Duncan Ryder

Sorry Mom by Duncan Ryder Spring, and the hardest trip home I’ve ever made. Confession time. A confession I’d promised myself I’d never make. For years, it’s been so easy. I’ve never had a reason. Now I do. He’s sitting beside me, his hand resting lightly on my thigh. Chi Ng. The love of my life. The man who assures me moment to moment, with every glance, every smile, every stray and tender touch of his hand, that I am the love

When you find your future, you shouldn’t have to give up your past.

I really like Haggis. I've had it a few times, best was in Scotland though. Now sea urchin sushi. Never again.

Me too....but gemerally more strongly expressed. 78 75 50 33 -- which means very expressed introvert, distinctively expressed intuitive personality moderately expressed feeling personality, moderately expressed perceiving personality Interesting though...I've done this a few times over the years and apparently I am getting less introverted...I used to be like 98%. Seriously.

Note, though, that you say "I myself don't anymore." Don't underestimate the number of people who do have the patience. We sometimes have the tendency to assume that everyone is at the same stage we are...or should get there fast. Based on my email, I think a lot of guys looking for gay themed stories find themselves on Nifty first and they spend a lot of time looking around, and a lot of them are looking for stories that are NOT smut. I have received literally hundreds of emails from guys saying just that. I think most leave Nifty behind and move on to other things....but every day, there are people who just discover it.

I post on Nifty. I will continue to post on Nifty. Why? Because I feel a tremendous loyalty to my Nifty readers, who have been kind and generous and supportive of my writing, and many of whom have followed me here. (And I should mention that I'm only here...and on another website where I"m also hosted...because people from these two sites read me on Nifty and invited me. I'd never heard of either site before.) Nifty is the biggest site, and it's the first site many people find when they are looking for gay writing. I know this...because that's how I found Nifty. When I started writing Everybody's Wounded, I knew that I wanted it to be read. I had no idea what to do with it so I did a web search and found Nifty. I was absolutely overwhelmed by the response I got...I started getting emails within an hour of posting the first chapter. The support, the encouragement, and the outpourings from people who read me on Nifty was incredibly touching and humbling. As for proximity to some of the material on Nifty...the company you keep.... well... we all know that Nifty's full of .... less than high quality material. But the gems are there if you look for them, and a lot of people do look for them. I don't think anyone who has read my stories would say I write anything remotely pornographic, but I hear from a lot of people who read me first on Nifty. Even now, three years after I started this journey, I hear from 10 to 20 new Nifty readers every time I post a chapter. I can only speak personally but I will say that my Nifty readership is thoughtful and kind and really really really supportive. People often tell me that they aren't comfortable posting to discussion threads etc. Maybe its because I tend to write very intimate stories...I don't know. What I do know is... while I continue to refer everyone who emails me to GA (and while my GA webpage is always way ahead of what is posted on Nifty) I will continue to post to Nifty for the simple reason that I respect my Nifty readers.

Not sure I should admit this but....I had dinner there just before Christmas. And used the facilities. And can attest that they are completely soundproof, and there is no way any sound could reach the dining room. I honestly think the whole thing was intended as a kind of joke. The bathrooms are very...different... and everyone jokes about having sex in them. Each bathroom is an individual room, and they are quite separate from the restaurant, and they play strange things really loud over the sound system. The time I was there, it was Air Canada safety announcements. Very odd...but kinda funny. I was with a group of people and when the first person came back, it was all "You HAVE to check out the bathrooms." So we all did. (Alone. Really.) But there was a follow up article in the paper indicating that they've withdrawn the ads... I suspect it was a smart advertising move. They got more attention than money could buy!

So many of these books and stories have deeply affected me. The Lord of the Rings...A Flower for Emily...Catcher in the Rye...Vonnegut (though I think the big one for me was Slaughterhouse Five). Brideshead Revisted... Other really important ones for me... Leonard Cohen's poetry, but esp. his novel, Beautiful Losers. Hermann Hesse, esp. Sidhartha. Joyce, esp. Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Sons and Lovers. Not Wanted on the Voyage. The Tin Drum and Death in Venice, which are wierdly merged in my head because I read them at the same time, on trains, travelling through Italy, switching back and forth depending on my mood...

CJ, relax. It's fine. If you need a sex scene, you write a sex scene. And I think the way you get good at writing scenes with sex in them is by....writing scenes with sex in them. I wonder if we all need to liberate our inner sexual writers... I love writing scenes with sexual content. I mean, I like to think I write love scenes rather than sex scenes, and I would deny to the death that I write anything that even faintly could qualify as porn, but really....I LOVE writing love scenes. Right on camera. Yup. Right there. To me, it's such a wonderful, magical, mystical, powerful metaphor.

Steve, all best wishes for a very speedy recovery. Duncan.

