Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Angels of Mercy: Volume One: Elliot
    Unavailable
    Angels of Mercy: Volume One: Elliot
    Unavailable
    Angels of Mercy: Volume One: Elliot
    Ebook711 pages11 hours

    Angels of Mercy: Volume One: Elliot

    By SA Collins

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    On the cusp of his senior year at Mercy High, Elliot Donahey, an out but terminally shy gay young man who keeps to the shadows – never wanting to be seen or noticed – suddenly finds himself in the arms of the highest profile jock on campus, local star quarterback, Marco Sforza. Their lives, and those closest to them will never be the same.

    Set against the backdrop of competitive sports, this character study work deep dives into the lives of these young men who each must "play the game" so Marco can continue to play the game he loves. They are just trying to find some small slice of happiness to call their own amidst their hellish final year of high school.

    Author's Note: Angels of Mercy is first and foremost, a character study. A great deal of it is inner-monologue. Elliot will pause the action, will break momentum as he grapples with his world – all the while flipping a finger to the fourth wall. He knows you're there. It was far more important to me as its author (and a gay man) that the reader come away with the whys of Elliot’s choices in how he navigates his often tumultuous world. The same can be said of Marco (his jock boyfriend) who will pick up the tale with Volume Two (due summer of 2015). I’ve read much queer literature and what I find rather interesting is that for the majority of it, very little is written about the character’s headspace. When you live in a world where you constantly have to be vigilant as you navigate through, it can make for some very powerful storytelling. That is my goal in writing these boys’ lives. I want the reader who may not be queer themselves to come away with what it might be like to be in a gayboy’s shoes – constantly polling and pulse-checking your world because your very survival depends upon it. All of that while you hope, you secretly pray, that you’ll find someone who will see you too and find they can’t live without you in their world. A small slice of happiness to call your own. And though you do everything to keep to yourself, you may still run into those who find your very existence threatens who they are and how they think the world should run. I pull no punches with this work. They are hormonally charged eighteen year old young men who are sexually active. While the sex is present in the work it is not gratuitous in that the main character does evolve from his physical intimacy with his high-profile boyfriend. It is not a genre romance read either, though it has a very strong romance threaded in the work. These elements bring a light to their world that attracts all the wrong attention. In a time where more queer youth are coming out to their teammates and their loved ones, I find that work of this nature is both timely and necessary to tell. I hope you'll find it as interesting and provocative a read as I believe it is.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSA Collins
    Release dateMar 31, 2015
    ISBN9781311267498
    Unavailable
    Angels of Mercy: Volume One: Elliot
    Author

    SA Collins

    I am a gay male author living in the SF Bay Area in northern California. Happily (and legally) married to a wonderful man (celebrating our 20th anniversary this year)! Our house is filled to the brim with two exotic cats, a daughter and a hurricane of a granddaughter. This is a house filled with laughter, with voices that carry through the walls, and a whole lot of love in between.In a nutshell, I write to keep the voice of actual gay men strong within our own community.I specialize in character studies. It is important for me that you walk away with my work not so much with a sense of what happened, but why my main character makes the choices he (or she) makes. My work is often unapologetic, gritty, unfair and dark. Doesn't mean that there won't be one hell of a love story or some hot and heavy action going on – but it's not a given. There's not an automatic HEA (happily ever after) at the end. Because life is often like that for us. Anything else is puff pastry with rose colored glasses. Not that there's anything wrong with pastry, mind you. I just don't have the wherewithal to write it.I pull no punches with my work.John Rechy and Gordon Merrick are my virtual literary mentors. Their work from the late 70's onward molded my life, gave it definition when a young 16 year old didn't have anyone else to turn to so he could figure out what was going on inside. These literary giants saved me. In so many ways that I could not begin to express. It is to them, to the likes of Paul Monette, Larry Kramer, EM Forster, Oscar Wilde and others that I aspire to write and carry their torch forward. It is a high mark to strive for but I can't help but think that having that mark will make me better at my craft. These men, these brilliant gay men and their complex lives have enriched my own. I am the man I am today because they gave me the food that my soul craved to say I was all right. I was going to be okay.While I am all for LGBTQI characters (told by any author who chooses to take up such a cause) in literature, media and the digital bytes and bits, I do not want it to be at the expense of those who actually live those lives. It is our house, and it is about time we, as LGBTQAIP authors, tended to it.I also co-host a brilliant podcast where we talk to guest authors about queer literature and the craft of writing. I invite you to join us in the discussion - http://www.wrotepodcast.com

