Lucy Kemnitzer

All you need(or ought) to do in the scope of this story is mention that Joe's decided to go for it. Because we know that once Joe sets his mind on doing something, he does it.

You really want them to adopt Stephanie, don't you? Yes. Yes I do. 1. Toby and Stephanie would have siblings, and siblings are good. 2. Toby and Stephanie have both faced monsters, so they understand each other. 3. Joe and Chris will pull another child out of the miasma they both have been struggling out of. 4. Joe's a take-charge sort of guy, and if he didn't do this he'd have missed an opportunity to take charge. 5. Since Joe would need Chris as the more experienced parent to help him figure out what to do for Stephanie, it would even some things out between them and help Chris feel like he's not just Joe's rescue. 6. Story symmetry would be enhanced. If you need more reasons, let me know.

Pieces: 58 Words: 62,812 Pages: 151 (8.5x11 with 1" margins and no page breaks between sections. Should I be afraid yet?) The way that I compare manuscript to print is to estimate 350 words per page -- this varies a lot, from 325 to 400, but 350 is pretty safe. This gives about 180 pages. If you look at romance and mystery books (in the gay section of the bookstore! -- or not), it looks like 200-300 is a popular length, with nothing much below 175 and nothing much above 400 except for generation sagas and high fantasy. In other words, if you're done with the draft and you're at 63K, you're in the ballpark of ordinary novels (I think that 80-90K is what science fiction editors usually expect, though if you ask them they will say "how long should i be? long enough to tell the story" I love that Steve's response to seeing Joe like that is that he's figuring out who he can tease and when. Also that Toby has made a decision. Now, the family downstairs from my stepmother (who we call cousins because that's how our family is) calls one mother Eema and the other Ooma. Toby (and Stephanie! Don't forget Stephanie!)could end up with a Daddy and a Papa.

It's a desperate misunderstanding of the science if a person can think that sexual orientation is ever going to be a thing that can be simply ordered up the way you want it to be. When they do figure out the genetic component, they'll find that there is no "gay gene:" there are several different locations where different influences can be brought to bear on the sexuality of a person. Then there are other factors which are biological but not genetic: and other factors which are environmental -- and environmental breaks down into different things too. I'd never even try to order up the sexuality of a person, even if I thought it could be done. There's just too much valuable cultural and personal material that comes from unexpected combinations of character elements. I'd genetically engineer a lot of things for my offspring if I could: their sugar and fat metabolism: their resistance to disease: their calcium metabolism: tendencies to auto-immune disorders, vulnerability to cancer, defense against vascular disease, tendency to develop dementias -- even their eyesight. But personality characteristics -- grit, maybe, and maybe altruism, but nothing else. Why should I try to determine who they're going to want to have sex with, or who they're going to love? Who knows bit what some love affair I could not predict might have a ripple effect to cause some huge breakthrough in the effort to save the world? Or just produce an operetta -- or a happy home. I don't know. I can never forget that sixty-odd years ago people tried to rid the landscape of every vestige of people like me -- not just the Jewish thing, but also the communist thing (it's not genetic, but it sure is heritable, as my family proves). So I don't approve of ridding the landscape of types of people.

Trebs is right about this scene. It has everything a love scene should have, and it's geared right there to the fact that these are grown men. Can they make Alex stop without his cooperation? Is it as simple as Chris embracing his whole self?

This is about what I was thinking was going on. Remember when I was talking about being fair to the readers? You were fair to the readers, even as you were adding information that could be used to support different interpretations, and I think by word-count, you began pruning the possibilities at about the right place (too soon would have meant no puzzle, too late would have been too frustrating to be fun), and this payoff is right on time after the major evidence pruning. I notice that the thing Stephanie recalled about the murderer saying he was from the gas company was not a fluke -- clearly the thing that does this needs to be invited into the house before it can do its thing. So that Joe, who is sensitive to these things, knows that the electric company guy is a fake, is dangerous, but not so dangerous that he can't warn the thing off.

