Independent bookstores not only offer selections of quality books from non-mainstream writers, they also provide much-needed support for the communities they serve. I’m proud and honored to have my books carried by these stores. To find out the nearest merchant in your area or to purchase my books from online indie bookstores, click on the Indiebound links below.
THE WINTER GARDEN AND OTHER STORIES
release date: May 31, 2012
Strange music from a legendary haunted glade can only be heard by a special boy. A grieving young man turns to the dark arts to bring his deceased lover back. A soiled and tired knight protects the innocent from the threat of a dragon. Young love blooms in a desolate garden.
Familiar and original fairy tales, myths, and legends explore the complexities in a gay teen’s coming-of-age through allegory and metaphor. Rain-drenched circuses, old wives’ tales involving candles in windows, water-irises deep in a wood, lonely fairy kings, and magical Christmas parties not only present valuable lessons, but also provide an escape into worlds in which a gay teen can see himself as the amazing, resilient hero of adventures and romance.
* This anthology contains all of the short stories listed below. *
SHORT FICTION
To purchase each story, click on the book covers to take you to the publisher’s site, where excerpts are also available. Please note that short stories are only available in e-book format.
Now Available
REVIEWS:
“Like the other short stories in Hayden Thorne’s recent collection, ‘The Bridge’ is filled with the magic and wonder and promise of finding love in spite of what seems to be impossible odds.” The Novel Approach for “The Bridge”
“There is a dreamlike quality to this story, as it fractures the concepts of time and reality, and it does so vividly. The imagery is at once monochromatic, then given to full and vibrant Technicolor pictures that worked beautifully to paint this picture.” The Novel Approach for “Clouds’ Illusions”
“‘Erl-King’ is a magical love story, told in a ballad form and written in beautiful, lyrical prose which flows like poetry.” QMO Books for “Erl-King”
“There is always more to see beneath the surface of the story. On its surface it is expressive and vibrant; underneath it is rich in symbolism and eloquent in subtly relating the trials of coming of age and coming to terms with the challenges of being different than the world expects you to be.” The Novel Approach for “Erl-King”
“I read this tale twice — once for the sake of reading it, the second time for the sake of experiencing it and all it entailed. It is both heartbreaking and uplifting , a legend and lesson in honor and virtue and discovering a priceless friendship in the most unlikely of circumstances.” The Novel Approach for “The Knight”
“I think that style of writing, heavy on narration and voice, works well for Hayden, and also well for the character in this story. The first person past tense works well to bring forward that romanticism in the prose, which is what drew me in — and ultimately broke my heart just a little bit.” Brief Encounters for “The Winter Garden”
“The more I thought about this story, the deeper it touched my heart, and in such a wonderful way, leading me on a journey to a place where the beauty of the things we aren’t meant to see or fully comprehend are absolutely capable of existing in the presence of love.” The Novel Approach for “The Winter Garden”
“The subtle twist at the end, the message that love is a power unto itself that will endure the test of time and prejudice is delivered in a way that truly is beautiful in its simplicity, but also profound in its significance.” The Novel Approach for “The Dollhouse”
“The cheerless atmosphere and a young man on the lunatic fringe infuse this story with the perfect balance of the disturbing and the romantic.” The Novel Approach for “Out of the Depths”
“Its message is universal and is delivered in a touching and magical way that inspires an immediate affinity with the characters and the story.” The Novel Approach for “The Haunted Glade”
RENFRED’S MASQUERADE
Young Nicola Gregori has always wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, a brilliant clock-maker who’s famous for his wild, fantastical designs. But his father instead sends him to school to learn more practical matters. Nicola, stricken with infantile paralysis that left him with a deformed right leg, becomes an object of mockery and cruel jokes in school. He learns that in order to survive his daily ordeals, he needs to vanish in the crowd, to stop aspiring, to stop dreaming, and above all, to believe himself unworthy of respect and love.
Tragedy strikes when Nicola turns sixteen. Gustav Renfred, an old friend of his father, takes on Nicola as his charge and whisks him away to an isolated islet filled with empty mansions and bordered by a bluebell forest. There Nicola slowly learns about the tragic history that tightly weaves together the fates of Jacopo Gregori, Gustav Renfred, and Gustav’s twin sister, Constanza.
