Welcome to the planet Regelence that is ruled by patriarchal military gay power-couples, including King Steven and his male “consort”, Raleigh.

Not unlike the old-Earth society of 19th century England, you will find Dukes, Earls, and swords with Formal Balls, Manors, Country Houses and estates – all within a futuristic digital space-faring age.

On Regelence, the planet of gay love, it is the young men that are required to be chaperoned and chaste until their wedding night, or until their 25th birthday. To complete King Steven and Raleigh’s family, the two men are parents to five handsome and somewhat rowdy sons, all genetically engineered predisposed to homosexuality and the male-dominated culture. Enter the swashbuckler Intergalactic Navy Captain Nathaniel Hawkins. A brawny perfectly formed hairy hunk of a man, virile, strong and dependable, finds himself attracted to one of the King’s sons. Prince Aiden Townsend, totally adorable in his innocence, is an extremely artistic starry-eyed young lad

more interested in his sketching and painting than in finding his life partner. That is until he slips from a tree limb and falls into the arms of the mysterious Earl of Deverell and once he gets an eyeful of Nate, he begins to reconsider his future.

Nate and Aiden spend nearly the first third of the book fighting their growing attraction to each other to avoid a compromising situation and certain scandal. When the two finally get together, after the romance, the anticipation and the yearning, the sex scenes are explosively hot and sensual.

My Fair Captain is recommended as a light and fun read, offering a wonderful distraction.

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I have enjoyed reading James Lear’s work especially involving the erotic investigations of amateur sleuth Edward “Mitch” Mitchell and his sidekick Harry ‘Boy’ Morgan. With The Back Passage, Lear gave us the classic country house, Agatha Christie-styled thriller. The Secret Tunnel was a dark erotic version of Murder On The Orient Express. Both books offer a wonderful blend of murder mystery and hot gay erotica, with Mitch fucking first and asking questions later.

Now in James Lear latest book, A Sticky End, Mitch races around London finding clues to absolve ‘Boy’ of a murder charge. The policemen, working class gigolos, steam room bathers, embezzlers, and blackmailers that Mitch comes across create a tasty mystery and satisfying erotic romp.

from page 88

My hands felt firm, muscular, football player’s thighs through the rough blue material of his uniform pants, and my tongue tasted a fresh, hard cock. I gave one good, slow lick along the underside of his shaft and then, when I reached the top, opened up and swallowed him whole.

from page 145

He made none of the mistakes of the novice, instead shielding his teeth with his lips, keeping his mouth wet, applying just enough suction to bring me to full hardness but not so much that I thought he was trying to suck my brains out through my dick. I’ve had a lot of mouths on my penis over the years, and of all the common errors in cocksucking that I’ve encountered, I’d say that overenthusiasm is the worst. A blowjob should be a pleasure, not a contest of wills. It should certainly not resemble some kind of industrial process.

from page 228

When Sherlock Holmes is faced with a seemingly insoluble problem, he retreats into an interior world, usually accompanying himself on the violin. When Hercule Poirot is approaching his conclusion, he gives up all attempts at investigation and treats himself to a good dinner, some fine wine, and a digestif. Time to cast my mind adrift – to lose myself. And I could think of no better way of losing myself than by taking the biggest dick possible up my asshole. Holmes has his fiddle, Poirot his liqueurs – I have cock.

Mitch’s various encounters, coupled with the central mystery with its cast of colorful characters and Mitch’s insatiable desires, makes A Sticky End quite an enjoyable witty and sexy treat.

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I recently enjoyed reading a Josh Lanyon murder mystery, The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks.

Take a large and creepy old house in Vermont with dark, mysterious shadows everywhere and unexplained drafts turned into apartment dwellings with a landlady from hell.

We are then introduced to the mild mannered, asthmatic and shy Perry Foster – a 23-year-old struggling artist with “Bambi” eyes working as a librarian.

