Chris James

Thanks, Gee...a trip down memory lane. Having rolled into the Maryland countryside fresh from California while I was in middle school, I was the only one who listened to the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean, it did nothing to endear me to my classmates. So either you have an extensive collection of 45's or you did some research to be able to drop all those little gems into the story. Fun stuff!

Oh yeah Cole...if only it was that easy!

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/rejoice-edifi-first-christian-tablet-190513571.html Does anyone really believe there is a need for something like this? The God business seems to have lost it's focus, no suprise there.

Never enjoyed seeing the guy as a performer, he always came off as a bad actor. I seemed to feel a little swish in his step since most guys don't walk across a room and then stop to pose like he always seemed to do. Perhaps it is best he isn't gay which might give the rest of us a bad name. He can go strike a pose in hell for all I care.

(I blush) Thanks, guys...always enjoy knowing I did something right. Ahh yes, as I confessed to Mike, this short was halfway done when I read Sanitaria Springs and then saw the challenge to engage the brain for a contribution in kind. It really had no setting before then and I thought why not place it around Binghamton. N.Y. and the Sanitaria Springs area. An earlier discussion on the forum about gaydar is what got me started. I wanted to make Arthur the responsible gay adult because that set a good example. I imagine there are lots of Ernies in this world and that first step is always the hardest, I know mine was. But there had to be a Neil, the man who knew everything and gives only sage advice. This could have been a much longer story which would have given Charlie and Ernie some further exposure, but by that point I had said all I wanted. Perhaps I should have included a good recipe for Siclian pasta sauce, but I don't know one.

Sweet, Luggie. Believe it or not, this story was inspired by the research I did on Nathaniel Smiley. At the time I knew very little about the native people around the Great Lakes and their past, and then I came across an article about that stone...and there you go. I have sent this to various readers, but this is what set me going: "The original Standing Stone of Huntingdon, erected by the Indians, was a granite column, about fourteen feet high and six inches square, covered with strange characters, which were the sacred records of the Oneidas. Once the Tuscaroras stole it, but the Oneidas followed, and, fighting for their sacred treasure, recaptured it. When the whites came along, the Oneidas, who had joined the French, went west, carrying the stone with them. Afterwards, a second stone, much like the first, was set up, and a fragment of it is now preserved at Huntingdon." Gotta love that history!

He might be married but a guy can dream, can't he? Of all the talking heads on television, Richard Engel is the only one who can turn my head when I hear his voice. Sigh. Keep on dreaming FT.

Yes, Luggie, a delightful addition. I got a good snicker out of the sand blocks, just the kind of thing my cousin and I did when I was 12. (We strung a line with tin cans across the road, you already know what happened...I got spanked)

Thank you for the free advertising, Luggie....the check is in the mail.

James, I have the perfect site for you to pull conversational material if you ever talk to that idiot again: http://www.corsinet.com/braincandy/insult.html

My thanks to all of you for the wonderful comments. I find it heartwarming to see how interested everyone gets as a story posts, but even Luggie and Richard know the Dude is doling it out on a regular basis. Not sure I can say anything about the story itself, except maybe that I had no idea how it was going to end until I was about halfway done. I lived for months with all the native mythology and folktales in my head until the characters seemed to write their own ending. I cannot tell you what will happen, but I will say that even now when I read the ending it gives me chills. Perhaps Marshall was channeling me his thoughts because I have never written anything like that before. So, no more teasing. Patience will bring you to the conclusion soon enough. It may be a long time before I write another story about Native Americans, but I will stand behind this one anyday.

I guess he taught you a lesson, didn't he? When you talk to assholes all you get is a bunch of S**T. This man is no preacher, he's a fundraiser for the Christian right. OMG, there's a fag under your bed, send me money. The message would be laughable if all he had was a soapbox to stand on. But these ignorant morons (no offense to the real morons out there) have all the money they can wring out of the God business to spend. Perhaps we could send his home address to the Taliban.

http://youtu.be/u2HvieB0Xs0

Sweet, Camy... and a wonderful lesson to be learned: Always lock the door when you're fiddling around.

