Anthony Bidulka (born July 24, 1962)

Anthony Bidulka has enjoyed time well-spent and misspent in the worlds of academia, accounting, footwear, food services and farming. In 1999 Anthony Bidulka, BA, BEd, BComm, CA left a decade long career as a Chartered Accountant to pursue writing. He lives in Saskatoon.

In 2003, Quill & Quire described Bidulka’s first book, Amuse Bouche: A Russell Quant Mystery, as “…an effervescent first novel that is much like the tasty French hors d’oeuvres from which it takes its name”, earning Bidulka a nomination for the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award.

With sharp writing, descriptive flair and wry humour, Bidulka’s mystery series tells the story of the first, and perhaps only, half-Ukrainian, half-Irish, Canadian, gay, ex-farmboy, ex-cop, world-travelling, wine-swilling, wise-cracking, Saskatchewan, prairie private detective being written about today anywhere.

The Russell Quant series has been nominated for Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Awards, Saskatchewan Book Awards, a ReLit award, Lambda Literary Awards, with Flight of Aquavit awarded the Lambda Literary Award for Best Men’s Mystery, making Bidulka the first Canadian to win in that category.

New York’s Mystery Scene Magazine proclaimed: “Quant makes for a riveting hero…the kind of friend you want to have—unless you’re a killer.” From the StarPhoenix: “Truly amazing is Bidulka’s sense of sights, sounds and smells. Like a good journalist, he gives exquisitely detailed descriptions of the settings and provides history lessons…” And Sherbrooke Record said: “…Bidulka brings a fresh voice to Canadian crime fiction, with a sense of humour that is often outrageous and always original; he provides his readers with a cleverly-crafted tale full of twists and turns, and challenges readers to broaden their perspectives.”

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Source: http://anthonybidulka.com/?page_id=195

With Flight of Aquavit by Anthony Bidulka, I learned a Canadian author could make it big. --P.A. Brown

Further Readings:

Date With a Sheesha by Anthony Bidulka
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Insomniac Pr (July 31, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1554831296
ISBN-13: 978-1554831296
Amazon: Date With a Sheesha
Amazon Kindle: Date With a Sheesha

Neil Gupta went to the Middle East looking for antique carpets. He found something equally timeless: murder. When Neil is found stabbed to death in Dubai's spice souk, his distraught father wants revenge. He hires private investigator Russell Quant to catch the killer. In his greatest case to date, Quant goes undercover to match wits with a wily museum curator, shifty souk merchants, corrupt carpet experts, and the denizens of an underground club for "fabulous" men. From the flamboyant glitz of Dubai to the scorching sand dunes of Saudi Arabia, Quant risks his life as he wades further and further into the shadows cast by the desert sun. As Russell's spicy international adventure heats up, he learns a valuable lesson about love, life, and learning to seize the moment ... before it's gone. On the verge of making the biggest personal decision of his life, Russell discovers that endings sometimes come before beginnings.

More Spotlights at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, My Lists/Gay Novels

More Rainbow Awards at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, Rainbow Awards/2010

David Webster & Larry Kramer

Larry Kramer (born June 25, 1935) is an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London where he worked with United Artists. There he wrote the screenplay for Women in Love in 1969, earning an Academy Award nomination for his efforts. Kramer introduced a controversial and confrontational style in his 1978 novel Faggots, which earned mixed reviews but emphatic denunciations from the gay community for his portrayal of shallow, promiscuous gay relationships in the 1970s. William David Webster (born 1947) and Larry Kramer married on July 24, 2013, in New York. Eve M. Preminger, a retired Surrogate Court judge in New York, officiated at NYU Langone Medical Center, where Mr. Kramer was recovering from surgery. David Webster is the principal designer and the owner of an architectural design firm in New York that bears his name. He graduated from Columbia. He is a son of the late Beryl Murrell Webster and the late William C. Webster, who lived in White Plains. The two first met in the late 1960's and dated in the late 1970's, but spent the 80's apart. Kramer included details, too many for Webster's taste, in "Faggots." Kramer's character wanted monogamous true love forever. Webster's character did not. Webster started an architectural design firm with Michael Eriksson, who became his lover, and for more than a decade never saw Kramer. But in 1992, Kramer called, wanting help designing his Connecticut house. They agreed to meet in a few months. In the interim, Eriksson died of AIDS. The effect Webster has had on Kramer is palpable, the calm that comes with finally being seen, finally being heard.


