Best Gay Romance 2010 (January 1, 2010 release), Richard Labonte, ed.

Best Gay Erotica 2010 (December 1, 2009 release), Richard Labonte, ed; Selected and Introduced by Blair Mastbaum

Boy Crazy: Coming Out Erotica (2009)
An explicit collection of young adult erotica, Boy Crazy explores in heady detail the “first time:” the first time feeling lustful toward another boy, the first time falling into bed with a peer, the first time discovering love with another young man. This youthful collection relishes the thrill of being crazy for a certain boy, for a moment or for a lifetime. In Jere M. Fishback’s “A Beautiful Motorcycle,” a young man shares a hotel room with his sister’s boyfriend and experiences a whole new kind of room service. Guitar lessons give way to instructions of a more amorous variety in L.A. Field’s “Summertime Blues.” Mesmerized by two hot young bikers, Warden finds himself taking a ride on the wild side in Jeffrey Rounds’ “This Is Not Your Country.” These and other stories of sexual awakening vividly evoke the trembling, heart-pounding, sweaty-palmed excitement of the first time.

Daddies: Gay Erotic Stories (2009)
One of the most powerful icons for gay men is the hunky, rough-hewn, authoritative daddy figure, who can offer hot kisses, warm embraces, and a firm hand with equal intensity. This collection of erotic stories reveals the unique sexual and emotional bonds between these older daddies and younger gay men: from twinks hankering for silver foxes to men with the meat of years on their bones mentoring spunky lads just coming out. Everything goes in these stories, from the sexually playful to the wistfully romantic, to hardcore S/M, to role playing, to extreme kink. Written by such masters of the genre as Barry Alexander, Dale Chase, Doug Harrison, Jeff Mann, Xan West, Shaun Levin, and more, these sizzling stories explore the world of men who may differ in age but have the same thing on their mind.

I Like It Like That: True Stories of Gay Male Erotica  (2009), Richard Labonte and Lawrence Schimel, eds.
From the editors of the Lambda Award–winning First Person Queer: intelligent, sexy, true-life tales of gay men's desire. The stories push at the parameters of queer erotic life, featuring contributors both novice and well-known; subject matter ranges from single, significant encounters to the ephemera of emotional desire that never lead to physical pleasure. Throughout, the book deals with the essential erotics of queer male life, to be used as a launching point for exploring the queer male condition: essays that delve into the diverse manifestations of desire between and among men.

Bears (2008)
Unlike their namesakes in the wild, the bears in this collection are decidedly sexier. Assembled by noted editor Richard Labonté, these tales take readers on a tantalizing tour of a gay subculture that's sweet and raunchy — and sometimes both at once. Written by the most popular authors in the field of queer male erotica, these stories showcase bears and bear-lovers exulting in the pleasures of scruffy beards, hairy chests, burly bodies, and belly-to-belly sex unfettered by social constrictions.

Best Gay Bondage Erotica (2008)
Whether intricately secured by ropes, locked in handcuffs, or bound simply by a lover's command, the men in these dangerously explicit stories of restraint will grab you, tie you down, and never let you go. From professionals letting loose their inhibitions on an office retreat to a garden full of earthy 'bound' delights this cornucopia of kink shows men put in their place and then held there firmly. Featuring some of the masters of gay bondage erotica including Jack Fritscher, Jeff Mann, and Larry Townsend.

Best Gay Erotica 2009 (2008), Richard Labonte, ed.; Selected and introduced by James Lear
Cleis’ Best Erotica series is the best-selling gay erotica series in America and with good reason. It sets the standard for erotic writing with searing action and stories that are smart, edgy, authentic, and wickedly inventive. Designed for your reading pleasure, Best Gay Erotica 2009 includes 20 of the hottest, best-written man-to-man sex stories to appear in print this year. Featuring the works of Simon Sheppard, Jeff Mann, Jamie Freeman, Robert Patrick, and more, these down-and-dirty page-turners showcase unique and in-depth characters that reflect gay lives not often found in erotic stories. From casual hook-ups to highly charged street encounters to dark backrooms, the men in this collection all let their lust and passions loose for all to read and enjoy.

Boys In Heat: Gay Erotic Stories (2008)
This incendiary collection contains a wide range of erotic short stories that burns up the pages with unabashed, uninhibited sex between men. Here two young guys' internet hookup leads to an exhibitionist encounter at a local shopping mall; a boy on the verge of manhood loses his gay cherry to the handyman of a local brothel; a college-bound boy raised by strict Christian parents comes out in the arms of his older brother's best surfer buddy; and two sexual dynamos have their way with a willing military man. These stories will definitely make you sweat.

