The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Octobercountry introduced me to the excellent trove of gay YA material written by DomLuka found at the GayAuthors website (which I've found has a mixed bag of stories - you get some duds and then ... one uncovers gems like DomLuka). I've often wondered why this author has not managed to self-publish his work - they're up there with the best of them IMO.

His young teen characters are well developed, the MCs internal dialogue and thought flow is written authentically to the age-bracket. There is always a fantastic mix of gay and straight characters (a bit like JF Smith stories). Parental figures don't fare well in these stories - whilst there are a couple of supportive ones, on the whole - they tend to be abusive/neglectful/rejecting which of course add to the drama/troubles of the teenaged MCs.

Most of DomLuka's stories fall into the high school/first love/coming out/coming of age trope. The latest title I read (last year) was different - The Other Side of Me, I should forewarn that aspects of the story were a little 'creepy' and some were outright violent. And yes, whilst we do have gay YA MCs, the focus seemed more on dysfunctional families & abuse as part of growing up. Also - no sex scenes (which is a nice change from other DomLuka tales), the level of sexual prose is about that for the Rose Christo books.

My favourite titles of his (in order of preference) are:


The Long Way and it's sequel - In the Fish Bowl
Desert Dropping
The Ordinary Us

DomLuka has an army of fans at GayAuthors but he seems to have stopped writing for a while now; which is a pity as his books are wonderful. To fully enjoy these stories (and not read them in front of the computer screen), it does take a while to download and convert the stories into Kindle-friendly formats (ask Octobercountry - he's mastered the art of doing this!) I'm never going to trash my DomLuka Kindle files - they are true keepers for re-reading.

Wait, Papermoon---wasn't it you that introduced me to DomLuka's work a number of years ago? I honestly don't remember now, though the one thing that's certain is that we both greatly appreciate this author's writing.

DomLuka is a complete mystery; an enigma---no one seems to know anything concrete about the shadowy figure behind the stories. He (or she) was active on the GayAuthors site for quite some time, posting several long novels and a few shorter works that were wildly popular. And then, three years ago, the author disappeared with no warning whatsoever, and not a word has been heard from them since. A few ongoing works were left unfinished on the GayAuthors site---stories frozen in mid-stride---so it would appear that this withdrawal from the public eye was unplanned.

I haven't been able to find out a single thing about this person---who they were or what happened to them---so all I can do is continue to enjoy the completed works that were left behind.

(Indeed, one book titled With Trust seems to have been abandoned with only a few chapters left to go; as is, the unfinished manuscript runs to just over 240,000 words. The fact that this story was so close to completion, but has been left hanging for the past three years, leads me to to believe that something has happened to the author. All sorts of scenarios have come to mind, but at this point it would appear that we'll never know the details.)

I'll have to remember to review a few of the novels on this forum at a later date. Oh, the books aren't perfect---they could be tightened up a bit and could use the input of a good editor---but even in a slightly rough state they're far better than some other things I've read by established authors at the big publishing houses.