Andrew Q Gordon

Spoilers are easy Type the word 'spoiler' inside closed brackets [ ] then type your comments then between another set of brackets [ ] type '/spoiler' -- make sure you use the ' / " before the word spoiler. It is the same system for quotes etc. Like thus: you can use the preview tab to be sure it was done right. Andy

Cool shots, definitely helpful to see what you are 'seeing' as you write. I have a couple questions - In the response to my last question you laid out Kian's past - orphan, raped, killed master who trained him etc. Is that part of the story or just something you have in your head as the background for him? If it is not anywhere else, you may want to find a way to link that post to the story so if people want some background on Kian, they will have it. In the future, I envision your discussion thread being rather long and people probably won't go back and read all the posts so it might get lost for someone new to the story say in 3 months time. How long do you envision this going? One book? Series? Also, you seem to be giving away things in advance, as in what will happen in coming chapters. can you put them in spoilers? I personally like to read about what will happen, but then I also don't LOL- yes I know what that makes me - impossible. Mike tells me that all the time. I am behind in my reading right now, so I owe you a review or two but give me time and I will be caught up.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FORTY TWO!!!!!!! Sorry I missed this until now Hope it was a great day!!! Does this mean that since you are 25, your new screen will be 52?????

An unstoppable evil is threatening the world. Barh, the last Magi is on a quest to find Chenoth, a spirit of great power entrusted by the God's to protect the people. But Chenoth's aid comes at a price, a price Barh is not sure he can pay.

THE PRICE OF LOVE - QUONUS10 “Stop!” I shouted. Something was wrong. We were leaving everyone with no explanation. Why wouldn’t he talk to me? “Barh,” I tried again. “We can’t leave them, they will die!” “They will die even if we stay.” Barh’s flat affect stung like a slap in the face. He was never this cold to me. Magic took us high enough for me to see for miles. Stretched below my feet the combined armies of three kingdoms gathered to meet the Degari; a swarm of evil the world t

Chapter's 8 & 9 are up, not getting as many posted as I had hoped, but will try to speed things up. Am almost halfway there. 10 more to go. Still shooting for finishing by the weekend and start posting the new chapters by next week. Andy Update: In light of the new system very likely being up and running next week, the rest of the chapters are being put on hold, I will try to get everything up next week including new chapters. if the new system is as easy as it sounds, I should be able to do that easy enough -- sorry for the new delay.

Happy Birthday!!!! Have some fun - 25 is SO not old, it is a great age to be, enjoy it! Andy

Okay, two more chapters up, that is 7 of the old 19. I will try for one more tonight, but no promises. Next week for sure new chapter(s) will be up. Andy

Thanks for the encouragement, but I should give credit where it is due, Anyta has pushed me to put more feeling and emotions in, clearly she had a good point Andy

Kavrik Wow, that was some impressive pictures. If that is what you consider bad art, I'll take it. Me personally, I don't think they ruin my mental image. I picture Kian similar, now quite the same but pretty similar. One question: I got that Kian had a sort of ambivalent sexuality - which I take to be bi-sexual, BUT I haven't read the newest chapter yet, so maybe this is covered, but in the previous chapter you mentioned a female wizard who was very powerful whom Kian loved but whom he didn't pursue because he couldn't have children based on the curse. You also mentioned that of all his partners he only loved Dylan. Seemed a dichotomy there. Now I get that he could have HER as his ideal woman, but Dylan as the only person he had a dalliance who he ever truly loved, but it seems he has two true loves. Did I miss something or is that accurate?? I do so love being able to ask the author questions, rather than coast along wondering, this who discussion forum idea is a great way to read books, if the author is willing to respond. [And I know you respond, that wasn't a hint you needed to do more, just a general observation] Andy

Okay five up 14 to go. I still hope to get this posted by the end of the week, but don't hold me to it. After that I will post the new chapters, hopefully two a week until it is done, maybe more toward the end. I want to get back to reading stuff instead of spending all my free time editing and formatting. Andy

Now I know this was directed at Anyta but she and I have talked about perspective - which is what you are suggesting - and my position is in third person you really ought to stick to either 1) one person's perspective - right now it is Karl, or 2) two distinct perspectives, similar to the Rune and Scott each narrating things. To drop in snippets is IMHO not the best. It leaves you are neither truly third person nor are you completely third person omniscient. I think this makes you third person unlimited, which is not wrong, but I tend to find it confusing to read. Cia does it well, so does Nephy but even in those cases, it is hard to follow because when the two characters are in a scene, you end up as a reader wanting to hear both sides and the writer doesn't do it enough for you, and as a writer you end up using more perspectives and confusing people. Once you start down that slippery slope it hard to stop and hard to control. Andy

