gardentuber

I have a very different way of using music. I have only one (partial) story under my belt. I find music helps define the mood of my character in the story so I include his playlist to help set that mood. I assume some familiarity with music from readers. If not, I hope folks will check the web to familiarize themselves. If that's too much work... well... it's expecting too much, I suppose. What do i listen to while writing (or reading)? I put my iTunes on shuffle and let it rotate through the list. The speakers are in the living room and kitchen, so the sound isn't too loud. My music is extremely varied: world (iranian, Corsican, Pakistani, Mexican, Algerian are especial favorites), jazz (new and old), classical rock and lounge are favorite genres. Favorite bands/performers: Brave Combo, Hossein Alizadeh, the Sabri Brothers, Chavela Vargas, Radio Tarifa, les Negresses Vertes, les Yeux Noirs, Cesaria Evora, Tenores de Bitti, Boswell Sisters, Talking Heads, Paris Combo, Andy Biskin Quintet, Cornershop, Gnawa Diffusion, Esther Lamandier, Cheb Khaled, Lily Yuan, Maurice el Medioni, Mercam Dede, Moveable Feast, Ozomatli, Natacha Atlas, Tarkan, Randy Newman, Vocal Sampling, I Muvrini, Combustible Edison. Is that enough? Too much? 'Cause there are so many more!

Funny, I started the story but decided not to continue. I've consistently liked Dan's work, but couldn't get into this one. I suppose I'm squeamish. Strike that. I'm definitely squeamish. Sorry to be a wet blanket.

HAIR That's a long a troublesome topic for me. When I was a teenager, I thought body hair was repulsive. When I was a teenager, I was the first in my class to get hair between my pecs. It was obvious because I was on the swim team. I found it ironic that the class sissy was the most obviously hairy member of the class. I conflated body hair with masculinity. I suppose I still do. A few years ago, I was leaving the pool after a long workout and a 7 year old kid said really loud, "Mom, that man's hairy!" when I passed him. She shushed him. Yeah, I've got hair everywhere, back, shoulders (but not my ass)... and all the usual places. A friend said, of aging men, that we don't loose hair, it just migrates from our heads to our backs. Too true. So, is body hair sexy? Yeah! Do I like my body hair? Not really. I tried trimming my chest hair once. Holy sh*t! I was tortured by the itching for weeks. I'll never, ever = no never again = trim my chest hair! I find trimmed body hair to be attractive. I find sculpted pubes to be ridiculous and cheap looking, kinda wanna-be-porn-actor cheap. Ya know? Fun facts to know and tell: Did you know that, if you're reclining and eating with no shirt on, crumbs get caught in your chest hair? Did you know that a long beard can tickle your chest hair? Did you know that the hair on the top of your chest will often go white before the rest of your body hair? Did you know that as you age, the hair on your lower legs disappears due to abrasion from socks (and doesn't grow back!)? That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Um... Hello? First the business: a new chapter's up... finally some quality time between the guys. Second: Response has been... um... minimal. Thanks to those who have reviewed the story. Now, I don't want to be perceived as whining 'cause I'm enjoying myself composing this story. I'm comfortable with what's "on the page". I'm confident with how it's constructed. Technically, I'm trying to focus on using strong verbs, on not using the passive voice, on good grammar and spelling. The small response has me wondering if the pacing is too slow? the characters too dull? too old? the tone too heady? or too heavy? Is there not enough plot? activity? action? sex? romance? I welcome feedback.

I've just uploaded a new chapter of my story about a couple of adult men exploring boundaries and (eventual) intimacy. You'll find it (not surprisingly) in the eFiction part of the site. This is my second attempt at writing fiction and my first time sharing it, so feedback is welcome. As always, please be kind (though not untruthful!). https://www.gayauthors.org/efiction/viewstory.php?sid=1143&textsize=0&chapter=3

David, Thank you. That was a very satisfying conclusion to Master of Fire. For a romantic such as myself, the bond between Chandler and Marty is heartwarming. I'm bummed that "George of Sedona" will conclude May 8th, only because I'm going out of town May 7th and will be incommunicado until the beginning of June. I'll have to patient!

