Sasha Distan

Well done wonderful wolf-friend. Well deserved. Congratulations!

Oh yeah, we went from the wrap (0-5 months) to an ergobaby 360 (5-17 months) and now we use a big rucksack style carrier (second hand! Score!) which he likes because he gets to be REALLY tall and can see over my head. Boy's getting heavy though. Thank you to everyone for your well wishes. We're busy over here organising the nursery so that it'll sleep two, and wondering how we're going to fit a second dresser in there for the clothes for the new one... Also, trying to stop the grandparents getting excited and buying lots of new clothes and things - after all we still have everything Goblin had, and there isn't that much storage space in our house.

Thanks y'all, I am grinning madly from all the hugs. You're all so supportive - and none of you told me we are nuts (you're good liars, well done). Goblin is a pretty independent, sensitive little beast (who likes drawing in the mud with sticks), about the only thing he'll watch on YouTube is cross-country horse trials, and he cries if someone falls off. We'll get him being all soft and gentle with the lambs soon enough. And maybe get him another tractor.

We might have done something insane. A suspect a lot of you might think so. We have made a mad, crazy, awesome, wonderful, expensive, fabulous, impulsive choice. Again. Our little Goblin is currently 17 months old, gorgeous, blond, fluffy, blue-eyed, intent on digging in the dirt, playing with his brother Dashi, pointing excitedly at tractors, ‘helping’ water the garden, and getting to know the sheep and lambs at the farm. So we thought we’d get him a sibling – a real human sibling (which in no way diminishes Dashi’s position as his only older brother). Yes, we’re insane. New Baby will be a blood relative of Goblin, and we will be accepting delivery of them sometime in mid August. Goblin will be 22 months old, we’ll have two in nappies, we won’t be sleeping, life will be harder, more expensive, and potentially more stressful. Why on earth have we chosen to do this? I couldn’t tell you. We love being parents to our little man, neither of us would have life any other way now. So why not? Sure, every now and then I have a split second desire of student life with clubs and loud music, louder outfits, and flirting with pretty boys. But then, I think the reason I look back so fondly, was because we were young, we’d just got together, and it was fun to be cute and desirable late at night in Brighton. I wouldn’t go back to that life for all the money, all the books, or all the pretty horses in the ‘verse. I see dads and mums in the woods, by the beach, in town sometimes, with their gaggle and brood of children in different heights, chatting, squabbling, giggling, sharing ice cream, playing games – and I want that life. Our one boy is perfect and marvellous, but I want him to have siblings to fight with and play with. So here we go. If I seem distracted, that’s why. As last time, I am not prepared to talk, openly or privately, about the ins, outs, or specifics of how we are going about this, and we thank you in advance for your understanding. So, anyone got any advice how to tell the Goblin he’s going to have an even smaller person in his life?

Oh sweetie, you can't be afraid of the end. I promise it will be worth it. I hope you know how much pride it gives me when you say this is a favourite story of yours, I value your opinion so very much. Well, if the lecturer had gone back far enough, he might have worked it out, but he'd have been disgusted well before that. Marty and Hrishi have never really been coy in their language, have they?

Yeah, but that's low-grade stuff compared to say... Kiaza? Or even Sitka and Shindae's brand of theft and destruction. Well, he spent more than a week expecting to die, and his life has never had 'great potential' in the eyes of others anyway - these things make it way easier to accept the reality and make the most of it. As far as Su-Yin is concerned, what would be the point of scurrying around in fear?

If you not read Torturous Love... you might not want to. Zai and Tobias likes to cause each other pain, and Zai likes blood, and pain, and causing pain, and breaking bones... I'll stop now. What Su Yin wants to learn will be revealed in time. It's not what Su Yin wants to know which upset Atoki, more the language and manner in which he needs to learn. Atoki's Chinese calligraphy isn't that good... My father-in-law has a copy. huge bloody thing. Why does Tobias want to read it in a language in which he is not proficient? When you have eternity, you find ways to fill the time. If you go back and read from the start, you'll have to forgive the gods-awful mistakes in the first 2 stories before i got a clue what i was doing and Kitt came to join me in story 4 and pull me out of the gutter of the un-edited. Glad we made your day better!

