Graeme

Correction -- fire season in Victoria doesn't start for another three and a bit months. Open flames are quite acceptable....

Lots of new people and lots of people who are interested in writing... Awesome! Welcome, everyone, and good luck with your stories!

I think this thread is getting off topic. There are several threads already that discuss religion and christianity in general. This thread is about helping those who want to go to a gay-friendly church, not telling them that they're deluded. I noticed that the list of churches in Australia is very sparse, but I suspect that that is more because there haven't been a lot of people contributing names.

If only it was that simple.... I know of at least one person who didn't realise they were gay until after they were married. Really. That was partially as a consequence of being sexually abused as young boy and having suppressed a lot of his sexuality as a consequence. In my case, I knew I preferred guys, but I also love my wife. Due to personal circumstances, I was emotionally vulnerable to anyone who showed me affection. I this fell in love with my wife -- and I still love her -- even though I knew I was gay. I tried to explain this to her before we got married, to the limit I was capable of doing so at that time, but she didn't understand, and I didn't realise she didn't understand. Another factor you have to consider is that the Internet has been a major force in helping people accept themselves, but that wasn't around when I was growing up, and even today not everyone has easy private access to the Internet. Without the Internet, I was essentially alone -- the only way I could try to find out anything about being gay was to out myself to someone, and I wasn't psychologically capable of doing that at that time in my life.

There is one class of gays that cruise because it's the safest option for them -- married men. When my wife was undergoing counselling (after I came out to her), her counsellor asked her to read a book: "She's my wife, he's just sex". I tracked it down and bought it for her (if you want a copy, it's cheapest to order it from the Australian publisher -- it's just over half way down the page). I started reading it too (as I did for the other books the counsellor suggested), but I couldn't finish it... because I could see how close I was to being one of the guys in that book. I don't know how many times, as a closeted married man, I was tempted to go to a cruise site. I knew of some -- I had tracked some down via the internet and the temptation got very strong at times. I certainly don't condemn the men who succumbed. The psychological pressure on a married gay man is one that has to be experienced to fully appreciate it. I can certainly understand the ones who go cruising.

I'll just say that CJ discussed his concerns above with me several weeks ago. I can confirm that he had plotted those items well before the last USA presidential election. As for his comments about Mr. Graeme... if CJ has trouble sitting down for the next few days, you can blame the fact that Graeme's can be prickly characters at times Just be glad he didn't name the undersecretary Donal Graeme, Ian Graeme or Kensie Graeme, or he would be in major trouble If you are wondering where those names come from, they're from one of my favourite SF series.

A belated Happy Birthday, Fran

I agree. Characters who are offensive are, generally, okay if it's done well, because people can see that that is that character. To do it properly, they should be balanced by other characters who are not offensive (at least not in the same way). If the story comes over as being designed to be offensive without reason, then that's a turn off (for me). I don't mind a story being offensive if it also makes me think -- where I can see that there is more to the story than just being offended.

I, for one, am also glad you've joined our community. And, as anthology coordinator, I'm looking forward to your next anthology entry (hint, hint) Australia is really nice, and there are lots of young guys here who would be very happy to show a cousin from the old country around (and educate you on the correct team to support during the Ashes series ) Thanks for being here, Johnathan, and I hope you'll be here for a long time to come!

Happy Birthday, Carl!

If you're using a Linux/Unix operating system, check the permissions on the file to make sure you have a "w" value set. eg. -rw-rw-rw. If it is -rw-r--r--, check that you own the file (because those permissions indicate that only the owner can write to the file) If it's Windows, right-click the file and select "Properties". Down the bottom of the dialogue box there will be a checkbox "Readonly". If that's ticked, then that's why you can't overwrite the file. If it is, uncheck it and you should be able to write to it. If this is a feature within Word, I'm going to have to leave it to someone else to help you. I haven't used Word for years. However, I did find an article about removing readonly and password-protection from a word document. Hopefully that will help you.

Is this something in Word, or is it at the operating system level? Have you checked if the file is read-only? I'm sure it probably isn't, but it's better to eliminate that as a possibility up front

I agree that originals are usually better than the covers, but there are numerous exceptions. I think it is also a matter of which one you are exposed to first. I can remember being surprised to find a song I liked was actually a cover. I heard the original and didn't like it because it was sufficiently different from the version I was used to that it grated. There was one cover I can think of that I think is sufficiently different to the original that you can't really compare them. It's the Beatle's Help!. The Beatles version was a fast tempo song, but there was a cover I heard that was a much slower tempo. The result was essentially a completely different feel to the song, not just a minor variation. I've just done some checking and Deep Purple appears to have done the first such a cover, but the one I remember is by the Australian John Farnham.