Best Gay Erotica 2008 (2007), Emanuel Xavier and Richard Labonte, eds.
Whether you like it rough and surly, smooth and sultry, or quick and raw, you’ll find it in Best Gay Erotica 2008. Here are 20 of the hottest and best-written man-on-man sex stories to appear in print this year. In “Underground Operator,” two men on a nearly empty subway platform indulge in forceful, anonymous sex that lets them momentarily forget the stifling summer heat. “Donuts to Demons” finds a self-described “rock'n'roll artfag” searching for a lover “as patient and gifted and generous as he advertised on craigslist.”

Best Gay Romance 2008 (2007)
In Best Gay Romance 2008, editor Richard Labonté shows that however romance happens, however long love lasts—a heartbeat or a lifetime—erotic love between men is a wondrous thing. In “Viva Las Vegas,” the narrator casts off his boy-next-door image and, dancing down the grand staircase at Caesar’s Palace into the arms of a handsome stranger, finally becomes the romantic leading man he always knew he was. In the beautiful, nostalgic “Endless Against Amber,” a man recalls a long-ago summer love, before adult life got in the way, “we were just two boys in a beat-up old car like so many others, cruising the neighborhood for a laugh, only one thing on our minds….”

See Vincent Diamond's review of Best Gay Romance 2008 in the August 2008 Issue of DREAMscene Newsletter.

Country Boys: Wild Gay Erotica (2007)
Sexy gay stories with a country twang.

Something about the country brings out the best – and the sexiest – in a man, and country boys are a special breed. These tobacco-chewin’, cattle-ropin’ icons in temptingly baggy overalls or skin-tight wranglers rank with cops and soldiers as one of the most potent symbols of the naturally masculine male. Sweating and sensual not from the gym but from honest, hard work (and play), they come in all shapes, sizes, and erotic potential. City homos hike the wilds to commune with nature and nature boys. Gay pioneers enjoy rural living and loving. Lonesome queers meet for moonlight trysts in the cornfields. Whether yielding to the rugged charms of that hunky ranger during bear season or skipping the farmer’s daughter and bedding his accommodating son instead, the men of Country Boys: Wild Gay Erotica unabashedly explore the sizzling side of life far from the city lights.

First Person Queer (2007) with Lawrence Schimel -- Finalist 2007 Lambda Literary Award for Anthologies
In this amazing, wide-ranging anthology of non-fiction essays, contributors write intimate and honest first-person accounts of queer (gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans) experience: from coming out to "passing" as straight, to the devastation of meth addiction, to growing old to living proud. These are the stories of contemporary queer life―and by definition, are funny, sad, hopeful, and truthful. Representing a diversity of genders, ages, races, and orientations, and edited by two acclaimed writers and anthologists (who between them have written or edited almost 100 books), First Person Queer depicts the diversity, the complexity, and the excitement of contemporary GLBTQ life.

Contributors include S. Bear Bergman (Butch is a Noun), Kate Bornstein (Gender Outlaw), Sharon Bridgforth (The Bull-Jean Stories), Ivan E. Coyote (Bow Grip), Katherine V. Forrest (Curious Wine), Daniel Gawthrop (The Rice Queen Diaries), George K. Ilsley (ManBug), Nalo Hopkinson (The New Moon's Arms), Josh Kilmer-Purcell (I Am Not Myself These Days: A Memoir), Tim Miller (Body Blows, Shirts and Skin), Achy Obejas (Memory Mambo), Stan Persky (Buddy's), Simon Sheppard (Kinkorama).

Where the Boys Are: Urban Gay Erotica (2007)
Many a confident urban gay man in the Castro, West Hollywood, and Chelsea was once a wide-eyed newcomer. Every year thousands of young men arrive in these queer-friendly neighborhoods, seduced by city life and its sexual possibilities. In Coming to the City, Richard Labonté collects raunchy memoirs and stories about these newly arrived country boys. Here are stories of first times, initiations, bars, backrooms, dance clubs, and parties, reading (or misreading) the codes — and sometimes teaching those city boys a thing or two.

