Graeme

The article and the comments agree that the club isn't expecting him to be a superstar. He's supposed to shore up a defensive weakness in the Nets. After all, they know what he can do because he used to play for them! Hopefully the hype isn't as bad as you (and I) fear. I'm watching this closely, since this is what my new novel is all about -- the coming out of a gay athlete at an elite level.

Jason Collins Signs With Nets, Becoming First Openly Gay NBA Player Considering how long he's been waiting, I think it's great news! The 10 day contract is something I didn't know about before, but it's a promising start!

How did I end up here? I honestly don't remember.... Now for the saga as to why I'm gay but married with kids. I've known I've been attracted to guys since a very young age, but as I wasn't a confident youngster, I stayed firmly in the closet for a long time.... until I was forty, to be precise. I'd had a handful of anonymous sexual encounters in that time, but I've never had a boyfriend. After I graduated from university and started a job, I met someone who tried her best to become my friend. She succeeded.... To be honest, as I was emotionally starved because I kept to myself so much, that I was vulnerable to someone who appeared to like me. Eventually, I proposed and she accepted. We've now been married for twenty-three years. Ten years ago, I started reading stories online, and found quality sites such as Deweywriter and CRVBoy. That's when I started to accept my sexuality. Before that, I had known it, but suppressed it. I was inspired to start writing, and posted my first fiction at Deweywriter in the forum there. It got a sufficiently good response that I kept writing Somewhere along the line, I joined up at GA and started participating here, but that happened later. Knowing that my wife would eventually find my stories, I told her one night, shortly before my forty-first birthday, that I'm gay. That started six months of hell -- mainly for her. She told me afterwards that she contemplated suicide. If we didn't have two young boys, she might've gone through with it. Cutting a long story short, we reconciled and agreed on limits. I will stay true to my marriage vows and she accepts that I'm gay and need some release. The release we've agreed on is my online presence. She's not tolerating me -- she accepts me as I am. She reads everything I write and offers constructive comments from time to time. We discuss things happening here at GA and at the other sites I'm involved with. I still love her, even if that love doesn't have the strong sexual nature that most people associate with a marriage. I've always been willing to share my story. The only thing I hold back is enough information to identify me, and that's predominantly to protect my family. I don't care if people know I'm gay, but my sons are not ready to deal with any negative responses that may occur, so I'm staying in the closet for now to let them grow up as safely as possible. Before anyone says anything, I have one son who's been bullied several times already through his school life, and he doesn't need any additional stress. My other son has developmental issues and also doesn't need additional complications in his life. If my sons were different, I'd come out, but my view is that they need me to stay in the closet. I may be erring on the side of caution, but since it's their lives at stake, not mine, I'll continue to err on that side. I'm very much aware that I'm in a fairly unusual situation. When I came out to my wife, I had the support of two other married gay men. Sadly, their marriages didn't survive. Most don't -- something I didn't know when I told my wife I'm gay I'm lucky to have such a wonderful person as my wife, one who is able to accept that her husband is gay.

Er... I hate to cause problems (well, maybe not), but any sport that involves umpires or referees includes a subjective judgement. This is speaking from experience, as I was a basketball referee for more than fifteen years. So this includes hockey (field and ice), basketball, softball. baseball, cricket, football (all codes), etc. Now, I'll concede that the degree of subjectiveness is different to sports such as ice dancing, but they've still got an amount of subjective judgement involved. Just look at the controversies that result with what the fans or media consider to be a bad call....

I actually feel a lot better about Josh after this chapter. He is really concerned about hurting people, even if he's also looking at it from a selfish point of view (eg. missing Jacob's mother's hugs). I wonder what's going to happen when Ethan finds out Josh is gay? One thing I know -- he'll give Jacob hell, saying that as identical twins, Jacob must be gay, too. I know that's what I would do if I was Ethan It doesn't have to be true, but it's too much of an opportunity not to tease Jacob about it. The big unknown is how he'll react to Josh....

Thank you! I've tried my best to keep the story interesting, even if you already know who is 'Ken' Hopefully, there'll be enough drama to keep you happy throughout the story.

Thank you! Tony meets the team in the next chapter, so you've only got about a week to wait until the next chapter is posted.

Thank you! I always like to give my characters real motivations for their actions. Sometimes those motivations aren't quite rational, but they will always have a reason for doing things the way they do. The poll is set up so you should be able to change your votes as the story progresses, so don't hesitate to vote for who you think it is

Thank you! It's more the online story gay stereotype that was I was tackling, rather than real-world stereotypes.

It was almost midnight when he stepped into the semi-darkness of the nightclub and immediately relaxed. After the deceptions needed to slip away, he was finally in a place where he didn’t have to hide, where he could be himself. It was only for a short time, but he knew he’d need every minute he had to heal and armour himself for the world outside. Glancing around, he first noticed and then ignored the short, broad-shouldered young blond in the corner. He was with a taller, dark-haired guy of s

LOL -- that's an evil ending. Now I have to wait to find out what Josh is going to say. It looks like things are beginning to unravel, but so far not in a way that's dangerous. I don't think they'll be able to keep up the deception all weekend -- Josh's lack of basketball skills is just the latest in small mistakes they've made. They could get away with school for a bit because it's more structured, but Josh is trying to replicate the social skills and history of someone else, and that's almost impossible.

