WORKS BY RODNEY ROSS
the old man at my door
A winter storm warning blankets the news stations before the blizzard itself. Saturday is going to be sweatpants, banana bread and a ‘Golden Girls ‘binge for Renata Todd. But at her farmhouse door, already flocked with snow, comes an unexpected knock: Albin Lawrence, an old man who grew up in the house. Renata’s caution yields to common sense as she welcomes him in for a tour. What danger, really, could a shaky man over 80 represent?
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SMOKING WITH DIDI
At the request of his older sister Didi, Pete makes a reluctant trip from Miami to small-town Ohio for his father's funeral. There, he's battered by flashbacks of an anxious adolescence and his late father’s rejection. But bigger revelations are yet to come, including an unexpected hot tub reunion with a straight high school crush and a road trip back to Florida with the Vantage Blue-loving Didi. She has a few things she wants to get off her chest about their own alienation, but the surprise may be hers when Pete opens a floodgate of his own secrets.
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DIVERSIONARY FIRES
Tara Atwater holds the right combination of numbers to the record-breaking Ohio state lottery. But what to do about the boyfriend, stabbed to death, on the kitchen floor? It was, after all, his ticket. A diversionary fire might be the answer. Left in her grandparents’ care as her reckless mother worked the carnival circuit, Tara learned about sleight-of-hand flame, purposely created to distract from something far bigger, at age nine. As decades flicker past, from the 1970s until the beginning of a global pandemic, the diversionary fire is a strange art that will touch her and those she loves. From the most marginal of means to unimagined wealth and status, Tara learns that good luck and bad luck, no matter how dense the inferno, can look a lot alike.
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The Cool part of his pillow
The prize-winning debut novel in its 2nd edition from JMS Books.
The mid-40's are that time in a gay man's life when his major paradigm shifts from sexy to Sansabelts. But when Barry Grooms's partner of twenty years is killed on Barry's forty-fifth birthday, his world doesn't so much evolve as it does explode. After navigating through the surreal conveyor belt of friends and family, he can't eat another casserole or swallow much more advice, and so, still numb, he escapes to Key West, then New York. He embraces a new mantra: Why the hell not? First, he gets a thankless new job working for a crazy lady in a poncho, then has too many drinks with a narcissistic Broadway actor. Next, it's a nude exercise class that redefines flop sweat, and from there he's on to a relationship with a man twenty years his junior, so youthfully oblivious he thinks Karen Carpenter is a lesbian woodworker. Yet no matter how great the retreat from the man he used to be, life's gravity spins Barry back to the town where he grew up for one more ironic twist that teaches him how to say goodbye with grace.
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bended knee
A short and bittersweet contemplation of same sex marriage.
When restaurateur Hugh Neumann rebukes Oliver Nicholas’s very public proposal to his boyfriend during a Valentine’s Day dinner, the diverted Cupid’s arrow strikes Hugh not in the heart, but in the ass.
After a media storm of commentary, ironically pro and con, gains national steam, what Hugh begins to refer to as his personal “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” begins to affect home life with his partner, Dominick Brodie.
The unrelenting focus forces Hugh to question whether his overreaction was pandering to his largely heterosexual clientele, or if maybe, just maybe, the incident triggered his own panic about same-sex marriage and his decade-long commitment to Dom.
As they realize their definition of a relationship is no longer the same, fractures form—and the public scrutiny threatens to crack apart the life they’ve built together.
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the other man
Anthology, edited by Paul Alan Fahey, feauring an essay by Rodney Ross (optioned for stage production)
Who is the other man?
He’s an accident waiting to happen: the skateboarder round the bend, the smiling barista with the extra hot mocha, the computer geek eager to retool your mate’s hard drive. He’s a relationship gatecrasher bound by no rules and with no sense of fair play. Like Caesar, he comes, he sees, he conquers. On the flip side, you or I can be the other man, charging in and breaking the bonds of a committed relationship without a thought to the pain and misery inflicted upon the injured parties. Face it: We’re not all innocent bystanders in other-man scenarios.
The Other Man is an artistic collaboration by and about gay men and their relationships. If you’ve ever been the other man, had him invade your life, or are just plain curious about this beguiling, unpredictable and dangerous creature, then this anthology of personal essays is for you. Twenty-one of our most acclaimed authors, many Lambda Award winners and finalists, write candidly about either being the other man, suffering the other man or having their relationships tested by infidelity. What they tell us is we must take heart, it does get better and one day our luck is bound to change. We’ll survive the bumps and detours in our relationships and weather the storms, or resolve to move on. Along the way, we’ll hope to meet someone new and simpatico, maybe even our long-awaited soul mate. Life will be good again. Or will it?
Contributors include Perry Brass, Rob Byrnes, R.W. Clinger, Lewis DeSimone, Paul Alan Fahey, Wes Hartley, Allen Mack, Jeff Mann, Tom Mendicino, Felice Picano, Glen Retief, Jeffrey Ricker, Rodney Ross, Philip Dean Walker and Chuck Willman.
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this anthology will go to the It Gets Better Project.
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OTIS
Short Holiday Fiction
An embittered old man’s Christmas Eve trip to the veterinarian with his late son’s cat Otis yields an unexpected lesson. As the snowfall mounts and city streets become impassable, is it too late for redemption?
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IMPACT
Anthology, featuring Short Fiction by Rodney Ross
