Adam

The very last thing I wished to have happen when I initiated this conversation was the evolution of a vitriolic diatribe between readers. We share different opinions as to where the balance lies between the responsibilities of the author and the proper expectations of the reader. This isn't life and death, or a question of religious faith we're debating here. Get a life! Nevertheless, I should be less than honest if I left the question I initially posed just there, as if I am a disinterested interlocutor. I keep on repeating the initial caveat that my opinions need to be tempered by the fact that I am very much a novice narrative author. Multi-chapter books of a non-academic nature are an area totally new to me. So I may be speaking through the top of my head - or from some bodily antipodean area of my body! When, as writers, we put out our wares for strangers to pick up and read, it is very similar to a band playing its lead single as a promo for its new album. Likewise, a store will show something in the window to encourage you to enter to want more, and a restaurant will show a menu to get you to order food. In each case the contract begins once something is exchanged. Money for music, or goods, or a meal. But the means of exchange doesn't always have to be money - hard cash. This is because we, humans, have intrinsic value. Our time and our talent has value. It is the height of hubris, however, for an author to say, "My time, my talent, is of great value. However, the mere time of a reader has no value at all". In buying into your book, in investing time and interest, and emotion in getting involved in your story, the reader has fulfilled the necessary consideration element of a contract. Then you now need to respond in a professional way, which is to fulfill the contract in, amongst other things, a timely fashion. This doesn't mean writers have to meet strict deadlines or keep to a rigid schedule. I think very few of us don't have a "day job" and other volunteer and socially active engagements. And I imagine I'm not alone in having kids - and if you've ever had teenage boys, you'll know scheduling is totally oxymoronic with the words teen boy! What I suggest this does require of each of us is for us to be more empathetic with our readers. I look at the great authors I grew up loving: Kipling, Dickens, C S Lewis, Defoe, Conan Doyle and so on. Most of these originally wrote their stories episodically, periodically, or serially in magazines. Some stretched out over several years, such as the Narnia tales. So they weren't necessarily published by a rote calender of dates, or by certain press deadlines. What was anticipated was that stories would be seen often enough so that readers could keep track of the plot. Also, it was thought reasonable that, other than long sagas like Narnia (like Kendric ?) stories would complete a tale in three or four years. Finally I think that every story published here on Castle Roland is a treasure in that it contains part of each author's unique gifts and hard work. In my move to find balance between the enthusiasm for new stories which is the essence of an author's creative craft, and his readers' rights to hope that the story he's reading will flow well, in a timely fashion, and to an ultimate conclusion, I hope everyone wins so more people read and some transition to become fresh, young authors. .Ubarikiwe Adam

In response to D'Artagnon: "Touché", in both the literal and fencing connotations of the word! Adam

