Altimexis

Now that I've had more time to think about it, The Hanging amounted to rape. It was forced, it was sexual and it was non-consensual. Any episode of forced sex is rape, and that's what this was. It might not have been as violent as the football incident cited earlier in this thread, but it was violent nonetheless, and the psychological toll was incalculable. This isn't something Ryan can simply work through or get over - he will have scars for life from this. Frankly, Jonny should be expelled and possibly face time in the Juvenile justice system. Perhaps those who held Ryan, too. The entire student body should go through sensitivity training and the principal should lose his job. Does that sound too harsh? What do people think the proper punishment should be for a principal upon it coming to light that serial gang rapes had been occurring at the school for years? I fear that this episode will be swept under the rug like all previous ones, and that's definitely not what should happen. This isn't a case of simple hazing!

I think others have said it, but wow, was that chapter disturbing. Frankly, I think the material in italics was way overdone, but the chapter otherwise was well written. The thing I find hard to believe is that so many boys could get away with accumulating in the boys' room without a teacher checking the action out. There is always the assumption that boys congregating in a restroom are up to no good, and they certainly weren't quiet about it. Could this really happen in the States?

Forgive me if this has been suggested before, as I just haven't had the time to stay abreast of the forum. When Dirk and Jim were discussing "the gay thing", perhaps they weren't referring to Trevor. Wouldn't it be ironic if both Trevor and Dirk think the other can't accept a gay son or father? I wonder if the reason for the divorce was that Mom found out Dad was gay. It would explain a lot, but there's still something fishy about Mom's disappearance (note that I didn't say death) and I don't think Dirk was to blame.

Mark and Nephy, No need to feel flattered - you're certainly the two most prolific authors at GA these days, so by shear numbers, your stories would have to stink for you to not be nominated. Seriously, though, you two contribute a lot to the site and deserve to be nominated. If the numbers of voters is small, then perhaps we need to do more to encourage people to vote. People shouldn't vote unless they've actually read the stories, however, so there are limits to what can be done. Perhaps the decline in the number of votes is tied in with declining readership, which is a much more serious issue. Adding premium content helps shore up the bank, but it may turn casual readership away. I think the number of top authors at GA who have simply stopped writing also has a lot to do with it. If it weren't for Mark and Nephylim, there wouldn't be much new material on the site at all. Getting back to the awards, however, I still think that short stories should be separated from full novels, but that the short story category could replace the Anthology category. I also feel that in the case of serial stories, incomplete stories or ongoing stories should be handled separately from completed stories. Ideally, a serial story shouldn't be eligible until it's finished. We need to encourage story completion, as I think the lack thereof is one of the things turning people away from the site. The place where I think we can consolidate awards is in the categories of authorship. Frankly, I think we have as much talent among the promising authors as among those of us who are hosted, and our top e-fiction authors are advanced so quickly to promising author status these days that there seems little point in separating authorship categories. If we're trying to simplify things, why not just have the following categories:

Ooooh. I see I already have a negative rating for my nominations entry. Last year when I raised this very same issue, someone said it was inappropriate to do so here, in the nominations forum. The rules are already set in stone for this year's contest, and I accept that. The trouble is, if I don't raise these issues here, then where is the appropriate place and when is the appropriate time to raise them. Now is when the process is on everyone's mind, and here is where the nominations are being made, so isn't this the perfect time and place to question the process itself? If people accept the process as it's handed down from above, then that means everyone is acquiescing to the process and that they feel it can't be improved upon. The bottom line as far as I'm concerned as an author, is that it's not fair to an author to have a 200k word story that took years to complete go head-to-head in a popularity contest with a 5k word short story that was written in a day, no matter how clever it is. Also, it's not fair to have the completed story go head-to-head with serial story that just started to be posted a few months ago, and that may very well never be completed. What I would like to suggest is that there be three story categories and four author categories, and that an award be given for each combination of the two. In addition, there could be a separate award for best new author, best protagonist, best antagonist and best king/queen of the cliffhangers. The three story categories would be best complete story of 50k or more words, best complete story or poem of less than 50k words, and best unfinished story or ongoing serial story of any length. The four author categories, based on their status at the time the nominations are made, would be hosted author, promising author, eFiction author and non-GA author. Unlike with the current system, this would be a fair division. It's similar to what I've proposed for the past couple of years, and it deserves a fair hearing, whenever and wherever that may be. I'm not saying we should change the process this year, but I do think we should begin discussion on the process for next year now. I don't really care about whether or not I win an award, but as an author I care very deeply if a story that someone finally completed after some years in the making is beat out by a serial story that has only a few initial chapters posted, or that has been abandoned. Perseverance should be rewarded. Please don't remove this post from the site - this discussion needs to be aired. I certainly mean no ill will by it, but in removing it, you would be telling everyone that you are not willing to listen to others when it comes to how these awards are made. Move it if you must to another, more appropriate forum, but please, please let me be heard on this. Respectfully submitted, Altimexis

