Mel Keegan is almost as famous for sea stories as for SF ... and nobody writes gay heroes the way Keegan does. THE DECEIVERS won the Stonewall Fact & Fable award, and FORTUNES OF WAR has been called a 'fine example of the genre (Gay Times). The whole genre of gay books, sea stories, science fiction, gay romance and adventure blend into a magnificent fusion in these novels. Since 1989, for many readers, Mel Keegan has 'set the standard,' and since 2002, in association with DreamCraft, the Keegan gay book list has become very special.

Looking for gay adventure and romance? Longing for something exotic, like an Errol Flynn movie where the pretty little girl failed to show up, and a beautiful young man happened along instead, and nature took its course? You're on the right page!

Several novels are available at this time, and more are on the way. FORTUNES OF WAR is an Elizabethan-era buccaneering story, set mostly in the Caribbean. It's a couple of centuries before the era of Jack Sparrow and company. In fact, it's set in the same time as Errol Flynn's THE SEAHAWK. But rather than being black-and-white and straight as a bunch of rulers, FORTUNES OF WAR is a technicolor gay romp, exotic and sensual, with a strong vein of genuine history. Its research has been praised since it was first published in 1994, and it's been our Reader's Choice gay historical ever since. It's currently in its third edition.

THE DECEIVERS is a shipwreckers tale set in 1862 on the east coast of England, in the time when steam was replacing sail. It's a story of tall ships and massive storms, and of two young men who are caught on one of history's pivot points. Gay heroes have never been portrayed with more delicacy and verve. DECEIVERS is founded in real history, real places, which lends a seductive reality to the story of Jim Hale and Bill Ryan. This is a delicious gay book which not only offers a thrill a minute, with mighty storms, shipwreckers, sinking hulks and old enemies coming out of the woodwork, it also gets to grips, often painfully, with what it meant to be gay in the mid-nineteenth century.

Meanwhile, STORM TIDE is a modern-day gay thriller, set in the 1990s, and described by Scotsgay as 'gripping.' The story is set, in part, aboard a creaky (also creepy) old 'break bulk' freighter, in 'the storm of the decade' off the coast of MK's own South Australia. This time, our gay heroes are of the reluctant variety, and there's also a gay (or maybe bi; and definitely sociopathic) villain who's weird enough, dangerous enough, to stand your hair on end. Millivres called Mel Keegan 'the master of gay thrillers,' and with STORM TIDE, Mel earns the accolade.

Lastly, we offer for your consideration the science fiction adventure, AQUAMARINE. This one is set in the warm, wild southern seas of a 'drowned future' where this planet was hit by a comet and ocean levels rose dramatically. AQUAMARINE is exotic in many ways, not merely for its locations but for one of its two main characters. Eric Devlin is an 'Aquarian,' genetically engineered, a child of the future ... able to breathe water as well as air. Once again, a gay book which is driven by gay heroes, thoroughly Mel Keegan style.

Click the covers, above, to go to the browser pages. From those pages you can read around 40% of each book online, get inside MK's head with the 'Research Tales,' link through to the Reviews and see what other readers are saying ... and order both the books and the ebooks.

See also: The Gay Historical list The Gay Science Fiction list