Adam Phillips

Don't be talking seductive like that unless you're intending to bring it. I do have a daddy thing.

They support his findings in the sense that they acknowledge that sexuality is not a binary, or even "trinary," ;-) thing. But rather than characterize that subsequent work as "supporting" or "confirming," I'd be more likely to characterize subsequent researchers' work as "buidling upon" Kinsey's. Some of their work takes issue with some of the implications of the Kinsey scale, for example. But not in the way of denying his basic insight that there's complexity to sexual orientation. The other thing worth bringing up is that Kinsey's scale was a distillation of reports of sexual behavior and not of sexual feelings, wasn't it?

Hmm. I gotta say, I never expected to have my s**t transformed into short-term memes and postered and real-or-fake Tweeted, but as long as it's all out there like that, I'll say some things. None of this is necessarily a direct response to anything said here about either Tom D or Crosscurrents. It's more a set of general thoughts and feelings about having my name taken in vain in the context of a discussion about a public figure lol. Here's what I think. There are some things we can say about sexuality with some definitiveness...but not as many things as people think. That's all I'm willing to say I know for sure anymore, and it strikes me that the people who speak the loudest and most vociferously about what certainly is and isn't, what's possible and what's not, are people who often appear to have vested interests, and who are "quite sure" about things that nobody is quite sure about. Not pointing fingers; just saying. Crosscurrents was never shared with the reading public as an autobiography. My intent in sharing the story with a large audience--when I finally got around to it--was to entertain. And maybe, in a sense, to reach out through the story to guys who might be wired like me. I'd never met anybody quite like me in terms of wiring, and the email I got in response to Crosscurrents helped me come to understand that I'm not quite the oddball, sexually, that I thought I might be. Apart from any autobiographical dimension, the basic plot elements of the story elicited email responses from sooooo many guys who'd been-there-done-that, it was gratifying to me. Inevitably the question came up about whether or not it's a real-life story. When I posted CC I didn't begin--or end--by saying, "This is a true story." But when people asked, I owned up to the fact that it was essentially autobiographical. I didn't see the point in not owning up to it. There's a smaller group of readers and e-friends who know a great deal about my life now, because we share a lot of stuff...much more than just stuff about sexuality...in a social-media-kind of forum. But as for the story itself, it's not thrown down as a "true story." It's thrown down as a piece of narrative writing that I hope will entertain and touch. Crosscurrents also makes no claims about anybody's sexuality beyond "things are more complex than they seem at first glance." It's not a story about sexual orientation. It's a story about love. I notice that Dan Kincaid's It Started With Brian also came up in this thread. I think if there's anything that can be taken from that story, it's the same thing. I'm efriends with the "Brian" of that story. We've talked a lot. Compared notes. We each, at a point in our lives, were on sports teams where a surprising number of guys fooled around sexually with each other. In that respect, whether or not the theme/meme of gay guys getting straight guys is a gay jerkoff fantasy, CC and ISWB incorporated real experiences Brian, Dan, and I had all had on that front. Dan didn't report all of Brian's stuff with guys because it wasn't relevant to his story. I've only become aware of those in my subsequent friendship with Brian, but they are mentioned at least in passing here and there in ISWB. I have no clue as to what my experiences, or Brian's, or Dan's, say about sexual orientation in general, or, more specifically, about numbers, percentages, or tendencies. And I'm not impressed by people's declarations that "everybody knows that in real life..." etc., etc. I know what I've experienced, and I don't care to defend it with explanations or believe-me-on-this-one defenses. That's not why I wrote CC, and in retrospect, I regret saying anything in public about its autobiographical nature. At the time, it seemed like something I ought to do once I was asked. But the question of "whether such a thing can actually be the case" has taken on a life of its own in a way that gives me a headache and puts me in the position--at least implicitly--of trying to defend my life and life experiences to guys out there who'd assure me--based on...what???? Their own experiences, which somehow negate mine???--that what happened to me never happened. During my student years, my experiences helped me, because they helped me see that whatever kind of freak I was, sexually, I wasn't in some complete other solar system from the rest of the population. I learned that there were other guys who could, and would, under certain circumstances, "go there." For people whose sexuality is somewhat diffuse, self-understanding is difficult. You know you're not gay; your dick's response to women informs you of that. But what are you? And what does it mean for how you live and love? Crosscurrents is a story of a guy's attempt to live out a satisfactory answer to those questions. It's not a thesis on sexual orientation. I never concluded from my dalliances with straight guys that everybody was like me. Quite the contrary, and I don't think the narrative of CC suggests that everybody is bi. It's merely a narrative reflection of the fact that when I saw that some straight guys would go there under certain circumstances, that helped me in my quest for self-understanding during my late teens and early twenties. The original core that served as the starting point for CC was intended for only one set of eyes and was a response to a specific question I'd been asked privately. But in that response I noticed that it scratched an itch in me. So it began to morph into a "book," and shortly thereafter--during the first five chapters of Crosscurrents--I began to see it as a vehicle for saying some things to "Matt"--and Matt alone--that I hadn't ever said to him quite so