Talo Segura

Phil is basically a nice guy who had one huge problem, being gay. He had to hide who he was, got married, had a son, caused a split up with Eloise and all that was hardly planned more than for the moment. It has led to hurting his family, his wife and son, and even if that was unavoidable it seems he did nothing much to ease the situation he'd created for himself. Eloise brought her ten year old son over to be met by a strange man at the door! I think we will discover Roger has reason to dislike his father. Still, it's never too late to mend bridges!

I've always thought there might be a disconnect between Europe and America, but as @JLynch is American and @Myr is also, then that's not it! I easily understood the question: And, who and why are people making comments? If I got or right, @JLynch would be interested in knowing what sparks readers to comment in large numbers. There is a knock on effect, many comments seem to provoke more comments. Then there is the simple fact that readers find the story interesting. Interesting enough to comment. Comments often snowball when readers identify with the characters and situations. It is not rare for people to give their own life experiences. This kind of points in the direction of slice of life stories being very popular with commentators. When an author replies to comments, that virtually doubles the numbers. Some authors actively solicite comments, the let me know what you think note at the end of a chapter. Perhaps if you don't write a chapter note you don't get comments, so that's one thing you could do, ask for readers to comment. Serial commentators, again if I got this right, it is the small group of members who read lots of stories, most especially the new ones out, and always comment. There the attraction is being along for the ride and in there with all the others commenting on the story as the author publishes, speculating on the plot, being part of the publishing trip, and of course, congratulating the author on a chapter well done. It's a unique aspect to this site and how it works. So in brief, ask for comments, reply to comments, and probably get known as an author, which is a question of time and a lot of work. Personally, I'll just take what I get, I love the stories I write and enjoy publishing some of them for others to read. An occasional comment, like, email, is a nice to get bonus, as for site stats, there off the wall, often make no sense. I had a book with I think 36,000 views on chapter one followed by a few thousand each chapter and that spike in the middle. Remember, thousands of views come with time, look at the stats after three or four years, time makes numbers, but not 36,000!

I have to apologise for my lack of knowledge about queer America In the 60s. This story and some of the comments have made me educate myself a bit more. It is difficult to understand (if you weren't living there) how the USA could be so diabolically repressive towards gays. I read some history and one article in particular struct me: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/lgbtq-life-activism-organizing-united-states-before-stonewall "By 1961 the laws in America were harsher on homosexuals than those in Cuba, Russia, or East Germany, countries the United States criticized for their despotic ways. An adult convicted of the crime of having sex with another consenting adult in the privacy of his or her home could get anywhere from a light fine to five, ten, or twenty years, or even life in prison. In 1971, twenty states had 'sex psychopath' laws that permitted the detaining of homosexuals. ... At California’s Atascadero State Hospital, known...as ‘Dachau for Queers,’ men convicted of consensual sodomy...[were] given electrical and pharmacological shock therapy, castrated, and lobotomized."

I set a time for stories published in the last year (May 2023 to May 2024) which gave a different list to All Time, but not your list. It would be informative if perhaps you stated the time period, top stories over the last month for example. Just a suggestion, it's nice to know what stats we are looking at.

What criteria do you use to get these lists? If I enter General Fiction, Drama, in set genres and most viewed stories, the list is not the same.

