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Parallel Lines
When Thomas’s constant indiscretions wreck his decade-long marriage to handsome Carter Lamm, he wonders how different choices might have made him happier.
In a misguided attempt to help, Ed Williams, Thomas’s Big Gay Role Model, shares a technology that plunges users into alternative versions of the present day, shaped by different choices. Would Thomas be happier stepping on Legos while juggling a wife and kid … partnered to America’s favorite secretly gay action star … or married to “The One Who Got Away”?
With each jump from life to life, Thomas gets just 24 hours to choose to stay (and, likely screw things up with his signature blend of self-absorption and over-thinking) or move on to the next of four “roads not taken.” But with each jump poking holes in the fabric of reality — and with the creator of the jump tech rushing to shut this unauthorized adventure down — can Thomas break his self-sabotage habit, escape collapsing realities, and find the critical path to happiness before his blundering around destroys the universe?
This gay romantic comedy with sci-fi / parallel universe elements will delight anyone who has looked back on prior relationships and wondered ... "What if?" Parallel Lines combines the comically self-aware sexuality of Brontez Purnell’s 100 Boyfriends ... the escalating tensions of Kate Hope Day’s alternate worlds drama If, Then ... and the life-hopping drama of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library. The result is a funny, fast-paced, and unexpectedly spiritual tale of one man's efforts to put his love life back together even as the world comes apart at the seams.
In a misguided attempt to help, Ed Williams, Thomas’s Big Gay Role Model, shares a technology that plunges users into alternative versions of the present day, shaped by different choices. Would Thomas be happier stepping on Legos while juggling a wife and kid … partnered to America’s favorite secretly gay action star … or married to “The One Who Got Away”?
With each jump from life to life, Thomas gets just 24 hours to choose to stay (and, likely screw things up with his signature blend of self-absorption and over-thinking) or move on to the next of four “roads not taken.” But with each jump poking holes in the fabric of reality — and with the creator of the jump tech rushing to shut this unauthorized adventure down — can Thomas break his self-sabotage habit, escape collapsing realities, and find the critical path to happiness before his blundering around destroys the universe?
This gay romantic comedy with sci-fi / parallel universe elements will delight anyone who has looked back on prior relationships and wondered ... "What if?" Parallel Lines combines the comically self-aware sexuality of Brontez Purnell’s 100 Boyfriends ... the escalating tensions of Kate Hope Day’s alternate worlds drama If, Then ... and the life-hopping drama of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library. The result is a funny, fast-paced, and unexpectedly spiritual tale of one man's efforts to put his love life back together even as the world comes apart at the seams.
- GenresScience FictionGay
248 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 28, 2023
15 people are currently reading
35 people want to read
About the author
Mark McElroy
53 books5 followersAfter escaping his home town of Anniston, Alabama, in a rainbow-hued balloon, Mark McElroy was kidnapped by post-modern minimalists at the prestigious Center for Writers (University of Southern Mississippi), where he earned an MA in creative writing. During that time, he designed and taught in the nation’s first computer-aided collaborative writing classroom, earned his first writer’s paycheck with a wince-worthy comic book script, and began coming to terms with the fact that, despite having been groomed as a fundamentalist minister, he was definitely gay.
Since then, he’s authored more than a dozen non-fiction books on subjects from Apple Computers (101 Reasons to Switch to the Mac, from Que Books) to lucid dreaming (Lucid Dreaming for Beginners, for Llewellyn Publications). He’s also designed and scripted more than a dozen Tarot decks for publishers in the US (Llewellyn) and Italy (Lo Scarabeo). His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Unlike his characters, Mark lives a quiet and happy life with Clyde (his husband for thirty-one years) and their two rescue dogs, Sunny Day and Windy Day. Parallel Lines is his first novel.
Since then, he’s authored more than a dozen non-fiction books on subjects from Apple Computers (101 Reasons to Switch to the Mac, from Que Books) to lucid dreaming (Lucid Dreaming for Beginners, for Llewellyn Publications). He’s also designed and scripted more than a dozen Tarot decks for publishers in the US (Llewellyn) and Italy (Lo Scarabeo). His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Unlike his characters, Mark lives a quiet and happy life with Clyde (his husband for thirty-one years) and their two rescue dogs, Sunny Day and Windy Day. Parallel Lines is his first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 25, 2024
I wish I could give this book 10 stars!
