William King

@droughtquake did you ever see Skins, the TV series, it also got a short lived US makeover? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skins_(UK_TV_series)

Which did you prefer - be honest? I find remakes are rarely as good as the original, but there are exceptions. I recently saw Dunkerque at the cinema, the remake pays homage to the original film and is really superb.

Emi - you are confusing people. You are saying (above) I have several books which I DO NOT OWN (they are not my books). Can I publish? Of course the answer you got is NO. You do not need to register your book to own it, it is yours to publish, you could register for the digital copyright, you have the digital copyright whether you register or not. What you risk - if this book has not been published previously, on here for example - is not being able to prove the book is yours, if someone should steal it and publish it under their own name - highly unlikely. So go ahead and enter the book in the competition and stop worrying, it's your book, you are free to publish.

There is of course the famous sex scene (QaF) where he's getting fucked - for the first time - with the theme tune for Dr Who making the sound track. Honestly, the US version of QaF is a pale imitation - why would you re-make an English language gay series for a US audience other than to tone it down, because you don't want the sex - which is just what happened. Don't accept copies, always watch the original! Oh yes, and regarding Dr Who being for kids. I watched it from the beginning, in black and white, I was eight years old (1963) and it scared the shit out of me - I had to peek out to look from behind the sofa - we had only just got a TV and maybe I was a very sensitive eight year old - LOL!

We don't really do trick or treat in my country, although Halloween parties etc. have been imported from America, any kids wanting to knock at my door would have to walk miles down country roads with few houses and no street lights!

So what I wonder is Danni going to do on this ice cold planet in perpetual winter, where the highlight of the week is Karaoke! 🎤

Shyness, I wonder if shyness and naivety go hand in hand? I grew up shy, it has always taken ages to get to know people, but with some odd exceptions. Some kids just break through your barriers and you get close quickly, but I would always be careful in a group. Then there is being naive, I was brought up never to lie and I thought all kids were the same – they weren't. That caused problems as a child and as an adult, because basically I believed what people said. One day I met a really cute attractive boy who, well wow, he pulled me in like a magnet. Then I discovered he lied, compulsively, about everything, not one word that came out of his mouth was true. A life lesson, he was still cute despite his personality, but it cut things short. How do you overcome shyness, well bit by bit, but also sometimes it's like learning how to swim. You have to jump in the water, sink or swim. That happened to me, I had to give a presentation to some important people – I was a young man now, with a job – sink or swim. I swam, and one day I found the shy me standing up in front of a hundred people giving a presentation. What was funny was that I enjoyed it, I could play with the audience, I could take them wherever I wanted, they followed, they asked questions, I had all the answers, and even when I didn't I still could manage it. The shyness did not disappear in the blink of an eye, but was less, it was non-existent up in front of people lecturing on something I knew inside out, but was still there on a more intimate level. Today it hardly exists at all, in fact I'm almost convinced it's gone forever, but ironically it's taken me a lifetime.

Good intro, war (of the colonies), intrigue (Danni's special), mystery and a hint of sex (what happened to Ben?), great description of Danni's birth - what will life hold for this beautiful boy (who looks exactly like Ben) on this frozen planet?

Why is someone called Former Member? I was browsing the forum and came across a reply to a post from Former Member who signed their reply Lyssa. Would I be correct in assuming Lyssa left the sight, but you kept all her posts, renaming them Former Member? Or did Lyssa adopt the name Former Member? As there is no way to contact Lyssa aka Former Member, I am asking here.

You absolutely are!

I get no notifications of new topics in any clubs, writers circle, Sci-fi etc. I have to go look and follow the topic. I see that there is a FOLLOW button so it could be you need to follow each tab, like DISCUSIONS and RESOURCES. It might not be a system error, it's just all become pretty complicated with lots of buttons to press to follow everything. Just a suggestion, but maybe the club's FOLLOW each tab could be the default and you can opt out of threads that don't interest. After all you join a club because you are interested in what is going on there. Anyway I end up always clicking the club to find out what's new, but sometimes come late to the party, because there is a lot going on - which is good.