There have been so many people who have helped me over the years I have been writing. It'll be hard to thank them all. Cole Parker was my initial inspiration. I first came across his writing at Nifty and started a dialog with him over the Internet. I learned that we shared a lot of common interests and had some common things in our background. Cole is a very private person and I won't share more than that, but he is an extremely talented writer and one of the most prolific at AwesomeDude - a treasure to us all. Write By Myself is another talented author who was one of my first editors. He played a significant role in editing my first novel, Love in a Chair, and did a lot to improve the quality of my writing. Most importantly, he taught me to think, and my arguments with him certainly have helped with my internal proofreading. Captain Rick is my "legal editor". He advises me on all things that involve legal issues in my stories. He is also a fellow author who has a background that is not unlike my own. I only hope he will take up writing again, and soon. Trab, is a longtime fan and my current beta-reader and proofreader. He has often sent me unsolicited edits of my stories and I finally made him an official proofreader. The amazing thing is that English is not his first language, and yet he does a far better job of catching grammatic errors than my editors do. Last and certainly not least is someone who has become my best Internet friend, even though there is a twenty year difference in our ages. David of Hope has been my editor, nearly from the beginning. Although he does not write his own stories, he has an uncanny knack of being able to pick up on a theme and write entire sections of material - even entire chapters - in the style of the original author such that they blend in with the original story and enhance the original work. If David thinks something is missing from something I write, he will not only tell me so, but he'll often write it and insert it, and I'll be hard pressed to do a better job. We've now collaborated on a number of stories together, and the results have been phenomenal, so he's not just my editor, but my co-author as well. We have never met, but we tell each other what is going on in our lives - we are friends. I am forever indebted to David, the man from a town called Hope.

