Graeme

I don't know what happened, but after sacrificing a few virgins and assorted other arcane practises, I got your story so it's no longer green. Hopefully, everyone will be able to read it now

The door to the boys bedroom opened and a small head peered through the gap. “Easter today! Easter today!” Andrew proclaimed happily. I rolled over and looked at the clock. At least 7:30am was better that 4am, which is when Colin had snuck into our room to ask if it was time to check for Easter eggs. Janine had told him no, and told him to go back to bed. I pretended to be asleep – there had been no point in alerting Colin to the possibility that he might have a second chance at being given p

I can't think of a higher praise... thank you!

Thank you!

LOL -- thanks! As an aside, I can't write horror. I tried once, and it ended up being a romance short story instead (see Horror Movie to see what I mean)

“I’m sooooo excited!” Colin said from the back seat of the ute. Janine and I smiled. Colin had been looking forward to this night for several days. The school was having their annual drive-in movie fund-raiser. It was a movie we’d seen before – The Chronicles of Narnia – but that didn’t stop Colin and Andrew from being excited. “When are we going to get to the school?” Colin asked a few second later. “Colin, you go this way to school every day. How far do you think it is?” Janine asked, sound

Ray opened his eyes and felt an immediate wave of despair. Something had gone wrong. “Hi there, hun. Take your time.” Ray turned his head to see a portly middle-aged woman in an old-fashioned nurse’s outfit. On her it didn’t look incongruous, but it seemed out of place for the modern hospital room in which he lay. She smiled sadly and placed her left hand on his arm. “Do you want to talk to me about it?” Ray scrunched his eyes closed. It wasn’t to stop the tears but from knowing that he coul

Dave and Ray had a suicide pact, but things didn't go to plan and only one of them died. This is Ray's story.

I'm still the main one to carry our tent, though the rest of the family can cope if needed (as happened on one camp when I cracked a rib and couldn't lift anything heavy)

“I’m bored,” Andrew said. “What can we do?” “How about putting up the new tent?” Colin suggested. Both boys looked at me. I smiled. “Sure!” It was Friday afternoon and we had a long weekend coming up. We had tried to get a new tent for Christmas, but the shop had been out of stock and the tent didn’t arrive until the week before Australia Day. I had collected it earlier in the week, with the plan being to set it up for the long weekend. The boys had anticipated my plans. Our previous tent ha

Thank you! One of the primary drivers of the story when I originally wrote it was to explore how someone coming out affects those around them. There are a lot of stories about the one coming out, but I wanted to write about how it affects others, too.

It was, as normal with these things, a long time in the planning. “Is it going to be a boy or a girl?” Andrew asked. “A boy,” I replied. “What’s his name?” “Tom.” “Where’s he going to sleep?” Colin jumped in before I could answer. “He can live in the playroom.” “That’s really generous, Colin,” I said, ignoring the fact that the playroom was a complete mess with Lego pieces scattered everywhere, “but Mummy and I have already prepared somewhere for him.” That had been the job on the preced

Colin and I were off for a weekend away. He was particular excited because it was going to be the first time he had taken his new dirtbike anywhere. He had been asking for a motorcycle since he was four, and when he turned eight we bought him a cheap dirtbike. Janine and I didn’t see any point in spending a lot of money if he decided after a short time that he wasn’t really that interested. Initially, that had seemed like a wise move, because the bike hadn’t been ridden a lot over the first few

“What’s two plus three?” Colin asked. Andrew sat and counted on his fingers as he tried to work out the answer. He’d stopped eating anyway, so Janine and I didn’t mind too much that they were interrupting dinner. We also like to encourage educational activities and both boys were at an age where doing simple mathematics was useful. “Five!” Andrew said, beaming brightly. “Correct!” Colin said. “My turn now. What’s eight plus nine?” Andrew asked. Colin frowned as he thought hard. He looked do

It also sometimes makes an appearance in Halloween stories. There's an excellent example in one of Tragic Rabbit's short stories over at AwesomeDude, but since the necrophilia was the shock twist at the end of the story, I'm not going to say which one as that would ruin the story for anyone who hadn't read it.

