Rilbur

No, I'm not that publicly out. Mostly because of family concerns. Not only am I still financially reliant on my family, but coming out could literally kill my grandmother. Her health has been on the edge for years, and giving her something extra to stress about could very well topple her over the edge. She's better than she used to be in a lot of ways, but still not what I'd call 'well'. It's nothing short of a miracle that she's still alive; and I'm actually starting to have hope she'll be alive this spring when I graduate from college, something I didn't dare dream of last year. It's not sure, but... That said, and slightly less OT, three cheers to those of you who are all the way out. One day I plan to join your ranks, and let the chips fall where they will. One day

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NEPH! Woo-hoo! Remember, you aren't any older, just better!

Mari, condoms don't suck quite as much as you seem to think for oral. (Sorry about the pun...) In addition to the 'plain' latex-flavored ones, they also offer a variety of 'flavored' condoms, or you can use flavored lube to help remove the taste. Sure, bareback would be 'better', but... safety first.

I actually meant me Guardians Spoiler: Oh, and perhaps here's an even worse bit, though I don't think I can count it as a cliffie.

'No pain, no gain' comes to mind. Coaches everywhere tell their athletes to just keep pushing, no matter what. And on one level, it's a good idea -- most minor aches and pains can be safely ignored, and learning to push through them is important. In this case, sounds like it was a mistake.

There are some scenes in my work that I can not reread. Look at chapter 2 or so of Guardians -- the rape scene. I can not reread it.

How about ending right after you killed off a major character? With no hope for 'redemption' as it were...

/me blushes. Thanks Nephy. Thanks for not giving me a pointed hint that Redemption is overdue for an update in the process, too... I want to finish off my rewrite of Trillion Dollar Family (hopefully coming out with GA.Stories) first.

dkstories, especially his Do Over series. Hands down the best i've read.

Possibly Kyle Aaron's Kandric cycle, but I think it was dkstories's works that were the first ones where I actually noticed where I was rather than just following a link and enjoying the story.

Take a look about 100 years ago... or 200, when slavery was widely supported, and even many of those that rejected it still thought blacks were 'inferior'. Because, after all, if they weren't they wouldn't have been made slaves, or they would have had civilization already, or another dozen reasons. (Mind you, the civilization point has some false legitimacy; as badly screwed up as Arabic culture is, African culture is quite possibly worse... and was worse then)

Is 'very' an option?

I have to side with Graeme. There are a lot of reasons someone might not realize it until late in life. And the bit about not recognizing anything until he had sex also makes an (unfortunately) large degree of since from my perspective. I didn't even imagine I could possibly be gay until... call it 22ish. Part of the problem lay with the delay in my general sexual development (embarrasing, but unfortunately informative for this discussion, I didn't learn about masturbation as anything other than a dirty word until I was nearly nineteen, and graduated from high school); without that particular formulative aspect to connect 'horniness' to sexuality, I didn't even recognize I was horrendously, and continuously, horny. And without masturbation to help me 'develop' and realize what I tended to think about, I had no way to start to recognize I leaned towards men instead of women, especially since my first (and more or less only) crush was for a girl. (?) Perhaps the theme for the upcoming Anthology says it best: people are wierd.

I prefer EPUB, or HTML, format over PDF. PDF has many advantages, but... frankly, it sucks. PDF is designed to replicate, page-for-page, whatever document / design you want. All the 'features' of an image file, without the excessive size. What it doesn't handle is reformatting to fit the device you use. It's designed to take a document and put it on screen without any changes, or to print it and know exactly what will print with ease. No thank you. Anyway, just as a plug, I'm actually planning to provide E-Book, HTML, .doc, and probably a few more formats to my readers once I've finished cleaning up Guardian. (So close... just a few chapters left, and then doing all the final formatting, all too much of which is format-specific).

1 in 20 isn't that bad a number. Not as 'good' as 1 in 10, but... I guess we have to let the woman have some of the good looking guys. Edit: Couldn't let that one lie there, unanswered. There are three major problems with this. First, not all males have a strong sex drive; there are occasional individuals who don't. (Meh, so small a percentage I'll grant you them). Second, it is possible for someone to satiate their sexual needs with a partner, and therefore not engage in masturbation. Third, not everyone learns early. Some people might not learn until after they graduate high-school, right around the time they turned nineteen for example. (*cough*, slow learner, I know, but there were reasons that probably tie into some 'medical' concerns that came up later *cough*) This third group would really benefit from improved sex ed in schools!

That wasn't made purely at you; that was made at a lot of people who do similar things. It's just assumed that you have a facebook account these days, and it ticks me off. Edit: I'm sorry I lumped you in like that, jumping to an unjustified assumption as I did. My apologies.

It's important for people to remember that however popular twitter, facebook, myspace, digg, reddit, stackoverflow, or a dozen other sites are, they aren't universal, and relying on them is just plain stupid. Don't feel 'out of it' phana; it's other people making completely unjustified assumptions about what we do, and do not, have an account for and an interest in.

Can anyone tell those of us who neither have nor desire a facebook account WTF is going on?

You'd be surprised by how many published authors break or simply ignore those rules. Frequently.

WTF does anyone care if he's kissing a girl? Is there something I'm missing?

I love Tanya Huff I haven't ready her blood / smoke series yet, but I've read the keeper ones, and loved them to pieces. I've also read the quarter's series, and those are good too. Enchantment Emporium was great, and so was Valor. Um... I think I like her too much, perhaps?

And yet language is, to quote a professor of linguistics, 'rule governed behavior'. You ignore the rules, and the sentence becomes nonsensical and fails to communicate. You can bend the rules to a degree, but if you go too far, you fail to communicate. And 'too far' varies from person to person.

Well, on the one hand 'thanks' as an author. On the other hand... Thank you, anthology team! I know full well that must be a lot of work, and you do not have enough help. Perhaps I'll be able to assist you next time; give me a shout if so!

Without access to the actual device, and basing myself on reviews, I don't think it's the best option for writing, but I suspect it is an option. I know that when I type, I NEED my tactile feedback; I simply couldn't type with the on screen keyboard. And if you add a keyboard peripheral, a lot of the advantages to the iPad (portability) start to fade. That said, for reading? I'd love one, yes I would.

Better idea; Just ignore it. Render him irrelevant by ignoring him like you would yesterday's garbage once it's been dumped.