AC Benus - Stories

Jack Shaw has a problem: he hates being Jack Shaw. He pulls his best friend Dawn into a solution, and both wind up in tough positions. What, if anything, can lead them back?

A collection of verse by other people to show we've always dared to speak our love's name.

Earth-shattering events are few and far between, but when they come, they have lingering effects.

Two teenage boys were swept up by the winds of change, and punished for it. A firebrand reformer enlists the help of a reluctant correspondent, and both unwittingly help a department store man come up with a durable innovation to bring a little joy into people's lives.

November 1843 to February 1844. In probably the greatest same-sex love story ever told, one man's soul is redeemed by an act of self-sacrificing love, while all the rest are damned by a single man's hate.

Elsie breaks her vow. She promised to never love him, but fell for the man she married.

We all hurt. It seems the only cure is being willing to see things through the eyes of others.

The store's display department is incredibly busy. One young man's strained relationship with his boss is complicated by the arrival of an outsider from Hollywood, and a young woman he meets by chance.

The South Pacific, 1842. These are powder-keg times, and in the midst of French Imperial gun boat diplomacy, Redburn has had enough of the sea. He draws a reluctant Toby into an adventure, and in the process loses something more valuable to him than his own life.

1845. In the spring Redburn leaves Peru for New York on a warship. He has nothing, and feels like a failure. Worst of all is the loss he leaves behind him in the Pacific – his husband is dead, and Toby is lost and presumably long buried. What awaits him in the fall when he arrives back 'home,' to a place he has not been for four years? There he must consider what his brother wants for him, against how Redburn might honor the noblest sacrifices of the men who love him have made.

1851. Redburn is a success. Guided by a wily critic, he has seen his sea novels become popular. However, his relationship with him is troubled, and he feels 'love' may not be in his patron's heart. Against this backdrop he begins writing his first 'land novel' and conjures up a character named Pierre. This fictional young man faces many of the same pressures and difficulties as his creator. Unfortunately for both, reality comes crashing home in heartbreaking ways.

1843. No lost soul is born into the world, but the world makes it so. Redburn must find Toby, nothing else matters, and on three ships of contrasts - well-governed, and hopeless - he thinks of only getting to land and looking for the man he loves.