Rick R. Reed WRITER

Orientation asks: Can love rise above sexual orientation? Can a lesbian and a gay man fall in love? What if the one of them is the reincarnation of the other’s one true same-sex love?

Orientation takes us through three pivotal Christmases. We begin at Christmas, 1983 and find a young man, Robert, tending to his older lover, his soulmate, Keith. Keith is dying from a new disease that the world has just recently christened AIDS. Robert tries valiantly to make this a special Christmas, but he loses the fight late Christmas night, when Keith, held tight by Robert, slips away. Fast forward to Christmas, 2007. Robert has now become Keith’s age and has inherited his former lover’s wealth. He tries to assuage the loneliness he feels through a succession of younger lovers, the latest of whom is named Ethan. Ethan is in his early twenties and is cheating on Robert, but what Robert doesn’t know is that Ethan’s love affair is not with another man, but with a highly addictive drug, one that poses a horrible peril not only for Ethan, but ultimately for Robert. Alone, melancholy, and more than a little tipsy, Robert ventures out late Christmas night for a walk, where he finds a young girl about to fling herself into the unforgiving waters of Lake Michigan. He rescues her and the two form a bond forged not just from Robert being a Good Samaritan, but from an odd feeling both have of familiarity and even love for one another. Neither understands it, since Jess is a lesbian and Robert has never been attracted to women. But there’s more: Jess begins having strange dreams, reliving key moments she couldn’t know about in Keith and Robert’s life and courtship. She was born on the same day Keith died. The pair begins to wonder if their inexplicable feelings for the other might be rooted in something much more mystical than just a savior/victim relationship.

As the two move toward and pull away from each other, Ethan is plotting. His drug-addled mind becomes convinced there is only way to save himself and that is through Robert’s destruction. Christmas 2007 spirals down to a shattering climax in which both life and love hang in the balance. There is a murder attempt. Salvation. Redemption. And a new love is born.

Finally, we arrive at Christmas, 2008. Robert and Jess have traveled together to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and have forged a loving, nurturing relationship. But have they been able to overcome the obstacles a gay man and a lesbian might face? It might appear so, but there are still a few surprises in store for those who stick with this oddest of couples until the end of their story.

Read an excerpt here.

They were five misfit kids who had banded together in their small Ohio River town. Over the years, they had organized various clubs and now they had formed the Halloween Horror Club. The premise was simple: each week, each teen would spin a horrifying tale and at the end of five weeks, the scariest story won a prize. The twist: the stories had to be told in the infamous and abandoned Tuttle house, where, fifteen years earlier, an entire family had been murdered in their beds. The idea seems like a good one, until the kids begin to realize they may not be alone in the Tuttle house, which backed up against the woods. There seems to be someone—or something—watching them. Is it Paul Tuttle, the teenage son who disappeared fifteen years ago, the night his parents and sister were killed? Or is it someone even more sinister?

With each story (each a completed short, original horror tale that stands on its own), the tension mounts...and so does the anger of this mysterious inhabitant of the house. He is enraged at having his space violated. And his rage could mean a real dead end for those who dare to invade his home...

Both of the above books are being published in both eBook and trade paperback format by Amber Quill Press.

Visit them on the web at www.amberquill.com.