Graeme

C James has always told me that there is no tradition of celebrating 4000 posts at GA. I've taken him at his word, and so this is NOT a congratulations on reaching 4000 Posts! but simply an appreciation of a person who has enriched my experiences at Gay Authors. Thanks, CJ!

If it's supposed to be a secret, why did you put it in your post? All I did was repeat what you're written....

Is that supposed to be gibberish? It reads fine to me: CJ's four-thousandth post Perfectly straightforward....

I travel to Brisbane (Queensland) every so often for work. The people there tell me that they can always spot the business people from Sydney or Melbourne -- they're the ones wearing suit jackets. Me? If I'm going to Brisbane, I'll wear a button up shirt and maybe a tie... I haven't worn a suit jacket for a couple of years now.

Happy 18th Birthday! :king: :king: :king: :king: :king: Have a great day and an even better year ahead, Jamie! As far as I'm concerned, your birthday started 7 hours ago, so Captain Rick is not a day early

Happy 18th Birthday! Have fun.

Do you have any idea how hard it was to find this thread again? It was buried on page 2 of the eFiction Discussion Forum. I also noticed that the vast majority of threads between the start and this one were started by C James, so it's all his fault.... I liked chapter 34. Not a lot of action, but there was still progress. What I was impressed by was the FBI -- even allowing for an admitted homophobic attitude, the FBI were coldly professional (as distinct to warmly professional, like Bob). What is not clear is the type of email used by Thaddeus. A reasonable number of email servers require a password to send emails as well as receive, which would remove the "reasonable doubt" defense. However, we have to assume that the one Thaddeus uses is not of that type. This means that anyone could, in theory, create an email and make it look like it comes from Thaddeus. Think of the fun we could have with that Thanks, CJ! I can see the story beginning to come to a close, and this is just the lull before the storm.... (category 5, of course).

I love baseball caps, too, but there is one problem with them. They don't protect the ears or the back of the neck (unless you're wearing them backwards) from the sun, and in Australia that usually means those areas get sunburnt. So, while I love them, I don't wear them very often anymore -- the big wide-brimmed hat gets pride of place....

Happy Birthday! Have fun! Enjoy yourself! Be happy

Happy 18th Birthday! Still a teenager, but now legally an adult, too! In Australia, you're also allowed to drink...

This was one of the most enjoyable anthologies I've been involved with. The sheer quantity and quality was amazing. I had fun writing the story, and even more fun reading the other stories. I'm now looking forward to the next one....

Happy Birthday, Jeff! Thanks for all your stories, and all the work you do on your website. I hope you have a wonderful day

I'd say the main thing I have trouble believing is opportunity. Yes, teenagers get opportunities to have sex, but it's rarely easy unless they are in a steady relationship, or in a state or environment that enhances the chances (eg. when drunk). In the later case, the sex is rarely romantic -- it's almost always selfish. The other one I have trouble with is where the parents or siblings are never around to interfere with the plans. Yes, this happens, and if it was only a few stories that had this, I wouldn't be bothered, but after reading story after story where these young teenagers seem to have no problems having a house to themselves for as long as they need... well, I just don't find it believable anymore.

Check out his first anthology story: No Shirt? No Problem! which does include sex wax. On the subject of jargon, I think CJ picked a good balance. You want to have enough to set the flavour and make the story/characters realistic, but not so much that the readers get lost. Most of the terms can be understood in context, even if all the nuances aren't appreciated. I've read stories than include quotes in foreign languages, but even though I didn't understand that language, it was clear from the context what was being said. This is the equivalent situation. What terms I may not have known, I grasped through the context. A short story can be a challenge when it comes to character development. If you go too far, you can detract from the story itself. I always like to know more about characters, but I certainly don't think that Drake's character has been short-changed.

Hear, hear! CJ was a delight to work with and I really enjoyed it. Thanks also to all the authors (apart from the pesky Australian), editors and beta-readers -- I enjoyed reading the stories and I was amazed by the quality. Keep up the good work and I look forward to the next anthology.

Happy Birthday! I hope you have a great day.

Do you think I care? You can tell that we're all waiting for the next chapter. This thread always deteriorates in the days before the next one is posted.

I'll start by saying that I'm not a surfer. I've never even been surfing (yes, I know -- almost sacrilege for an Australian). Even so, I found this surfing tale enthralling. There was enough jargon in it to drag me along, without so much that I would be dumped like a breaker. The description of the Green Room was awesome! The way the story ended had me going back to the start and reading again. The second time, I had an appreciation of detail that I didn't pick up on the first time. This is the mark of an excellent short story, and C James should be proud that he's achieved it. The detail and clues as to what was really going on were there from the start, but unnoticed (at least by me). Overall, the story rang very true for me. The attitude of the surfers matched those of the Aussie surfers I've known, and Cody's wish for how to end things was perfect. I'm glad he didn't get his wish, though

I saw the punchline coming, but that didn't stop it from being funny

45, but who's counting

Already taken care of. I can now state that I have given one story a negative review for the anthology. However, given Bondwriter's spoiler, I may need to make a change to my review of CJ's story. Bondwriter has raised something I hadn't considered when I did that original review.

Since others already know, and it's posted in one of the blogs, I can state with assurance that CJ isn't doing the comments -- I am CJ has already created the threads, and I'll be added my comments on each story around the time the anthology goes live. Keep an eye out for CJ's entry, though. It'll be worth your time...

I'm going for late afternoon, Monday 16th July, PDT. My logic is that (at the time of this post) he's only 56 posts away, and there are 22 stories in the anthology that's due out on the 15th. He can be expected to post a comment on most, if not all, of these, so there's over a third of the posts there. Given his normal posting rate, he should make up the rest of the posts required easily. The only reason I'm not guessing the 15th is because he says the weekends are his busy time for work, so he may not get around to all the anthology entries until the Monday. He can also be almost guaranteed to post at least three times (I'm being very conservative here) in the thread for his own story

I'm against the death penalty. Completely. The single biggest reason is that there have been cases where an executed prisoner has later found to be innocent.