Eric Radford & Normand Piche

Eric Radford (born January 27, 1985) is a Canadian pair skater. With partner Meagan Duhamel, he is a two-time World bronze medalist (2013 and 2014), the 2013 Four Continents champion, the 2014–15 Grand Prix Final champion, and a three-time Canadian national champion (2012–14). (P: Duhamel and Radford in 2011)

Radford was born and raised in Balmertown, Ontario. He moved to Kenora at age 14, to Winnipeg and Montreal at 15, and to Toronto at 16.He studied music at York University, plays piano and writes and composes music, and registered as a member of the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada in 2014.

In December 2014, Radford publicly came out as gay in an interview with the LGBT publication Outsports. He is an ambassador for the Canadian Olympic Committee's #OneTeam program to combat homophobia in sports.

"My concern was that I would be known as 'the gay athlete' if I came out at the Olympics, rather than Eric the medalling figure skater who happens to be gay. And I felt uncomfortable with that title."

Radford has been with his boyfriend Normand Piche for four years. They live together with Normand's daughter:

"I'm proud of our whole situation, how we're basically a gay family. We function great, we get along so well. We have become a family. I was only 25 when I met Normand. I don't know many gay guys that age who would take on that responsibility. But I jumped right in. It's been fun and fulfilling and has broadened my perspective on so many things."


Eric Radford is a Canadian pair skater. With partner Meagan Duhamel, he is a two-time World bronze medalist, the 2013 Four Continents champion, the 2014–15 Grand Prix Final champion, and a three-time Canadian national champion. In December 2014, Radford publicly came out as gay. "My concern was that I would be known as 'the gay athlete' if I came out at the Olympics, rather than Eric the medalling figure skater who happens to be gay. And I felt uncomfortable with that title." Radford has been with his boyfriend Normand for four years. They live together with Normand's daughter.

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

Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa Rolle
Paperback: 760 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (July 1, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1500563323
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/4910282
Amazon (Paperback): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500563323/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Amazon (Kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MZG0VHY/?tag=elimyrevandra-20

Days of Love chronicles more than 700 LGBT couples throughout history, spanning 2000 years from Alexander the Great to the most recent winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Many of the contemporary couples share their stories on how they met and fell in love, as well as photos from when they married or of their families. Included are professional portraits by Robert Giard and Stathis Orphanos, paintings by John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini, and photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnson, Arnold Genthe, and Carl Van Vechten among others. “It's wonderful. Laying it out chronologically is inspired, offering a solid GLBT history. I kept learning things. I love the decision to include couples broken by death. It makes clear how important love is, as well as showing what people have been through. The layout and photos look terrific.” Christopher Bram “I couldn’t resist clicking through every page. I never realized the scope of the book would cover centuries! I know that it will be hugely validating to young, newly-emerging LGBT kids and be reassured that they really can have a secure, respected place in the world as their futures unfold.” Howard Cruse “This international history-and-photo book, featuring 100s of detailed bios of some of the most forward-moving gay persons in history, is sure to be one of those bestsellers that gay folk will enjoy for years to come as reference and research that is filled with facts and fun.” Jack Fritscher

Alan Cumming (born 27 January 1965)

Alan Cumming, OBE (born 27 January 1965), is a Scottish stage, television and film actor, singer, writer, director, producer and author. His roles have included the M.C. in Cabaret, Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye, Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler in X2: X-Men United, Mr. Elton in Emma, and Fegan Floop in the Spy Kids films. He has also appeared in independent films like The Anniversary Party, which he co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in; and Ali Selim's Sweet Land, for which he won an Independent Spirit award as producer.

His London stage appearances include Hamlet, the Maniac in Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist, for which he received an Olivier Award, the lead in Martin Sherman's Bent, and as Dionysus in The National Theatre of Scotland's The Bacchae. On Broadway he has appeared as Mac the Knife in The Threepenny Opera, the Emcee in Cabaret, for which he won the Tony in 1998, and Design for Living. Cumming also introduces Masterpiece Mystery! for PBS. He currently appears as Eli Gold on The Good Wife, for which he has been nominated for two Emmys, two SAGs, a Satellite Award and Critics' Circle Award.

He has also written a novel, Tommy's Tale, had a cable talk show (Eavesdropping with Alan Cumming) and produced a line of perfumed products labelled "Cumming". He has contributed opinion pieces to many publications and performed a cabaret show I Bought A Blue Car Today. Retaining his British citizenship, Cumming became a naturalized U.S. citizen on November 7, 2008.