You guys don't know what a nightmare a HOA can be until you live in a condo or a co-op. We're on our third. OK, we've done the whole house thing and being in middle adulthood and all, the idea of yard work, shoveling snow and all that shit isn't all that appealing any more. When we were a young couple, I really got into the whole homeowner thing and I installed my own burglar alarm in both of our houses and completely rewired one of our houses. In fact, I've often thought I should have taken the damn exam and become a certified electrician - I could probably clear as much money as I do now and with a lot less hassles than as a physician (yes, I'm very serious). So about a decade ago, we sold the house and moved into our first condo. Before we even moved in, the people above us hired an unlicensed contractor to redo their bathroom, and that contractor neglected to shut off their water, caused a flood that brought down the ceiling in ours. Lesson number one - the condo board's job is to protect their own liability. You can go to the board, you can go to the HOA meetings, but no one else gives a shit - what happens inside your own four walls and between your ceiling and floor is your own GD responsibility. We had a $1k deductible, so we had to pay the damages ourselves. It would have cost us more to sue the bastards above us than it was worth it to us and our insurance wasn't interested in going after their share. Our second condo, which we still own BTW, 'cause it's in Detroit and nothing's selling in Detroit these days, is in a beautiful art deco building in the city. The developer dragged his feet at even letting the owners set up a HOA because the economic downturn hit and he couldn't sell many units. He ended up renting the unsold units out as dorm rooms to the adjacent universities - a major selling point for those of us wanting to move (note my sarcasm). Any way, our HOA meetings were nothing but gripe sessions and tirades against the developer - the elevators that should have been replaced, the inadequate job he'd done upgrading the plumbing etc. Some things are just so universal. Finally, we come to the place we currently live, our co-op. Co-ops are a whole other ballgame because the home owners don't own their own apartments - they own shares in the corporation and then rent their apartments from the cooperative. It's a very strange arrangement that's pretty unique to the East. You actually have to interview with the board in order to buy an apartment and be approved before you buy it - and I can see why - HOA meetings are contentious enough as is! Before each meeting, mysterious anonymous fliers appear under our door in single-spaced, all caps type alleging all sorts of improprieties by the board. There are numerous conspiracy theories floating around. And there are so many rules - you can't do this and you can't do that, but no one seems to follow the rules, and yet no one enforces them, but boy do they always become the source of heated debate at all the meetings! But every time I think about how ridiculous the whole thing is, I remember those long winters when I sometimes used to have to blow out our driveway twice a day for weeks on end, and then mow our lawn every week, and weed our garden every week after having spent some seventy or eighty hours that week at work. It's nice to be able to come home from work and truly be home, with someone else to take care of the yard work. And with the current place, we have a huge terrace with a west-southwest view that will be perfect for growing virtually anything we want - I'll definitely be giving tomatoes a try this year. All that and a view that's truly world-class. Yes, we can live with the hassles of the HOA.

I know I've raised some of these issues in past years, and the rules are certainly set for this year, but I somehow feel we're comparing apples and oranges here. First of all, some stories have been completed, some have not, and some are open-ended and have been in progress for more than a year or two. Can we really compare a story with only a few chapters to one with twenty or thirty? Is it fair to judge a story in which ten chapters were written in 2007, and one was written in 2008? Some short stories appeared in the anthologies, but some did not - are the non-anthology short stories supposed to go head-to-head with full novels? That hardly seems fair. How about the issue of promotion? Some eFiction authors were promoted to Promising this year, and some Promising authors were promoted to hosted, and I suspect the trend will continue. I know of at least one Promising author who is going to be promoted - is it fair for them to be competing with other Promising authors? There are so many issues! My suggestions for 2009 are to give awards in the following categories: 1) a serial story of 50k words or more that was completed in 2009 by any GA author 2) a short story of less than 50 k words written by any GA author, other than an anthology entry 3) a poem written by any GA author 4) an anthology entry of any kind 5) an open-ended series of any kind written by a GA author 6) a not previously recognized GA story of any kind (i.e. an overlooked story from past years) 7) 1st, 2nd and 3rd place new GA authors (rookie authors) who have shown exceptional promise 8) a lifetime achievement award 9) a non-GA best story award To me, this would make more sense!

Dom, I feel for you with the migraines - I've suffered with them since the age of 12 myself. I went to a neurologist for a number of years and am looking for one again after trying to manage them myself for a while. I've tried just about every medication thought to be helpful in treating them - FDA approved or not - and even gone through Botox and acupuncture. Depakote made me freaking suicidal - it's a good thing I recognized what was going on, but now I have an appreciation of what it's like to be feel so hopeless that one literally would rather be dead. Climbing out of that hole even after stopping the drug was tough and I have a healthy appreciation of what mucking around with brain chemistry can do. Lyrica worked great, but it causes weight gain in about 10% of people who take it if you read the fine print. I've never encountered such a powerful appetite stimulant. I could never satisfy my hunger - I've always been thin, and suddenly gained thirty pounds. Coming from a family where all the men die of heart attacks before the age of sixty and already being 52, I said 'thanks but no thanks', but every time I tried to taper off the drug, the migraines came back worse than ever. I found a non-traditional way to taper off the Lyrica and my weight's back to normal. Now I'm on Topomax, which seems to be keeping the migraines down to one or two a month - not great, but better than one or two a week. Now if I could only do something about my fingers and toes feeling like they're frozen all the time. I need to find a good neurologist. I hope you have better luck, Dom, and I'm sure Dennis and Travis will find their way out of the bathroom.