January 5, 2024
A thoughtful read
I became engrossed with Parallel Lines……a new take gay relationships, not just physical, but, I found it to spiritual seeking. Soul searching, not obsessive whining, but a difficult journey towards a serenity…..
Good writing.
I became engrossed with Parallel Lines……a new take gay relationships, not just physical, but, I found it to spiritual seeking. Soul searching, not obsessive whining, but a difficult journey towards a serenity…..
Good writing.
January 21, 2024
Extrordinary! In Every World
I gave this book a try because I'm a huge fan of the Many Worlds Theory, and the premise was deeply intriguing to me. Truth be told, I have so many regrets and roads not taken that the story actually called to me to read. I was not disappointed. I was fascinated from the beginning, and ended up reading the book in one sitting. Absolutely wonderful book! I can't wait to read whatever comes next from this author.
I gave this book a try because I'm a huge fan of the Many Worlds Theory, and the premise was deeply intriguing to me. Truth be told, I have so many regrets and roads not taken that the story actually called to me to read. I was not disappointed. I was fascinated from the beginning, and ended up reading the book in one sitting. Absolutely wonderful book! I can't wait to read whatever comes next from this author.
January 7, 2024
Holy resonance, Batman!
As a gay man who came out after 11 years of marriage to a woman and two kids I am intimately acquainted with questions of "What If...?" McElroy does a splendid job of evoking that mindset and does a bang up job crafting a story about what might happen if you had second (and third and fourth) chances. He's equally good at evoking Atlanta, where my coming out occurred. And he does all that while keeping you in the "what's gonna happen next?!" mode, moving everything along lickety split! I read the whole thing in less than 24 hours. Highly recommended!
As a gay man who came out after 11 years of marriage to a woman and two kids I am intimately acquainted with questions of "What If...?" McElroy does a splendid job of evoking that mindset and does a bang up job crafting a story about what might happen if you had second (and third and fourth) chances. He's equally good at evoking Atlanta, where my coming out occurred. And he does all that while keeping you in the "what's gonna happen next?!" mode, moving everything along lickety split! I read the whole thing in less than 24 hours. Highly recommended!
January 27, 2024
Parallel Lines
By Mark McElroy
Published by the author, 2023
Five stars
Set in a not-too-distant future, Mark McElroy’s “Parallel Lines” held a deeply emotional resonance for me. It is a savvy, thoughtful mashup of science fiction, existentialist angst, and time-loop adventure.
Thomas and Carter are on their way to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Warren and Ed, an older gay couple, at their lake house outside of Atlanta. Thomas’s own ten-year- relationship with Carter is crashing and burning, adding some bitter irony to the situation.
At the end of the evening, Ed, a NASA scientist-turned-Methodist minister, confides a deep secret to Thomas, sharing with him a device that takes him on an adventure that will change—or possibly destroy—his life.
What begins—in the reader’s mind—as a quest to salvage his broken relationship, becomes something quite different. Thomas confronts the consequences of past choices in his life, and begins to see that the damage he inflicted on people who loved him might have been his own determination to prove himself unworthy of love.
The story could have been a straightforward existentialist journey through guilt and responsibility, but quickly takes on a sci-fi tension involving the sort of time-line disruption issues associated with time travel. Thomas isn’t allowed to make his journey of self-discovery in peace, and the adventure that began as a quest for his soul turns into a race against time for his very existence.
McElroy has created a lot of interesting characters, including some we don’t see very much. But the key players in Thomas’s odyssey are important, and the reader comes to understand who all these actors in Thomas’s drama are. Thomas is not a wonderful person misunderstood by the people around him. He is a flawed human who has let his own self-doubts sabotage his life and damage the lives of people he cares about. In the end, without giving anything away, the story becomes a race against time as Thomas not only has to find his way home, but also has to figure out exactly what it is he wants.
The ending is not what one might expect. Not all wounds can be healed. You can’t always get what you want—but you still have to figure out what that is before you can try. I found myself emotionally knocked about a bit, but ended up impressed with McElroy’s skill at managing a complicated scenario that left me thinking and feeling more than I expected to.
