. It did really well, sold overseas. We even made a bit of money, which is unheard of. And it actually made the funding bodies take notice. Ask for more money. My mother was quite ill at the time. I loved our relationship.

I thought it was a great, full relationship. And I just thought, hang on…So I wrote a novel and Andrew read it and optioned it. As the screenplay was nearing production, it really separated quite strongly from the book. The book is quite epic. Characters went flying out of it—all that stuff.

So, , for 15 years the story has been kind of shifting through various media and forms. I wrote a first draft and got money [from Screen Australia, then the Australian Film Commission] to write the second draft. So we had a year focusing and that was the stage that was meant to bring it up to finance-ready, and it did. We had a good year. It worked really well for us. Not that it gives you any answers. It just ups the ante around the film, it shifts your thinking. And it brings a lot of interest to bear on it, which causes you to lift your game as well.

As a new writer it really made me feel I had business doing it because, you know, Gus Van Sant was there giving me feedback, and John Sayles and Alison Tilson. It was really confidence-building because they liked it. They thought it had lots of potential, which was the reason it was there.

The real shift that Aurora made was that the script had been a black comedy. At that point it shifted to really bringing up the emotional core of the characters. That was really satisfying to me. It kind of went back to why I wrote the book, which was to bring more depth into what the relationship initially was.

They helped mine that. The gradual tonal shift in the film is very interesting, from grimly comic to deeply emotional as the repressed grieving opens out. It was a real challenge to mix that and to varying degrees of success. People criticise it either way. How we deal around those extremes of existence is quite broad. Then after the wake she breaks down.

So the structure was constantly being addressed so you could get closer to this depth? And the whole causal effect that really starts to kick in in the film, once the boys make up lies about where they were—it all starts to unwind. It appealed to our sense of adventure and enterprise to do it there. But then, upon investigation and very close to production, the fringe costs and the labour costs and travel costs just blew the budget to such a degree that the percentage of the budget that was actually going to make it onto the screen was so minimal compared to what was going to be spent.

Then we talked about, well, can we do it here? You know, there have been enough films made here, set in America, that we have the infrastructure to do it. They grow up with it now. So it became an interesting possibility to do it here. And that was embraced, was it? Why are we funding the second-best version of this film, the best being one made in America?

So that was persuasive. In the meantime, Geena Davis got involved because we had been going to make it in the US and that suddenly lifted the finance possibilities. It was interesting when we were doing Aurora, part of the process near the end of the year involved a follow-up workshop when actors came in and read the workshopped scenes.

There was something about the language for them to feel true doing it, they needed the accent. And many of the set pieces, whether about the bowling ball, the baseball, the drive-in, felt much more American than Australian iconic. We had to find the last drive-in in this country to shoot the film in!

That would be silly. She jokes that she came over here and her Australian accent was so bad everyone else had to learn American accents. We got some private money. I was writing right up to production. As it gets closer, all kinds of budget considerations come into play, location and scheduling issues happen. We have to travel too far.

We need to combine those scenes. But as a story it was settled. No, there were so many changes over the years for various reasons and, because it had changed form, I was used to it. I really feel I was able to achieve this. I visited very sparingly. It was difficult, but prior to filming I had a great deal of influence really, during casting and location decisions and design. It was important that I have an input into the casting, to really understand and to secure the right people. So I was really lucky. What about in post-production?

Back into the game again. I was giving notes on picture edits, sound, music and marketing—I had a hand in some of that. Dance is the great collaborative artform, particularly contemporary dance. Film is also incredibly collaborative. But I think on the dancer level, the great evolution of dance over the last 30 years has been the empowering of the dancer and their artistic expression.

Rather than being the tool of the choreographer. So is dance still a part of your life? I still perform with Chunky Move when they do Tense Dave. We had a month in New York with it at one point and a couple of small tours around the States and around Australia. I teach contemporary technique at Sydney Dance Company, and stretch classes and yoga around various gyms. I make my living in a very physical way.

The writing is new. The film screenplay has continual feedback, weekly. Both work really well. I really like the collaborative element with the film. So I kind of fell into that. So it played into one of my strengths. So I intrinsically understand that and know that all the pieces make the story. The film adventure came along and it was very seductive because suddenly there was all this support and interest and funding and I got swept up in it. At the same time, the dance world was really difficult to penetrate for me. Funding was impossible without going through years of development funding and all this step by step funding.

