Steven Adamson

I've set my latest story around the St John's river/ intracoastal waterway and there's some boating/fishing references. I've experienced these things, but I'm not an expert, so I'd appreciate someone with some knowledge of either fishing or North FL life to give me a read through. I'm not looking to get every small detail right, but I'm hoping to at least avoid getting any big details wrong. PM me if you're willing to help out.

Mr. Whilickers did a bang up job and the submission was made on time. Sadly, the publisher went bankrupt a few weeks later, taking the planned alternate history anthology with it. I don't even know if they got around to reading my submission. (This kind of thing happens a lot with small press fantasy. In fact, my Hesperus story publisher got bought out and the anthology that the story was due to be part of was canceled until the editor got another publisher to step in.) I still have the story. At 10000 words, it's too long for most commercial publishing. I may post it to Awesomedude, but I was looking at it recently and I'm still unhappy with the opening, so I've put it on my workbench for later.

True story: As a teen I also spent many a day fishing, all day long, gone from all parental view. I also usually went fishing with the same two guys, a couple of really cute brothers. Hmmm. And yes, just like the guy in the story, all we ever actually did was fish.

Sometimes parents can be a little too supportive...

Wandervogel, the blog, is eccentric and out there, the blogger in charge proclaiming his dedication to non-conformity, anti-authoritarianism and the environment, but he seems to mostly post about justice for teens who kill their parents. That seems like an odd crusade at first, but his primary argument is that juveniles get no justice when they are tried as adults and that prosecutors use the guaranteed convictions of these teens to grandstand by pushing for harsh penalties, with the effect of ruining the teen's lives. To that point, I'm well in step with the author. I've often felt that trying juveniles as adults was stage justice that did not serve the interests of society and Wandervogel backs up that idea with documentation of the experiences of teens in adult prison, the way the court system denies the teen suspects a proper defense and also how the public media is manipulated to create monsters out of what are most often scared, powerless individuals. After that, the blog gets into territory where I'm not convinced, but I am sympathetic. The focus is not on gangbangers or even bullies or other violent youth. Teens who kill their parents Wandervogel claims are almost always from abusive homes or other dire circumstances and the murders should be treated as desperate acts of escape rather than heinous crimes. This is all controversial and I wanted to bring up the blog for discussion for a couple of reasons. 1st is that we recently had the story 'Wandervogel' posted here at AD and so when the blog name Wandervogel showed up in my google search results I perked up and I think just the coincidence warrants a mention. But second is that I think the issue of juvenile justice, whether you agree with the blog's analysis or not (or by half) is a worthy topic of discussion. The first thing I'd recommend anyone read at the blog is the experiences of Nathan Ybarra, who killed his mother when he was 16 and claims he was abused: http://wandervogeldi...e-adult-system/ I've only just skimmed the archives of the blog myself, reading about the famous King case from a few years back in Florida which I remember from the news, but there seems to be a deep vein of stuff there for cogitation.

Awesomdedude is the new library.

I thought Rage was taken from publication a long time ago. Back in the 80s I remember. King talked about it either in Danse Macabre or On Writing. Danse Macabre, BTW is a great breakdown of horror tropes and the reason Horror works and sells. I have read Summer of Night. Enjoyed it a lot. Simmons is technically a BETTER writer than King, but they could be brothers in the way the approach the idea of growing up, their knowledge of literary history and their sensibilities in general.And if Simmons is King's little brother, then Peter Straub is their big brother. Straub's 'Shadowland', about two 14 year old kids spending the summer at the home of an evil magician is one of my all time favorite books. What I remember about reading King's 'It' at age 11 is how unalarmed I was by the process. I was alarmed by the things portrayed, like abusive parents and racist bullies, and a whole town going vigilante etc that I hadn't encountered in my reading before, but I was excited in a positive way to be reading about this stuff. My mother, a few years later, would worry that Stephen King would twist my mind and wonder why I couldn't read about nicer things.(I can't imagine why she was worried, since I grew up very normally with no violent or creepy tendencies.). I think reading 'It' was for me similar to the experience many older people have when reading 'Heart of Darkness' for the first time, or 'Clockwork Orange', where you feel like you've seen into the heart of darkness and you are glad you did, because you know what's there and are prepared to deal with it. In contrast, I once read a book as an adult called 'The Painted Bird' by Jerzy Kozinski about a boy experiencing the horrors of the Eastern Front in WW2. The alarming things I read in that book alarmed me so much that I haven't opened my copy of the book in 15 years. Reading Stephen King at 11 never did that to me, because I never felt like I was being emotionally drained as with Kozinski. In fact, I felt like I was growing emotionally while reading King at that age.

