Cutlass: Blog

Have you ever had a story that just wouldn't shut up until you published it?

Here's mine, with all due respect to the people who've suffered in the Afghan war. I was never there, so any mistakes are unintentional.

Thanks to Pixel the Cat, who has graciously offered to edit my stories, Big Sky Country, Angel from the Sky and Ages of Flight have gotten editorial makeovers. There aren't any content changes, but the grammar and punctuation are much better.

As promised, I'm back to working on Hunter's Prey. I don't know when I'll be ready to post something, but I am writing again. I also have a new story in the hopper, which I hope will come out this year. Pixel has a hand in that, along with RVBuilder.

I posted the first chapter of "Big Sky Country", a four-chapter short story that just happens to be my 20th story published here on SOL.

I have been in a similar scenario while flying a light plane at night, so I can sympathize with Melody.

Normally, I don't complain about the scores my stories receive. In fact, most people give better scores than the numbers show due to the site's "niceness" factor. That's all fine - the numbers are still useful, and therefore reasonable. My mean score for all my stories is 7.24, which, again, is fine. I'm not in the group of best writers, so it's a score I earned.

Today, I was shocked to find that someone gave me a score of 4 on "Summer in Dallas", a story that I've had here for two and a half years now. It's not one of my better efforts, and the subject (m/m gay) isn't popular. Still, it was averaging a slightly better score than half the stories posted here.

To whomever posted that travesty of a score, I will say this: If you didn't like the subject, then why read it? Yeah, you're entitled to your opinion, but pissing all over someone's work when the rest of the readership thought it was much better is reprehensible. If you think you can do better, then leave my work alone and write something better yourself.

The people who post here are sharing their passion, and some are better writers than others. None of us are paid to do it, except for the feedback we get. It's okay to be honest, but it's not okay to be a troll about it.

Apparently, this story ended too abruptly. So, I posted more of Norm's recollections for your reading pleasure.