Cia

This month has featured quite a few stories already, with the Comicality Tribute Anthology, and I wanted to feature someone who isn't new to the site but who did write a story that I thought would have fit right into that theme as well. We have so many coming of age stories on GA where authors tackle those life changes that aren't easy regardless of what year or setting they occur in... just like The Answer by Wayne Gray. This slightly older story is a short story gem you should read and come back to comment on on the May Discussion day! I hope you will enjoy it. The Answer by @Wayne Gray Length: 5,848 Description: In his youth, Shawn passes through life as if it's an amusement park ride. Men come and go, all while his slightly judgmental friend, Ian, looks on. This is the story of Shawn dealing with the repercussions of his choices, and then him growing into his own life. A Reader said: Let's just say...it's definitely "Wayne's World"!! Amazing short story that hit all the right spots and showcased his excellent talents...and also the bonus of sharing a beautiful poem!!! Both were brilliantly done, thanks to you both!💯 ~ Onim Come back on the last Monday of the month, May 26th, to check out the Discussion day and share your thoughts!

He was definitely an iconic GA member that many many will forever miss. RIP, Comsie! ❤️

Thanks for commenting!! Lol, of course hurricanes should have read tornadoes. Total brain fart but then maybe my story is set ala a post-apocalyptic weather shift. I didn't set the year or actual Earth. Maybe San Andreas cracked off the whole real West and the Pacific ocean's temps changed and now we have a hurricane alley going east and west.... The best part of fiction is being able to play with reality to make the implausible become plausible.

Isolated “for his own good”, Judah is given no choice but to show up to the witch-be-damned ceremony on his fiftieth rebirthday. It wasn’t like he could run away. He’d daydreamed about showing up with messy punk rock hair in his torn jeans and a Def Leopard T-shirt, but that would probably just result in him being stripped naked. Not a look he wanted to sport for the awakening or what he feared came after. He'd heard them, wondering how they’d benefit from the miracle he was supposed to spread through the families. Would they be gifted his magic, his blood, or something even more sinister? And would Judah survive this supposed honor at all?

Fine, fine call me out in public! Yes, I'm a speed reader (no pharmaceutical assistance needed) and my hubby says that it's disturbing to watch because my eyes flick sideways too fast as I read across the pages. Lol Reading is my #1 relaxation, as it takes me away from everything else and I get to visit other worlds. Probably why I like sci-fi so much!! Thank you to everyone who continues to check out these features and give GA stories that might otherwise be missed a chance! 😍

If you didn't catch Monday's feature, check it out. I'm here to tempt you with a tidbit of the story text, and if you haven't already twigged to the fact that there's more to this story by the 1 in the title... there is! Nothing I like better than knowing I can start a story and keep going if I enjoy it. So what are you waiting for? Want to read more? Click here

Welcome to April's Signature Author Feature! I'm obviously featuring one of our Classic authors this month, and this oldie but goodie, might have escaped you. Dolores posted Space Pioneer 1 way back in 2014, so I wanted to bring it back now for your reading enjoyment. It features two of my favorite themes, Ancient Egypt and space! Length: 50,140 Description: On his trip to Mars, Jeff's shuttle gets dragged through space by an alien spaceship that is performing a space jump. The Daglon captain Lest takes Jeff on board of his ship and Jeff's journey through space begins. The crew chases Ezer Malk, who plans a space-time jump in order to steal Ancient Egypt artifacts from Earth. Lest is an outlaw and Jeff is lost in space. Will the two men get to know each other, will Lest come to terms with his past, and will Jeff find his place in the world? A reader said: I guess I should mention... I really had a great time reading your story. ~ Toast If you want to spread the word about Dolores' story, download the graphic below and add it to your signature! Make sure you come back on Wednesday to see the excerpt I chose to share!

