magicmau5

RE: Elevated vs everyday language: I keep wondering if a reviewer will tell me to tone down the cursing in my current fic. (I am only capable of writing one at a time) The MC says the f word so frequently (when angered) that I have to get really creative with his curses. Actually, he curses in 2 languages, so that makes it a bit easier for me. I know plenty of people who speak that way, but I rarely if ever read characters that speak that way (excepting perhaps Trainspotting characters). So far, no one has said anything, through 50 reviews. I keep thinking the next review someone will say, "Oy! Less is more!" The thing is, I really enjoy writing the character that way. Any thoughts?

Lisa, you're so funny! I'm kind of glad I don't have kids to explain the "talk" to and peek into my writing/reading habits! That's funny about your ex. I wonder why he hoped you edited M/M? After this chapter is done I'll look into those stories, although I have to admit I hate seeing lots of errors in fanfic. As to your wonderful review: I'm pretty sure everyone knows oi vey, right? Viagra overdose is pretty bad, from what I've read from research. All those symptoms are listed, although they usually take 6 hours to diagnose full fledged priapism (an erection that refuses to go away). I think this chapter was good because I had time to really think about each section. Piecing it together was the hard part. For the longest time, I had trouble with the concert and swimming pool scenes. Andres is pretty jealous of Fico because he still has feelings for Joaco, and was trying to sabotage their relationship. More to be revealed in chapter 13! Chapter 12 is coming out as soon at TRUgrit takes a gander at my second draft.

Hey Lisa, no worries! I'm actually almost done with the next chapter. I sat down a couple nights ago and it all just flowed out really naturally. Phew! I love it when it's easy. I will check those stories out, if both of you say they're good! If you like sk8r boi slash, you should read Skater Boys: Gay Erotic Stories, edited by Neil Plakcy. I bought it on Amazon for "research purposes" LOL. Really hot! Like flame-grilled roasting rating.

@blankiz: Hola chica, thanks for the fab review! Yeah I'm not that great with Spanish, my grammar is atrocious and I mostly know maldiciones! Yeah I think chinga tu madre means the same thing as vete a cingao. Thanks so much for the offer of help, I could really use it. I hope you answer your email, another girl said the same thing but never answered . Maybe it went to spam. I'll try to update soon, I'm just trying to figure out where to go from here, if Joaco and Fico make up, or if Fico breaks it off and goes to live with Luke's family.

@TG: Thanks for taking the time to read it . I wasn't sure how to do the cop scene but I'm glad you liked that. I really didn't want it to turn into another rapefic, so I had Fico top. I think I might have found all the mistakes in spelling and English grammar, not so sure about the Spanish but I'm feeling lazy and will check that later.

You know I kept posting here I was working on it...I dunno why ppl thought I'd abandoned it. I'll never abandon a work completely, they're all too close to my heart. If I didn't think it was worth continuing, I wouldn't start it in the first place. So rest assured the stories will continue! Slash stash, I love that. Um...I'm procrastinating right now and checking obsessively to see if anyone else writes a review - that's you Lisa!

@FD: Yay good to see you reading and reviewing me again! I was afraid all my old readers had gotten tired of the wait and vowed to never read it again...Yeah I debated whether Luke and Fico should kiss in this chapter but it didn't work out. I'm thinking one of Fico's friends might sit down with him and be like, dude, Luke is gay or at least bi.

@wolfluv: Glad you think so . I feel really bad for making everyone wait so long. I thought about cutting the chapter up, because I had the first part done for a while, but I hate short chapters, even if the update would have been sooner. Anyway, I really hope from now on I can get a new chapter in every two weeks or so. Or at the bare minimum, once a month because the hiatus I had was ridiculous!

@Lisa: Wow you're fast little lady. I was hoping you'd still be hitting the refresh button and you never fail me. Hope you like the chapter when you get a chance to read it.

Sorry about my lateness in these responses! @Reena: I am so glad you're enjoying the story. I hope if you notice something off you feel free to note it in your reviews. @Tahylor: Man I keep typing your name wrong. *Headdesk* Yeah things are okay, I was just going through a kind of depressed phase where I was eating instead of writing. Ack. But I wrote a third of this latest chapter just today so I think I'm back in the groove. Please bear with me!

