Columns
Articles and advice by our regular feature writers.
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Your Gay Best Friend
To come out or not to come out, that is the question
Dear Gabriel
I’m a gay man in my 30s. I had one partner for 12 years until he died of a heart attack. I couldn’t really date for a couple of years, then I found it quite hard to find someone. I suppose I’m the kind that likes to settle with someone.
Finally, I have met someone. I really like him. He’s a lawyer. He’s fairly recently divorced and has two teenage kids. The only trouble is that we’ve been dating now for a couple of years and he still hasn’t come out to his kids.
All About Love Official Blog
Romantic Fiction Writing - How to find ideas through daydreams
Daydreams as a source of ideas
We’re discussing four different sources of ideas that you, as a writer of romantic fiction, can milk at will. Ideas that, elaborated and complicated, will give you original stories that’ll form the backbones of your novel. In this piece, I’d like to tease out how much of a creative engine room your own day-dreaming can be.
All About Love Official Blog
Romantic Fiction Writing - How to find ideas
Characters generate their own stories Some writers of romantic fiction regard ideas as the gems on which their fortune will be based. I believe, on the contrary, that ideas are a dime a dozen, available in such profusion that you’re never likely to run short of them. If this proposition sounds ludicrous to you – if ideas, or the lack of them, are the stumbling block in your creative path – then this short series of articles is for you.
Love Factually
Literary Love
Love was in the crisp autumn air, as I strutted jauntily towards the City Book Fair.
Books summon up romance in my mind. More specifically, the image of a woman with whom I instantly fell in love as she pored over a textbook in the university library, way back when.
Way back when, round John Lennon glasses were big. And round. And she was wearing them, thus completing a vision of delectation which encompassed ebony ringlets falling forward over her flawlessly creamy face, a few freckles, a beauty spot … and a purple tie-dyed t-shirt with pink-paisley-patterned trim which, damn, I just cannot seem to edit out of my mind’s eye.
Luke's World
Good manners for gay men
I wrote recently about being “love’s executioner” – I had, I guess, burst the bubble of fantasy and hope when I met in person a guy who’d approached me online - and told him (and showed him) that I was just ordinary old me. Not the fabulous, handsome, all loving, all giving, never disappointing sex machine he had built me up to be.
All About Love Official Blog
Writing Romance - Five More Tips
Good Romance relies on good characters. We need to believe in them. They should be strong and complex enough for us to identify with them.
All About Love Official Blog
Writing Romance - Five Tips
Many people think Romance writing is a bit like knitting. There’s a pattern to follow and, even if you’re a bit clumsy at first, you can knock off a finished product in a few afternoons while the kids are out playing.
Your Gay Best Friend
Kids or no kids
Dear Gabriel
I’m in my 40s and divorced. I have two pre-teens. Recently I met a woman in her early 30s. She’s never been married. We’ve got pretty serious, I suppose. We both like the same things.
We met in a cycle club and we cycle marathons together. My ex-wife never liked things like that. We were planning to move in together in a month or two. Now, the thing is, right out of the blue the other night, she said that when we had our kids ... something or other. I didn’t even hear the rest. I mean what a shocker.
Luke's World
Guide to the internet for the not-yet misanthropic
Gosh I had such an interesting experience recently – I got to meet someone I had met through the internet!
Yes the sarcasm is deliberate. I’m just so tired of men flirting and chatting and texting, but all the excitement is in the chase and not in the kill. I now am convinced that about 80% of the men who use the internet are not really serious about finding a partner – it’s just a game to them.
The real challenge for those of us who are serious, and who are reasonably intact psychologically, is to “do” the internet with hope and sincerity while not becoming completely misanthropic.
A Lipstick Lesbian on the Prowl in London
Seventy-thousand lesbians flirting (or not)
You’d think my chances of hooking up, stealing a kiss, or meeting my soul mate would be quadrupled by being around 70 000 lesbians for an entire weekend….
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