Drew Payne

Thank you. First writing this essay helped me through an awful week in my life

I so want to answer you but that would break an important rule, no spoilers! What I can say is this chapter is a sort of transition. The first part of the story ended with the previous chapter and the second part starts with the next chapter. Thanks for your wonderful comments but I really cannot say anymore.

I am sorry that Liam's trial upset you but what I wanted to show was that a thirteen-year-old child shouldn't be tried as an adult, they are still a child. I wanted to show how alien and fearful his trial was. I also wanted to show, by the end of this story, that Liam isn't the same person he was when he killed the other boy. So many times, I've seen the press going after child offenders, when they are released, as if those people are still the same. And the self-righteousness of the media when an offender is given a new identity when they are released. When I was at university, one of the group of people I hung around with was a guy I got on with really well, we had the same sense of humour. At the end of our course, I found out he had a criminal conviction and I just thought, so what? It didn't change him in my eyes, I just knew a bit more about him. I know my attitude isn't common though.

Liam's Probation Officer is pretty crap at his job, only doing what he has to, and is certainly not seeing Liam as a person, though he knows why Liam was sentenced to Nurton Cross, which has coloured his actions (In a later chapter I will discuss the public image of Liam during his trial). I've met so many people like the Probation Officer, judging their clients and then doing the bare minimum for them based on that judgement. There is sub-text to this chapter, neither Carter or Kelly (once she looked at him) did not recognise Liam. The picture on the front of the newspaper looks nothing like Liam, but how many times do those pictures look like the people they are meant to? This story is only being told from Liam's point-of-view so I can only tell events as he finds out about them.

Liam leaned forward on the room’s window sill. His bladder was full and getting uncomfortably so. He couldn’t hold it off any longer or he could wet himself. He pushed himself upright and walked the short distance to his room’s door and walked the full length of his room in only a few seconds. He pulled his key out of his jean’s pocket. It took a few moments to unlock the double lock on the door - he had to repeatedly turn his key around and around to finally release it. When he had done, the lo

Thanks for this comment, but it's really hard to reply to. I've already written the next six chapters, I know where this story will end, and I don't want to give away any spoilers. I can say that the Special Hospital is actually based on a real hospital, were I worked for a while.

One bad decision has led to all this but Liam had no one in his life, at the time, who could have helped him. At least now he does have someone who cares about him.

Liam sat himself down again on the window’s wide wooden sill, but this time with his back to glass panes. Next to him, placed there in a little and neat row, were his only other possessions that weren’t his handful of clothes: seven books and an old radio. Donna had bought him the radio - an uncharacteristic moment of kindness. She had handed him the small black plastic radio when she had brought him here from Nurton Cross, simply mumbling, “This is for you.” The radio had been a wonderful gift

Arkansas is a collection of three novellas that show David Leavitt at his best, exploring the lives and emotions of his characters. The first story is The Term Paper Artist, which is the closest he has come to writing a sex comedy. The narrator is a disgraced novelist who is hiding at the home of his professor father. He soon becomes involved in accepting sexual favours from jock-students in return for writing English literary essays for them. Soon, word spreads, and he has several jocks and essays on the go at the same time. This being a David Leavitt story, it isn't a fun, rushed tale of sexed-up jocks and Eng. Lit. essays; rather the story is about a writer with writer's block and the strange course of events that releases it. Next is The Wooden Anniversary. Here, David Leavitt revisits two characters, Celia and Nathan, who have been featured in his previous short story collections. Celia is now living in Italy and running an Italian Cookery School for Americans. Nathan is visiting her with an old friend, Lizzy, a narrator who is always the last person to know anything. The reunion is not a happy one. Celia is married, but her husband prefers to spend most of his time with his mistress, and Nathan is still desperately searching for a lover, which he has been doing his entire adult life. The friends go sightseeing in the local area, there's a little holiday romance, and then the fireworks erupt. In typical David Leavitt style, this is a slow-burn story that only explodes at the end. This next Celia and Nathan story can feel like one is revisiting old friends or perhaps witnessing an unwelcome soap opera, depending on how one warms to them. Personally, I find them fascinating as they illustrate David Leavitt's take on the disasters of human relationships. You don’t have to had read any of the other stories featuring these characters to enjoy this one. The last novella is Saturn Street. Out of all the novellas, this one is the strongest, carrying its narrator on a greater emotional journey than the previous two. Jerry Roth, a writer lost in Hollywood, narrates Saturn Street. He has come to Hollywood to work on his screenplay, but instead, he sits around his apartment watching Dr Delia (a TV psychotherapist he never calls) and formalist gay porn videos (which he doesn’t find erotic). To break the monotony, he volunteers with Angels, a charity that supplies daily meals to people with Aids in LA. His regular round takes in a mixed bag of people, including a man who only wears orange sneakers and an IV. One of the characters he visits is Phil, a handsome ex-carpenter. Soon, Jerry falls in quiet, unrequited love with Phil. This isn’t the world of grand passions; Jerry and Phil don’t end up rolling across the carpet in hot sex, nor do they end together as a couple. Instead, Jerry quietly and secretly loves Phil as Phil’s health deteriorates. This is the territory where David Leavitt excels, with the small passions of everyday life. He carefully and empathetically charts Jerry’s unrequited love and how this moves him on in his life, but more sensitively, he describes the physical downward spiral of Phil’s health. This story shows David Leavitt’s great strength, charting modern-day gay life, and though this story has no great plot, the emotional journey of it more than carried me along. Arkansas shows David Leavitt’s power in mapping the emotional life of urban gay men and all the highs and lows that come with that. Though no grand passions, the emotions here have that sharp taste of reality. Don’t be put off by this book being made up of three novellas; David Leavitt packs much more into each one than lesser writers do into whole novels.