Just wanted to say that I feel guilty enough for continuing to disappoint you guys for the glacial pace of my OTW updates that today I will restart my OTW stuff. I am currently at my old home with all my notebooks in my new home, but I have my handy dandy laptop here and that will have to do. I have a nagging feeling that I wrote some notes about Ch 11 in my big OTW notebook (I have little ones I carry around in purses and my gym bag too. I always get ideas at the gym for some reason.) So that will bother me until I'm back in my new home. If anyone is interested, which I rather doubt that you are, I really like my new home. I go to Anytime Fitness and the new location is SO MUCH nicer than the old one. It has this massive ceiling fan about 12' in diameter that reminds me of whirling helicopter blades except much slower. And the TV monitors attached to the cardio machines have 4 options - workout view, TV view, internet and iPod view. So you can scroll through your song list on the big screen rather than one your iPod, or use the internet on it. That is super astounding to me. I feel like a little town girl in a big city again. AND....the best part, there's a big screen projector in a separate room which is hooked up to a digital kiosk in which you can pick out aerobic DVD workouts. I think its rather sad that my life has devolved (again!) to the point at which the gym is the highlight of my day. If you live in a rainy city, it's either the pub, the club or the gym, right? Having once again eschewed my RL friends in favor of my hermitage (this having more to do with mental illness than dislike of my long suffering friends), the gym is my favorite place since it's prepaid and Starbucks is so effing expensive. The gym is about $1/day and Starbucks would be more like $4/day. That's a savings of $3/day x 365 days/year = $1095/year. Not to mention the caloric savings. Please God save me from calorie counting! Now if only I could like hide in the personal trainer's office or an overhead heating duct and sleep there at night so I could get on the spinning bike without the trouble of driving there.

Also, it's not kosher at AFF to post a chapter w/o any actual chapter in it, as a placeholder. The mods would yell at me again and I'm already on their blacklist. Which, of course, is my fault! I'm trying to stay under the radar and be a very very good girl.

@Lisa: Poor dear, I feel so bad that I've been letting you down. I think at this point it's progressed from writer's block into pure avoidance of something difficult. Sure, I've been exhausted from packing, moving, and driving 3.5 hours to/from my new home, but I could spend some nights working on OTW like I used to. Before, I devoted every moment of my spare time to crafting OTW, whether it was research, writing, or editing. Now, it's spent at the gym, reading purely for pleasure, or watching stupid summer reality TV shows. Anyone see Breaking Pointe on the CW? I can't believe how easy it is for me to get caught up in watching this TV merde/mierda/shit/shite. I mean...I gotta get a grip on myself. I easily become obsessed with something and then leave it half-finished, and I want to actually finish something for once. I mean, I do that with books as well. I get bored halfway through and say, fuck it, it's not really that interesting, is it? The problem with OTW is that I've had ideas since then that I think are more interesting...but haven't bothered to write them down either. TRUgrit had a good idea to record my thoughts on mp3...but I absolutely hate the sound of my voice. It's really high pitched and SO ANNOYING I can't believe people actually listen to me without covering their ears. It's why I think people think I'm 19 instead of 29. Also: I'm exhausted physically from trying but failing miserably to lose weight. I've been strength training and I have to sleep at least 8 hr to get that muscle rebuilt so I can boost my metabolism so I can lose weight (that's the theoretical idea, but in reality it just makes me hungry and I eat stupid stuff like cookies). It comes down to whether I'm more concerned about my weight or about my writing, and if anyone else with an eating disorder will tell you, concern with weight is always highest on my list. That's why I don't have a relationship with anything besides my dog and food.

No worries BM. If you like, I can show you the punctuation probs via pm. It's mostly periods, I think. Wow, for someone learning English, you have a pretty good mastery of vocabulary and grammar! I'm excited abt the new ch.

