Paul

Strikes me as a pivotal chapter, plot- and character development-wise. We're get a glimpse, first-hand, at some of Alex's issues, previously just hinted at through comments from his friends. For all of his confusion over it, the incident provides an opportunity for Brandon to reveal important sides to his character. While there's no open confrontation between Nick and his father, we see that he can demonstrate some level of defiance. All of that makes me eager to see how things play out. Sort of like we've come to the first major hill on a roller coaster ride. On another level, though, I'm eager to see how EleCivil, as an author, handles it all. Lord knows that some of the elements here, at least superficially, are familiar ones. The hell-breathing fundamentalist gay-basher preacher pops up frequently, and usually interchangeably, from story to story and author to author. If there's anything he ain't, EleCivil ain't interchangeable, so I look forward to his take on this. On a minor proofing or structural note, I did get momentarily disoriented during the exchange between Brandon and Alex toward the end. After Alex's "Are you saying I'm easy?" there are two separate lines of dialog that seem partially redundant and, though they're separated as paragraphs and opening and closing quotes, both belong to Brandon. Reading straight through the first time, I got thrown off the track as to who was saying what. Maybe a revision that didn't get thoroughly cleaned up? There's a unique personal vision that comes through EleCivil's writing, something missing from a lot of otherwise competent online gay fiction. That's really what makes me eager for more.

Speaking purely as a reader, this kind of thing isn't unfamiliar at all, and if constructed properly, it never presents me with a problem in comprehension. Translation: if it's done right, I can understand it perfectly. Which is more than I can say about that article! Man, I thought the terminology in academic film criticism was arcane!

That's just a bad author. Oh, absolutely. I wasn't suggesting that as a way to surmount writer's block. Actually, when I read that, my jaw dropped.

Then there's the unfinished story I recent stumbled upon on Nifty. The author added a note that said something along the lines of "Hey guys, let me know how you want the story to go, OK? I'm running out of ideas."

Not quite, though they do serve a similar purpose. A ute is actually a passenger car body that's been modified to have a truck bed in the rear, where the rear seats and trunk would normally be. Sort of the reverse of an SUV, which is basically a truck modified into a passenger vehicle. Though they weren't called utes back then, these vehicles enjoyed a brief popularity in the USA in the 1960s, the Chevy El Camino being perhaps the most familiar. The research I did after reading the story took me to this site. I think they're pretty cool, and it's doubly cool that they're still being produced and are so popular.

Looks good; an intriguing concept that I look forward to seeing developed. Plus I had fun looking into what a "ute" is!

Assuming you don't have something personal to say to an author that only email would be appropriate for, what's the feeling about stating your general reactions to an author's story in email vs. in a public forum?

Maybe he's trying to tell us he's been proclaimed Emperor and just got himself a new wardrobe. Hmmm... there's an idea for you: Gay versions of Hans Christian Andersen fables. Some of the titles have possibilities: The Saucy Boy The Wicked Prince Everything in the Right Place The Old Bachelor's Nightcap Two Brothers The Farmyard Cock and the Weather Cock The Bishop of Borglum and his Warriors Beauty of Form and Beauty of Mind Granted, some of these require a bit of imagination, or maybe just a dirty mind...

It's messages like this that make me think you're actually living one of your stories.

http://www.iomfats.org/storyshelf/hosted/arram/ A series of linked stories that should be read in the order as listed on the site. Note that the second, "Terry and the Preachers," ongoing here, is actually complete on Nifty, as part of "Toward the Decent Inn" in the college section. At present, it appears that the third "Henry" story, "Henry in Finkle Road" is still in the process of being written. There's an ongoing "big" romance at the center of the first few stories, whose protagonists progress from college age through young adulthood, but whose lives continue to touch the evolving series of characters and their adventures. There are a wealth of fascinating, vivid characters who range from the affectingly romantic and sympathetic to the hatefully despicable, and a few who are downright hilarious. The narratives involve such varied themes as academic life, power, wealth and politics, English and European history and religion, even ghosts and spirituality. Besides the relationships that are at the core of the stories, there's a goodly amount of action/adventure. Locales range from rural English villages and schools to Southern California, from eastern USA college campuses to fictional European monarchies. Though the characters face their share of tragedies and heartbreak along the way, there's also triumph and fulfilment. The mood isn't angst-ridden, but on the other hand, neither is it frivolous; quite thoughtful when it needs to be. The large cast and varied storylines are handled skillfully, and you never lose your way. Scene-setting is evocative and descriptive when necessary; well-paced, nothing seems padded or extraneous. Sex, when presented, is integral to the narrative and characterizations, and not gratuitous. In the end, it's an excellent mix of characters whose lives you're eager to follow, and plots you're eager to watch unfold. A real page-turner for me. Very professionally accomplished, in the best sense of the term.

I'm looking forward to it. Kyle is one of those endearing characters who possess a great deal of charm, but doesn't realize it, and finds himself floundering. Another thing he doesn't realize is that he has a great deal of inner strength. You just can't help rooting for the guy.

