Jason Rimbaud

All those are valid points. But seeing as we haven't seen hide nor hair of Ethan for four or so chapters, it's amusing that the poor guy keeps getting all these suspicions thrown his way. . Five minutes before, more like never. Those two are so messed up I'm not sure even the lack of sex can save them. This just makes me wonder what the third story is going to be about next Christmas. .

Especially since San Francisco hosted the Super Bowl this year, my restaurant was a few blocks away from all the festivities, plus I am a hot wing restaurant. We had massive catering orders, busy lunches/dinners due to the high volume of tourists at the NFL Experience. Not to mention pre-orders for the game. It was a crazy three weeks I'm glad I only have to handle one a year. That's a very logical approach. Though, you might not know it, but you aren't reading my work completely free. It's costing you brain cells that die off while reading my silly stories. . People are theorizing that Ethan isn't really gone yet. And if he did steal Five's security code, that would mean he's been living at PineCrest for almost a week without being caught. I wonder if that is possible considering there are cameras, nightly lockdowns, and six other people staying at the cottage while Michael and company were attempting to kill Percy. I guess we'll see if you are correct in the next few chapters. Who would have guessed they would become so EMO, discussing feelings and whatnot? But they both admitted they are in love, no matter if Percy isn't sure of Five's motivations. After all the sex that had been in this Christmas story, I figured I needed to throw in a stumbling block so they'd have to confront their emotions instead of fucking it away like they seem to do, often, on repeat. Damn there was a lot of sex in this story. All i can say, I am a full believer that all bets need to be paid in full. Oh, that's a good guess. I wonder if you are right/write...I'm not sure myself. I have two completely different endings, one finishes at PineCrest, the other finishes in San Jose. Not sure which I'm going with to be truthful. Both of them are pretty much written, we'll see which gets posted. You get to hear from Bethany in Chapter Twenty, maybe, depends on how things get broken down. But she still has a part to play in all this so you will hear from her.

Thank you for your patience. I'm just glad Super Bowl is over and I can focus back on writing.

Percy looked up as a very concerned looking Five rushed down the stairs. He nearly ran over to the chair and dropped to his knees. “Are you okay? You should’ve woken me.” Percy touched Five’s cheek tenderly. “I’m fine. Seb and I were just enjoying the peace and quiet.” “Why are you only wearing shorts?” Five asked as he touched Percy’s chest. “You’re going to catch a cold.” “It’s like eighty degrees in here,” Percy said as he rolled his eyes. “I’m fine.” Five pulled off hi

Another SA entry I never guessed the author. . I only got two right, mine and....I lied, it was only mine.

I feel the same way! 😪

That's weird, I've always appreciated @wildone sense of humor. But I do love Canadians! .

Whether or not Sean is into BDSM remains to be discovered. I do know, he seemed to appreciate the art and photography despite the subject matter. Though he did mention he could take pictures just as good as Gabriel from his phone, so maybe he's also has interest in photography. Or he's a big ole perv...

Anyone with a love of photography should have figured out Gabriel's cover name was fake. . As for catching Gabriel in lies, he seems to have a high perception of bullshit, probably honed over years of being in one of the most famous boy bands in th world.

At the end of the day, I really don't care about the actual numbers. But I can't stand a puzzle/riddle/not knowing. And the chapter counts have bugged that spot at the base of my toe and I hate not understanding something. Thanks for indulging my silly questions. But I always figured if you don't know something and want to know, ask.

Excuse my slowness of mind. So each time someone visit the chapter page, it counts as a unique view? If that's the case, I'm back to being flummoxed. . Not hard to do with my slow mind

IF this true, that makes so much sense to me. As randomly, Frosted Hearts hanging out at 200 views per chapter suddenly jumped up to 800 in a few hours on Chapter Eight. Which is weird cause the comment count wasn't crazy high. But it was puzzling why Chapter One will have 300 views but Chapter Two will have six hundred. I was thinking, why do people skip chapters. Thanks for this!

