Creative Writing
Short Stories
Below is a table that shows all the short stories I’ve written with the most recent one first. Each story has it’s own page which describes what the story is about, a link for free download or to buy and what I learnt through writing these stories. I hope you enjoy reading these stories.
| Title / Cover | About | Free Download / Buy Link |
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In Soulmates Robert and Lucas keep missing each other. In fact, they’ve never met. That is until a disembodied spirit assigns himself Robert’s case. Can this spirit create the perfect opportunity for these two potential Soulmates to finally meet? And if they do meet, how will it go?
Soulmates is a short story in the gay romance genre. It is just over four thousand words and is yours to enjoy for free. |
Soulmates (PDF) |
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The Good Teen is a modern-day telling of The Good Samaritan parable, with a hint of magic.
I saw a call for submissions from the BBC Radio 4 ‘Opening Lines’ programme. I wrote, edited and submitted The Good Teen, but unfortunately haven’t heard anything, meaning that it has not been accepted. |
The Good Teen (PDF) |
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In A Few Amazing Moments Shaun shares his journey to find love through the decades. From his teen experience of rejection; to living by the philosophy of grabbing a few amazing moments of love where he can. The moments always coming to an end as he expects. But with Nathan his best friend and lover, will it be a happily ever after or is it another one of those relationships with a shelf life? Read More |
A Few Amazing Moments (PDF) |  |
Gina and Tom have just got engaged. But she’s got a secret and worries about his reaction when he discovers the truth. She’s also got an interview for the Director of Sales job, but she has some unexpected competition. How will Tom react when he discovers her secret? And will she win the Director of Sales job or is fate leading her in a different direction? Read More |
Stuck Between A Rock… (PDF) |
Journalism
Below is a table that shows all the journalism articles I’ve written with the most recent one first. Each article has it’s own post which gives the article in full and what I learnt through writing these pieces. I hope you enjoy reading these articles.
| Title | About | Available/Published |
| Being in a relationship can be great. Here are 14 reasons why it’s great to be in a relationship: Read More |
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| I’m out to everybody. These days I rarely need to come out and say that I’m gay, but it wasn’t always like that. Over the years I’ve come out to family, friends, work colleagues and even my GP. There’s been mixed reactions from people when I’ve told them that I’m gay, but most have been positive. In this article I’ll share some of the most memorable with you. Read More |
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| Inspired by Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay by Paul Vitagliano, I’ve decided to share my own story of growing up gay. Read More |
The Gay UK | |
| When’s the last time you saw a gay character in a mainstream movie? A while? Recently? Although gay people are under represented in the film world, there are more of us around than you might think. Read More |
The Gay UK | |
| John Barrowman recently released his Pledge Music fan-funded album You Raise Me Up. It reached #16 in the UK album charts, much better than two of his previous studio albums with record label Sony. Read More |
The Gay UK | |
| In After The Dark it’s the last day of term and Mr. Zimit, a Philosophy Teacher challenges his international high school students to take part in one final thought experiment: It’s the apocalypse and there’s a bunker that will save some of them. There’s twenty-one of them and only ten places in the bunker. Having more than ten people in the bunker will mean that all in the bunker perish. The class must decide who will get a place in the bunker and who wont. Read More |
The Gay UK | |
| So you’ve met this man, you really like him and you want to score yourself a second date. Well you’re going to have to impress him. Read More |
The Gay UK | |
| A few weeks ago, I was ill and in need of cheering up. I padded over to my DVD shelf and picked up a box set of Will & Grace. After watching one episode, I was hooked and ended up watching the entire box set.
What struck me as I watched and laughed is that I’d forgotten how funny Karen Walker is. So here are 17 of my favourite Karen quotes, on all the important things in life. |
The Gay UK | |
| Some chat-up lines work and others really don’t. Here’s 5 chat-up lines you should NEVER Use: Read More |
The Gay UK | |
| Homosexuality has been found in 1,500 species of animals through behaviour observation research studies. There’s probably many more species, if you consider that the number only account for the animals that have been studied. Here’s ten animals were gay liaisons or relationships exist: Read More |
The Gay UK | |
| I know it’s old news now; but Tom Daley recently revealed that he is in a relationship with a man. He made this disclosure on this YouTube video:
My initial reaction was pride. All out gay or bisexual men have had to have these difficult conversations at some point, so I definitely empathised. These conversations are hard enough, but for Tom it must have been even more difficult given his position. |
The Gay UK | |
| Christmas is a Christian festival, but a lot of its traditions originate from the older pagan festival of Yule. Yule or the Winter Solstice is on 21st December; it is the shortest day and longest night in year. From this point on days will begin to get longer. Pagans come together celebrate the return of the sun or re-birth of the sun God.
Lets have a look at 5 Christmas traditions and discover their pagan origins: |
The Gay UK | |
| The Christmas party season is upon us! We all want to have a good time; but we need to make sure that we’re safe to (and I don’t just mean condoms). Tom Hunt and his team have developed an App to help you out, appropriately named iSurvive. Read More |
The Gay UK | |
| In this article we look at the history of marriage in the UK. Our history starts at 410AD, as before this time there were no written records of the history of marriage. Before written records, history was past down orally from the older generation to the younger one, unfortunately over time this oral history has been lost. Read More |
The Gay UK Feb/March 2014 Magazine (priced £1.49) and published on The Gay UK Website. | |
| This month it’s been anti-bullying month here at The Gay UK. Bullying takes many forms: Name-calling, making negative comments on your work, making someone feel worthless, physical abuse are just some examples.
