Ibsu

Instead of saving it as html (word html is god awful!), try saving it as rtf. You might even have better luck trying to cut and paste.

It could have ended at 31 and noone would have been the wiser -- in fact, it would have been a great ending. (Well, that or a wedding scene... I'm not sure I like the forshadowing of infidelity or some sort of breakup between the two. Doh!)

Very nice work. Thanks for the inspiration today for me to get some writing done.

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

I've had a sneaking feeling that you've had it out for Brian's head since early on. I'll admit I'm not a big fan of killing off a character that the author has spent significant time developing and endearing to the reader, myself. In a story like Dawn of Tears, we expect it as part of the contract of reading the story -- it's established as early as the title. Do over, on the other hand, doesn't need the device to advance the plot. (In fact, I've seen in some cases where a death is only there because the author couldn't figure out what to do next.)

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*

How do you write so durn fast? I think you had said this was going to be 20 chapters a week or two ago. But very well done.

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!

No pressure, Dan. :2hands: Not like you have anything to do during the day but satisfy your adoring fans!

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.

I tend to lump science fiction and fantasy together with alternative history in a genre called speculative fiction. To me, the premise of sci-fi and fantasy both hinge on the "what-if" of life. Of course, fantasy is so much easier for me to write than modern, and right now that's what I'm trying to stretch for... le sigh.

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*

Let's see... I've only read one of them, unfortunately, other than some of the others that have been suggested. Alone With Myself: I believe you linked to the "director's cut" - I've only read the original, and that was a year ago, but it's t/t A boy learns of a secret underworld underneath London through its prince. (I wasn't a huge fan of it, myself. It's very well written, but I'm a "happy story" type. *laughs*) I'm not a highschool reader, and Alone With Myself is more sci-fi/fantasy.

Awww, I was really enjoying the no conflict fantasy, you know? *laughs* Reader side of me: Awww, forget those silly little distractions like work and life, we need you writing! *laughs* Author side of me: How do you manage to put so much stuff out as it is? I would love to work on my writing more, but so much of real life interferes. But all over: great chapter! I actually came to the site after googling dkstories (yes, I'm one of the emails that was sent.)