Adam Phillips

Readers Who May Yet Stumble Across This Story, I get an email every now and then from new ISWB readers who want me to convey a message to John ("Brian"). I have to say with a great deal of sadness that I no longer can. I'm sure he and Chris are doing well. It's just that our communication back in the day was limited to Yahoo Messenger, which I no longer have, and Yahoo Mail, which I also no longer have. The last I heard from them, Chris was in college and doing well. I expect he's graduated by now. John had moved across the country and was working in a field in which he had knowledge and experience. We were great and deep online friends; it was never our karma, destiny, or, even, interest, in extending it beyond that. Maybe some day I'll stumble across John again and we'll get updated with each other. I know he reads these reviews and comments from time to time. Time will tell. In the meantime, if you haven't already, you may want to read my story Crosscurrents here at GayAuthors. Solivagant's (pretty on-target, I'm afraid) comments above re: the protagonist's (aka "my") less-than-stellar character notwithstanding, this is also an autobiographical coming-of-age story about young men whose affections don't fit the neat binaries that the culture tried for so long to pigeonhole us into. I'm in the Classic Authors section because I haven't written for GayAuthors in ages; I hope to change that this year, but I'm not making any promises! Thanks for following ISWB; I miss "Sam" dearly, and you're all correct; he was a saint of a man.

Echo, I'm glad you enjoyed the story. I'm in "Classic Author" status simply because I haven't had the time or life-space to do any more writing yet, so it didn't make sense to keep me in Signature Authors...but I have about 15 other stories rolling around in my head that I'd like to put out there some time, to say nothing of the 4 that are out there at different places on the Internet in partial stages of completion. So I hope do something before too long to accommodate your wish for more.

Fair enough, Briansboy. I appreciate that you liked what you did, and I understand why you disliked what (and who!) you did. Andy IS privileged, smug, entitled, and gloating. It's over-compensation to some degree, as his protracted doubts and agonies illustrate, but that's not an excuse. I can only plead that Andy was in the process of growing up in the narrative and that he's grown more still. And that even though he is all those negative things, he also loves deeply and is loyal to a fault. 😉 The ending ended the way it did because there aren't very many roadmaps for bisexual polyamory, or at least for how to do it within the context of trying to live what would otherwise be an unexceptional suburbanite life in a heteronormative culture. The epilogue concludes with Andy uncertain about everything except for the fact that somehow his trust and love for Matt would allow things to work out, though he didn't know anything of what that sort of "working out" would mean. Along with you, Andy himself was wrestling with finding unbelievable the frankly-unbelievable situation he was in. All I can assure you is that down the road the parties found their respective ways and that Andy and Matt are still good. I'm taking the time to reply to this because after a lengthy absence to live life, work, and be a family man, I'm kind of itching to do some more writing for Gay Authors! And I hadn't seen your comment until today, so I thought I'd reply. It gets kind of dicey for a guy to read somebody saying what a prick he is, lol, but if the shoe fits...in any case, thanks for your ongoing interest and warm words about Crosscurrents. It truly was a labor of love for me.

Thanks for the birthday greetings, guys!

Happy Birthday, James, and thanks for your ongoing presence here!

Thanks for the kind words about Crosscurrents...but it really wasn't my intent to leave the ending of the story inconclusive. I just didn't want to beat the reader over the head with it. Go back and read it another time. :-) As far as any other writing is concerned, check out the Interview Cia did with me for this month's Signature Author focus at http://www.gayauthors.org/forums/blog/258/entry-15595-author-interview-adam-phillips/ And thanks for reading!

There are books that are now among my favorites whose first two chapters I didn't like. Don't let that make the decision regarding how to write. Write the story for you, not in anticipation of what your audience might like. I guarantee that'll make your story stronger too.

