Bondwriter

Quite right. I think the Steph pic Jack posted does share some features with his pics. What do others think?

Why feed the goat's obsession with numbers? I'm glad no one celebrated over CJ taking the undisputed (and quite undisputable) lead in posting frenzy. But, Brother Emoe, you're forgiven, the chapters have been delivered on time. The legions of readers waiting to see if the car has been fitted with a bomb that would be triggered by crossing the county line will be grateful.

When do we get an audio version of Seraph? (with 3D sound effects, a few actors/ actresses, music...) Just kidding, but you're an awesome reader and your voice... And yes, Seraph would be a great recorded novel.

"If you play with the Devil, your day will come to pay..." (Nikki Sixx, famous 80s philosopher in leather pants) Well, the general physionomy and the nice gaze. I thought CJ was being flattering. Actually, to be serious, I kind of picture Steph as you. The first person thing, not very surprisingly. BTW, I picture CJ's Chris as his avatar. Makes for weird pool parties. Then my lawyers will really be busy... I wouldn't dare. I just asked for a little tiny bit of her wisdom, poor foreigner that I am. Well, this is grown-up stuff; I think CJames sets the authorizations individually. A hefty lump of cash (a money transfer to the Cayman Islands) should solve the problem. Oh, and maybe a note from your parents.

Can't you shiver with fear? I only know tremble from an hymn sung at Easter, Where were you when they crucified my Lord, in which the meaning is obviously a shake/ quake from fear, but shiver didn't necessarily match a pleasurable thrill from what I knew.

Hey, CJ's Steph looks just like Jack, so how could he be the author (cute pic of Adrien, though in my own stereotypes he'd be more the rugged up type of guys I'd expect to meet in the Poconos)? By the way, CJames, I have no clue whatsoever how this old pic of me you used to represent Ben ended up on the Internet. I'll have my lawyers investigate.

The URL is this one. There was a slight spelling mistake.

Nice chapter, and yes, it does open with cappucino; we could not avoid seeing it. Why should it all go wrong? Everybody seems to be quite nice. I'd still like to see Jeremy have a lady he knows come up to the show unexpected. What about the retirment party of one of his school teachers, with all the school's female staff in the front row? I'm not sure he'd be the most embarrassed. By the way, both CJames and Nickolas James lost the bet on who Jeremy was going to go out with. *sniggers to infuriate the Jameses*

Now, we just have to wait for someone coming to say: "Well, why so much hatred? He who never has conspired to commit murder in the first degree, let him cast the first stone..." I wouldn't be surprised, but though Eric's defense lawyers have taken a pretty tough stance so far, I doubt they'll manage to save him once he faces the jury. They'll try, though.

You forgot possession of narcotics, possibly with intent to sell (but this has yet to be confirmed).

Well, well... I didn't imagine my ironical comment about the three blood-thirsty dictators would bring out a gathering of Eric fans. So now we have two distinct factions of pro and anti Eric. Interesting. Goats seem to lead the pro-Eric group. Is that this surprising?

What I meant is that he was much talked about, not necessarily present. Sure, he had quite a few scenes in the initial blackmail, and kept on lying about "having changed", "having learned from his errors", and all the BS that he may have given our heroes. And he did wish them a good day , and a good sun tan, as he left them staked out. Which is a feature of the villain leaving the hero in utter distress. And Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot weren't THAT bad, if you made a little effort getting to know them.

A vast majority of readers would say NO! I think three chapters of trial in which all his crimes are exposed and telling of his first few months in prison would bring the author lots of sympathy, and, to Eric too, since he's had very little "screen time" actually; the bad consequences of his nefarious actions have been more lengthily told in the story than his actions themselves. And his being in Piedmont, or running away, added to the first-person narrative, prevented the reader to see him under a favorable light. (Had there been a pool party at Sheriff Johnson's, and a web cam planted by Chris and Steve ...) Besides his free enterprise skills, that only have to do with crime and misdemeanor, what good can you actually say of him?

Yes, rule number one: Know Your Foe. And we know quite well one sleazy, vomit-inducing, stealing, blackmailing, conspiring, drugs dealing, murder-attempting sibling of one of the lead characters, that some keep defending despite the accumulated evidence against him.

This thread had flown under the radar for me. As I first read the title, I thought "well, another annoying celebration of quantity." Hence I was pleasantly surprised that quality was praised so much by posters. Then I reached Nick's postthat got me puzzled. After 13 seconds thinking, my conclusion is: "Build your own legend. Only you can."