I have news for you. We all regress and become children again when we're sick. That's just human nature. Sadly, my dad died when he was 58 and I was 16 (I was a late life surprise, as my better half likes to joke), so I never got to experience the role reversal thing with him as you are with your dad. You'll experience periodic role reversal's throughout your life. My mom, on the other hand, is turning 89 the end of this month, and is as spry as ever. She still lives alone, manages just fine, didn't even retire until she was 82, and the only help she asks of me is to change all the light bulbs every couple of years (compact fluorescent, or course) since at just under five feet, she can't reach. Two years ago, we thought we'd nearly lost her to a bleeding ulcer, and then she pulled through only to find a breast mass, but her oncologist says at her age, the cancer will probably outlast her by a mile-and-a-half. She's still sharp enough to rail against Bush and the disastrous war he led us into and the way he's wrecked the economy. At 82, my mother-in-law is definitely not faring as well. With each visit, she needs more and more help and remembers less and less of what we told her from the last time. I'm not so optimistic about how much longer she can continue to live independently in her own house. Yeah, growing older is definitely sucks.

Do you know why Walmart's prices are so much less than anyone else's. They buy in bulk from sweatshops overseas, mostly from China, Bangladesh and any other Third World country that is willing to use prison or child labor, pollute their environment and add melamine to baby formula. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating slightly, but not by much. I actually do favor free trade, but only if there is a level playing field and this is anything but. Helping to lift the 3rd World out of poverty is wonderful, but not if it means clear-cutting their forests, fouling their land, seas and skies or robbing their children of their childhood. Looking for the "union label" is nearly impossible these days, but shopping at Walmart is like driving a hummer with a "support our troops" yellow ribbon sticker on the back, but at the other end of the economic spectrum. Both acts show America's brazen indifference to the plight of the rest of the world. Sorry to ramble. My suggestion - shop at Target - it's not as cheap, but the service is a lot better. Yeah, I know that most of the products are still made in the 3rd world, but Target is not as brazen about going after the bottom line at the expense of the people who make the products.

I'm way overdue in making an entry, but I just had to say something on this history-making day - the day after America elected Barak Obama to be the 44th President of the United States. My wife and I were Obama supporters from the beginning. I usually don't go around making a big deal of my politics, but I strongly believe in the basic premise that government has an obligation to ensure a level playing field for humanity. That doesn't mean there needs to be a huge bureaucracy, but the lack of government oversight led to the complete and utter collapse of the world financial system in my grandparents' day, ultimately paving the way for the rise of fascism and Nazism, and it's sad to see our past mistakes so readily repeated. As they say, those who forget the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. I'm not sure when "liberal" became a dirty word, but I think we have learned some important lessons from our mistakes of the 60's and 70's - among them that government has its limitations and cannot be expected to fix all of societies ills. Still, we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, as they say. Just because the "knee-jerk" liberal notion to provide everyone with food and housing has led to generations of "welfare moms" with no incentive to work doesn't mean we should dismantle the entire safety net. Worse still, the conservative arm of the Republican Party has an unhealthy penchant for inserting itself into the American bedroom. Not only do they want to ban abortion, which should be a heart-wrenching, but personal choice, but they want to define the very nature of the American family, telling us who we can love, whom we can marry and to an extent, even whom we can worship. Never mind that their presidential candidate threw his first wife away. That, I suppose, is OK. That is not a threat to marriage, but heaven forbid, two men should try to marry, or two women. Yesterday, a few states passed legislation defining marriage as only being between a man and a woman, among them California, a state I called home for three years out of my young adult life. I'm very disappointed to say the least. Let us hope this is only a temporary setback. I am fortunate to currently live in a state that while not allowing gay marriage, accepts gay marriage performed in other states or countries where it is legal. Some of our good friends have gone to Canada or Massachusetts to be married and are now recognized as legally married where I live, which is a start. I myself am married to a woman whom I love and adore - it's a sad reflection on the way things were when I was growing up - but she is my soul mate and I wouldn't change a thing, and am greatful that she accepts me as I am. The truly amazing news out of the election is that the state where I grew up - the reddest state in the Midwest - Indiana, went for Obama. That was a true miracle! Hooray for the gay teens of Naptown, which BTW went for Obama by a 2:1 margin. In final news, to catch my readers up on my own situation, as of my last blog entry, I had started a new job in the NYC area. Unfortunately, with the downturn in the economy, I was laid off within weeks of starting that job, after having moved more than a thousand miles. They just didn't have enough business, and gave me a reasonable severance package under the terms of the contract, but it still wasn't enough. I ended up partnering with a long-term friend and colleague of mine who lives in the area. It means a very long commute and the income is less than steady, and there will be a long delay before I see any of it, but at least it will (hopefully) keep my head above water. Wish me luck!

