W_L

It's a story of familial loss and shattered dreams with memories of a garden. The story is very beautifully told.

This is a very moving and touching story about loss and mourning. Things can't put back together again sadly. Great story

It was fun to write historical fiction. Glad you like the little details. Boston has changed a lot over the centuries, but our defining period was in the 1760-1770s. Little details like street names and our infamous redlight district usually get pushed aside when people talk about famous events like Boston Massacre, Tea Party, and the battles during the revolutionary war. People forget that the reason why teenagers are featured prominently in fiction, especially historical fiction, isn't just because everyone prefers featuring good looking teens (CW teen drama aside ) , but a lot of times in history, it was teenagers who were involved in the most labor-intensive duties of society. Wigmaking was one of those professions. Also, despite Boston being prominently British descent, a large influx of German immigrants came in the 18th century. However, when people talk about the trigger points for American Revolution, very few people mention Christopher nowadays or if they do, they neglect to consider he was a child of German immigrants as Samuel Adams populist rhetoric had mollified this aspect (which could have split opinions due to view on ethnicity back then) to the event and made his killing an "every child" for Bostonians and the colonies at large.

I'll start reading now Thanks for including me

It’s hard to say exactly when it started—this sharp downward spiral and the unexpected purpose I found at the bottom of my life. Maybe it was the first pint on the night after Christopher’s death, the bitter ale sliding down like I could drown myself in it, wash his blood from my memory. But that was long ago, and I’ve drunk so much since then. I can hardly separate what I did out of anger from what was just the ache of losing him—the boy I would have loved openly if we’d lived in a world where

Can't wait to read the stories. I hope folks enjoy mine as well.

I'm debating on whether to release the chapter for Christmas to test waters or wait until next year. Do you think there's enough room in reader's hearts for a fluffy cat shifter adventure story.

This is more a YA story with fluffier themes, literally and figuratively. It's a hero's journey and modern fantasy tale with a disabled character, who I think fits better in this story than the vampire one. This story is going to be a lot lighter and have a few laughs for cat owners. It's easier to write and I already have 2 chapters now. The "real" Vampire one is more mature and social commentary material on society, mortality, and human value. I want to go into dark places in that one. Hence why I haven't written chapter 1 yet on that one.

That's why you have to be rich and powerful to enjoy immortality. Can you imagine Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or even Elon Musk in this scenario, they'd be living their peak lives and for Elon, probably a palace on Mars.

When my muse is running, I don't always go in one direction. This one, I've actually written one chapter of already. -The Setting begins in a modern town called Cooksville in the United States. It's going to shift to Alteria, a fantasy world with various magical creatures and shifter species, along with humans. -This story is going to be dual 1st-person narrative, a type of writing I haven't done in quite some time. -The first main character will be named Kevin Kidd: fourteen years old, male, short height, skinny body, red hair, green eyes, angular nose, deaf with portable hearing aids, near-sighted with glasses, and introverted. Kevin is a high school freshman, who gets bullied a lot in school. Kevin enjoys reading fantasy web novels and manga, dreaming of being a hero despite his various bodily limitations. -The second main character is Nico: a cat shifter, crown Prince of Catland kingdom in the world of Alteria, thirteen years old, male, tall for his age, average body with some baby fat, blond and white hair, green eyes, flat nose, possessive personality towards Kevin, and extroverted. Originally, his people are not named until their age of ascension at 18 by their masters or parents, who they inherit skills and titles from, or a special lover grants them a courtesy name to identify them as their betrothed mate (Sort of like a Wedding Ring). Kevin names him, Nico, after Kevin rescues Nico from some high school bullies, who torture him and attempt to burn him alive. -Nico fled his world due to his uncle, the regent of Catland, who usurp the royal family and framed him for treason. Nico had learned that his uncle has been secretly conspiring with the Demons, beings from another world, to take over Alteria by undermining the fragile alliance between the shifter-human-demihuman kingdoms. Nico hoped to find allies with equal magical power to the demon lord in order to reverse the situation, so he ended up on Earth through a random portal. However, upon entering the human world, he discovers he can't shift into his human form and is stuck in his cat form. -This story will have some comedy, I want to play off the human and cat dynamic between Kevin and Nico. Kevin won't know he's courting Nico and Nico will think Kevin is being too forthright with his affections by touching him in sensitive areas