Perry Foster then discovers a dead body in his bathtub and after he runs seeking assistance, the body vanishes and he is not believed by anyone except for his surly neighbor Nick Reno, a former Navy SEAL.

Now add several eccentric sometimes ominous and threatening fellow boarders, any one of them perhaps being the culprit, for various reasons.

Nick and Perry team up to try to figure out what is happening in their boarding house. Perry seems so fragile at the beginning, yet he has a core of stubbornness, innocent idealism and strength that keeps him going no matter how tough things get.

Nick starts out surly, cold, and even mean at times, but he too has hidden depths. Nick’s protective instinct evolves into something more as he comes to respect the younger man for his own inner strength and talents.

With a gay romance subtly and realistically woven into a plot that is mostly centered on the mystery, I did find The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks an enjoyable read.

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In Stealing Some Time, it is the year 2477 and much of the world has long since become desert due to the unchecked use of fossil fuels in the centuries past.

Technical Sergeant Kallen Deshara of the North American Alliance’s Air Defense Force is only 20 years old and already has been in three relationships.

While in boot camp, Kallen comes to terms with the fact that he is gay. He even finds his first gay relationship with a fellow recruit, Tiago Sandoval, but is dumped shortly thereafter. While nursing his wounds, he finds his second relationship with a fellow student Dayler Madsen at the operational photronics training school in Vancouver.

After a couple of months of steady weekly intense work outs with Dayler as trainer, Kallen came to understand that Dayler was only trying to constantly change him into something new and different. On Page 46, “Every week it was a routine of posing nude, having his measurements taken, then complying with a new sexual fantasy having to do with Dayler’s ‘transformed hot boy’”.

“Do you love me?”

“What do you want me to say?” Dayler responds. “That I want to be with you forever? That I want to only do you for the rest of my life? That we’re gonna get married? I knew you’d eventually ask that question. The answer’s no. I don’t love you.”

Kallen is then shipped off to his first duty in the mountains at the edge of North America’s Great Central Desert, beginning a relationship with Officer Acton Racelis. Since Kallen’s society shuns his sexual orientation, when called to Central Security, he is sure that he is walking into a court-martial.

Instead he finds that he is being sent on a secret mission. It seems that an experiment using a new device meant to accelerate the growth rate of crops has caused unexpected side effects. On page 123, Dr. Hatsuwakan explains, “I’m afraid our results couldn’t be predicted. You see, instead of shortening the maturation rate of those grains – the photonogrid opened a fracture or portal, for lack of a better word, in space-time.”

Kallen and his team are to travel to the year 1820 and end the severe ionizing radiation storms caused by the device. If they are not successful, their present may cease to exist.

They materialize in an isolated Kentucky wilderness and Kallen stumbles upon 19-year-old cartographer Aaric Utzman and literally and figuratively falls head over heels for him. Kallen discovers that love knows no boundaries – not even time itself.

In the meantime the plot thickens as a scientist uploads to Kallen the real history of how the world became burning hot. Kallen couldn’t be any more ill-prepared for that long-suppressed truth, along with a cascade of events that forces decisions about love, loyalty, allegiance, the quest for power, and the tampering with time itself.

Will Kallen go back? Can he go back? His colleagues who have already returned to the 25th century have other plans – they must bring him back before his presence in the past alters the timeline.

But Kallen recognizes that he may be able to shape the future that should have been.

My always enjoying Science Fiction, toss in a story of a young man discovering himself, add many pages of hot erotic gay sex – and after 492 pages in the three books of Stealing Some Time you have a wonderful story that spans one man’s full life.

Stealing Some Time – winner of the 2004 Stonewall Society Imagination Literary Award for best gay-themed science fiction.

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All hell breaks loose when Dean Smith, Earl of Carwick, is tricked into being discovered in the company of Rob, a handsome male prostitute. Now Dean needs to repair his broken engagement to a wealthy heiress… and Rob is the only one who can identify the man who set him up, proving to Dean’s fiancée that things weren’t as they appeared.