2nd person is rare and doesn't often come over "well". I'll just say that it should generally be avoided unless you really, really, really know what you're doing. There are a couple of variants of 3rd person that are worth mentioning. 3rd person limited is similar in nature to 1st person, in that you are essentially following a single person. You may get glimpses into their thoughts and motives, but for the other characters you have to guess at their thoughts and motives, based on their words and actions. A lot of published novels are written in this form (eg. the Harry Potter novels are largely 3rd person limited) though a lot of authors stretch it a times to give glimpses into the other characters. More importantly, it's possible to jump to the view point of another character when there is a change of scene or chapter, so a story can follow one character for a while, and then another, as the story requires. 3rd person omniscient is where the author can give access to the thoughts and motives of all the characters in a scene. This can be really useful and powerful, but the downside is that the author has to make a lot of decisions about what will and won't be revealed. 1st person is, to me, the easiest to write in, because the author just has to put themselves in the shoes of that character and write accordingly. Where it is weakest is where there is more than one main character, because 1st person only allows for one narrator. There's not a lot of difference between 1st person and 3rd person limited, so if more than one main character is required, I would suggest using 3rd person limited so when the viewpoint changes, the reader is immediately aware without requiring any gimmicks like "CHARACTER X" headings at the change of viewpoint. I saw a recommendation to use 1st person whenever you want to really restrict the flow of information to the readers (which is why it's popular in mysteries, though 3rd person limited is also often used), or when you have a story that's psychologically based (that's why I used it in my recent The Price of Friendship novel, because I wanted the readers to really understand what Rick was going through, and why he was acting as he was). Comicality's A Whole Other You is a great example of this -- we see, from the point of view of a straight guy, what it's like to learn that his brother is gay. In my opinion, when there is a single main character, and the readers only need to know what that character knows, 1st person is a very good choice. Otherwise, I would go for 3rd person. A good 3rd person limited story reads pretty much as if it was 1st person -- we really empathise with the character who we're following. 3rd person is also good for those wide-sweeping stories that have lots of characters, or where this is a lot of action taking place and it's not feasible to have one character experience all of that action. From a writer's point of view, the biggest problem I have with 3rd person is simply deciding what to include and what to leave out. Because I have the option to include scenes that occur anywhere in the world (literally), I have to pick and choose what to include and what to leave out. Sometimes working that out can be a real struggle.

It's your story, Mark, but why do any of them need to die? The events of 9/11 impacted us around the world without any us personally dying. To put it into context, around 0.001% of the USA population were killed in those attacks (if I've got my mathematics right). Have them affected, but do you really need one of them to be killed? Just my opinion

Great news! Thanks for the update, viv!

Welcome, Kalen! Good luck with the writing You may want to PM JSmith and ask to be added to the Author's group. That will give you more access to some of the sections of the forums for helping writers. Also, putting my Anthology Coordinator's hat on for a moment the next GA short story anthology is coming up next month. The theme is "Something Unexpected" is you'd like to put in a story. You can find the submission details here. The anthologies are open to everyone, so don't be shy! Graeme

Gentle lips a glow Flying fire surrounds our love As we near our end

Happy Birthday, Mike!

Speaking purely as an individual, and not a moderator, I think most people self-moderate on this topic. That thread that Old Bob refers to is a good example of that -- a member wasn't sure, asked a few questions, and then made the decision not to post the story here. No one told them what to do -- it was their choice after they considered the various options. What is pornography? There's no clear-cut definition. As Mark said in that thread, the line between erotica and pornography is subjective, not objective. There will always be borderline situations and different people will have different opinions on the subject. What I write is a long way from erotica, let alone pornography, so I'm not a good person to try to give opinions on the subject, but that's never stopped me before I see pornography having the generation of a sexual release in its audience as its main purpose. Erotica has as one of its purposes that of telling a story. It can include explicit sexual activity, but that is not the primary purpose (though it is typically a significant part). How much 'story' needs to be there to change something from pornography to erotica is, as has been said before, subjective.

Happy Birthday, Frank! :music: :music: I hope you have a great day!

It's the sum of the reputation of all of your posts. You'll notice a little green + sign and a red - sign at the bottom of the post. If you click on the + sign, it increases the reputation/recommendation of that post by one. Clicking on the - reduces the reputation/recommendation of that post by one. You're allowed a restricted number of 'votes' per day (and, yes, you're allowed to vote on your own posts ). In other words, it doesn't really mean much. Just another thing for people to play with until they get bored

I didn't think you could download a legal copy -- you have to buy one. I've just upgraded to OpenOffice 3.1.0 and that's what I use for communicating with my beta-readers and editors, AND also for doing beta reading when required. As long as I don't get .docx files, I can read word files. I had a problem with embedded textured backgrounds when I was using version 2, but I haven't checked that with version 3, yet. Not everyone likes OpenOffice, so if you really want to get MS Office 2007, I think you'll need to go out and buy one. Sorry.

:music: Happy Birthday! :music:

Happy Birthday!