I know I shall make myself terribly unpopular with what I'm about to write, but I'm beginning Lent by being honest with opinions and speaking out about something which concerns me greatly. This website is a most valuable resource. There is no doubt in my mind that it contains the best library of stories in the genre on the Net.Proportionately, Castle Roland carries far more narrative suitable to younger readers than other sites. Consequently my colleagues and I who work with teenage refugees searching their new freedoms in sexual awareness now that they are in societies which permit such expression, have found stories written here to be a treasure trove. But as these young minds have enjoyed the stories, they have been gripped by the characters the authors have created, and they have become immersed in the action and the adventure. Teens, after all, are only kids with hormones, so imagination is still rife in their lives. But as this life of wonder still exists, teens' attention span is not yet that of an adult. They crave each weekly episode of their comic book super-hero character, or the follow-up to the last TV feature. We were the same at 16, or 18, even 20. Now I can be patient a few weeks whilst I await someone's muse to return the ink to his pen. Even I become a tad grouchy, however, if, after a few months awaiting the news of whether so-and-so survived or what's-his-name succeeded in his plans, I still have read nothing. What I'm saying is that we need to get a handle on this whole "In Progress" thing. I fully understand writers have a "real life" outside authorship. We all have an earning to make, presumably, or maybe a family to maintain, but once we begin a story and start to publish it, I believe we have made another commitment too. It is a commitment to our readers that we will give them a story with a beginning, a story line, and an ending. And, furthermore, it is my not entirely humble opinion, that we promise to do this in a reasonable time. Let me explain. Currently on the Castle Roland site sit 50 (exactly fifty) stories marked "in progress" but which have not had a single syllable added in over six months. Two stories (one each by Rilbur and Kyle Matthew Aarons) have had nothing added since 2014. Five more (by: Wolfwalker, Cynus, D'Artagnon, Shinichi and Ricky) have had nothing added since 2015. Possibly the authors intended these tales to be put on hold, or something. Whatever is intended, the readers shouldn't be left hanging for four or five years waiting for something to happen. For a teenage reader that is a lifetime. Four other stories are over three years without additional chapters (one each by David Spowart and Parker Shaeffer and two by Al Norris ) 11 stories are two years or more without any more chapters (but under three years) One each is by: Kyle Matthew Aarons, Parker Shaeffer, Jamie Haze, Andrew Todd and Billy. Six of the stories were by Multimapper. There are 20 stories by 15 authors with between 1 year and 2 years silence and a further eight stories with over 6 months in the dark. Undersong, Time Quake, Time May Change Me, and Billy Joe 's Journal 3, each are marked 'in progress', but appear on their last pages to suggest they are completed. The Kendric Saga is a special case, but I note that the author offered his readers 4 chapters in 2014, 8 in 2015, 16 in 2016, three in 2017, one in 2018, and none so far this year. It is exciting to get a book started. Although I am new to narrative, creative writing, I have written academic stuff, and for magazines, for years. I know the buzz one gets with a new project and a fresh canvass, a crisp, virgin manuscript to etch one's own vision thereon. All too often, after the initial rush has worn off, it is easy for the writing to become more a task than a treat, no longer a novelty, more a nuisance. So, it is easy to get tempted aside by another fresh project, a nascent idea on an original tack. The former story gets pushed to a holding file, where possibly there are already older files already sitting. The rest, you know it........it's history. Now, Castle Roland. Make the tough decisions. When is progress no longer progress, eh? I reckon 5 years without a peep can hardly constitute anything suggestive of movement. But then, I still think young......though, regrettably by bones tell me otherwise. Ubarikiwe Adam

Monsiour L'oiseau, I cannot condone others' lack of good manners in failing to reply or even acknowledge your letter to them. Of course I am not a prolific author of narrative, so do not exactly get swamped with fan mail. But as an academic writer I do attract a weighty post bag, even if that is nowadays metaphorical, regrettably. Add to that my daily medical business post and there seems to be a constant welter of letters with which to deal. The point is, Monsiour, dealt with they are. It is a matter of discipline and organisation to get at the very least a brief pro forma note sent to each correspondent. When, as in my early childhood, such a thing involved dipping a pen in an inkwell on your school desk (I attended a school built in 1432!), then blotting the paper, folding, putting in an envelope, stamping the damn thing, and walking it to a pillar box, that was laborious. Now it takes a two second click of my mouse to recover the pro forma, affix my signature, and email the bloody tract. There is no excuse not to reply. Now, indeed if you have even gone so far as to offer a critique, then you deserve more. Then, as my correspondents will attest has been the case with me, I return the compliment by giving a raison d'etre for my storyline or character action or whatever. But, as I began by saying, I can only speak for myself.As I say to my children, "As you interact with others once you leave home, remember, those who observe your actions won't only be judging you, but also those who raised you." Adam

