Enoch

I don't know how I missed your reviews, but I did. I'm sorry. Thank you so very much for it.

Jaro, than you for your review. I do read them all and try to learn from them. Your input has indeed been helpful. Thank you!

Don't look for the Druid tie in until book 2 or 3 That is, if you the readers allow me to.

Thanks for leaving a review Jaro! The Druid scene was more or less placed in this story for future writings, but not in this book itself.

I don't think the judge had any intentions of letting either walk out of his court room without the issues being resolved. Thanks for leaving a review and I'm sorry I missed you writing it when you did.

Sorry about this chapter not meeting your expectations. It didn't meet mine either. When writing and posting weekly as I started out, life events can affect one's writing, and it did mine. Hopefully, if you didn't give up on the story you will find it smooths out and returns to what you liked about the story to begin with. The main thing is, from my point of view, you took the time to write your thoughts down and caused me to reflect on how my story made you feel or not feel. Thank you for that!

When I posted the last chapter in this story, my life was up-side-down. For years my mother and father had sacrificed a lot, both time and money, to make sure my life was as comfortable as possible for a kid with leukemia. The weekend before this past Christmas, my mother fell down those same stairs I had and broke both of her arms. As bad as this was, especially around the holidays, we thought that was it and we could help her get through the holidays and broken arms without much problems. That wasn't to be. The accident lead to the doctors discovering major problems. It was a downward spiral for my family. I lost my mom on June 6th. Ever since, I've been mostly wandering around in a fog. I feel like I've made a major break-through and I no longer feel lost and alone. I've been thinking about T&T the last few days. Back in January, I felt like I couldn't close book 1 of T&T the way I had wanted to, so to keep from leaving people hanging and not finishing the story, I kind of ended it where it was. However, I left too many unanswered questions. Therefore, it is my intention to at least write one or two more chapters to cleanly close out this part of Andy, Joey, and Roger's lives. I look forward to reading your replies and comments. Billy

Happy Birthday!

Thanks Jaro! Yeah, it's my first attempt. Sorry it has taken me some time to respond to your reviews. I promise to catch up. But, on the last review you did, don't give up on the story because of my start/stop into the fantasy/religious realm. I actually don't go any further there unless you count a sweat lodge scene in the future. Just wanted to let you know, Thanks again for the review.

Thank you so much for your comment. It means a lot to me for you to take the time to leave a review. I hope you enjoy the rest of the story!

I am indeed. In fact... shhhhhhhh.... don't tell anyone this, but there might be a closing chapter to book 1 in a few weeks or less.

Happy Birthday Steve!

A HUGE welcome to everyone new to GA. I know you will find stories you will fall in love with, find new friends, and make us all a better person by your presence. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Thank you for taking the time to write a review! That town or community you mentioned, is it Crown? If so, what's it near?

More is indeed coming. But please be patient with me

I'm looking for advice here. I'm in the market for either a new pc or laptop. Money isn't the over-all issue. I want a device that has windows 8.1, i5 or i7 chip, 8-16 gb of ram, 500 gb-1 tb hard drive, that comes with whatever is the best word processor. Where would be the best place to look, the manufacturer or a dealer? And which would be better, a pc or laptop?

I have decided to end Trials and Tribulations Book 1 The Beginning with chapter 26, Family. I will be taking some time off and then begin the second book, yet to be named. Thank you everyone that ever wrote me, commented on a chapter, and/or left a review. I never expected to have a story of mine to be so well received by so many of you. I truly look forward to writing again on this and other stories. It will take some time to gather together a team to edit and beta for me, but most importantly, it will take a little time for me to have the drive again to write, after recent dramatic events in my personal life. I wish one and all the best and look forward to establishing the writer/reader relationship again. Peace out

Even though the scientific probability of other intelligent life in the universe appears to be high, I rather doubt it. To me, the likelihood that everything necessary to duplicate the circumstances needed for life on earth to form intelligent lifeforms, is remote. Not only did earth have too be not to far from her sun and not too close, but earth needed the giant gas planets at just the right places in the solar system to protect her from destruction. Yes, there are trillions of stars, but how many are in just the right place on the out-skirts of it's galaxy, like our own, to prevent all the nasty things that can happen close to the center of a galaxy from destroying it's planets? I think I would be happy to be wrong, but even if I'm wrong, I'm not sure I really would be happy to know that there were a higher intelligent alien civilization knocking on our door. It didn't go too well for the Native Americans. Just saying...

