aj

A-ha! Yet another answer to questions that have tormented our gentle readers until this very moment.

We could try it... I have a friend named Grace who doesn't like religious bigots and is a black belt in Tae Kwan Do.

This was a great little backstory for me, as I recently read Bryce and the villains of that piece are the same as the villains of this piece. I agree with the others, and I can explain why, despite the good plot, this wasn't a terribly successful story: telling, not showing. This felt more like a character study, or a developmental piece for the novel. cheers! AJ

I have finished the third edit on chapter 43... and changed things right up until the very last note. It's a helluva chapter: I defy anyone to read this chapter without a lump in your throat and maybe a tear in your eye. Really good stuff! AJ

I don't have children myself, but I found it enormously satisfying when I stopped being only my parent's child, and began to learn to love them as best friends as well. It opened my relationship with them into so many new dimensions, and enriched my relationship with them so much...

Well, after many years and many tears, they did it... The congress finally repealed DADT today. No longer will gays who wish to serve in the military have to lie about who they are. A good day, for gays in the military.

We have that in common, debeagle. I learned to drive in my parent's VW Superbeetle, and have loved VWs ever since...but only the really old ones. The first car I ever owned was a VW Thing... gods, I loved that car. It was just so contrary, so incredibly reverse chic. It was ugly, uncomfortable and unsafe, and I plan on buying another one as soon as I can find one at a decent price. There's a guy a few blocks from here that has a '73 parked in his driveway....*sigh* Anyway, I read 'Wayward Son' and loved it. Very much looking forward to the next chapters. cheers! AJ

I am a huge fan of Dabeagle's work. One of the early stories that I read and really got me hooked into this genre is tale about the young man and his friend working on the old volkswagen squareback...forget what they called those officially. Good memories and a lot of anticipation as I go to read this new tale. cheers! AJ

Hmm...perhaps you're right. It would be a stronger story if they did go out fighting, because it would make it less 'happy endings for all,' and we know that that kind of 'everyone survives and lives happily ever after' is not a Jamie trait. I'll have to think more about that. cheers! AJ

If I were to speculate, and it would be pure speculation because I don't read the chapters a whole lot before you lot do, and Jamie and I don't confab on IM over the plot like we used to, I'd say that we won't really know what happened to the Trio until we reach the other side of the barrier. I think there's gonna be a lot of stuff over there that's gonna surprise hell outta the churchy types... AJ

I'm really enjoying Pertinax's college dude tale... the guys are hot and fun to hang with, and there's just enough spice in the air to make it a fun ride. Cheers! AJ

I wanted to mention that I was fairly blown away by chapter 39. It was by far the most technically ambitious chapter Jamie has undertaken to date, and it was handled with precision and grace. My hat's off to him for that accomplishment. I just finished the first edit of chapter 40 and sent it off to J. It's kind of a shorty, though it has a lot of emotional impact, and my newest 'fave characters,' the Trio, has a solid presence. Like others, I have been wondering (though perhaps unlike others, I'm also worrying) about what will happen to the Trio. I guess we'll all find out together. cheers! aj

/e Boadiceas stares at you with disapproval /s "Who's life are you calling stupid, pal? You may think it's 'just a game' but it's my life. /rude Yes, I know the addiction. It's like living in an interactive novel...very, very seductive for those of us who like to make up our own worlds and characters. The only criticism I would make is a content problem, and nothing to do with grammar or first and third person or any of that. All that stuff can be fixed relatively easily. The problem that I see is that while the prose is lovely, the piece you've given us is more like an outline of a story than an actual story. There's a couple minutes of showing the scene in the beginning of the piece, and then you go to telling us about what the guy is feeling and thinking. I think there are two problems with this: one, you don't have much of anywhere left to go, since you've already explained the story. and two, we miss the 'unfolding' of the story as it is revealed by what the character does and in slow degrees we start to really get what is going on. I think you said this was chapter one of a novel, right? So you have room enough and time to really show us what kind of guy this person is by how he lives his days, where he goes and what he thinks as he's fixing his meals to eat next to his keyboard...well, you see what I mean. You have a knack for beautiful language. It's clear that you have the poet's love for the feel of good language on your tongue, so you've a whole lot of what it takes to be a writer. keep going on this - I believe it's got the bones of an excellent story. cheers! aj

Hello everyone - I feel that I owe all of you faithful readers of TSOI a bit of an apology. The holdup in the work has been exclusively my fault, as the fact is that Jamie has several chapters already written and waiting for my attention. I could tell you all about trying to get one house ready to sell and trying to buy another at the same time, about jobs gained and lost and people that i care about losing their minds - literally. It has been a hellish mess for the last 8 or 9 months, and the circumstances have left me very little time for editing. The fact is that the last many months have been a time of extreme transition for me, and I've just been trying to stay on top of the wave of change and not get buried by it. However, I am beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel. We're in the new house now - all seven of us and three dogs - and beginning to do the work that will make it a beautiful place to live. While I have not found a permanent job yet, I have a temp contract in place and the possibility of something longer term in the works, and I'm working hard on managing my friend's illness as best it can be managed. I think that there may be a little time left at the end of the days (at least some of 'em) for me to go and live in Jamie's world for a little while, and that will be a very good thing. Again, I apologize for the lengthy delays. cheers! aj