Geez Now I am REALLY scared of you Congrats Cia, you truly deserve it. Andy

Yeah, I get to be the first poster I really like Chapter 2, 1 was good but 2 is fresher in my mind so I am going to start there. I like the feelings I get from this. You do a great job of giving us Karl's emotions, he frustration, his angst, his pride and his hurt at his family. I was glad to see you said you weren't going to have a lot of reference to S & T, I am not much of a fan of flash backs, especially in shorter works - that assumes this stays short as you originally suggested. As usual, your writing needs help. Looking forward to the next chapter. Andy

Sorry, but you didn't specify that you had tried some sites already, you just asked if anyone knew of a site. Figured you didn't know about TLA. Good luck. Who knew sites in the US were so stupid that they don't want Canadian Money?? Last I check your currency was doing better than ours. LOL

TLA has it and you can stream it if you have a pc, I don't believe streaming works on a Mac if I recall correctly. Here's a link. Is it just me

Your post shows you are not dumb just by how well it is written. There is a difference between lack of facts and being dumb. As you allude to, not being exposed to a certain set of facts does not make you stupid. Whatever else you learned in school, you certainly learned to read and write well. Everything else can be learned. My granddad came from Italy around 1910. He had to leave school at 12 to work in his father's bakery to support the other 6 siblings [he was the oldest]. When he died, he left me all his books - he had hundreds, from the classics to things no one would recognize.[some well over a hundred years old.] Turns out he would go to yard sales and look for books he never read to teach himself. I don't usually keep books long, I read them and sell them or give them away for someone else to read, but I kept these just because of what they mean to him, and the fact he felt that was the greatest gift he could leave me. Anyway my point is, you have the tools and the aptitude to learn whatever you want - you are not dumb, anymore than my granddad was with just a sixth grade education. But you should tell your friend that while you appreciate his attempts to bring cultural things to your attention, the fact that you can and have read and learned from them proves you are not dumb, merely had an education where these things were taught. And that you would appreciate him laying off the 'dumb' comments. Andy

Thanks Philippe, My goal is to edit a new chapter a day and post 2-3 old ones. That way I will have about 10-12 new chapters ready to post once the old ones are back up. I have 4 new ones ready 1 almost ready and one getting ready lol. Like I said in my status update, I have two other project I want to work on so I want to finish this sooner than later and move on. I am not good at working on multiple projects. Andy

Well I hope you noticed there were good ones in there too - you are doing a lot of good stuff so don't change those Oh, and whatever, I didn't believe Nephy when she said it, and I don't believe you now . Show me the money and I will believe it. Until then, not gonna happen. LOL

Stuart, Okay so I am caught up on all the chapters. Very interesting - and that is meant in a good way. Your 'world' is intriguing. Some comments - damn lawyers we always have comments - I like the realism. Dan and Matt didn't lock eyes, fall in love and leap into the marital bedroom. AND once they finally did profess their 'like' for each other, they still didn't jump into jumping each other. Makes it feel like the real thing - good job. Speaking of the two professing the like of each other - this may be just me but I would have like to have seen/read a bit more about how they felt afterwards. There was a lot of kissing etc, and while that is nice, I generally skim through those parts and look to see what the characters are feeling. Like I said, that is just me. Couple examples, we got a feel for Dan's emotions when he was telling Gary, but we didn't get that level of detail from Matt. Also, when Dan goes 'weird' on Matt, we know nothing about Dan's feelings. One of the great things about using 1st person to write is you get to show the reader all that the narrator is feeling. One of the bad things is that when you use 1st person, we expect to know what they are feeling in critical spots. Since you alternated between Dan and Matt, I was expecting to see Dan explain what was going on. More over, Matt seems rather blase about his silence. I am not sure that is in character for him, at least not given how you built him up. If he thinks people are judging him or he is not good enough, I would think he would be stressing out big time over the silence/avoidance. He would be having those same insecurity issues - I would think at least. I think you gave us four sentences after three days of silence. i didn't feel his angst over this, and IMHO I should have. One of the things I think you do really well is information delivery. You didn't sit us down and plunk a ton of info about Galwrock and his powers and all of that. You let it come out slowly and in its proper time - very good on that too. Be careful of the 'something pops up just as they are going to profess their love' kind of thing. You did it a couple times now. Like Dan and Matt were going to talk to each other at the Fresher thingy [no idea what that is, must be a Brit thing], and Matt has an energy attack. Then when they are trying to work things out at the bonefire, the assassin shows up. My point is be realistic. The timing of important events can't always fall just as another important event is about to happen. Too often, JUST as the two are going to say something momentous, something horrible happens to interrupt. Sure they might get cold feet and something could divert them as they struggled to say something, but try to avoid that easy out. There are many options for how to avoid this, they could talk, then while they were contemplating things it happens, they could intend to talk and before they get there the event happens, they could intend to talk but when they get there, something bad has happened and they don't talk, etc. Just avoid both events always coinciding. One thing that confused me - and be gentle I know I am dim at times - Matt went from telling no one to telling basically everyone. He was given permission but then you mentioned something about enforcing their silence magically. Did he do that? Or did he not want to for some reason? I wasn't clear on that. It is clear Dan can tell anyone. Which leads me to another question/issue. Does Matt's powers need to be a secret? If so then his telling folks without some kind of forced silence is not believable. He would never just tell folks willy nilly and trust them that fast - flat mates including. That would be very out of character for him, people in general, and the story. If however, it doesn't really matter, then it makes sense. Finally I love all the unanswered questions. Clearly the Principal knows more than he lets on, this whole war thing, what is it about, how long have they been enemies, has this fighting happened before, what kind of powers does Matt really have, what are his limits. Sure there is a cliff hanger but there is zero chance Dan dies, not gonna happen, going on record here as saying it. The better question is what does his injury do to Matt's psyche and his ability to have a relationship with Dan. Okay that is long enough for a Saturday morning. Very much enjoying this so keep it coming mate. Andy

