B1ue

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have been forced to stop eating take-out for lunch and now have to eat my own cooking. As I'm a fairly good cook, this isn't exactly an ordeal, but the clean-up promises to be. You see, I can start cooking just fine, but it is a little difficult to stop once I'm going. This weekend (my job is three days on, three days off, making my weekend a roving holiday of sorts that bears no particular relationship to the weeks of other people) for instance, I decided on a whim to make just about everything I knew how to make, all at once, given the constraints of the ingrediants at hand. For instance, my spaghetti marina was quickly modified to include italian sausage, and I served it over bread instead of pasta. The beef stroganoff was just a mushroom gravy that I later added cream to, and my chicken a la king I had to guess at, since I only made it once out of a recipe book. I ran out of pots, pans, and space on my stove quickly enough, but it wasn't until the first dishes were ready to be packaged up that I realized I didn't have any containers to put them in. I do things like that a lot. In fact, something like this is pretty typical on my "Sautrday." Walmart came to the rescue, but only after most of the dishes spent the night in my refrigerator still in the pan they'd been cooked in. A least the desert came out well. Granted, it is pretty tough to screw up an apple pie, but the honey cream was a bit trickier. When it was all over, I looked at the tower of stainless steel dominating my nice kitchen, I suddenly remembered why, unless I have to impress some boy or another, I stick to eating snacks at home. That way I only have to cook, thus wash pans, once a week. Everyone, beware. This is the fate that awaits those of you independant enough to want your own place yet not afluent enough to afford either dishwasher or maid (or are roommates/partners with a very nice person who does dishes for free and possibly a little sex).

Well. Sort of. Set in the universe, but only tangentially touching on that storyline. I'm not an Anglophile; I quite like the United States, and so I have no desire to try to write about a country I've never been to when I understand this one pretty well. We'll see how it goes. As I mentioned, the first bit was up today.

I just across this on Kevin(afriendlyface)'s blog, and thought it intriguing enough to try it out for myself. Especially since, towards the end, I had an idea. IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE? So, here's how it works: 1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc) 2. Put it on shuffle 3. Press play 4. For every question, type the song that's playing 5. When you go to a new question, press the next button 6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool... 1. Opening Credits: "Somebody Told Me" - The Killers Odd choice for an opening, but okay. 2. Waking Up: "Duck and Run" - Three Doors Down Might be strange, but since the entire song is about how the singer won't duck and run, I'll take it. Especially as...well, I'll get into that later 3. First Day Of School: "Holding Out For a Hero" - Jennifer Saunders Perfect. Just Perfect. 4. Falling In Love: "Groovejet (If this Ain't Love)" - DJ Spiller Ah. Another perfect one. 5. Fight Song: "Life #9" - Martina McBride Nice. Threats. My kind of fight. 6. Breaking Up: "Since You Been Gone" - Kelly Clarkson Even better. 7. Life: "C'Mon 'N Ride It" - Quad City Djs -Shrug- Whatever. 8. Mental Breakdown: "La Tortura" - Shakira 9. Driving: "Sugar We're Going Down" - Fall Out Boy 10. Flashback: "Rock This Country" - Shania Twain This one works. It is a series of images in various places. For the purpose I would put this to, it is highly appropriate. 11. Getting Back Together: "Listen to Your Heart" - DHT I don't think I could have picked a better one if I looked through my music files for it. 12. Losing Your Virginity: "Black Velvet" - Allanah Myles This song oozes sexuality, which is why I liked it to begin with. I love it for this. 13. Wedding: "Something's Gotta Give" - Leann Rimes Not the worst choice (considering what I have to select from), but if I think too hard about it, it worries me. 14. Birth Of A Child: "Bitch" - Meredith Brooks If I raise a child with this much sense of self, I will have done a good job, I think. 15. Final Battle: "There is No Arizona" - Jamie O'Neal Good for what I want to do with it, albiet a bit depressing. Though as it is the final battle, that makes sense. 16. Funeral Song: "I Know Where I've Been" - Queen Latifa, Hairspray Soundtrack Another good choice. 17. End Credits: "Jenny From the Block" - Jennifer Lopez Perfect closing credits song. A Torna-Atras is exactly the way I'd want a story to go. Anyways, I had an idea during the course of this. What if, instead of my life, I make this the soundtrack to a character's life,a nd these songs as the chapter titles. Specifically, a Harry Potter knock off, except set in America. Seventeen chapters might be a bit much for me, but Lucy will be thrilled. I'll probably write the opening on my notebook tonight.