Dom, It's really great to have you back, making posts to your blog! You were a major inspiration to me and when I first read your writing, I never dreamed that I'd one day be a hosted GA author myself. Still, it seems weird for me to be giving you advice. I think you're doing the right thing, going back and rereading WT and ITFB to get back into the stories, but much as I want to see them finished, you might want to get back into the swing of writing by starting with something else - perhaps something tangential. I'm not suggesting starting yet another serial novel, but perhaps a short story or a series of short stories to help get you into the right frame of mind. An interesting exercise might be a short story based on one of the characters in one of your other stories, but there would be no obligation to take it any further than that. Write one or two, or maybe three such stories, and then you can decide where to go from there. The main thing is it will help get your creativity flowing in a direction you enjoy without a sense of obligation or pressure - then you can decide if an when you want to tackle finishing the other stories, which of course the rest of us certainly hope you will.

OMG! I just started rereading TLW, as I do from time-to-time. What can I say . . . I have a weakness for the classics and I consider TLW to be one of the true classics of gay fiction. So I just thought I'd check to see if anyone had heard from Dom lately, and, WOW, you posted to your blog last week. Man! This is so cool! You bastard! When you started Fishbowl, I made you promise you wouldn't pull another With Trust on us, and yet you did it anyway. I know it wasn't deliberate or anything, and I know you have a real life and all, but gees, I got laid off twice in the last year, and I'm still writing. I donno - for me, it's a release, and I know your heart needs to be in it, Dom, but leaving your readers hanging without even saying goodbye or at least throwing them a bone is cruel. OK, that's enough of a rant. No one else had the guts to vent, and someone needed to do it. Anyway, welcome back. I do hope you'll get back into your writing. You have two very good stories in progress that you really should finish up, one way or the other. After that, consider doing something else. For example, what started out as a single short story has ended up being a series of 18 interconnected stories so far in my Naptown Tales series. By writing individual stories, I can pick up or leave my writing any time I want to while working in the background on my next full-length novel, which I'll start posting early next year. You might want to consider the short story series approach a try - it would allow you the chance to get back into writing my gradually.