Freakin' With Trust. Dammit. I want the rest of that story!!! Lol

Lots on on-point posts here. As a guy who took a decade to write and post a story, I feel grateful that I hung onto the readers I did. On the one hand, since (s)he's sharing free reading material, an author doesn't "owe" anybody timeliness, or even a story's completion. On the other, there is an at-least implied covenant between writer and reader. If the writer has, in effect, solicited the reading attention of a reading public by offering a story, I think there are some implicit promises made to said reading public. One of those promises is a conclusion to the story. Another is reasonable timeliness. With Crosscurrents, I would write and post. Write and post. Write and post. It wasn't a good decade for me to be trying to write regularly, though, and so it took as long as it took. These days I'll be producing a lot more, and a lot faster...but I've decided I'm not going to post a single paragraph until I've finished at least 80% of the story. Maybe 85%. My first experience with this sort of frustration as a reader came many years ago when I was reading a delightful and erotic novel at Nifty called Vermont Summer. I got to the end of the extant chapters, and then... Nothing. Ever again. That's a distinctive kind of disappointment, and the level of frustration a reader has in such a situation is directly proportional to the quality of the story. I won't do that to my readers yet another time. Thanks for staying with me as readers, all you who did.

Of course 10,000 Likes. It was inevitable. What's not to like?

Jeremy's a long-time nemesis/e-friend of mine, so take this reply with just a little tongue in cheek, all.-- I'm gonna have to bag on you just a little, Jeremy, as punishment for your posting of this. You know how sometimes you'd send me a review of a chapter of Crosscurrents two minutes after I'd posted it? And I'd complain, "If you're gonna speed-read my stuff, I don't want you as a reader."? Seriously, with all the work I did in each chapter and all I tried to put in each one, for you to digest it and render judgment in two minutes? And I'm supposed to take it seriously? Similarly, I gotta say, regarding that comment of mine to which you just responded, what part of "Someday I may go back and fix them, but I have other fish to fry and other stories to tell FIRST" were you not able to comprehend? The point of that section of the post was to acknowledge the validity of Tyler's criticism. That's all. The point was not to put everyone on notice that I won't be doing any more new writing while I immediately go into "perfect-it" mode on Crosscurrents. And to react to that one sentence as if that were, uh, actually what it said instead of what you made up from whole cloth in that little head of yours is to have misread and completely not-understood the post. Now that you've given it a second look, wouldn't you agree, Jeremy? Now the real lesson to be learned, the real cautionary tales--and something I might have taken more to heart in a post like yours--are that 1) Stephen King didn't improve the first book in his Dark Tower series (The Gunslinger) when he revised it. Quite the opposite; and 2) Likewise, George Lucas's new and improved take on Star Wars is arguably not an improvement, but a, uh, a de-provement. lol Those are points worth pondering. Not that I'm comparing myself those guys in their greatness. I'm comparing myself to those guys in their second-guessing-themselves-ness. Love you, buddy. ;-)

Yep, we still do the beach party on or around July 4 every year. It's always friends from high school and college and their significant others. These days, we alternate by years between kid-friendly and don't-bring-the-kids. And we have to rent additional condos. Who knew when we were 18 that we'd still be doing this 18 years down the road? I gotta say, they're a lot more fun these days than that first one was for me. :-)

Thank you, Tyler. And thanks for the review.

Again, thanks, guys, for the warm words about CC. Tyler has been an e-buddy of mine for a long, long time and was a huge supporter of CC in the early years. As time went on and I just wasn't finishing it, he fell away from the story--understandably--and he actually had to finish reading it to write the review! I didn't see the review before you did, but he did warn me ahead of time that he put a mild note of critique in it. I called him a bitch--well, because he is one--and told him "you know I'm good with whatever you bring." And actually--let's be real, here--he's on the money with that one critique. There are places where the writing takes Crosscurrents across the line that separates effective style from melodrama. There are places that are mannered and self-aware in ways that I'm not happy about. I wince when I read those passages. In my defense, much of CC was written when I'd just started writing narrative. I know now how to do those places better yet keep them just as powerful. Someday I may go back and fix them, but I have other fish to fry and other stories to tell first. But even having said all that, for the most part, I'm proud of the writing in CC and happy with it. I tried to put a little style to it, and for the most part I think I hit that "just right" spot between "not enough" and "too much."

I've had an oldie from way before my time in my head for the last several days, and I can't shake it. This loads kind of slowly, so be patient with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04QruaUQ50M