While I was just barely outside the ten hour watermark, I too liked the book. A lot. I must admit that I might not have, had I not been an English major in college. As it is, this book makes me swoon. For instance, I knew almost instantly that Hedwig's death, while continuing much of the rest of the book's "Death of the Innocent's" theme, was also included where it was because Hedwig would have been an incredible nuisance for Rowling to keep track of during the Horcruz search, so she either had to kill her off or show her staying with someone else, probably the Weasleys. And since she wasn't holding back with anyone else, why not an owl? I already wrote a blog post with my thoughts about some of the things people have mentioned already, but I have to say that Colin Creevy was my favorite character in the books, a lot because I had to hope for his sake that he was gay, or else he'd have had a bit of explaining to do to himself a bit later on in life (he was still Harry Potter's biggest fan, even in book 6, when they'd known each other for four years and Colin would have long began to be...distracted). I was PISSED when I got to his death, to the point I that I stopped reading and went to sleep right after. Especially since he seemed to be included simply so we could see his corpse. He was a Muggleborn, and I don't think he had been at Hogwarts all year, since the Death Eaters kicked out all the Muggleborns when they took over. However, he had one of the DA galleons, so I imagine he showed up when the Cho and the others did, possibly with his brother in tow (who would have been promptly shipped back out). My second favorite character was Molly Weasley. I knew she had it in her! I mean, she terrified an entire generation of professional troublemakers, none of whom (even Ron, at the end) could be reasonably described as weak either in character or in magical ability. In fact, the opposite was true. Only three people in her household had the nerve to stand up to her in the face, and one of them was a cursebreaker. Ever wonder where Bill got the practice? And then of course there are her older brother's to consider, "The Prewetts" mentioned in books one and five. If Moody had been impressed by their skill, and Hagrid goes as far to call them some of the best wizards of the age, they had to have been good, and it is reasonable to assume Molly isn't a slouch herself. I wasn't sure if she'd survive the experience, but I knew from book 4 that Molly would one day get to curse the crap out of someone. I started writing a fan-fiction once where a pregnant Molly defended her home from a Death Eater aunt, before I knew about her brothers of course. Rowling's version of Molly dueling is of course much more satisfying to read, but I'm happy that I got it right she'd reveal her greatest strength defending Ginny. Someone else wrote that the major theme to this book could be "second chances." I'm tempted to call it redemption, but I think second chances works better, because it is inclusive of the antics Voldemort got up to as well. I'd wondered why Madame Bones had been killed at the beginning of book 6, and the imperius curse on Thickneese explains it. Obviously, she proved a lot tougher a customer than her successor. The deathly hallows, the second battle of Hogwarts (I was dissappointed the final battle was there, until the second chance theme was pointed out to me, and I realized that though the causalties were higher this time around, it ended on a lot better note than the battle that ended book six), the ghosts, Kreacher, Mrs. Longbottom's solid support of her grandson, even Hermione's snappy reply to Ron's wish for Crookshanks (you know she'd been dying for years to pay that one back) all highlight, not redemption, but the feeling that things do come around again, and you can do better the second time if you take the opportunity. As much as the book wandered, I almost wish it had been longer, if only so we could find out a little bit more about the minor characters that someone had as their favorite. Can you imagine the scene at Arabella Fig's place, for instance? Though a squib, Rowling said Fig bred cats that, like Crookshanks, were big, magically intelligent, and able to spot deceptions. When they attacked her (for she couldn't have been spared, besides being in the Order she was also a squib and once testified for Harry, neither of which would have gone down well), whoever was sent was probably ran off minus a few strips of skin. I also wish we (alright, I) could have seen Colin fall. I will, in absence of evidence, assume he was killed by Narcissa, who would have been looking for an easy target to prove herself against so that no one would question her presence. Even if she saves Harry, and does what she does for her son's safety only, she's still not exactly a good person. This is the woman that made someone she had no business trusting (and probably did not fully trust) swear an oath that would kill him in order to safeguard her son. The only thing that would have redeemed her fully, in my eyes, would have been Draco in hiding in the room of requirements, with a message for Harry from both her and her sister Andromeda Tonks. The Malfoys in the great hall after the battle was good, but not quite enough for my taste.