Okay, at the risk of seeming a tad too egotistical, I am ready to start posting this again - and completing it too. I went back and edited most of the original chapters I posted. I toyed with posting a new chapter - 20 in this case - then posting the old ones, but that would probably be a problem if folks wanted to go back see what happened before to understand what is happening now. I promise to make the effort to get these old 19 up as quickly as I can, so that I can get the new ones up. One thing I decided was I am going to make the chapters shorter but post them faster going forward. That should get things up and done sooner than later. Unfortunately, the new system will put a halt to things while I transfer the old chapters first but hopefully that will go quickly. Any comments let me know. Andy

Louis, Finally! About time you started posting again - yes I know how much of a hypocrite that makes me but sue me - I'm a lawyer, bring it on tough guy So that was - as promised - a short chapter but that set up quite a lot really. So who is Alex really? Is he evil? Does he mean Keegan harm? Does he plan to stick around and take care of Keegan or is he just there for a purpose and then will disappear when he achieves said purpose?? No don't tell me, I can wait now that you have resumed posting - you aren't gonna disappear on us again are you?? And what about mom and dad?? What did they do to Keegan that has Alex so mad at them?? Okay, so please don't leave us hanging again, or at least warn us. Andy

At the risk of making Nephy like me or something, I totally agree with her on this. I wrote/writing a fantasy story. The 'world' has evolved several times and it grew - i.e. places were added along the way - more than once. You can drop hints about this or that, but really, IF these people knew the social structure of their world and understood that this was the biggest country and this was small etc, no one would sit around discussing the various places, it would already be known. Think of it this way, would you and your friends, or even someone you knew, sit around discussing what countries are the dominate powers in the world? I mean, maybe if you are debating it, but if you met a friend for lunch it likely wouldn't be a topic, same if you met a new business acquaintance. So in that regard, it is not the most interesting for the reader to get a several paragraph long recitation of the structure of the world. Personally I think you are doing a brilliant job of giving us info as we need to know it. Do NOT feel compelled to give us a chapter on the various places of the world. Stick to your current plan - that's my opinion. Andy [Happy Nephy? I didn't shut up. So please don't bite me now.]

Yeah I got the whole Scourge thing, that was my point, had I commented after three like I wanted, i would have asked, why is he hurt by magic when he is immune, but then I didn't reply and read four and the scourge was explained - hence I am glad I waited as it was quickly explained. It's not that you can't write more than one perspective - I said it wrong in my post, Nephylim and I did NOT agree [i left out the 'not' in the original] you can give multiple perspectives, Nephy did it well in Hostage - but you shouldn't give out the perspective of the antagonist was my point. Telling us Dolmani's thoughts takes away from the suspense. If we didn't know he had it in for Kian, using the scourge on him wouldn't make as much sense to us but it would set us up for the plot twist when you reveal his true motives. Same with the parchment with Kragar's seal. We know he is framing Kragar, it would be better if we didn't know that until it came to light. That was my point. I still maintain, one perspective is best despite the allure of using more than one, but that is a preference not a complaint. I do however think it should be limited to one type. To use Hostage as an example, we only 'heard' from the two main characters. We didn't hear from anyone who would give away a plot twist. So when we learned that Neive is more than she let on it was a shock. Anyway, I will shut up from now on and keep my comments to my self. So when is Chapter 5?

Is this a hint that you are an extraterrestrial and they are going to reveal your true identity today???