I'm so glad you liked it and thought it was realistic. I too, think they'll have more than a fling now - though where they're going to live is an interesting question. Marty's going to be singing to a different tune soon enough!

not as much as you might hope for...!

Su Yin still acted shy about looking at himself as Zhihao opened the front of his robe with delicate movements, pulling the heavy fabric aside, but leaving the boy’s arms and hands obscured. But the yaoguai could tell, as easily as listening to the jumping heartbeat of his lover, that watching himself be exposed turned Su Yin on. The boy’s dark eyes followed the patterns his hands traced, over the pale smooth skin of his chest, the undulation of his abdomen, stopping before reaching the swelling

The problem is, it's not just weight loss diets, but all these other diets which will, in various claims - make you live longer, cure cancer without drugs, cure depression, fix arthritis, cure type 1 diabetes.... There are people who have followed what looks like proper published advice (you don't have to have done any research or been peer reviewed to score a publishing deal for a food book) and stopped listening to their doctors, taking their meds, and suffered badly because of it. Makes me really mad.

"Lies, damn lies, and statistics" - British PM, B. Disreali (popularised by Mark Twain, and often attributed to him, in a fabulous example of disinformation) Today is "Brexit Day". For those of you not in the UK or Europe, this might not mean much. Nine months ago we held a referendum to leave the EU, we votes leave, by a significant but narrow margin. Lots of people are pissed off by this - I'm not one of them. But whether we stay or go isn't what I want to talk about, what I want to talk about is the reliance on polling data, and the idea we can tell who voted for what. Lots of statistics say it was the young who voted to stay, and the over 65s who votes to leave (and this is called unfair, because apparently the older generations won't have to life in a separated Britain - as though the average lifespan now isn't 87 or something...). I've also read so-called statistics about what percentages of blacks/Mexicans/women voted for Trump. On both these things, I called bollocks. Our votes are private and confidential. At best, all we can say is who voted where. Everything else is guess work. All this data is created from small samplings of the people who chose to talk to to the information gatherers outside polling stations, and who says they're telling the truth? No one can check. And since voting for Brexit, like voting conservative, isn't socially popular, plenty of people will deny they did it, even if they did. I hate that news outlets publish this data as fact, use it to openly bully certain categories of people in the country. It's bad maths. Right, now that's out of the way, I'm going to go make a cake.

For those of you who don't know, I teach secondary school Food Technology (which is somewhere between Food Science and the Home Economics some of the older generation may remember). For those of you in the USA, secondary school covers some of middle school and some of high school - ages ranges 11 to 16. In this interestingly exalted position, I get to hear some rather odd things. Over the last few years these have included: 16yo boy: "Don't cows lay eggs?" 13yo girl: "Chef... isn't bacon a type of bird?" 15yo boy: "Chickens come from eggs? Really? Are you sure?" 14yo boy to his friend: "Dude, c'mon, everyone knows bacon and ham are different animals." But the things I hear which most often worries me, are students as young as 11 (and, yes, most of them female) telling me during nutrition lesson that I am wrong because: "wheat is poison", "carbs are really bad for you", and "fruit contains sugar". Lots of this, they get from their parents (mostly mothers in questioning) who are on diets and trying to lose weight. They don't like it well I tell them that none of these things are true (not in the way they think they are) and that a healthy diet should contain carbohydrates, wheat is only poisonous if you suffer from coeliac disease, and that the sugar contained in fruit is in no way comparable to processed sugar cane that they pour liberally on everything they eat. My big problem, is that so much of this information is not coming from their parents, but from YouTubers, Food Bloggers, and Lifestyle Gurus who have about as many qualifications between them as my dog does (like him, their hearts might be in the right place, but they're talking out their arses much of the time). There is a trend, on the rise over the last few years, but prevalent for at least a decade or so of fun new dietary fads. Clean Eating, Paleo diet, Raw food, the list goes on and on and on. And most of the people spouting this stuff know... nothing. My job is to teach children how to cook and why they need to eat foods (other than that they taste nice) and my job is being hampered by the celebrities of the internet. Well bugger.

you're officially in! Welcome aboard. In case you hadn't noticed, the site has just upgraded to a new and shiny edition, so if you see lots of chatter about software, bug fixes, and the tiredness and high caffination levels of the volunteer staff, that why. It isn’t always like this, though I can promise it is always fun, and there's always someone here to talk to, read with, or be read by.

