Rife with local color and laugh-out-loud dialogue, SUBTEXT, A Nervous Novel, is a love letter to New York City in the 1990s and the irrepressible gay community. The storyline follows a family of friends as they navigate a series of significant events set in The Big Apple. A bartender with a predilection for panic and Twenty-Year Scotch, a consummately shirtless soap opera lothario with silver-blue eyes and a Basset Hound named Frank, a Broadway starlet whose vocal chops, theatrical flops, and Clairol Nice'n Easy No. 6R Light Copper curly mops harness the power to heal sorrow-filled souls, a "va fongooling" Staten Island meatball merchandiser with a mishigas for malapropisms, and a muscle-ripped, motorcycle booted, sager-than-he-should-be leather daddy are among the novel's colorful characters. When a terrifying hate crime results in a perilously dire outcome, each of the family members is forced to take tight hold of their dreams. Together they stumble upon the universal, gemstone discoveries that exist between the lines-the subtext of life, both hidden and heart-touching. The story's ultimate message delivers a riveting, personal narrative of hopes and desires, and the disappointments that must be overcome if one is to perceive all the beauty that life has to offer.