Just a quick note so I can mark this as answered, for anyone else who might also check this topic for Help info. All plagiarism checks are done on stories with the first chapter posted. No chapter = no content to check. Also, title, story, chapter content & author contact info have to match up. I have to be able to contact and have the posting on GA be verified by the author on the original site to ensure it's not plagiarized or have some very specific criteria met. This is all done to protect copyright and can extend the moderation queue approval process and timeline. Reaching out to me in a PM like LostSole did is always okay!

Did you manage to read this month's CSR Feature, In His Image, by ChromedOutCortex? It was very short, under 4k, so you can also go read it now! Be sure to share your thoughts on the story below, after you also check out my interview with this month's featured author! Chocolate or Vanilla? ** Vanilla, then you can pile on whatever you want. 🙂 If you were an animal, what would you be? ** Wild horse - they run free, not worried about what's around the corner, exploring their environment at their own pace. What’s one location you’d love to visit to research for a story? ** Great question; I haven't really thought about this as I'm so content where I am and travelling within the country. I'm close to my ex and our kids, my partner is close by -- it's really an ideal situation to be in. But if I had to go somewhere, I'd love to relocate to Canadas' West Coast. What’s something personal about you people might be surprised to know? ** Dad to two amazing adult kids (F18, M20). Also, I have an embarrassing memory from grade school that still makes me cringe. There was a popular, cute guy in school, and I could recognize him just by his backside. One day, I thought I’d strike up a conversation with him at the water fountain. I blurted out, ‘Save some water for the fish!’ He turned around—and it wasn’t him. I’ve never moved so fast in my life! What brought you to GA? ** I was posting on Reddit, but wanted to share my writing with more people and engage with them more. Reddit is great, so many people -- but like most social media, most are simply scrolling from one post to another. It's difficult to capture their attention. I also want to continually learn from other more established writers/authors and see what others are writing about. Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? ** Ideas! There are lots around us, but taking one and putting it into words can be a challenge. Sometimes something comes to me in the middle of the night, and I force myself to get-up and write. Other times, I can stare at the screen for hours at one line an I'm a complete blank. The idea is in my head, I've planned it all out like watching a movie, but when I start writing... nothing comes out. What’s the best part of being an author? ** Being able to expose yourself, without exposing yourself. I've always felt that a writer (I find it so hard to call myself an author... am I an author? Imposter syndrome at its worst) writes about things important to them—about challenges they’ve faced and overcome, or maybe not overcome. I like to write about my own experiences, as well as the experiences of those I see around me, to provide an alternative perspective. When I read other stories, some are pure fiction or fantasy, but I often wonder how much of the author is in that story. What message are they trying to convey? What part of their soul did they pour into those words? It’s fascinating to think about, and it’s something I hope readers might ponder when they read my work. Sometimes in stories, you can see the message clearly, but other times you have to read between the lines—it’s complex. I think I like those types of stories best, the ones where you have to really think about the message. They stay with you long after you’ve finished reading, challenging you to reflect and see the world in a new way. What lead you to explore the angle of religious conflict with coming out in In His Image? ** I come from a "mixed religious family". We never really grew up with religion. My mom, sort-of practiced and some things just stuck with me over the years. As I thought more and more about my roots, I read more about others in similar situations, I wanted to explore how religion can shape your identity and your feelings. On one hand, you've been brought up with deep ties to your faith and community, but you're told to behave in a certain way because faith doesn't align with who you are -- but this causes an internal conflict with who you are. What do you do? Do you give up your religion? Do you learn to coexist? It's hard to do both, and it's also hard to do neither. Along with this you're trying to fit into society as a whole. Do you have a favorite scene or line from the story? ** Does God make broken people? Haven’t we been created in His image? Having gone through life doubting who I was (and sometimes, am—causes tremendous mental struggles), I remember hearing this from friends who were more religious than I ever was. While I always knew I was gay, I suppressed those feelings until I couldn’t. It’s a question that still lingers in my mind, a reflection of the internal conflict between faith (even though I was never religious), identity, and self-acceptance. Could you share anything about your current or upcoming work with readers? ** So many ideas! I'm working on a murder mystery, but it's slowly getting out of hand. Dozens of characters, world building, character building, several places within the world, trying to build an intricate web between characters and situations while maintaining some mystery about what it all means. Besides this, I'm trying to focus on shorter stories that are easy to read and perhaps allow the reader to pause and think about what they have and to cherish that. I wouldn't say that I am trying to moralize anything, but often we look past what we have and only realize it later in life.