nakedly and directly. It wasn't long into that idea, though, before I got it into my head to let other people read it. The overwhelmingly positive response I got to it--especially from guys who've told me their own agonized--or once in a great while, joyful--versions of the same story kept me going. Well, sort of, because it took ten years. You're welcome to believe what you want about it. Anything I've said in public about it being autogiography has been in response to questions about whether or not it's based on real life. Is it 100% autobiography? Of course not. That being said, regarding the question of whether straight guys will do gay sex, I've had sex--I'm counting oral as "sex" too--with a surprising number of "straight" teammates. A couple more, actually, than Andy encounters in Crosscurrents. I didn't include them all because I thought the reader, uhh, got the point, and Andy was already enough of a slut in the narrative as things were. It never occurred to me that people would consider the number of straight encounters I'd had not-believable. I had them, so it never occurred to me to second-guess it in the writing, except to ratchet it back some, for the aforementioned reasons. So yeah...I'm not impressed by claims that Andy's "sample group" includes too large a number of straight guys to be real. Of course, I've also been rebuffed by an unsurprising number of straight guys. In other words, a lot. More than the number who'd said yes. "Why so many attempts, slut-boy?", you may ask. Well, see, after I'd had some initial successes, I was in a mode of saying "nothing ventured, nothing gained," so I made some advances I wouldn't recommend that gay or bi guys generally make. The worst I ever got was a putdown, never a fist to my mouth. Somebody else's mileage might vary tragically. I don't generally give off vibes that you can do violence to me without violent consequence. I'm sure that didn't hurt. And also, I never hit on anybody I didn't know. That may have also helped. Regardless of all that, though, in none of my narrative about all that do I intend to make any claims about men's sexual fluidity or nonfluidity or anything else. Shit happened to me; what it all means I leave to the experts. It just irritates me when people say "that shit can't happen." Tell that to Brian. Tell that to the many people who've written me telling me about their wonderful--or excruciatingly painful--experiences with the same thing. At this point in my life, I refuse to draw any conclusions about people's sexual wiring. I certainly don't think we're all fluid. I've kept track of many of the guys I hooked up with over the years, and almost all of them are married, or married-and-divorced, or married-and-divorced-and-remarried, and most of them have kids, and I know they don't go fucking around with guys. I don't think trying-it-a-couple-of-times in college reveals anybody as bi, or reveals that "we're all bi." I seriously doubt that many of the guys I fooled around with back in the day gave their sexual dalliances with me more than a brief play. Most of them were one-off kinds of things. A couple were more significant. I don't know if any of them ever got with any other guys after college days. I kind of doubt it. I learned something about myself sexually during college. They may have learned something about themselves too...but I doubt that they learned they were all "sexually fluid." What does any of that have to do with Tom Daley, you may ask? Nothing, maybe. And lots. He's seeing a guy. An older guy. Anything beyond that is conjecture. Maybe he doesn't even know quite how he's wired. Why would any of us presume to know more about him than he knows about himself? Yeah, we're at a watershed place in the culture, a place where gay and lesbian, and, I guess, bisexual people can help move acceptance of gay sexuality along by being open about their sexuality. But if you ask me, nobody owes the culture at large a particular way of doing their sexuality, or thinking about their sexuality, or a particular degree of public visibility about their sexuality. And nobody's talk about their own sexuality tells us anything more about them except what the words themselves suggest. Whether Tom's into daddies, and whether he's into daddies if he is because he has father issues or not, whether he's straight, whether he's gay...all that's ultimately known are the public facts. All the rest is inference and conjecture, and not unoccasionally, borderline slander. Cheap talk, in other words, and in my opinion it's about as tiresome as the question of whether straight guys ever hook up with gay guys. I celebrate Tom's having found someone he loves, but I don't really know the guy, and I have no idea what it means about his life or anybody's. And on the question of whether guys who like guys also like girls, I'd think the answer is obvious: "sometimes." And on the question of whether guys who like guys ever hook up with guys who like girls, I'd think the answer is also obvious: "Sometimes." Probably not usually, in either case. Does it matter? Yeah, I guess it does. Does it mean that everyone who has a definite, conclusive opinion on the matter is right? Rarely. I've seen that firsthand. What counts in the final analysis for me is how a person handles his/her sexuality, including everything he/she says and does about it, in the larger context of his/her life. What counts for me in the final analysis is the integrity he/she brings to that larger context. At the end of the day, at least in my book, what counts for any of us is whether--and how well--we've loved and cared for our loved ones and for the larger human community. I prefer to leave the gossip and the speculation and the judgment-casting and the definitives about "what is and what isn't" regarding people's wiring to those who seem to need that sort of thing. All that being said, if this post has inspired you to check out Crosscurrents, I sure as hell wouldn't mind! There are aspects of the writing that make me wince a little--I've become a better writer over the years, and I may at some point clean up the things that really bother me in the story, from a writing standpoint--but generally speaking, I'm happy with how it turned out. Sorry to have intruded here. This thread wasn't about me. But c'mon, when people start throwing your stuff around in these crazy ways, you gotta step up and say something!

