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Review

In its first incarnation, before the collapse of original publisher Harrington Park Press orphaned this anthology, it was to have been marketed mainly as another collection of gay love stories (title: Moonlight & Roses). It’s still a spiffy collection about men wooing and winning men. But in an anthology field bursting with overtly erotic writing, and thanks to the editors’ high standards - both are also accomplished members of the “Timothy James Beck” writing collaborative - it also lives up to its new publisher’s claim: this is indeed new gay fiction, prose of meritorious quality. Fiction pioneers like Felice Picano and Andrew Holleran provide solid stories, and Paul Lisicky, Greg Herren, Trebor Healey, Joel Derfner, and Rob Byrnes represent later generations of queer writers with panache. But it’s the newcomers that give this fine book its the-future-of-queer-lit-is-good edge. Among them: Josh Helmin on high-school attraction, ‘Nathan Burgoine on literary liaisons, Jeffrey Ricker on dog-lovers and loving, and Mark Harris on men making time for each other - fresh fiction from a new generation of queer writers.

 -- Richard Labonte, Books to Watch Out For