Hunter Thomson

Welcome aboard. I hope you find something here that interests you. There's an untold number of stories here all waiting to be read.

I'm very sorry for your loss. You and your family are in my thoughts.

Now, change your age to 25 like it should be!

A very happy silver birthday to our very own chat mod, Mikie! I hope it is the very best it can be and that you have many good memories from today.

So, we finally get to meet the other three Cards. Seems like Cory and Ephrain are facing a stacked deck right now, but at least everyone close to Cory seems to be supporting him as best they can. The chapter flowed quite nicely, and I appreciated the different changes of perspective and seeing the thought processes of the boys a bit more. I'm happy that Preston and Indie are becoming co-leads instead of main supporting cast members. They're good for the story and your storytelling with them is better than when it was focused mainly on Cory and Ephrain.

Thank you for your review dlg0724. I appreciate your feedback about the characters and plot development of the series. there's going to be more coming, sooner than later I think.

Keeping you in my thoughts, especially the day of the surgery. Your optimism will help you recover more quickly, I'm sure, and I hope your recovery is quick and without complications.

Never forget this wonderful feeling of contributing to the civic society of your nation. Too many people say and feel that their one vote doesn't matter, but they do. the politicians exist only through our consent, and that consent cannot exist without our participation in the system.

Congratulations Carlos, completely well deserved!

I'm going to go back and get my Master's degree. I already have Bachelor's degrees in Political Science and Education, and a diploma in Adult Education. The MA in Political Science is a bit of unfinished business, one that I swore I'd go and finish up. It's been years since I wrote an academic essay, but such skills don't usually atrophy over time. I... I want this. Not just for the sake of having an MA, but because politics is something I've grown to love from both the outsider's drama of it, as well as being deeply involved in my own personal battles with elected officials and political systems. I want to be teaching political science one day, and while teaching in high schools would be deeply satisfying, there's something about politics that keeps bringing me back. I can do it. I know I can. I also know that the last time I tried, I wasn't able to prove it. My marks have changed, but perhaps that won't matter. I like to think that it will, especially since my grades have gotten significantly better through my programs. I was always a good political science student as well, and my GPA only went down because of elective courses that were required for graduation. The only thing I don't have are recent letters of reference. I think it may be time to go and see if there's anyone at my old/current school who will write me a reference, and who feel doing so won't be a waste of time or insult to their time. There are plenty of people in the department that will still remember me, hopefully fondly. In the meantime, I'm going to be taking some time to write a couple of long-overdue papers to get myself back into the swing of things. I can do this. I need to do this. I know it's where I belong.

"And who are you supposed to be?" I called out. I stepped out onto the back porch of my ranch, only to see movement coming from the fields. I wasn't surprised. It was almost harvest season, and movement meant either more scavengers, or more thieves. Either way, I wasn't happy to deal with them. I was less happy when it was people who popped into view. the couple, at least I assumed they were a couple the way they were dragging each other along, appeared at the edge of my corn field without a

I hope you have a very good birthday Cynus, you completely deserve it.

I have opinions about this whole thing with David and Twoey being a permanent package deal, right down to having to have the same degrees, careers and potentially even employers. I can understand David's need to be securely attached and have someone that isn't going to run out on him or otherwise abandon him, but he's getting too attached, and it's not healthy for either him or Twoey. I did like learning more about what happened, though. That's interesting about David's father being arrested and Tom staying behind to live with his aunt/new mom. I'm actually a bit disappointed in David. It sounds like he abandoned his younger brother, even though back then Tommy was the only one to stick with him through everything. Chuck's very lucky to have such strong supports in his life, and having his new/old older brother Carl back in the picture is going to be great for him over his four (let's be real, probably five) years at Yale.

I can't get rid of the stupid grin on my face. This was so adorable! Cory's adorable at any age, but that's sooooooo cute! I love that you're filling in the EPICverse a little more. It makes your characters that much cuter and lovable.

Bees are perfectly fine. I can differentiate between bees and their much more evil cousins. I've even been known to *not* kill bees when I encounter them, simply because I know they're not the evil little hatemongers that wasps happen to be. In short, bees=good, wasps=fire. Especially since some wasps build their hives/nests underground, so you might be inadvertently stepping on a hive. God, thinking about the little monsters makes me shudder. Ah, so they're even worse than I thought, in that they kill the arachnids I actually like and keep around for the sole purpose of killing them. Thankfully, there aren't any spiders up in my neck of the woods that are particularly dangerous, so I'm content to let them live as well. Perhaps escorting them off the premises might be better, if all they're doing is becoming wasp food.

Wasps and hornets. Awful little critters. when I was 7 years old a wasp landed on my leg and climbed up my shorts. Thank everything you care to thank that it didn't sting me somewhere sensitive. I still haven't figured out what their role in the food chain is, other than to be a pestilence. If ever there becomes a way to wipe every last one of them off the face of the earth, I'll give serious consideration to doing it. They actually make me happy I have spiders in my room/house.

Hello Graeme, thanks for chiming in. This is a busier blog post than I thought it’d be, and as Drew and you pointed out, there’s also a thread from last year that discusses this same issue. It’s interesting that you’ve pointed out that sex scenes can be a distraction for the reader, and make it more difficult to see the actual feelings between the characters in the story or scene. Society and our culture seem to intermix the ideas of sex and love, and they’re still very different things from each other, so even though they’re not totally related to each other, a lot of readers and writers will equate the two. That’s good to see that you write for yourself and that doing so doesn’t require you to add sexual components to your stories. I’ll have to read more of your work when I have less work to do.