I think, in a story like this, that's part of the mystery. It can't be too much of a mystery, though. At some point relatively early on it has to be clear what general genres are involved, or I risk having a reader back off with a big "ewww!" after investing a lot into the story. I know I've had that happen once or twice when someone's sprung something unexpected halfway through a story I otherwise really liked and just killed things for me. So, yeah, romance/supernatural thriller. Which I expect everyone's figured out already. Well, you've got to be fair, whatever the mystery is. You have to have enough clues from the beginning to make the reader respond with, "Yeah, of course! that's what it was -- I almost got that on my own." I think you've been fair, here. There's enough clues. Well, there's too many. But they're beginning to cancel out, like a good logic puzzle, where things get eliminated as you go.

I think, in a story like this, that's part of the mystery.

Good for you. Those are great shoes. And I like that song and that singer, too.

I don't think cliffhangers are evil. I think they're necessary, to prevent the situation in which you might as well stop reading because you're already done. I had pretty much dicounted the dissociated personality theory already, and I had already thought that Toby and Chris' illnesses might have had something to do with how Alex -- shall I say manifests?

I know that if I ever point out being /straight/(1) it's a matter of solidarity -- that I'm trying to reduce isolation by saying "look, it's not just gay people over here, there's no boundary here." Other than that I don't care. And I don't often refer to my friends' sexuality unless it had a bearing on something. It's weird though, now that you mention it, to try to decrease distance and difference by ppinting out difference. I think I'm going to have to think about that more. (1) Personally I hate the word /straight/ because it confuses me -- I come from a time and a place and a subculture where /straight/ means something very different. Instead of being about sexuality it was about culture and politics, and my family was definitely [not/i] straight.

I hope Alex knows what's going on! Actually, I think he does. You do realize, don't you, that you still haven't eliminated any of the interpretations I've been juggling?

They have been, haven't they? I'd not given it all that much thought. It makes sense though. We've already established Joe notices scents, and it is a very primitive thing. No surprise that it'd hit Chris. 'Specially as they did both spend the evening dancing, and neither of them showered after. Scents would be... somewhat in evidence. I just noticed something. Joe very distinctly noticed Chris's scent and did not notice that it was particularly like Alex's, though it must have been enough like Alex's because Joe didn't realize he was with Chris until he was fully awake. So, like enough not to be disturbing when he was expecting Alex, but unlike enough that when he wasn't expecting Alex he wasn't disturbed by the Alex aura. That's interesting, whether you did it on purpose or not.

Actually, neither is ours. We have learned that our University (u. California at Santa Cruz), providing 25% of its students with on-campus housing, is unusual -- most provide far less. Though I don't know whether they included two-year colleges and vocational colleges in that figure. I know they provided the number as a defense when the town got exasperated about the housing shortage and yelled at the University for bringing in more students all the time and not providing more and more housing (this has changed to some degree. Now the town is exasperated because the University keeps growing and doesn't pay for new infrastructure, particularly water, which is in short supply. I know that University administrators feel like they can't win, but these are real problems the town has and the University just has to help out).

Well, all is revealed (or at least most is) before this is all done. There are hints dropped through the story too, as to what's going on with Alex and Chris. Not necessarily clear ones, I'll admit -- they've not been unclear on purpose, more a first draft kind of unclear. I'll probably go back and gather them up in a list when this is done. Which does remind me. I'm glad folks are enjoying this, and I really appreciate the comments, but when I hit the end it'd be great if everyone could weigh in with a technical analysis of sorts. What bits worked, what didn't, places things were unclear, material that was missing and should've been in -- stuff like that. Y'know, indulge that voice in the back of your brain that says "This was okay, but that thing there really bugged me". You're right to ask for that at the end. Right now it's too easy to think, "this will be revealed later" and not really worry about anything. You'll hear from me, for sure!

Get the shoes. Moms get frogs. Frogs are mom things. It's like those sweatshirts with puppies or birds on them, but much better, and still very momlike.