Yep. "Kind of." So much to say here, and yet I won't. :-P

Sell it to yourself any way you can; it's a sad thing when the testosterone wanes and your balls shrink. Anyway, congratulations on your achievements here. There's lots to be proud of.

I stared off into forever. The night was black. A full moon shone down upon the water. The tide called to me with its hypnotic, incessant song, as I watched it kiss the shore and fall back, over and over and over. "More Than Words" repeated itself endlessly on my boom box. Beth's boom box, actually. My sister's portable player was the only one I ever brought to this place. I thought about that first time and smiled. The fire I'd lit flickered in my peripheral vision, and if I'd had compa

I stared at Jared Cannon's ass while the water was cascading down his back, and my dick responded appreciatively. It was a new school year, the final one of my undergrad studies. Ryan Cannon's kid brother was a soccer player too, and now he was his brother's teammate and mine, a freshman, one of the New Guys on the team. We'd been the last two men off the field after practice, and the last--and only--two in the shower together. I'd taken the opportunity to gawk because he was rinsing his sha

I may very well be the most procrastinatin' slowpoke story-nonfinisher of a Hosted Author at this whole place. And I know I've driven a bunch of you crazy with my slow pace. Heck, I've probably driven some of you away with my slow pace. But I'm here to say that the conclusion to Crosscurrents will be posted some time tomorrow. You have no idea what a relief this is to me. Talk about your albatross. On the one hand, anyway. (See below.) Many if not most of you know that I've had the final chapter and epilogue of Crosscurrents written for months. But I didn't like what I had. I couldn't put my finger on what I didn't like; I just didn't like what I had. So I started all over on those last two segments, not even consulting the previous versions. Trying not to even think about them. And whaddya know? I got it told the way I want to tell it. Not saying it's a masterpiece. I'm just saying I'm good with letting the final chapter and epilogue stand as I've written them. They do what I want them to do. What I couldn't get the previous attempts to do. The epilogue in particular pleases me, because even in its conceptual stages--and all the way through the writing of the first version of it--I didn't like it. And that's bad. An epilogue has to be the capstone of the whole damn novel, right? And it just wasn't. It was going to piss off readers. It was going to leave them going, "Huh?" And going, "WTF?" And going, "Well, that sucks. Ten years I waited for that?" I may still get some of that. But at least when people say it, I won't agree. The story's going to end as it needs to. And I think as I've written it, it'll please many people who were not going to be pleased with the original epilogue. I've said that the conclusion to CC will be "inconclusive." It's still going to be inconclusive. It's still going to want a sequel, and it's still going to get a sequel. But it's the kind "inconclusive" that will allow the Faithful Reader to close the book--so to speak--satisfied. I've also told readers for years who were demanding surcease from Matt's drama and pain and a happy ending for him (they don't give a rip about Andy, and that's as it should be) that the ending wouldn't make them want to slit their wrists. That was the best I could do for them. I couldn't promise a happily-ever-after ending, because that's not how Crosscurrents ever imagined itself closing out. And anybody who took the Prologue seriously should never have even bothered to ask for a giddy-happy ending. The Prologue simply won't allow it. The Prologue, and the reality behind it, made that impossible. But. But, but, but. Everything lies in the freakin' delivery of the inconclusiveness. Not comparing myself to Margaret Mitchell or David O. Selznick, but that final scene in Gone With The Wind hasn't left decades of viewers grumbling about the ending. And it feels like the end of a movie. And It's damn inconclusive. And that's just fine. Day before yesterday it fell from the sky into my head how I needed to write the epilogue. After ten years of telling myself "I'll think about that tomorrow," and then refusing to think about it because