William King

Interesting review - You wrote, "There is a reliance on melodrama." It is difficult to describe what is meant by melodrama, no definition exists, one person's melodrama is another person's drama! Generally speaking the term covers exaggerated events created to provoke and engage the reader's emotions, coupled with sparsely drawn characters who are somewhat like cardboard cutputs. There are some extremely strong scenes in the books, which I rather enjoyed, I actually liked the emotional upheavals and considered it dramatic, realistic, as opposed to over the top (melodrama). The characterisations of the three main protaganists, I found well drawn, they were given depth. I thought the quality of the characterisation extended well into the secondary personalities, Billy's parents and Brett's mother. Admittedly, all this grows over time through the series and things build book on book as the boys grow up. JKW says he is working on toning down the melodramatic - Well my two penneth (or two cents) worth is JKW don't touch a thing I loved the drama!

Pinocchio (I learned what happens if you tell a lie) and the other Grimm's fairy tales. They were read to me when I was young and scared the shit out of me. No way did I want to grow a huge nose, get lost in the woods, or eaten by wolves! Fairy tales indeed, they should come with a warning - not to be read to sensitive little boys - gave me nightmares. Oh and life's lessons: don't tell lies and never go down to the woods alone (you can't rely on breadcrumbs)!

Let's ignore the processing power for a minute, because the essential problem is italics. Authors use italics all the time, quite commonly to represent thoughts rather than using or combined with single quotation marks. It is difficult to go through a copy and pasted chapter and edit back in the italics, unless you have marked the italics in some way. If you are going to mark the italics in order to easily edit back in after processing, then why not code the italics? If you code the italics when you save the chapter - hey presto - the italics are there. The saving process puts in the formatting, but strips out the code, and so I see no problems. This is a solution for not only Android copy and paste, but for anyone who loses their basic formatting when copying and pasting their chapters. I do not want to specifically tell users how to do this, I think that is down to you at GA ( just in case you have an issue with it ) although I can't see why you would. In effect this is a solution for anybody with formatting problems, what do you think?

I would add that my experience is that it doesn't matter what word processor you use, but copying and pasting from Android will not keep any formatting. It has been stated the ideal is to paste choosing the no format option and put the italics and bold ( center text ) back in by editing the text you have pasted. That is rather difficult to do, in terms of remembering where the italics, bold text is or continuously moving back and forwards from the original text. The easiest option is to code the italics and bold, it causes no problems and solves introducing errors by missing some italics, bold text.

I loved that film ...

In the fifth book of this series the author treats us to the continuing saga of Billy, Brett, and Dustin. We follow their sometimes violent, sometimes catastrophic, confrontations, reconciliations, and chaotic journey towards adulthood. It is nothing but real and totally believable. The story is crafted with such care and skill that the twists, turns, and revelations will nearly always catch you out and take you by surprise. The characterisation is superb and extends beyond the three principle roles, to include well drawn secondary personalities in Billy's mum and dad, Bretts mother, and Joey McKenzie. Even the cameo appearances of Justin's family, Joey's father Jack and Pastor Carl show real people. Maybe that is why these books have such an avid fan base and following. It was a thoroughly enjoyable read and I, like a number of other people, look forward to the sixth and final book. I should add, with a mixture of eagerness to see how it all works out, and sadness that it will finally come to an end. What better recommendation is there for reading these books?

There are some good times in there @Dennis191, but the suicide is sad. My own best friend from childhood died pulling a stupid stunt, I'd known him since we were seven, then at just shy of 21, he was gone. Nothing to do with being gay or having a crush on him, he just happened to be my best friend for a number of years. Sad.

I reacted WOW but was cut between LOVE and SAD. Love because you came through and made peace with the past to move forward, sad because It's happened to me being separated from childhood friends in a world controlled by adults that you don't fully understand.

I read all the comments so far, they were good and all made valid points and expressed what they felt about the ending. For me it was not only a nice way to end, but a powerful way to end. I do feel worried about George, I am pleased that Brett and Billy have developed a super relationship. There was also though a glimpse of things to come, which was captured in a very subtle way - the two ladies they passed hand in hand contrasted with the guys who called them "fucking queers." Brett got provoked, Billy dragged him away! Not everything in the garden is rosy and there are demons lurking - I can't help thinking that we just got treated to the calm before the storm! Great story, I'm looking forward to the next book.

