[Andrew_Q_Gordon] Second Shot

[TrevorTime]

I have enjoyed reading how Jason deals with being in the closet while trying to have a relationship with Peter and really enjoyed the last chapter when he finally came out to Darryl.

 

That was probably one of my favorite plotlines of the entire story. Reason being, it so reminded me of the day I finally came out to my mom. I pretty much knew ahead of time she would be okay with it, but just getting to that point seemed like a major struggle back then.

[Andrew Q Gordon]

Anthony,

 

Thanks for the note. I have a semi close friend who was some high up referee official for the FA. He told me that was a big game and sent me an Arsenal hat that I still have almost 20 years later.

 

I'm glad you like the story so far. It sort of grew on me too as I was writing it. Hopefully it got/gets better as you read on.

 

Andy

[johnlaw]

 

 

Having finished posting Second Shot on GA, I started to post it on Nifty, after someone suggested I cross post it. They are good enough to allow me to link readers there to GA so I wanted to mention them here in return. So if you get a change you can see what it looks like over there or you can go check out other stuff as well.

 

 

Thanks that you reposted it there and I happen to read it!

 

As for the money issues, I can relate to it and I think it is not off. Really need to deal with it myself too. If only I had a Jason with me in real life.

[Andrew Q Gordon]

Thanks that you reposted it there and I happen to read it!

 

As for the money issues, I can relate to it and I think it is not off. Really need to deal with it myself too. If only I had a Jason with me in real life.

 

Glad to hear you found this on Nifty. I hope you'll keep supporting Nifty even while you read things here as well. Nifty serves a good purpose for the Gay Community as a place where people can go and feel they are not alone so I don't want to take anything from it.

 

As for finding your own Jason, I am sure he exists, just don't give up.

[TrevorTime]

Hello Andy, I am speaking for Wyatt (my new BF) here, as he does not have his own GA account. Anyways, he read the story and he had some issues with Pete's character. Here goes:

 

[A] He wants to know why Pete has such low self-esteem in almost every chapter. And in looking over the story again, I had to agree with him. You described Pete as a good looking guy, yet he seemed to take offense every time Jason paid him a compliment.

 

The money thing. He wanted to know why Pete went ape-shit every time Jason spent money on him. And again, I had to agree with him (even though I didn't want to).

[Andrew Q Gordon]

Hello Andy, I am speaking for Wyatt (my new BF) here, as he does not have his own GA account. Anyways, he read the story and he had some issues with Pete's character. Here goes:

 

[A] He wants to know why Pete has such low self-esteem in almost every chapter. And in looking over the story again, I had to agree with him. You described Pete as a good looking guy, yet he seemed to take offense every time Jason paid him a compliment.

 

The money thing. He wanted to know why Pete went ape-shit every time Jason spent money on him. And again, I had to agree with him (even though I didn't want to).

 

First tell Wyatt to get his own account so he can pad my numbers

 

Okay, A] Who said he was good looking? Only Jason. [Not that only Jason found him hot, just he's the only one in the story who said he was hot stuff.] If you recall Peter never felt he was that attractive, so beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm kinda shocked you agreed with him on this - you must be sucking up Trevor

 

B] This too was explained in depth, so I'm a tad perplexed at how you could wonder this as well First his family never really had much money so he has a chip on his shoulder about making sure he carries his own weight. Then there was his asshole ex who made him feel like shit because he didn't have much money which only reinforced his feeling of being unable to be an equal with Jason monetarily.

[WyattRiot]

Hi Andy, Trevor encouraged me to get my own account, so here we are. I had another question, but I think I might know the answer already.

 

I understand why Jason and Darryl had their own apartment, because their parents did not live locally. But Peter's mom lives in Hamerton. So technically, he could have lived at home, still gone to Graydon and worked for Mr. Lee, and saved $700 per month.

 

But I think I know why you wrote it the way you did, so that Jason and Pete could have privacy when they got together. Am I right? I know that when Trevor and I get together we would rather not have any parents around.

[Andrew Q Gordon]

Hi Andy, Trevor encouraged me to get my own account, so here we are. I had another question, but I think I might know the answer already.

 

I understand why Jason and Darryl had their own apartment, because their parents did not live locally. But Peter's mom lives in Hamerton. So technically, he could have lived at home, still gone to Graydon and worked for Mr. Lee, and saved $700 per month.

