Altimexis

I sent an email to him at the address listed on the site, but haven't heard back. I'll try resending it from my Gmail account, as some people have trouble receiving mail from Yahoo!. It may be that he just isn't monitoring his author account anymore. I'll let everyone know if I hear back.

I was about to suggest once again that we attempt to contact former CW authors who might have an interest in generating new content. Then it dawned on me that one of my favorite CW authors, Grant Bentley, is a high school teacher. Even if he isn’t willing to take over running CW, he might be a good person to provide input into the future direction of the site. He might also be able to recommend someone who could become the next Colin.

My sentiments too. CW fundamentally changed when Colin took it over, yet we knew him and could trust him to remain true to Codey’s vision. Whoever takes over will again change the nature of the site in fundamental ways. Arch Hunter is a young author at GA and not yet a Promising Author, although he certainly has the potential. He might not want to take on the responsibility of editing a site until he’s more established. I’d be more interested in him as an AD author who might eventually move into the role of managing CW. Perhaps therein lies the best approach - recruiting new talent to AD to carry on the legacy of AD and CW. GA is huge and it takes luck to build stature as an author. AD offers a more individual approach.

My nephew and his husband live in a suburb of Columbus, just inside the path of totality. He sent me a grainy smartphone photo taken from his driveway. He didn’t have to travel anywhere or pay thousands of dollars to stay in a fleabag hotel. He just stepped out the door and looked up. Lucky dog!

I briefly considered visiting my family in Indy for the eclipse, but I'd rather jump out of an airplane than stay with my sister. As I'm still recovering from prostate surgery, traveling any distance isn't an option just yet. Besides which, with greater than 60% cloud cover this time of year, the odds of seeing totality were only fair. As it turned out, the view from Indy apparently was spectacular. The eclipse as seen from Indy is on the front page of The NY Times. So I settled for watching a 90% partial eclipse from the terrace of my apartment in NYC. I bought a $20 pair of Wirecutter-recommended solar binoculars and a $14 solar filter for the tele-zoom lens on my camera. As thin, wispy clouds started to move in, I wondered if there would be anything to see, but the clouds remained sparse and high in the atmosphere until just after the eclipse ended, at which point the sky quickly became overcast. We were lucky. I would've loved to have seen totality. I would've loved to have seen the corona with my own eyes. I've never seen a total solar eclipse and the next opportunity won't happen until I'm around 90. That said, seeing a 90% partial eclipse was impressive as hell. My photos don't look like much, but they clearly show the sun as a tiny, thin sliver of light against a dark sky. The solar binoculars were one of the best purchases I've ever made. While most people saw the sun as a tiny dot through solar glasses, I saw the crescent sun, magnified by several times. The binoculars were so powerful that it took a lot of patience to actually find the sun in the sky, but I learned to aim it first and then look, with good results. Today was a real celestial highlight. All said, the most spectacular celestial happening is one that very few people are able to see anymore. Just getting away from the city lights that seem to be ubiquitous, even in the countryside, and the view of the night sky that awaits is nothing short of spectacular. I remember as a kid, looking up at the sky from my back yard in Indy, before there were streetlights in the suburbs, and seeing the Milky Way stretching across the sky. Going camping was even better. Nothing made me feel so tiny and insignificant. There are still places like that, but they're fewer and harder to find, even in the National Parks. I do hope one day to see the Southern sky. I've been to Sydney, Melbourne and Buenos Aires, but all suffer from extreme light pollution. I hope to get back to Australia and New Zealand within a few years, and this time I'll have to be sure to visit places where the sky's still dark.

Don't look at me. I taught and mentored medical students, residents and graduate students. Although maturity was sometimes in short supply, they were adults.