Monday I featured an ad for Dodger's story, Pardon my Polari. Did you catch it? If that didn't get your interest, maybe this excerpt of the story written for the 2022 Anniversary Anthology will! Want to read more? Click here

Length: 12,647 Description: The story of Anthony Larkin, his struggle against injustice, and the evolution of gay rights in the UK. The characters in this story occasionally converse in Polari—a secret slang adopted by gay men in the UK during the fifties and sixties to evade prosecution. The Polari words are in italics, and translations are provided in the chapter end notes. A Reader said: A very realistic look back at one of the darker parts of UK history. There is humour, there is sadness, but above all there is realism. Well written and told, this should be a compulsory read. ~mancunian If you want to spread the word about Dodger's story, download the graphic below and add it to your signature! Make sure you come back on Wednesday to see the excerpt I chose to share!

For this longer month, I've actually chosen a short story for the CSR blog readers. I think sometimes the longer a month is, the more I feel the need to cram into my life, or the more I have going on, and the less I have time to just... be. That time to stop, reflect, and take stock of what is truly important is a huge part of In His Image by ChromedOutCortex. Please check it out and come back to share your thoughts at the end of the month! In His Image @ChromedOutCortex Length: 3,891 Description: In His Image is a short, introspective story about Ronald, a young man in his mid-20s, struggling with his faith, identity, and feelings for a male co-worker, Chris. Raised in a conservative religious family, Ronald faces confusion and shame as he grapples with his desires and beliefs. As his friendship with Chris deepens, he experiences a pivotal moment of emotional and physical intimacy, marking the start of his self-acceptance. The story ends with Ronald’s breakthrough, leaving the outcome open-ended for readers to imagine. A Reader Said: I identified with Ron all the way through the story. As someone you might label as “very religious” I found it true to life and quite beautiful; there was nothing offensive to me at all. Thanks for sharing this poignant journey ~ B Warner Come back on the last Monday of the month, March 31st to check out the Discussion day and share your thoughts!

Well, we are a terrifying bunch, like... never knowing if you're going to bite in and get the nasty orange creamcicle flavor.

We did!! When I was a little kid (think age 3-10 before he remarried) my dad would travel the 1.5 hours up to a truck stop to meet my mom's parents, who were long-haul truck drivers, and we'd always get a meal together at the Denny's they had at the stop. I have fond memories of the dark brown curved mugs with hot cocoa topped high with cold whipped cream and the claw machine in the lobby. That was a weird special circumstance, though. I can't think of a single time as a teen or adult that we were like... "Oh hey, you know what sounds good for dinner? Denny's!" LOL It's always been that we were super *ahem* partied out, and it was 2 AM. Where else do you go??

We had snow days 2 weeks ago, then 60s this week. Yeah, the world is weird. Today, however, it is gray and rainy, my FAVORITE. Yes, I am truly a red-headed vampire as my family claims me to be. I live in the Pac NW for a reason. @wildone always does a great job summing up the week, but it truly is a big job working together to keep all the events going. I'm glad to be on such a dedicated team! Thanks to everyone who is always working together to keep GA going, from the staff volunteers to the site members who participate!

I work K-5 SPED. I start the year with my "That was unexpected" voice queued up and it just goes downhill from there. I have to say it's been harder the last few years, with kids being more physical than ever and harder to redirect with calming coping strategies. Sometimes I have to use them myself first, lol.