Larry Kramer is an American playwright, author, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. David Webster and Larry Kramer married on July 24, 2013, in New York. The two first met in the late 1960's and dated in the late 1970's, but spent the 80's apart. But in 1992, Kramer called. They agreed to meet in a few months. In the interim, Webster's partner, Eriksson died of AIDS. The effect Webster has had on Kramer is palpable, the calm that comes with finally being seen, finally being heard.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Kramer

In 1987, at a meeting in New York City, playwright and activist Larry Kramer called for a new, grassroots AIDS organization that would perform direct action and demand the basic health care, civil rights, legal protections, and respect that Americans were guaranteed under the Constitution. Two days later, three hundred people turned out for a meeting to form such a group. The result was the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). In many ways, ACT UP was a return to the raucous street actions of the Gay Liberation Front and the “zaps” of the Gay Activist Alliance. But it was also a repudiation of the play-within-the-system approach of the reformist LGBT rights groups. Kramer was explicit about this in his original speech, in which he stated that the group Gay Men’s Health Crisis, of which he was a cofounder, had no political clout in the legal or medical world. National and local groups, such as New York’s Lambda Legal Defense and Education Foundation and Boston’s AIDS Law Project of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, were doing necessary legal work. But the instances of discrimination were so pervasive, and enforcement often so weak, that there was still much more to be done. With devastation increasingly evident in the gay male community and anger and frustration mounting, new tactics had to be tried and new energy harnessed. Like the Gay Liberation Front, ACT UP was predicated on the principle, traced back to anarchist thinking as well as labor and other social justice reform groups, that the people who are affected by injustice are the most effective in changing their own circumstances. --Bronski, Michael (2011-05-10). A Queer History of the United States (Revisioning American History) (Kindle Locations 4795-4806). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition.

But while thousands of lesbians and gay men responded to these changes by publicly declaring who they were, thousands more still assumed that safety, comfort, and prosperity would continue to flow from inside a closet. And most gay people still believed that a public declaration of their homosexuality would mean losing the chance to rise to the pinnacle of their profession. In his first career as a film executive, even a future firebrand like Larry Kramer was careful to bring a woman friend with him to the Monday-night executive screenings. "I was more interested in learning what my professional talents might be and how to get to the next step on the ladder of success," Kramer explained.
[...]
IN NEW YORK CITY, the first gay writer to become alarmed about the epidemic was neither a journalist nor an activist. Larry Kramer was a novelist and screenwriter. He had an elfin look, bouncing eyebrows, and boundless energy to excoriate enemies and friends alike. He had spent years in analysis to try to overcome the self-hatred typical of the gay men of his generation who had come of age in the fifties, but he still seemed deeply discontent much of the time. His first important success came in 1969 when he wrote and produced an excellent film version of D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love, which featured a famously homoerotic wrestling scene between the two male protagonists. For many years, that was his only visible contribution to the gay movement. "I certainly wasn't interested in gay politics," he wrote in 1989. "Like many others, when gay pride marches started down Fifth Avenue at the end of June, I was on Fire Island. Gay politics had an awful image. Loudmouths, the unkempt, the dirty and unwashed.... On Fire Island, we laughed ... when we watched the evening news on Sunday night flash brief seconds of those struggling, pitiful marches." Most gay activists were unaware of Kramer until 1977, when he published Faggots, an inflammatory account of upper-middle-class white gay life in Manhattan. Because he had so much contempt for the movement, the novel naturally did not acknowledge its existence, much less any of its achievements. Kramer thought he was writing satire on the level of Evelyn Waugh, but gay activists considered his graphic accounts of fist-fucking and every other sexual excess of gay culture a blood libel. Others simply found the book so overdone as to be unreadable. "Why do faggots have to fuck so fucking much?" Kramer's narrator asked. "It's as if we don't have anything else to do.... All we do is live in our ghetto and dance and drug and fuck.... There's a whole world out there! ... as much ours as theirs ... I'm tired of using my body as a faceless thing to lure another faceless thing. "I want to love a Person." For thousands of young men mesmerized by their newly won sexual freedom, this notion was truly radical. As the gay psychologist Joe Brewer told Randy Shilts, "Stripped of humanity, sex sought ever rising levels of physical stimulation in increasingly esoteric practices," while Brewer's colleague Gary Walsh saw promiscuity as something more positive-"a means to exorcise the guilt ... ingrained in all gay men by a heterosexual society."
[...]
Kramer's novel (Faggots) had focused on the emotional damage he thought had been inflicted by nonstop sex. But like Edmund White's pre-AIDS speculation about the possible cost of gay fantasies of San Francisco-"Did we know what price these dreams would exact?"-something else Kramer wrote would soon sound like an ominous prophecy. Everything had to change, said the narrator of Faggots-"before you fuck yourself to death."
[...]
Faggots "angered everyone, of course," Kramer recalled, "particularly the gay political leaders who told everybody they should have as much love as they want." But Kramer thought that "having so much sex made finding love impossible. Everyone I knew wanted ... a lover, and everyone was screwing himself twenty-four hours a day ... to what turned out to be to death.... You could have sex twenty-three times just going to the market." After Faggots was published, it was made "pointedly clear" to him that he was "no longer welcome" on Fire Island. At the beginning of the epidemic, because no one knew for sure whether AIDS really was a sexually transmitted disease, anyone recommending reduced sexual activity as a sensible precaution ran the risk of being attacked for "internalized homophobia" or "sexual fascism." And because Kramer had already attacked promiscuity for other reasons, he was particularly vulnerable to this criticism. He went to his doctor three weeks after the Times article to ask him what he could do to avoid the new disease. "I'd stop having sex," his physician told him. One month after that appointment, his first warning about the epidemic appeared in the New York Native, a gay newspaper that pioneered coverage of the disease:

