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Author Hans Hirschi (middle) with husband Alex and son Sascha
SOMEWHERE UNDER THE RAINBOW
Author Hans Hirschi Releases New Book of Short Stories
BY MIKE TROMBINO
SHORTS: Stories From Beneath the Rainbow is the latest collection of stories from the author of The Fallen Angels of Karnataka, Willem of the Tafel and Living The Rainbow: A Gay Family Triptych. The novel features 17 stories in all, each more gripping and powerful than the last. All are meant to show the humanity of the LGBTQ community and how, like our straight counterparts, queer people struggle with self-esteem, fall in love, help others and fight to survive even the harshest of realities. Author Hans Hirschi explains more:
Which story from SHORTS: Stories From Beneath The Rainbow do you most relate to?
Hans Hirschi: I think all stories speak to me in various ways, but two stand out. The first is "Nightmare". It's about my family and based on a real nightmare I had. The other is "Alex", a story about a trans doctor. So little of us in the community really understand our T siblings and the amazing plurality they stand for. Just as we were once seen as sex-maniacs fucking in parks and public restrooms, our trans siblings are so much more than the stereotype we often see portrayed in the media.
Would you say these are stories not typically told in gay fiction?
I certainly haven't read anything similar to them. If you look at the approximately 110 thousand LGBT books available on Amazon today, the vast majority are gay romances with a dominant alpha male and a submissive boy to be rescued and whisked away to their happily ever after. While it beats the misery of what we had to read until the 00-years, it's still very much fables, and very much a fantasy. The lives of real LGBT people aren't really portrayed.
Why is it important to tell the stories of real LGBT people?
A vast majority of the community are average people. Some of us are great; some of us do bad things. We live all kinds of lives and I think it's time we moved past the GLEE or Modern Family portrayal of the "happy gays". While that is amazing and great, the community is ready for more, to see the community fail, be ugly, struggle… and sure, we can be happy too sometimes.
SHORTS: Stories From Beneath the Rainbow is available digitally and in softcover, on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple's iBookstore, Smashwords, and at select local bookstores, via Beaten Track Publishing.
Videos
0:04 / 1:10 Shorts: Stories from Beneath the Rainbow - Relea - Posted Aug 26, 2016
