W_L

Happy Turkey Day! ...Remembering to add another layer of honey to turkey Thanksgiving is a time of reflection and hope. On days like this, we should remember both the things we have and the many people who now lack it. I'm thankful for finding a job and getting my Master's degree. Tomorrow night, known as Black Friday, I will be thankful if I am the 10th person outside Best Buy.

I'm getting the feeling CBS is trying turn into the new NBC for gay audiences. The big build up of As the World Turns, also on CBS, with Noah and Luke seemed to have got the studio heads into the mindset that gay= controversy= ratings, like NBC used to do. Hollywood is weird.

It depends on the story, Exodus is broken up by days and half week periods. If I had wrote a whole week as a chapter it would be around 120-130 pages long. The biggest issue I find with this type of writing style is keeping the story elements flowing from one day to the next without interruption and in a related sequence. There's also a lot of subplots that I have created, so what happens in this story's first week will have huge plot ramifications for later on. This style is going to be hard, but it makes a lot of sense in how I want to present the universe that I am building. If you are writing a love story; focusing elements with short plots makes more sense for character development. If you're creating an epic, then you have divide plot lines to showcase the entire universe. It's like Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, you have Bilbo and Sam with the ring story, Merry and Pippin with their adventures rallying the ents, and Aragon, Legolas, and Gimli fighting the war on the battlefield. It depends on your stories scope a great deal, if you see a story of immense scope and foresight, then you have to create multiple plot lines and splits. For me, it gives the impression that while the core characters are doing their thing, everyone else is also living, working, and dying in this universe. I also agree to the point that most people do not read my long stories as they do not come out quickly. If they wanted a story with more depth than my micro-fiction anthology, Love and Again, they will have to wait and/or push me to hasten my pace. Exodus is being hasten, because of the support from readers that want more in this universe and my own desire to expand the scope of my story. I already have plots planned out for three or four books within this universe, so it goes to show that fan participation is a necessary thing for authors to write. There is also more demand from people to have sex scenes; I can understand that and I will add it when it is necessary for story elements or character development.

I think Kefka was actually based off another literary concept: The Kafka villain, basically a nameless villain without clear motives in a labyrinth-plot.

Graeme, I got an interesting thought, what if the villain started out as a hero, then you progressively make him darker as the story went along? Some of my favorite fictional stories are found in comic book like the Marvel Super hero civil war saga. Everyone began the story as a hero, but some slowly started turning as the story went along due to their own degrees of beliefs in certain things. Take Iron Man, I won't leak too many spoilers, but suffice to say, he was originally a very big hero. As the civil war and dividing lines started, his action started going south. In my mind, the storyline revealed an interesting transition of a hero, who for his own beliefs turned into an unwilling villain for a cause that is controversial. My thought about creating the best villain is not to create a villain to start the story, at least not a villain you can see at first. Create heroes with great ideals and contrasting belief systems, then let the natural evolution of such ideas form around issues. When a certain principle or issue comes into place, you could create a dividing line or a lightning rod for villains to be made from the transition of heroes. In reality, such villains are not villains in their own mind, but the ideas they support are opposite of what others believe. On the other side, the heroes may be viewed as villains for going against the same issue or eventuality. Creating a dynamic hero/villain, it is my hope for the stories that I am writing, where both sides of the readers can see the merits of the heroes/villains' logic, while being unable to accept the other side's position.

Did I happen to say that my next chapter is about the length of a book? Lucky I break them out into days.

I think that's more of a gay boys fantasy to be stripped naked, having stuff in your ass, and doing it with a group of friends. Whoever invented these rituals most likely was into gay bondage.

I write when I am excited and motivated in stretches. It makes a really odd writing schedule, I can write 100,000 words in a day or 100 words in a month.

I guess, I am one of those embarrassed guys, because after a few years in high school, I realized most of the other guys were bigger than me (Yeah, I'm still an extreme grower, which is kind of odd). I did take peaks; most of them were bigger than me and I kind of got intimidated. It was only later on in college that I realized that those guys didn't grow as much as I did (I went online to check some of this stuff out). My 1st roommate can be considered an exhibitionist; every time he got drunk or high, he would strip naked in front of me. I saw him in the shower and in the morning, when he realized he was naked on top of his bed without covers (I won't lie, he was tempting, but I kept my sexual libido in check). By college, I was more or less willing to be around naked guys and probably lost most of my shyness.

We can only wish, but there's enough shirtless, want to kill for those guns, and wild guys in the promos to make me want to see. The books were okay, but I have a thing for werewolves versus vampires. The blood sucking sexual seduction thing is fine for some, but I want me a strong, virile, and hormone driven werewolf, who enjoys getting naked every so often.

Yeah, the disease does seem to affect the young a bit more than the old due to the immune response. Sadly hundreds of children have already died of Swine flu.

I'm no expert on the subject, but one of my clients is a major distributor of the H1N1 vaccine. Anyone who was exposed to the Asian flu of the 1950's is immune from H1N1 and would not require a vaccination, so the elderly in that age range are not priorities. It is one reason why certain elderly people are not being inoculated, because the strain variations from the 1950's Asian flu is similar to the current H1N1, so it would provide the same protection as a vaccine. Just a friendly piece of medical advice. I opted not to take the vaccine; although technically I do fit the criteria as I am involved in health care business consulting and make trips to hospitals and community health centers often. I'd rather people younger than me or more at risk get the vaccine first.