Oh man is this thing spoilerific. Seriously, don't read more if you haven't read the book. I finished the seventh book yesterday. There were some things, some events in the plot that did not please me, but that was bound to happen, I suppose. The body count was impressive, and Rowling was bound to work her way someone I liked. That it was my two favorite characters in the entire series was, naturally, bad luck. Actually, I was surprised to see Colin Creevy in Hogwarts at all. I thought for sure him, his brother, and Justin Finch-Fletchy had already been killed or were in hiding. I guess he could have surfaced with the rest of Dumbledore's Army, and if so paid for his bravery. Actually, that makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. That said, Dobby's death makes me want to throw things, even if she did a better job of giving him a grand exit than she did for Colin. But for everything I didn't like, there was a dozen details that made me smile, even while tearing:Ginny's refusal to let Cho go off alone with Harry, Hermione's full-frontal snogging of Ron, McGonagol's powers of transfiguration in a duel (and the Colin in me went "Yes!"), Molly's duel with Bellatrix (outright cheers here), and, surprisingly, Mrs. Longbottom. Molly had always been a fascination of mine, because I knew she was more powerful than she acted, and that her greatest power would come when Ginny was threatened. In fact, the only attempt I ever made at HP fanfiction dealt on this topic. But I had never considered the story of Mrs. Longbottom, a woman so formidible that she raised not just her son Frank, hero among aurors, but Neville, who with Harry proved himself probably the bravest Gryffindor to don the Sorting Hat. The story of her battle with Death Eaters, her appearance and formidable support of her grandson, were impressive additions to the book. I suspect though that she didn't make it either, as she isn't mentioned again, and one would expect her to be one of the first to rush to her grandson's side in the final skirmish, and she wouldn't exactly have been quiet in the lull between the melees. I was also impressed by Rowling's deliberate tweaking of mythology. For those that didn't get it yet, Syltherin is Water, Gryffindor is Fire, Hufflepuff is Earth, and Ravenclaw is Air. I'm willing to believe that the scrambled symbols of air and fire (properly and respectively, a sword and a spear or wand) were due to happenstance, the virtues of the houses as she laid them out, and the more compelling story of the elder wand. But I think the cup and the pentacle were mixed up deliberately, when she realized what she'd done with the first two. On the other hand, the professors that lead these houses are exactly the ones that make sense: Air light charms, liquids potions, plants in the earth, and what can be more transfiguring than fire? I wonder if they let a Hufflepuff teach transfiguration to balance against Neville, for herbology must have been seen as the Hufflepuff post since the founding. Even odder (if more obscure), are the ghosts. Ghosts, in literature, are commonly representatives of an oracular tradition, usually one that is dying out. They are the ultimate stories that change after they have been finished, and are never perfect yet each time correct. Even the phrase ghost stories conjures, for most, oral storytelling. At least, that's what they are usually. Rowling does have some elements of the traditional view (it is so strong I don't think she had a choice): note that the ghost professor teaches history, and several times across almost every book secrets are held only by ghosts or the memories of the dead. But in the cases of the house ghosts, Rowling has done something a little different. To recap, the prized virtues of the Hogwarts houses are Bravery for Gryffindor, Ambition (and to a lesser extent dispassion) for Slytherin, Intelligence for Ravenclaw, and Loyalty for Hufflepuff. However, we learn in books 5 and now 7 that three of the ghosts who have been chosen to represent the traditions of their houses are ghosts at all because they failed to emulate their houses most prized virtue. Nearly Headless Nicholas, we learn in five, was afraid of death. The Gray Lady admits in seven that she acted like an idiot, and died for it. The Bloody Baron, it turns out, walks forever because he gave up his dispassion and slew his own greatest ambition. It makes you wonder who the Fat Friar betrayed, doesn't it?