Thanks for reading, I can offer a little happiness in despair

That's why brainstorming happens to flesh out the story and improve the flow If the MC is part of a minor vampire nobility, like the Queeny family for instance, it could work to age him up to 18 and make him interact with the blood livestock. (I love using entendres, John Francis Queeny was the founder of Monsanto Corporation, so it would fit if his descendants became literal bloodsuckers ) Remember all of these Vampire groups are descendants of modern corporations, political families, and powerful influencers in our modern society. Access to Immortality just adds the entire dimension of using human beings as livestock. Now, the big writer's block I have is differentiating this story from a Slavefic or modern-day version of an antebellum novel, like Uncle Tom or Huckleberry Finn. The big problem is a lot of the territory have been traversed in the past by abolitionists, so I am mindful of the lessons learned. This should be a modern reflection on our society's tendencies and problematic focuses that allow for such a triumph and disaster. Who wouldn't want to live forever if they had money and power? And society is willing to grant them this immortality, because the cost is not born on those who serve these modern vampires, but the excess population from outside the society. I thought about writing a villain novel and just have my MC be an unrepentant "elite" who uses and abuses the livestock, but again, I'd be going down the slavefic territory. Keeping the MC young was a means to prevent that too (I really hated Docile).

December 25th, 2020 The world outside was eerily silent. The streets of New York City, once a symphony of horns, chatter, and life, now stretched like an empty, snow-dusted canvas beneath the weight of the ongoing pandemic. From the window of our apartment, I watched the cityscape, its quietness a stark reminder of how much had changed—and how much was out of anyone’s control. Tommy and I had taken every precaution over the past several years: disposable masks, hand wipes, hand sanitiz

This might be sacrilege to diehard fans of this sci-fi franchise, but I did not finish TekWar by William Shatner, nor do I have any intention to read the series.

True, writing teens in these stories is extremely hard. One of the reasons why I've considered keeping the MC young is I don't want the love interest and the MC to have too much of an age gap that violates site rules. If he's too old, then it gets uncomfortable and morally dubious. As for blood livestock, they're naturally going to need to be young and "bred" to maximize performance for their future recipients. According to one report I was reading, an 20-year old blood donor to a 67 year old resulted in nearly 20-year regression of organ function improvement for the elder recipient (Scary that these studies are going on). I'm pushing the limits of the science, it's no different than breeding horses, cattle, or pigs for the ideal outputs. In this case, human beings are commodified for performance.