Update for the impatient types (you know who you are ): I'm really, truly working on Ch 11 now with help from the great and glorious TRUgrit. All hail TRUgrit! This chapter is a culmination for all the jealousy that's been brewing in the previous chapter. Some elements of violence, just as a warning. I'm actually working on Ch 12 at the same time - it's the beginning of Ch 11 that's been irritating me all this time. It's like we're in a staring contest. The screen is staring at me, taunting me with its emptiness. I hope to finish this chapter by Saturday, July 20. My sister and her four children are visiting this week, though, so that date might have to be moved . Just when I'm picking up steam! Well, I hardly ever get to see the little tykes so I need to spend some quality time with them. I get most of my writing and research done late at night, though, so my visitors shouldn't inhibit my progress too much.

@Lisa: Hi sweetheart, yeah I suck don't I? I guess things kind of suck balls right now. I've been really depressed. And every time I think about writing OTW, I get stuck on this idea that it won't turn out right. I mean, wtf? This has happened before, I'm a really avoidant person. At least that's what one of my therapists told me. Anyways....I feel bad for letting you guys down. I even got a pm from a reader saying basically the same thing, except she's willing to help me out with ideas. Man, I feel so lame. I'm glad you poked me. I need a kick in the pants sometimes when I get stuck in a thinking rut. I'm also moving closer to my sister and that's taking some time and energy, but not enough that I don't have time at night to write. Instead, I've been reading (devouring more like) a book a day. Plus Rolling Stone. I mean, I can't go without RS for more than a day w/o feeling a little empty. I've also started spending more time at the gym b/c I have a tendency towards emotional eating...ergh. I worked out too hard last night I think because although I'm not sore today, I am sooooo tired. I bet tomorrow I'll be mega sore. I used to lift 40 to 50 lbs on most machines and now I'm down to 25-30. How lame is that? I was being really sedentary while I wrote a lot the past few months. If you want to know what I've been reading, I starred them on goodreads.com and even left one or two reviews. Most aren't worth a review, honestly, they're so trite and cliched it's pretty sad. Like I told TRUgrit, I can't believe some of this shit actually gets published. I mean, M/M romance books are sooooooooo predictable sometimes!! It's irritating enough that I want to continue writing if only to provide someone like myself the opportunity to read something not quite run-of-the-mill. ---- Man I'm such a pity party sometimes. WTF, self?

Thanks FD , I appreciate your words of encouragement. I've been reading a ton just to relax my mind a bit and take the pressure off. Today I've started working on Ch 11; I had a few pages before my hiatus and now I'm picking it back up. I gotta get back on the horse, right?

So I got a new wireless keyboard today, as I tend to do most of my writing on my laptop, not my desktop. I have this nice ergonomic chair but it's not ergonomic unless you're looking at a screen at a reasonable height. Laptops are by definition not ergonomic, as you have to look down (back strain from slumping) or get wrist pain from wrists in a too-high position (if you've raised the stupid machine so as to minimize slumping and back strain. I thought, hey, it's worth the $$ so my back won't hurt so much from prolonged typing and internet research (we're not talking about porn here, which although can be educational in terms of sex itself, doesn't lend itself towards preventing procrastination). Now I have this nice keyboard, a decent laptop with the most recent version of Word for Mac, and a nice ergonomic wireless mouse. But that doesn't matter since I have F***N writer's block. I sit down here and try to write ch 11 and nothing but gibberish comes out. What bugs the bejesus out of me is that all my ideas lately seem to come just as I'm falling asleep and it's not exactly conducive to a well-rested state. You may be thinking, hey magic, why don't you write this useless crap on your blog? Well, dear reader, I don't have a blog, mostly because I'm too lazy to update 500 different things which mostly say the same thing. I've even stopped using FB, I'm so lazy. So the long and short of it is that I can't for the life of me work on this chapter w/o freaking out. I wish I had someone to bounce ideas off of. But all I have is you, and you mostly don't care as long as the juicy bits keep coming (no pun intended). I do appreciate the reviews immensely as I am the queen of procrastinators and need a good old fashioned kick in the butt to keep going. But that still doesn't give me the creativity I am currently lacking. Sometimes caffeine helps. Sometimes it just makes me even more crazy than usual. I took a break from writing The Invasion of Ian because I had the exact same problem. This next chapter can be pivotal in terms of plot and I'm afraid I'm going to let you all down by not writing the precisely perfect words to describe the important scene I have in mind. What if you don't like it? What if it's like a wet, limp rag that flaps in your face and makes you go, "ugh that was terrible and now I want to go wash my face off"????? I'm scared. I'm scared my writing will be shitty. And you guys will tell me it's shitty, and I'll be like, "Yeah, I know, right? It's so shitty. Now I shall go hide and eat chocolate ice cream". I want to scream but that won't help. Chocolate won't help. Maybe I'll try to get some sleep.