To be fair, there was a little bit of a nod to the Harry/Draco thing in the last book too. In fact, if Draco had surrendered in time, I'm sure Harry would have (breifly) been put in charge of hiding the little brat. Just imagine how that would have gone down. And let's not forget the fourth book; it took the movie for me to notice that Harry and Cedric really do spend much of the book wanting to hump the other's leg. I was also greatly shocked by the number of deaths, particularly among my favorite characters. I'm sorry he got waxed, but pissed Rowling didn't even show his death or show his killer dying as well. I'll choose to believe it was Narcissa, and accept that as an excuse. I was sad that the epilogue didn't reveal more about the minor characters, but I can see why she didn't go into that detail. She was able to gloss over many of the possible deaths by not going into detail, but the fact that half of those that stayed died couldn't mean well for someone's favorite character.

Edit: Wrote this a couple days ago. Forgot to publish it. Oops. In colonial Latin America, there was a pretty extensive caste system in place based on one's skin color, and what it implied about the person's parentage. If you google it, there are some pretty specific categories, where one Black, one White, and two Native American grandparents made one a Wolf, and so on. It was also partially a breeding experiment using people and slaves. The most haunting image I saw had a little girl, with the caption (in Spanish) "Her fair face, every image of her fathers, without a trace of her mother's savagery." A "Torna-atras," the return backwards, was considered failures of the system, as Torna-atras were dark skinned children born to a light-skinned parent or parents. But ever since I could tell stories, the torna-atras has been one of my favorite themes to work with. Not in terms of race of course, because I hardly think about race, especially where it applies to me, but in terms of the way a person sees himself. For example, a few of my favorite songs: "Jenny on the Block" "Switch" "Who Says You Can't Go Home?" "Mississippi Girl" "Gone Country" "1985" "'Fore She Was Momma" All of these to one extent or another deal with the same theme, the "return backwards." The main character in the song, who is in many cases the singer themselves, is saying that they haven't changed from their roots, or in the case of the last two is forced to think about for far from her youth she has wandered. Country songs, with the inherent structure of the same event/image repeated throughout a person's life or across three different people, is naturally better equipped to deal with this idea, which is probably why they dominate the list. In literature, this theme crops up with surprising regularity, and is as often positive as negative, just like the examples I gave above. Werewolves and the concept of original sin are both examples on the negative side, while all throughout the novel American Gods, not to mention the endless of the Sandman comics by the same author, deal with the concept as a positive. People in these Niel Gaiman's stories are at their most powerful and most vulnerable when they have revealed their true selves, and their torna-atras have revealed that, diminished, challenged, and on the surface changed, in the end they are still the same beings they were millennium ago.