Right? I'm 43, I have 21 y.o. (OMG, it's been 2 weeks and that still floors me!) and an 18 y.o. "kids" that have both graduated high school, have either a AA done or a trades career path planned & started... so I'm that adult who is supposed to have it all together and planned (NOT!). Life is still throwing me curveballs. You did have great answers to this month's interview questions, so thanks for playing along! I love to feature all different authors on GA, those at different stages in their writing careers, time on GA, genre writers, novel fans, etc... It makes for the best community! I think that's sometimes the best part of being a writer as well, dodging real life. You get to envision life for the characters and put them through whatever hell or heaven you can come up with (can you guess how evil I usually am? ) Reading can sometimes be just as much of a relief. Light and fluffy often has its place in my line up, along with nitty gritty stories where the main characters are being shot at and running for their lives (last night's fun read). At least when I'm dodging kicks and student refusals, I can tell myself I'm not dodging actual bullets! As a former Kindergarten teacher @JJQuinn I'm sure you know what I mean!!

Well this month has flown by! I can't tell if I was 'just keep swimming' against the flood of my life or if life was sweeping me along. Sometimes we have to pause and evaluate what's happening and where we go from here, like Liam in JJ Quinn's story, Just Keep Swimming. I hope you enjoyed this month's CSR selection and have some comments to share below, but first, my interview with him! Chocolate or Vanilla? We’re eating vanilla ice cream all the way, especially with an obscene excess of rainbow sprinkles covering each creamy inch. For other aspects of my life… Who likes being vanilla all the time? 😉 If you were an animal, what would you be? A Capuchin monkey. I love the Indiana Jones movies and thought the monkey was so cute in Raiders of the Lost Ark, even though he met such an unhappy end; “Bad dates.” I’ve had more than a few bad dates in my own past that made me want to play dead when they asked for a round two, so I could relate. What brought you to GA? I’ve been writing since I was a kid and for a while I wrote professionally for a small private LGBTQ publishing house, but the stress of deadlines got to be too much for me because at the time, I was going to school for my master’s degree and working full-time as a kindergarten teacher. When the publishing house closed a year or so after I published Chasing Halos and Heroes, I just gave up on writing altogether due to health issues and just changes in life. I began writing again a few years later, posting on other erotic websites. When I reposted a revised version of Halos on another site, a reader here, who’s also a reader there, told me that I might find a better fit for my work on GA because I try to write erotic fiction and romance, not just straight sex and kink, which was the norm on the other site. However, I was very intimidated because I’d read stories on GA before under an old name, the quality of writing here is superb. I wasn’t sure I deserved to be here honestly. But, thankfully @Cane23 convinced me to try. So, here I am, with no plans to go anywhere else! Everyone has been so helpful and supportive, and I feel very grateful and blessed to be among so many amazing writers, and that my work has been well received so far. What do you like to do when you’re not writing? Honestly it depends on the season and what my body allows me to do at the time. Dealing with MS means that what you want to do, and what you can do, aren’t always the same thing. But I’ve been a voracious reader for years and even though I sometimes have issues with my right eye so I can’t read books as often as I want to (It also makes writing difficult at times) I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I am totally a Hoopla lover. I’ll read anything, but I will admit I won’t listen to erotic romance novels because I feel like a guilty kid, even when I am alone in my car and want to sing “la la la la!!!” at the top of my lungs until certain sections are over because of the ‘sound effects’ LOL I read a lot of urban and paranormal fantasy, and really enjoy the ones that are dramatized versions with full casts because it’s like listening to a movie wherever you go. I love being outside, so gardening and sitting around the fire pit in the summer and early fall, just enjoying our small rural town is always nice. I did go to art school New York City so even though I never really did anything with that degree professionally, I do like art and being creative. I used to make fake foods out of inedible materials (which I know sounds soooo weird but it is actually a thing!) for places like restaurants. For a while I was able to work with a few local bakeries and ice cream shops by making models of their best sellers that wouldn’t mold or melt. That was fun. I also like messing around with clay and ceramics. But I always come back to writing. It helps with my weirdo dreams. When I don’t write, they get even odder so it’s in the best interest of myself and everyone who has to interact with me, that I do get it all out on paper. What’s one location you’d love to go to research for a story? I’d love to travel everywhere, so I guess my destination(s) would depend on the story. I have so many ideas bouncing around in my head. The issue is in getting them actually written. Based on stories I am working on now, maybe Greece or Spain? I do love road trips and my partner and I have gone to a lot of places in the U.S. I really love the south and southwest (even though I grew up in Spanish Harlem, New York City) so a lot of my stories tend to take place out there. I always say I was southern in another life because the accents… Yeah, they’re sexy. 