Lastly, I'd like to come back to what you were saying about moving the script away from black comedy into more something more deeply emotional. That actually brought me home in terms of what I wanted to achieve with the relationship between mother and son and the power of Gloria, who is ball-breaking and totally devoted at the same time. Did Geena Davis live up to your expectations? The great thing about Geena is that while the role is at times so unpalatable, she brings a history of likeability.

Conversely, Billy appears likeable, but when he starts lying and covering up, if sometimes from altruistic motives, you think that perhaps Gloria's right, that he's selfish, or heading that way. But that's unfair and her wit is cruel: This amongst others of the later scenes adds considerable depth of feeling.

It was one of the struggles. Early in development, they wanted me to lose Linda altogether. The double grave is half-empty, waiting for him. The cinema release will allow Geena again to do publicity tours. It comes via the internet to your TV. It eliminates all the costs of cinemas and prints and publicity. Hopefully it will allow a return somewhere down the line and allow the film to find its own audience. The film opens in in lower middle class American suburbia with a nasty accident—a neighbour sets fire to himself and stumbles in slow motion, flaming, towards a small boy, Billy, playing beneath a garden sprinkler.

These early scenes, a retrospective prelude, establish the initial mood of the film, brisk, shocking, witness to the role of chance and the complexities of cause, effect and responsibility. Billy Harrison Gilbertson is His father Joel Tobeck has left the family for a new marriage, his mother Gloria Geena Davis is in bitter denial, keeping the world at bay with dark witticisms and refusing to see Gene, who is in care and visited regularly by Larry Harry Cook , the second eldest boy, who blames Billy for the car crash and, cruelly, for the fiery death of their neighbour.

Billy, in the manner of his own grieving, emulates Gene by befriending Doug Sebastian Gregory and tempting him into misadventure, but their brief partnership causes a very serious accident. A great strength of the film is its ensemble playing with uniformly good performances, script and directorial attention foregrounding each of the characters. You know what they say? When God closes a door he opens a beer. There are revealing moments when she cracks, for example after the wake: When she fears that Billy is turning into the delinquent Gene she atypically can barely speak.

The relationship between Billy and Gloria is of easy intimacy, in the way he advises on the choice of earrings before her date or joins in droll exchanges: All those loose screws you have will finally come in handy. But hoping to see the overt smiling charm of Davis in this tough mother role risks missing the subtleties of a strong performance. I need someone who is on my side, damn it. Gilbertson plays Billy with a quiet charm, who at his lowest point sounds not unlike his mother: But the writer has lived in Australia for 15 years and the film is faithful to his vision. Accidents Happen is bracing cinema—funny, cruel, suspenseful and wise, never letting the viewer off the moral hook with loveable characters and a predictable tale.

Its tonal, structural and thematic integrity is supported by the slightly heightened aesthetic of the production and art design Elizabeth Mary Moore, Angus MacDonald and the cinematography Ben Nott , evoking the 80s while intensifying the everyday in what is a very contemporary, shadowy parable—and something more than mere realism. Australian screenings commenced April 22, For much of the 20th century, risk-taking was encapsulated in the notion of a formally and politically disruptive avant garde.

In the 21st century the avant garde has been replaced by a multiplicity of agents for change, now busily reclaiming the right to risk as an aesthetic prerogative, and with utopian potential. Such an agent is Melbourne's increasingly international Next Wave Festival, for and by young adults, directed, for the second time, by the ever energetic and clear-sighted Jeff Khan.

In an era when the artistic manifesto has been usurped by the business plan and society has become increasingly risk-averse while contrarily wreaking environmental and financial destruction in the name of the free market , the call to experimentation is growing. If hardly a new concept for the arts, the ways in which artistic risk are being realised are evolving differently from their Modernist avant-garde antecedents. I asked Khan about the kinds of risk entailed in the works in this year's festival. We need to look beyond that in our fraught times, of environmental meltdown, of the big systems which are proving to be untenable.