I didn't know how to freakin' close the thing out in any way that was going to be remotely satisfying...it just came to me. And the weird thing is, it's not all that different from my previous thoughts and plans and attempts, all of which disgusted me. That tiny bit of difference, it turns out, makes all the difference in the world. Now that I've oversold and overhyped, you're going to read the Epilogue and go, "What's so great about that?" And the answer is, "Nothing." In the same way, when I first tasted my first cup of coffee made from the Geisha varietal--specifically the Hacienda la Esmeralda from Panama--It had been so overhyped, I went..."Well, yeah, it's very good, but...but...it's not the Second Coming. It's not God in a Cup." So in the same way, when you actually get to read the epilogue, you're likely to be underwhelmed because of my blather. I'm just warning you. What I'm saying is not that in writing the second version of the epilogue I became Steinbeck redivivus. I'm just saying that for years and years I couldn't get it like I wanted. For ten years, I couldn't even envision it like I wanted. And now it's come to me. Now it feels like the end of a book. Now it won't send readers screaming at me for an immediate sequel because Volume One was so unsatisfying. And that's good, because I'm not going to get to that sequel for a few books. Andy and Matt need a rest. Couple of other things. 1) I'm gonna have to bypass my three proofreaders this time. I want it posted as quickly as I can get it posted. That means I don't have time to run it by my three proofreaders. Sorry, proofreaders. Wish you were here, lol. But I'm not sending you stuff and then pressuring you to get the damn thing turned around in five hours. 2) The chances are good that I'm not going to make my self-imposed Sunday-right-before-midnight deadline. These last two segments need the vernix scraped off in the worst kind of way--they're not bathed and pretty-smelling and swaddled in a receiving blanket yet; they're straight from the matrix--and Sunday evening is family time. And that's sacrosanct. It's not impossible that I'll meet my deadline. But I'm more likely to get them posted Monday. Maybe Monday at 2 AM. Maybe Monday at 10 PM. But not later than Monday. I feel kinda weird. Talk about your long, strange trip. I'm not sure I'm ready to say goodbye to Crosscurrents. As I've more and more lately been willing to admit, CC is essentially autobiographical. In spite of the bi-jockboys-fall-in-love cliche. In spite of the people who say "No way bi guys ever get with all those straight guys like that." Look, how the hell was I to know I was a walking stereotype? I prefer to think of myself as exemplifying an archetype. But, you know, I don't care if you think my story is autobiographical, or if you think in real life I'm an obese woman living in a double-wide with two ducks. The story's the thing, and anyway, I've been pretty reticent about passing this thing off as anything but fiction until the last couple of years. But I digress. What I was gonna say is that Crosscurrents has been a part of my life since 2003. And now I'm bidding it farewell. I'm ambivalent about that. I'm not sure I like it. Still, 2013 is apparently my Year To Say Goodbye on a number of fronts. It sucks...but this goodbye, at least, doesn't suck so bad. I accomplished the goal I'd set of telling the story of my best friend and of my adolescent confusion. And that is immensely satisfying. I've made so many e-friends and acquaintances along the way. And, maybe more importantly, I've heard from so many people for whom Crosscurrents resonated deeply with their own experience. Over and over again, readers told me how deeply they've been touched by what I've written. What could possibly be more gratifying for a writer? Some of you know that I write for a living these days. One of several income streams. And I want to say that there's nothing in my career-writing that can remotely compare. That's just food on the table, a roof over my head. With Crosscurrents, I'm not even thinking about profit. It's one guy's heart touching other hearts. And apparently I've done that. Over and over and over again. Thanks for walking with me on the road, Faithful Readers. And if you're willing to keep walking, I think I have some new places for us to explore. I'm far from done.