The men who have been stricken don't appear to have done anything that many New York gay men haven't done at one time or another. We're appalled that this is happening to them and terrified that it could happen to us. It's easy to become frightened that one of the many things we've done or taken over the past years may be all that it takes for a cancer to grow from a tiny something-or-other that got in there who knows when from doing who knows what.... Money is desperately needed.... This is our disease and we must take care of each other and ourselves. In the past we have often been a divided community; I hope we can all get together on this emergency, undivided, cohesively, and with all the numbers we in so many ways possess.

The attacks he received for this sensible appeal set the tone for the debate within the gay community during the first few years of the epidemic. On one side were those like Kramer who believed "something we are doing is ticking off the time bomb that his causing the breakdown of immunity in certain bodies," and therefore "wouldn't it be better to be cautious, rather than reckless?" On the other side were writers like Robert Chesley, who immediately skewered Kramer in the letters column of the Native:

I think the concealed meaning in Kramer's emotionalism is the triumph of guilt: that gay men deserve to die for their promiscuity. In his novel, Faggots, Kramer told us that sex is dirty and that we ought not be doing what we're doing.... It's easy to become frightened that Kramer's real emotion is a sense of having been vindicated, though tragically. . . . Read anything by Kramer closely. I think you'll find that the subtext is always: the wages of gay sin are death.... I am not downplaying the seriousness of Kaposi's sarcoma. But something else is happening here, which is also serious: gay homophobia and anti-eroticism.