And if they're hiding under the bed, it needs a re-write? lol cheers! aj

Just read the opening chapter of James' new novel, and I'm impressed! If you haven't read it yet, get on it...it's good stuff! cheers! aj

Hey JMS - Congrats on taking the leap into the beautiful addiction! I'd be happy to take a look at what you've written and offer some commentary, if you're interested. You can send it to joesdoga at yahoo dot com. cheers! aj

Haven't been around for awhile, but I saw this tonite and wanted to share some thoughts. I think this is headed in the right direction. I love that the items that show the character of the narrator are included in the smallest details: "Big enough to eat bad kids and ride to school." I love the idea of the role reversal in the human/feline relationship. I know that people think I'm just trying to be cute when I say that I'm lucky enough to be allowed to live in the house that the dogs run, but it's pretty much true. When I was a child, we had a cat named Marmalade who still exemplifies the maternal spirit for me...she was the best mom I've ever seen, and I was her child as much as her kittens were. In spite of all the dumb things kids do to their pets (cut their whiskers off, suck their tail up in vaccuum hoses, you know the drill), she loved us without reservation or condition. I'm looking foward to more of this stuff, JS. aj

It sounds, Cole, like you and your editor on not in synch with regard to your intentions. I have said before that in any author/editor relationship, the editor is the logistics expert, not the artist. We're like the support team that makes sure the story gets to its readership in a form that is comprehensible and enjoyable, not the guy who creates the story. It is not our place to attempt to alter the intentions of the author and re-create the story into what we might have written. If you have explained the effect that you are attempting to create with the unusual grammar/spelling/other mechanics that you are choosing to employ, and your editor is just not feeling it, then you have to make an executive decision, and your editor needs to be able to live with that. If that is not possible, then some parting of the ways will have to happen, whether it's just on this particular tale or in your joint work altogether. It could well be that what you need is more sets of eyes seeing the work and further opinion on what is being offered, and I would be more than happy to throw my two cents into the debate. If you'd like to send me the work in question, I'd be happy to beta read for it, and offer whatever analysis I can come up with. cheers! aj

And a far better way, I think. I had a somewhat similar experience when I was a very young man, here in Seattle. I was working in a restaurant, the very first that i ever cooked in. The head chef was a campy, screaming queen named Jeffrey. He recognized that I was a very innocent young man, without a clue about life in the gay community, and he took me under his wing and was very kind and nurturing. He could have exploited me very easily, but he chose to teach me how to cook, how to fight off the despair of loneliness and how to wait for the right time to express the needs and desires that I had experienced for so long. He told me almost the very same thing that the older man in your tale tells the protagonist: You're going to make some man very happy some day. I will always cherish his kindness to me. cheers! aj

You're a very compassionate man, Des. Personally, I come at this from a public health point of view: such people form a vector for a sickness that has reached epidemic proportions, that effects not only their own lives but those of everyone around them: intolerance and hatred. All our efforts to cure this illness have gone for naught, so my feeling is that there is only one solution: quarantine. It is my belief that we must move the last few sane, loving people out of texas - Blue, I have room in my house for you and your mother already set up and ready to go - and then move all those infected with bigotry and hatred to the state of texas and place a high tech fence with proper border patrols around the perimeter. This is, I believe, the only way to prevent their sad and debilitating illness from infecting the currently healthy populations. cheers! aj

I was in my room-mate's room, watching the results come in on PBS...I have a great deal of respect for Jim Lehrer, and so I was watching him announce results. It was a good night, marred only by the passage of Prop 8 in CA and the other two bits of garbage in AZ and FL. It saddened me to see the overwhelming support that prop 8 received in the black community in CA, but I guess shit runs downhill. From oppressed to oppressor in one easy step...do I sound a little bitter? sorry. cheers! aj

I got stuck in the elevator at work just the other day...was heading down a floor to go home (my bike lives in the garage at work when I'm taking care of old folks), so I got in, pushed the button and...nothing. all the buttons completely nonresponsive. i knew that this had been happening from time to time, so I didn't panic...tried to call out with my cell phone and couldn't get reception in the elevator shaft. used the emergency phone, but it doesn't allow one to talk, just sends a pre-recorded message to the front desk. I was dressed in my cold weather biking clothes, so I started sweating. I had just worked a double shift, so I was tired as hell and decided that the thing to do was just curl up and take a nap. Sadly, before I could lay down the elevator restarted and delivered me to the basement. cheers! aj

So the AD birddog has sniffed out yet another diamond in the rough for possible inclusion to the site. This one is a formulaic high school romance by a first time writer, Joe Parker. He states that it was really just a little story that he wrote for his boyfriend, who then convinced him to post it to Nifty for public consideration...though it took two years of nagging to get him there, lol. Since posting it, the author has received about 600 email communications about it, which means its got something going for it that captures people's attention. He's actually a little freaked by all the attention it has received... In my opinion, what has attracted all the attention is the author's eye for detail and dialogue. He has a very deft touch with these parts of the tale. The plot, as stated earlier, is fairly formulaic and includes some of the cliche`s that are usually the equivalent of sudden death, but he handles them with such a fresh voice and approach that they are forgiven by most. The story will need the work of an editor. The author freely admits that he doesn't edit before he posts, and that there are some typos and punctuation errors, but has stated that he will do a clean up before posting to AD, if that becomes a possibility. Take a look: http://library.gaycafe.com/nifty/gay/inces...-im-in-trouble/ cheers! aj