I thought I had something to add, but I don't. Not really.

I would hesitate to make any inferences about Whole Foods from this poorly-written rant. It was childish and uninteresting. My little brother works at Whole Foods these days, and he has an entirely different story to tell. A story of geniune supervisor investment in the well-being of employees, a story of a store that rewards good workers and demonstrates loyalty to them, a story of a store that tries to live up to the corporate values that this clearly-butthurt former employee so viciously derides. Anecdotal evidence can't tell you anything. Gonna believe this juvenile malcontent or my brother? I think the truth might not lie with either of those two testimonies. But what intrigues me most is the willingness or unwillingness of various readers to take at face value everything this ex-employee says. I think we can learn a lot more about the people responding than about Whole Foods from this original letter and the responses all over the Internet.

By 12:01 am Monday morning, Crosscurrents will have its final two segments posted. And as for what I will or won't do with Andy and Matt...that's not entirely up to me. ;-)

You know what? You're right about that. I can't bring it into 2013. And...I never squeal.

Yes. I was having trouble with Crosscurrents. It's not that I didn't know the story, heh..it's that the writing wasn't singing any longer. It was flat, heavy, and tiresome, and I just couldn't get the lead out of it. I was pissing and moaning about this to a writer friend of mine. He said, "Get away from it. Write something else. I promise it'll help." So I decided to. I started with an idea based on...based on...well, based on a guy who used to watch over the goat in my basement whenever I had to leave the house. (inside joke). I imagined a scenario involving him, and I starting writing. And it was as though someone flipped a switch. Writing difficulties over. I can honestly say that I think Brushfire features my best narrative writing. But once I'd cleared out the creative roadblocks with it, it had served its purpose. I had no need to finish it. I treated it like an exercise, or maybe as therapy, and I returned to work on Crosscurrents. But it was better than just an exercise. Hell, it was better than Crosscurrents, literary-quality-wise. The other thing you have to remember is that somewhere around all of this I took on the sacred task of trying to finish Sam's It Started With Brian before he died. So Brushfire just sat there abandoned. But I have a warm spot for it...and it will be one of the first two pieces I finish after the end of July, when I'm finished with Crosscurrents. As for the fact that it's now a period piece...yeah. Barely. I'm turning over in my head whether or not I need to update the allusions and bring it into 2013. It can be easily done without hurting the story in the least. Stay tuned.