Of course there is no case of the Monarch overriding legislation or constitutional change (ignoring Juan Carlos the King of Spain publically condeming the movement in Catalonia to achieve independence) either in the United Kingdom or elsewhere. To do so would result in parliament revoking the Queen as head of state and de facto becoming a Republic. No member of the Royal Family is supposed to publicly espouse any political view whatsoever, in order to remain a non-political head of state and head of the Commonwealth. The Queen for the first time in her reign broke that protocol when she voiced her opinion about the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. That was brushed over! It is true that a constitutional monarchy lends a certain stability to the country although I don't see other European countries being unstable because they do not have a monarch as head of state. There has always been the argument vis a vis tourism, but dispensing with the Queen as head of state does not equal doing away with the entire Royal heritage. The argument is rather one revolving around wether having a non elected person symbolicly ruling the country is something we want in the 21st century. One should bear in mind the archaic tradition of swearing allegiance to this monarch rather than to your country and fellow citizen. One should also consider that in the United Kingdom everything belongs to the monarchy, it is the Queen's highway, the Royal Mail, and she is the commander in chief of the police and armed forces. The consequence of this for example is that British citizens do not have a right in law to occupy the streets because those streets are the Queen's and this may be used by the police to remove citizens from those streets. In effect without being aware the ordinary citizen lives under the Royal command. You may like that, I do not.

On the story hit PRINT then from your browser menu SAVE WEB PAGE. It's then available for offline reading by selecting your saved web pages. Android 7.0

You do know there would be knock on effects - No more Royal Canadian Mounted Police, just plain old CMP! And what about British Columbia, you might have to rename it Canadian Columbia! Of course you would still get to walk backwards after an audience with Her Majesty, if she ever deigned to visit again after such a slight! I think she would probably tell Charles to go. On the plus side you would get your country back, or most of it, because Quebec might take the opportunity to declare independence. You've already changed the flag to a Maple leaf so why not go the whole way, get rid of the Crown and save a few dollars in the process. You might regret the loss of title, Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, Queen of Canada and of Her other realms and territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. Then again maybe not! I can hear Prince Philip now, telling Her Majesty over a nice cup of tea, whilst the corgis yap at their heels, "Who the bloody hell is this Dodger fellow? Send him to the bloody Tower. What a nerve!" To which she would in her indomitable fashion respond with a smile and a wave.

Life comes in phases - how long they last, when we move on, if ever, that you can only see looking back. Maybe everyone gets sucked into one lifestyle or another - but what your soul seeks is pure love and that ain't easy to find, hell some people don't even know they have a soul, they can't tell fake from real!

No before you ask it has nothing to do with sex! Below every Avatar image it says NAME, then title Awesome or whatever, then some dots .... representing quantity of postings. I humbly request that those dots get replaced with ACTIVE or NOT ACTIVE or any similar words that tell you which members are active on the site and which members are ghosts. My personal criteria would be absence of logging in for more than one year - last active - renders that member a ghost. Perhaps you could even use the term. Maybe you might like a list of terms describing the period of inactivity? It could go something like this: 3 months since last active FADING 6 months since last active DISAPPEARED 12 months since last activite GHOST What do you think?

There was way too much description for me, you could have drawn a plan of the place. Nothing grabbed me and engaged me in the story, it just felt like one huge info dump, with no atmosphere. What I mean is something like: As usual Bryce was up just as the sun was rising in the distant sky, lighting the vast flat landscape of the homestead with those unique vivid colours that seemed to bring everything alive...

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs... Brilliant, loved it, and the sex wasn't half bad mate!

I thought it started off really well, interesting, but then you switched points of view and started telling us everything about Kaleo, which just didn't work for me. All the mystery of meeting a stranger on a remote island evaporated in the second half of chapter one. There was no real change of voice and for me Adam and Kaleo were indistinguishable except by their different histories.

@C.Arthur that was just so romantic you blew me away with your description of that kiss!

