Adam Phillips

Chapter Three, entitled "Growing," will be posted on Friday. It begins to nudge the plot and characterizations along. I have a little more to say about it at my Yahoo group, Adamstories. I'll be updating regularly at Adamstories and maybe providing a little additional commentary. I'd love to have you join. Just click on the "Yahoo group" link on my GA home page.

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.

LOL. Yeah, it'll be 22 weeks. During that time, I hope to pick up readers at GA who haven't read any of Crosscurrents yet. So if you point a few people toward my story, I'll give you ten percent of my profits on the story. But you won't have to wait to read other stuff of mine, hopefully. I'll be submitting a short story for the Summer Anthology. If it doesn't get selected, I'll post it at my site anyway.

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.

Well, weekly installments to the very end is going to be the fate of Crosscurrents here at GA. A new chapter will be posted every Friday. Let me encourage you to start over and read the chapters as I post them here instead of just waiting until Week 23 to start. That way your memory will be refreshed, and also, I'm tweaking the writing a tiny bit, and it would make me happy to have my Constant Readers read the New Improved Version.

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."

Well, some of them. And at least the ones who welcomed me. Assuming they don' t write as fast as you do.

Thanks for the welcome, all! I'm really glad to be here. I hope you'll all read my stuff. I promise all you GA authors that I'll read yours as well.

Rob, Thanks for your willingness to start the story again. I'll reward your faithfulness with a conclusion this calendar year! And also, there are some little literary improvements here and there if those things make a difference to you LOL. If you have other efriends who read online gay/bi stories I hope you'll point them toward Crosscurrents. I hope I can get most of my old readers back and I'd love to get some new ones. --Adam P.

As a matter of fact, I did chat with him on Yahoo Messenger the night before he died. I wish I'd known it would be the last time. He was such a great guy. As you can see from the second chapter, the bulk of the story is going to be told in flashback. The narration is actually an account of Andy's memories as he sits in the condo alone and walks the beach that spring break of his senior year in college. --Adam P

Amelia, I'm glad you found Crosscurrents after reading It Started With Brian. The two stories actually have a real-life relation to each other in an odd sort of way. If you've read It Started With Brian you probably know what that is. By the way, in case anybody else hasn't checked out Sam's story, my Links area has a link to it. Sam was a great e-friend of mine and I miss him more than words can say. I appreciate your willingness to make your way through the story one more time, and, yeah, this year you'll get to see how things turn out! --Adam P

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

It appears that you're as annoying here as you are at my other place.

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.

Thanks for the welcome. A new chapter of Crosscurrents will be released every Friday until all 34 chapters are posted. I have three other stories in the works; each of them has at least one chapter started. In addition to that, I have three additional story ideas that I'm anxious to start work on. It won't be too long in the grand scheme of things before you'll be able to find seven stories of mine either in progress or finished here at Gay Authors.

Thanks, Mark. I'm very very happy to be here. By the way, I'm catching up on all your Cramptonworld novels. I'm in Be Rad right now and I'm loving it. It's my favorite in the series up to this point.

I just thought I'd let everybody who wandered into here know that as of today, I'm officially being hosted by Gay Authors. Here are my pages: https://www.gayauthors.org/adamphillips/ And, of course, I have a linked forum space as well: https://www.gayauthors.org/forums/forum/125-adam-phillips-forum/ Thanks for your interest in my story. I'm excited about being at Gay Authors! --Adam P