Chronicles of an Academic Predator -CH4 and 5 UP!

[Mark Arbour]

I've been working on re-writing Chronicles of an Academic Predator. At the risk of repeating myself, here's why:

 

1. There were some rough spots in the stories. This was my first one.

2. There were some errors that were really annoying.

3. There were some inconsistencies in dates and times.

4. There were a few changes I needed to make for the flow of the new story. (Let me know if you can find them!)

 

So, having said all that, Chapters 1,2 and 3 are up!

[paya]

I've been working on re-writing Chronicles of an Academic Predator.

[Mark Arbour]

You're brave Mark! You're re-opening old wounds with that, you know... but it will be nice to see Jeff again... I think... He was the first one cooing, you know... At least you're not re-opening 1968, so we're going to see the better part of the story. And Tonto again! And Andre...

 

 

 

 

It will also be nice to see how it all works together with all we know now... like the resemblance of the Hayes and all... it's like when they released Star Wars remastered... I'm sure it'll all fit in better (if you can improve "perfect" ) but then if the changes are more than subtle, there will be bitching... :mace:

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks Paya. This time you'll know what happens without reading my mind!

 

You guys can let me know if the changes are more than subtle.

 

 

[Mark Arbour]

Revised Chapters 4 and 5 have been posted

Revised Chapter 4

 

Revised Chapter 5

 

[methodwriter85]

It's kinda funny when Frank talks about the third kid that he and Brenda are working on having, and knowing that this future baby will become the love of Brad's life, who is currently growing in someone's belly after being the result of an affair.

[Mark Arbour]

It's kinda funny when Frank talks about the third kid that he and Brenda are working on having, and knowing that this future baby will become the love of Brad's life, who is currently growing in someone's belly after being the result of an affair.

 

And you reference one of the fixes. In the original, Brenda was already pregnant with Robbie. You're the one who helped me out with that one. For a gay boy, you're pretty up on gestation periods. Was it a 13 or 14 month pregnancy that Brenda originally had? No wonder she's so bitchy.

[paya]

So... how's the revising CAP going on?

[Mark Arbour]

So... how's the revising CAP going on?

 

It's a low priority. We're working on new chapters of "The Box" and "HMS Belvidera" first, then we work on CAP when there aren't any new chapters to edit.

[methodwriter85]

You're the one who helped me out with that one. For a gay boy, you're pretty up on gestation periods. Was it a 13 or 14 month pregnancy that Brenda originally had? No wonder she's so bitchy.

 

It was originally a 12-month pregnancy- March 1962 to March 1963. Not quite as bad as the other elephant-like gestation period you've written.

Edited February 21, 2010 by methodwriter85

[Canuk]

without getting all gynaecological, technically it could be possible to be pregnant for that long; if the woman concerned miscarried at the end of the first trimester and then became pregnant again - it could just seem like the first two trimesters were very long...... Now there's a plot twist!

[methodwriter85]

But she's not actually pregnant for 13 months- for the period between the miscarriage and conception of the next baby, she's not pregnant. It's impossible to be pregnant with a live baby for 13 months, although it's possible for the baby to die in utero, and then stay there for years as calcified remains.

[Guest russian]

Mark, while you are editing the story, let me point out that in 1962, the year your story unfolds, NATO HQ was still in Paris. It was not until 1966, when de Gaulles pulled France from the Alliance, that NATO upped sticks and left for Brussels. Another factoid not many are aware of is that NATO's first HQ was in London, from 1947 till 1952. Hope you won't mind my little bit of fact checking on your behalf here, 'cause your story is tout a fait off the hook, and I totally dig it, hermano!!!

 

Love,

 

Russian

[Guest russian]

Mark,

 

another factual snag, this one in Chapter3 of 1968. Alexander Dubcek was never President of Czechoslovakia. In January of 1968, under pressure from Brezhnev, Antonin Navotny resigned as both First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Czechoslovakia amidst popular discontent with his Stalinist policies and a mounting opposition inside the Communist Party itself, especially its Slovak branch, then headed by Dubcek and Stur. Dubcek was then elected as First Secretary of the Communist Party, and because he was a Slovak,a Czech was needed to assume the Presidency. And that was Ludvik Svoboda, a hero of WWII and prominent victim of Stalinist purges of the late1940s, who was elected to the Presidency by the Federal Assembly in March 1968. In Czech, as in Russian - my native language - svoboda means freedom, so his very name became synonymous with the Prague Spring. I realize for many Americans it matters little whether Dubcek was President or First Secretary, but for a Russian like me the difference is gargantuan. It would be like saying George Washington was America's first Speaker of the House. Hope I'm not putting you off, Mark, too much with my nitpicking.

