briefly told lives by c. bard cole It is rare to come across a genuinely original voice in fiction, but Bard Cole is just that, and it is a voice that deserves to be heard.   – Sebastian Beaumont, Gay Times (UK) No one writes more compellingly about sex than C. Bard Cole. He is a master of confused longings, clear-eyed chronicler of ambiguous desire, purveyor of desperate acts of love. He charts the course of badly lived lives with great economy and wit.   – Paul Russell, author of The Coming Storm and Boys of Life C. Bard Cole's Briefly Told Lives is fresh, sweet, lucid, raucous, and amazingly free of the corner-cutting, soft-peddling, pseudo-literary tropes that constitute most of contemporary fiction. The way these stories face fucked-up music of lies, sex, loss, and social injustice, and maintain their curiosity and style, is a really new, rare pleasure.   – Dennis Cooper, author of Frisk and Period