The trip from Worcester to Bath turns into a journey of self-discovery, as Dean finds himself becoming increasingly attracted to Rob.

On page 116, “And, oh God, Rob was attractive. Compellingly so. Eyes that glinted merriment and promised affection. A mobile, oh-so-skillful mouth. Rob’s body, half-glimpsed nude several times: the long line of his back, strength of his shoulders, alluring curve of his buttocks. Strong, graceful legs. Naked last night on the floor. Rob’s arousal had been most certainly not been faked.”

Rob stirs feelings that Dean has long kept repressed, but acting on them would make true the accusations that destroyed his engagement. Torn between duty and desire, Dean’s destiny lies in the hands of a Discreet Young Gentleman.

The Discreet Young Gentleman has adventure, mystery, and humor. The story has dashing young men, ghosts, class conflict, sleeping a night in a barn, getting robbed and a mysterious lady in grey.

Rob and Dean are given time to actually become fond of one another – never consummating their dreams with actual satisfaction until nearly the end of the story.

No damsels falling out of their dresses but just a Discreet Young Gentleman in tight pants.

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A few years ago, Rupert Smith was complaining in frustration to a fellow writer about his inability to find a publisher for a second novel. “Have you ever thought of writing porn,” his friend asked.

Rupert Smith took on a new author name, James Lear, and started writing gay erotica. His first book was entitled “The Low Road”, which will become available again in September 2009.

His second book, recently republished, was The Palace of Varieties, for which Mr. Lear won the “Writer Of The Year Award” at the 2008 Erotic Awards in London.

His third book, which was first published in 2006, is a British Country House murder mystery entitled The Back Passage – my personal favorite of Lear’s current works.

The fourth James Lear novel was an American Civil War epic entitled Hot Valley which has a wealthy white young man with a black slave frequently sexually entwined.

I have recently enjoyed reading Lear’s latest work The Secret Tunnel, which is a parody of the “Murder on the Orient Express” – a sex-drenched comic whodunit that would have made Agatha Christie blush.

While The Secret Tunnel is not a sequel to The Back Passage, it allows author James Lear to bring back two wonderful characters, namely Mitch and Boy.

In The Back Passage, the handsome and muscular Edward “Mitch” Mitchell was a college student visiting an English country estate for a holiday weekend – which happened to include finding a body in a closet.

In The Secret Tunnel, school days are over and Mitch has begun to settle down to a career as a doctor in Edinburgh, living a life with his partner in the year 1928.

Accepting an invitation to London from his ex-lover Harry “Boy” Morgan, he jumps aboard the Flying Scotsman, hornier than ever, and the ride is anything but smooth.

A good crime novel follows a basic formula of crime, investigation and solution. The porn parallel formula would be encounter, seduction and sex.

While a whodunit plots this pattern across an entire book, James Lear must repeat it several times within one novel, he offering at least one orgasm per chapter. In The Secret Tunnel, the sex takes you along with the plot and becomes an integral part of the entire story.

The Secret Tunnel introduces a whole cast of colorful characters from closeted film stars, hairy legged kilt-wearing highlanders, fascist dowagers, bent coppers and gay royalty. Mitch’s new sidekick, a stowaway Belgian power-bottom Bertrand Damseaux, is supposed to vaguely remind readers of Hercule Poirot.

A dead body tumbles out of the train toilet and you have a magical mix of comedy, mystery and non-stop sex as the plot giddily does its own twisting and turning – piling up clues and theories.

The Secret Tunnel has an ensemble of memorable characters, well-defined settings with period detail and thoroughly likeable heroes – an excellent well-written story.

My favorite though remains The Back Passage with its feverish erotic detail.

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When I was young gay man, there never seemed to be enough science-fiction novels for me to read, with Frank Herbert’s Dune and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation remaining my classic favorites. As I have matured I have found myself with quite a varied taste in literature. I just finished reading American Theocracy – The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.

