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Catching On

Editor Ian MacNeill

Early encounters with gay identity
'Catching On' is about that moment of personal awareness when your gay identity becomes clear. All new writing from eleven authors.

Editorial: ... I wanted them to tell us in lively ways how they came to know they were gay. ...

Review
Thought you never wanted to read another coming out anthology? Iconic gay-ebooks.com.au has just released Catching On and word is out: it's excellent. Catching On contains 11 stories capturing that moment of personal awareness when gay identity becomes clear. Intertwined as coming out is around notions of sexual identity, some argue that both concepts are obsolete, as the song says 'kissing boys, kissing girls, it's all the same...'

The premise for Catching On is that coming out, at least in a modern westernized country like Australia, remains a necessary rite of passage.

Happiness, personal fulfilment even sanity and health are dependant on homosexual people being honest with themselves and others, argues writer Ian McNeil who compiled and edited Catching On.

"I wanted the writers to tell us in lively ways how they came to know they were gay," says McNeil. "This confrontation with ourselves must surely give us insights into human nature, denied those who get to waltz at their own weddings, no matter how many frogs they had to kiss before they slipped the ring on."

Each story captures the burgeoning self-awareness of coming out, which McNeil correctly points out in his introduction "... is a life long test of character even in our type of country: ask the elderly entering nursing homes." Poignant or funny and always insightful, Catching On encompasses first love, missed opportunity and awakening sexual awareness evocative at times of an Australia existent only in the authors' memories.
Alistair Sutton
reporting for evolution news/Queensland Pride © 22 September 2010

Free download

pdf file >2MB, 50 A4 pages, released July 2010

ANOTHER GAY-EBOOKS EXCLUSIVE

Contents:

Keith Howes Danny and Farley and Me
Saturday afternoon screen idols ...

Geoffrey Ostling The Only Queer Boy in the World
At least I wasn't the only one ...

Jeremy Fisher Inventing Myself
... I was in Standard Two at Puhinui Primary School...

Robert Tait His Spun-Candied World
Acting out ...

Jim Anderson First Encounter
I started falling in love... at school...

Campion Decent Max's Decline
Max laughs and thinks of Oscar Wilde...

Tim Herbert Big Stiffy
... awkward schoolboys were undressing in a change room ...

Michael Hurley Wistful Variations
His searching eyes silently plead my assent ...

Gavin Harris January
... buttons up his shirt and makes for the back door...

Kendall Lovett The Crotch of the Matter
... I would watch these handsome, sleek young men...

Robert French Your Tiny Hand is Frozen
It was the voice that I was fascinated with.