It could also be something that the kid did. A story I'm working on has a character that ran away from home to his college-aged half-brother, not because his mother or father were abusive or anything, but because he has a fervent hope that the local police won't pursue him across state lines. I haven't yet decided what his specific crime was (but I'm thinking some sort of possession charge), other than it has to be significant enough that Daddy won't be able or might not be willing to throw money at it until it goes away, yet unremarkable enough to not get a nationwide manhunt on his tail. As the brothers despise one another, and have a long history of despising one another, it's been quite fun to write so far. I guess I should also specify that the character is 16, and his brother is 20. In your case, the kid might have been banned from the county by court order. It happens, albeit not often in cases of people so young. In which case, his mother might have specifically sought out gay-father, despite her own misgivings and possible homophobia, as the only person who might be willing to take on her little hooligan. I guess this is a variation of "Desert Dropping," with the bonus that no one is particularly innocent (Mom, Dad, and Son all made some screw-ups to create the situation), which should up the surly factor all around by a couple orders of magnitude.

Some history about me. I have told stories, wrote stories, since I first learned to print. My sisters, who are farily good writers themselves, encouraged this fascination of mine. Just around August the year before I turned 11, I started writing poetry. By the Valentine's Day two weeks before my birthday, I had sold several of my poems to my male classmates that wanted to prove to their dates that they were willing to go the extra mile in originality. I didn't have my own date, but I did make five dollars that year, so I considered it a wash. For about a three year period, I wrote poems incessantly, maybe three or four a week. My creative writing portfolio had thousands of lines of verse, a few good, mostly trash, but I hardly cared. Besides the fact that it was high school, and volume counted a lot more than content, I was content to be simply writing. The only thing that mattered was feeding that particular beast. I mention all of this because over the last two years, I have written maybe ten poems, not counting the half-rhymes I sometimes find myself waking up to. I do at least a free-write every day I have the time, but all of that has been prose. I have a theory for why this happened, but it makes me seem a bit crazy. You see, one of the last poems I wrote was one called "Jeremy Dominguez," which I have posted in e-fiction. An explication of a different poem, this poem was basically taking part of my mind and letting it run away with itself. You know how there is a difference between the speaker in a poem and the author? Well, in writing "Jeremy Dominguez," I accidentally gave my default speaker a name. Later, when I was writing a couple prose pieces for a college writing class, Jeremy was given a history, family, and quirks to differentiate him from me. And aside from the prologue to that piece, titled "F--cked Up Love Songs," I haven't written but a handful or poems since. I don't think I really managed to fracture my consciousness that completely, but it is fascinating that a habit that completely ingrained into me went away that quickly. My family is known for such behavior, no addiction seems to stick to us unless we want it to (at different times, all five of us managed to quit smoking cold turkey, and diets are ridiculously easy for us to modify), but this surprised me. There was a slight petering off period when I was concentrating on completing my first novella, but that was all the warning I got. But not all is lost. I actually wrote a poem for the latest anthology. Check it out: "How to Make a Rainbow." Gabe

Warning: I am a Harry Potter fanatic, and my fervor has only gotten worse as July 21 draws closer. This post reflects that. With nothing much else to do today, I went down to Irvine and saw "Harry Potter" at the IMAX theater. It's been quite some time since I saw an IMAX film, so I had a good time. I'm afraid the Harry Potter movies may spoil me, since the scenes flick by so fast I barely notice time has past at all. Rather than review the movie, which other people can do with greater ability than I possess, there is one thing I wanted to mention. I think what impressed me most of all about this film, beyond the continued progress Emma Watson has made in regards to her acting ability (remember when she had to enunciate every word?), was the characterization of Tonks. Like Alan Rickman's portrayal of Professor Snape, Natalia Tena's Tonks does not quite jive with the way the character is presented in the books. In OotP, and even more so in HBP, Tonks comes off as a bit of a drip. Sure, she has to be talented, but she always acts the ditz, and gets very weepy when Lupin spurns her feelings. But due to how fast this movie moved and how much was dropped in the script, Tonks comes off much stronger. Instead of that girl who could of been very good in class but got caught up in mad crushes every thirty seconds, she's now an older sister or young aunt, near enough in age to the kids to relate to them, but old enough that she's clearly got it better together than they do. In the climax of the movie, she appears not with the trepidation one would expect of someone young to the profession, but with "This wasn't the time to f**K with me" confidence evident in her features and stance. I sat upright in my seat when they showed her, and I realized that this, alone in the movie, was a character I could relate to. I really hope the rest of the movies continue this characterization, which now that I think about it is possibly a combination between Tonks and Bill Weasley. I had looked forward to seeing Bill, who might have been a hot guy (and Lord knows the movies could use some legal man-flesh, as Tom Felton doesn't get enough scenes to qualify), but if ditching him brought me her, I'll not complain.