“Have you ever been to the company unit in Korea, Trevor?” Karen asked. “Yes, I have,” Trevor replied. “That’s the one with the really fancy toilet, isn’t it? With the all controls?” “That’s right. And the heated toilet seat,” Karen said and sighed. The blissful way with which she said that made me wonder about the place they were talking about, and also wonder about their sanity. Of course, this was at the end of a week of work in Los Angeles, and we were on the way back to the airport so we

I’m not a competitive person, at least not normally. I’m not sure where Colin gets it from, but he always likes to be the winnest. “Daddy, how about a race to the end and back?” We’d been riding our bikes at the local high school on a Sunday afternoon, and I was thinking it was about time to finish. When Colin challenged me, we were in the carpark. I don’t know what it is that prompted my response, so I’ll just assume it was temporary insanity. “Sure, Colin.” “I’m going to win, because I’ve

Thank you! I'll admit that I feel a little guilty in not keeping them going, but I suppose the boys deserve a little privacy now that they're teenagers or about to become teenagers

The norm is what is typical. Normal is what is natural. Never confuse the two. Being right-handed is the norm. Being left-handed is not the norm, but it's still normal. Main-stream music is the norm (okay, that's probably by definition). Alternate music is not the norm, but it's still normal. The norm with fiction are adventure, drama and romance stories. Other types of stories are not the norm, but they're still normal. If you write a story that is not part of the norm, then don't expect it to be popular. It may be, but it probably won't be. That doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile story -- it's just not a commercially successful story

There is something intensely satisfying about an almost perfect kids birthday party. A perfect kids birthday party is like a perpetual motion machine, or a government that does things properly: an ideal that can be approached but never reached. Andrew’s fifth birthday came as close as can be expected, unless you decided to substitute the kids with pre-programmed robots. To start with, he only invited three people. As any parent will tell you, the anxiety levels increase exponentially as the nu

An author has to always look at who is the target audience. You're not going to get a lot of readers under the age of 10 if you write in an old English style, with smatterings of Latin and Russian without inline translations. If you're trying to write for that age group, you need to self-censor so the story fits the target audience. Please note that this is a generic comment that applies to all authors -- I'm not talking about erotica or gay-themed fiction. So we self censor all the time in our writing, and that's normal. More specifically for this discussion , GA has it's writing guidelines to fit with the audience that the site wants to attract. This means that the author needs to not only work out what target audience they want, but also what audience the hosting website (GA in this case) wants to attract. So to answer the question: Only if that's what you want to do. The driver is determined by why you're writing, and if you're writing to be popular, then you're going to have to do this to maximise your target audience size. If you're not writing to be popular, then you can write what you want, and you're only restricted by the guidelines of wherever your story will be published (or no restrictions at all if you don't care if the story isn't published but stays in your personal files for your own enjoyment). Now, if you want to be a popular author, you'll self-censor so your writing hits the largest possible target audience. If you're more interesting in just writing for the sake of writing, then the only constraint is what you want to write about and what the hosting website will allow. And, naturally, there's a whole range in-between.

It has become almost a family tradition that someone has to get sick while on holidays. It started the first time we took Colin to the Gold Coast in Queensland when he was only one-year-old, and he came down with croup. Since then both Andrew and Colin have had either asthma attacks or croup almost every holiday. Croup mainly affects the very young, Colin hadn’t had an asthma attack for a couple of years, and Andrew has been taking preventers for asthma, we were hopeful that this holiday would

(With apologies to Julie Andrews and all Sound of Music fans) TV antennas and connecting cables. Little small figurines on outside tables. Cuddly soft toys that can laugh and can sing. These are a few of our now broken things. Curtains ripped off from their hooks and their railing. Little small boats that used to go sailing. Windows that shatter when knocked by a chair. Things that just happen without thought and no care. When the tears start, When the boy hides, When he cries out ‘OW

No. Completely different people

The story doesn't say. It's possible Ross was positive before he and Carl became a couple. Certainly, ten years with HIV before developing full-blown AIDS isn't unusual any more. But it's clear from the story that Ross had been positive for at least tree years, because it was three years ago that Carl had let it slip to his boss that Ross was positive when they were at a company function.