Welcome back Tim, thanks for responding. I agree with you that the imagination can bring to life all sorts of things that the writer may not be able to put into words, and that words themselves are often not a good medium for transmitting ideas. I do know what you mean when you say it’s difficult to write good sex scenes. There’s a nagging feeling that you have to describe everything and make it read as though the parties know what they’re doing, and I think that’s a big part of how it ends up sounding like porn. That, and there’s so many unspoken limits about what people are ready to see and read, and whether it fits the story at all. I sort of like it when I read that the characters are fumbling around and aren’t smooth operators. It makes it sound more real and less like rehearsed porn.

Interesting response Drew, particularly how you have different views as a reader than as a writer. I like that you’ve pointed out that the on scene sex should fit the story, and that it should move the plot forward in some way. That’s something that a lot of people seem to be thinking when discussing the issue, and it’s something I agree with. That’s an interesting point that you bring up about the authors being able to display the emotional connection between the characters as they’re having sex. As we both have read in other stories, sometimes the sex is just a means of relieving tension or biological needs. Do you find those kinds of encounters less satisfying to read, because there’s no passion behind them beyond the need to get off?

Hello Tim, thanks for stopping in and leaving some thoughts on the issue. I definitely agree that it shouldn't be every chapter or even every other chapter that characters end up having sex. It does get predictable because as much as we'd like to, there's only so many things that can be done sexually that make sense for the plot. And that is the important part, I think. It should make sense within the context of the plot that there's going to be a sexual encounter. For example, after a date the happy couple goes upstairs to the bedroom for a nightcap. That's a logical point for a sex scene because that's something that would plausibly happen in a real life scenario. On the other hand, my random hookup in the locker room that I have in Extra Innings, while potentially titillating, is not something that would be particularly realistic. In hindsight, it shouldn't be there at all. That's interesting that you find it sexy to have the scene fade out instead of describing it. Is there any particular reason why you find that so interesting, often more so than describing the details of the scene?

Hello Cia, I'm surprised that you're the first to comment, but I'm glad you decided to stop by and leave a note. I want to be clear that I've never felt like my writing was going too far for GA. I wouldn't have started posting stories here at all if you hadn't been willing to encourage me and confirm that my stories were acceptable for GA. I'm glad that GA has such a refined search feature, I've made use of it a few times to look for things, and it definitely helps to be able to narrow things down as much as you can through the search engine. My concern is more for the world of publishing away from GA. There are a few publishers that GA authors work with and don't seem to mind sex scenes as long as they aren't omnipresent, but a lot of traditional publishers are still very wary of it, and I think that mindset still does affect writers to a certain degree.

OH. I didn't update this, did I. Well, I didn't take the job. The school phoned me the day after the interview with a totally different job offer. Instead of a full-time position, I was offered a less than half time maternity leave position, with the district unable to say when the leave was expected to be over. That's not something I'm comfortable with, and it's certainly not something I can say to a landlord and negotiate a rental agreement over. Also, it wasn't even for a subject that I'm qualified to teach. Which is sort of important, since I'd prefer to be able to actually teach something instead of being half a step ahead of the students I'm supposed to be instructing. Back to square one-ish.

A lot has been said about how sex sells. There’s no doubt about that; sex and sexuality are hugely important to many marketing and advertising campaigns, and the fact that companies continue to experience commercial success after using sex as a marketing tool proves how well sex sells. But, I’m not a marketer, or an advertising executive. I’m just a guy who writes young adult novels. Which leads me to wonder how much sex is too much sex for a novel, or even a series of novels. We’re all taught to hide sex in our writing, that if we really must have our characters be put in sexual situations then they must be off-screen, to be imagined by the reader instead of explained and detailed. All of this is done in fear of disturbing potential readers, or especially potential publishers. This moral paranoia extends to television and films, though not to the same degree. You see people on tv or the movies pre and post-coitus. Sometimes, you even see the sexual act in some clinical fashion. Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way, as authors. I try to be a realist in my writing. I write about young adults who are on journeys of self-discovery, particularly relating to sexual orientation. They fall in love, and they have all the same urges that we had when we were young adults. We had sex. We didn’t let sex consume our lives; it was present, to be sure, but it didn’t dominate our existences. It was one thing among many other things that we did. I like to think that my writing is the same. Yes, there’s sex in my novels. Boys kiss boys. Sometimes they stop, sometimes they don’t. They’re learning how to control themselves and figuring out how to satisfy those urges without causing problems in the rest of their lives. But, they have other things going on in their lives that are much more important. I think that part of the equation is incredibly important, that sex not become the defining quality of the novel or the character. Frankly, the people who read my novels, and who read your novels, and who read anyone else’s novels? They all have sex.We’re deluding ourselves as an industry if we think our readers don’t know what’s going on when we fade the scene to black. Let’s be realistic with our writing. Write scenes the way that feels natural, not the way you think it needs to be censored in order to survive a publisher’s wrath. In an industry filled with things that defy reality, it will make your writing feel that much more connected to the lives of your readers. Cross-posted from https://authorhunterthomson.wordpress.com (Check out my blog/twitter/facebook page in my profile!)

I'm glad to see there's a continuation in the Twoey-verse, and that things sort of went well for David and Twoey. I mean. David's family completely leaving wasn't too much of a surprise. I do like that you're taking us on a new journey with different characters that didn't get enough screen time from 18 weeks. I'm looking forward to the show!

Congratulations Valkyrie! Very well deserved.