Jump to content

Forever on a Tree


James

Recommended Posts

I'm thinking that maybe it got taken down since it was never finished. The last I knew, there was one chapter left. The last time I had any contact with Joey was when he sent an email out that chapter 19 had been posted and that was back in 2007. That date is based on the file date for that chapter.

Another reason for it being taken down could be that the author asked for it to be removed.

Just out of curiosity, I googled it. AD and GA were the only story sites to come up.

Link to comment

My understanding was that it had been finished. There was an hiatus of over a year before the unlitmate chapter was posted, and when it was, it was a gigantic chapter, maybe 100,000 words or so. I can't say this for sure because the chapter was too long for me and I never read it, but that was what it was announced as: a final chapter, with apologies for taking so long to finish it.

C

Link to comment

I've sent an email to the author (Joey), and have alerted him to this thread. I think he was mulling over publishing the story in some form a year or two ago, but I don't know what happened to that.

I hope he'll consider posting it here, or at least making it widely available. It's a good novel, very well-told, and I think more people should read it.

Link to comment

Er, it is 5.3 Mbytes in size. Can that go through regular email? Please, let's not get into discussions about copying things that aren't supposed to be copied, okay?

Link to comment
I'm thinking that maybe it got taken down since it was never finished. The last I knew, there was one chapter left.

It is common to post all but the final chapter when an author plans to publish in hard or soft cover. That's probably what happened. I'll write Joey and see if that's the case.. and if it is, I'll post a link to the published version at amazon or whereever on BoNN.

Link to comment

There was a final chapter written, a whopping 165 pages long. Hopefully the Dude will get it for AD.

Link to comment

Thanks for the link on the Wayback, Clay. This is one of the longest online novels I've ever read on the net -- over 328,000 words (1500 pages in 12-point courier) -- but for some reason, it wasn't in my archives. Good to have a copy of it.

Joey was a talented writer, and I hope he'll continue with more. I know writing the story was tough for him, because there were elements in it that were autobiographical (which he admits in his introductions). Some of the best, most realistic dialogue I've ever read on the net -- and I thought the author was particularly brave in going with a downbeat ending, and not for the usual "happily ever after" thing.

Link to comment

Wow! That was a fast response.

The funny thing is, I tried to find it on the way back machine also. It didn't come up when I tried :(

As for the story itself, it was completed. The last few chapters are extremely different from the first ones though. The big differences are length (those last few chapters are monsters) and the overall mood of the story.

Link to comment

I did get a response from Joey, the author, who tells me he's still mulling over some publishing options for his novel. I've encouraged him to drop by AD, so maybe he'll pop up and answer some questions.

Link to comment

...This's John Galt speaking. ;p

So. Howdy, dudes. This's the aforementioned Joey, author of FoaT. The Pecman alerted me to this thread, so I figured I'd pop in and answer any questions you guys might have. So go ahead. Ask me anything. ...I'm clearly not shy, heh.

Yeah, sorry you couldn't find the story online, there, Jimmy. There's a reason for that... Believe it or not, I worked hard on the story. I'm proud of it. So, after some encouragement from the populace, I was like, "Yeah, maybe I should try and publish it." And then I wrote to a few agents and they were all, "Yeah, maybe you shouldn't." Heh. So, it's entirely possible that the story's about three times longer'n a novel "should" be. The P-Man was bein' generous when he said I was mulling my options. Verily, I hath no options. (I mean, I know publishing like I know the love of a good woman, heh, but I still feel like I should really give it el try.) But rest assured, the three or four people who were worried, after the publishing world tells me to eat it and stuff, I'll post it online again. And I'll post the final, edited, definitive version. It's much, much better, I think.

(Oh, yeah, I should probably mention at this point that I write my forum posts like I write my stories: redonculously long and shamelessly dull. Now, I know I've lost Cole Parker by this point, haha [shout-out to you, by the way, dude--your post about the length of the last chapter made me laugh for days], but for the rest of you, I'll try to keep this short-ish and such.)

Now, I know we all love the, erm, Wayback Machine and that's all lovely and such, but damn, it's a bitch, heh. I kinda went through a lotta trouble to get it pulled from teh intarwebs. I mean, can't get a story published that's plastered all over the internet, word? Word. So, I had it pulled from Nifty and a few other sites, and then googled it and found it gone. So, that was good. Then, you guys found it. So, that was bad. ;p So, now that everyone here who wanted a copy got one, can someone tell me the best way to get something off whatever the hell "webarchive" is? (Yeah, I don't just play a greasy buffoon in bad net-fiction: I'm also a greasy buffoon in real life. Me = dumber'n a bucket of hair.)

Um...

Well, the Pecman's very generous with his praise, but really, I'm just another sappy little hack. I did work hard on the dialogue, I won't lie, but at the end uh the day, I can't really take credit for the good stuff. Anything truly cute or funny or sweet or touching I took from real life. (Hell, the final chapter revolves around the conversations between Mikey and Sky. And those convos really happened between me and Big. I'd like to take credit for being an insanely good writer dude, but I can't. We were just good together, verbally.) And I wasn't brave for ending the story the way I did. I set out to tell my E! True Hollywood Story, and I did. That's the way things really went down between me and Big. We really did have that dinner, he did run that light, he broke up with Natasha, and...well...you get the idea. I guess it is a "downbeat" ending, but I dunno. It feels a little tacky to complain that we didn't die of old age in each other's arms. However long it lasted, we made each other happy. It's more'n a lotta people seem to get. We just weren't right for each other. It happens. We're not compatible as either friends or boyfriends, but I still wish him nothing but the best. I hope he's as happy as he made me. I dunno. Haha. ...This must seem like therapy, huh? I really am fine with the way things are. I thought the end of the story was kind of hopeful, but I am sort of emolicious sometimes, heh, so don't take my word for it.