Kramer later credited Chesley's attack with turning him into an activist. Kramer was the founder of two of the most important gay organizations spawned by the epidemic. The first one was Gay Men's Health Crisis, which grew out of a fund-raising meeting in Kramer's Fifth Avenue apartment on August Ii, 1981, where he raised $6,635. Philip Gefter attended this first gathering with Jack Fitzsimmons; then Gefter volunteered to organize a follow-up fund-raiser on Fire Island over Labor Day weekend. "Larry made this impassioned plea for us to focus all of our attention and our energy on this because this could become a major crisis," said Gefter, who was working as a picture editor at Forbes magazine at the time. "We went out to dinner after that meeting, and I remember Jack was panicked. I'd never seen him so panicked. He was a very controlled person and very even-tempered. But he was really scared, much more than I was. I asked him, `Why are you so scared?' And he couldn't answer. For six years he had an obsession about AIDS. Every time there was anything in the paper about it, he would call me and read me the story."
[...]
Howard Rosenman was an extremely active Fire Island visitor in the summers of the seventies. He never slept with Dugas, but he did have sex with a great many of the first AIDS patients on Fire Island, beginning with Enno Poersch, who was "German and six feet four, and one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen. "He lived in the house right across from the one I had rented for the summer in the Pines. That was the house Randy Shilts wrote about. I didn't sleep with Patient Zero, but I slept with most of Patients One through Nineteen at some time during the eleven years I had summered on Fire Island. Okay? Most of them. In the summer of 1980 they told us Poersch's lover got cat scratch fever [he actually had toxoplasmosis; he died on January 15, 1981]. I was in medical school for three years, right? I remember saying to myself, cat scratch fever? That's really odd. That was the end of the summer of 1980, and that was the first time I knew something was rotten in the state of Denmark. I was at the zenith of my wildest time. And then I came home to California. "Somewhere along the winter or the spring of 198o I had a boyfriend named Reuven Levi-Proctor who was a rabbi drug dealer who Larry Kramer wrote about in Faggots. He was from Baltimore, Maryland, and his parents were very religious Jews. But in the summer of l98o, Reuven and I were now friends and he had a new boyfriend who came down with these marks on his body and died very, very quickly. And none of us knew what it was except Dr. Joel Weismann who treated him. Then Bronte Woodard, who was a writer who wrote Grease. He had been writing a screenplay for me. He was a bighearted guy from the south. He was like a big fat boy, bald. He used to give orgies that Nureyev used to attend in L.A., and he was also writing for Allan Carr. He got very, very, very sick with liver disease and other diseases." Woodard died August 6, 198o. His obituary gave the cause of death as liver failure. Rosenman had been friendly with Larry Kramer until people whom Rosenman had told Kramer about in general conversations turned up as characters in Faggots. Kramer hadn't shown him the manuscript in advance. "He was dishonest with me," said Rosenman, "and I punched him out and I wasn't speaking to him. He modeled some of the characters in Faggots on people that were really close friends of mine. And I remember walking to the boat and Larry was sitting at a makeshift desk collecting money for gay cancer. And I remember saying to myself, `Howard, whatever's going on here is really big-time and important. You've got to transcend your level of loathing for Larry and go for what he is representing and give him money.' And I gave him a hundred bucks. And I remember leaving the island and saying to myself, `That fucking Larry Kramer. She may be one hysterical girl, but boy oh boy, is she committed!"' In fact all of Kramer's instincts about how the community should have behaved at the beginning of the epidemic proved to be absolutely correct. When GMHC was founded, he felt exhilarated: "It was one of those rare moments in life when one felt completely utilized, useful, with a true reason to be alive." But Kramer continued to behave like a volcano that was never dormant, constantly spewing lava in all directions.
Because he was so lacking in any ability to get along with his colleagues, much less his adversaries, no one ever considered Kramer for GMHC's presidency. That job went to Paul Popham, a beautiful, closeted ex-Green Beret, who worried that his mailman would realize that he was gay if he saw an invitation for a fund-raiser with Gay Men's Health Crisis as the return address. Popham constantly battled with Kramer about tactics and substance. Later, Kramer admitted that he had been somewhat in love with Popham. One of the first arguments between Kramer and Popham was over whether GMHC should tell its members to stop having sex altogether, or reduce the number of their sexual partners. Kramer was adamant that they should be warned, but Popham and rest of the board opposed the idea. What if it was determined that there was no infectious agent? Popham asked. Then GMHC would look ridiculous. The infighting came to a head in April 1983, after Kramer had repeatedly accused Mayor Edward I. Koch of an inadequate response to the health crisis. After months of violent attacks from Kramer, the mayor had finally agreed to a meeting about AIDS with ten representatives of gay groups around the city. But the GMHC board refused to send Kramer as one of its two envoys. Paul Popham was terrified of how Kramer might behave in a small meeting with the mayor. Kramer was stunned-and promptly resigned from the board. After that, GMHC rebuffed all of his subsequent efforts to rejoin the organization. A decade later, Koch said that he regretted not meeting with Kramer sooner. "I read a letter from him in one of the magazines in which he was ... denouncing me," Koch said. "I inquired and I was told that he had made a request for a meeting.... I was told he was not held in high regard because of his vehemence and I should just ignore it. I'm sorry I took their advice, frankly. He is a very important force in the AIDS movement.... He has caused people to give this matter a lot of attention." Despite all the internal dissension, GMHC grew rapidly into an extremely effective social service agency and lobbying group. Anyone with AIDS could come to the agency for help. After one of Kramer's periodic complaints about inadequate press coverage of the epidemic, the Times printed a glowing three-thousand-word feature story about GMHC at the end of 1983. Written by Maureen Dowd, then a rising star on the paper's metropolitan staff, the story described the agency as a "sophisticated social-service organization with growing political power, 12 paid staff members, an 8-member board of directors, 500 male and female volunteers, and a 1984 budget of $900,000" which was "currently helping 250 people with AIDS."
[...]
ONE OF LARRY KRAMER'S most persistent complaints was about the failure of The New York Times and Mayor Edward I. Koch to make it clear from the beginning that AIDS was a crisis-and a communicable disease that gay men needed to avoid. But considering the degree of hostility that gay leaders encountered when they tried to make these points, it's unlikely that anything Koch could have said would have done much to influence the behavior of gay men. Dan William, a prominent gay New York doctor, was denounced as a "monogamist ... stirring panic" just for suggesting that bathhouses should be required to post warning signs about the epidemic and the dangers of promiscuous sex. In 1982, according to Randy Shilts, "More gays were furious" at William "than at anybody in the Koch administration." Kramer's most famous piece about the epidemic, entitled "1,112 and Counting," was printed in the New York Native on March 14, 1983, and reprinted in many other gay newspapers across the country. "If this article doesn't scare the shit out of you, we're in real trouble," Kramer wrote. "Our continued existence as gay men upon the face of the earth is at stake. Unless we fight for our lives, we shall die." It was one of his most effective polemics, and it included his usual criticism of The New York Times for what he considered inadequate coverage of the epidemic. But Kramer's piece was actually published five weeks afteran extremely comprehensive, six-thousand-word analysis of the epidemic had been published in The New York Times Magazine. --Charles Kaiser. The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America. Kindle Edition.