We have had terrible terror attacks perpetrated on the city centres of London, Paris, Brussels, Nice, Boston, Berlin, and New York. They have varied in their degree of awefulness only by the level of the carnage the killers succeeded in inflicting on men, girls, boys, women, the peaceful communities they decided would be the token heads on the pikes of their ignorance-based hatred. 9/11 standing alone as an uniquely orchestrated case, the city centre bombings and shootings in more recent years in Europe and North America have, in addition to having had by now a terrible echo of repartition in method and choice of soft target, have also developed another level of inevitability. Just like school shootings in the US, actually that last phrase 'in the US' is almostredundant as virtually no school shootings occur anywhere else, but then. As I was saying, similar to school shootings, terror attacks in cities anywhere get wall-wall coverage. All other programmes are fused into a continuous airing of repetitious reportage of newsmen (or newspersons) talking to each other or to "experts" on esoteric minutiae or on things which even my little knowledge often finds the expert short of expertise. I found one such US professor during the Westminster attacks twice definitively identify for the watching millions on the most watched cable news channel in the States two churches in Westminster and the main entrance to Westminster all, each totally erroneously. The problem was the news channels has hours and hours to fill and little to say. So they put up self-styled experts who said nothing or said nonsense. All because every channel was feeling obligated to pay homage to the terrible fact that 10 or 15 or 20 people had died of shooting or bombing in a modern city centre. This week 21 people were blown up and shot during a 20 hour-long siege of a 5-star hotel complex in a modern city of some 6 million people. The city houses the fourth largest UN complex on Earth, is central to western military monitoring communications, and is headquarters for many international organizations. No, if it was Geneva, which will spring to the mind of many, you can be certain, the news would indeed be comprehensive. However, this was in Nairobi. So CNN, for example, carried an initialthree-minute news bulletin, followed later by a 5 minute longer story. It was never more than the third story of the day. By the second day, when fighting was still going on, it was barely mentioned at all. It must be noted here that the killers were the Islamist group al Shabbat, who are affiliated to IS or Daish, and they claimed the attack was in retaliation for the Trump Administration's decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. There was thus a clear link between this attack and the US. It was an attack by IS, which is an organisation the UD President says he has defeated. Yet this story does not merit coverage in the US. On the BBC website it was number one news, even though the Brexit debate was then going on in the British parliament. Theconclusion can only be that black African lives - or maybe even white African like mine - don't matter a damn to US audiences and that Donald Trump has it perfectly right all along. Perhaps he should just finish the job and build a wall with Canada while he's at it. It puts me in mind of the movie Maze Runner. Adam

This new author has a gentle sense of humour. His first two principal characters have indicated by their names an interesting sense of the cosmopolitan: Goedelic and Brythonic Celt and Flemish/Dutch in one, and a thoroughbred Highlander in the other. They may make good music, pun intended. Mendelssohn, perhaps! Or Vaughan-Williams? I think I like the way Juju has started this out. It has the interesting potential of being able to go in any number of ways. It teases with promise. That is the mark of a good first chapter. Thanks Juju. Adam

Hi Will!, I believe it was my search for this story which initially tweaked your interest in it. It is a trifle dated today, but nevertheless remains the best ballet boy story out there. But, more richly, the tale reaches into the vulnerability of even the most powerful and, conversely, the ability of the seemingly haughty to be understanding of those most vulnerable. For what is really little more than a novella, it manages to cram between its veritable covers a wealth of richly hewn characters akin to the first chapters of Kipling's Kim or of Dicken's "Tale...". My only feeling of shortcoming is that, unlike Billy Elliot, the story didn't continue through until we saw at least a glimpse of what either student became. After all, Will, you chose as your illustration, if I'm not mistaken a still from the short documentary on the Corp de ballet in Paris which follows the regime through to 16 or 17. It would have been great to have seen what Raphael and his cadet would have become by that age! There is a short documentary on the American or New York school of ballet programme or program for boys, but nothing has been written as a narrative in recent years that I can find. There seems to be no art in any of the multifarious dimensions of future multiverses. Adam

Hi my fourth Musketeer! I agree with theaforesaid in what both asserted and hope you pick up the literary challenge with your typical zany and off-left-of-field way of addressing the subject. However, I equally strongly hope you do NOT do it yet! Why? Because this site and others of this genre has sufficient stories of the, what I shall call the "hanging-chad" variety. They rob the reader just as those chads robbed the US of their rightful leader. I know I do not need to tell you that you already have five stories In Progress on Castle Roland. Two of these have seen no new chapters for over 9 months and one for over 3 years. This is almost Comicality territory, about par with Kyle Aarons! I often have to juggle writing academic articles for different magazines and journals, but I recognise my limitations and though I would love to do everything which catches my imagination - and for which in these cases I can earn a Shilling or two - I recognise that if I'm to do a satisfactory job of one or two, I cannot do five. Which is why my narrative writing has come so much later in my life than it has in yours, I expect. Of course you needn't heed me. But my teen readers who enjoy your hot stories hope you will. They are keenly awaiting the next installments of Riposte. Adam