Your concerns are valid, but don't change horses in the middle of a stream. If you find contractions adequate in the dialogue you write then continue it throughout. The rules of grammar we have discussed time and again always seem to come to the same conclusion, do what you think best. All those hard and fast rules you learned in school are imprinted in your mind and will often prompt you to question a choice of words. But contractions are situational due to their placement in a sentence, and we know dialogue varies from speaker to speaker. "I do not agree with you" does sound stilted and formal after your character has cried out "don't touch that" only moments before. But it does fit if your character is trying to be emphatic, probably because it reads slower. "I don't agree with you" works equally well and allows the sentence to flow. Personal choice, I don't think there is a rule covering this. Our writing has become a mirror to our speech, and since humans are characterized by lazy speech this it is to be expected. I just finished a book where the author deemed it proper to say "probly" instead of "probably." I understand, my own IM speech goes with "prolly" all the time which allows me to communicate and be abbreviated at the same time. I fear that this young generation of texting individuals will devolve the language even further. If that happens I would suggest any of us who post on AD will look like a bunch of frickin sages.

I am often reminded that many readers get so fixated on the small details in a story it becomes absurd, especially when they know it is fiction to begin with. Like many others, I have been reading right along with Cole's posts, absorbing the emotion and pathos of the story figuring I would comment when he is done. This is a fine story, mysterious in plot, so true to life in the confusion sown between father and son. I don't even care if the kid turns out to be straight, I have empathized with every moment of this young life. How little it seems that a detail I don't even recognize could disturb the read of such a wonderful story. And so I will continue to be amazed.

My father was a journalist for almost 32 years, most of them with the Associated Press. He was in Asian war zones, civil unrest in the Middle East, and one South American revolution...not a scratch on him, but he was scared silly on many occasions. I feel sad when I read something like this especially since the death is suspicious. Mexico is going to become an isolated, desolate country in the near future.

The Dude should take note...maybe we could get Lugnutz or Des to read aloud and post it on AwesomeDude radio. But it would take a story the likes of which I have not seen here...thank goodness. Fifty Shades of Gray does seem to come across as prose-titution in that short video clip...doubt if I will ever read it.

Sounds like fun...but I have no idea what you are talking about. I am already predisposed to think that the French are a bit strange, but those are all relatives I don't want to make public. I'm sure you will have to expound on your commentary to bring us all up to speed.

On the suggestion here, and the reviews I have read on some of the other Dale Peck books, I bought the Kindle version of Sprout around noon, only two hours ago, and I am already at page 65. Crap, I hate it when I find an author that won't let go of my imagination, especially when I have my own work to mind. This is a book you can fall into right away, and I have. The term "wicked imagination" must follow Mr. Peck around wherever he goes. It isn't just the story line but the presentation that grabs the reader. This is one of those "if only I could write like this" books. The emotional moments whip past surrounded with such absurdly fresh humor I have gone back several times just to review an entire sequence. And characters...wow. If any of these story characters are based upon real people then Mr. Peck must have selected them from a list of the really outrageous crazies he knows. But he fleshes them out with his wit and leaves his main character intact throughout. Can you tell, I like what I am reading. Put this book on your yes list. It may be three years old by now and that is probably why the title sounds familiar. Well worth the five dollar investment from Amazon. Dale Peck gets a B+ from me and I still have 200 some pages to go. So if you don't mind...I am going back to Kansas.

Don't be sorry! This is a fine example of what happens to our work after it gets posted. If you will notice, Nifty has now made it easier to copy and lift an entire story, or link it somewhere else...I did not appreciate that. But once it goes public anyone can use the stories for their own purposes. At least Queerschool is not obnoxious, unlike that European site (Ukranian I believe) that lifted some of my Nifty work and was selling porn on the same site along with sex toys. Bastards, nothing to be done about it, but I am not alone with this dilemma.