Well, I'm ready to finish up Crosscurrents. The final chapter and the epilogue will be posted no later than Sunday, July 28, at 11:59 pm CDT. I hope I still have a few readers who started reading when I started writing it, a decade ago. Wait. A decade? How did this happen? Let's see: In the course of a decade, I got finished with college, got finished with grad school, got a job, got married, started a business, had a kid, quit a job, went full-time at my business, took another part-time job, added another side gig...and had another kid. Whew! Along the way I met hundreds of wonderful people online and made some online friends that continue to brighten my life on a daily basis; I dealt (for the most part) online and offline with some internalized homophobia; I grew in my love for the two most important people in my life: I had my heart broken a couple of times twice through deaths and once through the loss of a relationship that meant the world to me; and I got a much better handle on my tendency to rip people new orifices when they piss me off. I'm not completely healed of that last tendency, but the signs are encouraging. Thanks, everybody who came along for the ride. I'm going to keep writing. And that brings me to the musings upon which I based this entry's title. The next works I post to Gay Authors (after I've finished Crosscurrents next week) will come much more quickly than CC did. I have two short stories already in progress at different places on the web. I'll get those finished first and bring the completed stories to Gay Authors. Then I'm going to turn my attention to the other story ideas I have. The two in-progress stories are called Brushfire and Tumbleweed Connections. Brushfire is about a twentysomething "straight"--and married-with-child--young college prof who is drawn to an airman at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. It's currently only at Tickie's place, though I've done a considerable revise which I haven't gotten him yet. Tumbleweed Connections is a scandalous little short about a twentysomething-young high school football assistant coach who can't get a certain 18-year-old senior football player out of his mind. There are four "chapters" posted to Nifty. There are one or two left to go. Those will be easy to finish quickly. I have several other short stories cooking in my head that I'm itching to get started on: One I'm going to call Piel Canela. It's about a staredown with a young stud behind a cash register at a local restaurant. This one will be primarily prurient in nature, so be careful who's reading over your shoulder at work. Lawnboy is an overdue literary keeping-of-a-promise to a longtime online friend. The title should give you the general ideal. As with "Piel Canela," there will be nothing morally redeeming about this piece. But hopefully it'll have a little art to it, if you're not too...busy to appreciate that kinda thing while you're reading. Remix will follow a young thirtysomething guy as he wakes up on some parallel Earth somewhere in the multiverse (think Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics) and discovers that the elements of his life--including some people--have been...well, remixed. Solve is a dark, disturbing story of love, obsession, loss, and pain, and of being driven toward a solution. A literal one. Small-Town Boys is a coming-of-age slice-of-life short that looks at four high school guys dealing with themselves, their peers, and small-town living. I think this a short story. I'll only know for sure once I start writing. Spunk is a triptych whose individual pieces are united thematically by that white gloppy stuff that gives this short story its name. This one may be the most abstract of all the pieces waiting to get written. Even so, it'll take the reader places. As you might infer. American Honey is about an unlikely love affair between a married thirtysomething artist and a small-town, newly-graduated high school guy who's headed toward the armed services. Although I have it in my head as a short story, this one may turn out to be a novel, and of all the stuff I'm previewing here, I need it to be the last one I get to. Some of it's already been written, though. I have another novel just barely begun. It's called Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, and it's about that odd interstice between graduation from college and Starting Real Life. It chronicles one summer's misadventures between a Texas boy and an online friend from New York. Said Texas boy goes to meet said online friend at the top of the Empire State Building (oh, shut up; they're gay, okay?), and Mona Lisas lets the reader watch them live out and love out that summer (cue ABBA singing "Our Last Summer") (oh, shut up; I'm gay, okay? Or, at least I'm allowed to carry that card!). This is the story that's going to be the most difficult to write of all those I have in the lineup. But it too is a way of keeping a promise I made some years ago. I have one chapter of Mona Lisas--a prologue--up at Nifty. But I abandoned it years ago. I'll pick it up again and finish it off eventually. A novel that has some considerable life in my head already is Not to Touch the Earth, a book that explores the question, "what if you could go back and take roads not taken?" Better yet, what if you went back and the world actually accommodated some of those choices you were too scared to make back then? This story is something of a period piece and something of a science-fictiony piece. But the SF element is only a vehicle for the story, which isn't SF at all. Anyway, It's set in the early Seventies for the most part, with occasional intrusions from the 21st century. I have a great opening sequence in my imagination. Unfortunately, the way I have it in my imagination is as a movie. I'm not at all sure how to write that sequence. That aside, I have much of this story plotted out mentally. I'm anxious to get CC finished and to get on with all these other projects. The thought of it kinda jazzes me. Stay tuned and I'll let you know how it's all going.