Maybe if my (admittedly extremely limited) experiences before my partner had been good, or fun, or even not an absolute disaster, I would have answered no. But I answered yes because frankly they were a disaster, leaving me feeling guilty and sad and hurt and totally screwed up emotionally and ready to take a vow of celebacy... But two kind of interesting things. First, I remember sometimes feeling very sad that I wasn't HIS first, at least in some small way, because in every way that mattered he was mine....and I wanted to somehow be able to give him what he had given me. And even then I knew that was really dumb because it was precisely because he was so much more experienced that he was able to get me past all the issues and make it all wonderful... Second, my friends were pretty scandalized when I moved in with him because they thought I was way too young and inexperienced and "one day you'll wake up and wonder what it was like with someone else". They were right...and wrong. Yeah, some days I wonder. Of course I do. But never enough to want to find out. !

I am very honoured. On behalf of Scott and Josh, Luc and Matt....thank you. Because I don't say it enough -- thanks to Gabriel Morgan who really goes out of his way to proofread stuff for me fast...and to Steve for all his work on my page. Thanks also to everyone who worked so hard on the awards. duncan.

Even good relationships can be difficult. You both have to want it and be willing to put it first, and even then there will be rough times. Still..love and respect and commitment will get you through if it's what you both want. I think too many people can't see past the rough spots, want it perfect and easy all the time. Then they start to see possiblity as what they can be with someone else, the whole grass is always greener thing. And some people are in love with that whole idea of being in love, that new rush, that in the beginning thing. For me, I believe the mature relationship gets better and stronger over time if you are both committed to it. Making that commitment means that the exploration of possiblity is about being the best person you can be with the person you have chosen and are committed to. Maybe I'm an incurable romantic...but I've been with my partner since I was 19... I believe that if it's what you really want, and you're willing to work for it with a partner equally committed, it is possible.

Um...some do.

Yes, that's what I meant.

Well...it's "man" because the poem is a father to son thing...so he's telling his son about growing into a man. Equally applicable...

It's pretty hard to say it better than good old Rudyard.... If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you But make allowance for their doubting too, If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream--and not make dreams your master, If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!" If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much, If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son! --Rudyard Kipling

Uh, thanks. Geez, Tiger, Can't tell you anything!

Lol. I knew if I defended Toronto bad things would happen!!! I'm not from Toronto nor do I live there. (I wasn't even born in Canada....) But I feel obliged to defend it because no one else does, and I think that's really unfair, and I was making a point of focusing on the good side. I knew lots of people would be happy to point out the bad. The last four quotes aren't fair...because I was defending Toronto agaisnt specific claims. And I did agree with Cyn's points, just saying that they weren't the only face of Toronto. I didn't say anything bad about Winnipeg. Didn't even mention the cold...and I've been in Winnipeg in mid Feb. when it's, well, I expect you know how cold it is. And I only mentioned the drug problem in Vancouver because it's in the news so much and it puts people off and I think it's fair to warn people away from the area because you can find yourself in it without meaning to. The rest of the city that I've seen is absolutely gorgeous. Other wonderful cities: St John's. Ottawa. Halifax. Quebec City. Regina. Saskatoon. I'll try to think of something good about Calgary ... Wait.... it's near Banff. And Drumheller and the Bandlands are pretty cool. Want me to say bad things about Toronto? I can do that too. In addition to Cyn's points, which I mostly agreed are a valid face of the city, it's noisy. And it's it gotten dirtier. And there are beggers in the streets. It's commercial, very commercial. There is that live to work thing... It's self conscious, all that "world class city" stuff is stupid and gets real tired real fast. I personally HATE the club distirict; all the suburbanites land there to party and puke, far as I can tell. It's very expensive. The transportation infrastructure is suffering. It has some absolutely hideous industrial areas, and a corridor with significant violence (though a tourist is highly unlikely to find him/herself there.) The big festivals...Carribana, Taste of hte Danforth etc -- have gotten so big and so popular they're no fun for locals any more. They have totally mismanaged the waterfront, and the expressway that cuts it off from the city is an embarrassment. The city streets are so crowded that rush hour is a total nightmare. I hate driving in Toronto with a passion. And it yes it does tend to think of itself as the centre of the Canadian universe (though literally that would be Winnipeg) and that gets real old. Ok?