It seems to me that those that yell the loudest in pointing out the actions of others, usually do so to draw attention away from their own actions.

Hi everyone! I hope you all are well and having an awesome day. Those of you that know me will attest that I am a man of many opinions and not shy about sharing them. However, the recent past finds me trying to be more selective in my trips to the soap box to render a diatribe. I believe I have been somewhat successful in this endeavor, at least until now. I have never been accused of being a gay activist and I don't think of myself as one now, either. What has happened now to change my passive attitude you may ask, quite simply, I'm fed up. I'm sick and tired of some in Church Leadership blaming the woes and the decay of America only on the GLBT community. I readily submit that every element of society has bad apples. People none of us would bring home to meet our families or our dogs, for that matter, includes some members of the GLBT community. But I can not subscribe to the Church party line on this subject. I understand the reasoning behind the pulpit assassination attempts on the GLBT community- it's a easy minority to sling hate at without repercussion from the thither, not yet, anyways. I'm hopeful that that will change. It's really a shame that pastors will target the GLBT community as the cause of so many problems that we face. While there are liars, cheats, thieves, murderers, back stabbers, and idolaters that fills their pews every service. I'm not saying that there aren't real Christians who leads Christ-like lives that attends those same services; because I believe there are. What I am saying is that those disgraceful preachers are allowing their need for dollars over-shadow their calling of God's love. You see, I believe that God is the God of love. He created us to have someone to love him as He loves us. He gave all of us free will so we can return his love. For without free will, there can't be love. I won't go into the the verses from the Bible that are thrown about against gays, nor will I answer them with the responses that most people are now familiar with. I think most sane thinking people understands that one must consider the context and the times that the writers of what we call the Bible, lived. I've been taught, as I think most have, that the books in the Bible were inspired by God, not dictated. Therefore, the writers' life experiences and the intellectual thinking of the times influenced what they wrote. For an example, in the New Testament, Paul speaks out about a man laying down with another man like with a women, as being wrong. What you aren't told is that the Great Greek intellectual thinking of the times, which was widely accepted, was that any sex whose purpose wasn't for procreation was animalistic and beneath us as human beings. Paul, being raised Greek, was well aware of this point of view and was clearly influenced by it, as evidenced by some of his other thoughts. To me what is important is what each writer in the New Testament all agree on, God is Love, God sent His Son to us, and Jesus did willingly suffer and died for us all. If that isn't love, I don't know what is. What I do know is if every Shepherd of his flock stuck to this theme, this world would be a lot better off. Jesus left two(2) commandments, and both dealt with LOVE. Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as you love yourself. As I see it, if God IS love, and I believe he is, and I love another man, there can be nothing wrong with that love, for God is love. I must be clear on this point, I do mean love, not lust. However, even in stating that, I must say that this is just my opinion. In those two commandments hang the ten. I believe gays(GLBT) can be good Christians and go to Heaven. When I think of the preachers that preach hate and damnation (not all of them do and in fact probably most don't) I'm reminded of Matthew chapter 7, verses 15-27. I'm sorry, but this is something I needed to get off my chest. I hope I haven't offended anyone, but I do hope I have caused some enlightenment and provoked some thought.

It is what it is. Nothing anyone else says can make what to me is trash, art; nor what is art to me, trash. I believe that to be true for everyone. If I'm not mistaken, this debate, or expression of opinions, has been ongoing for thousands of years. To me, it comes down to individual taste. I have no problem others liking, worshiping work as art, that I wouldn't waste my time contemplating. As they say, to each their own. As for the main topic of this thread, I don't know enough to form an opinion beyond I tend to lump this guys attempt at art to placing a cross in a jar of urine- tasteless.

Again, Thanks everyone!

Thank you guys! I must admit that you have brought the first smile in a while with this.