LJCC

Yes. Everything in this story is based on reality, or some of it. I'm writing about a story set in COVID, so everything has to be nearly a replica of the real thing. If you Googled Dennis's mansion, even my descriptions are real-life descriptions of what the house looks like. The only made-up scenario here is the Tinge App, because Hinge (its real-life counterpart) doesn't have an in-app video feature. In the story, Dennis and Klebber use the app's video call feature, and I don't want readers calling me out and saying, "HINGE DOESN'T HAVE VIDEO CALL! HOW DARE YOU!" 🤣 So I named it something else. There's a chapter in Part 2 that's set in Florence, Italy, and it took me two frigging months of doing online research just to get the facts right. Research is too time-consuming. But it needs to get done.

Er, he's Welsh. Wales IS a part of Britain. And British people aren't a single class of people. Because the people of Wales have been described as being candid in their conversations, even with strangers, in ways that might be considered unusual in other parts of the UK. This openness can contribute to a sense of directness in communication. Some from the north have particular attitudes and traits, more so with the neighboring east or the south, particularly Londonites, that makes our country a melting pot. Try going to Leeds, and therefore compare their behavior to Londoners. Like this example: So you see, British people don't live in a bubble. We're also a melting pot of weird.

Yes. Dennis has, er, a lot of issues. But one character trait I tried to give him, which I think is the most important one, is that he's kind. When I wrote this story, around 2023, Elon was still a highly lauded figure, and the perception amongst billionaires was still up there, where people considered him to be 'a good guy.' When 2024 hit, things changed, and Elon, as we all know, came into notoriety, amongst other things. Then something in my writing changed; just watching the news somehow affected it. And Dennis also changed. I wanted him to be kinder and better than he was, but with definite daddy issues that resulted in the character that he became: a broken guy who needed someone to see him for who he is. Both Klebber's and Dennis's character arcs will culminate in part 2, since the second part is way more mature and heavily written than the first half. I can't wait for you guys to read about them. The next chapter is also the intro to Klebber. All I can say is...it's one of the funnier chapters I wrote. Originally it was for Charlie Sheen. The joke was darker with hookers and strippers. But Mr. Toledo, a high school teacher, might not have been able to joke as such. Hehe.

Bloody hell, you're fast! 😅 Yeah, thanks for the kind words. I'll unpublish this now. I'm kidding. Haha. How do I explain this? "Good riddance. I hope you stay dead." Is a line you'd be coming back to every so often. All I can say is that everything in this novel has a purpose. So, come back to it when everything gets explained near the end of part 2--which is a long time from now. HOWEVER, there are bits and pieces of SUBTLE hints left in the narrative that I've dusted here and there for you to have an idea. The story is two years old, so there's a lot of thought embedded in the plot, I'd like to think. My assurance, though, is that PART 1 and PART 2 are ALREADY FINISHED. Part 1 is 145k+ words. Part 2 is 155+ words. So there would be a lot of posting and reading before we get to that part. Hope you guys enjoy Klebber and Dennis's, because I laughed and cried while writing this. I just hope I make one of my readers cry. Then my plan is a success! *EVAAL LAUGH*

CHAPTER 1: THE BILLION DOLLAR KID (EARLY FEBRUARY 2020) A few feet from The Ritz, in the crystal-and-marble splendor of Thomas Shaw's fourth Michelin-starred restaurant, the most magnificent of his new restaurants in London, Dennis Ellison was seated at a secluded corner banquette, dressed smartly in a gray suit, admiring his newest investment as a silent partner in this establishment. It was quite the dazzle for brunch before liquor was served. But the forest of crystal a

Yeah, I know how reading small feels since I'm technically blind if not for the glasses I wear. 😄 🤣 I tried posting the prologue almost a year ago since, I swear to God, I kept changing it. Like, I've completed part 1, and I couldn't make up my mind as to what the prologue should be. So yeah, I stuck with that, and now that I've finished part 2, I guess it's time to post the story. Weekly postings are set. I promise this isn't a one-off where I'll post again 6 months later. Haha. This story is really finished because I wanted to move on to writing another story; that's why it's time. The story has finally defrosted. Like Mariah Carey. 😂

SCENE 1: THE MEETCUTE

Me, emoting, while lipsnycing this song in my head.

That was meant as a joke that Zelt is insane, but I guess that's cannon now. Ahihihihi. Sorry if I turned him hinsaeen on the membrane. Nutty characters always have a soft spot in my heart.