We need to be citizens who can step outside of our own comfort zones. Every act of creation is a risk—starting with nothing and taking a position. A risk averse culture is contrary to the artistic process putting at risk, in turn, the scale and ambition of artists' projects. Since at least the s and 80s risk has increasingly manifested as cross-artform, intercultural and multimedia, entailing new performer-audience relationships and a pervasive engagement with media technologies.

What kinds of aesthetic risks are being taken in Next Wave ? It's definitely about the dissolution of boundaries between artforms, collaborations between complementary and sometimes contradictory practices, and especially the engagement with art in a non-art context. One of the things that most excites me has been a real ramp up, for this festival, in the number and rigour of site works that make interventions into the public arena.

It's about making meaningful interventions but it's also about speaking to a non-arts audience at the same time as to an arts audience. It's also about the choice of sites, of public spaces. This year's Sports Club Project evolved out of using night clubs as sites in the last festival. This time we're establishing a deep engagement with two sports club spaces: George Knott Athletics Reserve, which is a suburban track and field training facility and the MCG, one of the most iconic sports venues in Australia.

To really meaningfully intervene in these spaces with integrity is a huge challenge. The artists visited each venue once a week for six weeks, not only getting to know the architecture, but meeting with the sports people and the stakeholders—sports administrators, little athletics clubs, security guards, operations people—to learn about the function of the space both in an operational and a cultural sense. So the artists' works will be genuine responses to these sites.

There'll be a durational event in each venue over eight hours beginning in the afternoon and comprising roving and spot performances and media art works installed in nooks and crannies. People can come and go at any time and will find themselves immersed in these altered environments. Immersion, sensory deprivation or amplification, one-on-one performances, mass durational events, unusual locations—these are increasingly indicative of the tasks artists set themselves to attract or challenge audiences, to build them into the work.

Parts of the program are very immersive, very experiential, like Great Heights, which is staged across Melbourne rooftops. There are performances which are very physically confronting—Ashley Dyer's And Something Fell On My Head is a full-length performance made entirely of objects that are choreographed to fall from the ceiling of the space towards the audience who are fitted out with safety goggles and hard hats.

There are also works where audiences will become participants in unfamiliar places. The Melbourne new media arts collective Tape Projects' Proofs the Earth is not a Globe is essentially a tour of the Victorian Space Science Education Centre with performance, video and sound, transforming the educational tools. It's a work that requires the curiosity of the audience as well as a real sense of adventure.

A lot of the festival's projects have a sense of stepping into the unknown. We're used to the idea of performers tempting fate, as in physical theatre, but now different kinds of risks are being broached. In performance art this kind of approach has sometimes been physically dangerous for the performer. The success of the show will depend on the fearlessness of Mish and Jackson and how they handle the SMS commands from the audience. The risk is that the premise could result in something banal or something completely out of control, but what tempers it is that fearlessness and the performers' incredible proficiency in channelling the instructions into creating situations that are dramatic and spontaneous.

There's such a complicated backend tech and media system which underpins the performance, but what elevates it is the quality of the two performers. I'm intrigued by Dangerous Melbourne, an advisory session on how to handle the city's perils. It follows the format of a community information night and will be presented in a series of town halls across Melbourne where Neighborhood Watch meetings might normally happen.

It's equally a photography and performance event. Paula van Beek's been doing surveys and research to establish what various samples of the Melbourne population find dangerous about the city. Her photography is a sometimes literal, sometimes abstract interpretation of those fears. People will be given tea or coffee and name tags and a slide show which will accurately represent their fears but also poke fun at big irrational fears in the collective consciousness.

This criss-crossing of fact and fiction is fascinating. Doomsday Vanitas likewise engages with the facticity of fear by being located in Melbourne laneways inhabited by works of art: There's a lovely connection with Dangerous Melbourne here, because Nicole Breedon takes iconography from literature, film and largely computer gaming culture—the icons you 'collect' on your visit are everyday objects but become weapons and tools of survival.

Both Dangerous Melbourne and Doomsday Vanitas are about being held in thrall by our fears but also about being entertained by them while the world around us melts. What kind of gothic fantasies, for example, will be spun out of the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland? Managing the growing scale of Next Wave must in itself involve risks.

It see that your international project is aptly titled Structural Integrity. Structural Integrity is the biggest exchange that Next wave has undertaken, with artists from the Asia-Pacific region in residence at the Meat Market. We've brought together 11 artist run initiatives and art collectives from across Australia and around Asia.