( Larry Kramer with Molly, 1989, by Robert Giard )

( Further Readings )

More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices

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Chris Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury & Dorien Jabri

Christopher "Chris" Robert Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury PC (born 24 July 1951) is a British politician; a former Member of Parliament (MP) and Cabinet Minister and a current peer. Although he is currently not aligned to any party, for the majority of his career he was a Labour Party member. He was one of the first openly gay British MPs, coming out in 1984, and in 2005, the first MP to acknowledge that he is HIV positive. In 2005, Smith and communications director Dorian Jabri (born 1957) sealed their love with a civil partnership ceremony. At then end of 2012 it came the news that Smith is no longer sharing his life with Jabri, whom he met in 1987 when Dorian joined a delegation to lobby MPs about Clause 28, which made it illegal for councils to promote homosexuality. Within months, the two men were living together and they bought a house in Islington, North London - Smith's constituency. Smith has told friends that their separation is entirely amicable and that it is 'just one of those things'.

Chris Smith was born in Barnet, London, and educated at George Watson's College in Edinburgh and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he gained a first class honours degree in English and a PhD with a thesis on Coleridge and Wordsworth. He also attended Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar, where he was president of the Cambridge Union Society.

He worked for a housing charity and became a councillor in the London Borough of Islington before narrowly winning the seat of Islington South & Finsbury at the 1983 General election, defeating George Cunningham. Cunningham stood against him a second time at the 1987 General election when Smith again defeated him.


Dorian Jabri and Chris Smith attend an after party on press night for the recruiting officer at a hospital club, London, England on 14th february 2012. (credit: dan wooller/wooller.com).
Chris Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury is a British politician; a former Member of Parliament (MP) and a current peer. He was one of the first openly gay British MPs. In 2005, Smith and Dorian Jabri sealed their love with a civil partnership ceremony. At then end of 2012 it came the news that Smith is no longer sharing his life with Jabri, whom he met in 1987 when Dorian joined a delegation to lobby MPs about Clause 28. Smith has told friends that their separation is entirely amicable.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Smith,_Baron_Smith_of_Finsbury

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More Real Life Romances at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance

Connie Kopelov & Phyllis Siegel (and all)

On July 24, 2011, The Big Apple said "I do" to a new era of gay rights and celebrated New York City's first same-sex weddings: Chelsea residents Phyllis Siegel (born 1934) and Connie Kopelov (born 1926) got hitched at the marriage bureau on Worth Street in Lower Manhattan at 9:02 a.m., setting off wedding bells across Gotham.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is openly gay, witnessed the ceremony that was officiated by City Clerk Michael McSweeney.

‘‘It was just so amazing,’’ said Siegel, who has been with her love for 23 years (as of 2011). ‘‘It’s the only way I can describe it. I lost my breath and a few tears.’’

She added: ‘‘This is the first day of the rest of our lives.’’

In Brooklyn, retired nurse Michael Faurey (born 1948) and Bobby Amagna (born 1946) celebrated their nearly two-decade-old relationship in matrimony.

‘‘It’s [been] an 18- year struggle,’’ said Faurey. While the two grooms nonchalantly exchanged vows, judge Ellen Spodek, who officiated their ceremony, broke down in tears.

Meanwhile at Queens Borough Hall, Greg Levine (born 1979) and Shane Serkiz (born 1978) were the first ones to show up to tie the knot, and they celebrated their 11-year relationship.

Serkiz said he hopes today’s weddings bring hope to future generations of gay Americans: "I hope this makes it a lot easier for gay and lesbian youth to understand that who they are is OK . And it definitely gets better."


On July 24, 2011, The Big Apple said "I do" to a new era of gay rights and celebrated New York City's first same-sex weddings: Chelsea residents Phyllis Siegel and Connie Kopelov got hitched at the marriage bureau on Worth Street in Lower Manhattan at 9:02 a.m. ‘‘It was just so amazing,’’ said Siegel, who has been with her love for 23 years (as of 2011). ‘‘It’s the only way I can describe it. I lost my breath and a few tears.’’ She added: ‘‘This is the first day of the rest of our lives.’’


On July 24, 2011, The Big Apple said "I do" to a new era of gay rights and celebrated New York City's first same-sex weddings: In Brooklyn, retired nurse Michael Faurey (born 1948) and Bobby Amagna (born 1946) celebrated their nearly two-decade-old relationship in matrimony. ‘‘It’s [been] an 18- year struggle,’’ said Faurey. While the two grooms nonchalantly exchanged vows, judge Ellen Spodek, who officiated their ceremony, broke down in tears.


On July 24, 2011, The Big Apple said "I do" to a new era of gay rights and celebrated New York City's first same-sex weddings: at Queens Borough Hall, Greg Levine and Shane Serkiz were the first ones to show up to tie the knot, and they celebrated their 11-year relationship. Serkiz said he hopes today’s weddings bring hope to future generations of gay Americans: "I hope this makes it a lot easier for gay and lesbian youth to understand that who they are is OK . And it definitely gets better."