Singing is something I only do when there are no witnesses. I actually had a decent singing voice at one point, but puberty took care of that, and I never took any lessons to modulate the baritone I wound up with. However, every once in a while, my dream self will inexplicably break out into song. By the light of morning, the poetry isn't all that, but the fact that it ever comes that easilly is something I marvel at. I mention this because it happened a couple nights ago. It was a full two-thirds of a song in the dream, but I only managed to right down the opening couplet before I forgot the rest. "Admit I'm what's keeps you up in bed every night/one hand grasps at dreams and one prays for morning's light." I do remember that I was singing this to someone that was trying to physically intimidate me, and that as I sang outed him I was also pushing him out of whatever building we were in. The sheer ridiculousness of the scene woke me before the third verse. I am not one for dream interpretation, but I am pretty sure this one means I need to write poetry more often, even bad poetry, because my subconcious will do it with or without me regardless. I think I'll stop here, and save why I don't write poems as often as I used to for another day, as it is fairly complicated. Later, Gabe

I want to start by saying I never thought I'd create a blog. I held back for years, even though I genuinely liked reading the blogs of friends and strangers. But not me, I was determined not to indulge. I created what I call a notebook for my rough drafts, but that was as far as I was willing to go. It even made sense, since I often found myself away from my computer, but rarely long separated from the internet. My writing class homework was now a breeze to accomplish, where before actually took some scheduling. A year and some change later, I wound up with a myspace and a facebook entry, neither of which I dedicated any amount of effort or creativity. But the crack had been revealed. I tried to keep the inanity onto those spaces, but no, it eventually carried over onto my precious notebook. A line here, a paragraph there, pretty soon every entry was prefaced by something about me, my life, and the people I dealt with. The horror, HORROR, I felt when I realized I was writing more about me on certain entries than the actual piece I was working on, cannot be adequately described. So now, a full two years after the advent of my notebook, I've caved. This is my blog. To baptize it, here is a blog game my friends have been passing around like a sorostitute during pledge week.* Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog. 1. I am Mexican-American, though I have some difficulty convincing others of this fact if they aren't aware of my full name. I actually started going by my middle name for exactly this reason, but even I didn't guess how effective it would be. People have thought I was white, which is ridiculous. 2. I realized I was gay in ninth grade. At the time, I had so many other things to be angsty about that it barely even registered until twelth. 3. I am a Pisces, which apparently means I have only a so-so relationship with reality. 4. While I don't really regret majoring in English in college, I kind of wish I had realized I like Geography a bit earlier in life. I'd have a much easier time finding a job in my chosen career if I'd picked that or Urban Planning. 5. I tell people I don't want to be a teacher, that I wouldn't be good at it and that I'm terrible with kids anyways. Those are lies. 6. I have 5 different colored necklaces that I wear to work each day (only one at a time though). I also have three neckties that I hardly ever wear. 7. As a matter of habit, I see how long it takes me to break into my own apartment whenever I acquire a new one. My current one takes all of thirty seconds, maybe a couple minutes if I want to do it silently. 8. I think that the songs "Run to You" by Bryan Addams, "You Outta Know" by Alanis Morrisette, and "Does He Love You?" by Reba McEntire make an interesting story cycle, even more so if you imagine the Alanis song is sung by a male. Instead of tagging others, I'll just say "participate if you feel like it." *Oh, yeah, this will sometimes be a graphic blog. Close your eyes if you are underage.