They won't be sent to an adult prison but they are tried in an adult court. I still feel very uncomfortable about that.

And a child of ten can be tried as an adult, which has disgusted me since I first found it out, too many years ago. One of the things I wanted to write about here is that a thirteen year old isn't an adult and can't take part in their trial, the way an adult can.

Liam did stab to death another boy in front of a crowd of witnesses, yet there is so much going on here he doesn't know about. But things don't end here.

@Timothy M. thank you for an amazing review, you make me blush. If any reader wants to ask me about this story, please feel free to do so, here, on my profile or add a comment to the story. I lived with these characters for a year and really got to know them well.

The next day, which would turn out to finally be the last day of Liam’s trial, he was again brought back to the Crown Court by that prison van. As the van stopped outside the courtyard at the back of the Crown Court, he knew where he was because he could hear that crowd shouting for him. He expected the banging on the outside of the van - it always happened - but the banging suddenly escalated. Something crashed against the outside of the narrow window, so loud that he feared the glass would br

Thanks for the wonderful feedback. I had such fun writing Simon and Jeff's relationship, especially Jeff's "Too Cool for School" attitude getting in the way of him just asking out Simon. Jeff will be very good for Simon, and Jeff's father will also be someone good in Simon's life. Niki was just a joy to write, especially as I could give her so many of my views and attitudes. This is the first (but will not the last) long form story I have written and finished and I'm so grateful to the GA readers whose encouragement helped me do so.

Oh, spoilers, spoilers... Wait until the next chapter. The jury has been influenced by what they have heard and seen in the court room, but they have also been influenced by what they have seen and heard outside the court room too.

This story is about a very difficult subject so it’s telling isn’t easy. This story is going to be about 50-60,000 words long and I'm at the 30,000 point (Though I am haven’t posted all the chapters I’ve written yet). There's a lot more story to tell before I can reach a resolution. Liam is 19 when he's released from Nurton Cross, here he is only 13. There's a lot happened to him in-between. Please hang on in with me.

To me, the judge decided that Liam is guilty the moment he was told he would be presiding over his trial. It's the adversarial nature of our trials, were the defence or prosecution barristers must "win", that I have problems with. There isn't a search the true but just who can win. As for justice being blind… yes… right.

The last day of his trail was made up only of speeches. First went Mr Spencer. The man stood up and addressed the jury, talking straight to them. Liam didn’t want to stare at the man but Mr Spencer’s good looks kept pulling his eyes back to him. Mr Spencer told the jury how Liam had deliberately taken a knife to school with the sole purpose of hunting down Rhys Clarke. He then claimed that Liam killed Rhys Clarke in a vicious and sustained attack, that he showed no remorse for. Mr Spencer c

There's so much here Mrs Stewart-Graham could use on appeal and she's certainly intelligent enough to do so, but spoilers, spoilers…

@chris191070, thanks for that great comment. Things were always stacked up against Liam, especially the evidence. The end of Liam's is coming soon and things will change.

The next witness Mrs Stewart-Graham called was Duncan Loughton. The man slowly walked into the courtroom, his awkward gate on his crutches slowing him down. His right crutch moved forward, then his left crutch moved forward, and this was followed by his legs almost swinging after them. It seemed to take him an age to reach the witness box. He was dressed in a dark grey suit with a white shirt under it, though he didn’t wear a tie. Even struggling to reach the witness box, with a determined expre

Spoilers, spoilers. Miss James isn't a witness because of a big reason, and Liam will find out later.

@Anton_Cloche, thanks for your comment, you've hit several things right on the nail. In England you are innocent until proven guilty (Ha, ha), but so often so many people have made up their minds before a trial begins, and that can include the jury. I learnt a lot about the English justice system from reading the Rumpole stories by John Mortimer, who was himself a barrister. In many of those stories there were judges who had already decided the guilt of a defendant before the trial starts. The two days of a trial I observed, as research for this story, I saw a judge who had decided that the defendant was already guilty. I was shocked, and that shock formed the character of the judge here. I also wanted to make the judge the voice of the establishment. I'm writing chapter 22, and I have this story planned out, so I know what will happen. Mrs Stewart-Graham has a lot of grounds for an appeal, but that will be explained, also I will explain about what is happened outside of the courtroom, which Liam has been shielded from, which is causing a lot of pressure on everyone taking part in this trial, including the judge. This story is told solely from Liam's point-of-view and so we find out facts when Liam does, which can be much later than everyone else.

This story is about redemption but that is a long way down the line. I am fascinated by your take on this opening chapter, I worried that I had given away too much information here. Thanks for your feedback and happy reading.