Even with marriage, not all women want revenge because they learn their husband is gay. From my understanding, they're more likely to want revenge if their husband has been cheating on them, and if it's with another guy there's a sense of betrayal and shock that may amplify it, but the fact that their husband is gay is, generally, not enough to generate feelings of revenge. I also have a problem with people who don't take responsibility for their actions. If a guy cheats on a girl, and then breaks up with her because he prefers his new lover, doesn't she have a right to be upset? That shouldn't make her a b*tch. If she then finds someone new to comfort her while she's upset, that doesn't make her a whore, either. However, the topic at hand isn't whether the W&B phrase is realistic. The topic is why does it appear in so many stories, and is this a good thing? I have to agree that it's not good. It's being lazy. I have no problem with having a female character who is a b*tch and a whore... but I have a problem with a female character who became that because a male character came out. That's so unrealistic to me it's not funny. If this were about one story, I could accept that because these things do happen from time to time, but not a lot of stories because it doesn't happen that much. I have the same problem with fatal car accidents and light plane crashes, but that's another story

I wonder what those obstacles were, since DOMA and same-sex marriage are irrelevant to the story. Is it that the producers didn't think a gay-themed movie would be successful? I would've thought that Brokeback Mountain would prove them wrong. In some ways, at a high level it has a similar plot to The Front Runner, which is the first piece of gay fiction I ever read (sneaking into the book store from time to time to read another chapter -- I was very much in the closet at the time and couldn't afford to buy it and have it found).

I see this from a different perspective: stereotyping. The authors seem to be taking a simplistic stereotyping to the female characters and to the male characters reacting to the female characters. Realistically, not female becomes the jealous revenger seeker, and not every male views the females as "whores and b*tches". The W&B character is a stereotype, and the author is being lazy with sticking to that stereotype. The male characters who call the females W&B are also being stereotypes. Having said that, I have a couple of male characters in my current novel who (in a future chapter) call a female character a b*tch (not a W&B ), but that's as a one-off event and they supply the justification for that statement at the time. I find that to be realistic given the context, but it's not a core part of the plot and the male characters in question simply move on. Of course, I'm biased, because I'm the author...

'We did the best we could': Victorian firefighter leaves poignant note to home owner The volunteer firefighters do a magnificent job. It was five years ago that one of the devastating Black Saturday bushfires occurred in the same area, though that one started at Kilmore and swept down to the south east. Thank you also to the volunteer firefighters who came down from New South Wales to help.

A great start that really drags the reader in (at least it did with this reader ). Nice teasers for the coming events, too

I think calling the sport corrupt is too strong, though if there really is a backroom deal it's justified to call some of the people involved corrupt. However, this is a sport that has a strong subjective component, and that's where opinions can vary. The same applies with diving and gymnastics in the summer Olympics -- judges making a subjective call as to how well a competitor has performed. There are technical components to both of those sports, too, but they're not 100% objectively determined.

Thank you! More information will be revealed over time for not only Ty, but also the other characters.

Hi, Circle, The short answer to your questions is that it's the members here at GA who made the short lists. There was a nomination process that finished a couple of weeks ago, where all members were invited to nominate stories. The stories with the most nominations in each category are the ones on the short list above. This is why these are called the "Readers' Choice Awards". They are the choices of the readers here at GA. The nomination process was completely open and explained at the time. The voting in the nomination process and again here in the final selection for each category is kept secret, but that's not unusual. Graeme

I wish him all the best. I've read a recent article indicating that while officially the NFL has an anti-discrimination policy, the actual situation is the exact reverse (as indicated in the NY Times article where the scouts asked questions about if he had a girlfriend or was seen with women). I hope there's an NFL team out there that wants his skills and aren't homophobic.

That was going to be my guess, too. I worked with someone once who had the misfortune to be name Francis Spencer. He never shortened his first name to Frank....

Hmm... I think there's a major problem coming up. They're pushing this swap way too far and it's going to fall in a screaming heap soon. Josh is clearly enjoying his 'new life' and Jacob is willing to let him. But the longer they go, the more issues that will arise when they swap back. Phillip, in particular, will notice when Josh switches back because he won't know what Jacob has told him, like the thing about friends at the pool and that girl.... Looking forward to the next chapter!

He made a decision. Saturday night, after the game, he would go to the gay nightclub he’d found. It was a boutique club, but that’s what he needed. The larger nightclubs catered for a mixed gay/straight crowd, and that meant there was the chance that someone who knew him might be there. He knew that a couple of his teammates had previously visited one of the larger nightclubs in Prahran with their girlfriends, and being seen there only by himself wasn’t something he wanted to handle. It tore h

That sounds like Pertinax Carrus's Dermot and Dermot II stories. I read them last week It's a pity the author never continued the story past the sequel

When CJ returns, we can look at getting those images posted to the gallery and then getting the links in the story fixed up to display the images correctly Until then, however, we have to wait