On July 24, 2011, The Big Apple said "I do" to a new era of gay rights and celebrated New York City's first same-sex weddings: up in The Bronx, youth pastor Carmen Hernandez (born 1963) and dental assistant Doris DeArmas (born 1961) tied the knot. When they sealed the borough’s first same-sex marriage, DeArmas told her love: ‘‘I’ve got you.’’


On July 24, 2011, The Big Apple said "I do" to a new era of gay rights and celebrated New York City's first same-sex weddings: down in Staten Island, a pair of Long Branch, NJ, lovebirds — Bedelia Sanchez (born 1964) and Lavern Rivera (born 1961) — got hitched even though their state won’t recognize the nuptials. ‘‘We have six grandchildren together,’’ Sanchez said. ‘‘We want them to understand that even though we’re homosexuals, we love each other and are very serious about our family.’’


On July 24, 2011, The Big Apple said "I do" to a new era of gay rights and celebrated New York City's first same-sex weddings: Under a steamy half-moon Dee Smith and Kate Wrede signed their license at the North Hempstead Town Hall in Manhasset. Kate -- in a traditional white wedding gown - and Dee, who donned a tux, walked across the street to a romantic park gazebo to tie the knot. The Patchogue duo were exchanging vows by the stroke of 12 - and then rode off for the honeymoon in Rolls Royce.


On July 24, 2011, The Big Apple said "I do" to a new era of gay rights and celebrated New York City's first same-sex weddings: In Niagara Falls, longtime partners Kitty Lambert and Cheryle Rudd made a splash with a midnight wedding on Luna Island. "We're so proud of everybody who crawled up this hill with us," Lambert, her eyes filled with tears, told the Buffalo News. "This wasn't done with just the two of us. Every single person here played a part in getting this law passed."

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Source: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/first_same_sex_weddings_take_place_Cnzs5B8JcW6EC6Esu04oOJ

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2014 Rainbow Awards Submission: Pretty Boy Dead

Gay Mystery / Thriller
Pretty Boy Dead - A Kendall Parker Mystery by Jon Michaelsen
Paperback: 306 pages
Publisher: Wilde City Press, LLC (November 6, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1925031608
ISBN-13: 978-1925031607
Amazon: Pretty Boy Dead - A Kendall Parker Mystery
Amazon Kindle: Pretty Boy Dead - A Kendall Parker Mystery

A murdered male stripper. A missing go-go dancer. A city councilman on the hook. Can Atlanta homicide detective Sergeant Kendall Parker solve the heinous crime and remain safely behind the closet door? When the body of a young man is found in a popular midtown park, police and local media are quick to pin the brutal killing on a homeless gay kid with AIDS. But homicide detective Sgt. Kendall Parker isn't so convinced, even when the suspect is accused of assaulting another police detective with a deadly weapon. City leaders want the murder solved yesterday and jump at the chance to pin the crime on the drug-craving teen. It's an election year, so remaining in office is their top priority, even at the sacrifice of the young man. Sgt. Parker isn't so persuaded and is determined to prove Hopper's innocence, despite the protest of his colleagues, and threatening the deep secret Parker has carefully hidden from his comrades for years.

Charities Donation program progress:
328$ Albert Kennedy Trust: http://www.akt.org.uk/
990$ Ali Forney Center: www.aliforneycenter.org/
50$ Audre Lorde Project: http://alp.org/
25$ BiNet US: http://www.binetusa.org/
125$ CARE: careprogram.org/
125$ The Center Colorado: http://www.glbtcolorado.org/
25$ LGBT Center of Greater Cleveland: http://www.lgbtcleveland.org/
401$ COLORS: www.colorsyouth.org/
80$ Covenant: www.covenanthouseno.org/
75$ Diversity Role Models: http://www.diversityrolemodels.org/
25$ The Diversity Center: http://diversitycenter.org/
317$ Galop: www.galop.org.uk/
150$ GLYS: http://www.glyswny.org/
135$ Human Rights Campaign: http://www.hrc.org/
50$ Huntsville GLBT Advocacy & Youth Services: http://www.glbtays.org/
100$ It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org/
100$ Inland Northwest LGBT Center: www.thelgbtcenter.org/
235$ Lambda Legal: www.lambdalegal.org/
50$ Lambert House: www.lamberthouse.org/
50$ Lancaster LGBT Center: http://www.centralpalgbtcenter.org/
50$ LEAP: http://www.glbtleap.org/
512$ Lost-n-Found Youth: www.lost-n-found.org/
50$ MKE LGBT Center: www.mkelgbt.org/
130$ Moveable Feast: http://www.mfeast.org/
25$ Odyssey Youth Center: www.odysseyyouth.org/
25$ Out Youth: outyouth.org/
25$ Pathfinders: pathfindersmke.org/
100$ PFLAG: community.pflag.org/
175$ Point Foundation: www.pointfoundation.org/
100$ Ruth Ellis Center: http://www.ruthelliscenter.org/
650$ SAGE: giveto.sageusa.org/
25$ Terrence Higgins Trust: www.tht.org.uk/
455$ The Trevor Project: www.thetrevorproject.org/
160$ UCAN: www.ucanchicago.org/
25$ WayGay: http://www.waygay.org/
200$ You Can Play: http://youcanplayproject.org/
50$ YouthCare: www.youthcare.org/
997$ Other Funds
TOTAL: 7190$*