You know when I wrote on another forum about what provided, for me, the "bones, muscle and viscera" in a story...? Well, I felt more bones, muscle and viscera in this most recent chapter of Master of Fire. The gristle derives from the difficulties with which the protagonists struggle due to the dislocation they've experienced. Those struggles: the loss of language, cultural fluency, and physical and conceptual tools... They're huge! The guys have experienced a gigantic loss aside from all that they've gained in their new World. Addressing that loss helps ground the story in human nature. Grounding the story in human nature helps me sympathize with Chandler and Marty. Sympathizing with Chandler and Marty helps me invest in their struggles as you develop their story. Hats off!

Well, I think we all know that the end of the story will include some true love, but between whom? My bet is that despite discovering he's bisexual and that he's interested in Dale, Cole will blow it and it'll be Jeremy and Dale in the end. I suppose we'll just have to wait to find out... We're waiting.... Patiently..... Still waiting........ Yup, we got the patience of Job!.......... Don't rush for our sakes!........

David, What a rich story, like a mage's bean and barley soup, redolent of herbs and garden vegetables. I'll look forward to future chapters. There's a part of me that feels there was simply too much on the table. After reading it, I'm overfull, like after a Thanksgiving meal. I feel the need to circle the block a couple times. The story of the boy's visit to Glebe or their attack and its reapercussions could have been their own chapters, as could the story of the visit to the mage's water-encircled cottage or the ghost's visitation. I assume they're just a taste of things to come and that we'll visit some of these situations in future chapters, 'cause you've left us some solid bones to gnaw upon. The folk tale "How the Woodpecker Got Its Red Head" was a beautiful children's morality tale. It fit so naturally into the scene where it appeared. It truly had the flavor of a Grimm brother's story. To extend the analogy, it had its own savor, perhaps as a dumpling floating in a rich pottage. And now I need to prepare to leave for Easter dinner. I guess food's been on my mind!

As the boys travel towards Eblis they're feeling the susurrus of evil washing over the mountainous border. They've begun to get tetchy. It's a relief to see them reacting in such unwelcome but human behaviors. They're just regular (magical) guys. No goody-two-shoes, they! "Hmmm. In part because David still has trouble writing transitions showing the passage of time. Sigh." Yeah, I've been told I am too attached to practicalities and the prosaic, that I'm too 1st chakra, but having an idea of the passage of time in a story helps me feel settled. Those prosaic elements: how do the characters manage their finances (income and expenditures)? where are they in the passage of time (where's the sun? what season is it? how many annual cycles have passed?) how do they find sustenance? Those elements ground the story and give me a sense of the physicality of the narrative. The story takes has bones, muscle, viscera. While you may feel challenged communicating the passage of time, you certainly keep us grounded in the culinary experiences of the quartet, from watery stews to near beer, pemmican to amber ale. Another note: thanks for the vocabulary lessons. I can usually find a word in a chapter that sends me to the dictionary. And what's even cooler... you offer a definition of new words at the bottom of the chapter. Is that cool or what?! Before closing: thanks as always for your time and trouble in "translating" these stories for us. And thanks for your generosity in sharing your thoughts in this forum!

Here's a reader's 2 cents: When reading an interminable serial novel, I find it annoying when a character exhibits a completely new history/personality/point-of-view/cousin in, say, the 30th installment. While I realize the change may be critical to keeping the story going, the addition seems to be at the convenience of the writer but not the story. It seems some initial definition of the plot line would provide for any developments so they would be inherent to the story rather than added at the last minute. (I swear I'll not to use the word "gestalt" here!) How does one create that definition? Why, with an outline! Also, as David stated above, writing biographies of characters makes good sense. Actors do this in preparing for a role, why not writers too? Of course, many writers never bother to run a spell check, so it's probably expecting too much to ask them to prepare an outline. As a reader, I don't want to be taken out of the story by observing the writer's technique (or lack thereof). Please, let me be swept away!