@Al Norris, @Paladin, I don't think I am judging Phil's actions by today's standards. Everyone is faced with choices in life, stand up and be counted or don't. I would not judge Phil for his choices in avoiding the draft and marrying Eloise, but I do hold him responsible for pulling the wool over her eyes and not telling her the truth about being gay from the start. True, I didn't live in the US in the 60s, 70s, but I can look up the facts: It is now known that, during the Vietnam era, approximately 570,000 young men were classified as draft offenders, and approximately 210,000 were formally accused of draft violations; however, only 8,750 were convicted and only 3,250 were jailed. https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&client=tablet-android-samsung-rev2&source=android-browser&q=how+many+people+went+to+prison+for+avoiding+draft+to+vietnam+war Homosexuality started to be decriminalised from 1962 in Illinois and progressively across other states through the 70s just until 2003. Of course if you lived in a state where being gay was a crime, and I'm not sure where Phil lived when he married, then that's a huge problem. A reason why lots of gay men migrated to more liberal states and cities. The whole gay liberation movement began with Stonewell in 1969, it's our history. It is never easy to make hard choices, but sometimes you need to, and Phil suffered and is suffering the consequences, years later, of his choices. The little incident in the restaurant with all three making a joke about Phil's wife and son being bitches can't be excused by Phil being from an older generation. The young men are of today's generation and the incident is current. Perhaps it reflects, unintentionally, the author's own attitudes. Surely you have to accept this incident shows Phil in a not very good light and I'm sorry if it reflects your own and many other gay men's experience in the past, but there were those who chose to move and or fight the laws and prejudice.

This chapter begs responses to classic situations: the gay man who gets married, the son who detests the father, the boys who have runaway from home. Phil getting married to avoid the draft and getting sent to the war in Vietnam is understandable. Finding a hippy girlfriend willing to marry him, even suggesting the move, was a lucky chance. Being deceitful however, is ignominious. Much better to be honest, never mind the odds. Meaning, sometimes in life you ought to stand up for who you are and what you believe in. His lies brought retribution from his son and hurt his wife. The way he acted was pretty unforgivable. Stanley running away with his best friend Maxwell, Colin states, "he would be able to help him understand that running away doesn’t solve problems." Well, actually it does sometimes. Getting away from a toxic situation can be good, but a lot of factors come into play. The most important is being able to support yourself, accommodation and a job. So, I agree that kids running away is no solution. Phil is not so great as the hero protagonist, we get a glimpse of a personality I can only describe as nasty: “Damn,” muttered Jason angrily. “He’s (Phil's son) a son of a bitch.” I (Phil) laughed and replied, “I didn’t know you knew my wife.” We were laughing when Emanual brought our meals to the table. The three of them, Phil, Jason and Colin, are laughing at Phil's derogatory comment about his wife. He's telling them she was just as much a bitch as his son. That little scene in the restaurant shows Phil as an unpleasant macho hetero gay, and his gay friends go along with the sick comment. It's not at all sympathetic and totally misplaced, I wouldn't want to be with people who have that kind of attitude, it's not funny at all! The different threads in this story keep it interesting, Phil's life story, Stanley's disappearance, and Colin, Jason, Gary, in the present. Nicely done! It's just a shame we have no real nice guys, nobody who can call things out, no heroes, but that's life!

I wanted to comment not so much on the story, but the writing. Thinking about your writing style which, at least for this story, has a label. It immediately struck me, this is soft writing. I should explain the label, not really for a seasoned author like yourself, but for the benefit of others. I can't take up the space to explain the detail, so here is an extract from and link to an explanation of soft writing. With a soft opening, you’re beginning your story in the day-to-day for your character, the average experience. We’re familiar with the archetypes of plot, of which the most basic is “character exists, something happens to change up the ordinary.” A soft opening isn’t a departure from this, but rather the where we move the focus. With a soft opening, we’re going to start with an increased amount of attention on the “character exists” part of that story, setting up our player(s) and what their daily existence is like before we jump into the “change.” http://https://maxonwriting.com/2015/09/25/being-a-better-writer-hard-and-soft-openings/ It seems to me you do this perfectly and that makes for an engrossing and captivating story which draws in the reader. There is drama, but it's subdued, there is action, which is a slow build, this is not a story that starts with the hard opening of some dramatic incident, rather it is the gentle revelations peeled back to show a life that's been lived. It's got sub plots a plenty and is really well crafted.