I know how you feel, but . . . I have in my house at this moment, an almost-20 year-old (on one quarter's leave to have surgery, but she's going to college in town and decided to save money by living at home -- a wise choce, as we live in a town of high rents and low wages), an almost-28 year-old (applying to medical school), and an almost-30 year-old (not my kid) (applying to law school). Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't like an empty nest for a while . . . the almost-20 wants to move in with her boyfriend as soon as she can afford it, the almost-28 seems most likely to be going very far away (as far away as Havana or Prague, maybe) to medical school, and the almost-30 will probably move out within a month or so, as he's saving up enough and getting good enough temporary work . . . when the nest finally empties, I guess it will be really really empty. I like these young people a whole lot, and it's fun having them around, but I'm sort of ready to have them come over to visit instead of being here all the time!

He could feel the pain Chris was in. Is that regular empathy, or more? In this story you can expect either. I like that when Joe's taking care of Chris, he doesn't do the comparison with Alex and the lust-and-guilt thing. It's nicely realistic for a person not to be lusting all the time, even when the magnetism is that strong.

I'd say that Chris and Joe's respective hangups are coming through quite well. It's refreshingly modern to have the sexual identity not be the primary conflict. I mean, Steve and Mike barely turned a hair when they figured that Chris was bisexual. Their response was, "Ohthat's it," and "This Joe looks like the real deal." The question of what is Chris-and-Alex is maddening but interesting. I've been speculating all along so I won't repeat all those speculations here. I'm having a visualization issue: Chris-and-Alex are kind of big guys, right? Is Joe short, or just smaller than Chris-and-Alex?

See, I think your B and your A just switched places. And I think that's okay. So, does all this firing range business arise because you've been shooting a lot yourself lately?

This is a B plot? It seems sort of A to me.

You don't have to take out the sex scenes. I think you're on to something here. (as I told Dom) not every good online story is also a potentially good print story, but this one strikes me as being one that could go that way. Have you read Michael Nava? There are some other authors whose names are not fighting their way out of the middle-aged ooze in my head at the moment, but a trip to the bookstores downtown will jog my memory. I'll get back to you. (The advantage of living in a college town is that you get to have multiple large bookstores, mostly independent ones, with lots of category fiction as well as the literary stuff) Generic legos are just about the best toy -- when my kids were little we accumulated a double bushel-basket worth. In those days the specialized legos were not so prominent or even so specialized, so getting a few sets and mixing them in with generic ones worked really well. Though my nephew (I almost wrote "little" nephew, but he's 22!) always got the specialized sets, made the main model on the cover of the box, and then kept the model like that forever, which always puzzled my kids (and me).

Who did you buy the legos for? A 200-page paperback novel is, by the way, 80,000 words, more or less, if the pages are about 400 words. That can vary a lot.

1. I really like the depressed brother. It's more complicated. I also like the way he reacted to news of Joe being gay. I'm not sure about the mom's dialog. 2. I told you Joe was going to adopt Stephanie. 3. I'm not surprised, somehow, that Billy has a connection to the murderer that isn't (directly) accomplice. 4. I don't like the Little People reference: it seems a little precious, and this story is anything but precious.

I didn't notice anything off about Steve's conversation till you mentioned it, but when I went back and looked at it I think I saw what you meant. I bet you'll probably leave it be in the end, though. What's really weird is that the timestamp for the comment reads "Today, 11 something AM," and for the post it reads "Today, 3 something PM." In other words, you made the comment four hours before the post? Or did you edit the post later, and the system only shows the edit time and not the original post time? Chris's complaints are out of line in any construction of events from the night before, but he's a whining wreck and still drunk, so it fits. I'm dying to know whether the serial killer plot is parallel to or one with the Chris/Alex situation. I had this idea that maybe Alex comes from the same place as the monsters, rather than, as I had been thinking, from the center of Chris. I'm pretty well convinced, for now, that Alex is more than a chunk of Chris's personality, though clearly he is also less than a complete person. And just because Chris and Steve agree that Alex is not "real," that does not really exclude him having a kind of reality anyway.