😊 Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? Yes! SEX SCENES!!! OYE! I write erotic fiction because I like to read it, but the truth is that I cringe every single time I have to write a sex scene. I find it tedious to make love scenes sexy and well-written because I don’t do bow chicka bow wow smut. When I end up with a story that has to end on a scene that’s heavily smutty, I want to pull my hair out and usually procrastinate, which is what happened with Just Keep Swimming. I ran out of time to submit it for the anthology (I learned about it with less than 2 months until the deadline) and when I tried to finish it just for regular posting before the end of 2024, I procrastinated forever because the last chapter was almost entirely a love scene, and I just couldn’t get into it. I prefer plotting stories and focusing on strong dialogue and character development. Keeping my stories tight and smart, but also sexy, is very much a challenge. I also have a lot of issues typos because of the eye issues I mentioned earlier, as well as stiff hands and spasms that occur because of the MS. I write my stories by hand then use voice-to-text software to input the stories into WORD. I use spell-check of course, but sometimes after reading and re-reading and constantly making edits, I miss things ☹I just do the best that I can, write for the love of it, and ask that when readers notice glaring issues, that they just mention it to me so I can fix them. Past that, I hope that the quality of my writing is good enough to balance the fact that I can’t type for beans. How did the writing of Just Keep Swimming evolve for you? Plot or Characters first? Generally, I come up with the characters first, but it’s really dependent on the story. A lot of times I’m inspired by song lyrics, things that happen in life (personally or on the news) or even a writing prompt. I’m very visual, so I tend to use AI to create my characters. Knowing what they look like helps me flesh them out and the stories write themselves more easily. For Just Keep Swimming, I was literally working off of the idea for the anthology, In Too Deep, so I started thinking about what that means for me. Being that I almost drowned when I was 16, my first what was about just getting in over your head in a pool—literally. But I wanted the story to be something light and fluffy so I based it very loosely off of a story I wrote about 15 years ago. This is a complete revamp that looks nothing like the original, other than the main idea of a computer programming falling for the Dad of two little girls. Everything else is a complete rewrite, including Liam working at the Y as a swim instructor. Until the story begins, Liam believes Gabriel’s straight, and was afraid of getting in too deep over his head with his feelings for him. Gabriel felt the same way about Liam because he has two daughters and is 8 years older than Liam, and wasn’t sure that he’d want a pre-made family. It’s sort of all just came together in a pretty wholesome way despite the last explicit as O.o chapter. Do you have a favorite line or scene in Just Keep Swimming? I actually really like the epilogue. It’s short, but I feel that it tied the story together well; the girls are playing in the soccer field and Liam bends over to touch his toes to get Gabriel’s attention. When they kiss, Gabriel’s youngest daughter, Harlow, tells him that there are impressionable young eyes in the field. Liam tells her that’s where her eyes should be. It’s just a very family-friendly moment, which is what the entire story was about. I also love when Liam kills the overnight French toast in Gabriel’s kitchen and the girls are as gleeful about it as adorable minions of Satan. Do you relate more personally with Liam or Gabriel from the story as a person? Honestly, I don’t relate strongly to either character, although all of the characters in my stories have some characteristics of family members, friends, or people that I’ve met or worked with in the past, as well as some of my own personality quirks, especially my sense of gallows humor. But if I had to choose, I’d say I relate more to Liam because I can be very awkward when put on the spot, especially around people I don’t know. Being a klutz was pretty much my superpower for years, and I still have more spazzy moments than is probably cool to admit to. Can you share a little of your current or future writing projects with us? I always have a million and one ideas bouncing around in my head with characters chatting to me and to each other, so I have a lot of outlines written. There’s at least a good 15 story ideas bouncing around in my notes. I’ve plotted about five of them fully. Some are inspired by old prompts that I found here, so I’m working on some of those short pieces in between the longer ones. It’s easy for me to get overwhelmed because I want to do too many things at once, so I try and balance by not working on more than a handful at a time; that allows me to put down a story if I hit writer’s block on it, without feeling like a failure. I can just pick up another story and work on it till I’m ready to return to the previous ones. Right now, I’m just trying to focus on the second full-length novel in my Finding Home series, called Hood and Holy Water. I’m trying to post a chapter a week at minimum. (-crossing fingers) If I can get out two per week, that would just be a lovely bonus for my readers, but I’m going to go with a more conservative estimate of one a week. I’m currently working on a piece based off of one of the GA prompts that will be my take on Lady Justice. That one’s interesting because I’d originally planned to do a comedic story set in modern times with a snarky first person POV about what it means to be Lady Justice, and the hassles it van bring. When I started actually plotting the story out, it took a completely different turn. It’s much more serious and I’m weaving a lot of mythology and actual history from Greece, Egypt, and Rome into it. A lot of the story will be told in flashbacks. It’s technically still set in the modern world, but in Greek mythology, Themis, one of the female Titans, is their version of Lady Justice. So, we’re going way back to the creation of the earth and stars, and the old gods. It will probably still be told from her point of view, and the flashbacks till unpack all of the things that influenced her till now. There will be mentions of Alexander the Great, Aristotle, and Cleopatra, so it’s getting pretty complicated, more so than I originally planned. But I think it’ll be interesting. I also plan on doing a heavy revision of a story written close to seventeen ago. It won’t get done in time for Valentine’s Day (Cupid is involved! LOL) but love stories are good all year round. And of course, I want to work on other stories that I’ve started, but put long-term holds on, including Coloring Outside The Lines (which is fully plotted) and Studs, Spurs and Stephanotis. There’s so much I want to put out into the world, but just not enough time and my fingers just don’t work as fast as my brain. I’ll get there eventually, and am so grateful to the readers who take time to read my offerings. It’s very motivating when I’m tempted to throw in the towel.