Feeling like a classic

I thought I'd write out my story ideas from a recent brainstorming session: -Firstly, the genre would be speculative fiction/science fiction about a near-future society, based on the recent advances of young blood transfusion and convalescent plasma therapy, which President Trump and key advisers supported versus mRNA vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic. It's one of the areas that traditional regulatory guidelines might not have caught up to the data, which indicates this approach might be highly effective for general population immunity. -It's a dystopia, but how do you get from our current world to one where wealthy and powerful elders begin farming human beings for literal immortality Incentivize certain groups to become dependent on your enterprises, reducing the free flow of capital. Essentially, it's monopolization based on crony capitalism, we've started seeing formations of such groups in technology and finance, i.e. can a restaurant or a private plumber, carpenter, or electrician operate without credit to obtain goods or tools. Controlling intellectual or monetary capital, the principle is the same Create a crisis to stimulate decentralization. If you offer different segments of various groups and interests benefits, you can maintain an upper hand by keeping civil administration fragmented and impotent. Say the country is being invaded by a foreign power or have a surplus of illegal immigrants who cannot be expelled and cannot be used as labor force, the offer of being "livestock blood donors" might be appealing. (Around 3 million illegal immigrants exist in the US right, would be hard to get rid of by force, but not hard to convert into human material under the right conditions) The modern vampire society is run like a feudal state, where there's a nominal king from the elder vampire elites, but each vampire group/corporation/bloc would have more power than any appointed leader of the king. Such a society should not exist in a vacuum, other world powers should also be interested in similar practices, creating "Pop" wars, where populations from various countries are extracted to satisfy blood quotas. Religion and moral fluidity- Religious drift occurs over time, especially among the Judeo-Christian religion to allow for the use of blood livestock. Catholic and Protestant beliefs are co-opted by a new religion with various tenets that conform to the new social order, just like Medieval European Christians changed their pagan practices by changing gods to Saints for worship among other things. -Main Character- He should be part of a family of "freeholders", a term meant for those independent business owners and farmers in society. I imagine a boy in his early teens, around 12-13. He is deaf and does not have access to a hearing aide, nor was he taught sign language due to the poor educational standards in this society. Thus, the boy must rely on a notepad and pencil to communicate to others. He's skinny and bullied a lot by other freeholder. Update 1.1 Main Character- I am going to age up the male protagonist to 23 years old and change his background. Instead of being deaf (my other ongoing project's MC is deaf and I am using Sign language in that one) he'll be visually impaired (like myself, I am blind in one eye). He's the bastard son of the Queeney patriarch, an important family that manages and enhances the "blood livestock" for prospective buyers. Freeholders will be changed as people who can buy and train blood livestock for profit under contract with more powerful groups, making them akin to independent ranchers of our current world who operate on contract basis to raise cattle to larger meatpackers. New plot points: 6. The "vampire"/Lords of this world can custom order their blood livestock for various performance enhancements, i.e. say you want blood that has better oxygen flow like an athlete, you can have select special stock, which is trained for it. We see that right now with various athletic training programs that target specific bodily functions with top athletes and specialized livestock for certain tastes are common like the famous Wagyu Kobe Beef cattle raised in Japan that fetches thousands of dollars for an A5 rating. ---------------------- Now the question is how can I write a story that will allow the protagonist to make a difference in such a dystopian world? Yes, I could do the trope of him meeting one of the "blood livestock" boys and build a relationship, but then it would feel like I am writing a reinterpretation of an antebellum drama with the injustice of slavery. This isn't the old issue of slavery, it's more nuanced and societally complex, the arguments for human mortality is not something to toss around without some forethought. That's where I was stuck in brainstorming the story

Thanks guys, This is just me writing fanfiction in-between major projects. I'm glad people enjoy it.

For Tommy and me, the walk back to our apartment after work was unhurried. The bustling sounds of New York City filled the gaps between our sparse words, an ambient hum against the weight of the conversation we were about to have. Tommy already knew about Kayleigh’s abrupt visit to my clinic and the videotape she’d brought—though without an old-fashioned VCR, the tape's contents remained a mystery. I had told him everything: her disheveled state, the desperate threats, the tape, and finally, the

Right now, I am immersing myself in several online stories before I head off on vacation around Dec 16-20. One of them, I think some GA readers might find interesting, despite the difference in culture. It's called Back to My Youth, it's the story of a man, who goes back to the body of his high school self, and saves his best friend, later his boyfriend/partner, who would have died in a sanatorium due to the "treatments" for homosexuality. It's an interesting story as it comes from a Chinese cultural perspective. Here's a link for the fan translation https://chrysanthemumgarden.com/novel-tl/btmy/ The website is also pretty good if you're trying to get access to underground published gay literature from China, though private gay publishing exists in China, it is too censored to be exported (unlike Japanese/Korean BL), so it's rare to find english translations of gay Chinese novels.

May the Five Year Mission continue... Better than the JJ-verse, less lens flares

This reminded me of a scene from Futurama: "Someone's acting awefully aluminum"- Bender

As a writer, I prefer to be honest with my ending based on the circumstances of the characters, setting, and plot. As a reader, I prefer an ending with the possibility for more stories or imaginative potential (The end of one story should not just be "The End") As a beta reader, I prefer an ending where the writer follows through on his promises within the story, so my efforts and time were valued. --------- It's hard to put value judgement on an ending, depending on my role and perspective.

I took concepts from the movie for this, Kayleigh did become a drug addict prostitute in a timeline George gets arrested, but... Tommy's accident has a few more ramifications Maybe, maybe no

Oxygen is not flammable onto itself. Oxygen is an oxidizer that makes flames stronger, brighter, and more explosive. Oxygen can lower the ignition temperature of other materials, causing them to catch fire.