* more than 150$ is a direct donation from a supporter of the Rainbow Awards who isn't submitting; while some authors were more than generous, arriving to donate 5 times the suggested amount, being the submission fee a non mandatory and voluntary direct donation, we were struggling to raise the same amount as last year and there is who decided to cover part of it. I thank you for all you are doing, and if you wish to donate to the above links, please drop me a note with your donation and I will update the total.

2014 Rainbow Awards Guidelines: reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/4162490.html

2014 Rainbow Awards Submission: Hell & High Water

Gay Paranormal Romance
Hell & High Water (THIRDS Book 1) by Charlie Cochet
Paperback: 296 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (July 7, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1632160110
ISBN-13: 978-1632160119
Amazon: Hell & High Water (THIRDS Book 1)
Amazon Kindle: Hell & High Water (THIRDS Book 1)

THIRDS: Book One

When homicide detective Dexter J. Daley’s testimony helps send his partner away for murder, the consequences—and the media frenzy—aren’t far behind. He soon finds himself sans boyfriend, sans friends, and, after an unpleasant encounter in a parking garage after the trial, he’s lucky he doesn’t find himself sans teeth. Dex fears he’ll get transferred from the Human Police Force’s Sixth Precinct, or worse, get dismissed. Instead, his adoptive father—a sergeant at the Therian-Human Intelligence Recon Defense Squadron otherwise known as the THIRDS—pulls a few strings, and Dex gets recruited as a Defense Agent.

Dex is determined to get his life back on track and eager to get started in his new job. But his first meeting with Team Leader Sloane Brodie, who also happens to be his new jaguar Therian partner, turns disastrous. When the team is called to investigate the murders of three HumaniTherian activists, it soon becomes clear to Dex that getting his partner and the rest of the tightknit team to accept him will be a lot harder than catching the killer—and every bit as dangerous.

Charities Donation program progress:
328$ Albert Kennedy Trust: http://www.akt.org.uk/
990$ Ali Forney Center: www.aliforneycenter.org/
50$ Audre Lorde Project: http://alp.org/
25$ BiNet US: http://www.binetusa.org/
125$ CARE: careprogram.org/
125$ The Center Colorado: http://www.glbtcolorado.org/
25$ LGBT Center of Greater Cleveland: http://www.lgbtcleveland.org/
401$ COLORS: www.colorsyouth.org/
80$ Covenant: www.covenanthouseno.org/
75$ Diversity Role Models: http://www.diversityrolemodels.org/
25$ The Diversity Center: http://diversitycenter.org/
317$ Galop: www.galop.org.uk/
150$ GLYS: http://www.glyswny.org/
135$ Human Rights Campaign: http://www.hrc.org/
50$ Huntsville GLBT Advocacy & Youth Services: http://www.glbtays.org/
100$ It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org/
100$ Inland Northwest LGBT Center: www.thelgbtcenter.org/
235$ Lambda Legal: www.lambdalegal.org/
50$ Lambert House: www.lamberthouse.org/
50$ Lancaster LGBT Center: http://www.centralpalgbtcenter.org/
50$ LEAP: http://www.glbtleap.org/
512$ Lost-n-Found Youth: www.lost-n-found.org/
50$ MKE LGBT Center: www.mkelgbt.org/
130$ Moveable Feast: http://www.mfeast.org/
25$ Odyssey Youth Center: www.odysseyyouth.org/
25$ Out Youth: outyouth.org/
25$ Pathfinders: pathfindersmke.org/
100$ PFLAG: community.pflag.org/
175$ Point Foundation: www.pointfoundation.org/
100$ Ruth Ellis Center: http://www.ruthelliscenter.org/
650$ SAGE: giveto.sageusa.org/
25$ Terrence Higgins Trust: www.tht.org.uk/
455$ The Trevor Project: www.thetrevorproject.org/
160$ UCAN: www.ucanchicago.org/
25$ WayGay: http://www.waygay.org/
200$ You Can Play: http://youcanplayproject.org/
50$ YouthCare: www.youthcare.org/
997$ Other Funds
TOTAL: 7190$*

* more than 150$ is a direct donation from a supporter of the Rainbow Awards who isn't submitting; while some authors were more than generous, arriving to donate 5 times the suggested amount, being the submission fee a non mandatory and voluntary direct donation, we were struggling to raise the same amount as last year and there is who decided to cover part of it. I thank you for all you are doing, and if you wish to donate to the above links, please drop me a note with your donation and I will update the total.

