W_L

2025 Halloween Horror short story: Jonah, an eighteen-year-old freshman, is invited to attend a fancy Halloween formal party at an old fraternity house by Griffin, a flirty upperclassman.

Thanks for reading

I was just browing Youtube for something to pass my time on Saturday and came upon a list of Cold War era movies about nuclear annihilation. Like many folks, who were born near the end of the Cold War, I've seen movies like Dr. Strangelove and Day After with the detached thought of, "they're just actors" and "Everyone is being stupid in this movie". Well, I noticed a movie I never heard about on the list and it caught my attention, since it was co-produced by PBS (an odd choice for an old nuclear apocalypse film). The movie was made in 1983 and is called "Testament". No, it's not a religious meditation on nuclear warfare, but an average person's view of the nuclear apocalypse. The nukes have already been launched and the cities are already gone, the ones left in small towns and suburbs are isolated, lost, their supplies running low, and radiation poisoning is coming in. It's very haunting and brutally honest portrait from a human angle without any semblance of hope. It's bleak and unapologetic about the future. Children dying, people going insane from radiation poisoning, and suicide is common without any humor that you might see from modern apocalypse films. If you want to watch, I'll leave a link below, but be forewarned get some kleenex tissues ready. Here's the youtube full version of the movie, it has ads.

Thanks, I'm really happy that you enjoy this chapter. It is the culmination of various things that happened earlier, tentatively setting up the rest of the story. Yes, Reese is open-minded and careful. He knows who he likes and what the needs are. Nice GIF Yeah, Reese is good for Dexter. Addiction is not something you can fix by turning off a switch, it's a long-term struggle and has many unexpected results. It's a good first step to admit you have a problem and Reese has been gradually acting as a stabilizing factor in Dexter's life. I know it's a trope in romance, but some folks do need this stability to handle issues like substance abuse.

Sunday’s light found Dexter first. The hangover hit hard, but his attention landed on the man beneath him—Reese, asleep on the dining room floor of Le Coq. They were both naked. Memory came back in flashes: kisses, the heat of skin, the blur of too much wine. Reese’s arm lay around Dexter’s hips; Dexter felt an exhaustion and sensitivity that suggested how fully the night had been used. He eased free, gathered the wreckage of their clothes, and winced. Reese’s shirt and socks were torn to r

Technically my story is a Xianxia, but I am alone in either genre

This is one of those situations where "was it consensual or not?" will have to play out. Basically, they were both doing foreplay for weeks under the excuse of training sessions and healing afterward, so it's not that they don't find each other attractive personally. Reese has been under a lot of stress, like Dexter, so the relief clouded him. Dexter had tried cutting back, but he's developed a habit that in reality is very hard to quit completely with alcohol and painkillers. They're not teenagers and both understood what they wanted, but held back. Sex just happens sometimes, imperfect as the setting may be. Like I said, I wanted to touch on some realism in this romance, an imperfect first time is normal.

In the following months, Reese lived on a knife’s edge of sleep. Most nights he got home around midnight, tumbled into bed by 12:30, and rolled out again at seven. From eight in the morning to three in the afternoon, he worked phones for a CRM software sales firm, a new second job he found as the tips declined within the month. As Sara indicated, the business was in decline, so he needed another source of income. Leaving from the sales office, he went straight to Le Coq. He showered in the locke

Thanks VBlew Cloves and Carnes are line cooks, which is one reason why Dexter is so stressed out. He doesn't have a sous-chef to help. A lot of restaurants have similar tip splits, different staff do get angry if they feel slighted. Thank Chris, I hoped giving folks a glimpse at the restaurant's dynamic would be interesting. Reese has just a spark of romantic interest for Dexter, their situation isn't good for romance though.

In chapter 4 of Essence of Life, I wrote in detail about table etiquette. It's actually something I had to learn in business school, which was an insane class back in the fall of 2005. People think of the early and mid-2000s as the second gilded-age sometimes. I sort of agree in retrospect. My freshman class were ushered to our university's executive dining room, then taught a series of lessons on where spoons, forks, knives, and plates are at a "proper" dinner. It's an unnecessary thing to do by modern standards, but back then when mortgage-backed securities and rising valuations made money from nowhere, it was considered necessary for us to learn this stuff to not stand out in the world of the "new rich". Not billionaires like Gates, Bezos, Musk, or Trump, but high-value Americans with assets over a million dollars who wanted this kind of lifestyle. Dining Clubs are essentially an extension of this world of the "faux" rich. I wanted to give you guys a taste of the group that Finance majors were trained to serve and emulate. I switched my major from Economics-Finance to pure Accounting in late 2006 before the housing bubble burst, but I still remember these weird classes on etiquette.

