Adam Phillips

Okay, I couldn't leave it at that. Somebody might actually believe I mean it. I'm only through A Summer Love and haven't looked at your Bridgemont stuff yet. But I thought Be Rad and Man in Motion were both most enjoyable. It's always fun for the reader to have loveble characters that aren't subjected by the author to assisted suicide. It's also nice when scumbags who assist in a suicide themselves end up dying alone and in pain. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy. Even if the rest of the story hadn't been good, that alone would have been enough for a "thumbs up" review from me. :devil:

I think your stuff sucks. All of it. In more ways than I can possibly enumerate.

The thing that strikes me as intriguing is that apparently there are demographic pockets oddly distributed across the US characterized by different reactions. I guarantee this has already happened at high schools in the Dallas area, with male and with females. Already when I was in high school (I graduated in '98) the whole gay thing was not any particular big deal in my school. Not even among the group that's often reviled in story and song for being the most homophobic of all demographics...the jocks. And when I got to college there was even more acceptance of gay people by straight people. Which is not to say that I never ran into virulent homophobia in high school or college. I'm just saying that for the majority of my cohort at both places, it wasn't any big deal. And if that's true in freakin Dallas, surely it must be becoming more and more the norm everywhere. Then again, Dallas is not some small town in Mississippi.

Yeah, but this assumes that stories about someone with a fetish for a toe up the ass are by their very nature lo-quality. I maintain that in the right hands, any premise can be made into a story that's well-written and compelling. Perverse, maybe, but compelling. Yeah, there's lots of bad writing at Nifty. But there's also hi-quality non-smut that shows up like a needle in a haystack over there. Not many people have the patience to sift through it all to find that. And to be honest, I myself don't anymore. But that's not to say that I won't ever again. Sometimes it's fun to find the hidden gems. The fact that they're surrounded by so much garbage makes the finding all the more satisfying an experience.

I'd never admit to crying over a song. But if I were to admit, I'd have to admit that I'm a sucker for the poignant tune. Particularly if it resonates with my own experience. Here's a song that was first sung to me, accompanied by guitar, by someone important in my life, not that long ago actually. Since then, it's been one of my maudlin-romantic favorites.

Some day you oughta read my story Crosscurrents. At least when it gets to Chapter 15. That song has a special relevance. What a great tune.

I always liked this way of putting it:

What he said.

You're so damn predictable on this front. (Don't you think the emoticon is appropriate?) But Mark's right; the church as dating service/social circle is questionable unless you already have religious commitments that are compatible with the church's. I'd hate to see anybody whore out their convictions just to make friends.

Hey, Joe. Welcome. Hope to see you around the forum, and obviously you're always welcome to stop in at mine.

Thanks. And I promise I'll look at your work as soon as I'm out from under the backlog of Arbourtales I created for myself by getting behind. The guy just writes too dang fast.

Thanks, Jeremy...but all in good time. Don't encourage people to be seeking the story out at those sites where they can find more chapters! I'm sprucing up the story just a little in terms of the writing, and so the New Improved Version is going to be right here well before it shows up at them other places. Meanwhile, Chapter 3 New Improved Crosscurrents, Now With Color Brighteners, will be posted on Friday. And...uhh...sorry to have hijacked the theme. I'll shut up now.

Aww, shucks, ma'am... I guess paying Mark Arbour to say nice things about me gets the word around to at least a few people.

Hey, Mark. Looking forward to reading your stuff. I just got here in a writerly capacity myself, though I've been a member for considerably longer.

I have to have two. One because it's local and I gotta be loyal--The Texas Rangers. A second, because it's pointless to pull for the Rangers :wacko:...so I gotta go with the Red Sox.

You never can tell. I think a lot of readers do come to Nifty just to find something that...uhhh...relieves a little sexual tension for them. Nothin' wrong with that, but once they see a story--something intended to stay with them past that orgasm they're seeking -- that's not exactly what they're in need of at the moment, so they pass it by in favor of something that meets the needs of the moment. That being said, nothing I've ever posted at Nifty was only about that. I've always had some story happening. And eventually, somebody has always found it and gotten back to me. A lot of somebodies, actually. I have no idea how to account for what gets feedback and what doesn't. It's one of life's odd mysteries. Like the appendix and the inexplicable appeal of MacDonald's.

I'd like respectfully to disagree. I read widely in all kinds of genres, fiction and nonfiction, and while not everything I pick up has sexual content, I can't say that I find sex for its own sake, or even sexual narrative for its own sake, "just plain boring." I think this is one of those "I like broccoli/I hate broccoli" things. Oh, I'm definitely interested in what's happening past the bedroom. Or in front of the bedroom. Or before and after the bedroom. A steady and exclusive stream of bedroom scene after bedroom scene would get boring. But effective writers of erotica can still find ways to call the libido and the imagination to attention, sometimes explicitly, sometimes tantalizingly indirectly; sometimes within the context of a larger story, sometimes stand-alone just to rev your engine. Mainly I wanna see a writer do what his/her muse is tapping him/her on the shoulder to do, and I want to see it done well, whatever it is. Fortunately, we see a fair bit of that here at GA, and occasionally you'll bump into it at Nifty as well.

Oops. Meant to "Edit" and instead "replied."

There's well-written porn and there's bad porn. Like everything else. The purpose of porn is to bring a level of sexual excitement and arousal. I don't think that's ignoble in and of itself, and I don't think it's incompatible with good writing. Good writing encompasses a wide variety of types and purposes. I don't believe that a person can say beforehand what type of content is going to lead automatically to bad writing. It's all about the writer, his or her skill, and his or her creativity. There are some folks here at GA whose stories contain pornographic elements, and they're quite well written. I'm much more disdainful of literary and mechanical ineptitude and incompetence than I am the presence of pornographic content in narrative. But I do agree that if written porn puts you off, you should simply stop reading. Meanwhile, though, I'm not a guy to cast aspersions on either the tastes of readers who aren't put off by porn or the merits of writers who write porn. I want to say to those writers, "Show me what you got, be it porn or non-porn, then we'll talk."