2014 Rainbow Awards Guidelines: reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/4162490.html

2014 Rainbow Awards Submission: The Rules

Lesbian Contemporary General Fiction
The Rules by S. Renée Bess
Paperback: 194 pages
Publisher: Regal Crest Enterprises, LLC (March 4, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1619291568
ISBN-13: 978-1619291560
Amazon: The Rules
Amazon Kindle: The Rules

Blackmail, murder, missing persons, and hidden identities link lives that otherwise, would have remained unconnected. London Phillips' suburban black middle class background has made her vulnerable to the alienation she feels as she tap dances between the expectations she holds for herself and the expectations other people impose upon her. A full-time realtor and part-time writer, London encounters frustration when she tries to contact Milagros Farrow, a revered lesbian author whose work London would like to include in an anthology she's compiling. Milagros has disappeared from the face of the earth. Rand Carson is a prominent newspaper journalist who is forced to deal with the sudden loss of her financial security and the dissolution of her long term interracial relationship with Willa. Rand seems compelled to pursue London, although it's possible she's more attracted to London's ethnicity than to London herself. Candace Dickerson, a corporate event planner, is married to avarice. In order to chase a more lucrative future, Candace has abandoned her lover, Lenah and Lenah's perceived lack of ambition. She's moved into the city where she executes a plot designed to augment her earnings with other people's money. Lenah Miller is content with her job at a local hospital's Emergency Department. For reasons known only to her, she distrusts women she considers too ambitious or from different social strata. Steeped in cynicism and memories held in secret, Lenah finds it easier to criticize a woman whose gentle nature differs from hers than to accept their differences. The threads entwined around London's desire to connect with a kindred spirit, Lenah's wary skepticism, Rand's inappropriate ardor, and Candace's greed come undone when three people fall victim to blackmail, one reappears, and another succumbs to murder.

Charities Donation program progress:
328$ Albert Kennedy Trust: http://www.akt.org.uk/
990$ Ali Forney Center: www.aliforneycenter.org/
50$ Audre Lorde Project: http://alp.org/
25$ BiNet US: http://www.binetusa.org/
125$ CARE: careprogram.org/
125$ The Center Colorado: http://www.glbtcolorado.org/
25$ LGBT Center of Greater Cleveland: http://www.lgbtcleveland.org/
401$ COLORS: www.colorsyouth.org/
80$ Covenant: www.covenanthouseno.org/
75$ Diversity Role Models: http://www.diversityrolemodels.org/
25$ The Diversity Center: http://diversitycenter.org/
317$ Galop: www.galop.org.uk/
150$ GLYS: http://www.glyswny.org/
135$ Human Rights Campaign: http://www.hrc.org/
50$ Huntsville GLBT Advocacy & Youth Services: http://www.glbtays.org/
100$ It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org/
100$ Inland Northwest LGBT Center: www.thelgbtcenter.org/
235$ Lambda Legal: www.lambdalegal.org/
50$ Lambert House: www.lamberthouse.org/
50$ Lancaster LGBT Center: http://www.centralpalgbtcenter.org/
50$ LEAP: http://www.glbtleap.org/
512$ Lost-n-Found Youth: www.lost-n-found.org/
50$ MKE LGBT Center: www.mkelgbt.org/
130$ Moveable Feast: http://www.mfeast.org/
25$ Odyssey Youth Center: www.odysseyyouth.org/
25$ Out Youth: outyouth.org/
25$ Pathfinders: pathfindersmke.org/
100$ PFLAG: community.pflag.org/
175$ Point Foundation: www.pointfoundation.org/
100$ Ruth Ellis Center: http://www.ruthelliscenter.org/
650$ SAGE: giveto.sageusa.org/
25$ Terrence Higgins Trust: www.tht.org.uk/
455$ The Trevor Project: www.thetrevorproject.org/
160$ UCAN: www.ucanchicago.org/
25$ WayGay: http://www.waygay.org/
200$ You Can Play: http://youcanplayproject.org/
50$ YouthCare: www.youthcare.org/
997$ Other Funds
TOTAL: 7190$*

* more than 150$ is a direct donation from a supporter of the Rainbow Awards who isn't submitting; while some authors were more than generous, arriving to donate 5 times the suggested amount, being the submission fee a non mandatory and voluntary direct donation, we were struggling to raise the same amount as last year and there is who decided to cover part of it. I thank you for all you are doing, and if you wish to donate to the above links, please drop me a note with your donation and I will update the total.

2014 Rainbow Awards Guidelines: reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/4162490.html