Yikes! Just when I thought things were bad enough, I've been laid off! But don't worry, I've landed on my feet. More on that in a bit. OK, let me back up a bit. If you haven't read it already, go back and read my story, The New Job. This is not only the story of my coming out to my wife, but it chronicles the story of my career, too. Although the story is fictional, the scenario is close enough. After finishing university, graduate school and medical school, I did my residency out west, and that's when I met my wife. I then joined the National Institutes of Health, and eventually went into academic medicine, planning a career in medical research. I did very well, eventually becoming a department chair. Big mistake. After suffering through three, count 'em, three deans in five years, I wound up with a dean who knew nothing about my field, could have cared less about it and, in the end, decided we were too small and too much of a bother. He basically decided to consolidate our department with a much larger one, scrapping fiver years of hard work spent building a world-class program. Everything I wrote about in my story is true. When you step down as a department chair, even under these circumstances, everyone wonders why. Since no one is ever fired - they always "resign", there's no way to tell if they resigned because they quit out of disgust, they were eased out because of politics or they were fired because of incompetence. People ought to be given the benefit of the doubt, but it's human nature to steer clear of such people - to treat them as damaged goods. Some people have a natural charisma and manage to pick themselves up and move right on, securing an even better chairmanship, but I'm not one of those and, besides, I've had my fill of politics. I ended up taking a friend up on an offer to head up a division in an academic department in a city I would have never previously considered calling home. :wacko: I'm not going to name the city. It's in the Midwest, and it doesn't have the best of reputations. It's known for violent crime and for corruption in government. The good news is that it has affordable housing. My wife and I were able to buy a condo in a beautiful art deco building, right in the city, within walking distance of work. Of course just about everyone I know told me I should be packing a piece if I intend to actually walk to work. :2hands: Now that's a gross exaggeration - I've walked to work many times when the weather's nice and it's quite safe, but you do have to choose your route carefully or you will be stopped multiple times and asked for money. When I told my wife it was more a matter of when, not if, I would eventually be mugged, she told me in no uncertain terms that I shouldn't walk to work. OK, so maybe it's not completely safe. :sword: In any case, I've been here 2 1/2 years now, and absolutely hated it. My "friend" thought he was doing me a favor, but he was bringing me into a political mess in which I was expected to replace and ultimately fire an unproductive colleague who had been entrenched for years. I didn't really know that at the time and it only became apparent after I'd been here a while. The problem with entrenched academicians is, there's usually a reason they're entrenched, even if they don't have tenure. Either they know the system well enough that they can manipulate people to keep from being fired, or they have enough dirt on people to guarantee job security, or a combination of both. I'll tell you, when I even suggested to the colleague that he might want to complete his subspecialty boards while he could still be "grandfathered" in, I immediately received a long diatribe of an e-mail from one of the senior associate deans on the inappropriateness of anyone but the department chair dealing with career development issues. My boss quickly cleared things up by explaining on my behalf to the dean's office that subspecialty boards were a job requirement and I was only doing my job as the head of a clinical division, but this certainly showed me what was in store any time I attempted to do what I was hired to do. The long and short of it was that at the end of the day, there wasn't a single thing I could really do to fire the guy that was ethical and I wasn't about to become a target in my own right in the interest of making it easy on my boss, who was too chicken to pull the trigger on the guy himself. :wacko: When I failed to do what I was really hired to do, I was removed from my position as division chief, relegated to a low-level clinical position that someone just out of training might get, at a significant reduction in pay, I might add, and prevented from spending any time on research grants. Talk about punishment. To say this sucked big time is an understatement. I've been looking for a better job ever since, but now everyone's really suspicious. First I resigned as department chair, and then I resign as division chief after less than a year, and now I'm looking for a new job after only a couple of years? It certainly looks like I'm bad news, doesn't it? :wacko: Of course, there are always two sides to every story and there are a lot of crazy things that have been going on here besides the drama between myself and my colleague, and besides that between myself and my former friend, my boss. The CEO of the medical center is a former prosecutor who takes no prisoners, and he has his own agenda that is heavily at odds with that of the dean of the medical school. I would say it's fairly accurate to say the CEO and the dean are at war with each other. Recently, the CEO announced a retroactive cut in something called the DISH payment - payment his hospitals receive for taking care of the destitute - to the medical school. He's supposed to pass this money on since it's the physicians that actually render the care, but he's decided to hold on to it. The dean is crying foul and claiming he'll have to lay off physicians and stop serving the poor. Well, guess what - the dean's quietly circumventing union regulations for laying off faculty by simply pulling the plug on approving contract renewals, and guess whose contract was up for renewal on July 1. Does my life sound like a soap opera or what? I've had it with academia for the time being. Much as I'd like to help humanity, the politics in academic medicine just aren't worth it. If I had my life to do over again, I would have stayed at the NIH. Although you have to put up with the changing priorities of each presidential administration, once you rise though the ranks, you can pretty much do what you want and you don't have to compete to nearly the same extent for research funds. Now, however, I have to move on. I received a very good offer from a large private practice group on the East Coast and I've decided to take it. I won't be rich by any stretch of the imagination, particularly when one considers the cost of living where I'll be going. In fact, after factoring in the cost of housing, We'll be living in less space than most people would consider acceptable, so from that standpoint, I guess you could say that at best we'll be middle class. The most important thing is that I'll have freedom, and I'll actually have better opportunities to get back into medical research than I've had for the past five three years. And now an important announcement about my upcoming story, Out on a Limb. Because I have a major cross-country move coming, up, it will obviously be impossible to start posting the story as originally planned in mid-May. Only the first three chapters have been written and edited, but I can at least say that I'm very pleased with the way they've turned out and with the direction of the story so far. OoaL is a much darker story than LiaC, and much truer to life, but I think it will be very fulfilling and resonate with a much wider audience in the end. Something about it just resonates with me as I write it, much the way it did when I wrote The Un-Christmas, so I know it will turn out well. In the interest of doing it right, I'm postponing it's initial release date until the fall.

