Some More and More of My Writing

Here are some links to pieces of writing that I’ve had published, some of the recently. Most of them are short stories, my non-fiction writing is usually published in print format and takes longer to get onto the internet, but I have managed to include one of my opinion pieces.

Praying in The Stock Cupboard
http://www.gayflashfiction.com/Story_Archive/Praying.html
This story features one of my favourite themes, the clash between Christianity and homosexuality. This one revolves around Joe, a gay officer worker, who finds one of his colleagues praying in the office’s stock cupboard and the effect it has upon him.

One New Message
http://www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/One-New-Message.446401
Receiving emails can be a joy or a chore, a personal email from someone can be so enjoyable and a pain when it’s scam. This story is about a man who posted a profile on Friends Reunited and then gets a message from the only person he would want to contact him...

Goodbye
http://www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Goodbye.320077
The ending of relationships is another subject that fascinates me; I’ve been on the receiving end of it enough times in the past. This story features a man who has finally decided that the time has come to end his relationship with his girlfriend, they are so very incompatible, but he also doesn’t want to hurt her. He hasn’t set himself an easy task...

Things You See in the Dark
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=20525
This story has a special place in my affections. It was published in the Spring 2006 edition of Chroma magazine. Chroma is a lesbian and gay literary publication and it was an amazing honour to get one of my short stories accepted by them. This one traces the growth of one gay man’s self-identify, during the seventies and eighties, through the films he watches and the different images of gay men he’s exposed to.

'The NHS should help obese people change their lifestyles to lose weight – blaming patients is dangerous'
http://www.nursingtimes.net/This_weeks_issue/opinion/Hot_topic/2008/12/the_nhs_should_help_obese_people_change_their_lifestyles_to_lose_weight__blamin.html
This is an opinion piece I wrote for Nursing Times magazine. The subject here is very plain from the title but it was based on something that actually happened to me. I was bluntly told, by a doctor, that I was overweight and had to lose weight but that was all the help I got. He bluntly told me that and then I was expected to leave, no further help or advice offered. So this was one of my responses.

Happy reading.
Drew.

One in Ten People

To mark the 25th anniversary of Terry Higgins’ death this year, one of the first people to die from AIDS in Britain, The Terrance Higgins Trust (Who bare his name) conducted a survey into people’s attitudes and knowledge around HIV & AIDS. 10% of those who took part thought HIV could be caught from sweat, 10% thought you can get it from kissing, 12% thought you can get it from sharing cutlery. 20% thought there’s a cure for AIDS.

When I read this I was shocked, all these beliefs are false but what was more shocking is that these are basic HIV/AIDS information, not rocket science, and should be widely known by now. We’ve had twenty-five years to get our message across, what the hell has gone wrong?

I turned my horror into an opinion piece for Nursing Times magazine (it was published two days ago), with the hope that others will feel the same way that I do. I can barely believe that our health information message has gone so wrong on HIV/AIDS. But HIV is no longer a “hot potato”, the media has long ago lost interest in it, and so such of our health information is in reaction to the latest media health-scare.

I am deeply saddened by this. So often we seem to be chasing behind bad information/rise in infection rates were HIV is concerned. We’ve had over twenty-five years and we are still not winning the fight against HIV, and it makes me feel sick.

Drew.