More from notalwaysright.com. Always be nice to your server. I couldn't help thinking though, that the story would have been better if the waitress had been a waiter and ended up hooking up with the brown-haired guy. It'd make a good start for an AD story...

John McCain. I'm surprised by the ruling. Many years back the supreme court ruled that a school could punish students who held up a sign saying 'Bong hits 4 Jesus' at a parade. The court said that schools are justified in banning speech that may be disruptive to the learning environment. I suspect that the drug reference was what swayed the justices there, but it set a legal precedent that students don't have speech rights even on very flimsy justifications of 'disruption' by the administration. If the principal/district wanted to pursue this T-shirt case, they could probably get it overturned, but I notice the news report said a settlement was reached which makes me think that the district decided not to fight and won't take it further.

"It' by Stephen King is the single most influential book of my life. I received it as a present when I was 11. Until that point I had read young adult detective stories, some war novels, fairy tales, bible stories and other good fiction, but nothing grown up. Soon after school closed for summer that year, I picked up the book. The plot in the book begins on the last day of school before summer. The cast for the 1958 half of the story are 11 too, same age I was. So I had this wierd parallel experience. I was enjoying my own summer, with friends and romping around outdoors and I'd come home at night and read some of 'It' also featuring 11-year-old friends romping around in summer. The plot was intricate and layered. The friendships just shone bright. Maybe not realistic in the sense of how strong they were, but bright as in an idealization of friendship and that was something I might have needed at that point, having only just embarked on the first deep friendship of my life at about the same time with no example to show me what I might be getting into. And the villain. Books like this, it always comes down to the villain. And this one is just a doozy. I was never scared reading the book. I saw the words 'terror' and 'horror' on the blurb at the back and kept waiting to be scared, but I was seeing it more like Sinbad fighting giants, as a monster adventure. But what a monster. The clown and his power of deceit was unlike anything I'd ever come across. The sense of magic and power in the world King created was somehow 'realer' than all the other books I'd ever read about wizards or pixies or princes and seemed far more dangerous and full of possibility than the novels about boy adventurers in the Congo and detectives foiling smugglers. I was always going to be a fan of supernatural 'horror' fiction. Like other aspects of my personality and taste, I could see that looking back. But 'It' got me to the heart of the matter earlier than my natural arc. It short circuited my growth and brought me straight to the good stuff. I read everything I could by Stephen King after that, coming eventually to other influential stuff like The Dark Tower, Salem's Lot, The Talisman and The Stand. And knowing where the itch was that I'd been looking to scratch my whole reading career, I could find more like his work - Alan Rodgers, Dan Simmons, Peter Straub, Eric van Lustbader... But it all started with 'It' that summer I was 11, reading about 7 other kids my age fighting the most monstrous and ancient evil imaginable, told be a man who understood at the most fundamental level how to tell a good story, to make you picture the people and what was driving them and how they moved in their world. King has lost some of the magic with his later stuff. Yes, the Dark Tower series derailed, and his editors stopped trying because they know his stuff is going to sell no matter what, but even on his worst day, he's stil clicking along better than most people.

Hardened, yes. Cynical? I didn't think so. We should definitely start a Stephen King thread.

Carnegie actually built the biggest public library all the way down here in Guyana too. I only used to for assignment research though, since their collection was lacking in the scifi department.

So cute and touching: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/02/26/boy-7-raises-more-than-30000-for-sick-friend/ Also, a budding writer, so one day he may be one of us here at AD, who knows?

"70% of voters under age 3o support gay marriage." That's from the article and it shows that the Republicans know the fight is over and the bigots lost. Equal marriage is a battle that's been decided. It's all over now save the screaming and the dying.

Most of the rest of the world is homophobic too. I'm guessing there's a lot of international members in the leadership council of the world body. Even though the US is technically a separate entity, I suspect that getting the votes to disinvite them over homophobia would be seriously unrealistic. I know the rep from my country wouldn't vote for it. Add to that most of the Caribbean countries, most of Christianized and Islamicised Africa, a chunk of Catholic South America, the religious middle east, probably Russia and a lot of Orthodox Christian Eastern Europe and that's a tough nut to crack.

