Max: "My friends get me in the middle of this line dance and all I want is out." The tale, a standalone novella, won't let Max out easy.A boy that never learned the rules of dating in high school still doesn't know what to do in college, especially when he meets a guy from the Air Force. Max steps outside with the Airman, away from the play-it-safe group dating that's going on at the pleasant honky-tonk. Now Max is holding on for all he's worth in a desert land where the rules neve...

The tale, a standalone novelette, is out there on the open road of lost causes. It's wide open out there.A 21-year-old guy goes round and round in his head about what went wrong in Salt Lake City - the nice guy that he met and how it has all come to nothing. He is left with the story itself: destination California, a routine bus layover in Salt Lake, a fateful meeting at a lunch counter - and he's got to find out if you can change the past. Because he can't stand it the handsome st...

The season of the stranger and of falling for him hard.Then what if you are a boy who isn't supposed to do that and the only one you can tell is Dear Diary... Which you are supposed to turn in for 7th-grade Language Arts come September.They are gonna get a watered-down version of the truth. "Dear Diary, I don't know who you are."Michael is the rebel that you always knew you could trust.

"I saw you there and I liked you." A message from Kalhoun among a collection of Middle Grade fiction. The other standalone tales are Kid Jude, Stuart's Wall, and Judas Judas Michael.Michael is the major rebel. His behavior is loud; his parents can only try and tone him down, which is not the problem with Chip and Kalhoun in their stories, Stuart's Wall and Kalhoun. But it should not be mistaken they go quietly - which then leads...

A so-called incident of affection - an arm thrown around another boy - jump-starts the universe of a high school boy on the beach. No one is supposed to notice, there is nothing there to see, everyone should go back to their hot dogs and their marshmallows and forget about it. Clark is worried about where he left his shoes; he must have left them in the little-boy universe, the one without love.

A downcast hick boy finds himself powerfully drawn to the kid he rescued in the pond last fall - the problem is, he hasn't seen the boy since. With the coming of the Fourth of July, the bone-dry pond makes it look like he never will. Neil has to somehow find him on this desolate American landscape, and then he needs to take him back to water if he does.

This is the story of high school freshman August Righteous, who will lie, cheat, and steal to get his name on the dance card of a boy he wants to meet. The school dance looms on the December calendar, a date for a fresh set of rules: you have to dance with the person they write on your card. The old-fashioned setup was never supposed to turn out like this, two boys shipped by the dance committee.

A high school boy gets the idea that it's time to tell his best friend who he likes, which is boys. He's been putting it off for a long time and there is still no reason to do it - it could send things spinning out of control if his friend gets all weirded out. Chase doesn't know why he needs to do it - he just does, even if it costs him a friendship that has gotten close since freshman science.

When two happy boys push one another toward a crime, one of them speed-shifts up a gear too far. The fast cash and stupid love that Karl takes for real - all that breaks up under the hunter's moon. So he reaches for another gear in a new-look October, like how you can make your way through high school and still go out with who you actually want to.

A here-goes-nothing American boy - open to the things out there in the world - gets deeply involved with the boys of an Eastern European cult. But he's got the situation under control: his exit plan, the train to Budapest, will take him away whenever he wants. The one thing that Eli doesn't see coming is what his own feelings could do to him.

Impossible love drives a boy off for a school that trains priests - where he meets a boy he can't turn away from. With a little luck, no one will uncover how Ian feels - including the boy he falls for. Ian hides the truth from himself, too, but the problem hounds him - what do you do when you find the Midwestern boy that you weren't supposed to find?

Junior high school basketball players play for love of the game, if not for the love of one another. Hitch gets himself up in the middle of it, an 8th-grade boy who likes one of the other boys more than he is supposed to. The way they plan to get away with it, these first- and second-string two guards, is that no one takes them for breaking the rule you cannot break: boys don't like other boys.