Of course I have attempted to avoid review or discussion outside of the current TyRain theme – which basically is the enjoyment and sharing of enticingly good looking nude men and gay life. That is why, when someone wrote to me here at TyRain and suggested a science-fiction story about young gay love… I could not resist reading it – and in a few days I will write a detailed favorable review of Stealing Some Time.

As a genre, gay science fiction seems rather rare. I do have a personal favorite. I can not recall the first time that I ever read the novel Chrome – but it must have been at least 25 years ago. A story so well told that it hauntingly has stayed in my mind over these past decades. Chrome and Vortex are in love. One of them is a robot. It is in this future tyranny that it is death to love a robot. As Chrome falls in love, he begins to question if he is human or a robot.

In fact, when I first came online in 1994, before the WWW was popular, communication was via BBS (Bulletin board system) – generally a computer hooked up to 6 or 10 phone lines. In those days you needed a “handle”. My first was “irish”, second was “spitfire”, and then I become known as “chrome”, named after that novel and the main character. I still continue to use “chrome” over these past 18 years for some email.

As a fun side comment, recently it was news that Netscape would no longer be updated and supported. It was wonderful years ago, before Microsoft even knew that there was a need to create Internet Explorer – and I still had the 3-floppy disk set that I purchased for 30 bucks. Don’t ask – I sold the original box and disks on EBay last year to a collector.

Over time, with my various relocations, I lost my yellowed and well-read paperback copy of Chrome. An Internet friend in 2001, knowing why I had named myself “chrome”, sent me one of the out-of-print books as a surprise birthday gift. It now rests displayed encased in plastic on my bookshelf.

The person that wrote Chrome in 1978 is just as interesting as the story.

George Nader was an actor and the movie studio, in the mid-1950s, heard that a scandal newspaper was prepared to publish details about a rumor – George Nader was having a gay affair with Rock Hudson.

George Nader’s career was suddenly over and he moved to Europe, getting a few roles there. What a shame – I used to have an image of Nader and Hudson shirtless together on a boat – either lost or buried somewhere on my computer.

Interesting gay tidbit – one of George Nader’s companions was Mark Miller who would later become Rock Hudson’s personal secretary.

Via Amazon, as I write this, there are 21 copies of Chrome available. Please purchase via my link and I will earn, I think, a whopping .04% commission – oh but please continue to shop – for I will earn commission for everything purchased during that Amazon visit – don’t you really want a Blu-Ray DVD player (laugh).

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I just finished reading The Master of Seacliff by Max Pierce – an enjoyable gay gothic mystery.

Many time-honored expected gothic cliches are included in this tale. The year is 1899 and Andrew Wyndham is twenty years old. When a friend arranges for him to work as tutor to the son of a wealthy patron of the arts, Andrew sees a chance to make his dream come true – earning enough money to study art in Paris.

While traveling in a coach pulled by two black stallions, Andrew “watched as the dense fog enveloped the carriage and the sunlight faded with rapidity. A chill skipped down Andrew’s spine, one not caused by the obvious drop in temperature”.

Seacliff is a large, dark and foreboding cliff-top mansion enshrouded in near-eternal fog, dark mystery, and suspicion – perhaps a reflection of the mansion’s handsome, hirsute master.

The Master of Seacliff is Duncan Stewart – a wealthy and powerful businessman. Duncan’s father, Gordon, and his father’s friend, Albert, were found shot to death at Seacliff eight years prior. Officially the deaths are considered a murder-suicide but the prevailing gossip holds Duncan responsible, wanting control of the family business.

This, however, is not the only mystery clouding the situation. Duncan’s protégé and secret lover, pianist Steven Charles, disappeared a year before Andrew’s arrival. The housekeeper’s daughter apparently committed suicide in a leap off the cliffs when she learned of her beloved’s suspicious death. Of course, we have the gothic butler, who is inordinately dour and suspicious, determined to drive Andrew from the mansion.