Several of us here have had our stories reviewed on the Queerschool site. The brief synopsis is usually fairly accurate and the only thing this school doesn't do is give each author a letter grade. The site does offer comments about the story and some of them are encouraging. I also have some issues with the photos of adolescent and pre-pubescent boys, although none are related to the posting about my stories. Some of those images are lifted from old nudist magazines and at least they might be legal, but just barely. As I had a character say in one of my stories: Once you are posted online you are out there...forever. If you Google the site and look at the offering there is a link to Age 12, clicking on that takes you right to one of my story reviews. Not exactly comforting I'm afraid. I wish they had asked.

I would venture to say that most of the authors here have at one time or another posted a story or two or ten to the Nifty site. But if you write enough sex scenes in the work then you reach a point where it becomes pretty much meaningless, at least in your own mind. Nifty is a good place for reader feedback since the minds reading there are so easy to please. Having exchanged mail with a dozen or so authors on the site (they don’t have a convenient forum) I felt an undercurrent of dissatisfaction among the group. Perhaps we were all tired of writing one kind of story for one kind of reader. But Nifty served a purpose. It allowed experimentation outside of the sexual content and I found it challenging my boundaries as a writer. I began writing in sixth grade, putting my gay feelings on paper. I even posted some of those to Nifty (forty years later) just to see the reaction. But those lessons taught me what I really wanted was to write something better, and so I moved my tent to another pasture. If you want to cut back on the sex scenes then try writing a story without them. Write the piece and where the characters should hop into bed to consummate the deal go on and skip to the emotional aftermath. Yes, it may leave a hole in your plot, but it won’t be as big as you might think. After the story is done then go back and see how little it will take to bridge those gaps. It might take a little sexual activity but who knows? I wrote Marathon Gold without any overt sexual feelings between my main characters, although there was a boyish masturbation scene early on. Around the adventure tale was another story of how boys become men and share an emotional tie akin to love. Those emotions served to replace the sex as a means of self-expression between the characters, and that was my point. So if you are determined to remove the sexual depiction then it needs to be replaced with something that allows the characters to express their feelings. A good piece of descriptive writing doesn’t have to include sex. After all, what new aspect of the act are you going to describe for us that we don’t already know? I always recommend the author’s focus should be on perfecting dialogue to bring out the hidden aspects of a character or situation. The right combination of spoken words can bring great insight to a scene for the readers, and perhaps give them a glimpse of what inspired the author’s thoughts. I believe most readers want to know where creative ideas come from. Cole Parker is a master of giving the reader all the emotional content needed to convey his point in a story. I think he would rather bake a pie than write a gratuitous sex scene for a cheap thrill. His writing is a fine example of why it isn’t necessary (I mean the sex not the pies). So don’t feel self-conscious about the sex scenes when you can always avoid going into massive detail. There are many here who will gladly work with you and offer their opinions on what you have written. Just put your fingers back on the keyboard and let it rip. Good authors are hard to find, but critics come in piles. I keep mine in the back yard next to the pile of horse poop and it is often hard to tell the difference between them.

Pie Day...October...California? Perhaps this is just after the marijuana crop is harvested, lots of munchies around that time of the year.

http://www.lights-camera-jackson.com/index.php I have touted this young man's talents before, but then Jackson Murphy is evolving. A pre-teen when he first began reviewing mainstream films, he now has a regular spot on telvision as a film critic, at least in his hometown. I became aware of him several years ago, back when he couldn't even attend a PG-13 film by himself. But then I also like animated films and that has been his specialty since the beginning. Now I believe the boy is fourteen and he has moved into reviewing a larger variety of films, although he is just as critical. He assigns letter grades and is a tough sell for some of the dribble out of Hollywood these days. But when he first began his website I noticed he was a member of one of those "focus on the family" associations. I complained, as did many others it seems, that he wasn't doing his reputation any good with that affiliation, and lo...he dropped out of that. Yes, Jackson is probably a nice little church going young man, but he has talents far beyind that which I find informative. So if you want to see what a film is all about (he doesn't review everything) then check out his website. I am off to the theater to see the new Pixar animated film "Brave," Jackson liked it, I should too.