William King

So this is how they sell you ice cream in Finland... yummy!

What a little jem of a novel, I picked it up, started reading, and couldn't put it down until I'd finished it. The thoughts and the world of the just turned thirteen year old, Cam - don't call him Cameron, only his mom can do that, and he hates it when she does – expressed in his personal journal. His self reflection and observations, his interactions with his small group of friends are wonderfully written. The story revolves around his dawning self-awareness, what might equally be labelled his sexual awakening. His inner turmoil to realise how he truly feels about his friend Nate. All the characters in this novel are described in perfect little cameos, even his sisters. They may not be described in great detail, but the author manages in very few words to paint Cam's whole world and the people in it. There is some great writing here, and it is so easy to pick up and read, if you don't, then you will be missing a wonderful story, beautifully told. There are some marvellous little throw away lines like the moment when Cam and Nate first kiss, - “We stayed locked together for hours, or more like two minutes.” This story is written using the weekly entries in Cam's journal to describe the events that take place in Cam's life. The chapters are short, and vary in length, the whole thing works perfectly. I applaud the author for adopting this unique approach, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The poodle part will need a nice cut and blow dry at your local poodle parlour 🐩

I agree with Lisa, it was hilarious. Perhaps you have missed your vocation - should have been a stand up comic - well it's not too late. Can't wait for more adventures with Stardust/Banjo and that poor guy who got trapped into taking him in - oh, that's you! 😂

What would summer be without fishing - could be the title of a book, inspired by the young boy sitting on the jetty, that could be straight out of Mark Twain - great photos - and the butterfly bush, that's a buddleia 🙄

A short while ago it stopped working for me, now it's back working, what can you say, it's temperamental!

Yes, sorry, it is confusing. The answer is that in Word you need to uncheck the option in paragraph formatting that says - add space after paragraph (unchecking the option means that it reads ADD SPACE AFTER PARAGRAPH). The same thing for - add space before paragraph. Then every line you write in Word follows on until you hit RETURN and get a blank line. When you copy and paste it is fine (you still need to centre text, add bold and italics).

I played around and found the answer - simple when you know how - in Word you have to do a double carriage return (hit the return key twice). Then when you copy and paste it's fine. I think Word shows paragraph spacing for a single carriage return, but this is unique to Word. Either that or the GA editor likes a double dose 🤔

I posted a story using Word for the first time. It is the latest version 1.0.1, in Chrome. I had no spacing between paragraphs in Word other than a carriage return. Pasting it into the GA editor there was no line spacing at all when published. To rectify, I had to make a carriage return at every paragraph (return key), then delete the line space with the backspace key. The text then appeared with no line spacing, but published correctly with the line space. In brief: using Word is a problem for the format. Previously I used Polaris with no problem.

You have (sorry) to be British to remember this - short clip from the film small faces.

The book is a prequel to a series (The Fragmented) in development. It tells the story of how Kutanga – also known as Tanga or Tan, the Unseelie from the title, meets and falls in love with a Changeling called Lihai. His love transforms the other boy’s precarious existence, but danger is lurking, and eventually strikes. This short introduction to the universe of The Fragmented does what it sets out to achieve, it conjures up a whole other realm, a magical world, ruled over by the priests of different religious sects, and inhabited by creatures with extraordinary abilities. The author describes well this other world he is telling us about, and makes it compelling through the story of our two protagonists. Possibly the only thing missing is a better understanding of the different priesthoods. Having said that, the author has avoided the trap of over describing this world, perhaps an appendix might have served to elaborate, although no doubt we will discover more in the subsequent books. The writing style makes for easy reading, and all the elements are there for a great story. It is a good beginning by a young author and leaves you wanting to discover more. What the writer has successfully achieved is creating believable situations in a fantasy realm.

Chinese gay cinema. Scud (雲翔) is a film scriptwriter, producer and director, born in mainland China amid the Cultural Revolution, given the name by his eldest uncle Li Kang (力匡), a poet and writer of Singapore, raised by his grandmother. Both passed away in the 90s.He moved to Hong Kong with parents at age of 13, devoted the next 20 years to a career of IT, worked for multi-national companies, founded a public listed company, and acquired a bachelor degree through part-time study. He then migrated to Australia. Realizing that he had fulfilled the dream of others but not his own, he returned to Hong Kong 2005 to start Artwalker, an independent film company. Scud co-directed his maiden film, City Without Baseball (無野之城) (2008) with Lawrence Ah Mon (劉國昌). It’s about the Hong Kong Baseball Team, in a city where baseball culture is almost non-existent, acted by actual players of the city’s delegation and was based on their own stories. The film caused a lot of controversies for exhibiting male full frontal nudities and touching on intimate brotherhood within a masculine sport. Even the billboards around town were said to be shocking and had to be removed after a complaint filed by one citizen. The film was academically acclaimed, however, awarded by China and Hong Kong critics. Film Critics China – Top 10 Chinese Movie of the Year 2008 HK Film Critics Society – Recommended Movie of the Year 2008 MOVIES City Without Baseball Permanent Residence Amphetamine Love Actually… Sucks! Voyage Utopians Thirty Years of Adonis

This is an old film, a short (20 minutes), it's subtitled, someone already said the best films are foreign language, well unless you happen to be from Norway in this instance.