First the link to check it out: http://webcomics.yao...ete_title_page/ Prologue and chapter one posted so far. If you need convincing, here's a few words to sell it. Red Hot is a teen superhero with fans and a team of superfriends. One day he covertly decides to check out a gay bar for the first time and bumps into the most dangerous supervillian in the world. Will the villain out him? Blackmail him? Just try to kill him? What I like about this book is it skips over origins. Red Hot is already established and so is his team. The heroes and villains all know each other, so there's no 'setting up'. It gets right to the part where the villain and hero accidentally meet. Or was it accidental? Maybe the villain is just being a villain. There's good ambiguity here. We meet villains with principles and hero vigilantes who endanger innocents. The strong characters are a big part of this book, especially the interaction between the two leads. They have that chemistry that is required to accept that they'd act the way they act. Woolfson is a good writer, whose dialogue is natural and develops the story, though he can be over wordy and pace things too slowly. The art is by a bona fide comic artist, so it's good and even creative at times with the angles. My only real problem is that with the once a week update schedule, this story looks like it'll take forever to reach the end. Also, Woolfson has his second comic available at the site. It's called Artifice and is actually complete, with more of a short story feel. Deacon, the lead in Artifice, has actually been named #34 sexiest guy in comics apparently. I'm not as impressed with Artifice because both characters seemed flatter to me and didn't seem to click in their interactions. Plus the dialogue was much too wordy and a bit overacted. I suspect 'Young Protectors' is a newer work because it's much better and doesn't have the faults of Artifice. I still recommend Artifice, btw. While I point out its faults, it's still a very romantic story with good tension and drama despite the predictable plot.

Yeah, I was screening a book for my nephews last night. They are at the age for the bad touch talk and the book was supposed to clarify the idea. Only problem is that the 'sleepover' incident in the book where the bad touch occurs isn't with any adult. It's one five year old trying to touch another. My first reaction was, damn this is stupid: It's just kids experimenting. It wasn't until the AFTERWORD of the book that the author explains the details of the real life incident that led to the book: The five year old 'molestor' tried trickery (All the cool kids do it), bribery (50 dollars!) and threats (I won't be your friend any more) and the victim did indeed feel pressured and uncomfortable to the point of locking himself in the bathroom to get away from it. I can't dismiss that as 'experimentation'. (I have a stron suspicion the agressive 5 year old had been in bad touch with an adult, and was maybe even playing Judas Goat that night, softening up the other kids for the adult's approach.). So, yeah, even if it's a 12 year old and a 13 year old or two 16 year olds, issues of consent and knowledge of personal limits is essential. In relation to the scouts, I'm not sure how it works exactly, but I assume there is seniority among the scouts, so one boy in a position of authority could force others to cater to him and that would suck. I don't have a solution, but I'm leaning towards more education on the issue for the scouts rather than more restructions, i.e. telling them that they are free to refuse rather than making refusal the default.

I'm picturing the love scene from Ghost, but with a robot instead of Whoopie Goldberg...

Just out of curiosity, were the US Scouts ever officially segregated? When did any official or unofficial segregationist policy end if it did exist? Who was the first black scout and scout master?

Another story from the same site: British People are alright.

But it's the *Onion*. We're not shocked at you getting mad, we're amazed you don't know the Onion is a spoof site. It's been a mainstay of internet humor for 15 years. It's like you confused the Daily Show for Good Morning America. [Covers ears in case Cole confesses he doesn't know the Daily Show.]

Cole, dude...

Wrestling (AKA Greco Roman wrestling) has been voted out of the Olympics starting 2020. I had trouble following the details of the procedure, but the decision isn't final yet. It doesn't look good, though, as 7 sports compete for one available spot. Most of the rationale comes apparently from the voters being concerned for revenue and loyalty to 'their' sport. Wrestling is one of the original olympic sports. Next to running, it's probably the most primal. It seems ridiculous that golf is voted into the olympics with racewalking at the same time wrestling is removed. As one writer at CNN put it, 'Hercules wept.' I suspect that in the end wrestling won't get cut because the cries of 'you sold out' will be much too bad PR for them. They value their false image of non-corporate, pure-sport event too much to let spark a controversy. Better by far for them to drop wushu, wakeboarding and baseball which won't draw such fire.

Sleeping in on Sunday morning. (Or Saturday morning or Wednesday night or a siesta on Friday afternoon depending on the locale)

Any word on if the scouts are changing their policies on atheists? I'm worried that they'll make a minor change to the gay policy and since us atheists are the most distrusted minority in the US, they'll get back their public and corporate support without any blowback for the exclusion of atheists. Not that worried mind you given the "arc of the moral universe" and all that...