Previously resigned to a lonely life as a tutor and artist, Andrew soon attracts the attention of Duncan and another powerful man from the neighboring estate. One is a possible murderer and the other determined to prove it. Will the obvious attraction between Andrew and Duncan blossom into love – or as Andrew determinedly solves the mysteries surrounding Duncan, doom their relationship to failure?

The Master of Seacliff is an enjoyable thriller, telling a tale of forbidden love at the turn of the last century – and the conclusion was an unexpected surprise.

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Gay author Edmund White has written over twenty books including
the classic gay coming of age novel – A Boy’s Own Story
and was co-editor of The Joy of Gay Sex

In 1991 Edmund White wrote about being gay:

As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn’t the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together. In the early 1950s, the only book I could find in the Evanston, Illinois, Public Library was Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice”.

His latest book is entitled CHAOS, which includes four stories – each having the theme of aging as a gay man – of recollection and of longing. Age has always been an issue in the gay culture. Once past the magical age of 35 years old, you are suddenly thrust, or is it shoved, over the hill.

Edmund White, born January 13, 1940, writes now as an elder gay man – with CHAOS being a mix of fiction and autobiography – teasingly letting you guess what parts are true and what is fantasy.
Read more

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Back in the mid-1970’s, a naïve 20-something Mary Ann Singleton arrived in San Francisco for the first time. Making her new home at a boarding house at 28 Barbary Lane, Singleton’s life soon became intertwined with the building’s colorful tenants: the enigmatic and magical transsexual Anna Madrigal, the womanizing Brian, and the sweet, sexy, hopelessly romantic gay guy, Michael (Mouse) Tolliver.

So began life in Armistead Maupin’s The Tales of the City series, published between 1978 and 1989, with installments appearing daily in The San Francisco Chronicle, later morphing into an acclaimed public-television miniseries in 1993; with Marcus D’Amico as Michael Tolliver and Anna Madrigal, played so memorably by Olympia Dukakis.

For those who have invested years reading and rereading The Tales Of The City, when we last checked in on the characters in 1989, Michael Tolliver had tested positive for HIV and was preparing for an early death. As the title implicitly states, Armistead Maupin’s recent novel, released June 12, 2007, couldn’t have a happier title: Michael Tolliver Lives.

A lot has changed for Michael. He finds himself now a 55-year old gay man, somewhat astonished to be alive after being HIV-positive for two decades. He owns his own house and runs a successful business as a gardener and landscape architect. With regular shots of testosterone and a Viagra prescription, he has an active sex life with Ben, a much younger man. The domestic bliss that Michael shares with Ben is distinctly San Franciscan in flavor – “You’re too young to be monogamous,” Michael tells Ben. “And I’m too old.”

Michael found Ben on the Internet, at a site devoted to older men and their admirers, on which Ben identified himself as CLEANCUTLAD4U. It is interesting how Armistead Maupin occasionally makes reference to how clueless Next-Gen gays are about their predecessors’ cultural references. “Who’s Sally Bowles?” asked Ben. I turned and looked at my younger, less theatrical half. “She used to be married to Ansel Adams.” Michael is clearly a character with which Maupin intimately identifies (Maupin, 63, is married to Christopher Turner, 35).

Mirroring the lives of many baby boomers, Michael Tolliver is dealing with aging parents – specifically, his “biological” mother, dying in an Orlando nursing home, and his “logical” mother, the indomitable Anna Madrigal, 85-years-old and as feisty as ever.

It was a genuine thrill for me to learn what has been going on in the lives of Maupin’s loveable characters. But alas, the building at 28 Barbary Lane is no more. Even the stairs have been replaced. Neither Michael nor Anna Madrigal, the former landlady, can ever go back again. Luckily for me, the six Tales of the City books still populate my bookshelves – so I can return anytime to relive the tales.

Michael Tolliver Lives is a wonderful story about growing old and learning how to be grateful for the small gifts that fortune throws your way, and to deal with the pitfalls with as much grace and style as possible. Gay or straight, that’s a lesson for all of us.

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