text: I have enjoyed many of Mark's novels (Do You Know That I Love You is my favorite of the bunch), all the time recognizing his severe limitations as a writer.  
  
  Every character in every Roeder novel speaks with the same voice--all of them, and though his dialog is usually age appropriate for his teen characters, his narrative passages invariably sound as if they were written by someone decades older.  There is frequent repetition and redudancy; characters never say anything once if they can say it two or three or four times (though he has definitely improved since his mediocre first novel Ancient Prejudice, which had the unfortunate distinction of glamorizing teen suicide).  His characters always (and I mean always) mate for life, which is a beautiful romantic ideal, but ultimately can get tiresome (gay teens are no different from straight ones in their need to play the field a bit before a lifetime commitment).  
  
  All that said, at his best (DYKWIK, A Better Life, Keeper of Secrets) Mark Roeder writes a compelling and often un-put-downable story.  
  
  But in Outfield Menace, the bad most definitely outweighs the good.  Did Mr. Roeder do ANY research into the time period???  The fifties are certainly a good setting for a gay teen novel (if only as an educational experience for contemporary teens, who don't realize how impossible it was to be gay at that time), but if you want to set a novel in the fifties, don't have a lead male character with a ponytail.  No one, but no one, wore a pony tail in the fifties (and certainly not in a small midwest town).  Don't have characters use anachronisms like "fifteen minutes of fame."  And most of all, don't have characters behave and think in anachronistic wasys.
  
  Mark Roeder illustrates the dangers of self publishing.  He has apparently made a name for himself (and some money I'd guess), and I must confess, I've bought his novels (glutton for coming out stories that I am) but no legitimate house would publish his novels, at least not without major editing and rewriting, something that a self published author (especially one with an apparently inflated self image) goes without.  
  
  There has been a renaissance in quality gay teen fiction this past year or two.  Major publishers have put out such superb young adult novels as Totally Joe, M or F?, The Hookup Artist, Rainbow Road, Boy Girl Boy.  Read them, if only to see how these truly outstanding (and published by legit houses) novels could teach Mark Roeder a thing or two.  
  
  If you must read Roeder, then stick with his better novels and avoid this serious misstep.  Memo to Roeder: if you want to write about a time you don't know about, do your research
  