I love the way you guys so quickly pulled together so much useful info. Depending on where one lives, the public library is an invaluable resource for young gay teens. Nearly all libraries offer on-line books that can be 'checked out' for free. Offer void where prohibited, such as in Florida, Texas and other red states. When Cody founded CW, he was himself a teen and he wanted to provide a resource for young gay teens and even tweens to access age-appropriate stories they could relate to - stories that could give them hope. The overriding imperative was that the content be sufficiently benign that it could get through most nanny filters. In other words, young teens could access content, even if their parents had blocked content from explicit sites. Sadly, Cody was a very sick teen who gave us so much, which is why a Codey memorial must remain a significant part of the CW site. Much has changed since CW began and being an out gay teen is much more acceptable than was the case when I was growing up. However, the fact that some states are banning any gay-themed content from schools and libraries reminds us how fragile our gains really are. There's still a role for CW, but accessing it could be more daunting than ever. The one positive is that most kids today access content on their smartphones rather than by computer, and most parents don't even bother to even activate the content filters that are available in Android and iOS. Most parents don't even bother to check on which sites their kids visit on their smartphones, which is pretty scary, actually. With the spotlight on social media, most parents wouldn't even think to check their kids phones browsing history, but there's still a risk. I hate to sound like an Apple snob, but the best advice I can give to kids who have the choice is to buy an iPhone and use a privacy-oriented browser such as Brave or Duck Duck Go. Antitrust issues aside, Apple makes their money from selling hardware. Google gives Android away and makes money from amassing and selling data. Most people don't seem to care but gay kids have reason to. Since kids don't always have a choice in what phone they use, helping kids avoid peril in using their phones is a must. But I digress… I'd love to see CW revitalized and made more modern, with moderated, high-quality gay-themed stories for young teens and perhaps late tweens. Our more recent approach of allowing AD authors to post the same content to both sites won't meet that standard, so we may need to ask authors to go back and edit their stories appropriately for posting on CW. The most important thing is to have a young adult, preferably in their late teens or early twenties, take charge of CW and to make the site their own. I'm days away from turning 68 and although I'd like to think I'm too immature to be this age, I can't relate to kids who have grown up in today's world. I'd be happy to mentor someone who's willing to take this on, but I'm not the right person to run the site. We're never going to find a new Top Dog to run CW by posting the request here. We need to reach out to other sites and maybe even social media to recruit someone with the right demographic and skill set. Perhaps we could read some of the existing content out there and identify promising authors who might be interested in taking this on.

I think that by definition, most high school students are sociopaths in a sense. Kids tend to be self-centered, but there's a key difference between a true sociopath and an ordinary teenager. Sociopaths are incapable of relating to how other people feel. Kids are obsessively focused on what other kids think of them. I think Dante, for example, might well be a sociopath, with the others falling under his spell. Without getting into the abusive nature of the American criminal justice system, had a group of high school boys cornered an underage girl, taken her against her will to a clearing and stripped her naked, I think that the lot of them would be looking at some serious jail time, either in Juvie or possibly in adult prisons. This is well beyond the level of parole with counseling and community service. I doubt the situation would be treated any differently when the victim is a boy. The first priority is to find Perry and keep him safe until the 'authorities' arrive. When faced with actual arrest, I think there's little doubt that the kids will turn on each other. The parents will lawyer up to the extend they can afford it, and those kids not directly involved will plea to lesser charges in return for testifying against Dante and those most directly involved. I can't say how things would be handled in Vermont as opposed to New York, but my guess would be that those directly involved would be tried as adults and those on the periphery would be treated as juveniles, with the possibility of having their record expunged when they turn eighteen. However, I'm not an attorney, so what do I know? I do think the school will have some serious soul-searching to do. Let's hope Perry's okay.

Thanks for a wonderful story, Cole. The French horn is one of my favorite instruments - to listen to, obviously - not to play. It's not as brassy as the trumpet nor as bold as the trombone. It's far more versatile than the tuba. Although seldom played in the foreground, when it is, it shines like no other wind instrument.