Hot Gay Erotica (2006)
Lambda Award–winning editor Richard Labonté leaves no fetish unfulfilled in this new collection of gay erotica. This steamy collection contains a wide range of erotic short stories for readers with a taste for sizzling storylines and uninhibited, unrepentant mansex. Scott Promfret, coauthor of the Romentics series of gay romance novels, contributes “The Competitor,” in which a hunky athlete unexpectedly meets his match at the gym. Cat Tailor’s rollicking “Delta Boys” finds four randy soldier boys, back from the frontlines, living out their fantasies in a sleazy motel room.

Best Gay Erotica 2007 (2006), Richard Labonte, ed. with sections by Timothy J. Lambert -- Finalist 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Erotica (Gay Male)
Rough and surly, smooth and sultry, or quick and raw in public places — however you like it, you’ll find it in Best Gay Erotica 2007, twenty of the hottest and best-written sex stories to appear in print this year, along with fourteen pages of comics that aren’t for kids. In Jay Neal’s “The Lighthouse Keep,” a stranded traveler stumbles into a ghost story, a murder mystery, and a skin-tingling S/M thriller rolled into one, complete with B-movie storm effects and a gnarled ancient mariner. Cat Tailor’s “There’s More to Kink than Leather” follows a leather daddy as he makes a crucial misstep into a drag bar, where the queens are restless for new subjects. And in Greg Herren’s “Disaster Relief,” a renter whose apartment was flooded by Hurricane Katrina gets some unexpected comfort from a FEMA inspector.

The Future is Queer: A Science Fiction Anthology (2006), Lawrence Schimel and Richard Labonte, eds.
In a world increasingly complicated by questionable technologies and factional poli-tics, what does the future hold for gays, lesbians, and transgenders? In this anthology, the first of its kind in over ten years, provocative stories and comics posit a queer future of limitless possibilities, covering issues like cloning, gene manipulation, and gender assignment. It includes contributions from best-selling author and comic book creator Neil Gaiman (Anansi Boys, The Sandman), World Fantasy Award-winner Rachel Pollack, and cult UK comic artist Bryan Talbot.

Best Gay Erotica 2005 (2005) with William J. Mann -- Winner 2004 Lambda Literary Award for Erotica
Brains, muscle, tenderness, kink. Like the perfect lover, the tenth anniversary edition of Best Gay Erotica has it all. From the blushing explorations of Jonathan Asche's "Doll Boy" to the dark journey of Alpha Martial's "My Place" to the sexual confession of a homophobic "straight" boy in Alex Rowlson's "Pink Triangle-Shaped Pubes," these 21 stories explore a heart-pounding range of male-male desire.

Best of Best Gay Erotica 2 (2005)
Beautiful bodies, searing male-male action, and wickedly inventive writing: all the things that make you read and reread your gay erotica books until the covers curl and the pages drop open to your favorite scenes. Chances are a few volumes of Best Gay Erotica are among the books you can’t part with. Since it began in 1996, this groundbreaking series—hailed as "consistently outstanding" (Lambda Book Report) and "literally orgasmic" (HX magazine)—has delivered the hottest gay male sex writing anywhere.

Best Gay Erotica 2006 (2005) with Matt Bernstein Sycamore -- Finalist 2005 Lambda Literary Award for Erotica
The year's hottest, most provocative gay writing...and the bestselling gay erotica series in America!

Best Gay Erotica 2004 (2003) with Kirk Read -- Finalist 2003 Lambda Literary Award for Erotica
Best Gay Erotica 2004 captures the hottest, freshest stories of man-on-man desire by the most cutting-edge writers of gay erotica today. The 2004 edition features stories selected by Kirk Read, author of the wildly popular memoir How I Learned to Snap, one of the most engaging gay coming-of-age stories published in recent years.

Best Gay Erotica 1999 (1999) with Felice Picano

Best Gay Erotica 1998 (1998) Edited with Jack Fritscher
Celebrating sexy, literate queer writing, Best Gay Erotica features the steamiest, most thought-provoking sexual writing of each year. Guest judges selected from the queer literary world select and introduce the collections, which represent a wide range of styles and voices. The series is edited by Richard Labont. Best Gay Erotica 1998 is selected and introduced by guest editor Christopher Bram, author of Father Of Frankenstein and Gossip. "Sex is a wonderful subject for fiction," writes Bram, "It's so expressive, so dramatic.a way of thinking with our bodies, the mind climbing down for a brief visit"

Best Gay Erotica 1997 (1997) by Jack Fritscher with Richard Labonte and Douglas Sadownick, eds.

Putting Out: The Essential Publishing Resource for Gay and Lesbian Writers (1994) with Edisol W. Dotson

Tickled Pink: Lesbian and Gay Humor Fiction (1994)