Back then using the internet was restricted by time of day, charged by hours used, and as slow as a snail. It was also the wild west, a place where you could do what you want, and GeoCities, Tripod, and Angelfire gave you access to create free websites, you only had to learn html! This freedom gave a space online to share across the world whatever you wanted and allowed for minorities. Allowed for gay stories, forums, and group sharing. Comsie was in there somewhere at the start of something that became great, huge, empowering, and did so much for so many everywhere. Comsie made an unforgettable impact and he will be missed, a pioneer, an author, and an all round good guy.

and the music you listened to is now the soundtrack to adverts. I don't think I've ever read a story whose theme is the intergenerational relationship between a young man (surrogate grandson) and his grandfather (apart from my own short story, but that was a young boy rather than an adult). I remember talks with my grandfather when I was a young boy, I loved hearing about his life when he shared a little, but he never talked as openly as Phil and I was left with hints and little substance. Still I remember him and his stories which only goes to show the power of the older generation who have a lifetime of experiences to share, which is not boring, but enriching and deeply meaningful.

“Your stories aren’t boring,” he replied. “I’m enjoying them.” Ditto.

Do you want to share how old you were when you had your first gay experience? You really do pose a lot of questions. Me too! Me too! And what can I tell you? I grew up falling in love with boys. There were a couple of girls I liked and I had a best friend who lived down the road. I never did anything with my best friend or even really talked about sex, but I did with other friends. I guess my first experience were the feelings I got wrestling with Stevie when we were about nine or ten. I think he got those same feelings, because we did it all the time. The one thing I knew, apart from how I felt about boys, was it was secret, nobody could ever know!

It's a sad start because of where Phil finds himself now, but it promises some revelations. It also poses rather a lot of questions which I can't begin to address. Questions about choices made in one's life, questions about who we are, questions about what's next, what happens when the wait in the care home is over. They all are for the moment unanswered which is perhaps where the sadness lies?

A wonderful tale by a brilliant author which deserves all the compliments showered upon it. In some measure it departs a little from the the overall feel good emotions of previous tomes, but not very far. The ending underlines this and is not perhaps how I would have chosen to tie things up, nevertheless, it is the author's prerogative to take his characters to their destiny, however he sees it. The story is as always with this series, compelling, full of little twists and surprises, with a few cliffhanger moments along the way. It left me with a huge hole in my heart for Cosmo, one of the story protagonists, who struggles with what life's thrown at him and wrestles with himself. His plight effects how I see Marco, the other protagonist, who does nothing wrong, indeed is probably exemplary in his actions, which only serves to emphasise the depths to which Cosmo, his would be friend, falls to. The happy ending is not so happy for everyone, but despite everything that happens, James Carnarvon never leaves the reader unsatisfied, nor without hope. I, like many other readers, hope he returns to Ravello to take us on another journey together. Without any hesitation I recommend this book, but then, if you've followed the series so far, it needs no recommendation because you're already hooked!

“I’m the last single boy in Ravello, everybody knows that,” Marco mumbled. ... He wasn’t in love. Not yet. But who said they couldn’t dabble just a little? After all… would that be so bad? No, it wouldn't be so bad, but, "the last single boy in Ravello," Marco's forgetting Cosmo!

Dramatic! Obviously, no, she's doomed, but I did like her. She got dealt a bad hand, she took things way too far, she had huge problems which led her into oblivion, but it wasn't entirely her own choice and as has been said, she had redeeming qualities. As for the others: Luca couldn't quite say "I love you bro." Giorgio was understandably speechless. Cosmo came back from the brink. Marco... well you have to admit, however much you like him, in some way he probably caused this drama. Perhaps you don't like me saying that, but it's easy to see him telling the police, which is why he left Cosmo so quickly, left him to his fate: “Come on, Giorgio,” Marco whispered. “Let’s get out of here.” They pushed past him and hurried on up the steps, leaving Cosmo sitting anxiously on his own. Don't see things in black and white, nobody's all good nor entirely bad, it's not a fairy tale the author intended, but a slice of life and there are not always happy endings!

