The Mail Crew

Wow, I didn't even know I was actually helpful, Dewey. I'll soon have more free time, so I'll get back to editing TPW. I think I need to start back up with Chapter 10. Aaron

AJ, if Graeme sends out the story after we leave, I will get it at the beach house and read it, but I've promised the guys I WON'T do any editing of ANYTHING while we're on vacation. They would kill me. Aaron

Graeme, I don't think even I could track those interim steps. That involves several trips through on the computer, doing the red, then a printout after each go, followed by the red-pen trick on the hard copy. My final (almost) step is what my buds here call my "mumbling stage" where I pace around with a copy, reading certain passages and trying them in different ways. :? THEN, you get the final file with all the red in it. :D Aaron

Hi, This is Aaron. I'd like to take a stab at Graeme's little story. You all know that I've edited other things for Graeme, but I want you to know that I have not seen the story he offered. I hope there's no big rush on this, since I'm taking a break from editing June 9-19, and I'm booked up from now until June 9. I think Talon's suggestion is a good one. That would prevent any editor being influenced by the edits of another editor, which could unintentionally happen if edited results drifted in piece-meal to this forum. Aaron

This Editor?s Desk section is a great addition to AwesomeDude. First, I want to thank Graeme for his nice comments about my editing. He and I are learning together and we have fun haggling over some of my edits. And then we haggle even more if he edits my edits. :twisted: Am I an editor or a ghostwriter? I ask myself that question sometimes as I?m editing chapters for one particular author. I?ve edited almost 30 chapters for him, so far. After the first few chapters he no longer wanted to see the files with all of my red edits. He now just wants to see the finished product. It?s like he starts the work and I finish it, or ?make it work?, as he says. That?s fine with me, since I really like the guy and his stories, and I enjoy helping him make them work. About a year ago, I got some really nasty e-mails from someone who is not an author but who accused me of being a ghostwriter instead of an editor. He criticized my ?very high schoolish attempts at editing?. He had read some chapters of a story that had been posted at Nifty, and then read my re-edit of those chapters. He really upset me for a while, but I got over it. So, am I a ghostwriter in some instances? Is that cool, or is it not so cool? Do the definitions of ?editor? ? the subject of this thread ? sometimes include a bit of ghostwriter? Thanks, Aaron

This is Aaron, again. I want to thank all of you who wrote supportive comments about editing and editors, and your kind words about me. After re-reading this thread and after reading some e-mails I've gotten since my post, I do believe that AJ's comment was made in jest. Last night all of us were worried about a good friend who was to have a cancerous kidney removed this morning, and somehow I let that worry cause me to get "bent out of shape" -- as my dad would say -- by AJ's comment. I apologize to AJ, Jamie and anyone else who has taken offense to my post. BTW, that surgery was delayed until late this afternoon. Early news is that the cancer had apparently not spread and all malignancy was successfully removed. Time will tell. My time limitations keep me from reading all of the posts here, but I've just now read the TSOI May 5 thread, and I'm impressed, Jamie. Thanks for your accurate description of an editor's work. Thanks, Graeme, for your kind remarks. If it weren't for school and all my other activities, I'd be getting chapters back to you sooner. You're always patient, and I appreciate that. I also owe everyone an apology for changing the focus of the thread away from welcoming Naiilo, labels, etc. Welcome, Naiilo! Best regards to everyone, Aaron

This is Aaron. I know I can't speak for other editors, but as for me, I'm highly offended by that remark. It makes assumptions about all editors. I'm editing "New Brother" for Graeme, and I'm sure he'd be happy to tell you that my editing is not a "damn lazy" effort. In fact, thorough editing can sometimes be more effort-intensive than doing "all that typing". I also edit for other authors, and for one of them I probably spend more time editing that he spends writing (doing "all that typing"). I've read on other sites stories whose authors name and thank their editors. Sometimes I wonder if some of those editors are lazy, or even inept, but I always try to give them the benefit of the doubt, hoping that time limitations affect their editing. There are differences in effort level among editors, but how can you accuse any of us of being lazy? We editors are an under-appreciated lot. Right, Blue? Thanks for reading my rant, Aaron

Hi, everyone, Here's something we posted over at DeweyWriter's forum. We're not patting ourselves on the back, just want to share something good: Today we received a wonderful reply to an e-mail that Trey wrote last night to a 17-year-old student who lives in rural Ireland. We had noticed in our site statistics that he had linked to our ?Kayden? page in his blog. Today he wrote about us in that blog, and in the words of Eric, our resident ?bull in a china shop?, ?Hot damn! That?s what we?re all about. He?s got it right!? Check out A Different Shade of Normal. We can?t show the guy?s name, because he?s out to only a few select people, but he tells us he?ll be posting regularly to his blog, which he started only a few days ago. We really feel great every time we see evidence that someone is accepting himself or herself and feeling better about life. Keep it up, ADSF. The blogger?s e-mail address is shown in his profile, linked from his home page, in case you?d like to give him some encouragement. Cheers, Aaron, for The Mail Crew

This is Aaron of the crew. I want to thank Blue for starting this thead about my story and I thank everyone for your posts. James made my chest swell. :-) Input from experienced - and patient - authors (Grasshopper, Graeme, Dewey and Drake) helped me polish the story. Even after we posted it at The Mail Crew I kept changing it, which meant we had to repost it several times. I got some grief from our crew for that. :twisted: I learned during the writing process that although I knew in my mind the characters' thoughts and feelings, I at first was not revealing enough to the reader. Writing from an Australian point of view was a challenge. I'm really pumped about James thinking the story was written by an Australian. I'm getting e-mails from others who ask if I do or have ever lived in Australia. Another challenge was writing a story that has a character with my name. I'm actually more like the Will character and my partner Billy is more like the Aaron character, naughtiness included. In my frist drafts I reversed the names several times. Thanks again for all of your very kind responses, Aaron

Hi guys and girls, My name is David. I am the one "hopelessly straight" member of The Mail Crew. Eric has been my best friend since we were about 4 years old. Eric and Trey came out to me a little over 2 years ago and I was shocked. But I had been thinking Eric was ignoring me and taking up with Trey as a new best friend, so I was glad to know why. I admire all of these brothers of mine of the crew. They have helped a lot of kids and I am glad to be part of it. I handle most of the sh*t from straight guys who send hate mail but there is not a lot of that anymore. I know gay guys can help each other in a lot of ways even if they don't come out to the world. Gabriel is a fighter in his way and Drake and Graeme and others are fighters in their own ways. All of you have the same goal I think. Trey has a big plaque in his room that his dad gave him when he was 12 as a way to pump him up for football. It ended up helping Trey a lot after he came out to his parents when he was 15 and his dad rejected him. And now it helps the whole mail crew when things get tough. it is a quote from Theodore Roosevelt. I think all of you are showing that you are not cold and timid souls and I like that. Here it is from a site I googled: "It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the door of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." All I can say is keep up the good work you all are doing in your own ways. David p.s. Hope y'all don't mind hearing from a straight guy.

This is Aaron, for The Mail Crew. It is so awesome to see a thread like this. When we read Gabe's opening comments we were like, "Go, Gabe! You rock!" Then the replies started coming in, and then we were at the point of, "Go, Drake! You rock!" Then we came to, "Go, Codey! You rock!" Then everyone who has responded "rocked". I think I've just said that this thread is giving us a lot to think about. We get e-mail from around the country (and the globe), and we're learning from kids in all areas. Some kids thank us for being good role models, but few have complained about not having gay role models. They do express a distaste for the "in-your-face," flambouyant types that Codey mentioned, and they definitely don't see those people as gay role models. We like EleCivil's comments about role models. We're just living our lives, not playing roles. Good examples are always welcome, though. Gabe asked: "If you're a kid: Do you look up to the other gay people to see what's normal and how you should act?" In my case, when I was 13 I started to act like the stereotypical limp-wrist. That was because I knew only two gay kids, and they are just naturally effiminate. It will always be their nature. I thought I had to act that way, too, knowing my sexual orientation. Thanks to Trey and Eric of our crew (for starters) I learned differently, and dropped the act. I fear, though, that other gay kids are doing what I tried, just to feel like they're not alone. We do need more non-stereotypical gay kids and elders to guide them by example, wherever possible. We're fortunate to live in an area that is tolerant, probably because it's a rather isolated community near a large city, the little community comprised of affluent, well-educated people. We realize that if we lived in a different area, we probably would have had a much harder time starting that first e-mail group. (Codey, we were 14-16 then.) The idea spread to other schools and other states, and gave birth to our website. Gabe asked us about a month ago if we purposely stay under the radar. We explained to him that we do that because of promises to our protective parents. But, really, there's a good reason for staying under the radar that is not mainly safety-oriented. We're encouraging kids to start e-mail groups in their schools to get to know some of the non-stereotypical gay and lesbian students like themselves. There are lots of them, and they need local peer support, and if that support is under the radar they feel more comfortable. We in no way disparage the naturally effeminate gay guys or masculine gay girls; we just know they're a small portion of the whole picture. Trey's grandfather was born in 1941. He tells us that when he was a teen the word 'gay' wasn't associated with sexual orientation. He first heard the word used to refer to homosexuals when he was in college, starting in 1959. He says that homosexuals were "tolerated" in his teen and young adult years, and usually just thought of as being different. They were not targets of hate or abuse. But then came the standoff at the Stonewall Inn. That has been touted my some as a wonderful step forward. Was it, though, the beginning of the anti-gay backlash? The real beginning of homophobia as we know it today? Would the general population more comfortably accept us if they didn't paint the entire GLBT community as rainbow flag-waving, parading radicals? Just some rhetorical questions, not an attempt to stir up controversy or rain on anyone's parade. I'm rambling, and the guys are throwing ideas at me from all sides. We've spent a part of this school holiday reading and discussing this thread. This is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. When we're older, will there be a Gabriel Duncan Day? A Drake Hunter Day? A national holiday that celebrates a successful movement to bring equal rights to those of us who are different in one small part of our total being? Probably not. We're not marked by skin color as being different, so we're hard to spot, unless we fit the stereotypes. Most of us don't, and don't want to. We see good and valid points on both sides of the "war" debate in this thread. Our heads are spinning from all of this. We appreciate all of the posts. You've made us think. We're so excited about this thread that we've linked to it from the News/Updates page of our website. We wish all teens would read this thread. Looking forward to more responses, Aaron, for The Mail Crew

We want to thank Dude for linking on his home page and Stories page to Drake Hunter's "Through Different Eyes", which is posted exclusively on our site. Drake wrote the story for us about a year ago to help increase traffic to our site. The story is popular with teens and adults as well. Our site statistics show us that only about half of the people who read the intro page actually go on to read the first chapter, and some who read the first chapter don't read the other three chapters. We wonder if this is because the intro says that the story is science fiction. It's not the futuristic, inter-galactic warfare type of scifi. It's about a 14-year-old boy's excellent adventure with one alien. The best action happens after Part I. We want to encourage everyone to read the complete story. It made us laugh a lot at some of the things that happen to Louis after he shares his brain with Chela Feff-Nur, and it made us laugh at ourselves, too, by showing us how we sometimes worry too much about little things that shouldn't bother us. It's a great story. It even made Alekat laugh, and that's good. Thanks again, Dude...you're awesome! Aaron, for The Mail Crew

This is Aaron, again. I noticed in another forum (crvboy, I think) that someone said he was almost feeling as sorry for David as for Adam. I think that is a great compliment to Graeme's writing ability, because he has put aside his own sentiment well enough to be able to get us into David's inner conflict so powerfully. If Adam were the narrator, I'm sure we'd have little compassion for David. Graeme is showing us the other side of the story in a very effective way. All of this discussion of David's being homophobic (or not) makes me wonder if he is more anti-gay than homophobic. If he fears Adam or other gays, he is homophobic. If he just doesn't understand homosexuality and is guided by outside influences to reject it without question, he is anti-gay. Does society overuse the word "homophobic"? Aren't many actions more anti-gay than homophobic? Hasn't anti-gay sentiment become too much of a political issue? A powerplay for some? I didn't mean anything bad by my "generational difference" comment. I have the oldest parents of our crew (I'm 11 years younger than my only sibling) and they would call it a "generation gap". Must have been a popular term when they were my age. Best wishes to all, Aaron

This is Aaron. I can understand Dude's questioning the reason for David's reaction being so much different from Randy's. During the editing I told Graeme that we were wondering the same thing. Then he added the paragraph in Chapter 3 that he quoted in his post and asked if we thought that was sufficient. We did. We are surprised that anyone would have a negative reaction to the story, but maybe that's a generational difference. Homophobia does not usually come at us in small doses in real life. It's all around us, and we face it head on, whenever possible. We can't hide from it. All teens that we know who have read (are reading) the story love it. We have the advantage of having read all ten chapters, so I can only ask that all of you keep reading. Chapter 8 is our favorite, but we love them all. David does seem homophobic early in the story when he is worried that Adam will do something improper if he is shares Randy's bedroom. Other than that, we agree with Graeme that David is possibly not strongly homophobic, but is reacting to what he perceives as Adam-caused problems. He's "not seeing the forest for the trees" as our parents would say. In a lot of ways David is a very typical straight teen. We wish every teen in the world would read "New Brother", especially the "David's" of the world and those who are more homophobic than David. In the opinion of a bunch of teens, the story is very realistic. In our own school we know kids who could fill the shoes of all of the teen characters. It's been a fun coincidence for us that we have a crewmember named David, who is straight. We're thankful that our David could fit the part of Randy. Thanks for reading this, Aaron, for The Mail Crew

Yo, Ry, Well it's good to know you still have those jewels. Good job, bro. You forgot to put your email address in your profile though. :roll: Eric

Ryan has had problems with his yahoo.ca email address and has not been getting email. If you have written to him about "Kayden" or "One Life" and not gotten an answer, you might want to try again. His new address is ryan_kayden@hotmail.com Thanks, Eric

Aaron here, with Billy, Trey and Eric, All nine of the guys of our crew like stories that attack the popular myth that most gay guys are promiscuous, bed-hopping sex machines who are not capable of truly and faithfully loving a life partner. We think Ryan attacked that myth very nicely in "One Life" and we hope all of you read it. It does become overwhelming in Part Six. We know some readers have stopped reading before finishing Part Six, and have not gone on to read the epilogue. :( We hope you guys will stick with the story to the end. We really think you'll be glad you did. Thank you, Dude, for deciding to keep the story here at AwesomeDude. We think Ryan has made an important contribution to the world of gay fiction. That's just the consensus of a bunch of kids, though. Best regards to all, Aaron, for The Mail Crew

We want to thank Blue and Dude for the nice words about us, and for others from other members in another thread. We are usually too busy for doing much in forums, but we will visit as often as we can. Trey, for The Mail Crew (Aaron, Billy, Chris, David, Eric, Jon, Scot, Todd, Trey)