JamesSavik

If you use Word, as many people do, it has a rather good spelling and grammer checker. Is that cheating? If so, I'm guilty. I'm a reasonably good story teller but a.. wretched speller. :oops: I REALLY don't think so. Unless you were told specifically NOT to get help with your paper. I've looked over dozens of papers and pointed out glitches for students that asked.

Nice DJ! When I read it, I could hear the words being sung to music. That rarely happens for me but it is the mark of a good poem.

I'm really sorry that I can't read everybody at once. The Scrolls has finally made it up the list and I'm hooked! I can see this is going to be one of those stories I check on everday. Wish I'd find an angel in my yard. I'd treat him lots better than the lout from chapter 1. ;-)

the best part of camping, well maybe besides for the way food taste cooked over a fire, is... well, you've read my stories :-D

How Can I Make It Better? Lately I think that we?ve all seen more strife, contentiousness and hard feelings than is absolutely necessary. While I don?t know all of the details of what has transpired, I do know that some good people have had their feelings hurt. While this is always regrettable, when a community reaches a certain critical mass, it?s almost inevitable. It?s just unreasonable to expect hundreds of egos and intellects to walk in lock step. I don?t think that we would want it that way. That would be pretty boring. This community is a valuable resource and I considers many of you friends. I appreciate and respect all of you; some I even have a genuine affection for. It concerns me when there is stress and conflict. Especially when good people are hurt and it could just as easily have been avoided. I ask a question that I hope each of us will ask ourselves: How can I make it better? I do not speak for the site or anyone else. I can only answer this question for myself in my own way. This is how I will respond. I will treat each person here with respect. I don?t care where you are from or how old you are. I value you all and respect your opinions and perspectives. Hell, I?m from Mississippi. I?m not too fancy to listen to anyone! I might even learn something. I will put principals before personalities. That principal is that we are all valued and respected members of our community, each equal with our own value and worth. I will do nothing to harm the community. As much as many of us despise Reagen, one of his smartest moves ever was his 11th Commandment: thou shall not speak ill of fellow republicans. There is power in unity and wisdom in learning from our adversary?s tactics. If I am wrong about something, I will promptly admit it and set it right as best I can. Pride is a good thing but vanity is a nuisance. I will be civil in all of my discourse and never post in anger. Perhaps some things have happened that can not be undone. I don?t know but I doubt it. I?m an optimist and believe that people of good will can work things out. I challenge us all to be those persons of good will. Work things out. We are all worth it. Peace, James

Will my presence and ideas be welcome or merely tolerated? Welcome- each and every time Codey!

Lucky Harry!

Is the Dude a trackball user? I have been the Jedi of trackballs since the 80s Arcade days of Missile Command and Atari Football. At least with the Logitech trackball, ya pay all your quarters up front. RE: the site layout and all, I'm easy to please. I know a work in progress when I see one.

So that's where the catty criticism has been coming from. I'll just send some Tender Vittles with my next submission and get on their good side. :D

ROFLMAO- Good to see you Rainbow, thanks for bringing a good laugh with you!

I agree. Anybody want to join me mountian biking down the Natchez Trace? Dogwood and redbud are in bloom and it's magnificent.

Speaking completely for myself, what the critics don't understand is that I write for ME and no one else. If others like it or get something out of it, then it's a happy bonus. I know from the feedback that I've been getting, some people are enjoying and relating to my tales. I too notice a generational divide in our community and urge all parties to cease fire and think this through. Division only serves to weaken us all.

Somebody has been working hard. Looks good. Whose office might that be?

Why did I immediatly think of Nick Nolte? http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/nolte1.html

blueI've noticed something odd about recent fic by several authors: Why is it we, as gay writers, editors, and readers, often have negative themes in gay fic? Why can't the gay guy be happy and well adjusted and be the hero, and help out someone else, some other gay guy or some friendly straight guy...whoever? [/i] This is a question worthy of its own thread. From my perspective it's because gay life in much of the US is a meat grinder that chews people up and leaves them damaged in all kinds of ways or even destroyed. Hated, spit on, outcasts that have been beaten and bashed and seen their dreams turn to ashes over and over aren't likely to write tales of shiney happy people. Why can't the gay guy be happy and well ajusted and be the hero? As much as some of us have been s**t on from very early in our lives, our mere survival is in itself heroic. What is a hero after all? Someone that faces adversity and triumphs or at least stands his ground? To me it's someone who refuses to quit and refuses to lose regardless of the odds. The "gay hero" doesn't have to be well balanced. He doesn't have to be rich, drive a Porsche, date porn stars or be on the cover of GQ. He has to have guts and grit and that's what it takes. Someday, and I hope for that day, we may get past that but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

