Serendipity Develops
Garage mechanic David and office worker Christian met a few weeks ago, thrown together at Christmas through a mixture of luck and fate. They felt an instant spark for one another, but didn’t want to rush into bed until they were ready. Christian's emotions are all over the place, as he's still hurt from his parents rejecting him last Christmas.

Cathy works with Christian and she's worried about what he's telling their colleagues about his relationship with David; things can't be moving that fast, can they? Are they really planning on moving in together and adopting babies already?

She isn’t the only one worried. David begins to wonder if Christian is loving him too much, too soon. His friend Tony thinks they’re rushing things, and suggests dumping Christian, whose strange behaviour has David on edge. Is it too much for him to cope with? Or will they be able to work things out after all?

It is available on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Until next time,
Liam Livings xx

I listened to a podcast about the late director, producer, screenwriter Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail, Sleepless In Seattle). During the discussion, Eve Pollard, a journalist, explained how Nora always used to say 'Everything's copy' meaning everything that happens in your life, and to those around you can be used as material. Eve Pollard, used to tell her other famous friends, if they wanted to split up they should do it on Monday so by the time Sunday came, when the paper she edited was out, it would be old news.
So this got me thinking – is everything copy, or not? Are there some things that as a writer you can't use in your work?

I'm often asked if I use my own experiences in my writing and my response is yes, but it's changed a bit. It may have an incident that really happened as the starting point, but the fiction spreads out from there. I wrote about my experience of depression in And Then That Happened, about much of my experiences of coming out in Best Friends Perfect, about walking into the wrong room at my first writers group meeting in Wrong Room, Right Guy - I could go on, but I think you get the point. I think it's similar with using other people's lives and experiences 'as copy' -I realise that's a disrespectful way to describe someone's real sometimes traumatic experience, but that's the phrase that started me writing this, so I'm using it here.

I think one of the main reasons why we tell stories as humans is to make sense of our lives and what happens around us. We do this by seeing parts of our self reflected in characters we read about / see on screen. I also think we enjoy stories as a form of escape from reality, albeit briefly, which allows us the strength to forge on with our own reality.

Coming back to my question, is everything copy? Or are there certain things that happen to you as a writer, or those around you which shouldn't be used in fiction? If I think of some terrible experiences people have gone through, they are used in what is now its own genre of stories, the misery memoir. I suppose that's a bit different because the author is deciding to use their own experience.
The other thing to bear in mind when considering this question is really how individual to one person is that person's experience? A friend splitting up with her husband isn't something that's only happened to her. A woman finding out her husband is cheating on her -or the other way round. A death and how that affects those around it? My view is if you can write something that is very personal to that one character's experience, it actually becomes very universal because of what I've just described above. The jobs or where the characters live will give the story colour and realism, but the motivations behind what caused the event are, I think, pretty universal.
I also believe, if you use someone else's life as copy, but you do it in a respectful, not salacious and appropriate way, to tell a story about that emotion, and not simply to share some gossip, then a writer is using it respectfully to help others with that emotion. Obviously, you must change enough about the real life and what ends up as 'copy' – names, locations, jobs, relatives etc – to protect the innocent. But at its core, the real human emotions felt by that real human person who experienced that life event, are what as a writer we try to convey in the words we write, so they can be experienced by readers. And that, is why I think everything really is copy.
I went to a writers conference and an author wore a T shirt that said 'be careful, I'm an author, or I'll put you in my next book.' Kenneth Williams kept detailed diaries for 40 plus years and he used to threaten his friends with it. 'Be careful, or you'll end up in the diary,' he'd say.
Am I wrong about this? Are there some things you can't or shouldn't write about? I'd love to hear from you,

Liam Livings xx

If you enjoyed reading this blog, please consider 'donating' to support it by buying one of my books. They're all on my Amazon.co.ukand pages, or my book shelf here.

I'm blogging on Joyfully Jay about friends to lovers and if emotional cheating is really cheating. I'm also giving away an ebook for two lucky randomly selected commenters. All you have to do is let me know what you think about my theory on emotional cheating in the blog either on my blog here or on the Joyfully Jay blog. On Saturday 19 March I'll check the comments on both blogs and randomly select someone.

