Valkyrie

But there's one for you too!

I've written a couple of stories about non-binary characters, so I completely relate to the pronoun struggle. He/she is so ingrained in our daily use, that unless you know a non-binary person, it's difficult to get used to using the singular 'they'. My BFF has a non-binary child, and I find myself slipping in the pronoun usage occasionally. They understand it's not intentional. There's 22 years of binary thinking to get past. It was hard reading about the mother's mental health struggle, but you showed how deeply it affected everyone around her. I had a similar situation in my own family (minus the non-binary part), so it really hit home for me. I wish Shay had been able to find a little bit of empathy for her, despite her treatment of them. But I completely understand what it's like to cut a toxic family member out of your life, mental illness notwithstanding. I had to do that myself, and while I love that family member dearly, having them out of my life is much better for me. The father seemed to do the best he could in horrible situation. I liked the scene where he told Shay about their wedding and how the mother was before she became mentally ill. He's to be commended for sticking with her throughout everything. I'm glad Shay and Griff reunited at the end. Thank you for participating in the anthology!

Thank you! It's easy to forget the important things until we get reminders like this.

Thank you. I'm glad you liked it.

Thank you so much

Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment. We should never take anything for granted.

Thank you, Bill. I'm glad you liked it. Our friends never truly leave us.

You are so right about these moments validating life. I'm glad I got you thinking again. Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment

If only we knew then what we know now... Given the choice, I choose disgracefully!

I feel like I want to cheer right now

Thanks, Gary. I'm glad you liked it. I hope we keep on winning for decades to come

Thank you I'm glad that line spoke to you.

Thank you so much! I always like it when my poems make people think.

I loved this story. The use of the podcast was unique and it worked. And now I want cake.

There was a fairly recent court case in the US where the plaintiff had to pay millions of dollars because of the lack of an Oxford comma. I'm totally team Oxford when it comes to commas!

Reunion We decided to postpone our annual weekend – August instead of July. It’s always been July, but, you know how life happens, schedules conflict; there’s always an excuse not to. Forty years ago we started what became an annual tradition, an anniversary of sorts, to celebrate friendship and pick up the pieces after diagnoses, divorce, and loss. We never expected to say goodbye to one of our own, especially not one week before our specia

Sometimes I embrace the gray and give a middle finger to the sky as I dance in the rain. Other times, I scowl at the stranger in the mirror, remembering less pounds and wrinkles; sleepless nights easily remedied with an extra cup or two of coffee the next morning at work. Now caffeine is the cause of insomnia instead of the cure. I stopped shaving years ago and don’t give a shit when it makes other people uncomfortable. There was a time when I

Sometimes we have to embrace what life throws our way, whether we want to or not. These two poems are a tribute to aging and the losses that inevitably occur, and how we deal with both.

Thank you, Myr, Cia, and all the admins and staff throughout the years for working tirelessly to keep GA updated, current, and the amazing place it is. Here's to another twenty years! 🍾

Thursday is Anthology day, so the next batch will be posted on Thursday. There are four batches total, so we have three more weeks of new anthology stories

BTW, we'll blow the new story goal out of the water, just from anthology stories alone! I'm beyond thrilled that we exceeded our 20 story goal. Readers are doing an exceptional job supporting the hard work of our contributing authors. We've only just started, and the number of comments and reviews are fantastic. So thank you all again - readers, authors, poets, editors, beta readers for all your incredible support to make this an anthology to remember!

I finished reading them last night 🌟 I hope that wasn't a wildfire outside your condo The smoke from the wildfires even reached the International Ring in Spruce Meadows I'll tell my penguin assassins spies to be more careful next time. That was very clumsy and inept of them to destroy your closet like that

For a minute, I was wondering if we had made @Carlos Hazday's story go live instead of yours Seriously though, this highlighted the current situation in the US perfectly. We're living in scary times and, as you said, we need to get out and vote and hopefully turn the tide. As for the tone of anthology stories, they definitely do not have to be light and feel-good. I've written some pretty dark stuff for the anthos. As northie said, the story takes you where it takes you. Thank you for sharing this with us and including it in the anthology.

All the takes on the theme have been pretty different so far, which is really great to see. Even three years later it seems pretty clear that Sawyer and Josh have the same attraction to each other. Hopefully this time they won't wait so long to see each other again. Thank you for participating in the anthology!