They stood together, watching the train pull away—a metallic beast sliding into the damp morning, swallowed whole by the mist. A single sunbeam, indecisive, pressed its fingers against the last car and then withdrew. For a moment, something moved on the horizon—divine intervention? No, just light making its last desperate claim. The sky cracked open in orange slits, jagged wounds above the mountains. The train, undeterred, surged forward. Not toward disaster, though that would have been poetic, two hundred souls dashed against the rock. No, this was a collision of a different kind: a slow, inevitable plunge into the tunnel of Mordor—where, for the next twenty minutes, passengers would surrender to the darkness, to sleep, to forgetfulness. Zelt had been speaking. To whom, he wasn’t sure. The air, maybe, or the careful curator of voices in his head. Yes. He's gone mental, apparently. "You know I’ll always love you." "Yes, and I’ll always love you." "Promise." "Yes, I promise." "But why do I have to go to the station?" "Your parents need our help. The luggage." A tap on his shoulder. It was real. Unmistakably real. Zelt turned, and the male nurse sighed. He was accompanying the patient on his last journey to get institutionalized, who, sounding weary and rehearsed, said, "How many times do I have to remind you, Zelt? Take your fucking meds."

Just finished Reading Night by Elie Wiesel. It's a short book but really made me think. Every moment where Elie describes losing his faith feels like a gut punch. His entire world had revolved around his religion, and by the end, it’s like that foundation has been ripped out from under him—leaving nothing but emptiness, now bereft of devotion. That scene with Juliek and his violin is haunting—such a powerful moment of beauty and despair intertwined. It’s one of those literary images that just lingers in your mind, no matter how much time passes. SPOILER WARNING.

I need to be alone for a few minutes... Greek wrestling was known to the ancients as or the pale ("upright (or erect) wrestling"). Yep. Sounds about right. Also, by 4:47, it's a thirst trap at this point. The uploader knows what he's doing, and I'm here for it. You're doing God's work. I support you.

Never watched this. Now I'm curious.

I sadly don't have Amazon Prime. I have Netflix though. I don't think it's on Netflix.

I wish this had a good English translation. Now my quest to find a good english sub has begun.

When you're writing with 1st person POV, you're writing with blinders on. You only have one path of sight, which is the 180' degree at which your character's line of sight can see. If your narrator looks straight ahead, those are the things you can describe. If N slightly angles their view to their left and right, it's the extent of how you can describe things. In no way can the narrator elaborate on the things he cannot see. If he does describe them, it would be things that had already happened in the past based on the extent of how he'd acquired such knowledge. For example, behind the narrator is a church. He could say: Martha, my gossipy neighbor, told me about a robbery at the Cathedral Square last week. He wouldn't have an idea that the same robbers that attempted to rob the church would be robbing the place again as he's walking through the town because it's literally behind him. So, putting words in the mouth of your narrator's son literally pertains to that emotion from the narrator's perspective because, as a rule with first-person POV, unless the narrator can read minds, the narrator wouldn't know other people's truths apart from their version of how he/she would explain things. UNLESS those around him have some one-on-one time and tell him whatever they're feeling. This leads to the question of: Are these characters telling him what they're really feeling, or are they just saying what the narrator wants to hear? Are they lying or being truthful? And yes, you can surmise, BASED on WHATEVER your character sees (eye roll, smirk, side eye). Because whatever explanation your narrator creates for the people around him is an opinion formed on his own. He can interpret the eye roll as an attempt to question authority, a typical teenage way of dismissing things, a disparaging remark on whatever he did, or he can describe it and not think about it while still putting it in the story because you want the readers to think he doesn't think about the eye roll, but in fact, it's an intricate emotion leading to his son not having respect, and it bothers him (SUBTEXT). It can be as simple and complex as that, with him interpreting one single gesture.

It's 1st person POV. Anything the narrator says is formed from the narrator's opinions. That's why 1st person POV is inherently unreliable because you're assuming that the narrator doesn't know everything. Unless the narrator explicitly states like, "[Son] said he didn't like his weekends with me," or indirectly, "His [Mother] pointed out how I kept buying the wrong cereal brand. Was I such a shitty father that my own son kept tattling on me?" As for this: I know he’s waiting for me to say something, to open up, How did the narrator know what the son was thinking? I don't know the son's age, but children tend to not be reliable conversationalists with their emotions since they are, after all, children. Unless the son spoke to the father outright, the reader would assume whatever the father was saying was directly coming from his own insights. If it went like this: I know he told his mother that I'm barely saying anything to open up, but… what’s the point? If it's a third-person POV, it could go like this: "[Son] hinted, through a series of eye gestures, eye rolls, and dismissive nods, when his mother had asked how his father was, that the entire weekend was inexplicably fraught with silence, a shrug, and his father excusing himself to lollygag at his beloved shed. [Son's] weekend was met with abject displeasure that his father still remembers the shit he did, one shitty thing at a time—as expected. And that got the teen frowning at his mother. Stealing your father's credit card to purchase concert tickets will surely elicit any parent's greatest arsenal, the silent treatment."

