Jump to content

Mark Arbour

Signature Author
  • Posts

    20,254
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Mark Arbour

  1. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 16

    Ah, that's the type of circular logic that makes being 14 a nightmare.
  2. I'll have to work harder to set the tone for Darius. It's just playful banter between guys (and between mostly straight guys at that). I'm skeptical as to whether the hookup scene is more pronounced with this generation than before. It would be interesting to discover whether hooking up, with no strings attached, is more prevalent in the gay community than the straight community. If I had to speculate, I'd say that hooking up has always been at a pretty high level, relatively speaking, for the gay community. I think this generations' straight couples are just starting to catch up to that.
  3. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 15

    I'm pretty sure none of us has that much cash.
  4. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 15

    It's nice to see you getting in touch with the "inner you". :-)
  5. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 16

    Stef has a way of dragging things out of people.
  6. July 20, 2000 Paris, France Will I thought I’d figured out how to arrange the curtains to block out the light in the room, but evidently I’d missed a corner. Through that corner the morning sun blared, as bright as a 300-watt bulb, or at least that’s how it seemed. I rolled over onto my side and took in the sunlit view of John’s form. Damn, he was hot. I ran my hand across his chest and down his abdomen, smiling at how he moaned and squirmed under my touch. I pulled down the
  7. Carl, I have so much admiration for your perseverence. Depression is one of those illnesses that so often gets discounted as simply a weakness. Those who have endured it, or studied it enough to understand it, know otherwise. When you land on your feet, and I know you will, I hope you take some time to look in the mirror and acknowledge what an achievement that was.
  8. Renee, I'll be interested to see how this goes. My own experience with re-writing/editing stories suggests that it's an effort that almost solely benefits the author. I did that with one of my stories ("BeRad"), re-wrote about the first 15 chapters, and while I didn't get any comments or feedback on the changes, I was much happier with the result in the end. So now when I venture down that road, I have to do it with the attitude that I'm doing it for me, and that my readers have moved on and are waiting for what's new and what's next. You may end up with a different result, but I thought I'd let you know what my foray into that world yielded. Mark.
  9. I posted a new chapter. Happy Memorial Day to US readers! When I researched xebecs, I found it to be a very generic term, and as you noted, there were large ones, small ones, and all sizes in between. (Kind of like dicks ). I've chosen to assume the ships we encounter in this story are of the smaller type.
  10. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 10

    November, 1796 The wind. No one seemed to notice the first gust, but the second gust started to get attention. “You there,” Granger called to a seaman who had just sliced open a pirate with his cutlass. The man looked at him crazed for only a second before discipline reasserted itself. “Sir?” “Take the helm. Hard starboard,” Granger ordered. He left Roberts to continue the fight, while he went below. He arrived on the gundeck to find it clear of pirates
  11. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 36

    Granger the Black Widow.
  12. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 37

    Your comment on manning is spot on. Captains with reputations never had problems manning their ships. Sir Edward Pellew, Lord Cochrane, Sir Sydney Smith..captains like that had plenty of volunteers. For the rest, it was exhausting and trying.
  13. No you don't. It's a very scary place.
  14. I think you get those when you "like" a story. You could try "unliking" HMS Belvidera and see if that stops them. Just don't unlike it for real.
  15. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 35

    The use of a spring was a well-used naval tactic, but I don't know if it was used on pirates or not. The key was shallow water, and that usually wasn't an option. IRL, Mann ends up as one of the Lords of the Admiralty. Now that's stunning.
  16. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 34

    I agree about Cadiz. It was mandated by Spanish law that gold from the Americas be landed there, so it's no wonder the city is so beautiful.
  17. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 33

    It's hard to imagine how primitive medical technology was back then, a mere 200 years ago.
  18. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 32

    You are correct: not much R&R. The men generally got excited about battles, primarily because it broke up the boredom of being at sea.
  19. Evidently he did the math wrong. You'd think God would pick a spokesman with some reasonable analytical skills.
  20. So they are. Great catch!!!! I do believe I fixed it.
  21. Chatham? Spencer? Hood? Howe? Mann? Linzee? Hotham? All of these guys were real. I start posting as soon as I'm a few chapters into a story. That's why sometimes I post more frequently or less frequently. Sometimes I'll get a bit ahead, and have some chapters in hand, but lately it's been pretty much when they're done, they get published. I like doing it that way. Most readers here are pretty patient, and I think they trust me to finish up the story and to post as often as I can. More importantly, the feedback in the forums and the reviews is really helpful. It tells me if I'm getting the characters right, and it reminds me of things I may be forgetting.
  22. I want to take a moment in this forum to thank Andy (Quonos10) for taking the time to read the Bridgemont Series and leave comments on every chapter. Andy's become a good friend of mine, and if you haven't read his stories, I recommend them. I'm not as diligent about leaving reviews, so I have to go back and atone for that this summer. I'd also like to thank Bugeye, who read through Chronicles of an Academic Predator and left lots of reviews as well. If he decides to go on, he'll read 1968, and we all know how popular I was after I wrote that story. Both of these guys had me re-reading chapters to remind me of what they were talking about. Fun times.
  23. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 31

    Thanks Andy. Jervis was a no-nonsense, hard-charging disciplinarian. He did a stint as First Lord of the Admiralty, where the bureaucrats beat him (where Napoleon couldn't). Tells you the power of bureaucrats.
  24. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 30

    You're a lawyer, it's a trial. You're biased. :-)
  25. Mark Arbour

    Chapter 29

    He has to distract himself somehow, and what better way than with a big dick to play with?
×
×
  • Create New...