Several days blurred by as Reese learned how to be the kind of waiter Dexter demanded. He’d braced for bottomless wine and endless tastings; instead, Dexter kept the lessons measured. He walked Reese through a revised, twenty-item menu with suggested pairings and four alternate preparations for dietary restrictions. “In a modern dining room, you cook for the guest you have,” he said. “Not the one you wish you had.” Reese thought memorizing dishes would be the hard part. It wasn’t. He needed

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Chris It's a big question for Colin and this writer of his fanfiction story Thanks, I haven't found any Colin Creevey/Harry Potter stories that felt right. To me, I did a "what-if" Colin's fixation on Harry was a shy queer kid using photos as an excuse to show his interest, it makes his character more interesting for stories than just the porn I've seen. Knowing he died in the Battle of Hogwarts, while his little brother survived, it adds some gravity to the unrequited romance. Yeah, I do agree that Colin has been through a lot. Additionally, there were a lot of dead people by the end of final novel. I wanted to eulogize the fallen in this short story, because even in victory, there will be people lost. Colin wasn't especially close to Harry unlike Fred or Lupin, but he's grateful for even a moment of grief from the person he loved. JK Rowling doesn't touch on this aspect of ghosts as much, but watching the world slide by and seeing the people you knew or loved move on without you is hard to bear. ----- The hardest part if I am going to continue this fanfiction for Colin's sake is to figure out how to give the kid what he desired realistically, while plotting a decent story around Colin's second chance. I don't feel like just flipping Harry's straight/gay switch or revisiting Hogwarts early years again, too easy and done by others better than myself.

Glad you like sober Dexter, people tend to forget that alcohol abusers aren't always drunk and emotionally tempestuous like TV shows make them out to be.

Thanks

Yeah, it took me a few years to write this one despite the short length due to the subject matter and the intrinsic details. Glad it interests you

The first thing you lose when you die is weight, but it isn’t just the weight you see on a scale. It’s the idea of contact. Every tug of gravity, every scrape of stone, every clumsy wrestle with your own limbs—gone. I pass through the world and the world passes through me, like an old photograph left too long in the sun. No one warns you about that. They tell stories of chills in empty corridors and rattling chains and cautionary moans. They don’t mention the stillness. They don’t mention how ev

Colin Creevey died at the Battle of Hogwarts on May 2nd 1997. This short story chronicles his afterlife and opens the perspective of a character on the periphery that is seldom used in HP fanfiction. It's sad and somewhat tear-inducing if you're familiar with the novels. Also, I have added a final scene at the end, I am thinking of giving this character a full story. It depends on how many readers find it interesting. If no readers exists, it's fine, I just wanted to give Colin a fresh take and a different kind of HP Fanfic.

The smell of breakfast tugged Reese up from a deep, muddled sleep. In the last dream he could remember, a meaner, greener Shrek had pinned him, kissed him, apologized, and, with a fairy-tale snap, turned into a beautiful man he promised to marry someday—Eddie Murphy’s Donkey providing color commentary like, “you could do worse,” and, unhelpfully, sizing the ogre up. Sunlight poured through the open window when he blinked awake. In daylight the house seemed a shade less bizarre. The clashing

Starting new book: Together in a Broken World by Paul Michael Winters Post-Apocalyptic gay romance with a road trip theme. It's not bad and I am glad an author has taken up the pen/keyboard to explore this area of fiction. (Personally, I enjoy the genre even before Walking Dead)

Reese couldn’t shake the last eighteen hours. Dexter Osenfield was at once a man he despised and a man he pitied. Dating had long since fallen off Reese’s schedule; sex, too, apart from the rare, hurried release in a shower. The saddest truth was that last night had been the first time in ages he’d slept beside another man—though not in any way he’d hoped. He’d imagined comfort, steadiness, a shoulder that stayed. Dexter was none of that. And yet Reese didn’t feel hollowed out. He felt, inexplic

Thanks for reading Looking forward to you reading more

Here's a link to my new Culinary/Romance Fiction story: Essence of Life This story has been a work of labor for many years. I conceived it back in 2019, but did not publish it as there was a lot of issues and Covid put a damper on things. Though not a long story, it's probably one of the most fun stories I've written about food and restaurant culture. I hope readers will enjoy it and maybe get a little hungry reading it. Good food like good stories should never be wasted. Bon Appetit

Food is essential to life. Billionaire or pauper, when hunger hits, you seek a meal. Tastes may range from a burger and fries to steak au poivre with pommes dauphine, yet the foundations remain universal: proteins, vegetables, sugars, spices—arrangements of molecules coaxed into flavor. Under the right hands, even tripe can masquerade as filet. That was the first lesson Dexter Osenfield learned in culinary school—thirty-two now, owner and chef de cuisine of the former one-Michelin-star rest

Dexter Osenfield is a restaurant owner and executive chef, who suffered several setbacks and is on the verge of losing everything. Reese Hershell is trying to get his head above water after his mother's death, dropping out of college, and supporting his younger brother. They'll strive to live better, find their lost passions, and perhaps gain more than they could ever imagine. (Weekly Publications- Every Friday with bonus Chapters on certain Mondays)

...Is there a reason we're all avoiding acknowledging Arthur C. Clarke by name? Sadly, despite this being an award winning YA novel, a lot of young LGBT readers in the US will not be able to read it due to various restrictions. Hope we can at least share good literature