mancguy

In fairness to me I did absolutely say that ‘Worldwide’ would be needed and that some authors might still not want to set a location - but hey it’s the time for good will so let’s agree on what a fab job the admins do in keeping this going. This was a very honest response to the question about people leaving - I didn’t say it was logical but one isolated example from me of how it can (nearly!) happen and it would have totally been my loss if I’d not stuck with it so all good :-). Happy Christmas!

Thanks for the reply - that makes sense. The earlier reply did ignore this but I did actually suggest worldwide as an option. However, I guess tags don’t provide a solution but maybe a text field could although I appreciate if I’m the only one with this thought the gay demons should definitely take priority :-). I do love the site and the global diversity is one of the things I enjoy about it. Thanks again and keep up the good work.

A new reader here, potential subscriber and author too if I get my act together next year! I’ve enjoyed exploring the site and you do a great job attracting good content. The new software looks cool too. In terms of feedback, while the core basic tags work really well in helping readers to know what kind of story they’re in for, the ’Setting’ tag really isn’t helpful - where it is even used. ‘Europe’ is a pretty big category and doesn’t really help! You almost lost me when I became frustrated with not being able to find stories by location. I ventured back to Google to try and search from outside the site which of course gave me other writing sites as well. I wonder if others drift away for this reason? My suggestion would be to ask authors to tag for location by country which would be really easy to search. They could still opt not to (or to use off-world/worldwide/fantasy etc.), but I think for most they would add the country and this would be a super search tool helping to celebrate the fact that the content here is global. A very minor niggle. I’ve given up searching by tag and now work through authors’ profiles, checking who likes stories I’ve enjoyed and exploring the full list of ‘All Authors’. Merry Christmas and please keep up the excellent work!

Quite a roller coaster of a story…. Enjoyed reading this - only thing I can’t quite get my head around is why Nathan’s dad would set him up to go to prison to keep him from his daughter before all this kicked off. A final thought was why the parents weren’t saying ‘of course now you know you should get to know each other… just not in that way’ rather saying they just couldn’t be together at all. But then real people are not rational and I guess in the heat of the moment with the built up passion between them that would be a challenge. Interesting!

Very enjoyable. Who is Nathan by the way… Liz refers to him.

Enjoying it so far - grim time! Trying to place it in time - I think as a young kid I might remember a cinema having an ‘intermission’ but I’m not sure where that places it…. Reading on with interest!

Really enjoyable writing bringing enough real-life issues to the narrative to make it feel genuine and not simply a ‘rose-tinted’ view of the world. Somehow this makes it even warmer. The story made me laugh out loud at one point - a rare thing for me - and was poignant when it needed to be, touching on a range of themes with sensitivity. I’d have loved to have known the location sooner but it gave me a good excuse to re-read and maybe that’s deliberate so if you're reading for the first time go with the flow and see if you agree :-).

Really loving the story - the writing is excellent. I didn’t spot the comments earlier and your profile doesn’t give much away so it was interesting to me to find that this is set in Canada at such a late stage in the story. I assumed (wrongly!) that as with many stories here this was in the US, but when I suddenly picked up the city names and realised I’d been to some of them and understood from experience what some of the journeys would be like the story took on another richer meaning for me personally. Although the depth and enjoyment from this story is such that it could be set almost anywhere, and it can be dull to be overloaded with geography in a narrative, I think the hint of where this is all taking place adds colour and I would have loved to have known sooner. I’ll enjoy re-reading with that knowledge!

I really enjoyed this chapter - the writing is great on this story but rare for any story to make me laugh out loud! All good 🙂

I haven’t read the book but I have seen the harrowing film version of 'Christiane F.’ and I totally understand why this writing would bring back the shock of that particular narrative. Something about the characters being so endearing through such adversity. I also loved the twist and the optimistic ending, a perfect point to conclude the story leaving the reader to imagine the ups and downs to follow on the road to recovery while the new relationship builds.

On the surface this story follows a theme covered many times in print, online and on TV. The story of a rich family on holiday somewhere with their kids exploring relationships between family members, breaking out into the real world outside the bubble of a holiday experience may have been explored before, but oh boy this is really special and goes way beyond the run of the mill. Tough challenges through life, the meaning of love, the poetry of The Smiths and - for me the most uplifting element - the unconditional love of surrounding friends and family are all to be found here. Beautiful.

I'm enjoying this gentle story of life in rural Essex. I've read a lot of good stories here and it's good to find variety in location/geography. Langauage is a funny thing and I enjoy encountering differences in the use of English between American authors and those from this side of the Atlantic, but occasionally pick up something different from an author in the UK too - must be more local geography. 'Knickers' is a funny word for me - totally without excitement and inherrently linked in my mind (for not much logical reason) exclusively with women's clothing not mens. Kind of get that it's a slightly comic word to use and it fits well with the narrative here, but it's odd (and indeed interesting) how sometimes we're conditioned to experience different thoughts with the same word. Keep up the good work - looking forward to more.

I enjoyed this story immenseley and was engrosed in life aboard ship. The use of correspondence through letters made me curious and I learned that sailors at the time did indeed write letters home and that the Royal Navy facilitated their passage to and fro - even when ships were on voyages a long way from home it would be possible to send letters sporadically through ports and other Royal Navy ships. Easily in my top reading experiences on GA - the writing is really wonderful. Peter's earlier review sums it up prefectly. What an enjoyable read.

I completely echo RobV’s comments above - he expresses how this story made me feel so well. Really compelling writing and a great ending. The recollection of elements of both main characters in the younger me and my friends made this a tough but authentic read. Great writing and thanks for posting it.

Great ending - left lots to pick up in another story maybe. Anything planned…?

I loved the pitch of writing, pace and level of realism combined with the interesting characters in this story. Really gripping and I’d love to hear more about what followed - maybe family introductions and other life events along the way. Great tension towards the end and well closed out overall. Superb 🙂