I began last summer. I had just joined up with a wonderful local Atlanta group called Outworlders, which is basically a club for sci-fi/fantasy/horror fans of a queer bent. Reading through their email mailing list, I noticed some friendly notes from a guy named Steve who, so he said, was coming to Atlanta as a guest at Dragon*Con and was eager to connect with our group. He was a writer who'd done a gay horror story anthology. Steve turned out to be Steve Berman, author of Trysts and he was connecting with Outworlders because our interests matched his.

So Dragon*Con came around the first weekend of September and sure enough, there was Steve! I attended several panels in the writers' track and when I had the chance, I introduced myself. Steve was so easygoing and also eager to talk with me about writing, which I'd told him I was doing.

We arranged to meet up after his book-signing, since once the signing was over he'd be there an hour with no one to talk to but other writers. I showed up as schedule and sure enough, Steve made good on his promise and we did a lot of talking about writing. I gave him the synopsis for the fantasy novel I was working on (and still am) and we talked about fan fiction, why writers write, and all sorts of other lovely topics. Walking out of the room, I had a copy of Steve's book -- kind of owed him!

Trysts is a cool little book. Steve has labeled it "a triskaidecollection of queer and weird stories" (yes, that's 13 stories)and I think that description fits pretty well. Some of the stories reminded me of Twilight Zone plotlines gone horribly, horribly wrong (and that's saying something!), while others were almost traditional horror stories like I grew up reading in those big Alfred Hitchcock anthologies. Sure, they were "queer and weird" (and I don't think Twilight Zone would have gay men and lust in the middle of most stories) but Steve certainly has a handle on the basics of horror!

One of the main themes, maybe even the theme of the story collection seems to be that of a character or a group of them stepping away from normal life (either willingly or by accident) and getting sucked into situations or whole worlds which are just scary -- painful, corrupt, wrong, immoral, or just not part of the normal world, instead belonging to a dark side of life, from which the characters can't escape.

One story, "Cries Beneath the Plaster," has an artist seeing his own creations (and past misdeeds) coming after him in revenge. Several of the stories take place in a nameless city where large sections have somehow changed, so they are now "Fallen" areas where people live in madness, magic, corruption, and are just generally no longer living the safe, happy lives they were before.

My favorite story in the book is "Path of Corruption." Reminding very much of Storm's stories (see my review of The Oracle Lips), "Path" tells the story of a young gay college student in New Orleans who step by step abandons his safety and propriety to join up with a male prostitute. And it's not just that he ends up basically living in a whorehouse, but that the man he's with, the men in the house, aren't just ordinary whores but more like a cult. The story ends with a shattering scene of whores carrying out a ritual half-way between an H.P. Lovecraft story and something in Storm's Grigori series!

This is a great short story collection and one I'd strongly recommend to people looking for horror and dark fantasy with some queer content and/or sex mixed in. Go out and hook up with Trysts!