So we’ve put some tips together to help anyone out there who might be being bullied. It doesn’t matter if you’re being bullied at school, college, university, work or home. |
The Gay UK | |
| November is anti-bullying month. In 2010 there were a few high profile cases of gay teens committing suicide as a result of homophobic bullying both in school and in their communities in the USA. Dan Savage and his partner Terry Miller uploaded a video on YouTube titled ‘It Gets Better.’ The aim of this video, as you may have guessed, was to encourage gay teens to hang in there, as it does get better.
From this sprang the It Gets Better Project, an international campaign that aims to communicate the ‘it gets better’ message to gay teens to give them hope. |
The Gay UK | |
| With the dark nights closing in, the routine this time of year can feel a bit monotonous. So we’ve come up with 15 pleasurable ways to spend an evening.
Depending upon your own personal preferences some of these activities might be your idea of absolute pleasure or excruciating pain. Still, hopefully this list will inspire you to do something different and fun that will break up the routine. |
The Gay UK | |
| Here at The Gay UK this month it’s all about Coming Out. We’ve spoken to two parents about their experiences of Coming Out to their children. Both of these parents were concerned about the impact of telling their story on themselves and their family and asked for their identities to be protected. So throughout this article pseudo names are used for both the parents and the children.
The second is Paul, a 51 years old father from London, England. Paul has two now-adult children his son David, 25 years old and his daughter Janet, 23 years old. |
The Gay UK | |
| Here at The Gay UK this month it’s all about Coming Out. We’ve spoken to two parents about their experiences of Coming Out to their children. Both of these parents were concerned about the impact of telling their story on themselves and their family and asked for their identities to be protected. So throughout this article pseudo names are used for both the parents and the children.
The first is Linda, a 55 years old mother from Glasgow, Scotland. Linda has two now-adult children her daughter Julie, 37 years old and her son Darren, 34 years old. |
The Gay UK | |
| James Stevens was a regular attender of Manchester Pride’s Big Weekend. He describes himself as a ‘proud Mancunion,’ as well as ‘proud to be part of the gay community’ and states that he donates to local gay charities and support groups every year.
But he recently wrote a letter to Manchester Pride expressing his concern and anger at less money being raised and given away to gay charities. |
The Gay UK | |
| I’ve come out of two closets in my life. First through the rainbow-coloured door – coming out as gay. Then out of the broom closet – coming out as pagan. Every time I’ve come out as pagan, I get asked the same sort of questions. Here are some of those questions and my responses: Read More |
The Gay UK | |
| I’ve got a confession to make, but first let me tell you a bit about myself. I’m a gay man, twenty-seven year old and a professional. I’ve been single for the last 3 years following a bad breakup.
Here’s my confession: |
TheGayUK | |
| It’s #NakedAugust month here at The Gay UK, so I decided to go along and see Up4aMeet? the hilarious naked gay play.
Grant (played by the brilliant and sexy Chris Wills) finds it difficult to talk to gay men in reality. But on his favourite app ‘The Cock Shop’ he can be himself and even find out how many metres away his nearest gay man is. ‘The Cock Shop’ is described as a gay man’s sweet shop; with a few clicks a man can be delivered to your door. |
TheGayUK | |
| I Want Your Love is collaborative film between gay porn studio NakedSword and independent filmmaker Travis Mathews.
Jesse is an aspiring artist who feels creatively blocked because of the state his finances and his massive amount of debt. After spending the last decade in San Francisco, Jessie decides to move back home to his parents in Ohio, the Midwest to free himself of the financial pressure. |
TheGayUK | |
| The Gay UK is officially a year old this month. It’s amazing to think that in that time we’ve grown to a dedicated readership of 150,000 gay people per month, not just from the UK but internationally. With birthdays in mind, we thought about ways to celebrate a birthday other than the traditional alcohol-fuelled night out or throwing of a party. Read More |
TheGayUK | |
| Manchester Pride Fringe Festival is a wide-range of events throughout August that are separate from main event: The Big Weekend. We’ve had a glance at the programme and chosen our five must see art exhibitions and cultural events: Read More |
TheGayUK | |
| Manchester Pride Fringe Festival is a wide-range of events throughout August that are separate from main event: The Big Weekend. We’ve had a glance at the programme and chosen our five must see shows: Read More |
TheGayUK | |
| Pride season is upon us once again. Here’s a list of 13 essential items to help you to have a safe and enjoyable pride. Read More |
TheGayUK | |
| Health Protection Agency has given two years of funding to the Terrence Higgins Trust to deliver the ‘It Starts With Me’ HIV Campaign. This campaign focuses on three aspects: Test, Treat and Protect. Read More |
TheGayUK | |
| Wayne Wright is Benidorm’s longest serving British Drag Queen, better known as Miss Levi. I got the opportunity for a chinwag with Wayne about how Miss Levi was born, what she’s like, what she’s up to and her future. Read More |
TheGayUK | |
| The International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) announced last week that they are starting a clinical trial for a HIV vaccine, based in London and two centres in Africa. Read More |
TheGayUK | |
| This month’s theme is Vintage. So I thought I’d share with you my Top 5 Vintage TV Characters. In order to make my list, characters had to be iconic (at least to me), gay and in some way vintage. Read More |
TheGayUK | |
| Manchester Gay Village has a long history that makes it truly vintage. Starting as an underground scene in the sixties, through the decades it has transformed to what it is today: one of the most vibrant gay scenes in the UK. In this article we’ll cover the significant events that led to this transformation, describe the Village today and briefly contemplate it’s future. Read More |
TheGayUK | |
| Can someone ever have no vices? Be so flawless that they seem perfect? And if so, is perfection what we seek? In this article, I’ll share an experience I had a few years ago; along with a realisation I had about aspiring to be perfect. Read More |
TheGayUK |
Last Updated: Saturday 13th February 2016.