He! He! I'll tell you the sites once the case is settled, I don't want to see the problem solved in three minutes by someone else who'll then be coming to rub my nose in my ignorance! I still see the small tripod site that has collected stories and poorly assembled them as rather pathetic, and since the story is already on three sites, two of them free and well-known, I don't feel as strongly as other people. I doubt anyone will ever buy the story anyway, I think I'd even have granted authorization to the site owner had I been asked. Update: 1/ Still no news of the original site (I'll check for other email addresses and get back to them today). 2/ I filled in a form at Lycos/ Tripod. Here's their reply: Dear bondwriter@walla.com, This is an automated message to advise you that a technician has responded to your question. You can view this response and track the progress of your inquiry online, or see the included reply below: Ticket Ref : 9405-UHLV-2350 Ticket Subject : Copyright infringement Reply: I am writing in response to your e-mail regarding content hosted through Lycos on one of our free homepage services, Tripod.com and Angelfire.com. You should understand that the content to which you have referred have has been stored on the Lycos system solely at the direction of a Lycos user and has not been initially reviewed, monitored, or edited by Lycos employees. Lycos users bear sole responsibility for such material, and Lycos, Inc. has no knowledge of the specific contents of member directories. Lycos, Inc. fully complies with all intellectual property laws. In particular, when the owner of an exclusive right is concerned that this right is infringed by material placed on a provider's system or network by a subscriber of that provider the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") provides certain procedures to ensure that infringing materials are removed without wrongfully injuring the ubscriber or unduly burdening the provider. In such instances, the owner of an exclusive right should send to the provider a notification containing the following information: 1. A physical signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. 2. Precise identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site. 3. Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material including exact URL's and references to specific files. 4. Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party (the copyright and/or intellectual property owner, not the alleged infringing party) may be contacted. 5. A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. The phrase "good faith belief" must be used. 6. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right is allegedly infringed. The phrase "under the penalty of perjury" must be used. If you are able to provide the missing information, please submit an appropriate notification meeting all of the above requirements to Lycos Inc.'s registered agent for receiving such notifications: Registered Copyright Agent Lycos, Inc. 100 5th Avenue Waltham, MA 02451 Facsimile: (781)-370-2990 Upon receipt of a proper notification, Lycos, Inc. will respond expeditiously to remove or disable access to the materials properly identified in the notification. Lycos, Inc. will provide a copy of the notification to the subscriber and give the subscriber an opportunity to respond. This letter is written without prejudice to any right, remedy, or defense that Lycos, Inc. may have which has not been asserted in this letter. All such rights, remedies, and defenses are expressly reserved. If you have any questions about this letter, please do not hesitate to contact Lycos, Inc's registered agent. For legal advice, you should consult an attorney. -- Lloyd D. Customer Service - Lycos This is exactly the kind of message that makes me happy in the morning. So, basically, they say I should send a letter asking to remove the file (if I understand the legal/ cover-your-ass mumbo-jumbo). It doesn't matter for them apparently that ALL the site is made of material borrowed/ stolen without asking. OR, this is (as is stated), the first automated reply, and real life people will actually look into the problem later on.

Not much to add to the above plea, that's exactly what I thought as I ended reading the chapter with this evil precipice suspender. There are lots of very intense emotions that are stirred with almost every chapter since 10. I think it was smart to focus the narrative on Aaron for this chapter. It makes the ending more mysterious, but then now we readers will want to have a little insight into Brian's mind. Adam is quite a protective brother. One thing that I don't buy: Darren telling Aaron over the phone "Aaron, I've been jerking off to fantasies of you ever since we met..." He's on the phone with this guy he's been fantasizing about, but he's a young teenager, I doubt the first thing he'll tell his crush is that he jerks off. "I've been thinking/ dreaming a lot about you" seems quite a confession already. One other thing: Darren's father calling Aaron: from my experience with American people, they are more outgoing than us, but would a parent get involved in a teenager's sentimental life like this (gay or not)? Apart from these points, it seems the writing flows better and better. So, yeah, please, Brian, make it, I'll keep my fingers crossed too.

A Happy Birthday (though the board doesn't say it is, but I'll trust CJames to have loads of inside info. )

OK, I took the advised course of action. It's now been two days since I emailed the site that had its stories plundered and posted with a lousy index, not all chapters, etc. 1/ I haven't heard from the webmaster/ administration. 2/ The said copy site is still up. Personally it doesn't make me utterly angry. If people like a chapter, there's my name and the title, and they may easily find a good version. I just don't see the point in duplicating (poorly) content that already exists. But well, people are weird. And BTW, Nexis leaving the site has nothing to do with this thread, but with feedback he got he deemed insulting. From what I understood, it's the whole "posting stories on the Internet" that he gets out of.

It's back up! We found a host that has been most helpful. We've been able to explain in detail what the site was about, and they seemed supportive and understanding. With real people, who reply directly, not robots.

Let this "the End" get written many decades ago, after you've managed to add many paragraphs full of success and happiness. Glad James offered for maths and calculus, I would be quite helpless.

Because you're bad with computers and haven't spent the last ten or fifteen years online. Because you don't feel too good for writing stories with homoerotic content. You will certainly not call your lawyer friend over such a matter. Because you've been writing on your own for years and would like to give a try having people read it, and take the first site you find because you act on impulse. (I'm guessing the first applies to Nexis, and maybe 2 and 3, which apply to me indeed; 3 was not GA in my case, but when I first posted a couple of years back, I knew nothing about copyrights and stuff, I just wanted readers) I've learned something today. Having noticed a few weeks back a lycos site that had parts of a story of mine along with others, all taken from the same site, I did email the site's administrators, and will see what happens. I did not get a reply within ten minutes, though. I might be biassed towards Nexis, but I didn't read a "nothing can be done" comment. Well the fact he deleted his post won't help to settle the matter, and so, so be it. I think that something really basic can be done also in the line of posting a message on a board that gathers people who are experienced with posting stories on the internet. I'm just sad the writer who impressed me the most over the last few months (and there are quite a few excellent authors here) didn't get the same nice sense of community I did, especially since I got him to come over. I'll still get to read his stories, in text format on Nifty. And advertise them in the Story Caf

I guess when you're new to the game it's not this easy to solve such a case. This is precisely why a forum like this is useful. Taking action, sure, but which one? I have stories on sites where it's almost impossible to get in touch with the paople who manage it. What I mean is that Nexis' question didn't need the (hopefully unintended) scornful tone in the replies.

Great chapter. (24 was quite good too, though it was a bit difficult to read with the mindless bullies...) Hopefully Brian will overcome his depression as he recovers from his operation. Who may have set a trend for nasty cliff-hangers? I'd like to know.

Though I don't really feel like rejoicing or mourning, I doubt the sincere sympathy from the "gay community" would deeply touch his family. Let us not argue over this bigot, that's what he would have loved!