To enter, by midnight GMT on 19 March, please include in your comment:

• your views on my blog post - please play nicely and politely, I'd like to have a debate not a fight!
• your email address so I can contact you

Happy commenting and reading! The blog is copied below as well as in the above links.

Is emotional cheating actually cheating?
Or, to put it another way, when is cheating not cheating? I think cheating is only cheating when it involves something physical happening by interacting with another person.
This debate came up because Gabe and Dominic, the two main characters in And Then That Happened, both have boyfriends when they meet. At first they are friends, but then as it becomes apparent there are a whole host of issues in their own relationships, they look to one another for emotional support and solace. Evidently, this is emotional cheating. Or is it?

If you read the reviews on Goodreads And Then That Happened really divided opinions. One reviewer said it was, ‘a beautifully rendered portrait of the death of a long-term relationship and the long, slow birth of a new one.’ Another review said, Dominic ‘was emotionally cheating on Luke the whole time, which in many ways is worse imo.’ Personally I’m happier to have made some strong reactions from the story than to have been faced with a sea of meh whatever reviews. Just to let you know, Dominic and Gabe end up together at the end of the story – it’s not a massive spoiler really is it, because it’s a gay romance, so a happy ending is expected. I’ll come back to the reaction it got from readers and why I think that is.

I think this concept of getting emotional support from someone other than your boyfriend isn’t cheating. I’m quite black and white about this; if something physical happens with another person that’s cheating. Going to someone for emotional support; discussing personal problems with someone other than your boyfriend; even beginning to fall for someone else emotionally – for me, none of these count as cheating.

At its most basic level, if your boyfriend falls in love with someone else you can’t stop that from happening. You can’t make people love you or fall in love with you; it just happens. In And Then That Happened, Dominic and Gabe realise the full feelings they have for one another gradually. So if your boyfriend’s fallen for someone else there are a few choices: you leave him to be with the other person – a sort of if you love him set him free approach. Or you fight for him to stay with you (and in my experience he’ll leave you anyway a few months later.) In short, once he’s fallen in love with someone else, the love in your relationship is on its way out the door, so you’re probably both better off out of that relationship. This applies to falling in love with someone, not physical cheating which is a whole different kettle of fish we don’t have time for here.

As for all the rest of the emotional ‘cheating’ this indicates for me that emotional support is lacking in your own relationship, so the partner can’t come to you for this, he turns to someone else. Or it may be that the emotional cheating is about your relationship, and that the partner has tried to talk to you about it, but you’re not interested in hearing it, so who can blame him for seeking emotional support from someone else? For me, this is definitely still NOT cheating. And if you do think it’s cheating, then I put it to you that you’re focussing on the wrong thing. Instead, how about trying to focus on why he’s discussing your failing relationship with someone else, or what’s gone wrong emotionally in your own relationship?

Same gender friendships
What struck me about the reaction to And Then That Happened on Goodreads was how some of the reviews were so black and white about this emotional cheating aspect. I’m going to try and unpack why I think that is. I can’t know this without actually talking to the people who left those reviews, but based on statistics in the gay romance genre, 70% or more of the readers will be women. I think what’s happened is these women may have imposed their ideas of emotional cheating from their straight relationship with a man into the gay friendship between Gabe and Dominic. (I know not all the female readers will be straight women, some may be bisexual and others may be lesbian, but again, based on the general readership of the genre, and the population overall, the majority tend to be women who identify as straight.)

And here’s the problem with imposing a straight set of values onto a gay friendship and gay relationship: most straight women tend to have close and sharing emotional relationships with other straight women and not straight men. Hence the likelihood of this emotional cheating happening between a straight women and her straight male friend are relatively low. However, most gay men tend to have this sort of emotional sharing and close relationship with either a straight woman or another gay man. (Again, this isn’t based on anything scientific, except my friendships, those of my friends, and others I know of. I’m not saying gay men aren’t friends with straight women, it’s that gay men’s friendships with other gay men that include emotional support are more common that straight women’s friendships with straight men that include emotional support.) And in the latter situation – two gay men being friends – unlike the former – two straight women being friends – there is the possibility of sexual physical cheating happening.