Each is building a pavilion structure to house or represent emerging art in their region. It looks at how grassroots cultures balance their work with their geopolitical position. There'll be different takes on this. Post-Museum from Singapore are apparently meeting with 20 non-profit organisations from around Melbourne—climate change, anti-domestic violence, arts groups and charities who all believe they can change the world for the better—to organise a collective action which will determine the structure of their pavilion.

It's a utopian collectivity which really reflects the group's position in Singapore where they support arts projects and live art but also provide a meeting point for activist organisations, as an intersection of art and politics. There's a strong sense in Structural Integrity of art collectives and artist-run initiatives as providing an alternative social structure. The project is bigger than Ben Hur but it's looking pretty stunning at the moment.

The demands are sometimes epic: The full Next Wave program can be found at http: Participants in Structural Integrity are: A black speck emerges from right of frame. Like a Rorschach inkblot brought to life. Is it a sea creature? As the speck hurtles towards the screen, it becomes a man on a bike, carting his photographic equipment on a trailer.

Murray Fredericks is a landscape photo-artist. Salt, a joint effort by Fredericks and co-director Michael Angus, is an amazingly accomplished short documentary considering the isolation and the difficulties of shooting in various weather conditions on the lake. With no crew on board, the lone Fredericks frames each shot carefully, capturing stillness rather than motion. His monologuing, his intimacy with the camera as we sit in the tent with him, capture his moods, etch into the silent landscape. This short film is elegantly structured with the answer to that question revealed at the very end, after the video camera is switched off.

The DVD can be purchased from www. Prompting us to consider a series of possible futures, the theme of the exhibition parallels the concerns of the sci-fi genre where projections of the future function as anxious meditations upon or inspirational extensions of the present day. For myself, it seemed fitting, then, that entry into the Blackbox space resounded with allusions to science-fiction. Invited to touch the draping tendrils and leaves of the overhanging plants, we discover that this garden can emit sounds and acoustic vibrations. Akousmaflore brings together the human, the natural and the technological to imply harmonious fusion.

The work itself is founded upon proximity and recognition: One wonders, however, whether or not this leafy chorus harbours darker undertones. In the greenhouses of the future, will the hybridisation of nature and technology lead us towards social betterment or destruction? Such questions became all the more pressing when an occasional scream issued from the garden. One of the most compelling features of the biennial was its notion of a future still to be decided, through a rhythmic alternation between ominous and optimistic scenarios across the assembled works.

If utopia is an age-old ideal that speaks to our sun-dappled dreams, then Experimenta rightly chose to pay heed to the aesthetic complexity of its curatorial premise by showcasing the prospect of utopias lost as well as found. To that end, the elegiac I Feel Cold Today Patrick Bernatchez, presents us with the darkened flip side of utopian rationality and order. At once beautiful and imbued with a palpable sense of mourning, the work journeys through floor after floor of an abandoned office building, gradually filling with snow.

Instead of people, its scenes are filled with office chairs and windswept paperwork. All that is left of capitalism and economic industry are its vestigial remnants, soon to be covered over by a blanket of post-apocalyptic snow. Often, it is difficult to separate out the ludic appeals of the works on display from their darker portents as both utopic and dystopic possibilities reside within the same piece. Whereas beforehand we had controlled the actions of our shadowed selves, now detritus begins to slide down the string and affix itself to our shadow. Shadowplay animation leads to our own uncanny automation for we cannot halt the accumulating pile of debris.

Eventually, our shadows are overcome by a tidal wave of junk, drowned by the rubbish. Sometimes, utopia is found in the most unlikely or gloomy of places because this is a concept that is tethered to individual hopes and dreams. You Were In My Dream is a glorious stop-motion animation that recalls media art history from the vantage point of the present. Functioning as equal parts perspective box, reflective display and interactive installation, the visitor is seated at a booth and provides the stand-in face for a child protagonist fed live into the animation.

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The densely textured world of You Were In My Dream consists of hand-cut paper human and animal characters, delicate feathers and fronds—demonstrating how such material still persists within the age of the digital. Unlike the traditional perspective boxes of earlier periods of history, however, this work is not confined to a single-user experience. Indeed, the crowds who gathered around the piece seemed just as transfixed by the exterior projection on the side of the wooden box as I was by the world unraveling within it.

