Percy

Thanks for sharing. These got me thinking. Good fit for the haiku form.

As always, your poetry is evocative. Strong imagery here.

Enjoyed these, especially the urban one with the cars and ice.

Have a great day, Daddydavek!

You captured all the emotional notes of witnessing the decline and death of an acquaintance beautifully, Aditus. Some very elegant writing here on a complex relationship. This phrase particularly caught me, " I could almost touch his agony..." Glad you shared this.

Vivid was a good choice of title for this piece. The writing and emotions are vivid and powerfully delivered. The narrator's memories of the time in his village before WWI and his innocent crush on an older boy are laden with bittersweetness. An enjoyable read. (Yettie- have you read John Boyne's The Absolutist? Worth checking out if WWI and the trials of that era, including harboring same-sex desire, are of interest.)

Russell and Jacob are thoroughly likeable. I learned a lot about Denmark's nature areas reading this. There's lots of interest here.

This was the first one to elicit a little thump of emotion. Just enough. Well done.

I did guess a/c but I wasn't sure! I pictured myself as a kid in South Carolina on those days I wanted to lay on the shag carpet in the a/c, bored beyond belief, rather than go outside. Good job!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Cia!

This is very sad. He will be missed here.

I usually opt for the "it's not you, it's me" line. I'm an introvert, I need a lot of alone time in my life right now. Whatever. Be truthful but keep it simple. The important thing is to give your reason and then repeat it as many times as you have to. Sort of like when someone calls asking for a donation. They'll keep coming at you from different ways, badgering or offering compromises and seeking a future change of heart. Be firm. Be kind. But be firm.

Good story, KC, with your signature style of adventure and romance. I liked the fast pace and the real life challenges they faced both individually and as a couple. Honestly, Michael never grew on me. He started out a falling down drunk in the bar and progressed to a verbal attack when verbally harassed by a stranger. Later in the story he physically assaults a friend of Asher's who verbally harasses him (in jest.) Okay, yeah, the coming out process is tough, especially to oneself, but that wasn't enough to make Michael an appealing character to me. He showed some emotional growth in the end but as a reader I didn't get to experience that with him so there wasn't a payoff for me. I liked the courtroom scenes in the final chapters. Really well written action with a lot of detail. I thought Asher's coming to terms with being shot was very well handled and some of the best parts of the story. His reluctance to deal with the police and grudging acceptance that he had to be an active part of the process in order to ensure prosecution and conviction were very believable, as were his struggles with flashbacks and nightmares. Always appreciate the dedication you give to your stories, KC, and looking forward to whatever is next from you.

This story was reviewed for the GA Blog here.

When I'm done with the story, I go through a series of re-reads with a single focus for each pass. I don’t try to fix everything in one go. I do these on hardcopy because it’s easiest for me to make notes on what needs to be fixed along the way. Pass 1: Content. Does the story make sense? Are the emotional arcs logical? How did they end up with passengers in the backseat of that car I described as a sports coupe? Better fix that. What else needs to be smoothed out? Pass 2: Fact Check. I circle every fact that I want to confirm. These are usually small things that don’t impact the story itself but I want to get right. Would that shuttle flight from D.C. land at JFK or LaGuardia? Pass 3: Style. This is my “read out loud” pass. I tick off any phrasing that sounds awkward and then go back through and see if I can come up with something better. These are hardest for me to fix and sometimes I have to let them go and chalk it up to the fact that I’m not yet the writer I want to be. But, I do noodle around with the parts I don’t like and sometimes I surprise myself and come up with something better. Pass 4: Grammar and punctuation. I run it through an application called Grammarly first just to see what it has to say and then I print it out and mark it up with whatever I catch on my own. Pass 5: Formatting and skimming for overall visual presentation. This can get messed up on the upload sometimes, but I try to get it formatted reasonably well. That’s it. I’m done. Post.

Glad you're back. Sorry about the theft from your luggage but glad the trip was a good one overall. Hope you at least have the weekend off of work to fully recover from the traveling.

I admire the way you've been able to carry these characters through the anthologies. They feel authentic, real people with realistic hopes and fears to which I could relate. Well done!

Interesting concept, Ashi. Brings to mind an interview I heard recently with a Vietnam veteran. He advised people not to presume they know what moral choice they would make until they are making it under duress. Sounds like this game touches on the same theme.

Great choice of topic and an energetic, focused cadence to go with it. Well done!

Nicely done. I hadn't caught on to the repetition until you mentioned it which is probably a sign of its strength. Strong emotions coming through.

I liked it and I am glad you posted. Great imagery and brevity!

Sounds like a melancholy time for you, Wayne. Sorry about the death of your friend and the sad circumstances surrounding her passing.

Nice, concise response to the prompt. The boys actually seem to have a decent relationship despite still working on rebuilding trust. I have to admit I kept racing along, thinking I was going to learn what happened to him when he went missing as a boy and how that related to gardens. I didn't realize until the end that that was a whole different story!

Thanks, Cia, for putting in so much time on the site and with the authors. I know you give a lot of new authors some of their first reviews as you release the stories from the queue and that's really cool of you too. I know it took me a couple attempts to get things right and I am sure sometime down the road I'll have a new issue crop up. On the other end, it's great as a reader to find a consistent quality to presentation of the stories. It reflects well on all of us as a group.