As some of you are aware, I started writing and posting Crosscurrents in the spring of 2003. It's been a long, strange trip, and that trip has almost reached its end. Over the years, my work on the story has been glacially slow. I imagine there may be a hundred or more readers who started reading and ultimately bailed because I have been so terribly slow at getting it written. As you'd expect of a person over a decade's time, I've been through some changes. Above all else, my life situation has resolved in ways I couldn't have predicted at the time I began the story. One of the major facets of my life reached a sort of final resolution in 2007, and that left me with something of a dilemma regarding how to conclude the story. I don't make a secret out of the fact that CC is essentially autobiography, and the future I was looking at in 2003 was hazy and indistinct. By 2007 it had resolved, and resolved in ways that presented me with a dilemma for the story that I couldn't have foreseen in 2003. CC opens in 2003, really, with the narrator reflecting back on his experiences from childhood up to the present. That means that I have to conclude the piece in a way that doesn't go beyond where it started. And it's been a challenge to figure out how to do that in a narratively satisfactory way while remaining faithful to my own authorial intentions. I'm mindful of the requirements of good storytelling...and I'm also aware that life doesn't really imitate art, and that good art doesn't simply lift a slice of life out of the whole and lay it out for inspection. But from the standpoint of story, the place where I began the story doesn't give me a very solid place to end. There's so much simmering in the relationship between Matt and Andy still, and Andy's situation in the spring of 2003 is not the situation of a guy at the end of a story. But I painted myself into a corner from the very beginning with the Prologue. The writing itself demands that Andy end the reflections on his life at the place--and mindset--from which he began them. So, from a literary standpoint, there needs to be an epilogue that brings us back to Andy's final spring break of his college days, as he sums up his thoughts and feelings on everything he's just remembered. The epilogue won't be hard to write. The chapter that comes before it--which will, naturally, be the last one to advance the narrative--has been bugging the s**t out of me. Because I didn't know how to make it read like the conclusion of a novel. Novels don't have to end with "happily ever after" or "the heroes die and everyone mourns." They don't have to avoid ambiguity and haziness. But they do have to be emotionally satisfying, and they have to present a conclusion that makes narrative sense, one that has compelling internal rationale. I've had the last full chapter written for a long time, but I haven't been happy with it. I just haven't been able to satisfy that last demand. The demand that requires a story to end like an ending. One that doesn't feel as though the author merely pressed the Stop button before the final cadence sounds. And it's been bugging me. So I've stayed away. I took a beach trip with my family the weekend nearest to July 4. If you've followed the story, you'll know why, lol. I had some fun time with the family, some fun time with old friends, and some alone time to walk the beach and reflect. And while I was there, the way through all of that mess with the story just sort of came to me. So...if I can squeeze out an hour or two, I'm going to rewrite that final chapter and get it finished so I can post the dang thing. The Epilogue will be a piece of cake. It'll be short, and I'd essentially pre-written it the day I wrote the Prologue. But it's that dang Chapter 35 that's been beating up on me...and I finally have it figured out. You won't see any special brilliance in the conclusion. Nothing that suggests that there was an ongoing problem that I've solved in a stunningly creative way. All you'll see is a shutdown that makes some sense. Makes some sense in the story, and makes some sense in terms of what we need stories to do. I have a short sequel to Crosscurrents that needs writing. But that won't be my next project. Over the decade that I've been working on CC, I've had some other ideas spring up, ideas that wanted to work their way into stories. I'll be turning to those next. I need a break from Andy and Matt, and I have a feeling they need a break from me. And the next things I write should go considerably faster, because they won't be so heavily autobiographical. They won't weigh on me quite as heavily. One thing I do know is that Matt needs to narrate the sequel. And so he will. But that's a story for another day. Thanks for staying with me over all these years, Intrepid Reader. Your loyalty is about to pay off.