I loved my dungarees

Lord of All Hopefulness, Lord of All Joy – Mrs. Miniver. Did you know that a lady, Joyce Torrens (1901-53), wrote using the alias Jan Strummer, and it was she who penned the hymn – Lord of All Hopefulness (we used to sing that hymn at morning assembly when I was at school). She wrote this in 1929 for Canon Percy Dearmer of Westminster Abbey, for his new edition of Songs of Praise. It was a non-doctrinal, non-sectarian, hymn and was quite daring at the time because it replaced "Thy" with "You". This perhaps little known writer was also responsifor a newspaper column in which she invented the character of Mrs. Miniver, a kind of plucky English woman who embodied the spirit of the time. In 1942 Mrs. Miniver became a film, it was heavily promoted in America, where it won an Oscar for Best Motion Picture. More importantly, the film told the story of how a middle class English family were forced to confront the Blitz (the bombing of London by Nazi Germany aimed at reducing the city to rubble). The film acted as a catalyst, arousing sympathy amongst ordinary Americans. In so doing, it played a crucial role in turning the tide of American opinion for entry into the second world war – as they say, the rest is history. Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy, Whose trust, ever childlike, no cares could destroy, Be there at our waking, and give us, we pray, Your bliss in our hearts, Lord, At the break of the day. Lord of all eagerness, Lord of all faith, Whose strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe, Be there at our labours and give us, we pray, Your strength in our hearts, Lord, At the noon of the day. Lord of all kindliness, Lord of all grace, Your hands swift to welcome, Your arms to embrace. Be there at our homing, and give us, we pray, Your love in our hearts, Lord, At the eve of the day. Lord of all gentleness, Lord of all calm, Whose voice is contentment, whose presence is balm, Be there at our sleeping, and give us, we pray, Your peace in our hearts, Lord, At the end of the day.

I could review/comment all of them, but I think that is hardly the point. It is more about life what's written here, than the words themselves. What moves me is the insight, the emotions, the person we see emerging from behind the poems. I could never know your life if you didn't share these words - the pain, the searching, succumbing, wishing, hoping, suffering - it's all there in so few words. Number 2 - On my knees before you. This was insightful, I doubt you realised when you wrote it how much it reveals. Because you obviously were focused on yourself, you saw things from your point of view, and that is not difficult to see why that would be. But what you wrote describes more than yourself. In this little poem it seems to me that you describe two worlds colliding. Colliding, they don't meet, they smash into one another, they touch each other - physically, but they never actually merge. That is a sort of ice cold reality, it sends a shiver through your body to contemplate it. The guy being given a blow job is in a fantasy world where he can command the reactions he wants, looking in his face - the power, swallowing - the power. You don't exist for him, you are part of a fantasy he will never achieve - when it's finished he will not be satisfied. He will pay and move on, but you can't buy magic - he doesn't know that, maybe he never will. You sell a service to survive - his world is not yours. This poem in a few words illustrates such a contradiction - it describes a physical coming together that exists, but is empty, gives nothing, with one exception - a twenty to survive and a hint that something is terribly missing. It's a great poem, they all are. What could be more real than the words you wrote at 17, 18. Those words of angst are not yours alone, I think they exist in all of us. The circumstances of our lives are different, sometimes very different, but the reflections are the same. So I could never know what exactly that felt like - only through your words do we get a tiny glimpse, but I can in some way feel those feelings, because in a different life, in a different way I had them too. There is I feel a book in there somewhere waiting to be written, a story more powerful than you might know, but I can understand, also incredibly difficult. I suppose that even sharing these poems is hard, you are giving a little bit of your soul with each verse - that just shows how far you have come, to be able to do that.

Good point Graeme - maybe just highlighted text, that you click/touch the screen, for the multimedia response. That is possible and would give you the extra element if you wanted it.

@Renee Stevens you need to edit the link on the book title, it's not working, I had to hunt around to find the author and book - The Navigator

Here is the trailer for L'inconnu du Lac - Stranger by the Lake. I found it interesting with the suspense of a good thriller and the honest portrayal of gay causing - European films are much less constrained about nudity than perhaps American films.

A point of clarification before I start reading: does the reviewed story have to be complete or can it be a story in process?

My Own Private Idaho (USA 1991) In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters (River Phoenix) is a gay hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves) is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.

Another good British film is Pride (2014), based on a real history and about the miners strike in Thatchers Britain in the 80's.

It's all fixed now.

YES it's fixed. Thanks.

Beautiful Thing (1996 British) http://dai.ly/x3x0sdt