Gay Titles
Drumbeat (Notes from Boston #3)
Jamie Cosgrove is struggling to recover from an abusive relationship when he meets Cian Toomey, who has complications of his own. (Notes from Boston #3) (M/M)
Our gay publishing side is more correctly categorized as a place where men love men, not always exclusively. We wave our Bisexual Pride flag high, just as high as our Diversity flags and our Christian flags. We like flags. And we're extraordinarily proud of what we write. Often we portray a world we want to live in, where people are free to express themselves, and free to love.
A. M. Leibowitz is our first writer of men who love men, and hir work has inspired others here at Supposed Crimes to stretch our writing muscles and try more things. Zhe's always pushing us to be inclusive and it's making us better. Hir first novel is Lower Education.
The Acquitted Books imprint model is thusly--Have an idea for a book that doesn't "fit" in a "category"? Come write it for Acquitted Books. Have fun with it. Try new things. This section features anthologies--where our usual writers of lesbian stories come and try other QUILTBAG letters, as well as gay fiction.
Geonn Cannon exemplifies this with Stag & Hound, a crossover novel in more ways than one. Historical novel, check. Werewolves, check. Men who love men. Check. Women who love women? In our gay fiction? Check. Room for characters exploring who they are and what they want to do? Always.
Acquitted Books is where we prove we're not just writing for the market. We're writing for ourselves. And we're creating a home for ourselves. One author, such as A. M. Leibowitz, leads. Others follow. An idea goes in a different direction. That's great, too.
This is also a place to talk about our Christian fiction. Many of us have grown up as Christians and also have LGBT identities, and have too often found these parts of ourselves in conflict, as society tells us what each label means. Here, we want to reconcile those conflicts in the best way we know how--through loud and proud fiction. We won't shy away from calling our characters Christian if they're LBGT, and we won't shy away from calling characters bisexual or gay or trans because they're Christian. We want to example and, again, create a home, where all parts of ourselves are welcome.
Many of our regular reviewers have expressed anxiety when we mix one label with another, but with open hearts they read us, and we hope that leads to open minds as well.