I have been looking forward to seeing this story on this site and encouraged Sean long ago to allow the erudite readership of Castle Roland to have the opportunity to gain the rewards of reading his very worthwhile story. I shan't spoil any plots or forthcoming surprises, but those of you new to this story are in for an emotional roller-coaster, with interesting characters, some rarely seen in our site, to our shame. Occasionally you'll laugh at the American eye view of British life, but lads, roll with with the stereotypes and forgive, just as those of you on the East of the Pond still sometimes think all Yanks are actually Yanks and chew gum and build tree houses and call everyone (male) Sir. This is a great tale, well told and I look forward to reading my Castle denizens' opinions of it. Welcome Sean. Adam

I believe comments on The Kendric Saga are becoming simply too technical and, I believe such a word exists, pernicketty. The fact is, whether it is 80,000 or 800,000 words, Kyle has woven in this book the weft of a created history from his own imagining, and the weave of a panoply of characters as rich as that in The Old Curiosity Shop or The Utred Chronicles. Many contributory writers to this fine site have good story ideas, but haven't Kyle's way with words. Some have good English skills, or American ones (lol), but truly have precious little to say. Still others feel that, if they can build one or two strong characters, then the same old, same old, formulaic story line; pick any one from three or four; and voilá you have a fresh, new story. However, there is a handful, a clutch of highly gifted story-tellers who write for The Castle and elsewhere who break out. They create wonder, greater than anything in Orlando or Anaheim - because it involves the imagination of the youthful mind. Dickens realised this. As did Kipling and J K Rawling and C S Lewis and the Brothers Grimm. These authors provide that magic which is a combination of adventure, make-believe, credible yet incredible characters, alive yet larger-rhan-life heroes, parallel storylines and sub plots, things that go bump in the night.....in essence Disney world on Paper and in the Imagination. Making it, in fact Disneyland Plus Plus Extra! My young readers are constantly emailing or tweeting their counsellors demanding "Why can't you give us the next episode?" . And it is so GREAT when teenagers WANT to read! And they're in Canada and Corsica and Cardiff and Köln and Cairns and California. And they're refugees from every conflict zone you can imagine, and both LGBT and straight in this story's case. Thanks Kyle. Now, all I need to do is provide Diazepam to all your teen fans until your next episode is published !! Adam

I believe, your Imperial Majesty, You came around in the final sentences of your circumlocuatory address to your subjects to the very nub of what I thought I was saying in the beginning of what has proved to be an entertaining conversation. The Wild Boars Expedition and their evacuation has proved that man works at his finest when colour, race and creed are cast aside. When that is accepted, of course it doesn't mean nationality no longer exists. People can be proud Americans or Swiss or Burmese or Tanzaneans. But being proud of one's birthright should not make one blind to the needs of others seeking a share of what advantages each of us has. Few in America have great grandparents who were all born in the United States. If the current immigration policies had existed then, only 11.0 per cent of America's current teens would ever have been born. Generations would never have existed to meet and give birth. Of course there have to be controls, but in the high technology age is a brick wall like that China built 2000 years ago the best we can up with as a deterrent to human trafficking? Really!! I am no socialist. Far from it. Certainly, however, having Canadian great-grandparents and a mother too, I am not a conservative either. I grew up colour blind, up to 7 years having never seen or been aware there existed another white child in the world. I just thought I was a black kid with a problem! Wouldn't it be great if everyone grew up with children's attitudes to race and colour and what is important. As a paediatric surgeon I assure you, inside, every child's intestines look the same. When they're shot, they bleed and hurt and scream the same way. And kids dying are a tragedy whether it's because of a drunk driver in Akron, a Saudi air strike in Aden, an Assad gas barrel bomb, or an abusive dad in Aberdeen. So, for once we had good news. Our job, as positive rôle models in society, is to create more opportunities for good news to occur. It is a stain on society that this story was such a major one. We should make working together, even risking together, so commonplace, that it's hardly newsworthy at all. One day.....perhaps the next life, eh!! Ubarikiw Adam PS Just a Fact Check: while Roland is correct that US gives most foreign aid in absolute terms, in per capita terms the US comes 16th, after most North Western European nations, Canada, etc. The UK is alone in having enshrined into law that 0.75 per of GDP must go to Foreign Aid as a minimum each year. The US share is 0.34 per cent in 2016.

Having begun this little debate, Dave and Militarypress, I can only sit back amazed at the direction it has taken. Of course I stand in awe of Dave's knowledge of the United States' very gradual emergence from a racial, colour-based immigration policy. I was totally unaware of how recently, indeed just 65 years ago, that Asians were admitted freely to the US. As a fourth generation East African white, where, ironically it was the Africans who were last to be fully emancipated, after whites and, later, Asians, I learn something new every day. What is not new to me, Dave, is my awareness that there are several Americans (here read US, not Canadians) who think they created every good or finest thing on Earth: the Web, television, movies, the automobile, most forms of weaponry including, God save us, the Atomic Bomb, and of course they currently have the best, the finest, the cream of the crop in everything. This has to be because they spend the most. Of course none of the above was invented or discovered by Americans, and a survey held AMONG SERVING MEMBERS of Special Forces in 2016, while putting various US forces in three of five top places, did not rate it number One or Three. No, the Thai force came nowhere! The point I make is that each of us view life through the blinkers of our limited life experience. I have been blessed with being born in Africa and educated in England, Canada and Hong Kong. I've worked a long time in the US and on missions in conflict zones as a surgeon world wide, so my blinkers are loosened a bit. But they are still there. I am prepared to admit it, and to recognise that some of my prejudices are probably subliminal. But anyone who could not have felt anything but warmth and joy from the recovery, physically unharmed, of the Wild Boars, and to laud the ingenuity and self-sacrifice of those who came from every corner of the world to help, must be emotionally and spiritually challenged. Ubarikiw Adam

Dante, my fellow long suffering and long waiting reader of Revolutions Universe (and other universes too) stories.......I asked precisely the question you are asking now about nine months ago. I was accorded the reply that all the authors were poised with pens, pencils, quills and felt tips aquiver and full of muse-driven enthusiasm (Admittedly I may be mildly paraphrasing here) after having taken a long time off TO REBUILD THE WEBSITE. Well, the website is now long ago rebuilt. I think people have Comicality disease. As a surgeon I never begin an incision on one patient before I've finishing suturing my previous one. There's a Comicalitity story a student of mine began when in high school. He's still awaiting its denouement and his son is beginning 3rd grade in September! This isn't writing. It's playing with the emotions of putative and erstwhile readers. And it turns young readers off reading because they no longer trust writers to fulfill their half of the bargain. There is a simple rule I set my sons and it is one my Grampa set me. It is very basic. Finish what you start. If you can't for any reason, at least apologise and explain why. But never simply walk off the job. Dante, I hope things get better. Please don't judge all authors by the ways of some. There can be many reasons for delay. I do feel though, it would be reasonable for authors who wish to see stories held "in progress" to give reasons (as Arthur has, for example) if this period is beyond a modest time. Adam

Arthur, further to the email I wrote you early in the series, now the book is complete I feel compelled to say again how much this book has been a surprise and a pleasure to me. I very rarely dip my spectacles in the writings of those immersed in mysticism, ghouls, goblins, elves, vampires, and things that go bump in the night. I think Reposte and Coupé were last time I did so. Thread is a thoroughly enchanting story. It is a good adventure, doesn't attempt to gloss over the reality of man's natural traits to be cruel towards those he can bully or those who have bullied him, and it ends on the eternal message that love conquers all. What more could one ask for in a gay teen novella? I As an African I'll totally forgive your giving the Kiswahili language for people to speak totally where they couldn't and tribesmen walking 2000 km in days. It's just a story. It is the Dark Continent after all! Please write more in this ilk. Adam

At a time when in Europe and, most particularly in the United States, the drum beat of the Right is that internationalism and immigration are foul, dangerous and outmoded ideas, surely the message emanating, echoing loudly from the caverns of northern Thailand this week is that those fascists percussionist are wrong, wrong, wrong!!! It was teamwork between Thai Navy Seals and both military and civilian volunteers from the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, France, Japan, China, and others which brought out the twelve young football players and their coach from their erstwhile lost and almost hopeless situation. It was a refugee boy, a Burmese child escaping violence in his homeland and welcomed even by the already fairly poor neighbour Thailand, who was the only one able to translate between the English divers and the boys they found. What a double whammy of a message for the naysayers, the tribalists. International teams and a refugee child were the heroes of a world-wide outpouring of prayer and simple hope for these 12 children. Wherefore arte thou Victor Orban, Giuseppe Conte, Donald Trump? Adam