Graeme, Kit et al, Thanks for exploring this with me. It's been helpful to read reader's and writer's thoughts on the subject and to see where my concerns may be parochial and where they are global. Tks all!!

It's great to read people's thinking on this subject. In my original post, I didn't self-identify as HIV+, but I should have. I am a very private person and feel that my medical condition is salient only to someone with whom I am intimate. In this discussion, though, my diagnosis informs my thinking and opinions on the subject. I received my diagnosis around 20 years ago. I lost my life partner to AIDS in 1995. I am not naive regarding the horrors of the condition. Kit posted: First of all, I support your main point and I don't wish to trivialise it, but perhaps the expression of the point is a little extreme in places. For example, in my experience there are very few stories in which the protagonist dies of anything. Killing off the protagonist is not something that authors do very often, not least because it's usually very unpopular with readers. Well, yes, I was on a rant (and probably still am). While I don't interpret my post as extreme, I admit it is provocative. Mea culpa. There is another aspect to Kit's comment, however. It's the concept that an author giving a character HIV is tantamount to killing him. Currently, in most western industrialized nations, contracting HIV is not a death sentence any more than having diabetes is a death sentence. It's not great. It's not sweetness and light, but it is survivable in the long term. Again from Kit's post: Please don't ask me to name examples - I have a memory like a seive and rarely remember the titles of any story I've read more than a few hours ago!. The sort of story you describe seems like the melodramatic rubbish that is common in gay fiction (and indeed in most fiction) on the net, and so it is the type of story that I would probably have stopped reading long before the situation you describe. My memory is just as moth eaten. Remembering all the stories in which I've encountered the HIV=bad trope would be impossible. I read stories on a number of websites, so have trouble recollecting which story derives from which site. I've not yet begun to read any of Mark Arbour's opus, so that's not the source of my rant. I chose to locate my rant/conciousness raising exercise on the Gay Author's forum because GA is a collection of careful and considered authors and I trust my concerns will get an honest analysis here. The two most recent stories in which I encountered the plot device were (otherwise) very engaging and entertaining, definitely not rubbish. And both were located on other websites. The most recent was a Horatio Nimier story, the previous was a Nick Archer story. As I just stated, I have great respect for both author's story telling and language crafting abilities. I've encountered similar stories on the Forbidden Fruit website, another site of usually good story telling. In another insectivorous allusion, I didn't intend to kick the beehive here at GA but simply stir up some discussion on this subject. Graeme stated: I think the message is that AIDS is a probable consequence if you behave in risky activities, just like being crippled is a probable consequence if you consistently drive at excessive speeds. I take issue with this statement. Let me address this from the driving metaphor (it's less emotionally charged). I'd state: "...being crippled is a possible consequence of consistently driving at excessive speeds". Then again, a pedestrian can be run down while in a crosswalk, crossing with the traffic light as happened to a good friend of mine. All activities carry some risk. Sometimes a "low risk" activity simply doesn't pan out. For some of us, contracting HIV occurred before the retrovirus (not a virus; cheers, Graeme) was even identified. In the early 80's, risky sex was defined completely differently than it is now. For others it's the result of a broken condom (yeah, that's happened to me too). Back in the day, I enjoyed a sedate sex life, much more restrained than many of my contemporaries, nevertheless, while some thoroughly promiscuous fellows didn't contract HIV, some of us serial monogamists did. I'm not meaning to bellyache; I'm just trying to make a point using my life experience as an example. That, and to point out that "shit happens"... that "bad" things happen to people in any number of unpredictable ways... that placing a value judgement on a person because something "bad" happened to them is beside the point... and that doing so is just another version of the "blame the victim" mentality that another poster commented on (in relation to rape victims). I'll admit that this line of reasoning is opinionated and that it is judgmental in its own fashion. After reading other people's posts, I know that I'm not unique in my thoughts even if I'm a bit strident in expressing them. Oh, and speaking of opinions... I really (really, really, really) like Graeme's stories. Just wanted to put that out here since I'm quoting from his post (and disagreeing with him as well!). Let me see if I can come at this from a different angle. Vito Russo wrote the book, "The Celluloid Closet", which describes the portrayal of homosexuality in Hollywood. He pointed out that for the longest time, if a homosexual was represented in a popular movie, he/she would probably get knocked off before the movie ended. We all know that homosexuals die but we also know that something's fishy if the majority of homosexual characters in movies are dead by the time the movie ends. Of course, there are many alternate plot lines to killing off the homosexual, but in Hollywood's reductive reasoning, "bad" things (death) happen to "bad" people (homosexuals). To emphasize that homosexuals are bad, well, they had to be killed. Now, I'm not Vito Russo and I've not done an exhaustive analysis of web based, gay erotic fiction. Still, my (unscientific) analysis is that the majority of HIV+ characters in web based, gay erotic fiction 1) have been disloyal to their partner (the protagonist) 2) the disloyalty is evidenced by their promiscuity, 3) they then contract HIV which develops into AIDS and then die, while 4) their wronged partner goes on to form a long lasting, monogamous relationship with his soul mate (happy ending!). There are so many other possible plot lines (how about the plot line in which the HIV- guy dumps his committed partner after 5 years because he's, all of a sudden, frightened of sero-conversion? Yeah, I'm bellyaching. Yeah, it's happened to me... twice). To use the "Celluloid Closet" test, if the majority of HIV+ characters are unsympathetic and are then killed off by the end of the story, well, something's fishy. Enough, I do believe the horse is well and truly dead. I'll stop beating it now.