Yeah. I think I'm done blogging all you wonderful people out there in the dark. I...can't imagine I missed a spot, heh, but if I did, feel free to turn on the Hack Signal, and I'll come a runnin'. Thank you everyone who took an interest in the story. It was hard to write at times--least till I grew up and got over it--and it was bitchin' e-mails from bitchin' dudes like you guys that made it all worth it. Anyway. I should skedaddle now. Later, peeps.

P.S. In case anyone was wondering, no, I haven't written anything else. I wrote one chapter of what was essentially a parody of a bad Nifty for a buddy who was going through a tough time a year ago, but I would hardly say that counts. I'm just...not much of a writer. And I'm cool with it. It's certainly not a bad thing. Me and Big just went through some cartoonishly dramatic stuff. Without that, I'd have nothin' to write about. So. Yeah.

Link to comment

Inspiration comes from a lot of weird places. Twice, I've read bad (or marginal) stories that made me think, "ya know, there's a nubbin of a good idea there, but I think there's a better way to do it," and that inspired two of my novels. (One is the new one, Cerulean Project.) The third came out of an idle "what if" conversation with a friend of mine. And my first novel was just a rewrite of my early life.

So the ideas are out there. I think you've got the talent to tackle another story sometime, Joey, and you should think about it sometime.

BTW, don't overlook the possibility of just publishing it yourself. Here's some good resources:

iUniverse

Booksurge

and Tips on POD

The latter is a good rundown on all the self-publishing services out there, presenting the pros and cons. For a few hundred bucks, you can get your book listed on Amazon, hand out printed copies to your friends, and also sell electronic copies for the iPad and Kindle. So you don't necessarily have to wait for an agent to pick up the phone.

BTW, the fiction business is really, really bad these days. Bookstores are folding fast, and the big publishers are cutting back. Unless you're Stephen King or Tom Clancey, it's hard to get a contract for a new novel.

Meanwhile, you should consider posting all or part of your story here. I'm positive the site's members would enjoy reading what you have to say.

Link to comment

Another good resource for self-publishing is lulu.com. They publish both physical and eBooks.

If you want to sell on the Kindle, check Amazon.com (the links are in the lower left in Features and Services when you first go into the www.amazon.com website.

Colin :icon_tongue:

Link to comment

I forgot about Lulu -- good recommendation.

While I love the Kindle, the iPad has crushed it in less than a month. I think they've already sold 1,000,000 iPads worldwide, and that's going to be a far more successful eBook reader than the Kindle ever was. (And I'm a big Kindle fan -- bought one over a year ago.) And there's 3,000,000 eBooks out there already, including a lot of public domain stuff.

At least the iPad can read Kindle books -- thanks to a free Amazon app -- as well as PDFs, text files, and the ePub format. The Kindle can do only PDFs, text files, and Amazon's proprietary format.

There's a very good rundown on eBook pros and cons at this link on Wikipedia. I was surprised to see that J.K. Rowling is completely opposed to releasing any of the Harry Potter books on eBooks. Apparently, she's unaware that all of her books are already widely available all over the net as PDFs and text files, in several languages. Heck, I think the last book (part 7) was out as a text file within about 3 days of the book's release. Fans are crazy...

Link to comment

:lol:

So nice to see you, John, and to hear you talking about this story. The work that went into it was obvious, and I'm glad to hear you say you are proud of it.

The best to you with this, and I know we're not supposed to ask for more but...

that's as close as I dare get to impropriety in this crowd!

Tracy

Link to comment
  • 1 month later...
There was a final chapter written, a whopping 165 pages long. Hopefully the Dude will get it for AD.

So I went and downloaded ch 1 - 19 from 'way back' and am only an hour or so from finishing ch 19. I am already going into withdrawal lacking the final chapter!

Does anybody have a copy? I wrote John yesterday, but no response yet.

Link to comment

Interesting. Mountain Dude posted that he wanted Part 20, I PM'd him that I could send it if I got his email address, and then took a lot of time to get it ready to email (as I was in a rush to do some personal things) and then his post is gone, and I never got a reply to my PM either. I've effectively wasted over 30 minutes for nothing. I'm not pleased...and feel rather disrespected.

Link to comment
Interesting. Mountain Dude posted that he wanted Part 20, I PM'd him that I could send it if I got his email address, and then took a lot of time to get it ready to email (as I was in a rush to do some personal things) and then his post is gone, and I never got a reply to my PM either. I've effectively wasted over 30 minutes for nothing. I'm not pleased...and feel rather disrespected.

His post still seems to be there. At least I can see it.

Link to comment
Isn't it on Nifty? That's where I read it.

It used to be. But the author decided that he wanted to try to get it published by a legit publisher, and (after a protracted discussion) was able to get it removed from Nifty.

I've asked the author to consider posting it here on AD, but no luck so far.

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...