Anyone got any new sites to add? Thought I'd ask because the first thing that popped up when I went to add this comment was that the topic is old, which means that it needs a boost in case some new attention is warranted at this point. At least, that's what the red letter warning means to me, so consider the topic renewed, please.
Wanted, first, to confirm that Nifty is a great site. All manner of narratives, from short to very long in manymany multiparts, and from terrible (a minority) to really amazingly insightful and well written. The best balance decent prose (usually in short supply everywhere) with character and plot, balanced with an appropriate amount of explicit, detailed, blazingly hot sex scenes. Such stories and prose sexual indulgences can be a real creative challenge when it comes to keeping it real (at least within the fantasy world of the story, which may or may not be close to "real life") and original and nonrepetitive.
Those stories are often claimed to be based on actual (usually autobiographical) events and recollections, and thus provide a bunch of data, however unreliable or colored, idealized or enhanced, about what real people actually do in real life. At least most stories are supposedly about the author's version of reality, which may or may not coincide with that of the reader. One man who writes well tends to be interested in smelly bodies and such, but has credible characters one can care about whether or not that realm is of interest.
Some stories involve future or historical fantasies, well known fictitious characters, fanfic in which boyband members cavort together, get satisfied by a lucky fan, etc. Lots of options, and a whole bi realm with categories similar to the gay topics– family, youth. youth/age, military, jocks, romance.... Since it is entirely possible to interact with authors, many of whom love hearing from fans and even critics if they are politely supportive, and new authors can readily obtain feedback as well.
What I am primarily interested in at this point is the YA novels, but subject-relevant Young Adult novels, often quite explicit, don't seem to be available here, though I keep hoping someone will upload a bunch. Last year Huffpoo aka The Clickbait Gazette, had an article with a list of titles that sounded pretty impressive:
hXXp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/28/lgbtq-childrens-books_n_7462250.html
Personally, I think it is shocking to hear someone confess to never having actually read any gay fiction. ZOMG is that missing out. It's not just Gore Vidal or Rosemary Sutcliffe who had something to say while writing books worth reading, but America's on iconcolast Paul Goodman, subject of a documentary film available over in the torrents, and Edmund White, whose new one sounds terrific. I don't know that the brilliant poet and novelist Tom Disch ever wrote too explicitly, but his sexuality informed all of his work one way or another, just as it does the groundbreaking (sometimes pretentious and ugly) genre fiction of Samuel R. Delaney.
"The Dancer from the Dance" by Andrew Holleran is a beautifully written novel, the ultimate documentation of New York's disco era, moving and splendid, a classic worth reading even if you cannot stand the music -- or the scene itself, for that matter, whether you were around at the time or just want an outstanding slice of history. Felice Picano comes to mind as well, who has written nonfiction just as Edmund White has, but fiction is still first home for each.
E.M. Forster wrote great stuff, but his gay fantasy, Maurice, was written when he was still a virgin, a work of imagination that did result, quite a while after it was published posthumously, in an excellent movie, which also happens to have a naked Rupert Graves, who goes full frontal a second time (anywhere else?) in an even better Forster-based movie, A Room with a View, where all the best stuff came directly from the author's text.
Christopher Isherwood. There. Time, you thief, who loves to get sweets into your list, put him in. And it is not just the Berlin Stories that led to I Am a Camera and on to Cabaret. Again, there are documentaries that can be viewed and those might interest someone enough to follow up. Ditto Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, Jean Genet, who have all left an indelible mark on literature as well as other genres (art, film, music, to name three). Gide and Cocteau are two more who led the way and dared to say the unsayable.
Personally, I think Joseph Hansen is amazingly and unfairly underrated and would repay anyone willing to pay close attention. Found this online:
It's not until Joseph Hansen's Dave Brandstetter series hit print in 1970 that a well-rounded, serious, and effective gay
detective was unveiled. Brandstetter starts out as an insurance investigator in California, then in later books becomes
a PI. Middle-aged in the first novel, FADEOUT (1970), Brandstetter had lost his lover of 25 years, and his grief
complements his hard-boiled character quite well. In a twelve book series spanning 21 years, Hansen paints a portrait
of a complex and interesting sleuth. The mystery plots are twisty and complicated and as well-plotted as any sleuth
story in print at the time. Hansen tackles issues of AIDS and homophobia as well as typical mystery fare like drug
dealing and toxic dumping. As University of Michigan professor Ted-Larry Pebworth has written, "For the first time
in the crime genre, Hansen presented gay men and lesbians in all their variety, without sensation, as simply men
and women with understandable desires, triumphs, and frustrations."
Author Lori Lake has other useful information and tips in this essay, "Gay & Lesbian Detective Novels," online at
hXXp://www.lorillake.com/gaydetective.html
Hansen's series develops and changes with the romantic situation of his detective, but rarely includes much direct discussion of physical lovemaking. But his prose is brilliant, as pure and clear as a mountain stream, without a single wasted word, a single superfluous sentence. That means he says everything necessary, but just once, and it is easy to miss the clues and the story because his appeal is not to the stupid or the ignorant. He does not have the word power that stuns in Raymond Chandler, but he is just as spare, and lean, and ruthless in his pursuit of the story.
And so on. James Baldwin was another writer who was early to address gay issues, and bookstores are full of others, though not all as central to modern writing as most of the names mentioned here. Armisted Maupin's Tales of the City series is alternately outrageous, shocking, hilarious, and moving, though the degree to which he captured the San Francisco zeitgeist when he began groping his way forward with a serialized story where he had no idea what barriers he could safely break may not be evident to those who were not around at the time.
I'm reminded of the character visited by his parents, one of whom found poppers in his refrigerator, which he alibied as "paintbrush cleaner." May have been the first reference to the little brown bottle in all of fiction (happy to be corrected, of course), and if anyone can recall seeing poppers on television or popular nonporn movies, that might still be a first. (Similarly, I doubt anyone had discussed rimming in print before Burroughs talked about it in Naked Lunch.)
Which is, to my mind, all the more reason to hope there are other good sites that can be added to this thread, and even other remarks by those who would like to find good stuff to read that is not best approached with one hand free to celebrate the details so easy to indulge online at a place like Nifty.org.