Well, this is my very first entry in my very first blog. I better not set the expectations too high - posts will be few and far between, as I'm busy, busy, busy. . . . If any of you have read my story, The New Job, you know that I moved here after my department was consolidated into another. A colleague of mine, a "friend", or should we say former friend, offered me a position as more of a lifeline than anything else. Unfortunately, the thing is that if anyone should never have become a department chair, he's the one. Saying he has ADD is putting it mildly. :nuke: He can't resist micromanaging things and he doesn't give anything a chance to succeed before he makes changes. Further, we are an academic medical center and there are bound to be fluctuations in activity. Grants come and go and the patient census can be expected to rise and fall - that is the nature of things. I was here for scarcely a half-a-year when he removed me from my position as a division chief because I "reduced the efficiency of the division." Let's look at that for a minute. When I arrived, the inpatient census on the division was fifteen and the one physician caring for those patients was reaching a state of burnout. At the same time we had three physicians seeing outpatients, none of whom was particularly busy. It only made sense to split the inpatient service in half and rotate the outpatient physicians through the second inpatient service, while at the same time having the former inpatient physician also see some outpatients, too. This had the advantage of improving continuity of care for the patients, while making the inpatient service less "stagnant." Our residents also benefited from having a wider variety of teaching experiences. It was a win-win situation and a resounding success, and the inpatient census skyrocketed even higher, reaching a high of nearly thirty. But then the natural cycle asserted itself, temperatures cooled, fewer kids shot each other or for whatever reason and the census fell to around eight. Seeing this happen, I was prepared to do what obviously needed to be done - to temporarily suspend the second inpatient service until the census picked up again as it inevitably would (and did), but I was never given the opportunity. I was removed from the directorship person, my salary was cut by 25% and I was removed from the service, with most of my protected research time being eliminated as well. Now as to my having made the service more inefficient - the only way I did that was by the addition of my position - adding a fourth salary to the division budget. I thought I was brought in to create change, but they didn't want change. I later found out that I was brought in expressly to fire one of my colleagues in my division - it was assumed I would recognize the need to fire him right away. Although he certainly was not and is not pulling anything close to his weight, he has been here forever and knows how to use every provision of his union contract to protect himself, and I wasn't about to fire him without cause. So anyway, the long and short of it is that my lifeline of a job has turned into a bit of a nightmare. I've been shuttled into one situation after another without any regard to what I want to do or to what my strengths and abilities are. I also walked right into the middle of one of the worst political messes in any academic medical center that I've ever witnessed, in which the medical center and the medical school are literally at war with each other. The dean and the CEO hate each other's guts, and the fight has become very personal, without regard to the thousands of lives affected. A couple of weeks ago, I was called into my boss's office to be told that layoffs were being discussed. The CEO is withholding $1 million per month of money he claims the medical school is now getting from the state and no longer needs from him. That's total BS, and it's total BS that the medical school can't manage with $1 million less in a budget of billions if it has to. Of course the budget has to be balanced at the end of the day, but the dean has to do something to fight back and so he's grandstanding in the media. "If you don't give me my money, I'm going to have to fire some doctors and we won't be able to take care of the poor." Well, as the last hired in the department, I would be the first to be laid off. Never mind that I have a distinguished career spanning more than two decades. Never mind that I've been a department chair and a division chief. I've been unhappy in this job, practically since arriving here, and I've been looking, but everywhere I've interviewed, people have wanted to know why I want to change jobs so soon. At least now I have a reason. So I guess what I'm getting at is that my writing may have to slow down for a while. I plan to introduce Out on a Limb on schedule, but it may slide, particularly if I find myself involved in a move. I'm interviewing for a job next week. It's in a private practice setting with an academic affiliation - definitely not the sort of thing I envisioned myself doing when I finished school, but after having been burned in academia twice now, being away from the center of the firestorm doesn't seem like a bad idea.