Firstly, Valentine's Day is "meh" As for Olympics, I never cared. My family watched them all the time and I just never cared. To much like Sports Balls. Though as I got older, in my forties, gravitated towards swimming because of the mostly naked men. I am a loner by nature. I go to movies alone, I love going to dinner alone, and vacationing alone. As for going to bars, always alone. How else can you focus on finding a hookup if you're worried about Suzy having her third fuzzy navel and showing her assets on the dance floor? As for friends, they are for dinner parties, birthday gatherings, and now funerals. Bars are for sex.

Sean feels over confident, all his information is fiction made up by Scott. So let's see if he can see through the bullshit and really find out what Gabriel is all about.

Opps, I know that sentence could be read as it was Lonnie waiting in the lobby. It wasn't, it was part of Lonnie's security team for the band. Gabriel's comment was more Lonnie should have trained his guys better, and if he hadn't, maybe his earlier assumption of Lonnie's background was faulty. This may or may not happen in future chapters. Sean is not easily lied too...

That does propose a roadblock in Gabriel's quest to use Sean for his own ends. But Sean isn't innocent in all this either. He hasn't told Gabriel who he is either. With all the duplicity going about that hotel suite, it's a wonder anything of substance can be discussed. Frederick contacted Mehmet before Gabriel even knew about the Senator. Then when Mehmet contacts him, he wonders why the man broke protocol by contacting him again when he said I thought it was a dark assignment. Maybe there is something deeper happening. Gabriel better keep one eye on his rear and the other eye on Sean's abs. Who knows what craziness is going to surround Gabriel in the next four days. But I hope its entertaining and everyone enjoys the ending.

I think that is good advice for anyone looking to get rid of ads and help support GA continue to be a free site at the same time.

I can agree with you on that statement, I to only read a few stories at a time. And I will mark a story for later viewing. I also know some won't read a story until it's complete to ensure they will get an ending. So I believe your reason is one of many to explain the disparity of story views vs chapter views. And as with any data, it can be interpreted many ways. I do believe a good portion of it is story description, and what you tag the story. This is an area I struggle with which i why I fixate on it so much. For Gabriel's Gambit, I used an "AI" for the description as per Myr's suggestion in some other thread. This is why I really appreciate Myr looking at data and trying to find ways to improve author/reader engagement. With his deep dive end of year wrap-up, he gave all the authors a blueprint on how to achieve greater visibility on the site. Many other sites don't offer that much insight.

Gabriel Foster tried to organize his thoughts as he rode the elevator down. He would never have admitted it, but Scott has been right. Sean was the sexiest one of the group. Sexy in a one night stand kind of way. He doubted there could be anything else behind the rock star looks or the toothy grin Sean flashed like a weapon. And if he were to judge the man by the things he had read about over the last few hours, Sean was in a vulnerable state. He had just broken up with his long term girlf

Could this be your secret desire? . I enjoy some of the contests GA does annually, but the Secret Author contest is by far the best, in my opinion. And seeing the analytics showing that I am right, (i know you didn't release the other contests/anthology data but I'm going to pretend it's because SA was the highest performing) makes me want to participate next year. Then I'm down for any of the changes. Thank you for answering my questions and just for fun, my favorite genres are some of the lowest on your list in the original posting. Action and Adventure being the highest surprised me, I thought for sure it would be rom/com.

