Alan

I'm a bit take-no-prisoners on this stuff. My mum has developed her own tactic for dealing with this. She repeatedly forgets that I'm gay. She's old enough to be almost able to get away with it. Weirdly she then starts talking about when she worked in film and how she can recognise a homosexual at 60 paces. Or she runs out her new civil rights record and fiercely criticises our PM for banning gay marriage when it's, and I quote, 'an unfortunate accident of birth'. You're entitled to be pissed off. More to the point, you're entitled to turn up with a fairly thunderous book or page of your own refuting her sentiments and insist she reads it.

If you get too nervous you should cross the equator and kiss an Australian.

When the New South Wales state parliament was debating subsidies for the Sydney Gay Games an idiot MP from a rural district demanded to know what sports would be played and claimed leapfrog was the only possibility.

please don't die. We'll only embarrass you by taking out our ouija boards and muttering things like: 'Is there a chapter present?'.

Grrrrrrrr. All older brothers are evil. Even when they try to be good, they're generally evil. They keep on insisting that you're making the same mistakes they did when you're entirely capable of making new mistakes that they didn't have the imagination to come up with. So there...

Can I start asking for Chapter 22 now? Can I? Can I? Can I?

The phrase 'Xmas Dom' badly needs a comma to save us from visions of a leathery Santa with a whip, but I digress. The short story kept me going over Christmas, but (excellent as it was) it's wearing off and fullblown withdrawal symptoms are setting in. I may be forced to start whimpering in a big way in the near future... And that would just be embarrassing to all of us, especially since I doubt I'll be alone.

You should take the death threats as a good thing. It measures how much the threateners like reading your stuff. Still, an insecure Christmas is not a happy Christmas... No, I'm not going there, I'm too drenched in Christmas spirit to get into pathetic whining and begging.

I promise not to flame unless the final scene is Jase and Alice the Incomprehensible's wedding. Congratulations on a spectacular year of writing.

I'll happily ship over about 15 of mine. (degrees, not substances)

I'm so relieved this post is about snow. Meanwhile, Sydney was 43 degrees yesterday (109 Fahrenheit). People buy an evil plastic substance that looks vaguely like snow and spray it on their windows. Yesterday it all melted and turned black. Several Santas had to be treated for heat stroke. DD16 was the usual great chapter.

Damn! People are starting to channel Alice the Incomprehensible. It has to be involuntary.

I'm glad you're feeling better. Don't worry too much about the performance anxiety. I know people who tell me they don't regard a sex scene as any good unless they get off writing it.

Rory's fast becoming my favourite character to read. Owen's situation was rougher, but he had the support of his brothers and quickly made friends at school. Rory is completely isolated and is in an impossible situation. It's a wild guess, but I wonder if Luke might have given Aaron TLS a run for his money except for the Vow of Silence imposed by Eddie and (indirectly) by Alice the Incomprehensible . On the information Eddie had at the time, the Vow of Silence was not such a bad idea although it lasted too long. I can only surmise that Aaron TLS paid Alice the Incomprehensible quite a lot of money to make sure the Vow of Silence would be in place. This may be a big old soap opera but it's becoming my favourite branch of the Domlucian mythos.

Chapter 11 is great. The only possible criticism is the cruel and unusual wait for Chapter 12. I suspect the what if stories are a bad idea and would end up taking as much energy as the 'real' stories, but if you're ever tempted I think you should dispose of Quinn in some instantaneous and painless way and have Jude run away to Arizona in his grief. Where he gets a job in construction And meets this guy Luke...