My highest recommendation:

https://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/adult-friends/finding-liam/

[Apparently, some at Gay Authors also found it worth recommendation, and began appearing there just recently.]

https://gayauthors.org/story/jeff-burton/encrypted/

R

UPDATE:  Something about the story was beginning to sound familiar, and I discovered Ronyx was republishing an older story.  The complete story is here   
 

R

The writing is beautiful, full of similes and metaphors that are fresh and engaging, making the reader feel not only for the characters but also for the sounds and surroundings of a sailing warship.

https://gayauthors.org/story/andy-cannon/what-the-ship-remembers/

Unreservedly recommended.

I started posting a story over at Gay Authors called Tyler's Dilemma if anyone is interested.

Tyler Scott can't wait to start his senior year. An agreement with his dad means he needs to get an A in Advanced Calculus. That might be an unachievable task as his math teacher takes pride in never giving out A's. And he might have to do one little thing that could be considered gay to fulfill a bet he lost to his best friend, Devin. As a result, Tyler begins to question his sexuality. The only person he can turn to for advice is Brandon Myers, an old friend he hasn't spoken to in three years since the boy came out freshmen year. Can Brandon help him comes to terms before Tyler's life falls apart? 

https://nifty.org/nifty/gay/beginnings/harvard-comes-to-montana/

There is now a sequel in progress.

Damn!  This is a wonderful first chapter.  But it isn’t.  It’s finished.  Damn again.

I suppose you could say that about many flashes and short stories: they make great first chapters.  But you really want to know what comes next with this one and won’t; we never will.

At least, if you’ve never read it, you have a great treat in store for you.

C

I have also been sequencing through each of Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn stories, guided by a list of them in order that I found online.  It turns out that there is a definite sequence to them.  Again, the local library obligingly offers them in Kindle e-book form.  

R

https://gayauthors.org/story/lee-wilson/the-boy-on-the-porch/

https://nifty.org/nifty/gay/relationships/the-inheritance-clause/

There's a little slowing towards the end, but it ends on a fine note.

Maggie, a once-hopeful artist turned waitress, is pregnant and preparing to move back to her hometown with her boyfriend and father-to-be Ed.

Ed, coasting through life as a barely competent bike courier, is ready for a new start with Maggie and their baby, if only to finally leave behind his secret past of hooking up with strange men in train station bathrooms—and his secret past with Maggie’s best friend, Phil.

Phil, who sleepwalks through his office job and lives for the weekends, is on the brink of achieving his first real relationship with his roommate Keith. The two live in an illegal warehouse commune with other quirky creatives and idealists—the site of the party to end all parties.

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s addictive, page-turning debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a critical look at the political, emotional, and financial hurdles facing young adults trying to build lives there and often living for their evenings and weekends.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CC5VZHW5/ref=x_gr_bb_kindle?caller=Goodreads&tag=x_gr_bb_kindle-20

Lumet directed a bunch of movies, both well-known and otherwise, and I have seen only some of them.  His first feature from was Twelve Angry Men (1957), and I was inspired to dig out my DVD copy of the film and watch it last night.  His last feature film was Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), which came out before his death from lymphoma in 2011.  I did not watch that one again, although I have an awards screener of it, because it is just a bit too dark and somewhat depraved for my taste.  

In between those two movies he helmed a number of others that I have not seen, such as Serpico (1973), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976), Deathtrap (1982), The Verdict (1982), and many others.   Actually, looking at the list, I realize that I have seen Orient Express and Deathtrap.  

In any case, I have been finding it very interesting to read his philosophies about how to approach movie making, from selecting scripts to casting to running the show once photography starts.  Of course, living in Los Angeles it's hard to escape the influence of the entertainment industry, but even for people elsewhere I predict that they would find this book rewarding, especially when it touches on films they are familiar with.

R

Nathan Field, a talented young American actor, arrives at the newly rebuilt Globe Theatre in London to play Puck in a revival of A Midsummer Night's Dream. As rehearsals begin, eerie echoes of the past begin to haunt Nat, and he falls sick with a mysterious sickness.

