Ibsu

I would actually suggest a flashback mechanism. Start yourself with two timelines in each chapter - the first part is about present, and then the next part incorporates a moment that ties into the present, those moments coming in chronological order through the chapters. Yes, it means quite a bit of rewriting. A similar thing happened to me in a large, as-yet-unreleased story. I waved my hands over the introduction (because I'm really not good at them) and kind of skipped over the hard parts, thinking that I would just weave a thread through them. Unfortunately, what I found out is that those hard parts were goiing to result in a large plot hole and an overpowered main character. So, here comes the major rewrite where instead of the protagonist being a Ph.D student in Physics (of which I don't know nearly enough to write!), he's an artist. Who, it's going to turn out, really wished he would have gone through a few more science and engineering classes. Sometimes the rewrite is the solution.

It's most difficult when you can't actually move to find a job. Other than writing, what are your qualifications? What are you looking for?

There are whole sections of gay fiction in the bookstore. Unfortunately, most of them are relegated to the gay and lesbian section. Anne McAffrey's Pern series had many major gay and lesbian characters, but it was fantasy and tied to the mythos of the realm.

White boxers - I'm boring.

I still love music videos. In fact, I see them all the time on Yahoo's Launch. Seriously, the music video in American culture is an art form, and I don't think it's going to die off completely, it will merely morph. We've already seen things like AYB go across the net, will that too happen with other music? I'm trying to remember the songs with the angry kitties, but there's another example.

Augh - you have now introduced me to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. Did I really need to know there was a progressive rock version of Pictures at an Exhibition? Okay, maybe I did. Now I'm going to have to listen through their catalog, and I'm blaming you.

Ethan: I wish that Rhapsody had that song - looks like a good one! As for me, maybe Absolutely Bill's Modd from TMBG? I was born in a lighthouse, my mother was the sea I crawled to school each morning, when it occured to me That life's just a mood ring we're not allowed to see And this is what it said to me My room is comfortably small With rubber lining the walls And there's someone always calling my name He calls when I'm alone And he calls when I'm not home And he calls when I'm stuck out in the rain I'm insane I'm insane I'm insane I'm insane Now listen all you swingers, don't you try to tag along I know monkey see, but monkey's dead, for you it would be wrong Put a dime in my jukebox, you'll only hear this song And it won't be fun for long Because my room is comfortably small With rubber lining the walls And there's someone always calling my name He calls when I'm alone And he calls when I'm not home And he calls when I'm stuck out in the rain I'm insane I'm insane I'm insane I'm insane Thank you Thank you My room is comfortably small With rubber lining the walls And there's someone always calling my name He calls when I'm alone And he calls when I'm not home And he calls when I'm stuck out in the rain I'm insane I'm insane I'm insane I'm insane

Oh, I posted the first chapter of a novel I wrote, having written the entire rough draft and thinking I was going to post as I edited. (The problem, of course, is I came across a plothole that took months to resolve, and now I'm having to do a complete rewrite.) But, I got three email. Four were positive, and the fifth was negative. However, he didn't bother to complain about the story. No, he was offended by my disclaimer! Oh, and the offending line? "Kiddies, read your Bible like mom and dad say, or you'll burn in Hell like me." Now, I've said many insensitive things about Christianity, having left the religion a few years ago, but I didn't think of this as a pointed attack. This was from a man self-described as over 50 years old. *shrug*

I have three stories in various stages, none of which do I think are fit for consumption just yet. That said, the sex scene to me all depends on the narrator. Is the narrator passive? agressive? self-assured? timid? experienced? If it's two virgins, for example, the reaction might be very descriptive of the actions, but the effect acheived might be "that's it?" If it's a committed relationship, I'm looking for the emotions. If I'm describing a sex scene like that, there's probably some sort of context, and I'll try to draw some of that in. I like to find humor in sex. Humor is a great way to develop a character. How does a character react to an embarassing situation? If it's first person, how does he excuse it? When he accidently rolls his partner off the bed, especially... But most of all, I want sex to be there for a reason. Certainly, if it's a thousand line get-yer-rocks-off story that's one thing, but if the characters or plot's important, I want sex to advance it! Otherwise, I'll just skip it.

I think it's anything made by Versace.

Wow. That's an inspiring story, Rainbow! I wonder if we in the younger gay community truly appreciate the path that was paved for us. I can read about the history, of Stonewall (for us in the US) and ACT-UP, but I remember being on #gaychristians and listening to those who were either cheating on their wives and feeling guilty or trying to figure out how to come out to their family, and I just couldn't figure out why they exposed themselves to theat drama in the first place. Perhaps it was hard for me to fathom earlier the public pressure one had to marry. I mean, I had it myself but certainly not to the extent of even twenty years ago! (Especially 20 years ago with the emergence of AIDS...) Oh, and I revise my previous comment, Julian. I still suggest starting to work out, because either way it will help you. If you decide not to come out yet, it will keep them off your trail. (after all, "real men" work out, right? *laughs*) If and when you do decide to come out, you will have a better chance at defending yourself and you'll also be bucking their stereotype, making it more difficult for them to just dismiss you as anything but a real man. (Edit: the original post was a little unclear.)

