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Christmas Storms 4. New York Holidays

   (1 review)

Asher and Seth are two young teens living in New York City who have recently become boyfriends. Thanks to their efforts, Kyle and Francis (Freck) have take their first steps together as a couple, but they face many obstacles because they are preteen prodigies and because of a troubled past. Both young boys come from backgrounds of affluence, yet neither has experienced the love of family. Many storms await all four boys in their explorations of love, including a record Christmas blizzard. Can love be their salvation?

The author gratefully acknowledges the invaluable assistance of David of Hope in editing my stories, as well as Awesome DudeCodey’s World and Gay Authors for hosting them.
 
Disclaimer: This story is a fictional account involving gay preteen and teenage boys. There are references to gay sex and anyone who is uncomfortable with this should obviously not be reading it. The reader takes all responsibility for the legality of reading this type of story where they live. All characters are fictional and any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental. The author retains full copyright.
Copyright © 2018 Altimexis; All Rights Reserved.
  • Classic Author
  • 12/05/2018 (Updated: 12/19/2018)
  • 3 Chapters
  • 32,680 Words
  • 9,311 Views
  • 17 Comments
  • Teen
  • Complete

Story Recommendations (1 member)

  • Action Packed 1
  • Addictive/Pacing 1
  • Characters 1
  • Chills 0
  • Cliffhanger 0
  • Compelling 1
  • Feel-Good 1
  • Humor 1
  • Smoldering 0
  • Tearjerker 0
  • Unique 1
  • World Building 1

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Table of Contents
  • 1. Part One
    • 11,135 Words
    • 2,205 Views
    • 6 Comments
  • 2. Part Two
    • 9,617 Words
    • 1,808 Views
    • 5 Comments
  • 3. Part Three
    • 11,928 Words
    • 1,520 Views
    • 6 Comments

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Former Member

   1 of 1 member found this review helpful 1 / 1 member

Unlike the author’s Naptown Tales, the protagonists in this story almost have access to incredible wealth for mere teenagers. Several of them have an obsessive interest in very high-end audio equipment and esoteric audio formats. This was off-putting to me and distracted from the otherwise interesting characters and interactions. This story seemed less grounded than previous stories I’ve read by the same author. I wish I could have given this story a better rating.

Response from the author:

Thank you very much for your honest review. I know that methods of music reproduction are not as important to some as to others. My editor forced me to cut the time devoted to audiophile music by about 2/3, so the original was much worse from your standpoint. Still, as I pointed out to him, had I trivialized it all to a paragraph or two, some of my other readers would have complained that it wasn't real. I also went into a lot of detail on Asher's cooking skills, in spite of having very little experience in the kitchen myself. It's not my own interests that dictate what I write but rather the interests of the characters I've created. That said, I think that today there's an expectation that music should be plentiful and free with much less interest in faithful reproduction than in the past. When I was in my teens, my allowance was $5/week and I spent about $7 to purchase a new vinyl album every month. That album would be about $45 in today's dollars. A cheap stereo back in the 70s was around $200, which would be $1300 in today's dollars. The thing is, even the best stereo back then sounded like crap compared to most sound systems today, so naturally most people today are appalled at the thought of spending more than $1 or 2k on and entire home theater. Plus for $10 a month, one can practically stream the entire world's library of music in pretty good quality. So why in the world would one every spend thousands on audiophile equipment, and why would they spend $20 or $30 just to download a high-resolution version of one measly album? However, for those who are passionate about music, trying to reproduce the experience of a live performance is a worthwhile pursuit. Enough said about my characters' passion… and mine.

 

Regarding the access to wealth of these teens - remember that some of my Naptown Tales teenagers also had significant access to wealth. Jeremy was flat-out rich and was given a Porsche for his 16th birthday. Trevor was merely affluent and he only got a Jetta. However, David's dad lost his job and so there was significant belt tightening and Kurt was flat-out poor. Fast Forward to this series and welcome to the economics of Manhattan, where people spend over half their incomes to live in tiny apartments. I'm aware of no other city in America where some much affluence exists, side-by-side with so much poverty. Seth has access to fantastic wealth because his parents have invested wisely, and because they're trying to make up for lost time spent with him, but his father represents a district where the majority of his constituents live in housing projects. Asher's parents own their own take-out restaurant but they live hand-to-mouth with him in a tiny 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom apartment that cost about a half-million to buy and with a maintenance payment of cost to $1k/month. That's considered affordable housing in Manhattan! Yet as poor as Asher feels he is, he avoids having anything to do with the kids in the housing projects that surround his apartment complex. That the spending of these guys seems skewed is a reflection of relative prices in New York. When your parents are spending so much on housing, spending $25 per person at a diner seems ridiculously cheap. In fact, if you know where to shop as Asher and Seth both did, food, clothing, entertainment and high-end stereo equipment are no more expensive in New York than anywhere else - it's only housing that's expensive.

 

Expect to see more of these guys in the coming months - and I have no further plans to get into high-end stereo stuff. 

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