Nico, Thanks for posting a bit about your background. As you've gathered, a lot of the authors here are 'seasoned' and so you and I are among the young set. My 68th birthday is coming up the middle of next month. Whereas you've lived your entire life within a radius of less than a hundred miles or so, I've lived on the east, west and north coasts, plus two months in Houston. The smallest city I lived in was a summer spent at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, when I was sixteen. I grew up in Indianapolis and have lived in the SF Bay area, Washington DC, Rochester NY and Detroit. Now, I live in Manhattan. I've been to every state in the U.S. except for N. Dakota, and to many cities around the world. Many of my experiences from my travels have made their way into my stories. As a fellow author, I love hearing about other people's thought processes and how they construct their stories. Clearly, Incident is a character driven story and if you write much as I do, the characters you created are largely responsible for the direction the plot ultimately takes. Given well-constructed characters, the story literally writes itself. Not that you didn't have an idea of where you wanted to story to take the reader at the outset, but the interaction of the characters you create often dictates how the reader will get there. In my stories, that can lead to unexpected detours, but then real life is like that. You've indicated that your characters' motivations are never fully explained and I like that. Although all of my characters have a backstory, keeping hidden secrets isn't my forte. I'm more like a magician, doing things in clear sight while using distraction to keep the reader otherwise occupied. It's fun to bury clues, but keeping things just under the surface as you do is much more interesting. Keep up the good work, and I look forward with trepidation to the coming incident. A.

Perry might as well have said, ‘This is where I intend to commit suicide.’ Unfortunately, Ross is too young to realize it. For all the misgivings he has about ratting out his former friends, this is way beyond what he and his accomplices can handle. That said, Perry would never again trust Ross if he went to the authorities, who might not even believe him.

Another excellent chapter. I wouldn’t have thought of auditioning with the Williams piece, but it does sound challenging. For those who are interested, here’s John Williams himself conducting his composition, The Cowboys: Overture.

I inherited my brother's AF set. He's 10 years older than me but autistic. I think my parents bought it for him, thinking the circular motion would calm him. Unfortunately, as was the practice in the fifties, he was institutionalized when he was 5. His story's outlined in my story, Hiking Clifty Falls with Cliff. The reason I'm bringing this up is that a model train set can be a real black hole for anyone who has the interest and the resources to invest in more than a basic setup. My parents didn't have the resources to buy more than a circular track with some fancy platforms and the like, so I ended up amusing myself by using the tools that came with my erector set to completely disassemble the locomotive, and then put it back together again, at the age of 7. Growing up, my next door neighbor's oldest kid had a very elaborate model train set that was everything I could've ever wanted, but he was a few years older than me and not interested in playing with a little kid. Later, he took up the drums and practiced with his band, right outside my bedroom window, keeping me up at all hours. Then he got a very low draft number and seeing the writing on the wall, enlisted. I know he made it back from Vietnam, but I long ago lost track of him. I don't think model trains are much of a hobby for kids anymore, although there are plenty of adults who attend conventions and shows, and collect rare items. I gather that Freddie's dad was one of those enthusiasts and he shared his hobby with his son. However, a model train addiction is hardly the way for an introverted kid to make friends. I once tried counting sheep to get to sleep. I gave up when I reached a hundred.

The ebook suggestion has come up before and everyone thinks it's a great idea, but no one has ever stepped up to the plate to make it happen. I do read online stories on the go on my smartphone all the time, and even write portions of some of my stories that way, so having an ebook format isn't relevant to me. I know for a fact that serialization started because most authors posted chapters as they wrote them - and it showed. Very often, they forgot things they wrote in earlier chapters and the result was something I can't stand - inconsistencies. Chris James did that all the time and even lost entire years out of his characters' lives. Even when I pointed it out to him, he refused to correct his mistakes. I know it was his prerogative, but how was I supposed to care about his writing if he didn't care? I long ago decided to write the first draft of my stories in their entirety before posting the first chapter, but serialization allowed me to post them while my editors were fixing my typos.

It seemed pretty obvious from the beginning that some of Ross' friends are full of themselves and not worth having as friends. It's unfortunate for Ross that the rest of them went along with the trouble-makers in lockstep, rather than at least listening to Ross' arguments. Of course they had a history before Ross came along, and this is high school, we're talking about. I just wish Ross had pointed out that sexual harassment isn't just between a man and a woman. There have been plenty of lawsuits brought by men against other men, regardless of sexual orientation. Sometimes it's hard to do the right thing when it involves losing friends. That said, true friends will respect that, even if they don't feel they can be as outwardly supportive as they'd like to be. I have a feeling that in helping Perry, Ross will realize far greater rewards than sitting with a table of snobs.