I was a late bloomer. My first female kiss was at 17 when I was in my religious phase - it felt like kissing a sister or something. I'd realized I was gay but thought God would change something in me or something. So much for that. So, at 21 when I left the church and Christianity, it was a few weeks and I basically outed a friend to himself. One night we decided to experimen. I wasn't too attracted to him, but he was safe and that's what mattered to me at the time. So I went over there, we talked for about 2 hours dancing around the subject, and then I just kind of broached it, and we just started. He was a horrible kisser. *laughs* - he had the open-wide-enought-to-chomp-off-head technique down. Of course, being my first kiss, I was just kind of like - so this is what a kiss is? (incidentally, we moved to his bedroom, and he came while I sucked on his nipple. I never even got his pants off, or mine for that matter. I aborted the session at that point. ) So what I really think of as my first real kiss was a month or two later with my first boyfriend. We were walking around the neighborhood on a first date after we'd eaten dinner, and before the end of the date, he asked my permission for a kiss. I think he was a little worried that I was going to freak out or something, but it was romantic to me... (oh... on an unrelated note, I just had a delivery team for a new tv stand/cabinet... one of them I wanted to just strip down there - tres cute. : )

I was just watching Kurt Browning on the Today show... he *has* to be gay... Heck, he said that Michael Bolton was a hottie with the blush sarcasm rather than the sneer sarcasm.

Well, if you lived closer (of course, you might and I didn't know it I'd have suggested Super Kmart - they had really cheap turkeys if you bought 20 bucks of groceries. Heck, I would have cooked you a turkey. I've never done one before, but I've watched alton brown!

http://www.ourlittleplace.com/midi.html It's only a midi and not an mp3, though. It's about half way through the page.

PS - regardless, I'll try to get that money order in in the next week or two.

Forgotten about that... doh. (Actually, I'd only heard that it was pissy about porn and gambling, but I guess this counts. ) I'll admit that I'm amazed that the board is burning up 3.5gb. I get more posts on consr.us/forum and we usually only burn through a GB a month with phpbb, and we have pictures. (Of course, you might have more lurkers. If that's the case, post people, dammit! ) But you're on a dedicated server at 15gb of space? That seems odd to me. Perhaps our cheap/not so cheap values are different, but I'm on shared hosting with pair.com for 30/month and that's 30gb of bandwidth a month. If you buy it for a year in advance, that's 300 bucks a year with the special they're running right now. (I don't remember them not running the prepayment special, though, and it'll probably be running if you decide to switch in the future.) But then again, the 17.95/mo plan is 15gb, so you could just be on pair.com already. (feel free to delete and pm if this is too personal of info on the board for you.) But if we're talking raising 350-600 / year at this point, I'd hope between the authors and readers we could do so with a quarterly fundraising drive! PS - have you heard of any such problems with the Amazon tip jar? I haven't kept up with that... I know for a while there was a fit about them recording who bought what, but that's it. There's also the patent boycott, but hey. *trying to be helpful* --Eric

I'd love to see your webalizer reports to see where the bandwidth is coming from. If it's like my board, your message board is the large portion of the bandwidth. Check to see if you can turn off some of the <!-- --> comments in the PHP, for example. (It's only needed during debugging.) That's a little bit on the extreme side, bu that kind of optimization through the site might save you a GB. I mean, you're using CSS and your html is pretty tight (at least, from looking at your main page) so I don't know that it'd be the problem. I did notice on dk's "Do Over" that he has a before each paragraph. A popular enough story might be able to trim off a couple megabytes over a month. Cross this across the board and you might be able to stave off problems with bandwidth for a bit. Do you have a paypal account? It might not be this month, though...

I'll forget about a story. In fact, I'd forgotten about Dawn of Tears along the way, for example. I like to wait until a story has legs to get into it... and I much prefer reading something that's being released quickly - that probably means that it's been fully finished or at least the first draft is completely written. So yes, I'd much prefer that a story be finished before posting in most cases, unless it's one of those hundred-section continuing serials that you just keep reading like it's someone's journal, but you wouldn't feel too sad if it just ended. I know a few stories that were never finished and noone ever gave any notice - now *that* I find frustrating.

The problem I have is that it was insisting on picking up WMV and then it would only play the audio and not the video. *shrug*

I've only seen heartache and pain from any winamp player since the 2 series. 3 Was a travesty and 5 still crashes too much for my taste. *shrug* And Video almost never works on winamp for me. I'm a fan of ZINF for audio, myself. (Open source for the win!)

Augh - I love my Rhapsody! (It's a Real product.) You know, if you own Realplayer Plus, you should get free tech support on it. They'll have you go into the registry and remove the crud that's breaking it. This is their help page, and they have their customer service number as a link off of that page. Since you've bought RealPlayer Plus, you get that for free. I wasn't a fan of theirs for years, but their new player usually works pretty well, and they don't do the obnoxious stuff they used to.

I don't know legally, but it's in my company's non-discrimination policy and our federal contracts would pitch a fit if they found out about such discrimination.

You got to it before I did. - You know, that was really how the bear subculture popped up. It was a way for all the marginalized body types to assert their acceptability. Frankly, I couldn't imagine shaving my body hair, nor does such attract me per se. But then again, I've always gone after men older than me. *shrug* Back to the original question, I think the reason they're so described in erotica is because they were the ones working on their body and having the prescribed body type was instant success on the meat market. My current story has no such person. I have a slightly husky narrator and a thin guy who's never been the workout type. They're just both normal guys. I dunno.. that's what attracts me.