This is the start of the story, basically. After I finish book 3, what I wrote here may or may not change (just the details.) But yeah, this is literally the start of the story. I might continue that or restart another Cop story about Angels and Demons once I finish this. But yeah, that is after I finish this. lol.

Thanks for the support mate. Give me six months more to finish everything. I'm currently writing the last sequel to this trilogy. Fingers crossed it'd be up before July.

Those are very kind words.

I'm a hundred percent sure you'll fall in love with them. 😂 Also, the goal is to get the audience horned up and emotionally invested. So imagine yourself wanking off while crying. This is basically what this story is. I'm kidding. Haha. Anyway, I just need to write around 80k+ words to finally finish the last installment before I publish the rest of the series. It's still an uphill climb but it's getting there.

For My Niece, Who Always Believed that Romance Lives in the Eyes of The Reader— Carol Dianne CONTENTS: THE LONGEST THIRD DATE (PART 1) THE MEETCUTE THE BILLION DOLLAR KID MISTER TOLEDO MR. LONELY THE TINGE THE ENCOUNTER, A ONE NIGHT STAND? THE FIRST DATE - PARKS & RECREATION RELATIONSHIPS? ADVICE, ANYONE? THE SECOND DATE, SCENE 1 - UPDOWNDATING THE SECOND DATE, SCENE 2 - CUPSHUP DATE

Wait for the finished product months from now. 🤣 I assure you, you shall be surprised. Cause I changed a lot. Lol. And as for you, MISTER... Please finish your story now, because I want to read it.

Like with your question: Other than their actions and their words, how would YOU show what another character is thinking while being limited to the main character's overall point of view? By describing things, really. Context and subcontext are the keys to every situation. Subcontext is probably the most important part of storytelling you'd have to insert in everything you write. Without it, its like eating a sugarless cereal. The story would taste very bland. In-your-face writing is literally the opposite of fiction writing. It's like reading a news report. So to successfully hide whatever intention you have with your characters, you have to hide them in a subcontext that the readers will subtly understand. Some writers will directly hint at what the subcontext is (like in this sample), and some will hide it in their graves. This is a very short prompt I made to, hopefully (if it makes sense), give my answer to your question: SETTING: Context: William is showing his apparent 'fiance' to the guy he slept with last night. A fellow spy. Subcontext: Roger is doubting himself if William truly feels nothing about what they've shared together the night before. The CIA agent feels there's something more. He's also doubting if the fiance is his real fiance. “Well, this is my fiancé,” Damien said, smug as a cat dragging in a half-dead mouse. He turned to face Roger, his expression all polish and ice, heartless, soulless. Roger felt the contrarian demons stir inside him, their claws in his guts, pulling him toward what he shouldn’t feel, shouldn’t want—but did, and did deeply. He knew his feelings for Damien, and he knew Damien's duty. Knew, too, what he himself could give, which was less than nothing when the CIA had its iron hand on his leash. And yet, last night—goddamn it—last night had happened. He had let passion, real passion, take the wheel, knowing full well that today Damien would be boarding a plane back to London, back to MI6. Back to the interrogators, with their sharp questions and sharper eyes. If he wasn’t pitch-perfect, it would be his fault because he hadn’t said no to William last night Romantic, cold-effacing, heartless Brits. That’s what Damien was—wasn’t he? Or was he just a full-frontal asshole of an American to expect something? He wanted some version of romance, sure, but they were both intelligence officers. No room for distractions. No room for...this. And yet. Damien looked at him now, the look of someone who had already filed everything away in a locked box. Roger saw it. He saw the purple shadows pooling around his shoulders like bruises. Whatever connection they’d shared last night was gone, replaced by duty and steel. And now, as if the whole moment weren’t absurd enough, Damien was introducing him to this spineless twig of a man—this toothpick masquerading as a person—who was, apparently, William’s fiancé. The words floated, as pompous and self-satisfied as Damien’s tone. Roger swallowed down everything he couldn’t say and told himself, not for the first time, that what happened last night was for nothing. Or was it really for nothing? Because for certain, he'll be thinking of William till the end of his days. Fuck it, he thought. I have to stop his flight, was his convincing tirade in his mind. I'll blow up the plane if I have to.

YouTube knows you gay boy. It's time to come out. Also, if I'm filming something like a naked touchy-feely scene with a woman and I'm getting a boner, I may be straight. *glares at Taylor Zahkar-Perez* Just saying...