you moved me to *tears*

Monday- bang, banging, banged my head against monitor. Ideas? Plenty. How do I execute them? Not that way. Makes my characters look like truck-stop sluts. That will not do. Alpha version to the digital crapper. Tuesday- do something else. Uploaded new pix to my photography blog. Wrote an album review. http://jamessavik.zoto.com/ Worked in the garden. Thought about Brian Edwards and what made him tick. Wednesday- try again. More crap. Doesn't look right. No sir. I don't like it. Beta goes swirling down the crap trap. Thursday- Oh my God! Sequoyah is awesome! I haven't fallen off in a hole this deep since I found Drake's board or Driver's. I was supposed to be doing something. Is Luke going to live? Is Matt going to tell him how he feels. Never mind, I'm busy. 4:00pm Ack! Chapter 19! Store run, time to call out the big guns- carton of camel filters in the hard pack, 2 X 2 liter mountian dews and LARGE bag of peanut M&Ms. hunker down for the seige. By midnight the corner has been turned. Friday, am- DOH! Try, try, try! Argh! I know what I want to do but jeez getting it out right ain't working. Wretched, bloody muses! Why do you keep such strange hours! Why can't you show up during normal business hours and leave me alone in the middle of the night? %$^@*%*! Friday, 2:30am- draft emailed to editor. Brain rotting. So high on mountian dew, nicotien and choclate that I'll be up this time tomorrow. Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo bouncing off walls per Daffy. I'm resolved to start earlier on Chapter 20. Yeah, right! Only if I lose the bookmark to Sequoyah's page. A Special Place my eye. That's literary crack!

BTW- never underestimate the power of the right snack. Give me a 20 oz mountian dew and a big bag of peanut M&Ms and I can get on an all night roll.

Dude- you just had major surgery. That's enough to throw even a throughbred off his feed. I write something else. If I'm having trouble with my primary project, I'll write a poem or a short story. That how the Cool Green Sea and Jeff came about plus the vast majority of my mediocre poetry. I should be embarrassed that it sits besides RusticMonks and your work but it's fun and sometimes I even turn a phrase. If you THINK you've got writer's block, then you DO. It's purely psycological. It's NEVER about being out of ideas. Every writer has more ideas than he's got time for. It is all about execution and "getting off the ball" to borrow an expression from football. One problem that many writers have is that once they've written something very good, that becomes the yardstick by which they judge all of their work and their newer stuff doesn't seem to measure up. Everything get tossed in the trash, aborted before it has a chance. You've got to be patient with both the process and the product. ================== Rent a DVD. Go out with Champ. Have some fun. Don't even think about it. The muses will return in their own good time. The worse thing you can do is give yourself a self-feeding complex over it: I am blocked, therefore I am blocked. The trick is getting outside that little box and thinking about something, anything else than the rut you are stuck in.

I wouldn't try to do more than two at once and even that is pushing it. However, sometimes I need a break from the "main effort". I let the brain out to play and cough up a short story or poem and get back to work. Don't want to write myself into a rut. BTW- nice job on NB Chp. 13.

Yes, it is. It's a fun concept. Belters spend so much time out there in semi-isolation. I thought that a kid that had been brought up out there coming "home" to earth and having to learn how to live amoung humans might make for some good drama and a few laughs. Kind of a new spin on the old boy raised by wolves tale. I'm leaning towards taking that one on first.

Coming Attractions: These are a few of the projects that I have on the drawing board. Broken is of course my primary focus but its hard work. These other projects, they?ll be hard work too but there will be some small amount of fun involved in the writing. Let me know what you think. Which one, if any would you pick up and read given the teaser? A Belter Comes Home (genre: sci fi/future) In the 23rd century the hardy souls that live and work in the outer solar system are called Belters. It is a difficult and dangerous life consisting of very long periods of isolation and exposure to low-G conditions. The pay is good but you earn it. There are some things that aren?t worth the money. In this story a young man that was born and raised in the Trans-Uranian industrial area who is orphaned in an industrial accident. He decides that he wants to come ?home? to a strange planet that he?s never seen called earth to discover his humanity. Class of 1866 (genre: historical fiction) The students of the Port Gibson military prep school have always been called the company of cadets. In 1863 with the Civil War raging all around them, and going very badly for their native Mississippi and Louisiana, they become a real rifle company and participate in the Vicksburg Campaign. Based on true events but fictionalized. War of the Church and Crown (genre: fantasy) Something is badly amiss in the Kingdom of Keoland. For over a century some small fraction of children reaching adolescence have been becoming mindwalkers (or telepaths). As this is proof of demonic possession to the Church of Keoland, as soon as they are discovered, Inquisitors are dispatched to investigate their heresy and burn them at the stake. If that was all there was too it, the people and the crown would have no complaint but every year the numbers of young people becoming mindwalkers is growing, as is the carnage. When one of the Princes of the Royal House becomes a mindwalker, it sparks a bitter civil war for supremacy between the church and the crown with the great houses playing both sides against the middle. Why is this happening? What does it mean? Will the young republic survive or will fall back into despotism and decay?

The force is strong with this one.

WBS- you are quite correct. Colors have deep psycological meanings and impact that are so subtle that we may be completely unaware of them. There have been numerous studies to determine the best colors for rooms and structures with specific purposes. For instance, colors in a hospital waiting room are specifically chosen to calm and quite you. Colors have a number of meanings that are usually defined either by culture or religious tradition. The closer the color is to a primary color, the more important it is. Some of the roots of these meanings have been so obscured by time as we may never know exactly where they came from. For instance, when I write about something disturbing, I use red letters. They are of course a warning that something creepy is going on and you might want to buckle your chinstrap. Also on the topic of red, in our cultural context. The meanings and traits assigned to colors are by no means universal. Here are a few sites that talk about colors and their meanings in detail. http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0769383.html http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html http://desktoppub.about.com/od/choosingcolors/ http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/color/a/symbolism.htm

Damn Dog, that was awesome! After reading that, I feel like I've been slapped around. Mystery, twists, turns and a real haymaker of a punchline. If you don't read this story NOW, you'll hate yourself LATER.