Don't feel too constrained with stories needing strict beginning-middle-ends if you don't feel like writing the middle right away. If the second book is calling your name, write the second book, and slap what you have and a few paragraphs in connecting text on as a prologue. Do you really need to explore the whole saga of Devon's exploitation of Michael if another story line seems more compelling to you?

This is an ending? It seems more like a beginning to me. Or even a self-contained story in its own right.

I was going to email you, but since you brought the subject up already... Revenants... doesn't exactly grab me as a title. I have two suggestions that I came away with after reading through it: "Two-Souled" or something echoing the words "truth" or "real," such as "Truly." Why I picked these names will be evident as I criticize. There was something odd that occurred to me when I tried to write a fake back cover copy for the book. Your story isn't one story. It is in fact two mystery stories, only one of which gets fully resolved by the last page. Complicating this is that the more central mystery, Alex's, is from the reader's point of view mostly solved from about two-fifths of the way through the story. Now the characters don't know what's up for some time, because they withhold information from each other, but we the reader are able to see the assumptions they all make about Alex and see those assumptions challenged quite early on. Specifically, Joe doesn't know Chris doesn't have a twin, Steve doesn't know Chris and Alex are quite definitely two separate people, and Chris doesn't believe (despite quite a bit of evidence to the contrary) that it is possible for other people to interact with Alex. The mystery of the killings is typical of the genre, in that it doesn't really matter except to push the main characters to challenge and change themselves. That said, it is this secondary plot that actually remains a mystery for most of the book. Sadly, the nature of Coyote is not explicitly explained by the last act, so we are still left wondering what the hell is going on at the end. If you were tying it into a sequel, I wouldn't be so worried about that, but the plot pretty much just stops at end of this book, with no real incentive on the part of the characters to figure out what's going on, which implies the reader won't get to find out either. My suggestion would be to emphasis Alex a bit more, possibly by marginalizing Chris, or at least Chris's introspections. In other words, let Joe with his ability to sense truth figure the whole thing out, rather than have the whole thing spoiled by Chris too early in the story. The other way to go would be to amp up Chris's role in the book at the expense of Joe and Alex, emphasizing the murders. I would be wary in doing that, because it has a great chance in taking the story somewhere you don't want it to go. Anyways, that's what I came up with. Sorry it took so long. And I like your werewolf short. The only werewolf story idea I've yet come up with is now the property of White Wolf, Inc, and so I won't ever be writing it. It is nice to have an excuse for my laziness for once.

I'm making my way through Busted again, not easy as my palm pilot has such a limited battery, and I kept forgetting to grab its charger when I left my apartment the last couple of times. You were right, a lot of the details big make themselves more obvious when I read through it with all at once. As I said, I'm still picking through it critically, but two things do leap to mind. One: while I know you don't want to give the game away too early, Chris hardly reacts when Joe first says, "Alex," except that he replies "hard." I think there should be something there. Have him reach for his gun, pale visibly, look as if he's been slapped. Something. Also, while there IS a description of Chris included (once I knew to look for it), there isn't one for Joe. I know from your blog that he has red hair, green eyes, and if he looked any more stereotypically Irish he'd be a leprechaun, but the only clue the reader has for just about the entire first half is that his brother has red hair. That's about it. I suppose "Hennessey" should be a clue, but hell, I missed it. So, you might want to do something about that. The scene where Scott is watching the videotaped interview between Chris and Joe would probably be a good place to shove a smattering of description. I know it goes against the grain for you, but since it is somewhat important to the plot how Joe looks, you may want to bend your principles and add a little description. Hopefully I'll have more next week. I've already packed my charger, so I should make it through all of it by the time my new apartment is livable and my internet is installed.