Monday I featured Clouded Purity by Cynus. This is book 2 in his 5 book series, The Trial. I want to make that really clear, so readers aren't confused. Make sure you read the first story!! Then come back to this one, if you haven't already. But, just to tease you and make you want to... Want to read more? Click here

What do you do when you love something or someone so much that you have to make the hardest decisions of all? This story is Book 2 in Cynus' series, The Trial, so I really recommend you read them all in order if you enjoy fantasy work in order to be able to understand this one. But it's worth it! Description: Eight centuries before Salidar thulu-Khant's reign, the world was much different. Technology, not magic, defined the world, though political machinations and civil unrest had pushed the world to the edge of destruction. Two young men, embark on a journey of self-discovery while dealing with the consequences of a broken society. Meanwhile, an ancient force seeks to unleash a Trial of Destruction on the world. Length: 99,426 A Reader Said: This series is one the best fantasy series I have ever read and this second book took us in a lot of interesting directions. It perfectly provided so much clarity on the events in the first book while setting us up for the future. The already complex world Cynus built in Book 1 was filled-in here and now, we are right where the characters are: wondering about the fate of the world and the motives behind each characters actions. Nothing is as simple as it seems and I am excited foe the next part of this journey. ~ Nancer If you want to spread the word about Cynus's story, download the graphic below and add it to your signature! Make sure you come back on Wednesday to see the excerpt I chose to share!

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@W_L Thank you for the great review! I'm glad you enjoyed the Carthera stories, both this lighter one and the more complex main stories in the world. It's definitely been on of the more popular paranormal concepts I've written, and one that I kept strictly to GA rather than publishing because I always felt like commercializing it would ruin the fun of the whole world. If I can get back into writing again, I think it would definitely be for this!