B1ue

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.

Hey, so what if this is six months behind the curve. I still wanted to play. For the desert, I saw my favorite one, the hills outside of Palm Springs. Picture lots of rocks, clay, and not a lot of scrub to break up the lines. And windmills. My cube was a house sized pink box. Made of Adobe. It looked not unlike some houses you'll find in Los Angeles, in the places where there are no HOAs to tell you you're weird to ant your house to look like a cupcake. Ladder was a sturdy wooden variety, the kind used in ancient Native American southwest cliff dwellings. It was leaning onto the side of the house. There is suddenly a hole in the cube's roof. Flowers were bright yellow daylilys arrayed in front of the cube. Tons of them, all over the place, but with a tidy walkway in the middle to the bottom of my image. Oh, have I mentioned that I pictured all this as a painting so far, not as a a three-dimensional area? Actually, considering I worked for a company that sold flowers for more than a year, I kind of wonder why hemerocallis are the only things I picture. The horse I didn't put a lot of thought into. It was hitched near where the front door of the cube would be. An ex's family raised horses, so I pictured the one that didn't like to bite me. I think his name was Cinnamon. The storm. Well, there isn't much in the desert to trash, so it survived, maybe minus a windmill or two. The cube was too big to float away (plus it has a concrete foundation), but the ladder fell down in the wind, and floated a little ways before coming to a rest in the flower bed. There is probably a bit of flooding inside the cube, what with a hole in the roof, but the door by the horse let it all back out. The horse tried to break free, but as it is tethered, didn't get far. The flowers were shredded, but the plants themselves survived. *********** Analysis: My desert might, to someone else, look foreboding and lifeless, even for a desert. But for me, this is the one mental image guaranteed to make me smile. My family has vacationed in Palm Springs my entire life, and I have nothing but happy memories there. My cube. I am not at all surprised to find that my sense of self is an order of magnitude larger than most. My ladder. I don't know what to make of it. Its a ladder. An odd addition to this scene actually. Perhaps something could be made of the fact that it isn't free standing, and needs the cube to hold itself up? Flowers. Well, I always wanted children. Maybe not THAT many children, but in my family anything worth getting is worth hording. The horse. I'm not going to touch that one. (Stupid ex whose idea of a date was we both troop out to feed the horses.) The storm doesn't really change anything except what can be repaired. I had no idea I was that optimistic.

Sorry, nope. The Acropolis has more cultural significance. The Hagia Sophia has more spiritual significance. The Alhambra is historically more important. The Great Wall of China is physically more impressive. For pure ostentation, you can't trump the Coliseum (they staged naval battles in that thing). On artistic merits, I prefer the Eiffel Tower. Finally, I'd vote for the Statue of Liberty out of sheer patriotism, and because I like the spirit in which it was originally erected. If the Taj Mahal had been completed, maybe. Or maybe not. You'll notice that, with the exception of the Statue of Liberty, my favorites from the site's list served a living, active function in addition to being artistic. The Taj Mahal is extremely beautiful, but I object on a personal level to tomb art on that scale. Edit: I would have voted for Angor Wat, though. The person below me didn't go to church last Sunday.

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.

I'm somewhat obsessed with this story. Each week when I visit my apartment and regain internet access, I check for updates almost before I check my email. It is probably one of themsot engrossing stories I've read in a while. The chapters are quite long, and every single one (which have tripled in length since the author began publishing them in February) is far too short for me. I'm not one for summaries usually, but basically the story is that of a small group of freshman surviving a brutal year-long hazing into high school, which includes such fantastic highlights as rape, beating, and other forms of dehumanization. The story mostly does not dwell on the details of the hazing, instead focusing on the various responses the students have towards it, and how they grow into their teenage years both because and despute the daily fear thier school's "mentorship" program inflicts on them. While the cast and storylines chased are varied, all the actions centers around a beautiful blonde boy named Daniel Murrell, whose good looks and generally agreeable personality, among other reasons, are causing him to draw attention from those he'd least want. I'm not doing it justice, so I'd reccomend just popping over to check it out for yourselves. Now up to twenty chapters, Turbulance by Eliot Moore can be found on the gay/high school section of Nifty's. As I mentioned, he updates regularly, and the latest chapters (as of this typing) went up yesterday. --Gabe

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.

Thanks for the comments, all. To answer Camy's question, in the next couple weeks I'll be putting a couple other stories I wrote for Khay and Satar into eFiction. But beyond that, I think I'm letting these characters rest for a bit. At least long enough that Khay won't be so moody and angry. He's a lot more fun to write when he's been, as my favorite webcomic puts it, getting "Treasure type O" regularly.

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.

I posted this question to my blog (not here, I keep one on livejournal), but I thought this might be a better place to ask it. I'm considering what I want to write for the next anthology, and my first idea is to do a short story trilogy. The first part would be an edited version of this, the second would be a piece about his mother's angry reaction to that development, centered on his mother, and the third from a yet unnamed person about the aftermath. It is the second piece I am concerned about. Specifically, would it be tasteful to put a story that might be construed as sympathetic to an angry, homophobic parent on a website whose readership includes people who might live in terror of such circumstances, if not deal with such circumstances on a daily basis? My gut tells me that people would be able to handle it, and realize that what comes out of a character's mouth and thoughts aren't necessarilywhat I think and say, but would it be better to avoid the issue entirely? Please give me your opinions people. I'm honestly in a quandary.

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?

You know, with the talk of how easily riders switch partners, and the obvious level of comfort between D'kov and J'shon, this pairing might have more consequences than I first thought about. Having D'kov as J'shon's first makes sense from a story standpoint, since not too many other riders with dragons old enough to fly Liliath have been introduced, but what if Aliarth and D'kov had been thinking about this for some time? Actually, scratch that. It's obvious they have been, if you re-read the chapters. The real question is going to be what the morning after will bring. Also, I want to know what D'kov whispered to J'shon in the afterglow.

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.

That sounds close to the mix of continents that spawned me, except that my European ancestors were farther back, and there was some Chinese thrown in on the Mexican side for flavor (mostly around the eyes). I look Middle Eastern, enough that people ask if I am Iranian. I would imagine Chris might be a few shades lighter than I am, but not a lot, and he might catch some flack from anti-Hispanic prejudices. It also depends on what kind of Italian Chris's father is. Southern Italian any and every mob movie or television show has made people familiar with, but Northern Italian tends to be both thinner, lighter, and "prettier." If you wanted to soften Chris up a bit, and make a true mix of spiritual heritages, I'd suggest that mysterious Grandmother be half or quarter Asian. Anyways, I really like the job you are doing with this. I like the theme you came up with, "certainty without correctness."

At least you can. My name, both first and last, are so common that googling brings up nothing about me. The only combination that I've tried so far that worked was using my name and the college I went to, which brought up a letter to the editor I wrote. Back on topic, that's very cool that you managed to reconnect with someone like that, Jack. I probably wouldn't use someone whose name I knew ever, but in this case it turned out well.