The combination of code and artificially-generated creatures from an older mode of writing seem entirely apposite—it is well known that cyberpunk author William Gibson first conceived of the birth of cyberspace from the purview of his own typewriter. While many of the works contained in Utopia Now do function as somewhat like one-trick ponies—have your digital portrait taken and watch yourself aged via face-reading and morphing software; press a button, hold yourself against a glass panel and see yourself transformed into a suspended, full-body scan—this should not be taken as criticism.

Towards the conclusion of the short digital animation, Please Say Something David OReilly, , another favourite of mine, a complicated cat and mouse pair steps forward to take a bow and allude to our own appreciation of the display. This is the great strength of the Experimenta Biennial—its deliberate inclusion of the visitors themselves as embodied and vital participants within the artworks. This biennial might not have been utopia attained but, at times, it did function as an enthralling place to visit. Either way the audience makes a greater commitment to art than the usual heightened receptivity.

For many years interactivity has been largely associated with new media, but now physical correlatives are increasingly appearing in live performance. What is screen culture and will the making of more and more films alone grow an audience for Australian film? She is currently completing a practice based PhD at Victoria University, researching new critical frameworks to describe dance for camera. Many of the strands that Reeldance has traditionally offered, like the documentary session this year Paris is Burning and In Bed with Madonna , international shorts sessions and Reeldance International Dance on Screen Awards, are still in place, but there seems a broader sweep of both high end and low budget films, as well as films made specifically by choreographers and more general art films with an interest in the body and movement.

Aptly, the theme for the festival is space—physical, emotional, imaginative space and tensions held in space. Both have enjoyed wide audiences internationally outside of the dance on screen genre, but Mitchell enthuses about seeing them within the context of the Reeldance festival. Askill is a filmmaker with a strong interest in fashion, and therefore Mitchell notes an interest in the body, movement and composition.

She is interested in the ways Sussman holds the tension between people and space, people to people, and to the camera. There will be a retrospective of films by UK artist, Shelly Love, who will be attending the festival as an international guest and hosting labs in Sydney and Melbourne. These will focus on the festival theme of space and will create an environment for testing ideas, embracing spontaneity and play without the pressure of an outcome. Mitchell is also interested in Love as an artist whose first language is dance, and whose filmic choices are made through this dancerly perception.

The session will screen six new dance works made over the last year as part of an intriguing experimental process. The screening will be the first time the 18 artists will see the finished works, and there will be a forum for the artists to respond to the project. Mitchell sees this as an initial experiment to begin to build infrastructure for the ongoing program, and there will be much consultation with the artists on where to go from here.

Each artist whose work is shown will be afforded time for public response to their work. In conjunction, there is currently a window installation at the Australia Council building in Sydney with 10 screens showcasing works from the archives. This installation will tour to Chunky Move in Melbourne and the Judith Wright Centre, Brisbane as the festival travels from state to state. Beyond the individual sessions, Mitchell is interested in the overarching concept of a festival. She reminisces about days spent at the Valhalla Cinema in Melbourne in the 70s with a thermos of tea and packet of shortbread biscuits, watching films from morning to night, submerging herself in the filmic world.

To increase the sense of national convergence and conversation, Mitchell has created Artbus, two buses travelling overnight from Melbourne and Brisbane respectively with dance film screenings every hour and places for 48 people on each, who will be guests of the festival in Sydney with access to all screenings, forums and talks. Mitchell wants the festival to be not only about screening dance film, but about process and community too. She likens the process of her curation to creating a fabulous dinner party: Upon hearing this peace anthem by John Lennon do you: Instead he put bodies on stage: These onstage bodies moved, stood still, observed, listened and sometimes embraced.

Invariably they did these things to the accompaniment of well-known pop songs. Spectators at the Parisian premiere were offended. Not only did the spectators sing, they got up and danced whenever there was the hint of a groove in one of the Top hits in rotation. Here was the democracy of meaning-making in action at a postdramatic theatre event. For Bel a performance should mirror the socio-political reality of the audience. As he has argued, there is an historical logic to this. When the king was in the audience the performance was supposed to reflect the image of its royal patron.