OK, the clues are all there, according to CJ. [*]Then there were Two [*]Neither Steve, nor any of the others, noticed . . . that a small, white car had followed them, tailing them from a distance. [*]Steve made sure Chase

If there's anything left of him after the rest of us finish with him, yeah, that's a good idea . . . :2hands:

I just discovered the new chapter by accident. Great job, CJ! Now I'll let other people read it before I comment further.

Jees, I just got email a few minutes ago about CJ's new story, and I see from the discussion that it went up last night. I guess the e-Fiction bot isn't exactly speedy. I can't believe everyone got to it so quickly - especially on a weekend. Doesn't anyone here have anything else to do? I feel like I've arrived late to the party. I, too, couldn't agree more with Rigel. I think it's a given that Brandon's gay, and that one of the brothers is gay - most likely Chase. I look forward to some very awkward dancing around the issue until Brandon and the gay brother manage to come out to each other after falling in love. There could be some very interesting and, hopefully, humorous rather than tragic scenes until they do come out. The s**t could really hit the fan, however, if/when they're relationship becomes public. CJ, it's not up to me to tell you how to write your story, but I'm loving it so far. I would just hate to see it side-tracked by secret plots and nuclear bombs. You've already got a great start on a story without the need for espionage and intrigue, but knowing how you write, it will all come together in the end.

It's possible that Sam didn't call Billy that evening because he's just pissed at him for not being home, but I think you're right - Sam's a smart boy. I suspect he didn't just disappear the way Billy thought he had, and I'll bet he got an earful from the window of Billy's room. Now if he did hear Billy and Brandon having sex, the first question would be, could he tell it was two guys? Could he tell it was Billy and Brandon? I'm guessing he could tell at least that it was two guys. I'm also guessing he's pissed at Billy, not for standing him up, not for being gay, but for failing to trust him. Billy Chase 115 (or perhaps Com'll keep us waiting till 116) could potentially be very interesting.

My feelings exactly. CJ is evil . . . pure evil! Actually, maybe he's taken our advice to heart. Rather than giving us yet another cliffhanger ala, Just as I was approaching the county line, my right tire blew, causing me to lose control at 150 miles an hour, he just left us without knowing either way. Then again, maybe Chris does want this one to end on a happy note, but couldn't bring himself to not leave things up in the air. Either way, he's evil. Great chapter, CJ. I read it through in, like, 5 minutes and I don't think I took a single breath in the entire time.

CJ, you are sooooooo cruel.

Great chapter, but . . . Chris is a college freshman. He's premed and far from in medical school just yet. He hasn't learned anything medical yet. Nada. El Zippo. He knows about as much about arterial blood versus venous blood as someone off the street. If he knows anything about applying pressure to stop the bleeding or about the exit wound being larger than the entry wound, he probably picked it up from watching ER. Steve's father undoubtedly has more training about stopping bleeding that Chris at this point and unless his department is totally inept, the last thing he would do would be to leave someone bleeding from an arterial wound while he went for help from someone untrained. I seem to remember mentioning something about this in a private email - not in so much detail, but the bit about how limited Chris' knowledge and training would be was definitely in there. The bottom line is, listen to your editors. :king:

Very nice. Another great chapter! I think Graeme's on the money regarding the data stick. Eric did the same thing Dex did - he bought an identical data stick (or maybe he had some left over) and did a simple swap. Open and shut case. Now the question is left is who fired that gunshot at the end, and was someone shot in the process. :ranger: