Krista

Don't poor Steve him, he deserves every little flake that slowly melts, with the shock of the chill landing on his wee head. I also know I couldn't write in another person's style. Authors have their own habits, sure, but to be 'that' hyper focused on something to be able to copy it, would be headache inducing. ---- I wish @Mancunian well, sad to hear about their health issues. ---- The weather here is typical for late October, the mornings are crisp and chilly, wet from the dew. Sometimes the day warms to a nice day, but if there's a breeze, it doesn't. We can have all four seasons in the same week this time of year, a few days ago it got up to 80 degrees, it was lovely. We haven't had our first hard frost yet, either. We could use a little rain though.

Yeah, as I wrote Jackson, I pictured him as a cooped up, high-energy dog. Unless you allowed him to express himself and get some exercise and some of that energy out, you might come home to shredded couch cushions. He is definitely the poster child for inconsistent parenting as well.

Really? He refused money from them twice already? lol. I didn't realize he had done that, but I'll take the happy accidents, I guess. I also didn't set out in the beginning for Grace and Craig to be read as absent, but 'most' of the readers of this story saw them as such. Which is entirely fine, I am not strict with my character structure pre-writing, Jackson, Luke, and Cindy aside - as they needed a bit of pre-planning. So, in the writing I wrote Grace and Craig reacting to Jackson's antics organically in the moment and it just built them up to be not as present as they should have been. I know a lot of the backstory, and their work schedules played a huge role with it, but they definitely did leave Jackson to his own devices a lot and didn't follow through.

Yeah, I set out to really test people's patience with him. I had just finished writing a very less flawed character with, Cory in, "Standing in Shadows," so I wanted to branch out. Thank you for leaving a comment!

Depends on the day really. Also, if I'm dealing with your cheekiness Wildthing, I am far more likely to not be cool as a cucumber. I must admit I do react with the loss of control. Is it to a fault? Maybe, but I don't really know who will ever be brave enough to tell me such a thing. I mean, we've had the discussion of Husband's tactic for dirty dishes numerous times, as it is a tactic that seems to crop up in more issues than just dirty dishes. That's also why we have one of the world's most comfiest of couches for him. *whistles* On a more serious note: It definitely depends on the projected outcome. I think, at least for me when something pops up, I can work through multiple possible outcomes. If most of those possible outcomes outside of my control, are baseline manageable or has a lot of flexibility, I can deal with them without a lot of fight to regain control. I can be relaxed in those outcomes, whether they hindered me or not. If something outside of my control has more impactful outcomes, with unfavorable outcomes, or forced acceptances of bad outcomes, I struggle a lot with those, and they tend to stick with me a lot longer. Especially, if they impact more than just me.

I'm the mean one, I'm not scared, and that's me assuming neither of you are black belts or good throat punchers. And yeah, I'm over a year on a project I posted for a one-off Secret Author, so I'm well on my way to a nursing home before I get the second chapter out. I thought you handled the subject matter really well, gender fluidity, pansexuality, the whole thing. I think nerves are good, it means you cared enough to tell the story the right way and with this story, it needed the writing to be done the right way. It is all new to me, I've not looked into or really discussed any of it, parts of your writing was informative, but it wasn't overwhelming and distracting within the parameters of the story either.

I do not do horror at all. There's two films I find myself watching this time of year and those are, "Practical Magic," and "Hocus Pocus," but entirely for nostalgia reasons and nothing else. Halloween is my least liked holiday. I was totally that girl that used it as an excuse to dress as sexy as I thought I could. We all know what happens to those girls in horror/slasher films too... those little red heels do them in, every. single. time.

Hmm, I may have to tell the husband that Levi is my new hall pass and not Joey Votto. That man down to his name was just, shew. On a serious note, this was so well written and masterfully paced. The subject matter is entirely new to me, so I didn't know how I would fare with it. I think Prisma on Amazon has been the only other form of depiction regarding it that I have watched. So, I felt you did a great job allowing the shaping of Jay to develop. To do it in a span of 14k words makes it more of a feat, truly. The only thing I maybe would have wanted from this story was about 30 - 40k more words pre-meeting Rachel. And of course, about 30 - 40k more post meeting Rachel. I'm not ashamed to say that I'm greedy. Lovely story, I'm glad it caught my eye and I had a slowed down day to sit and read, as that's rare for me these days. I'm happy with the way it ended, as I became a bit worried after the first 'date' about where you may go with it. I'm glad you chose the path you did and not the one that hung around in the periphery of my mind while I read.

Ah, I need to get to writing, so I can continue my streak of attempting to upload a chapter/story and breaking the whole system for a few hours. On a serious note: The changes listed and upgrades we're getting seems like a healthy and structurally sound list. I hope it all goes smoothly. For me personally, I'm a visual person, I have to immerse myself and learn the changes, the tools, etc, for me to know whether or not I feel something is lacking. Enhanced for Mobile users is a big one though, whilst out camping in the summer that's when I know I have a lot of time to sit and browse stories on GA. I do not take any other devices other than my phone, and GA feels very clunky as it is. So, as far as the list above, that's the one I think will help most people. As well as the font sizes and minor issues associated with Light and Dark modes. Anything that makes submitting a story/chapter easier is also a plus, if it is a bit smoother than what we have now, good.

The sooner it snows on @wildone's wee head the better off we all are. Or maybe that's just my joy in life? He brought it on himself, to be honest...

What? Angelic little ol' me? I am glad you liked the story, it is a very early work of mine for an Anthology. I wanted to do a full circle sort of relationship with two characters, in brief little parts of their lives. Also, there's a word and time limit and I truly suck with both those constraints when I go to do a writing project for anthologies... 😮 I do hope you check out my other stuff, I'll point you towards 'Ridley,' as it is smaller and newer... if you want to give my writing more of a go.

Can you please write an entire short story using just idioms like you have supplied us here.

Yikes, I can't believe it has been over a year since the first part. I knew going in that I wasn't going to post anything else, not until I was close to completing the story, had clear motivation to complete it, and had an ending in sight that I could reach before the posting caught up to me. I've decided to wait until the entire story has been finished on my end. Which, may take more time than I would want, it is already over a year. I will give you a story progress report though, for those still interested: Learned to Lie: I'm up to 12 completed parts. That will likely be more, as some of the parts are too large, the largest being 20k words. I want to make the attempt to split them down between 5k - 7k. There are a few other parts that get upwards of 15k - 18k as well. So, if I am able to do that, we're likely already on part 15 or so. The word count right now sits at: 135,142; I never expected it to be this large of a project. If it keeps up, it will be a similar word length to my larger writing projects posted here. I mean, it's already a big chunk of words, only 7k of that is posted already. If I could, I would remove it from view and just start posting it all in one go, but a lot of people have already read the first part, so I don't feel it is appropriate. It was also for a GA contest, and I don't want to mess it up. So, yeah... I'm still writing. I don't have a lot to show for it for now, but maybe I can get a few of you back here whenever a posting schedule starts. I do not know when that will be, it won't be this year. Not unless I get a lot of writing done or find a nice and easy place to end the the story.

Red, White, and Royal Blue - parts of it were far too bogged down by the political atmosphere, and since I read to escape political atmospheres (at least ones too close to the one we're in at the moment), I DNF'd it. It lost a lot of the humor and fun after about the middle of the book as well. Cassandra Clare's - Dark Artifices. I read and liked the Mortal Instruments, by the end of MI, I thought it was a big dragged out. Infernal Devices being her best trilogy. But afterwards her writing got way too predictable and one-note. So by extension, the first book of the Dark Artifices trilogy ended my run with her entirely. Call me by your Name - I did a short review on another topic. Too wordy, too bogged down in cerebral pretentiousness that I just lost all feeling while I read the thing. If it got better in the latter half of the book, fine but I'll never know. Someone attempted to get me into reading James Patterson, I gave two of his books a try and DNF'd both of them. I can't remember the titles, so I can't say much about them, other than they were just too boring to hold my attention. There are countless other little fantasy books when YA - Fantasy was really big. A series I wish I never picked up was the Twilight series, I really wanted to DNF the hell out of it, but stuck with it. Do not hold that against me, I beg.

We had bookmobiles here as well. They only came twice a school term when I was in Elementary school. I think they stopped after the fifth grade, or that's when we aged out of the program and were expected to use the school's limited Library. I do not remember earlier books, I knew we were expected to read - the classes that read the most books and submitted the most book reports got parties at the end of the year. I was reading at five, mostly little picture books with two or three sentences per page. I honestly don't count those, but even at that age a kid could speed through them if they wanted to. The first book I remember reading for fun on my own without any expectations or incentives was: My Side of the Mountain. I fell in love with it and read it twice. I was in the third grade. It didn't keep me interested in books though, I had started little league girls basketball, it was the first league for just girls that year. We had mixed teams until then, which I still played on, but the travel girls team took all of my free time. I haven't read that book since pre-middle school. The other book series I read as a kid was the Narnia series, but to be honest the only one that held my interest was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The others I've only read one time and never revisited, but that book I have read multiple times. Harry Potter and to be honest Nifty got me back into reading for fun. Then GA. There is a book I read every other year or so, and that's "Hunter's Horn," from Harriette Simpson Arnow, only because I was at a book store and they had a "Local Authors," section, and I took a chance and bought her book. It isn't an easy read for a lot of people, but I love it.