This was a fairy story - you know like when Cinderella's fairy godmother made the pumpkin into a coach so she could go to the ball. Now everything was soooo perfect and the girls came along and turned into girlfriends so the boys and girls could go to the Prom. Only nobody knew that when the clock struct midnight the boy's would end up in bed with the girls! And it's going to take some magic to sort out what happens next 👬👭👪

I think what you @Comicality describe is very natural, because it was exactly like that for me. Boys from school and boys who lived nearby, but I never had sexual feelings for my best friend who turned out to be straight. But there was Steven, Stevie, with his blond hair and blue eyes who lived down the street. We would have mock fights where we literally tumbled around together, we were all over each other and it felt great, but neither of us knew anything about sex, we were eight or nine years old. There was Mark from school, another blond, his mother was German and quite strict. It all came to an end at his house where I was invited for his birthday party. I don't recall exactly what happened, but there were only a handful of boys there, it was a great party. But, I think he wanted to show off a bit, we all got into a pillow fight, and I knew we shouldn't be doing that. So it ended with one very angry German lady grabbing her son and spanking him in front of us, then we all got sent home. Now Demetri had the cutest smile, he was a small kid for his age, with short jet black hair and his family were Greek Cypriot. We hung out together, we were both in the school football team, I still have the team photo, a bunch of ten year olds (I should dig it out). The climax of that relationship was an afternoon spent at his house, because whatever we started out doing we ended up whispering secrets and holding each other and getting quite close. It was just that one afternoon, but I still have the picture in my head of his bedroom and sitting there on his bed close to him. Things changed with puberty and growing up, I never lost the getting close to boys, but for several years it was on hold, because I was scared, dead scared that I might get found out for who I really was, and that would spoil everything – because deep down I knew I was different and that I must be the only boy like that, so I had to hide and keep my secret to myself, whatever the cost and heartache.

Okay, they had sex. The gay pass was clever. I'm waiting to read the story.

If you could determine a person was gay from there facial features, then that is tantamount to saying that there is a gay gene.

Oh I guess I already know how Cam ended up with a baby - that's because he's not GAY right? 🤣 Nice chapter, can't wait go read what happens next.

Hurricanes are now less frequent than they used to be, but much more violent. Formed by the interaction of warm meets cold area, global warming and rising sea temperatures makes the hurricane stronger. Irma a category 5, damaged 95% of Saint Martin and Saint Bartholomemy (French Islands), 50% of homes are uninhabitable. There is no electricity, no water, and it is logistically difficult to get the help in. The airport is out of action, but being repaired, government buildings including the hospital are damaged and there are people looting. The French government is sending civil defence, police, and army. Hurricane force winds some ten or more years ago were in the region of 160kph, they have steadily increased and in 2017 have exceeded 300kph. Unfortunately, bigger and worse hurricanes are becoming a feature of rising temperatures.

Well done and thoroughly deserved 🤗

Searching for a list of stories, example: FANTASY, 20,000 WORDS, COMPLETE does not work. In fact the Advanced Search feature has never worked as far as I can see - unless I missed another thread about this! What is the situation now (6 months on)? It would be great to be able to search for the types of books you want to read especially to get a list of completed books, in the genre that interests and eliminating short stories.

That was a great twist in the plot, really well done. In a story full of explosive moments I just wonder what's next?

Great piece of writing - it went right through my heart and touched the core - Where we gonna go from here? Loved it!

It's a beautiful song with wonderful words: Lyrics of Little Brother Everybody has ideas We each have our truth We all have our own way and surely a destiny But when we look at the world it seems so awfully big, Our dreams fly each second swept away on the wind Tell me little brother what must we do, so things change? Tell me little brother if we look from the sky everything is mixed together on this earth We would like to see everybody talking in a better way We would like to see our parents smile more often But when we look at the world, it is a bit like the ocean Where the pain is so deep that it drowns the dreams of our children Tell me little brother what must we do, so things change? Tell me little brother if we also look from the sky is everything mixed together? Tell me little brother why do we get lost? It's so weird Tell me little brother what should we hope for? Does love upset people? Tell me little brother Tell me

"Where are you going?" "I'm going there. But I like it here."

I put space exploration into my latest story - thinking outside the box, I decided there would never be either faster than light speed space craft or any sort of cryonics to freeze humans for long voyages, there would be no discovery of worm holes or that black holes would instantly move you trillions of light years across the universe. No, humans would conquere distant stars by sending spacecraft carrying their sperm and embryos. Manned by robots, these craft would land on habitable plants, the robots would build cities, and the humans would be born in test tubes, reared and educated by the robots. Maybe we already did that!

Good libraries and patient neighbours, but the snow you can keep - haha, I prefer the sunshine, and that I can see the earth beneath my feet, but the snow is beautiful - so there's a dilemma!

Renee I like these critiques and eagerly read each new one and often the stories. I was wondering if you could add a list - somewhere - of all the critiques so far published?

What are the books you published on Amazon? Drop a link in here, because without knowing title and author name, no one can find them.