Not much to comment on, seeing as it is just the beginning. I would never have foreseen the end of "Busted" from the beginning, nor "Yankee" (though I came closer that time), so I'll learn my lesson and hold back judgment for now. The title gives me an idea for a DnD module I could write for a local gaming group, so already I have benefited from reading this. By the way, do you have a single file for "Busted"? I've been trying to re-read it all, but it is a bit confusing with chapters spread out over days, and a couple early bits out of order, and my not remembering that they're out of order until after the fact. If you could make available a single file with all of it there, it would help me considerably in my effort to make meaningful comments.

Something you might not be aware of, and that I thought you'd been referring to when you last brought up the term Coyote, is that Coyote is an OLD insult in the American Southwest. It means, among other things, half-breed. Well, not quite half-breed. It generally meant a sort-of light skinned mixed race, what we now call a Heinz-57. There was a pretty specific mix that made up a Coyote at one point, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is. Google is no help; all the links I've found misinterpret genealogy as a set of rankings. Twits. Anyways, Coyote can still work, and still be more or less the same insult as you intended. Before making further suggestions, I'll need to re-read the whole thing again. I'll get back to you in a couple days.

No, it lodged in the frame of the window. It was the harmonics of the impact next to it that shattered the window, or so I shall choose to believe. Nice ending, by the way. It makes me curious how much influence on that situation Alex had, but a fine ending jsut the same.

Maybe. It's fine without it, and really it's unnecessary in most cases. We don't really NEED to know that Joe has red hair. It makes the visualization easier, but that's overrated in my opinion. If it really important to you, you can sprinkle it in like you've done, but don't, above all else, do any variation of the standing in a mirror routine. I forbid you to take time away from the incredibly interesting plot developments at the beginning to talk about their eye color. Maybe if you put in Steve's mind, it might fly, but frankly the oddities in the opening chapters are much more absorbing than the character's physical appearances. That said...I do wonder what Chris and Toby look like to you. You may have mentioned it at one point or another, and the description of their "Grandfather" is a step towards that, but I can recall much at this point. For my own reasons, I picture them both as fairly dark, and strangely Toby is darker in my mind than Chris when the implication is that it should be the other way around. Maybe he has more time to tan, I don't know. Edit: Hey, I just thought of something. Why did a Detective pull over some guy on the freeway?

The jacket thing sounds familiar.

Wise decision. I am also happy this scene did not come on a friday. A cliffhanger, to keep the chapters hanging together, is one thing. That would have been torture.

Now, I take in all the evidence that Lucy just pointed out, and to me they justify an opposite set of character traits. The Joe I imagine has not had many, or any, close friends in his life, partly because of his experiences as a child, but also because he has to come off as bit odd to anyone that doesn't have or believe in psychic abilities. He can tell when someone is lying, and he doesn't exactly react quietly when set off. I bet that has trashed more than one childhood friendship, when he reacted inappropriately to some kid trying to pull a fast one. He doesn't drink, and sometimes can't tell the here and now from the was, might, and wished it were. I think he fell in love with Alex so hard and so fast was because Alex accepted him totally, and for once the second sight did not hinder a connection, instead being the direct cause of that connection. So really, do what you want. I will point out that the ability to form friendships that don't stem from forced propinquity might be an interesting note of contrast between Joe, Chris, and Steve. Toby too, I suppose.

To answer your opening question, I don't know. I honestly don't know. I've though about it before, even wrote stories about the topic (discreetly, using a supernatural monster as a stand-in for homosexuality so as to not rattle my creative writing class), and I honestly don't know the answer. The thing is, I know that if I had the option to alter my unborn child to swing the sexual odds towards heterosexuality, then I almost certainly WOULD do it. While I don't know if I can give up my own identity, being gay for me has been a mixed damnation, and something I would spare someone else, if I could. I'd feel guilty as hell for taking that choice, one I have said I cannot even make for myself, away from my child, but I would do it anyways. Well. I had hit writer's block for my anthology story. This has spurred on a new possibility.

It's a good palce to stop, in any case. I liked Joe's final speech, there.