I didn't know we could update our banners for each story. This is awesome!

Thanks very much! Well, demons do get everywhere! and you know the company Zai keeps, could be fun

I love this idea. I seem to have way too many characters who who have no idea what love is or how to deal with it. Get cracking Cole! Can't wait!

My first Unintended Consequences anthology entry is all done and dusted, just a final read through to be done and sent off to the proof team (next week hopefully). I'd love to write a second story, but since my new characters are keeping me hostage, that might not happen. And thanks to @Kitt for editing such an enormous workload.

Some people (Su Yin, Jem) take to hell like they were made for it. Others (Jahke, Atoki) have a harder time adjusting. Now we play a fun round of guess-what-Zhi-has-in-his-pockets!

You know my brain isn't logical, Tim! Also, I love a bit of speculation. You need to fall in love with a demon, have him fall in love with you, and move to hell. sorry sweetie. also, fun fact: Orkney has no trees. Soon... ish. I didn't write them all down when I did the research. Wakumi is a Japanese demon, yes. It's an Asian house. Jin-Ha doesn't have symbols. He's Japanese, and he was named back way back when (I was 18) before I knew how to do these things properly.

Like @Graeme said, it's a new diagnosis, which doesn't mean it didn't exist in the past. I agree with @Arpeggio it is a real clinical thing, but I also agree that it is also sometimes used (as almost anything can be) as a crutch by parents who just can't cope. Unfortunately, like with the rise in various mental disorders such as increased rates of clinical depression and anxiety, that our lifestyles as modern westernised humans (who, in broad terms, spend lots of time in front of screens and interacting through social media) are doing little to improve this trend. Various studies suggest that these things have direct correlation (though causation is not fully supported, and not everyone with ADHD, or depression, or anxiety spends lots of time online or playing video games). @Arpeggio your little brother is adorable. Just wait, one day he'll turn round a declare he has a boy/girl friend and you'll go "Wait, wasn't it your 5th birthday, like, last year?"

Yay! Prompts! this was my first ever prompt (sticking with the theme) https://www.gayauthors.org/forums/story/sasha-distan/promptmehard/1

I think we are all singing from the same hymn book. I so like much of what I've read here. I would love to ignore the current cultural climate, but I am also, unfortunately, aware of how in our social media environment, people can jump down your throat and vilify you for the slightest perceived insight. and as a footnote, for @R J Drew's nephew, I do not think writing a black character is less appealing, but to me, the idea is more scary (see above mention potential shouting). I do not have, as yet, any African-American characters, but since I have long admitted to not being in control of my characters, one never knows when this is change.

A lot seemed to happen in the first few days, and Su Yin had a lot of trouble distinguishing between one day and the next. The fire-stars burned in the sky day and night, and in the distance, curtains of red flame burned up into the blackness. Zhihao told him they were the divide between their part of hell, and the outer rings where nobody went, and Su Yin didn’t feel the need to explore the matter further. Unlike his time in the temple, he always seemed to be busy, and there was always som

I think the 'difference' we perceive in writing a murderer (easier) rather than a POC (harder) is that the current cultural climate is so incredibly divisive in many respects, seems intent on labelling people, and enforcing socially constructed rules where anything you do which might originally have belong to another culture or race (wearing sombreros or using a canoe) can now get you shouted at for "cultural appropriation" (my most hated phrase of the moment). Everyone is very quick to hand out blame these days, especially on this, and so the subject of writing a POC becomes suddenly terrifying, in case you get it wrong. potentially unpopular opinion: since according to the current cultural climate, you cannot be racist against a white person (especially one who speaks English or who is cis gendered), therefore you could obviously learn everything about this type of person with research and write them convincingly. When applied the other way around, lots of these concerns are highly suspect. I was once told an excellent piece of advice which was given to TV writers on writing believable female characters: write a male character, then change the pronouns. Whilst the exact same considerations might not be entirely perfect in this situation, it the principle stands. Same as my gender, my colour, my sexuality, are not any of the things I consider as my defining features, why should a POC define themselves by their skin tone as a major character trait?