I'll probably keep posting to Nifty. I didn't have any problems with removing stuff the one time I wanted it removed. And I don't hold the site in disdain. I think there's a place for it out here in the cyberverse. As for the you're-known-by-the-company-you-keep theory, it sounds good on paper, but I'm not sure I agree. Why? Because I've found some really good stuff there that's not posted anywhere else, and I certainly didn't look down on the writer just because he posted it at Nifty. But maybe I'm part of the undesirable company and, as such, don't have the necessary refinement to be offended by the site. I can't say I go there much to read, but it doesn't bother me to have my stuff there. And the porn thing doesn't really bother me either. Either the links or the presence of out-and-out stroke narrative. After all, some of my material is pretty explicit, and, I dunno, porn has never been something that gets me all outraged. The bad writing in such great supply there is more likely to do that...but then sometimes it's just as likely to make me crack up, and who doesn't need a good laugh once in a while? I think in the final analysis it's one of those your-mileage-may-vary things. Some people are fine with it, some aren't. If you're not, I'd say, don't do it. I'd prefer people not to judge people who do post stuff there, but I got no control over that. --Adam P

If you've read any of this blog, you'll maybe remember my sarcastic whine that I wasn't good enough to be a Hosted Author at Gay Authors. Well, whether that's the case or not, I now officially Are One. So head on over to http://www.gayauthor...g/adamphillips/ and check out my new place! Thanks a jillion, Steph, for designing my site for me and putting up with my pickiness. Thanks, CJ, for getting the gang to consider my stuff. Thanks, Myr, for fielding some questions and for letting me submit a book review! Thanks, Sharon, for all your Sharon-ness, your behind-the-scenes support, and even for the dark-musical welcome. You were supposed to let everybody figure out on their own that I'm a bad guy, but maybe forewarned is forearmed... And thanks to everybody who's read and supported the writing of Crosscurrents over the years. Including that story, I have a total of seven stories I'll be working on this year, and a number of them--the shorter ones--will find their way to my site fairly quickly while I post Crosscurrents. Speaking of which, you'll get a new chapter every Friday until the story is finished. It'll be either 33 or 34 chapters long. Anyway, just thought I'd blog about it. Also...Mark Arbour: I'm in love with you. We should meet in the parking lot and make out.

To be fair, I have to add to this discussion the following: A few years back I asked the archivist to pull a story of mine because of some personal stuff I had going on. And it wasn't any serious crisis-laden thing, but he pulled it for me anyway without a quibble. Several months later, I had a change of heart and I was really reluctant to ask him to re-post it, but I grabbed my package and did, and once again, I didn't get a word of complaint from him. He reposted it. So, while I agree that an author should have the right to call a story what he or she wants, I wanted to make sure I shared this experience in the discussion here in the interest of fairness. --Adam Phillips

You know what makes me laugh about this? It's the presence of all those totally-awful examples of writing all over Nifty. Stories written by people who seem not even to know the alphabet, much less anything about strong writing; and beyond that, the dreadful stories themselves... And he wants to quibble over a title? Hilarious. --Adam P

The administator at Nifty is widely known among writers of gay narrative for his quirkiness. He's going to do what he's going to do. You need to recognize this and balance out your desire to have your title exactly the way you want it against the advantage of having a huge pool of readers--probably more than Gayauthors gets. I post new chapters to Nifty last. New chapters go to my other host sites first. (We won't talk about the last time I posted a new chapter; that's another subject entirely). But I get more reader email from Nifty than I do from the other two sites that host my story. I'll continue to submit my stuff to Nifty. But I don't consider it my "primary" host. Actually Archerland was my primary host, and now that it's gone I've acquired a new one. Almost anybody can post to Nifty. That's why it's so easy to find dreck there. But you get a lot of readers there, and isn't that what we writers are all after? You can post it as you want it at a host site that lets you do it your way, and only you can decide whether telling the Nifty archivist to take a flying leap is justified in your mind. Personally, I like having that pool of readers. --Adam P

I screwed around a lot for about six years, from the time I was fourteen through about the time I was about 21. Mostly with women, although I had my fair share of men too. I'm 30 now and I've been binogamous since 21. I guess I got my wild oats sown early. I didn't do it because I felt a void, though. I did it because I was horny and because I could. I discovered as time went on that I wanted to focus. I guess that's the only way I can put it. I wanted to concentrate on being with a person, or a couple of persons, and going deeper and seeing what long-haul stuff felt like. I felt like I wanted that in my life. And I knew who I wanted it with. I think everybody's mileage varies. My "external life" is very conventional. My intimate life is somewhat unconventional in terms of arithmetic and gender, but not really all that unconventional. I like where I am and have no desire to do any more sexual exploring. My life is occupied with other things. Spouse, kid, job, hobbies, side-job, side-relationship. But I have no regrets, no guilt or shame over the period where I was boning everything that was young, looked pretty, moved, and belonged to homo sapiens (not much anyway...I did use a couple of women, and I regret that somewhat), and don't believe that people who are hooking up a lot are compensating for some kind of deep existential void. Personally, I think there's a Darwinian explanation for men's desires to spread the seed around. And if there is, it's off-base to try to dig for some deep "itch" in the soul to account for male promiscuity. I think we're wired for it. --Adam