    Read more from Sa Collins

    Related to Angels of Mercy

    Related ebooks

    Gay Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Steven Pinker

      Oct 24, 2022

      Steven Pinker
      5 min read

    • Article

      Woman About Town

      Jul 28, 2022

      Woman About Town
      5 min read

    • Article

      Deep Impact

      May 31, 2020

      Deep Impact
      9 min read

    • Article

      How A Black Man Grieves

      Apr 11, 2024

      How A Black Man Grieves
      5 min read

    • Article

      Alone With My Faith

      Jul 30, 2021

      Alone With My Faith
      7 min read

    • Article

      ‘We Are Bridges’: Featured Nonfiction from Cassandra Lane

      Apr 20, 2021

      Lane's memoir, which won the 2020 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize, explores the author's ancestral history in order to give her future child a family history. The post ‘We Are Bridges’: Featured Nonfiction from Cassandra Lane appeared first on The

      8 min read

    • Article

      Big Summer Energy

      Jun 14, 2022

      Big Summer Energy
      5 min read

    • Article

      Excerpt

      Jun 18, 2019

      Rt. 66 By some concoction of sugar, prescription painkillers, rancor, and cocaine, my father, Gregory Pardlo, Sr., began killing himself after my parents separated in 2007. He measured his health and lifestyle against his will to live, and determined

      6 min read

    • Article

      Nikki Sixx

      Oct 12, 2021

      Nikki Sixx
      14 min read

    • Article

      Bloodlines and Bitter Syrup

      Sep 1, 2020

      Bloodlines and Bitter Syrup
      18 min read

    • Article

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Tim Lane

      Dec 8, 2021

      We stopped at the Topaz Internment Camp, where my wife’s family was held during World War II, near the tiny town of Delta, Utah. We found the apocalyptic remnants of one of our country’s great shames. The post A Year in Reading: Tim Lane appeared fi

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Same Story

      Mar 29, 2021

      FROM ISSUE #53: MISTAKES SUZANNE ROBERTS is the author of Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel (Bronze Medal Winner from the North American Travel Journalists Association for Best Travel Book) and the memoir Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Da

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Last Waylon Party

      Jan 18, 2019

      The Last Waylon Party
      14 min read

    • Article

      Sir Kenneth Branagh

      Jan 17, 2022

      Sir Kenneth Branagh
      5 min read

    • Article

      Young Hearts…

      Oct 24, 2017

      Young Hearts…
      3 min read

    • Article

      Book Extract

      Jan 20, 2020

      My year off was also interesting, in that I didn’t feel any less loved, or cherished, or wanted. Why? Because my life is already rich with soulmates, and I got the chance to behold that. You don’t have to shag someone for them to be a soulmate. We do

      7 min read

    • Article

      On Aging

      Mar 1, 2022

      On Aging
      9 min read

    • Article

      Triple Threat

      Jan 17, 2022

      Triple Threat
      4 min read

    • Article

      Hits strike A CHORD

      Dec 25, 2022

      I headed into the city first thing to visit my favourite record store where I bought a newly released album by a band called The Beatles. You might have heard of them. They’ve been part of the world’s soundtrack for nearly 60 years so far. The new Be

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Change In The Climate

      Oct 21, 2019

      A Change In The Climate
      6 min read

    Reviews for Angels of Mercy

    4.5/5

    6 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      After completing the last three books of this 5-part series, in retrospect I shouldn’t have started with this one. The book has a pseudo-beginning, for Elliot, and an abrupt ending. Without the proper set-up (from the 2 prequels), one is bound to wonder how the relationship between Marco and Elliot is even plausible. You will be none the wiser, even after spending hours reading this volume. You have have been warned.

      The author can write and writes well. But alas, in his greed to put everything out there, he protracts each scenario to improbable limits and it gets VERY TIRING. You are bound to be left dissatisfied.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Can't Wait For The Next Book!