Graeme

Thank you!

“Welcome back, listeners. It’s time for Joe’s favourite part of the show: our Friday-morning, AFL- match preview. Helping us out in the studio, we have Paul Crowman and Jim Henderson from the Lilydale Leopards Football Club. Welcome, guys.” Michelle smiled at the two guys sitting opposite her and co-host Maria at the Pride FM radio station. “We’re at the pointy end of the season with the preliminary final between Sydney and North Melbourne tonight and Hawthorn verses Port Adelaide tomorrow. The

Happy Birthday, Adam! :music: :music: I hope your family spoils you rotten

Happy Birthday, Jo Ann! :music: :music: I hope everything is going well for you.

Happy Birthday, Bill! :music: :music:

Happy Birthday, Cia! :wizard: :joe: :joe:

Thank you! Neil might be being a little too aggressive in pushing his mother, but I agree that he's certainly justified in not letting her hide from the truth.

Thank you! An interesting question about Liam is still friends with the other guys at school. My response would be that for him to ditch them because they don't appreciate Neil is the flip-side of them ditching Liam because of his boyfriend. If it's wrong for them to ditch Liam because of who he dates, it'll be wrong for Liam to ditch them before of their opinion of who he dates. No friend is perfect. They all have flaws and annoying behaviour. Liam seems to find enough enjoyment with his friends that he's willing to overlook their disparaging of Neil. If the bad ever outweighed the good, he'd move on...but he's planning on moving on at the end of the year, anyway. Maybe he's sticking with them because he's got a long history of friendship with them and he realises he only has a few more months to enjoy their company?

Thank you! Yes, there's the potential for a lot of good to come out of that discussion...if, as ColumbusGuy has pointed out, Mary doesn't try to avoid the issue.

Thank you! Unfortunately, avoiding problems and issues rather than trying to resolve them is a very human trait. If a person can pretend that there's not a problem or that it will resolve itself, they often do nothing about it themselves.

Wow...what am I supposed to say to that? Phil asked Clarissa, Doug, and Liam to keep it quiet that he's lost his job. They apparently haven't told anyone, especially, Neil, but it's possible that some of the Leopards have worked it out. The fact that Phil was home when Tony went to visit isn't necessarily indicating anything -- he could have been taking a day off. Australia has pretty generous annual leave: the standard is four weeks per year for a full-time employee, and that's in addition to sick/carer's leave. Certain industries also have rostered days off, though that's usually applicable to larger companies/industries such as construction.

Dr. Andrew Bardley, the local general practitioner who donated his time to the Lilydale Leopards football club, looked up at Ty. “How does that feel?” Ty grimaced. “No change.” “Okay.” The doctor started to prepare another injection. “We have to get the painkiller into just the right spot. It may take us a few tries to get it to work.” Ty tensed as the second needle was inserted into his knee but then smiled as a sense of numbness removed the pain. “That’s it.” “Excellent!” Dr. Bardley smile

Welcome, Andy! I hope you enjoy it here

Thank you! That was one of the very first short stories I wrote (I think it was the third). There's a certain innocence at that age that has to be respected and admired. We lose that all too quickly...

A strong start to the story. Pain, misery, despair...and then maybe a glimpse of hope. Is this going to be a story of hope and redemption, or is this going to be a story of how someone is led to the permanent solution to a temporary problem? We're going to have to wait and see...

Well...all the lists of 'longest' novel I've seen exclude self-published/Internet novels. So in comparison to published novels, Circumnavigation fits between numbers one and two. But that's not comparing it to other Internet novels. I don't know how it fares there, especially when you have stories that may be broken into multiple 'books' but the author may consider to be one story in multiple parts. Examples include Mark Arbour's CAPS series, Bill W's Castaway Hotel series, Comicality's GFD and The Secret Life of Billy Chase, and elsewhere on the Internet, the still incomplete The Scrolls of Icaria by Jamie.

Thank you! I think it's important to describe the games from different perspectives to keep that part of the story 'fresh'. If I did them all as mainly narration (a big temptation) I suspect there would be a number of readers that would start to skip over them as 'more of the same'. As for Brandon and Isaac, don't forget Isaac's comment to Clarissa about Ty: they've never stopped looking. The part that is really messing things up for the brat, though, is the fact that every time an AFL club tries to contact him using the phone number they have (from his draft nomination form), they get his father....

I'm going to differ and select Let The Music Play as my favourite. While I thoroughly enjoyed Circumnavigation, I've always found Brandon's struggles to survive and then prosper more touching.

Thanks, Maarten! There was no way that Ty wasn't going to listen to the match. They don't have the TV set up in that hospital room yet so he couldn't watch it live, but he could still follow it on the radio.

Thank you! Yes, there's a big build-up for the finals. One more game to go and then the season is over. After that, there's two months until the national draft at the end of November.

Thank you! There's so much that I'm not sure what I can say.... Different players have different ways to deal with stress. As Peter identified, Ty's was with humour in an almost manic way. But now that Ty is aware of what he was doing, he'll be able to keep that under control. Hopefully...

Thank you! If you've found some AFL games on cable, they'll probably be for the current season. Unfortunately, my beloved Geelong team isn't doing too well...but I'm still hopeful

The game scenes are always challenging, so thank you for telling me that they're working As for the alleged cliff-hanger, there's not much I can do about that. The timetable for the finals is set by AFL Victoria, not by me. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it...

The cheers started in the grandstand and quickly spread through the assembled Leopard supporters. By the time the players interrupted their Friday-night training session to join in, Ty’s face was very red. He had been doing an upper-body workout in the gym, under the supervision of Jackie, when he decided he needed to do some more walking to loosen up his knee. Jackie had initially thought he meant on a treadmill, but Ty wanted to go outside so he could feel like he was part of the team as they

Another Melbournite! We Aussies are slowly taking over the world...one website at a time Welcome and I look forward to seeing your writing. As you may imagine, most of my stories have an 'Aussie' flavour, too. I'm currently posting a story set in the world of Aussie Rules football, which is something distinctly Australian....