Rick R. Reed
ABOUT ME
ABOUT ME
STORY BY Rick R. Reed
Eclectic Mix Tape
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The stories in this collection by best-selling author Rick R. Reed range from laugh-out-loud funny to tear-inducing poignancy, to get-your-hackles-up scary to fan-yourself erotic. Within the pages, you’re sure to find something to titillate, delight, provoke thoughts, and induce tears -- maybe all in one story. As diverse as this collection is, each story speaks to the power of love -- how it unites us, how it can free us, how it can imprison us, and, most of all, how it redeems us. Love speaks to our greater good, our most cherished dreams, and our deep need for connection. Revel in these fifteen tales and discover a world populated by people who want the most cherished of all human connections and who find it, often in the most unusual of places.
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The Impossible Childhood of My Desires
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Carl Young’s biggest secret: he’s always felt like Cara Young. Through the years, he acknowledged his authentic female self in ways he kept hidden in the shadows. The makeup, the dresses, the shoes -- all of them represented his most longed-for desires and his deepest shame. When Carl’s husband Roberto comes home early from work to discover Cara in her wig, makeup, dress, and high heels, he’s shocked. Who is this person he married decades ago? He flees, leaving their home in Chicago for the obliviousness of the sunny skies of Southern California. Cara begins making tentative steps into a world she imagined would always remain secret. She ventures out, dressing the only way she feels whole. Publicly claiming her identity, she’s terrified, but also filled with joy when she discovers there are others like her, people who will welcome her with open arms and support. But for both Roberto and Cara, their long-term and love-filled marriage is now a challenge with which they both must reckon. Does her transition mean following separate paths? Or forging a new one ... together?
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Sluggo Snares a Vampire
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"When Sluggo cruises online chat rooms, he isn’t looking for a hook-up; he’s looking for love. But love has a way of being elusive, especially when you’re not being honest. Presenting himself as “Sir Raven,” Sluggo promises his chat room cohorts he’s the “master of the night.” And then he meets someone who challenges him -- someone who claims the title “master of the night” as his own. TepesAllure’s enigmatic and flirtatious messages to Sluggo start out as fun banter, but quickly turn to eerie disquiet. As the night unfolds, so do the advances of TepesAllure ... and even when Sluggo tries to escape, he finds that getting out is not nearly as easy as getting in. NOTE: This story appears in the author’s collection, Unhinged."
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Moving Toward the Light
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Sequel to Penance Miranda had been through it all in her young life: homelessness, the victim of a crime that made national headlines, and losing those closest to her. Now, she barely gets by in a rat hole apartment in uptown Chicago, drowning her sorrows in alcohol she’s too young to buy, and making ends meet by turning tricks. And, just when she thinks it can get no worse, it does. With the lure of easy cash before her, she blows off her shift at McDonald’s and heads home with an older guy she met in a bar. But when she gets there, she finds the guy has a party all set to go, when what Miranda had in mind was one-on-one. After a brutal assault and rape, Miranda winds up in the hospital, clinging to life. In the half world between life and death, she finds Jimmy Fels, her dearest love, the boy who had died years before to save her. His appearance is enigmatic, but comforting and Miranda is just beginning to discover that he has returned to avenge her. The men will pay. And Miranda finds, through her connection with a long-lost love, that vengeance is truly sweet.
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Unhinged
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Horror. Romance. The two seem at odds, yet in provocative author Rick R. Reed’s hands, the pair merge like a match made in heaven ... or hell. Prepare for a dark journey into an unhinged world populated by ordinary and extraordinary monsters. Unhinged brings you sometimes chilling, sometimes romantic, sometimes hilarious, but always thought-provoking tales. Among them you’ll find a chilling and redemptive ghost story, a most unusual and shocking first meeting for two lovers, a story revolving around one of the 20th Century’s most horrific serial killers, and a darkly comic take on the vampire mythos. This collection will make your heart race with passion ... in all its forms. Contains the stories: Echoes, How I Met My Man, The Man from Milwaukee, Sluggo Snares a Vampire, The Ghost in #9, and Incubus.
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Caregiver
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Winner of the 2013 EPIC eBook Award for Best Contemporary Romance It's 1991, and Dan Calzolaio has just moved to Florida with his lover, Mark, having fled Chicago and Mark's addictions to begin a new life on the Gulf Coast. Volunteering for the Tampa AIDS Alliance is just one part of that new beginning, and that's how Dan meets his new buddy, Adam. Adam Schmidt is not at all what Dan expected. The guy is an original - witty, wry, and sarcastic with a fondness for a smart black dress, Barbra Streisand, and a good mai tai. Adam doesn't let his imminent death get him down, even through a downward spiral that sees him thrown in jail. Each step of Adam's journey teaches Dan new lessons about strength and resilience, but it's Adam's lover, Sullivan, to whom Dan feels an almost irresistible pull. Dan knows the attraction isn't right, even after he dumps his cheating, drug-abusing boyfriend. But then Adam passes away, and it leaves Sullivan and Dan both alone to see if they can turn their love for Adam into something whole and real for each other.
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Dreamboat
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Do you ever wonder where the dream people come from? Those people who appear in our dreams yet we’ve never seen elsewhere? So begins the story of a young man visited in recurring dreams by his personal vision of a dreamboat. His exotic, Latin ideal man is swarthy, sexy, and ripped and knows exactly the right ways to please our hero. The dreams are surreal and sexy ... but what happens when our hero encounters his dream man in real life?
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Tortilla Pie
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When Anderson, homeless on the streets of Seattle, first spies Josh, a volunteer at TeenCare, he immediately falls for him, even though TeenCare forbids client/volunteer interaction. Anderson thinks: "And speaking of noticed, I think I was, just a few minutes ago. One of the volunteers was coming by and we locked eyes. You know, the way two guys do. Two gay guys, anyway, who like what they see. It's not like a casual glance -- those only last for a second or maybe two at the most -- but when two gay dudes notice each other, man, that eye-to-eye lingers. You know what I'm sayin'? In spite of the youth center's policy of volunteers and clients interacting beyond the most superficial ways, will love discover a way around the policy, so Josh and Anderson can be together?
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Penance
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Bound by misery. Marked by sin. Set free by death. Barely into their teens, without homes, they dwell in neon shadows, the violent eddies of urban America. They trade their innocence for money, abuse their hopes, and then a monster comes ... A monster without fangs or claws, but more deadly. Because of them, he has lost everything: his wife, his family. And he vows to clean the streets of Chicago ... for good. One of the street kids and a man of the cloth form a desperate pact. Together, they will find the madman whose basement has become a chamber of horrors ...
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Hope
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After Todd's mother dies from cancer, he moves back to his hometown in the foothills of the Appalachians from Chicago. It's 1997 and he's just been given a death sentence -- an HIV-positive diagnosis. Todd expects his remaining time on earth to be spent alone. But Cal, his handsome next-door neighbor, has other ideas. Cal is not the only surprise in Todd's new life. Todd begins having visions of an older woman, Essie, when he dims the lights. Is she just a figment of his imagination? Or is she a truth teller? When she talks to Todd, she's smart and hopeful. When Todd tells Cal about the ghost, Cal knows her already because Todd's mother spoke with her before her death. Essie was a godsend when Todd's mom was in so much pain. And now, Essie urges Todd to live ... for himself ... for new love. But is she too late?
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