I've just finished reading yet another story in which a character becomes HIV+, contracts AIDS and then dies. It's never the protagonist, it's always a supporting character. The supporting character's HIV status and AIDS diagnosis is always a comment on his promiscuous sexual behavior. Usually, it's also a situation in which the character has wronged the (good) protagonist and then gets his just desserts. The message is that AIDS is appropriate retribution for a character's selfish and immoral behavior. I'm really fed up with this trope. I wouldn't be surprised it this were coming from a right wing, fundamentalist religious organization, but coming from gay authors writing for a gay audience... it appears to be an example of deeply seated fear and self-hatred. In some ways it's understandable. After all, we're all terrified of sero-conversion. Being a member of the community that has been on the forefront of the epidemic, most of us have personally observed the ravages of AIDS. We experience well founded, visceral fear when the subject arises. It's too close, too familiar. The more we can distance ourselves from HIV, the more we can see it as someone else's problem. The more it is seen as a problem for "the other guy", the "bad guy" -- certainly not something that would effect a "good guy" like ourselves -- the less we have to worry. Well hogwash!!! I'm tired of reading this hateful drivel. Nobody wants to be HIV+. However, it's not cosmic retribution for having too much sex or too casual sex. HIV is a virus for heaven's sake. Just a virus. It's transmission is mostly a matter of dumb luck unless a person is celibate. I suspect there's not a single reader of this forum who's not taken unnecessary risks at least once in his life. HIV/AIDS should not be a plot mechanism for differentiating good characters from bad characters. As unwelcome as sero-converting is, it's not a tragedy. It's not a death sentence. Most HIV+ people are surviving for decades now that the pharmacology has become so sophisticated. Howsabout dispensing with melodramatic plots in which AIDS is synonymous with badness and tragedy? Howsabout acknowledging that there are good, responsible, kind HIV+ members of this community? Howsabout dispensing with denial? Howsabout showing consideration for the HIV+ readers in this community? Howsabout including and welcoming HIV+ members of this community and not alienating them with cheap plot devices? Howsabout gay authors vowing to present HIV in a more compassionate way starting now?