OK, I confess. It wasn't my car keys that I once found in the refrigerator; that just sounded more dramatic, and to be honest, at least plausibly sane. Anyway, I have every expectation that someday I will find them in there. What I found, and what I'd been going crazy looking for, was my coffee scoop. And it wasn't the refrigerator, it was the freezer compartment. Now, were I to attempt an explanation as to why the loss of a coffee scoop, and in particular that coffee scoop was so important to me, I'd start sounding like a character from an EleCivil story, only not nearly as interesting.

Don't start worrying until the first time you find your car keys in the refrigerator.

Another positive comment here, by me. Very engaging characters. Looking forward to following them. Thanks!

Thanks for creating such an interesting character and writing with such wit and imagination.

Looks like I might wind up liking it even more than "Leaves and Lunatics," which is saying something. This boy has a real gift.

Could be a browser default text size thing. When I zoomed to 150% I could read it OK. And I'm only 350-1/2 years old.

I wonder if you'd care to expand a bit on what makes for "literary" quality in general, and also how it applies specifically to Buffet's work, "Alpha Male" in particular. I admit to having a problem separating my reacation to the thematic content of the story from its writing style. Perhaps you could address this in another one of the forums, if this isn't the appropriate one. Still feeling my way around here. Thanks.

Would you like to expand on that? What it is you like about this story?

This one still gets me to a page that says it was updated Sept 6: http://www.stormnation.com/

Thanks to all the previous posters who said everything I would have.

OK, just to clarify here... an anachronism is something that doesn't fit the time period in question, not the other way around. An example: President Lincoln goes to Ford's Theater that night to see "Cats." Here's an example of how an author (though in this case, the example being a film, I should probably say auteur) doing a period piece can drop in an unfamiliar concept with no explicit explanation: In "Barry Lyndon," Stanley Kubrick (a noted stickler for detail and authenticity) depicts a duel which later turns out to have been a sham. Unbeknownst to both parties, the "winner's" pistol had been loaded with what is described in dialog as "tow." For years, and after many viewings of the film, I had no idea what the heck "tow" was. It was only recently that I discovered that "tow" was flax or hemp fiber. But the lack of explanation in the film made no difference in conveying what was going on; the context made it plain that a false bullet had been used. The use of the contemporaneous term "tow" served to heighten the feeling of period authenticity, even for those of us who, at the time, had no idea what the stuff was.

Ah, truly a man after my own heart. I fully understand the need to make some alterations in language for the sake of comprehensibility to modern audiences, but at the same time it's a slippery slope. The more that's changed to conform to modern ideas, tastes, feelings, worldviews, the more we're separated from the period depicted. And the whole idea of a period piece is to get an idea of what living was like in that period. At least for me, anyway. I have no interest in characters wandering around in Elizabethan, or Victorian or Edwardian garb while their behavior and attitudes are purely 21st-Century. It's a big gripe I have against so many period-piece films made thiese days, and it makes most BBC adaptations of the past 15-20 years well-nigh unwatchable. Here's an example of what I think you're talking about. I got hooked, and easily, on Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series (source for the film "Master and Commander"), and wound up on a non-stop binge that took me through all 20 volumes. What kept me going, besides the exquisite characterizations and thoroughly involving narrative, was the feeling I never stopped having that this must have been the way it was. This is how people talked, how they felt, how they saw the world and their place in it. And how did O'Brian achieve this? By getting all the details right. How do I know he did, that every single detail was 100 percent correct? Of course, I don't. But never once did I come across anything that even seemed suspect; just a handful that were, or maybe even one, would have colored my whole outlook, spoiled the sense I had of looking through a window to another time. The fact that O'Brian took his work seriously meant that I was able to as well.

Ouch! Duly chastised, he hangs his head in shame. Still, the customary willfulness of the miscreant cannot help but surface, albeit timorously. I'd be interested in seeing Flexner's cite(s) for "put on" from that period, to see if they're fully consonant with what you might call the "Laugh-In era" sense of the phrase. Maybe it's just because I find it difficult to place Mark Twain and Dick Martin at the same spot on the drollery scale.

I was originally going to post this in the Spelling & Grammar Q&A sticky, since we seemed to be heading in the direction of usage that changes over time ("all right" vs. "alright"), but I figured the following is too much of a drift. I've always been quick to notice anachronisms in period pieces, be they films or fiction. My favorite most recently was in the 2001 film "The Cat's Meow," set in 1924. There's a close-up shot of pages in William Randolph Hearst's address book, and most of the addresses have ZIP Codes. This, of course, is a danger for younger writers when attempting to set stories in times before their own. Not only can facts and details be gotten wrong, so can language. For example (and I intend no disrespect for the Awesome One, it's just that he's provided a convenient target, one that set off my anachro-dar the first time I saw it): The Dude's sig, which is attributed to Mark Twain: "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." Now, exaggerated reports of his death notwithstanding, the guy did die in 1910, and I believe the use of the phrase "put on" in the sense of deceiving or kidding did not come into use until much later in the last century. In addition, though there are zillions of references to this "quotation" floating around cyberspace, I've never seen an authenticated source for it. Also, http://www.twainquotes.com/ doesn't mention it at all. I didn't mean to rain on anybody's parade, but I think that's a useful example of what to look out for if you're going to be writing a period piece. Or scrounge up some old codger for your editor.