After the French Revolution, the execution of the king and the shift to democracy, the performance was supposed to reflect a new patron—the bourgeoisie. In order to truthfully represent this reality of a performance event among social equals, Bel encourages mutual observation: The encounter between spectator and performer in The Show Must Go On is stark, comical, often surprising, and sometimes very moving. Bel achieves all this by setting very simple tasks for his performers. In one section they listen carefully to songs on their iPods, and very loudly sing the choruses when they come around.

Often the performers simply stand and watch us. I think this is how Bel wanted it. This is not what Bel wanted. We were supposed to sit in our seats, listen, watch and behave—like well-trained middle-class citizens? Sometimes the combination of a very intimate performance space and very uncomfortable subject matter is enough to provoke an encounter of intense co-witnessing.

The room is painted white and fluoro-lit. In this setting Capdevielle is able to watch audience reactions in detail as he performs gruesome murders of teenage boys in real time with puppets. The script is based on serial murders that occurred in Texas in the s. At times I am forcefully dissociated from my own feelings, which themselves become like puppets to observe: Kamp by Hotel Moderne Rotterdam is performed at the Roundhouse, a larger space that offers a little more distance from which to witness yet another horror, the genocide at Auschwitz.

The concentration camp is presented as a scale model that covers the large stage area. From this perspective, the human figurines, while individually crafted, are made generic by their uniforms, whether prisoner or guard issue. The obliteration of individual character in the context of a militaristic ideology that classifies human beings according to perceived evolutionary type is in itself worth an essay. The images that appear on an upstage screen have a gritty, hand-held, journalistic immediacy to them. Neither the puppeteers nor the prison figures look back at us from a perspective that is particular or unique.

They, and we, have been depersonalised. We have become industry. We have become utility in the service of mechanistic eugenics and skewed Darwinian ideology. From organised genocide to creative chaos: White Cabin by Ahke Theatre St Petersburg offers a life-affirming counterpoint to Kamp, but sit in the front row at your peril. A large, bearded man in partial whiteface, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a pork pie hat, might splatter you with red wine as he empties a bottle over himself or sprays it onto his fellow performers. Bits of newspaper, floating like tiny airships on fire, might make you their landing pad.

This is not participatory theatre but, like Jerk, the intimacy of the venue puts the audience dangerously close to the action—and the action is non-stop, carnivalesque and enticing despite the hazards. Who knows why the two large men and the medium-sized woman do hand-stands on tables, try to hang themselves or pour milk on their naked backs? Watching them makes me want to knock back some vodka and throw some wine and paint around for myself. Then something truly wonderful happens. Three large panels of white fabric are dropped across the front of the prop-littered stage. Each has a large window cut out of its centre.

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The first panel has the biggest window, the third the smallest. It feels a bit like a puppet theatre within a puppet theatre, while also carrying the suggestion of a series of Russian nesting dolls. The performers variously enter the front, middle or back windows and create brief tableaux or moving scenes—they fight, smoke cigars and one of them commits symbolic suicide by holding plastic bags of water to his body and slashing them open with a knife. This perspective is made more disorienting by the two-dimensional paintings and photographs that are projected onto the white fabric.

Because these images are usually in zoom-in or zoom-out mode, they give us the feeling of alternately falling into or out of the windows. Despite the fact that some of his performers are untrained—non-experts, you might call them—the overall construction of The Show Must Go On is as brilliantly crafted and manipulative as the most revered canonical works of Western dramatic literature. Bel spent two years making his show. We spend less than two hours trying to figure out the extent of our agency— are the performers inviting us to take part bodily, or just mentally? How much freedom do we have to affect the outcome of the event?

What are the rules here? Enter Rimini Protokoll for a dose of genuine interactivity [see RT91, p18]. So the idea of a daily journey travel to work is connected to the idea of something under construction the site around which the flagger is directing traffic , and both of these are connected to the metaphor of life as a video game you win or lose. Each spectator is given an Xbox-type controller to create and manipulate an avatar on the huge screen that stretches across the back of the stage. Around spectators take part, through their avatars, in practical decision-making such as finding a mate, buying a house, choosing a candidate, supporting military spending and voting on abortion rights.