I'm not finished yet, Jack. There's one more chapter, plus an epilogue, left.

OMG. Who'd want to read all this crap more than once? j/k. You know I love you.

Good points. But it's not only posts and short texts that are open to misinterpretation. Texts of any length can be misread. I just got into a pretty obnoxious "discussion" at my Yahoo group because a reader had misunderstood a fairly long political post of mine, and because I'd misunderstood his response. The written word doesn't give us the visual and aural cues we rely on when we're talking to someone face to face. And except in the case of instant messaging (or, possibly, phone texting) it also doesn't give us the opportunity to re-direct immediately when we can tell we've been misunderstood. I think that means we have to work extra hard to make sure we're clear when we're writing. And when we're reading, we have to consider the possibility that we've misread, or that we haven't gotten the whole picture or point, when we find ourselves reacting negatively. And above all, I think it means that we have to hang in there and not bail prematurely on the communication or the relationship (if you can call it that) on the basis of a couple of written transactions.

Umm, not sure how to tell you this, but there's only one chapter plus and Epilogue left!

This qualifies as tomorrow, I thought, as I climbed in through the window. It was too dark to see, but I knew where I was going, and I needed to get there fast so that the alarm wouldn’t go off. Heading in the direction of the control on the wall, I made it halfway... ...and banged my knee hard into the corner of Ms. Price's coffee table. I clamped my eyes shut and bit down hard on my lip so I wouldn't moan or gasp or swear. Sitting down on the floor to give myself recovery time, I took a f

You suck. But JP sucks worse, and Sam sucks worst of all. I hope JP and Sam die of dick rot. Slowly and painfully. Said with all the love, of course. :-P

Ok, so I'm wanting to read your latest stuff, but I feel like I have to remind myself of Cramptonworld by starting from the beginning. Couple of things: 1) The historical detailing is a strong point, for the most part, though I caught some anachronisms in the dialogue. But for the most part, the writing immerses the reader in the period. 2) The characters come through nicely...and they're not cardboard cutouts. JP in particular comes across as a fascinating, complex character. 3) On a related note, THIS reader, at any rate, fell in love with Jeff. He's entirely credible, and pretty much irresistible. Which, given the fact that I've read subsequent books on the series, pisses me off all over again. But then, I have a soft spot for football players, so maybe I'm not qualified to have the definitive word on Jeff. Just sayin'. 4) I'll email you some additional stuff. I know this first book in series is history, but I have some thoughts on it I didn't have the first or fifth time through it ;-)

Yep. I hear ya. It's a good thing we don't live in a world where the only things that ever happened were things that we all found easily believable. How bland, predictable, and lifeless that world would be. :-)

"Selfish tard." Yeah, I get that a lot. What can I say? Andy is who he is. He's afraid. From somewhere--certainly not his family--he's sucked in the notion that Sean couldn't possibly want him if he really know how Andy was feeling. And once he got over that, he just knew Matt would never forgive him for being so cold that senior year. So, yeah...he's a selfish tard; but he just doesn't get it. In his defense, I gotta say he's never experienced anything like this and he's not prepared for it. He doesn't know what it means for his life or how to handle it. And...he's not even 20.