Some music lives forever and gets reborn...

Giorgio shrugged. “I don’t know how it feels to be in love,” he mumbled. “But… I know I think about you. It used to be Cosmo, but now it’s you. What to make out of these three, Cosmo, Giorgio and Marco? Cosmo is completely spun out and alone, Giorgio has a thing for... who exactly? Cosmo, then Marco. And Marco? He's quick to step into Cosmo's place with Giorgio and he's a snitch. Like it or not he's telling tales on Elisabetta. From what I'm reading Giorgio isn't in love with Marco anymore than he was with Cosmo, the other boy just happens to be there and is being nice. I have to pose the question, what's the difference between Marco and Cosmo? They both want something, somebody. Maybe Cosmo is actually more honest about it, maybe? Will Giorgio actually get together with Marco?

And the only person doing that is Elisabetta. Marco regards Cosmo like he's the devil, Luca's support is practically none existent, and Cosmo's parents are desperately trying to convince themselves he's not a bad boy. Giorgio is out of the scene, Vincenzo as well, there is nobody except Elisabetta and as things stand she's going to take him out with her in a blaze of glory. "Mass murder is wrong. But if I were a mass murderer, I'd be Mickey and Mallory!" With director Oliver Stone and story guy Tarantino that couples' relationship becomes a natational obsession in Natural Born Killers, not unlike Cosmo and Betta!

Interesting comments. I'm not sure Cosmo had to seduce Giorgio, the younger boy is kind of infatuated. Marco's role in things is never questioned, as if he is Giorgio's guardian angel. But what is Marco doing with Giorgio?

I see underwritten characters as the supporting roles where those characters have no sub-plots. You don't need extensive sub-plots, but for supporting characters to be real I think you need to show a glimpse that other things are going on apart from the main storyline. It can be as simple as a character who plays a supporting role might be struggling with life after an accident, which influences how they interact with the main characters and plot. We don't need to know the entire history, but knowing there is one, brings those characters alive.

This is where things get interesting. Elisabetta is a Goth, which is a fashion for teenage rebellion and the need to identify with a group. She is a product of her circumstances and I don't see her as evil, simply protecting herself from being hurt, which sometimes can take a few bad turns, but intrinsically I am sure she is not a bad kid! How many boys have eyes for those they cannot reach and are hard pressed to see what's right there in front of them? The dynamic between Marco, Cosmo and Elisabetta's little brother Giorgio, for example. Excellent writing, a wonderful chapter that develops Marco, he's maturing as a character, the interaction with Luca shows just how much. I am sure you will develop Elisabetta with your usual sensitivity, she deserves the attention to detail.

I could wait until the end to comment, but where would the fun be in that? I agree with both the previous comments by @Luca E and @mg777 and yes the prologue seems like an almost different story, it could stand alone. I think it was set some thirty years earlier, which alone makes it interesting and it was so well written. But, chapters 1 and 2 have some equally delicious description: And over here, by a rusted set of railroad tracks no train would blow through on again, an old-fashioned shotgun shack sitting much too close to the ties, so close I wondered how on earth anyone had ever managed to sleep there. “Right nice, huh? ... the new owners rebuilt it close as they could ... the owners are old friends of my mom. They’re gay too.” The thing is for me I was so grabbed by the relationship in the prologue, the time jump has left me confused. The reference in chapter two, quoted above, hints at a connection, but the story is following another couple and I really wanted to see what happened after the one night moonlight encounter with the albino whore's son

Conjured up a southern America I don't know and never will, but this writing brought it alive and I lived the encounter and imagined the world and those lives. Excellent, loved it!

Because I could find nowhere to put my own ebooks, I asked every site, but there was zero interest, so I made my own free site - https://the-gay-fiction-library.site123.me The only problem is, being free, it is limited on storage and you have to rename the downloaded ebooks, but it's free.