Michael Rupured (born March 5)

[reviews_and_ramblings]

For as long as he can remember, Michael Rupured has loved to write. Before he learned the alphabet, he filled page after page with rows of tiny little circles he now believes were his first novels and has been writing ever since. He grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, where he came out as a gay man at the age of 21 in the late 1970s. He considers it a miracle that he survived his wild and reckless twenties.

By day, Michael is an academic. He develops and evaluates financial literacy programs for youth and adult audiences at the University of Georgia and is Assistant to the Dean for Family and Consumer Sciences Education. He's received numerous awards and honors over the years and is a Distinguished Fellow of the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education. Michael is also an avid gardener, a runner, and because he loves it and rarely misses a class, is known locally as the Zumba King.

In 2010, he joined the Athens Writers Workshop, which he credits for helping him transition from writing nonfiction to writing fiction. Michael writes gay romance thrillers that, in addition to entertaining the reader, highlight how far the gay rights movement has come in the last fifty years. A serial monogamist who is currently between relationships, Michael writes with his longhaired Chihuahua, Toodles, in his lap from his home in Athens, Georgia.

Happy Independence Day won a 2014 Rainbow Award as Best Gay Historical.

Further Readings:

Happy Independence Day by Michael Rupured
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (August 20, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1632161621
ISBN-13: 978-1632161628
Amazon: Happy Independence Day
Amazon Kindle: Happy Independence Day

Prequel to Until Thanksgiving

Terrence Bottom wants to change the world. A prelaw student at Columbia University majoring in political science, his interests range from opposing the draft and the war in Vietnam, to civil rights for gays, to anything to do with Cameron McKenzie. Terrence notices the rugged blond hanging around the Stonewall Inn, but the handsome man-and rumored Mafia hustler-rebuffs his smiles and winks.

Cameron McKenzie dropped out of college and left tiny Paris, Kentucky after the death of the grandmother who raised him, dreaming of an acting career on Broadway. Although he claims to be straight, he becomes a prostitute to make ends meet. Now the Mafia is using him to entrap men for extortion schemes, he is in way over his head, and he can't see a way out-at least not a way that doesn't involve a swim to the bottom of the Hudson in a pair of cement flippers.

Cameron is left with a choice: endanger both their lives by telling Terrence everything or walk away from the only man he ever loved. The Mafia hustler and the student activist want to find a way to stay together, but first they need to find a way to stay alive.

More Rainbow Awards at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, Rainbow Awards/2014