By Mark McElroy
Published by the author, 2023
Five stars
Set in a not-too-distant future, Mark McElroy’s “Parallel Lines” held a deeply emotional resonance for me. It is a savvy, thoughtful mashup of science fiction, existentialist angst, and time-loop adventure.
Thomas and Carter are on their way to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Warren and Ed, an older gay couple, at their lake house outside of Atlanta. Thomas’s own ten-year- relationship with Carter is crashing and burning, adding some bitter irony to the situation.
At the end of the evening, Ed, a NASA scientist-turned-Methodist minister, confides a deep secret to Thomas, sharing with him a device that takes him on an adventure that will change—or possibly destroy—his life.
What begins—in the reader’s mind—as a quest to salvage his broken relationship, becomes something quite different. Thomas confronts the consequences of past choices in his life, and begins to see that the damage he inflicted on people who loved him might have been his own determination to prove himself unworthy of love.
The story could have been a straightforward existentialist journey through guilt and responsibility, but quickly takes on a sci-fi tension involving the sort of time-line disruption issues associated with time travel. Thomas isn’t allowed to make his journey of self-discovery in peace, and the adventure that began as a quest for his soul turns into a race against time for his very existence.
McElroy has created a lot of interesting characters, including some we don’t see very much. But the key players in Thomas’s odyssey are important, and the reader comes to understand who all these actors in Thomas’s drama are. Thomas is not a wonderful person misunderstood by the people around him. He is a flawed human who has let his own self-doubts sabotage his life and damage the lives of people he cares about. In the end, without giving anything away, the story becomes a race against time as Thomas not only has to find his way home, but also has to figure out exactly what it is he wants.
The ending is not what one might expect. Not all wounds can be healed. You can’t always get what you want—but you still have to figure out what that is before you can try. I found myself emotionally knocked about a bit, but ended up impressed with McElroy’s skill at managing a complicated scenario that left me thinking and feeling more than I expected to.
February 16, 2024
Wow, just wow!
A very interesting read. Loved the whole experience, which I could jump from one alternate universe into another & try something new. Yet at the same time it seems like a very odd & dysfunctional relationship patterns with the main character & 5 other individuals who at the end of the day all live together!? We know he’s a man whore, which would’ve added some extra spice, if a sex scene or 2 was added in (just saying) but the story NEVER mentions him being an alcoholic. That’s the only odd bit.
I really loved the line from Davina about the realization that the main character was irresponsible, loveless sex addict, who only cared about himself, and yet these five individuals who he had known in his past life are somehow drawn to him in each alternate universe. It seemed like no matter what he’s done in the past they were still waiting for him. To help this this person grow, & mature to become a better person then he originally was. No matter what the situation, no matter what Alternate Reality they were in, each of them were drawn to him like a Month to a Flame, but the intention wasn’t to hurt themselves or relive a trauma but to show that even a selfish man whore like him deserves love!
In each instance no matter the outcome they each continued to love him. But HE had to find that out for himself, he NEEDED to see for himself that what he was doing to his life was only hurting himself& his chances for happiness. Now that, that was amazing!
A very interesting read. Loved the whole experience, which I could jump from one alternate universe into another & try something new. Yet at the same time it seems like a very odd & dysfunctional relationship patterns with the main character & 5 other individuals who at the end of the day all live together!? We know he’s a man whore, which would’ve added some extra spice, if a sex scene or 2 was added in (just saying) but the story NEVER mentions him being an alcoholic. That’s the only odd bit.
I really loved the line from Davina about the realization that the main character was irresponsible, loveless sex addict, who only cared about himself, and yet these five individuals who he had known in his past life are somehow drawn to him in each alternate universe. It seemed like no matter what he’s done in the past they were still waiting for him. To help this this person grow, & mature to become a better person then he originally was. No matter what the situation, no matter what Alternate Reality they were in, each of them were drawn to him like a Month to a Flame, but the intention wasn’t to hurt themselves or relive a trauma but to show that even a selfish man whore like him deserves love!
In each instance no matter the outcome they each continued to love him. But HE had to find that out for himself, he NEEDED to see for himself that what he was doing to his life was only hurting himself& his chances for happiness. Now that, that was amazing!
May 27, 2024
2.25 stars.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews