Grab Bag 26 is a twenty-story collection in habu’s eclectic anthology series of active gay male life and tribulations short stories. These stories, presented in the order in which they were written, were composed during the late winter and early spring of 2022. Most of the stories in the collection are from contemporary time, but the anthology starts with one set in the slavery years in the United States before the Civil War and it ends with one depicting a secret U.S. mission into Khmer Rouge-occupied Cambodia in 1979. Habu is wide-ranging in his own wanderings, which is reflected in his story settings. Over half of these stories are set in the United States, from Maine, down to the Florida Panhandle, and west to Chicago, Michigan, Colorado, and Brookings, Oregon. Six have international settings, including scenes in the Caribbean, England, Turkey, Morocco, Thailand, and Cambodia. Four of the stories are flash fiction, written to a contest demand that their texts be 750 words, no more and no less. All of the stories are set in a hedonist world where being actively gay and on the make is the norm and rough sex is sometimes the goal and the fulfillment.
