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Carlos Hazday

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Everything posted by Carlos Hazday

  1. That's exactly what I preach to new authors. I have plenty of stories with one chapter and nothing after. Had I posted that one installment when completed, most of the tales would have ended up on the bin with the countless others abandoned by other authors. Short of death or incapacitation, I find abandoning a story unforgivable. Posting chapters before completing the story's only acceptable if I know how the rest will go and it's only a matter of fleshing out my outline and having someone correct my punctuation.
  2. I need to introduce a couple of Spanish characters. Then we can have chorizo on the menu!
  3. Thanks, Doc. When Cia brought this up a couple of months ago I was surprised. These are not what I would consider well-written tales. Reading them again before answering questions was surprising. The plot, characters, and locations are good, and I hope to do them justice with the next installment.
  4. I've been helping @WolfM clean Running With the Pack, and the result is my interest in the fantasy realm has been rekindled. As soon as I kill off finish the current CJ book, I'll revisit the Dolphins. However, first at bat is a little story you can read to your students before nap time. LOL
  5. Clint's famous words may have been in the back of my mind...
  6. I'm awake, caffeinated, and ready to tackle any comments or questions any of you may have. Come on, try me. Make my day.
  7. Carlos Hazday

    Part I

    Youll figure it out sooner or later. Just another one of our connections that led you to comment on this specific chapter/story
  8. Carlos Hazday

    Part I

    @Reader1810 It's all a conspiracy. Since you mentioned the Gotham Knights in your other comment, I'm glad you're paying attention. You won't have to go searching when you read something in an upcoming chapter. Cryptic enough?
  9. Carlos Hazday