It's a very good video, but even in full screen at 8 inches the text is barely readable. DISPLAY Type Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors Size 8.0 inches (~74.0% screen-to-body ratio) Resolution 1536 x 2048 pixels (~320 ppi pixel density) Multitouch Yes

I am sure this has come up before, but anyway it still happens ( but is no big deal ). I just recently got two notifications that where: X has quoted you in chapter one. I had made comments on two stories, both chapter one, both by the same author. The first notification on a recently published story took me straight to the comment. The second notification on a much older story took me to the top of the second page ( the comment was the last one at the bottom ). Both notifications should have linked in the same way to the comment.

Just a bit OTT, did you pay him to say that? LOL. Seven years on and you've come a long way with your writing - even though we only get one chapter at a time - I liked the sex, you should put a scene like that in your Sci-fi world! 😉

Aegis was a blast, I love computers (AI) that talk back to you. The eye of the storm, landing on the ship, jumping into combat, all served with a side dish of delectable banter. Couldn't help reading some real life current issues in there with the outcasts and a thousand years of dogmatic religious worship. I do want more!

I've always intrinsically known that I have to protect myself to survive, I think that is a basic human instinct. How far and what measures you have to take in order to do this depends very much on circumstances. School was a jungle and I had to avoid getting eaten alive, beat up or psychologically damaged. Luckily my home life was more relaxed. I was never going to tell my parents, or grandparents – we all lived in the same house – that I was gay. Why? Because I knew they had a negative attitude towards that. My grandfather once told me that as a young man he would never leave the house without a hat, only men who weren't men would allow themselves to be seen in public without a hat! It isn't difficult to know your parents point of view about things, so at home I was in the closet, and everywhere else too. I had however discovered at the age of thirteen that I was not the only gay boy in the world. Yes I know, you may find that hard to believe these days, but I honestly did think that at age eleven or twelve. What I needed was a plan, a way to move forward, and a way to meet other guys like me. I decided it all had to be on hold until I reached eighteen, when I would leave school and leave home. I had to have financial independence. Whilst incidents happened before I reached eighteen, I was so fucking scared I always pressed the panic button and ran. Once I had left school and moved out I was halfway there, but that was the moment I had to come out. It was not easy. Was I pressurised into it? Yes, but by myself, not by anyone else, nobody knew. Perhaps the pressure you can put on yourself is just as great, if not greater than being pushed by others. I don't know, but I thought I was going to implode! I kept trying to work out how to do it, when to do it, who to tell, who to tell first, and did I have to tell everybody or just my parents and close friends? The first close friend I told I just blurted it out by saying, “look I've got something I just have to tell you.” What you should know is I was sharing an apartment with two or three other guy’s, of whom he was one. I don't know how the hell I got the words out, it was like one of the biggest moments of my life, but I said it, “I'm gay!” He had no reaction, I couldn't believe after beating myself up over this for days, trying to imagine all the possible scenarios – nothing. I had to come up with something quick, so I added, “You okay with that?” What do you think he replied? He said, “Yeah, but I'm not gay.” I just left it. Was that good, bad, indifferent? Did he think I might want to jump him? I was lost. Huge build up to a big non-event. And it didn't make it easier to tell other people, over time I sort of got used to it, right up until one day when I said to myself, why the fuck do I have to keep telling people? So I stopped, I just decided to be myself, if they asked I'd say, straight people don't go around announcing their sexuality to the world, why should I? I have to tell you I chickened out with my parents and wrote my mum a letter, that was short and sweet, and basically told her and my dad that, well you know that friend of mine, X, well we are actually more than just friends. I saw them soon after, I wasn't just going to leave it like that. Funny thing was, my dad had no problem with it, my mum got into blaming herself, and that took some time for her to get over. I don't think she was ever totally comfortable with it. I will just add that whilst adopting my attitude of telling if asked, I didn't hide or make a big deal out of things. Like at work when you are talking about what you did over the weekend for example. I remember very well telling a guy I worked with I’d been to Heaven (a big London gay disco) Saturday night with friends. He said to me, “but that's a gay club.” To which I replied, “Yes I know, I am gay!” He simply didn't believe me, telling me, no you aren't, you're not gay. I mean that really takes the biscuit doesn't it? When you have to come out and then convince someone that you really are gay!