 

Peace,

 

Russian

[Mark Arbour]

Mark, while you are editing the story, let me point out that in 1962, the year your story unfolds, NATO HQ was still in Paris. It was not until 1966, when de Gaulles pulled France from the Alliance, that NATO upped sticks and left for Brussels. Another factoid not many are aware of is that NATO's first HQ was in London, from 1947 till 1952. Hope you won't mind my little bit of fact checking on your behalf here, 'cause your story is tout a fait off the hook, and I totally dig it, hermano!!!

 

Love,

 

Russian

 

 

Mark,

 

another factual snag, this one in Chapter3 of 1968. Alexander Dubcek was never President of Czechoslovakia. In January of 1968, under pressure from Brezhnev, Antonin Navotny resigned as both First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Czechoslovakia amidst popular discontent with his Stalinist policies and a mounting opposition inside the Communist Party itself, especially its Slovak branch, then headed by Dubcek and Stur. Dubcek was then elected as First Secretary of the Communist Party, and because he was a Slovak,a Czech was needed to assume the Presidency. And that was Ludvik Svoboda, a hero of WWII and prominent victim of Stalinist purges of the late1940s, who was elected to the Presidency by the Federal Assembly in March 1968. In Czech, as in Russian - my native language - svoboda means freedom, so his very name became synonymous with the Prague Spring. I realize for many Americans it matters little whether Dubcek was President or First Secretary, but for a Russian like me the difference is gargantuan. It would be like saying George Washington was America's first Speaker of the House. Hope I'm not putting you off, Mark, too much with my nitpicking.

 

Peace,

 

Russian

 

Thanks for the updates. I really do appreciate them. My goal is to make things as realistic as possible from a historical perspective, so that really helps. Editing these initial chapters has been shunted to the backburner, appropriately so, but when we get back to them I'll have to try and fix some of those errors.

 

Dubcek was never President? Why didn't Paya catch that?

[Guest russian]

Mark,

 

thanx for taking my input in the spirit in which it was intended and not flipping out on me, as many an author would have done in your shoes. You authors are a touchy-feely bunch, and need to be handled with kid gloves :-) Good to see you are different and can take it with the best of them. :-) Bonne chance a toi et a tres bien tot,

 

Un mec russe.

 

 

Added: In the interests of full disclosure, now that I've had time to think about this some more, I guess I should point out my own mistakes as well. Czechoslovak parliament in 1968 was still the unicameral National Assembly, and not the bicameral Federal Assembly that came into being under Gustav Husak and his Normalization policies in the wake of the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968. And the last name of Dubcek's predecessor as First Secretary was Novotny, and not Navotny, as I posted initially, but that one was a typo, more than anything else.

Edited September 2, 2010 by russian

[Mark Arbour]

Mark,

 

thanx for taking my input in the spirit in which it was intended and not flipping out on me, as many an author would have done in your shoes. You authors are a touchy-feely bunch, and need to be handled with kid gloves :-) Good to see you are different and can take it with the best of them. :-) Bonne chance a toi et a tres bien tot,

 

Un mec russe.

 

I think the other people around here will laugh their asses off at me potentially being lumped into a group classified as "touchy-feely."

 

 

You're right though, and it can be pretty ego-bruising if someone is really critical of my writing. I decided to write with the past as a backdrop, though, so I try to separate any historical inaccuracies or anachronistic things from the actual story. It's ego saving, and makes for interesting conversations like these, where I end up learning something about the era I wrote about.

[Guest russian]

I think the other people around here will laugh their asses off at me potentially being lumped into a group classified as "touchy-feely."

 

 

You're right though, and it can be pretty ego-bruising if someone is really critical of my writing. I decided to write with the past as a backdrop, though, so I try to separate any historical inaccuracies or anachronistic things from the actual story. It's ego saving, and makes for interesting conversations like these, where I end up learning something about the era I wrote about.

 

 

 

Mark,

 

You know, as much as I hate for this to escalate into a mutual admiration society thing , but this needs to be said. I'm a history buff, but my knowledge of it is pretty Eurocentric. So I'm learning a lot about 1960's America from your story, googling all the events and names your are referencing. I'm not saying I like everything 100%. I find it particularly hard to relate to JP, who smacks too much of self-centered and self-seeking narcissism to be up my alley, if you don't mind my saying so. I'm reading 1968 now, and I gotta say I'm appalled at how JP threw out Jeff like yesterday's news. I would have fought for Jeff tooth and nail. Of course, who I'm to talk, I let my ex go after he'd found a woman to marry and impregnate. I just hope for his sake that he's really that bisexual, as he says, to find true enjoyment in hetero sex and won't wind up jerking off in the shower to thoughts of strong male hands around his shoulders and hard male bodies pressed against his and then cry or drink himself to sleep with the unwanted body of his wife right next to him in bed. Anyway, your stories are entertaining and educational, and have lots of hot sex in them, so what's not to like?

 

 

[Mark Arbour]

Mark,

 

You know, as much as I hate for this to escalate into a mutual admiration society thing , but this needs to be said. I'm a history buff, but my knowledge of it is pretty Eurocentric. So I'm learning a lot about 1960's America from your story, googling all the events and names your are referencing. I'm not saying I like everything 100%. I find it particularly hard to relate to JP, who smacks too much of self-centered and self-seeking narcissism to be up my alley, if you don't mind my saying so. I'm reading 1968 now, and I gotta say I'm appalled at how JP threw out Jeff like yesterday's news. I would have fought for Jeff tooth and nail. Of course, who I'm to talk, I let my ex go after he'd found a woman to marry and impregnate. I just hope for his sake that he's really that bisexual, as he says, to find true enjoyment in hetero sex and won't wind up jerking off in the shower to thoughts of strong male hands around his shoulders and hard male bodies pressed against his and then cry or drink himself to sleep with the unwanted body of his wife right next to him in bed. Anyway, your stories are entertaining and educational, and have lots of hot sex in them, so what's not to like?

 

 

 

I've had one or two people mention that they were slightly upset about how JP treated Jeff. I think that as you read on, especially when you get to Be Rad, you'll see that a lot of this story is about how JP grows as a person and deals with that very issue you raised.

[Guest russian]

Gee-shucks, you just had to kill Jeff at the end. I did have a nagging feeling this was coming, not that suspecting it made me any less angry when the end did come. Please don't be upset, but I'll have to switch to your other stories, 'cause I can't read anything with JP in it right now, as every time I read about the little pompous f**ker, I want to hurt somebody. And I fence regularly, and fencing is all about finesse and control, and if you are angry, you can really hurt somebody with your saber, foil, or epee. But please don't take me wrong, I think very highly of you as an author, and I stand in awe of your erudition and the sweep and depth of your knowledge. And you've proven you can take criticism in your stride, which speaks volumes about the kind of cool guy you are. It's just JP gets to me in all the wrong ways. Friends?

 

Ton mec russe

[Mark Arbour]

Gee-shucks, you just had to kill Jeff at the end. I did have a nagging feeling this was coming, not that suspecting it made me any less angry when the end did come. Please don't be upset, but I'll have to switch to your other stories, 'cause I can't read anything with JP in it right now, as every time I read about the little pompous f**ker, I want to hurt somebody. And I fence regularly, and fencing is all about finesse and control, and if you are angry, you can really hurt somebody with your saber, foil, or epee. But please don't take me wrong, I think very highly of you as an author, and I stand in awe of your erudition and the sweep and depth of your knowledge. And you've proven you can take criticism in your stride, which speaks volumes about the kind of cool guy you are. It's just JP gets to me in all the wrong ways. Friends?

 

Ton mec russe

 

Well, I was being a little sarcastic before. I got a lot of shit from people (you should talk to Adam Phillips about this) for killing Jeff off. Like I said, it's a core element in the development of the story, and the development of JP as a character. I'd encourage you to go on to the Land Whore. Stefan narrates, and it's a lot lighter than 1968.

[methodwriter85]

Adam Phillips could write a dissertation on why Jeff Hayes shouldn't have died. LOL.

[Mark Arbour]

Adam Phillips could write a dissertation on why Jeff Hayes shouldn't have died. LOL.

 

I think he did.

[PrivateTim]

I think the other people around here will laugh their asses off at me potentially being lumped into a group classified as "touchy-feely."

 

 

You're right though, and it can be pretty ego-bruising if someone is really critical of my writing. I decided to write with the past as a backdrop, though, so I try to separate any historical inaccuracies or anachronistic things from the actual story. It's ego saving, and makes for interesting conversations like these, where I end up learning something about the era I wrote about.

Not to bruise your fragile psyche, but in Chapter 6 you talk about the "execution of Edmond Jouhaud", but he was merely sentenced to die, the execution never took place and he was actually rehabilitated under Mitterand. General Jouhaud died at age 90 in 1995.

[Mark Arbour]

Not to bruise your fragile psyche, but in Chapter 6 you talk about the "execution of Edmond Jouhaud", but he was merely sentenced to die, the execution never took place and he was actually rehabilitated under Mitterand. General Jouhaud died at age 90 in 1995.

 

So he was. That's fascinating. It's a shame I missed that, because he would have made an interesting character in "Man in Motion."

[PrivateTim]

Well not CAP, but the Land Whore, but there was no Malibu High School when Scott Palladin and Armand were in high school, Malibu kids were bussed to Samohi.