I am a numbers guy, I analyze data for my restaurant, reviews, engagement, units sold, prices, and so on. I also have taken that love of data and have been analyzing my own readership stats for each of my stories on a weekly basis. I am tracking story page views, individual chapter views, comments, likes, and recommendations. I know I'm a bit retentive, but I have a system and it doesn't take me long. Currently, Frosted Hearts has 12,430 story page views. While overall, my total chapter views is 7,158. And as with most stories, the first seven chapters have a higher reader count than the last ones. So my data shows me I've retained about two hundred readers per chapter. So if 12K readers have hit on my story page, yet only 500 readers actually clicked on the first chapter, gives me the impression that I am losing readers based on the story description, story tags, or the idea itself. (we shall not entertain I'm a sucky writer/righter) And looking at the above preferences of the members, I see the majority of people want something other than what I write/right. Which is fine, I'm not going to change, but I am going to focus harder and put more thought into writing story descriptions and including proper tags moving forward. And just as an aside, I was averaging 400 readers per chapter until I informed a commenter that I was not writing a rom/com, my readers fell by half after that comment. Anyways, I love data, and looking at numbers and trying to make sense of things in spreadsheets. Sorry, a long response saying I love that you look at things trying to improve the site. Yet, I'm with Lee in one regard. My screen is already cluttered and if we are going to be shown recommendations based on our preferences, is that replacing an existing "banner", or will this be an addition? And would it be a feature we could customize? Like change our preferences if we so desire. And my own worthless two cents, please disregard if I'm out of line, but too many places try to tailor my experience to my own preferences as it is. I don't want to live in a bubble and see only comforting things. I do not like algorithms on YouTube or anywhere actually, because it only gives me videos it thinks I will like based on the one cat video my husband sent me. It took me nearly a month to get rid of cat videos recommendations. I like that I see all new posted stories/chapters. I discovered many stories using that existing tool, stories I would never read because it's outside my normal reading habits. I know I am in the minority probably, but I have control issues and hate the idea that some "AI" knows me better than I know myself. I, no doubt, will learn to adjust to any new re-tooling of GA, and outside of this comment, will probably never mention things again. I can, in some small way, understand trying to make something better for all users, and in that vein pissing off some of them. Happens every three months when I change my signature sauces, I remove some and add new ones. I deal with pissed off people all the time. So ignore me if I'm being nit-picky I'm a work in progress...maybe. Sorry for the long response.

Quick question though, cause I'm old, whats some good conversation starters on dating apps? Um, a different, quicker question... I usually start with "looking?" . Oh wait, that's Grindr...I don't know how to date. I've been married for ten years and before that, I kind of sent a pic of my peen and ask, Looking? I never found any dates but I rarely slept alone. So I guess, I'm not helping at all. But that's par for the course, I'm not helpful to anyone really. I really don't think they're any real gay dating apps. Or if there is, I don't know about them. But welcome back.

Sorry FO, I have stopped trolling you the moment your story ended. Think back, all my comments regarding you have been glowing since then. You are the best and your comment stated your opinion wonderfully. Not trolling, promise and pinky swear

So if I was trolling you still, I would reply to this by saying something... Hello, have you seen the length of this comment? But since I'm not trolling you at the moment, what a nice, thoughtful comment. Good job!

I judged Ang Lee hard. He was the wrong director for the movie. If he would have spent a quarter of the time spent on breathtaking vista's overlaid with a horrible soundtrack, and furtive glances between our two leads, on character development, it might have been a good movie. Might. There was a reason the original tale was a short story, I believe less than 10K words. Or a single chapter for @Krista Padding it out for a feature film, 214 minutes, was above Ang Lee's talent lane. Jake and Heath had great chemistry, all the actors were top notch. The ending, though depressing, was expertly acted. Heath remaining silent as he cried into Jake's smelly shirt, was amazing. The issue was pacing, lack of narrative development, and boring with incredibly long stretches of silences. Once they established that Jake and the Joker were in love, everything else was looking, watching, remembering. You summed up the political climate perfectly in your comment. And those of us that remember Matthew Sheppard will forever be scarred by the violence. And I think the film was important in the culture of moving gay rights to gay marriage. That doesn't excuse the producers for making a bad film. I don't judge it based on what it did for gay rights. I judge it both then, and now, on whether or not the movie was entertaining. And it failed on every level. The only thing it got right, Jake is a bottom, even though he's straight, he's a submissive bottom in the bedroom. I can't prove it, I just know its true. For all of you that Brokeback meant something either at the time or since, that's okay. You have valid points, and no one is trashing the film's impact. It was the first gay movie I saw in a theater, my second gay movie ever, the first being Beautiful Thing. Which I think Beautiful Thing is head and shoulders over Brokeback. Brokeback took America by storm. It got people talking about acceptance, and thrust those of us that lived in the shadows into the light. Too bad it took nearly thirty years for the Hockey show to make the same kind of impact. You can't go anywhere without hearing, reading, seeing, these two ugly ducklings in their hockey gear. It's taken over the culture again, and that is a good thing. In brokeback, we barely got to see them kiss, in the hockey show, we see nearly everything. In the middle, we got Will & Grace, where I'm not sure if we even see two men kiss. *shrugs*