August 13, 1999
Web posted at: 1:36 p.m. EDT (1736 GMT)

(CNN) -- Andrew Holleran, known for his award-winning gay novels, has released his first-ever collection of short stories. The book includes tales of broken dreams and ill-fated love affairs as well as comedies of mistaken identity and circumstance.

The title, "In September, the Light Changes," comes from the title of one of the 16 stories Holleran included in the work. He has been writing short stories for years, but only three that appear in the book have been published before.

"This was a wonderful opportunity to publish not only new stories, but some I've had in a drawer for 20 years. Plus, I love the story form," Holleran says.

"That's why I leapt at the chance. It's tedious and discouraging trying to get stories in magazines -- there are just so few left that print them, if you leave out the academic and literary journals."

The stories are mostly about characters he wasn't able to fit in his previous novels.

"Some of these stories are just portraits of people I knew in New York in the '70s I couldn't leave unrecorded -- there was something about them, their voice, personality, that made an impression -- people who are no longer alive," he says.

Unlike his last book, "The Beauty of Men," this work does not focus on AIDS and its impact on gay life. Holleran says the subject comes up, but directly in only one story.

"I wanted to do a book in which it wasn't the overwhelming fact of gay life. Also because in some peculiar way the culture has moved beyond the AIDS subject -- even though people are still getting infected, still dying, and certainly dealing with the virus on a daily basis -- the urgency is gone, or simply the interest, since this is a culture which always demands new topics."

As a result, Holleran says, the stories deal with the same topics he wrote about before AIDS.

"Mostly these stories are about people's failure to connect, the savagery, if you will, of erotic and romantic life," he says.

"In September, the Light Changes" is published by Hyperion. Holleran's previous works include "Dancer from the Dance" and "Nights in Aruba."