When he wakes, Nat finds himself in 1599, an actor at the original Globe - and his co-star is none other than the King of Shadows himself: William Shakespeare.

Nat's new life is full of excitement, danger and the passionate friendship that he has longed for since the tragic death of his parents. But why has he been sent to the past - and is he trapped there forever?

Susan Cooper wrote a series of books, the first of which was 'The Dark is Rising.' This was made into a rather lacklustre movie. They should have made King of Shadows,,,

Here it is:

https://storiesbydriver.net/jitb/jitb01.htm

And the starting point is:

https://storiesbydriver.net/jitb.htm

A true tale out of Rockland, Maine; a complete short story unto itself. If you go to the YouTube version, the words and history of the story are available in the notes.

Wishing everyone appropriate holiday greetings.

--Rigel

Part of the reason why that war inspired such powerful writing by such as Rupert Brooke, Siegried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Erich Maria Remarque, is that children were still being taught that war is glorious and the young men, children really, who signed up were expecting to win glory for themselves, in victory or in death. Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.

The war to end all wars didn’t work. Only twenty years later it all happened again, on an even greater scale and with even more powerful weaponry. That second one required that world wars be numbered, World War 2 - and its predecessor became World War 1. There hasn’t been a World War 3, yet, so did these wars end all wars? Sadly, no – there are always wars going on somewhere, just not on a worldwide scale.

My father was just too young to be called up to fight in the Second World War. He did National Service in peacetime just after the war ended. I have lived my life without experiencing war. I have had the luxury of considering my life valuable, but human life is not valuable, really. Nations still fling themselves into conflict with their neighbours without regard to the vast numbers of their citizens who will die. Like the columns of soldiers who marched in line into machine gun fire in World War 1, and like the Light Brigade sixty years before that in the Crimean War, who rode similarly into fire, and died pointlessly, soldiers are still being sent to their deaths so that their masters can claim to have captured a town which will be retaken by the enemy the following week.

Military leaders still factor expected casualties as ‘collateral damage’, and they must consider a certain level of such ‘damage’ as acceptable in the pursuit of their aims, or no battles would ever be fought. Human life is still expendable, and I, having lived a life insulated from this harsh reality, struggle to think of my own life in those terms.

I have just read In Memoriam by Alice Winn. I was powerfully affected by it. It has changed me. I highly recommend it – if you get a chance to read it, do.

Out of curiosity, noting that the credits mentioned that the show was based on characters created by novelist Ann Cleeves in a series of Vera Stanhope books, I tracked down the first book in that series, entitled "The Crow Trap."  It's long -- over 600 pages -- and uses a Rashomon-like approach in which the same time frames are separately narrated by multiple characters.  It takes some concentration and focus to keep details straight, which isn't helped by the fact that characters have confusingly similar last names (i.e., Fulwell and Furness).

The Vera that emerges from the written novel is different from the one seen on television.  Now, I should qualify that by noting that this comparison is between the first novel and recent episodes that have been evolving over more than a decade.  But the Vera that emerges in this novel is not as likeable, and not as surefooted, as the TV counterpart.  

Evidently this first novel was adapted to appear in the first season of Vera.  I don't think my Britbox subscription lets me look back that far without paying extra, so I probably can't compare that early version of Vera to the book.  

In any event, I can warmly recommend the TV series -- the stories are filled with twists and turns as the investigators peel back a prodigious number of onion layers that reveal many surprising hidden connections.  At the same time, one thing I can definitely say about the book is that the solution to "whodunit" in 'The Crow Trap" was an absolute surprise.  My only real complaint is having to slog through more than 600 pages to get there . . . it's not the kind of casual read that a typical Poirot or Marple would be.  

Cheers,

R

UPDATE:  I discovered that BritBox lets me access Season 1 after all (though not all earlier seasons are available).  I have started watching the TV version of "The Crow Trap" and it is clear (and quite understandable) that the story has been greatly trimmed down to fit the TV frame.  The book starts out with a suicide; the TV version has this person murdered.  The book has three people living temporarily in a remote cottage; the TV version has only one person.  And there are other changes.  Now I'm curious how they have refashioned the book story.

https://gayauthors.org/story/unilive/u-n-i/