I can't seem to open the article but imho... Toronto is a fabulous city. It's Canada's national passtime to hate it, just as it is the US passtime to hate New York, and Torontonians couldn't care less. I'm sorry, but that's generally because they don't understand or appreciate it or find it's size and speed a little scary or they've never been there at all. I adore Toronto passionately (and no I'm not from Toronto and I don't live there now, though I have and no doubt will again.) Toronto is big and beautiful and full of life, has great museums, art galleries, cultural life, restaurants, fashion, but also lovely neighbourhoods, parks, beautiful places to walk and to just to be. Toronto is a city of neighbourhoods, much like London, so you can know parts of it intimately and still have no sense of the whole. Toronto is also, has been for about five years now (passing Paris according to the UN) the most culturally diverse city in the world now. There are parts of it where you would swear you were in China, or India, or Korea, or the middle east... so deliciously foreign you'd swear you were in anothr country. The lovely thing is, for the most part it all works. (my favourite story is of a Mosque and a synanagogue that share a parking lot and organize good works together... ) Not there aren't problems, but I'll tell you, I'd rather have Toronto's problems than just about any other city I know's problems.... Montreal is delicious, lovely, very European, fashionable, and considers itself superior in every way to Toronto and probably ever other place in the world. Torontonians love to play in Montreal and Montrealers don't like to play in Toronto far as I can tell. I don't think they like to play anywhere but Montreal, except to show everyone how much better they know how to play (and do just about anything else...)! There is nothing in North America to compare to it. Its fashion absolutely surpasses Toronto (you can walk into a room and ALWAYS pick out the Montrealler by the clothes), and frankly so do its restaurants (it has that European reality to it; Toronto takes itself a little too seriously, tries to hard to do what Montreal just is.) I totally adore Montreal, work there from time to time, and spend weekends there when I can. Winnipeg...I don't know Winnepeg well, only been there twice for a couple of days each time. What I have read about Winnipeg is that it has a rich cultural life, and that the music scene esp. is surprisingly good. For those of you who are into vintage rock and roll, it produced The Guess Who and Neil Young, and for movie afficionados, Guy Maddin....and they've left a real mark on the city's sense of its own culture. Edmonton...I like going to Edmonton...but frankly the best thing I can think of to say about it is that it isn't Calgary. Which is ugly, crass, full of new oil money, and very, well, never mind. Calgary's a boom town and has a boom town mentality, and its all about money money money. Vancouver, ah Vancouver. It has the worst slum and drug scene in North America, a small area right up against their Chinatown, and I accidently found myself in it last summer and it scared the crap out of me. I've never been scared in a Canadian city before. Otherwise, its gorgeous, and it has moutains and a beautiful Chinese garden. I always feel sad somehow when I leave Vancouver though... I've had bad luck there weatherwise (it rains all the time...like London), the mountains can be oppressive if you aren't used to them, and I never feel I had quite as good a time or apprciated it quite as much as I should have.

Well....I'm one of those people who said I don't write sex scenes, I write love scenes... but I sure didn't mean to imply that I thought they were beneath me. The distinction I was making was about the purpose of the scene. I don't write sex for sex (like a lot of the Nifty stuff); it's always a metaphor. But I think I write fairly....sensually. At least, I sure try to. Having said that...I really like writing love scenes a lot. I don't find them difficult. I work at them (from a craft perspective I find dialogue much much easier to write) and often go through for or five revisions to make them sing the they way I want them to, but it's a labor of love. In fact, I often start with a love scene...that's what comes to me so I write it first. And then I try to figure out what I want the characters to learn from it, and what got them there, and that often kind of drives the plot. As for back to the original topic... I was already hosted on another site, and I started and will continue to post on Nifty, though with a time lag. As a pretty new writer to this genre I've had enormous encouragement from writers who've been around awhile, here at GA, and from several of the other sites. GA seems to have a stronger reader community re the forums etc, but personal supposrt of other writers, and of the hosts and administrators, at least in my experience has come from various hosted sites and I am touched and grateful for it all. Speaking as a writer, it's wonderful to have "homes" for these children of mine, where people can read and enjoy them, and I hope all the sites succeed.

I tried a few chapters of EW and a few of Light. EW came out more female than male, though chapter by chapter the margins were always really close. Light came out male, the newest chapter hugely male, like by a 2 to 1 margin. No idea what that means... I did wonder if a story being in first person would make a difference, since EW is in first person....

Well....I hate Picasso for different reasons...as people who've read Everybody's Wounded might have noticed.... But yes, few of us are Picasso (whether we like the art or not) or Keats or Joyce... but we can aspire... Guidelines are useful esp. in the beginning as we are learning our craft as writers, and we need to learn the craft so that we can realize the vision of what we want to say. Actually, the guidelines are not unlike grammar rules, which in skilled hands are also guidelines... these are rules you break consciously and deliberately (like Joyce...) not because you don't know any better.

Rules, guidelines, whatever. Generally it's about the skill in breaking them. Generally I agree that you should be doing it deliberately, but there are even exceptions to that. I'm not speaking specifically about these "guidelines", lol. But sometimes a new young, inexperienced writer can just...get it right, just with that kind of wide eyed freshness and go right to the heart of something magical... They do something magical because they don't know there are rules (or guidelines) and just...do it. But it is very very very rare, of course. Like...Picasso... looking at a picture painted by a three year old and saying "It's taken me all my life to learn to paint like that..."