Alan Cumming, OBE (born 27 January 1965), is a Scottish stage, television and film actor, singer, writer, director, producer and author. Cumming lives in New York City with his husband, graphic artist Grant Shaffer, and their dogs, Honey and Leon. The couple dated for two years before entering into a civil partnership at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London, on January 7, 2007. Cumming and Shaffer remarried in New York on January 7, 2012, the fifth anniversary of their London union.


Photo by Grant Shaffer

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

Further Readings:

Tommy's Tale : A Novel by Alan Cumming
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: It Books (October 21, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0060989270
Amazon: Tommy's Tale : A Novel

Tommy is twenty-nine, lives and loves in London, and has a morbid fear of the c word (commitment), the b word (boyfriend), and the f word (forgetting to call his drug dealer before the weekend). But when he begins to feel the urge to become a father, and the pressure from his boyfriend to make a real commitment to their relationship, Tommy starts to wonder if his chosen lifestyle can ever make him happy.

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

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Ethan Mordden (born January 27, 1949)

Ethan Mordden (born January 27, 1949, Pennsylvania) is an American author.

Mordden was raised in Pennsylvania, in Venice, Italy, and on Long Island, and is a graduate of Friends Academy in Locust Valley, New York, and the University of Pennsylvania. He at first sought a career in show business, working as music director on off-Broadway and in regional theatre, and enrolling in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop run by Lehman Engel. As both composer and lyricist, Mordden wrote musicals based on William Shakespeare's Measure For Measure and on Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson, but he ended up earning his living as a writer of English prose. In the 1970s, he was assistant editor to Dorothy Woolfolk on such DC Comics as The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love.

His stories, novels, essays, and non-fiction books cover a wide range of topics including the American musical theater, opera, film, and, especially in his fiction, the emergence and development of contemporary American gay culture as manifested in New York City. He has also written for The New Yorker, including fiction, Critic At Large pieces on Cole Porter, Judy Garland, and the musical Show Boat, and reviews of a biography of the Barrymores and Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus.

His best known fictional works are the inter-related series of stories known collectively as the "Buddies" cycle. In book form, these began with 1985's I've a Feeling We're not in Kansas Anymore. The fifth in the series, 2005's How's Your Romance?, is subtitled Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle. Together, the stories chronicle the times, loves, and losses of a close-knit group of friends, men who cope with the challenges of growing up and growing older. In this circle of best friends, teasing putdowns become performance art, but none of the friends ever attacks any other friend's sensitive spots. Mordden thus breaks away from the gay model proposed by Mart Crowley's play The Boys in the Band, in which supposed best friends assault one another relentlessly in a style that has bedeviled gay art ever since, for instance in the television series Queer as Folk. Mordden's ideal of gay friendship presents men who genuinely like themselves and one another. They are unique in gay lit in that they respect the limits of privacy. This explains their devotion to one another: this "family" is a safe place.

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

Part of the legendary Buddies series, with Buddies Mordden can tie touching and telling and hilarious vignettes together like no one else. It´s often said that gay men make their own families, friends they keep for life, ones that help mold them as individuals - and that´s what this series is about, your buddies. A Tales of the City set in New York in the 80´s, the dialogue is fun and fresh, the situations truly real-to-life, and the writing superlative. My ultimate dream is to have my own Buddies-esque series for this millennium. Fingers crossed! --Rob Rosen

( Ethan Mordden, 1987, by Robert Giard  )

Further Readings:

How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle by Ethan Mordden
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (October 17, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312333315
ISBN-13: 978-0312333317
Amazon: How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle

Mordden explores a tricky moral universe in which emotional loyalty is exalted but sexual fidelity is not assumed...There is a sense of real pain amid the zingers; Mordden's characters run their mouths to avoid baring their souls." -- New York Times Book Review on Some Men Are Lookers

After a hiatus of eight years, Ethan Mordden returns to the fictional universe for which he is most beloved in this latest, possibly last, volume in his much lauded "Buddies" cycle. Following the exploits of his best-loved characters -- Dennis Savage, J. (who was once Little Kiwi), Carlo, the slowly maturing 'elf-child' Cosgrove, and narrator Bud - as he lays bare the changed emotional landscape of the city within a city that is Gay Manhattan. Blending the comic, the sexy, the tragic, and the at once idealistic and realistic, these stories are Ethan Mordden at his very best.

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

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Sally Ride & Tam O'Shaughnessy

Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American physicist and astronaut. Ride joined NASA in 1978 and, at the age of 32, became the first American woman in space. She left NASA in 1987 to work at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control. She served on the committees investigating the nation's two space shuttle disasters (Challenger and Columbia), becoming the only person to serve on both panels. She founded a company, Sally Ride Science, in 2001. She co-authored six children's science books with her life partner of 27 years, Tam O'Shaughnessy. Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to be launched into space.