Favorite childhood movie: Lion King (1994)

The thing about lawyers defining things, it takes three thousand pages and an act of congress just to define "The law". (I'm not joking either without things like legal definitions the field of taxation would be just as boring as regular accounting and auditing. It's for that reason that most people studying tax are learning the subject from J.D's rather than regular professors with doctoral degrees.) Steve, I think Mark had a different kind of pirate in mind or it could just be my dirty mind. 0:)

Darn, I could do some improv and pretend to be a comparable grouchy college professor without tenure and a fear of cheese. Or a deceptively cute lad with a fatal attraction motif.

Mark have you ever thought I was a fraud? I mean how many 22 year old Master of Taxation with an interest in history and philosophy are out there, who also happens to be a former vice chair of a Republican party branch. Plus the fact that I am blind in one eye, it makes me almost too weird to believe. Yet, I hope I convey my situation and reality well enough for most people to understand that I am an actual person.

Well, I'm an oddball. Recent Master's Degree and I do think most business school people from the northeast are a bit different. I'm younger than most Master degree holders and college graduates, so it's not really a surprise. I also have a contrarian sense of interest in history and philosophy, which are kind of alien to Accounting majors and Master of Taxation. Syntax wise, I have never been a very strong grammatical person; although, I can use and create my own imagery within stories with linguistic components. I am more or less not what you would consider accomplished in such fields even with an advanced degree (Quite frankly in business, there tends to be more expression in bullet points, but I prefer longer explanations. That comes from my accounting background.) Now age wise, I am 22 with a dab of old soul. I am a very classical person due to my love of history. I can remember and recite nearly two thousand years of history compromising of a few hundred different cultures, which is an odd feat (my history professor still think that I should go to doctoral school and study a history subject, but I prefer the business world at the moment over academia). I am also an ongoing student of philosophy and religious concepts, which I consider life lessons rather than educational lessons. Yeah, I am a bit strange.

It is an odd thing to say, but I am a fan of the old movies. Quite odd for a Republican, who dislike the idea of grass-root campaigns, to have sympathies for a 20th century populist commentator. There's just something about Capra's characters, whether it is a political satire or a social commentary about the world's issues. When I watch them, I get the feeling of naivete and honesty from the main characters. They're not stupid, but they are naive with a hope for a better world that does not exist. In there actions, you feel like it would be something anyone else would do. It's not all built on high dramatic situations; although, there are high dramatic tensions in the films.

I'm not sure if anyone here has ever written the "everyman" type of character before, but I would like to see if anyone here has ever attempted it either way. I do enjoy these types of characters, because they appeal to my base humanity without appealing to my other senses or philosophical point of view. Frank Capra's characters were very universal despite many of their over glossed personality traits. I know universality is hard for gay characters, but I would like to incorporate such an ideal into some of my writing. There's something missing in the stories that I am reading and writing. Any help out there

These are pretty big ships and if the reader wondered how they could be built and hidden from earth's telescopes prior to launch, let's just say there is a certain rocky body near earth's orbit, which is tidally locked and served as a base in a potential prequel series. I act as my own scientific adviser, which puts a lot of headaches on me. Centrifugal force is just one way to achieve artificial gravity as you read into the story, I do acknowledge much more advanced techniques based off one possible solution to the UFT (Unified field theory). Yeah, there's a lot of geeky stuff in my story that science guys will have fun poking at and jeering about my ideas for technology use in the near future. However, mixing that and the human element is very difficult for me. I try to create a scenario where our technologies have reached an exciting point in time within decades. I know some of it seems impossible today, but if things did develop along my lines it would be possible, i.e anti-matter, nanotechnology, and other breakthrough occur in the next few years. The same can be said about my exile's origin scenario, a genocidal war against homosexuals and other undesirables have happened once in the last century during the holocaust, so it is not beyond human focus for the 21st century. There is going to be a sci-fi element that is out there, but I do think it questions the very nature of human conscience or I hope as the storyline continues.

hmmm...How about during a space walk? (I'm trying to figure out how zero-g sex would happen, what I found in my research is interesting and kind of scary about your sperm in space.) One reason why I am using centrifugal force to generate artificial gravity in my story.

Don't get me wrong, in a few chapters of Exodus, you will get a lot of sexual tension and issues coming up. I just tend to pent up my sex and let it explode later.

I have a tendency to hold off on the sex until it's absolutely necessary.

Well, I am going to hold off on Civil War scenario for a bit, any type of storyline like that takes a lot of work to build up. My current plot outline (hopefully no changes) calls for two sequels and one prequel (if people demand it). The order of my stories will go like this: Genesis (prequel) Exodus (Currently being written) Kings (Future Sequel #1) Revelations (Future Sequel #2) Enjoy speculating on my plot, if you wish. Government is going to be something that I am starting in Exodus and extends much more into Kings, so developing it will create a lot of different outcomes.

Sounds like you want me to start a Civil War?