    The Fuse

    @Oerff Sad but true. This chapter was posted before the conventions and the election. I was setting up CJ's involvement and his words reflected pundits' comments. Little did I know how things would turn out when I wrote it.
  10. Speak for yourself! I say bring THEM on!
  11. I hate these family reunions. Everyone gets lit thanks to all the free booze, and these group photos are a pain in the butt. Nobody said I was limited to one caption. At least I waited 8 hours before the second one.
  12. "Come on, Linus. You don't really expect to lure the Great Pumpkin with this display, do you?"
  13. @northie Wat chu talkin' 'bout, girl? The sky's falling! The sky's falling!
  14. Back in the Dark Ages (1977) the group battling Anita Bryant (may she suffer in hell for eternity) used this song as a rallying cry. When her group won, I swore I would crawl out of the closet and become an activist if a similar situation ever arose. It did, and I kept my promise. Two decades later, on December 1, 1998, the Dade County Commission approved a measure adding sexual orientation to the county's human rights ordinance.
  15. I hate it when the tow-truck driver makes me wait...
  16. Never met Cleve, but have read some about him, and heard plenty of stories from people associated with the Names Project when I worked on a few Quilt displays in South Florida. I honored his legacy by having the main character of my series arrange for a few panels to be displayed at his school. A little history for the youngsters who didn't live through the holocaust. Love him. Somebody gave me the first book as a Christmas present years ago; I devoured the others within a month. I shared a link to that same series of mine with the president of Washington's gay rugby club when I decided to include the Scandals in my story. He paid me the hugest compliment when he said my amateurish attempt reminded him of Tales of the City.
  17. I'm not in New York But I'm a frequent visitor and my series takes place as much there as in Washington. I may be able to answer. Otherwise, Defiance19 is my usual source for assistance.
  18. Larry Kramer. From writing Faggots and The Normal Heart, to pro GLBT and HIV+ activism, he's done it all. Talented, opinionated, and passionate, the man has done as much for his community as anyone else I've heard of.
  19. About time, mate. You've been on my mind lately. Each time there's a news report on the recent tsunami I think of your story.
  20. @Palantir, @Valkyrie, @Mikiesboy Thanks, Y'all. @Renee Stevens started the ball rolling with the reboot; I took it over later. She deserves the credit for bringing the feature back There's been a nice flow of new questions this week, and I've already begun assembling next month's issue. Get ready for a super-sized second season premiere with the largest number of authors ever featured in one entry! How's that for marketing?
  21. It’s been a year since Ask an Author’s reboot. Although the feature appears to be as popular as ever, getting questions continues to be a struggle. Serious or silly, professional or personal, short or long, what you ask makes the monthly blog possible. Don’t be shy, tell me what you want to know, and I’ll look for answers. • • • • • A self-described NoCal gay, @Ashi puts the social in social media in Gay Authors. The man has to be one of the friendliest people around here. What many of you may not realize is he is also an author having posted both fiction and poetry. • You’ve written a number of poems but not on a regular basis. What moves you to write a poem? Do you have to be in a certain mood? Will we see more poetry from you? • • • Anyways, yeah, I wrote just a dozen of poems here and there. Honestly, poetry is not my main genre and I do not plan on doing it regularly. The prime recipe for poetry to me is some epiphany as a starter, plus some proper mood to get going, so I can put random thought fragments together. A few pieces are particularly taxing, emotionally speaking. It creates a weird contradiction, because feeling down gets my creative juice going, yet, I need energy to write. While other pieces of poem I wrote come happily in one stroke, without dragging my feet for a laborious chisel. The 99-Cent Love Poems ended with twelve pieces by design, six-hundred words exactly by accident. The title of the last poem is a wordplay. Last signifies ending, but lasting is a continuum. Pineapple is traditionally a symbol of hospitality. Sailors from Colonial time would bring back home a pineapple, signaling a safe return from an arduous journey. Thus, I am forever thankful that a few people read this journey of angst, lament and nostalgia, though love and hope are constantly on stand by. I really enjoyed writing them. Now I just need a guy to love. LOL! • • • • • From the San Francisco Bay area, we jump across the country to the Tampa Bay area. Prolific author @BHopper2 celebrates his second anniversary as a GA member later this month; in that time, he’s shared 17 stories which have earned him wide popularity. • You are normally seen writing Sci Fi, yet your latest story’s set in the modern world with a regular (mostly) dad and son, is wildly successful. Will you go back to Sci Fi at some point? Have you learned anything from writing My Son you'd apply to your other work? • • • First off, I want to thank you for reading my work, and it's my hope that you find it enjoyable. Will I go back to SciFi? the simple answer is yes. SciFi is a passion of mine, ever since I was a kid watching re-runs, and recordings, of Lost in Space (the original), Star Trek, Star Wars, and Buck Rodgers. One of my favorite memories is of my Grandfather, before he passed away, doing a SciFi night with me. We watched a couple of old movies, Forbidden Planet and War of the Worlds, and ate Apple Pie and Ice Cream. Then in High School, I was introduced to SciFi Role-Playing Games, and have been hooked ever since. In High School and College, I was in creative writing classes, where most of my work revolved around one aspect of SciFi or another. So, again, one day I will return to SciFi, and finish what I started on a few projects. The story, My Son actually scares me on how popular, and successful it has been. To date, it's been my most successful story on GA, and the story is flowing like no other for me. I have to thank several people for its success though. @Mikiesboy and his husband @MichaelS36 first and foremost. Mike was the one that challenged me to go outside my comfort zone and write something different than what I normally do. I had some notes lying around, read them over, and wham My Son was born. tim has been helping with content editing on the story. Helping me reword passages to mark them more presentable. Last, but not least, @Kitt for being a technical editor on the project. She really gets in there and helps polish the drafts off. She's working on the first four chapters, post-publishing, but I thank her for doing the job. What I've learned with My Son, that I can carry back to SciFi is to focus on telling a character-driven story. All the dodas and gadgets are nice, with epic space battles with ships blowing up in stellar fashion, but they are all secondary to the Characters. Know the characters, give them their own agency, be in their mindset when you write their part of the scene, and take chances and see where it goes. • • • • • A member of the exclusive Signature Author club, @CassieQ has always impressed me with her thoughtful opinions. But her participation’s not restricted to GA conversations, her stories are thoughtful and well written. If you haven’t discovered them yet, I suggest you get your butt in gear and start reading. • What are your biggest motivators in life? Do these translate into the stories you write? • • • My main motivator in my life is writing. I have grown up responsibilities like everyone, but if I have any free time, I like to spend it writing, or thinking about writing or planning out my storyline. Aside from that, my family is a big motivation for me. I adore my sister and my Mom and I think that comes across in my writing a lot. Most of my characters have a kick ass sister or best friend figure. During my early writing days, my beta reader once pointed out how a lot of my characters have a relationship with their mother but don't have a strong father figure in their life (my father is alive and well, he just wasn't around a lot growing up). My Mom has finally clued in to the type of stuff I write and while she is not thrilled about it, she will ask how the writing is going and was very supportive of me going to my first writing conference this year. It was very cool of her. I hope that answered your question! • • • • • Since our previous three authors are all Americans, let's finish this month with an international flavor. In the process, another author will lose his Ask an Author virginity. If you’ve ever wanted to visit Australia but have not done so, I have a suggestion for satisfying your Aussie cravings: read a story or two by @quokka. The prolific author from Down Under charms us with his descriptions and Aussie dialogue. I’m not sure how his imagination can conjure up so many different stories when I have trouble concentrating on one. • How long have you been writing? How do you deal with writer's block? • • • Thank you for the question. I began writing as a teenager as a sort of hobby, but it was never a regular thing. It wasn't until I discovered Gay Authors, in January 2012, that I began to take up writing a lot more seriously, with action and drama, mainly about Australia, being my main themes. For writer's block, I will usually just leave the story and continue on another story or begin a new story, from ideas that develop from what I see or hear in everyday life. A lot of the Australian stories, I usually don't have to do very much research, as I have either lived or visited the places, especially in my home state of Western Australia. For the other stories that are not based on Australia, I like to do a fair amount of research before I commence a story, to get a basic outline, and on occasions I have to stop during writing, to do more research. For me, it is very much like the quote from Beatrix Potter that I have mentioned in my profile. "There is something delicious, about writing those first few words of a story. You can never quite tell, where they will take you." Beatrix Potter - 1866 to 1943. Regards Q • • • • • That’s it for this edition, my friends. Tune in next month for more insight into authors you love and those you have yet to discover. In the meantime, remember to send me any questions you may be dying to ask but may feel too shy to do in person. I promise to protect your identity.
  22. Hope you join in to talk about them at the end of the month. I'm already working on responses to the INTERESTING questions Cia sent me.
  23. Maybe I can lend Mann a hairy, muscle bear, Santa's assistant to help protect Rudy...
  24. Such a pleasant surprise. Totally unexpected twists. You done good, Def. I loved the way you built up her expectations even if I knew her hopes would be for naught.
  25. Category 5 is a great little story. In light of Florence hitting the Carolinas recently, it's good timing to have it featured. Good choice @wildone!
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