When contentious issues are introduced, interaction jumps from the screen to the seats where spectators get into playful or heated arguments. The company also risks having these parameters redefined by the spectators. In this sense the spectator-performer relationship is truly levelled. As in The Show Must Go On, this levelling is made clearer by the fact that the performers are untrained actors. The truth-and-consequence on-screen game is counterpointed by the stories of the experts who talk about life choices that led them to their current circumstances.

Each story has its own peculiarity: At the point where the performers become practiced enough to feel secure, begin to build their roles and to act, the piece loses more than just its charm. Insecurity and fragility are the defining moments of what is understood by many to be authenticity. Yet such moments where timing, tension, empathy and presence disappear are also agonising. Alexander Verlag Berlin, Each event provides a thematic and aesthetic frame in which we meet and reflect on who we might be to each other.

In these situations the artists avoid setting themselves up as authorities. The role of the spectator has shifted from decipherer-of-meaning to co-creator of the theatrical event. Another way to put it is to say that interpretation has been subordinated to encounter, and that it is in the energy of the encounter that meaning is created, rather than having meaning encoded in the event beforehand by the artist. As cognitive science has shown, spectators tend to respond kinetically to what they are watching. Even though it may not be apparent, a spectator responds to movement neuro-muscularly.

Often the bodies on stage are as diverse as the bodies in the seats. PuSh has also helped push Vancouver from bystander to participant in the greater creative flows of world theatre. Now in its fifth outing, PuSh has taken its place among the best theatre festivals of its kind. Now in its 18th year, Panorama has developed into one of the most important platforms for contemporary dance in Brazil, if not in all of South America.

One of the declared aims of the festival is to present international works to local audiences at affordable prices. Among those, Not a Love Song by French choreographer Alain Buffard was an undisputed crowd pleaser and it was easy to see why. They stagger across the stage, losing control, towards the end turning into dog-like creatures. Not a Love Song playfully exposes a world enamoured with itself, obsessed with celebrity and self-display. Strong partnerships with numerous important arts organizations in Europe, such as Arts Admin in London, the Goethe Institut, Alliance Francaise etc, have enabled Panorama to regularly present works by European artists and companies including innovators like Jerome Bel, La Ribot and Jonathan Burrows.

Under the artistic directorship of Bonito and Lopez, there has been a push to present more works from Southern Hemisphere countries, especially South America and Africa south of the Equator. It was no surprise then that the involvement of South African choreographer and dancer Boyzie Cekwana in Panorama was two-fold. I Wanna Be Wanna Be. At the beginning of the piece, we see Soweto-born Cekwana clad in black pants and a white corset with what looks like a belt of explosives strapped to his chest.

His face is painted black and his lips are bright red. He runs on the spot, his arms executing powerful jabs. It looks as if he is fighting. But who is the enemy? By the end of the work, Cekwana has undergone a striking transformation. He is now wearing a metal crown of thorns and a tutu with strips of papers attached, like price tags. He suggestively crawls across the audience, occasionally stopping for a brief lap dance. Is this the celebration of a new-found identity, proudly embraced, in full awareness of its flaws…? Besides presenting new international productions, Panorama also aims to showcase and promote Brazilian work with a focus on artists and companies outside of Rio.

The scope of the Brazilian work presented at the Panorama Festival is impressive, to say the least. One of the most intriguing contributions comes from Company Cena In their Embodied Voodoo Game, the concept of the voodoo doll is explored as a potent metaphor for the correlation between dance and video games, the body and new technologies.

The roles of manipulator, medium and the manipulated constantly change throughout the piece. Using gaming devices such as joysticks and acceleration and motion sensors, they manipulate sound and image projections. Gradually, a sense of danger and violence creeps in, as in the advanced stages of a computer game.

Bodies leap through the air and crash to the ground. A female dancer is suspended by her hair extensions. Heavy rocks are balanced on body parts. In the end, the stage is covered with white feathers, electrical fans swirling them up into the air as the performers spin on the spot. Throughout the year, audience development initiatives and activities are conducted in order to heighten the awareness for dance. They include free shows for residents of the favelas in the outskirts of Rio and the handing out of booklets in schools.