Well, Libby, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the story as it currently exists on this website. I'm taken aback with a) the richness of this stew of a story, a regular goulash! and the quantity of responses on this thread! You Go! I'm fascinated by the characters, especially Nate and Will, oh and also Emma. The essential plot line: a sixteen year old kid escapes with his seven year old sister and sets up housekeeping in a new home is, well, a bit contrived. But, if you can accept the premise, and any story requires a degree of suspension of disbelief (does it not?) the story really grabs at you. As I said, I'm entranced with Nate's stoicism balanced by his innocence. I'll be interested to read about his preparations for his and his sister's escape prior to when we pick up the story. Likewise, I'm taken with the contrast between Will's initial hopelessness and his slowly developing assurance and hope. And Emma, her character may never get developed as you proceed with this tale, but her kind-heartedness and naivete/myopia make me curious. So far, Bran and Jon don't show the depth of the other characters, and Sophie is simply a requisite foil for Nate's and Will's character development as well as an element that moves the plot along (and very effectively too!). For me, the moist poignant events (which have gotten me choked up and teary eyed) have included Will's observation that Nate is in way over his head despite Nate's belief that he's calling the shots; Nate's sacrifices for the comfort and safety of his sister and Sophie's perspicacious attempts to calm Nate's fears. That last one, though, doesn't quite ring true with the character or her 7 year's old emotional development. I'm always interested in a character's limitations. We've witnessed Will's dissolution early in the tale as he succumbs to his addiction. I'm still waiting for Nate to fail and come apart due to his inability to control his sister's security. The opportunity came up as he was forced to let Will take Sophie into the hospital's emergency department while he stayed in the waiting room. While we've read what occurred in the emergency room, we don't know what happened after Nate was left on the other side of the swinging doors. Personally, I'd like to see him come unravelled a bit. It would be a great chance for Bran and him to do a little more bonding apart from their flirting. And it would be more touching if he came apart in a way that doesn't include a major plot element. Perhaps I can make myself clearer... His coming apart would make him more accessible to us readers, he'd be less heroic and more human. Such a development has it's own drama, apart from, say the drama of meeting his father or his father's snatching Sophie, if you catch my drift... So, here I am, imposing myself on your story. My apologies! However, I'm clearly unrepentant. I worry about the appearance of Jon. I worry that the overall plot will resolve with Will and Jon making a loving couple balanced by Nate and Bran, with Sophie being the glue that holds the alternative family together. It's a sweet resolution, but perhaps a little too.. what?... pat? saccharine? neat? Of course, there are the other characters... the father, who will certainly appear, both in flashbacks which will explain the necessity for Nate's and Sophie's excape and later, when he discovers the location Nate and Sophie (can already see the court case in which the lawyers Will and the father battle for custody); Cat and Alex, who may just appear to add some pathos to Will's past or who could play a part later in the tale (especially Alex, perhaps as a best friend to Sophie?); and that dark horse, Emma who has piqued my curiosity. I'll just have to wait. The arc of the tale has clearly only begun. Thanks for taking so much time and effort with your story. Your trouble has produced an engaging tale populated by endearing characters. I'm hooked!

You know, there are so many ways to cry. I usually wail (I can't go to sad movies, it's too embarrassing), but this story had me keening. It's not a pretty sound. Years ago, I discovered that the world is divided into those who have lost a dearly loved one and those who have not. People in the "those who have not" category have no idea what a void the loss leaves. It's a physical thing, the void. It sits in your chest, like a black hole it sucks all the light from your life. The vacuum has diminished after more than a decade, but it's still there. It'll never go away. I remember the first months and year... The greatest pain was unexpectedly coming across our plans that would never come to fruition: doing the weekly shopping, the seed packets for the vegetable garden, the vacation plans (as in your story), our annual Thanksgiving dinner with friends (the food was put on the table and I had to close myself in the guest room to cry... well, wail). And yet, life does go on. We do meet our "Daves". We find our lives extending in directions that were never a part of our shared plans. It's been twelve years, four months and thirteen days, no, fourteen days. Life continues to go on. Now, I've gotten maudlin. Anyway, thanks for the story. I think you understand what I've been talking about. It's nice to read a story from someone who gets it. A previous commenter referred to your personal experience. I'm sorry for your loss.