 

But I think I know why you wrote it the way you did, so that Jason and Pete could have privacy when they got together. Am I right? I know that when Trevor and I get together we would rather not have any parents around.

 

Well thanks for letting me be your first GA post.

 

Actually, his mom doesn't live in Hamerton, she lives close, but not that close. Pete has his own place because he'd have to communte too far otherwise and since he can live on his own, who wouldn't?

 

I suppose it wasn't clear enough that they family home is not right around the corner. In that part of Pennsylvania, school districts can be pretty big. So while Graydon might be the 'local' University, it was - in my mind - about 25 miles or so away. Close enough that he could have commuted, but why give up the on campus part of your college experience. As I said, being on scholarshop, he only had to pay for himself, so that is what he did.

 

Minnesota eh? I went to school there - the Univ. of Mn to be exact. It's snowing here so I'm reminded of Minnesota so the profile image was timely.

 

Andy

[TrevorTime]

Okay, I was stressed out last night (had Easter dinner at the ex's parents place). And whenever I am stressed out, I like to read a story that I call my "comfort food".

 

So anyways, I found another mistake. In chapter 25, Mr. Gregory identifies his new wife as "Becky". But later on at the hospital, she introduces herself as "Betsy". I'm surprised I even caught this, seeing as how I had had a couple of drinks. Maybe I read better under the influence?

[Andrew Q Gordon]

Trevor,

 

I once wondered if you were any good at being an editor, but dag dude, you catch them all.

 

I'm keeping these because my plan is to go back and clean this up before I finish the sequel. (don't anyone get too worked up, I've barely started it, just saying that is my plan.)

[Andrew Q Gordon]

I finished posting Second Shot a little over a year ago and while I was happy to put it to bed so to speak and move on to other projects, I've always been a bit unhappy with one aspect of it - i.e. the mistakes both grammatical and plot issues. As many of you know this was my first attempt at a novel length story. I actually began it as a means of improving my writing and story telling. I feel with all the feed back I've received along the way, I've improved a bit over the last 18 months. So now it's time to take what I've learned and clean this up a bit.

 

Trevor has been really good about point out errors along the way that I have been keeping and plan to go back and correct at some point. Well some point has come.

 

What i'm planning to do is go back and slowly revise the story chapter by chapter. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep the new clean version and ePublish it or repost the chapters once they're all fixed up. My sense is I'll want to ePublish it before I finish the sequel and then hopefully either ePublish the sequel or if I'm really lucky, get the sequel published.

 

I don't expect folks to edit this for me, that isn't the goal of this post. What I'd really like is for people to do what Trevor has done and point out mistakes. Someone was nice enough to link my story on her web page and she pointed out that I call his cousins his nieces. So that is a mistake I'd like to catch. Another thing I was looking for is parts that are weak, thin, don't work, need beefing up, need to be eliminated. etc. I'll work on the grammar/spelling/punctuation stuff, but in some ways I'm a little to close to this to be objective. [Trevor is too, to be honest ]

 

So for those who are willing to help, you can post the suggestions here or send me an email belsport09@gmail.com

 

If anyone is really ambitious and wants to help with the editing, I'm not going to turn that down either, but email me so we can talk about it.

 

Thanks

 

Andy

[TrevorTime]

Yupp, I'm way too close to be objective; there's no way I could be a decent beta for the story. The only thing I would change is to combine and shorten Chapters 18 & 19; to me, they really side-tracked the main plot.

 

Check it, Bill W actually rewrote Castaway Hotel, and that story is approx. 5 times as long. So yeah, this is do-able.

 

(Trev is giddy with excitement at the chance to read a new and improved SS).

[Andrew Q Gordon]

Haha trev, well it's a bit away, to be sure, but we'll see how it goes. I've got a few things going right now, but this won't be as hard as what I'm doing now.

[naaz]

As touching a story as I ever read. The emotions are impossible not to relate to.

[Andrew Q Gordon]

Naaz,

 

Thanks for the comments. I'm glad you felt the emotions I wanted the story to convey. I'm not sure if I can reproduce them going forward. Maybe that is why people end up being one hit wonders. They put everything into the first one and the rest are just pale images. Let hope I avoid that with the sequel.

 

Thanks again.

 

Andy