In terms of artistic development, Panorama offers its residency program coLABoratorio. For a period of several months prior to the festival, emerging artists from Rio and Teresina engage in artistic exchange, mentored by more established artists, both national and international.

Panorama is a massive undertaking made possible through a large number of income sources, predominantly government funding and corporate sponsorship. According to artistic director Bonito, the edition of the festival was the best attended yet. And from an Australian perspective? Only one Australian company has presented work at Panorama to date, Branch Nebula in There is hope this might change. It would enrich Australian artists to be able to present work regularly at this diverse and stimulating dance festival. Premiered in and revised in , Le Grand Macabre is a magnificent piece of comic music theatre, complex, demanding and highly entertaining, and this is a wonderful production, with outstanding performances and staging.

The story, drawn from the absurdist play La Balade du Grand Macabre by Michel de Ghelderode, tells the story of Nekrotzar, the Grand Macabre, who returns from hell to destroy the world with a comet sent by God. The video then gives way to the theatre set, where we see a model of the sprawling woman, now naked and enlarged to fill the stage, her face frozen in horror. The surreal play thus appears as the nightmare or hallucination of a sick woman. The staging suggests all kinds of allegories, from Gulliver in Lilliput to a corpse being devoured by rodents. She is inert and helpless beneath her intruders, as the secret police emerge from her intestines and people walk in and out of her head, breast and vagina.

Such a representation of woman is provocative and, some might suggest, obscenely incorrect, but she literally embodies our own anxieties, harrassed as we are by the troublemakers of society, and when her innards finally collapse, we feel her torment in our own abdomens. Le Grand Macabre updates the traditions of opera with those of absurdist theatre, pondering the meaning of life in a licentious, ridiculous world. The setting is the fictional principality of Breughelland, and the characters are caricatures—Piet the Pot, a drunkard whom Nekrotzar enlists to support his mission; two insatiable lovers, Amando and Amanda; the astrologer Astradamors and his dominatrix partner Mescalina; Gepopo, the hysterical chief of secret police; and the impotent prince Go-Go and his fawning, bickering, manipulative ministers and brutal police.

At various times, characters fake death or think they are dead, or are dead and are then revived, as if death is merely an alternative and contingent state. Ultimately, Piet and Astradamors get Nekrotzar so drunk that he fails in his mission a lesson for us all , suggesting that men are all dissolute failures. Gender issues are also central, amplified by the confronting set design—women can be independent and controlling, and can also be obsessed by desire.

Gepopo and Venus are sung by the same actor the wonderful Susanna Andersson , suggesting the interchangeability of the characters, and Amanda and Amando are both played by female performers, further confusing gender identities. The brilliant score, opening with a fanfare of car-horns parodying a wind ensemble, is a collage of classical and operatic musical genres, fragments and gestures. Particular instruments emphasise characterisation, such as bassoons for Piet and rumbling brass for Nekrotzar.

Scene one ends with a swirl of bassoons, bass clarinet and brass that echoes and elaborates the car-horn introduction. To suit the action, the music is alternately slapstick, raucous, dramatic, gently melodic or ironic, sometimes underscoring and sometimes mocking the vocal line, or recreating the vernacular sound effects of urban life. The orchestra is heavily weighted towards winds, brass and percussion, with a reduced violin section.

Such music is conspicuously different from the music of any era, challenging both the avant-garde conventions that dominated the early- and midth century and the traditions of earlier opera. Neither classical nor modernist but referencing both, it is postmodernist, a milestone in the evolution of music, and particularly suited to the absurdist mockery of human foibles. Though it is rooted in the World War II and Cold War eras, it remains highly engaging artistically and still relevant in a world beset by the politicking around terrorism and climate change.

The opera concludes with a return to the opening video, where we see that the woman has recovered and is washing her face in the bathroom. Le Grand Macabre delivers ironically contrasting messages about the end of the world—selfishness, vanity and overconsumption bring on the illnesses of our society, but ultimately death happens anyway and, in the meantime, life, however meaningless, must be lived. In the midth century, US-born Mexican composer Nancarrow created numerous compositions by hand-cutting piano rolls for the player piano, producing works so complex they could not be performed by a single pianist, and characterised by competing rhythmic structures and layered canon forms.

Though less cerebral and more accessible than preceding works, it is complex and absorbing.

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