The elder child of Dale Burdell Ride and Carol Joyce (née Anderson), Ride was born in Los Angeles, California. She had one sibling, Karen "Bear" Ride, who is a Presbyterian minister. Both parents were elders in the Presbyterian Church. Ride's mother had worked as a volunteer counselor at a women's correctional facility. Her father had been a political science professor at Santa Monica College.

Ride attended Portola Junior High (now Portola Middle School) and then Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles (now Harvard-Westlake School) on a scholarship. In addition to being interested in science, she was a nationally ranked tennis player. Ride attended Swarthmore College for three semesters, took physics courses at UCLA, and then entered Stanford University as a junior, graduating with a bachelor's degree in English and physics. At Stanford, she earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. in physics while doing research on the interaction of X-rays with the interstellar medium.


Sally Ride was a physicist and astronaut. Ride joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space. She left NASA in 1987 to work at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Arms Control. She co-authored six children's science books with her life partner of 27 years, Tam O'Shaughnessy, a professor emerita of school psychology at San Diego State University and childhood friend. Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to be launched into space.

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

Tam Elizabeth O'Shaughnessy (born January 27, 1952) is an American educator, children’s science writer, former professional tennis player, and co-founder of the science education company Sally Ride Science. She is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Sally Ride Science.

O'Shaughnessy was born in San Andreas, California and attended Troy High School in Fullerton, California, where she was active in tennis. As a junior player, she was coached by tennis great Billie Jean King, who loved helping young players develop their skills, just as she had been helped by others. O’Shaughnessy went on to play on the women's professional tennis circuit from 1971 to 1974. She competed in the U.S. National Championships (now known as the U.S. Open) in 1966, 1970, and 1972. Her entry into the 1966 U.S. National Championships at the age of 14 came about by serendipity.

O’Shaughnessy was being coached by Dr. Robert Walter Johnson, a physician who played a key role in the tennis careers of Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe. Johnson was an official of the American Tennis Association (ATA), an organization that promotes tennis for African-Americans but welcomes players of all backgrounds. During the summer of 1966, O’Shaughnessy, who is not African-American, competed in ATA tournaments in addition to U.S. Tennis Association junior events. O’Shaughnessy won the ATA national 18-and-under championship and so was automatically entered in the U.S. National Championship draw. O’Shaughnessy also competed in the 1972 Wimbledon Championships. During her tennis career, she was ranked as high as No. 52 in the world in women's singles on the Women’s Tennis Association rankings and as high as No. 3 in the U.S. in women’s doubles (with Ann Lebedeff). O’Shaughnessy holds national hard-court doubles titles in the junior division (with Ann Lebedeff) and in the women’s division (with Pam Austin).

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tam_O%27Shaughnessy

( Further Readings )

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Cover Reveal Blitz: Winter's Wolf by Tara Lain

“Winter’s Wolf (Tales of the Harker Pack, #3 )” By Tara Lain
eBook: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=6064
Paperback: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=6065

Winter Thane was raised on the two cardinal rules of werewolf existence: don’t reveal yourself to humans under penalty of death, and there’s no such thing as a gay werewolf. It’s no surprise when his father drags him from his wild life in remote Canada back to Connecticut to meet his old pack in hopes it will persuade Winter to abandon his love of sex with human males. Of course Dad’s hopes are dashed when they come face-to-face with the gay werewolves in the Harker pack.

Winter takes one look at FBI agent, Matt Partridge, and decides bird is his favorite food. Partridge is embroiled in an investigation into drug dealing and the death of a fellow agent. He can’t let himself get distracted by the young, platinum-haired beast, but then Winter proves invaluable in the search for clues, a move that winds them both up in chains and facing imminent death. Winter quickly learns his father’s motives are questionable, the pack alphas are a bunch of pussies, humans aren’t quite what they seem, and nothing in the forests of Connecticut is pure except love.

( Excerpt )

Author’s Bio: Tara Lain writes the Beautiful Boys of Romance in LGBT erotic romance novels that star her unique, charismatic heroes. Her first novel was published in January of 2011 and she’s now somewhere around book 23. Her best­selling novels have garnered awards for Best Series, Best Contemporary Romance, Best Ménage, Best LGBT Romance, Best Gay Characters, and Tara has been named Best Writer of the Year in the LRC Awards. In her other job, Tara owns an advertising and public relations firm. She often does workshops on both author promotion and writing craft. She lives with her soul­mate husband and her soul­mate dog in Laguna Beach, California, a pretty seaside town where she sets a lot of her books.
Passionate about diversity, justice, and new experiences, Tara says on her tombstone it will say “Yes”!

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Website: http://taralain.com/
Blog: http://www.taralain.com/blog
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