Magic, impossible dreams, and unrequited love come together in Ambrosi, the Renfreds’ mansion, where Nicola is caught up in a world of haunting portraits, a ghostly housekeeper, and the mysterious disappearance of Davide, Constanza’s adopted son. When Nicola’s invited to one of Renfred’s magical masquerades, he discovers the answers to riddles as well as the mounting danger that the Renfred family faces with every passing hour. With the masquerades’ existence depending on the physical and mental strength of an ailing Renfred, the task of solving the mystery of Davide’s disappearance before time runs out falls on Nicola’s shoulders, and he has no choice but to depend on things he’s long learned to suppress: courage, self-respect, and the desire to aim for impossible goals.
Queerteen Press (print) | Queerteen Press (e-book) | Indiebound
REVIEWS:
“The characters are very well developed and I was really able to connect with them. The emotions that the characters experienced were really raw and easily felt.” Flamingnet Reviews
“The themes of the book are simple — coming of age, coming to terms with who you are, how you view yourself and how the world views you. But the themes are by no means simplistic; never once did I, as an adult, feel that the book talked down to me, thus I would imagine and hope that a young person reading it will not feel that way either.” Reviews by Jessewave
“Hayden Thorne’s writing is a love affair with language and symbolism, her books ones that engage the mind and envelope the senses. The settings are a breath of life, as much a part of the plot as the characters, becoming characters themselves that are wholly imperative to the narrative.” Top 2 Bottom Reviews
“Hayden Thorne is blessed with the ability to tell ageless stories; ageless because they are suspended in time, they can be a fantasy or an historical or even a contemporary setting or all of the previous, and ageless because they are fit as much for a young reader than for an adult one.” Elisa Rolle
ARABESQUE
Warning: This book is NOT young adult fiction. It contains some material that’s unsuitable for readers under 17. Please visit my other pages or check out updates on new titles above for age-appropriate LGBT fiction.
An ambitious young princess, Ulrike, turns to the dark arts in order to become queen despite her younger sister’s warnings of a fatal consequence to mortgaging her soul. She succeeds, yet Ulrike finds herself trapped in a hateful marriage, her mind slowly being devoured by her powers, while conceiving and giving birth to a boy.
Alarick—“the bastard prince”—becomes the court’s favorite object of mockery because of the scandal of his conception, his mother’s spiraling madness compounding his ordeal. When Alarick falls in love with a childhood friend, Roald von Thiessen, the added sin of an unnatural romance gets caught up in a tumultuous aristocratic environment that’s rife with hypocrisy, cruelty, betrayal, and murder.
Forcibly separated from each other during a bloody uprising, Roald and Alarick become helplessly ensnared in nightmarish adventures designed to twist their characters and destroy their minds in the process. The young lovers fight for their souls and a way back to each other in a world weighed down by the forces of dark and light magic, and where gods grapple with each other over mortal destinies.
Arabesque is a gothic, homoerotic retelling of the “Snow White” folktale, set in a darkly decadent, alternate Europe.
Smashwords (multi-format) | Amazon | Barnes and Noble
REVIEWS:
“Romantic and erotic and poetic and provocative and incredibly touching, Arabesque believes that where love is found, there is no sense of wrong; there is no “normal”, there is only what was and is and will be. This is a story that made me truly think about the nature of hatred and prejudice and intolerance.” The Novel Approach
“Although it’s tagged as gay romance, it works better as a commentary on myths, magic and homophobia, as well as the underlying racism and classism of many of our most beloved Western folk stories, and their assumptions about romantic attraction and the divine right of kings, than as a straightforward love story.” Outlaw Reviews
NOTE: On April 4, 2011, I marked down the price of Arabesque to its permanent price of $1.99. Recent events in the YA market have made me seriously reconsider my plans to focus more on adult fiction in order to throw all my weight and support for LGBT Young Adult fiction. Thank you for your interest in my one and only experiment in writing adult speculative fiction.