@ds: Yes, the juice doth overfloweth doesn't it? I get a kick out of making the sexual tension b/w Luke and Fico simmer more each time. I'm not sure about this next chapter. I'm not sure if Luke will kiss Fico or not...and if Fico will kiss him back. We'll see!

@Maggie: Wow I'm never had such a long review! Thanks! Let's see if I can address things in an orderly manner ... Impressed? You're going to give me an enormous head if you keep that up! lol Thank you for the lovely compliment. I know there are lots of much better stories out there, at least more popular ones, so that's sweet of you to say. I think sometimes I go overboard on the slang, but like you said, it's fun to use. As far as the Spanish bits, when I speak with my bilingual relatives, we chatter back and forth with stuff like "look at the stupid menso" etc, and some words I can't even remember what the English word is. I have a reader here, kellankyle, who is Cuban-American and she doesn't do that. I guess each family is different. But I absolutely love using any kind of slang, and I love cussing in every language, so that's why these characters do that . I'm such a bad girl. I've read a few high school gay fics and was less than impressed, they were pretty stereotypical as far as jocks vs preppies, etc. In reality, every person is unique. So I've tried to create characters that break those molds. I'm waiting for a reader who is a skater to come here and say, wow this story sucks! But until then, I'll try to keep up the spirit of what I think the skater world is: freedom, a sense of community, thrill-seeking, creative, rebellious, etc. Also, I was a teenager, and I remember "falling in love at first sight" but feeling like that person doesn't give two shits about you, when in reality they just don't know you like them and would probably return your affection if you made a move. L.A.: I've only been there once, and I really didn't like it. That's because I'm an Oregonian, and by definition we don't like Californians, who come up here with their big money and buy all the nice homes with a view in historic areas. LOL. And there is SO MUCH F***N smog there, it's like a cloud hangs over the city constantly. The hot dust, the sense of dirt everywhere on the street, the green-moldy "river", are all anethema to the forest and free flowing river loving Oregonian. Also, that Hollywood walk of fame is just a sidewalk. Like, really unimpressive and covered in the everpresent dust. BUT it also has a real sense of energy that cities always do, and is quite pretty at night. And there are a TON of skateparks there, including a professional one owned by Nike. There are skaters here in OR, but on the west side it's so wet that you have to be pretty brave to skate in the fall/spring/winter rain-fest. I heart Fico. He's so "misundastood" and is into the whole Romeo and Juliet "we can never be together" romantic crap. I think he likes the cross on his love-star, because he's actually too afraid to go out there and just say, "hey, we should hook up". He's blaming the difference in sexual orientations when it's really just his strong fear of being rejected and abandoned the way his mother did. I know, I need to concentrate on Luke. There will be at least 30 chapters in this story, so his time will surely come. I really like Luke, not because of his physical attractiveness, but because he's just a really nice guy, very cheerful and charismatic. I have quite of bit in notes on Luke's family and backstory, which will be featured later on... Have you noticed that Fico makes split-second decisions without thought to consequences? Yeah. That's the big problem with him. He didn't anticipate the fallout to his promise to never cheat on Joaco, to make the risky move to move in with him, and now this lie about loving him. He's gotten himself into a bind that can only end in heartbreak. Which is sad but good for a juicy plot. I like his friends too. In some teenage stories I've read, the friends are hardly ever mentioned. In reality, in high school you depend on your friends for everything. That's the time in your life when you develop these life-lasting friendships that carry you through your golden years (hopefully). But most especially, they help buffer the terrible three ring circus that is high school: pimples, body hair, horrible teachers, being so "misundastood", parents that are such a drag, etc. I think oftentimes that you can tell what kind of person is by their friends, and the way they treat their friends. I'm pretty sure there will be a happy ending. I'm mushy too.