So what does all this mean? Just like Dominic and Gabe’s friendship in And Then That Happened, it is common for two gay men to have an emotionally supportive friendship where what could be viewed as emotional cheating takes place – but in many gay men’s support systems that is the only option they have for this sort of support, whatever it’s about. The fact the two gay men emotionally support one another behind their boyfriends’ backs is due to them having that close emotional bond (in the same way two straight women could be very close friends). And the fact that these two gay men could physically cheat on their boyfriends with each other, doesn’t mean that 1) they will and 2) that the emotional support is cheating or 3) that gay men shouldn’t look to one another for emotional support while being in a relationship.

That’s pretty complicated isn’t it, and only now having written it down do I realise how complex it is, although it’s something I’ve taken for granted my whole adult life as I’ve had many close friendships with other gay men, while we both often had boyfriends.

If I got funny about Himself having close gay male friends he wouldn’t have much of his close friendship group left. Many of these guys are his ex boyfriends anyway. Similarly, I’m still friends with quite a few of my ex boyfriends, because you know, people move on, relationships end, and gay men can be friends with other gay men before and after sleeping with each other, and it’s all fine.

If you think you’d like to read about two men starting as friends and ending as lovers in what I hope is a realistic portrayal of gay male relationships, I’d love you to try And Then That Happened.
Buy links

• Amazon.com 
• Amazon.co.uk

Should you settle for a nearly perfect happiness or put your heart on the line for more?
It’s 1999 and 28-year-old Dominic’s carefully planned suburban life with his boyfriend Luke is perfect. His job as a nurse, his best friend Matt, his relationship with his parents, everything is just right. He and Luke have been together ten years, seen each other through friends’ deaths and their parents’ ups and downs, and even had a commitment ceremony.

Gabe isn’t happy with his boyfriend, but he stays with him, because, well it’s complicated.
Fate throws Gabe into Dominic’s life. And then that happened. Gabe’s open relationship, impulsive nature, enthusiasm for life and straight talking advice are fascinating to Dominic. They’re friends, they click over a shared love of Goldie Hawn and Gabe shows Dominic there can be more to life than planned and safe. So why can’t he take his own advice?
And Then That Happened is about finding a new kind of happiness, even when what you have is already perfect. And how sometimes perfect isn’t quite what it seems

Wired has posted this review of a new writing machine and I thought I'd compare it against what I think is the ultimate writing machine – the Alphasmart Neo. I recently watched a Cats Vs Dogs programme on TV which compared the two species against one another in various tests and aspects. Ultimately of course, it was just a bit of fun comparing the dogs and cats, and I hope this review is received in a similar way. Also, I'm not strictly comparing two new products as the Alphasmart Neo isn't available new any longer, but you can still pick them up on Ebay. Also, I'm not dismissing the Freewrite – if you want to buy one to free yourself from distractions while writing, crack on, go right ahead, I'm not going to stop you. And I wish the company making them well with the venture, it's just that not everyone has $600 lying around to buy a one purpose device, and I want to show you there are other options for distraction free writing.

First, a bit of background to the Freewrite: it started life as the Hemmingwrite, but has since changed its name. It came about after a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014 to fund it. And now, finally it is available for everyone to buy. For those who didn't pay into the Kickstarter campaign, it can be bought for… $598.80 – let's call it $600 including taxes which works out at £435. I think that's an awful lot of money for what is essentially an electronic word processor. I only paid £65 more than that for my new Dell laptop – and that writes, blogs, connects to the internet and everything else. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, I like to be systematic with things so let's take the Freewrite's functions and compare them with my Alsphasmart Neo.

If you want some background on the Alphasmart Neo, I've blogged about writing with it too.

Price
As a comparison, the Alphasmart Neo was £150 new including taxes etc, but you can pick them up on ebay, used with the cables and batteries required for 25-45GBP each. I bought two for 60 – because I wanted to have a spare!

Freewrite £435 does seem expensive.
Verdict: Alphasmart Neo 1: Freewrite 0.

No internet

The main joy of the Freewrite is that it only writes words, and it doesn't have an internet browser, so when you're writing on it, that is all you can do. It is NOT an alt tab away from the internet. As the article says, 'It's just you, the Freewrite, and a blank piece of e-paper.'

The Neo is exactly the same. No operating system, no menus, no mouse. It doesn't connect to the internet.
Verdict: Alphasmart Neo 1: Freewrite 1.

Cloud storage

The Freewrite saves documents onto its own storage, but also connects through WIFI to so you can save through the cloud – Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive and Icloud to come later.
OK, hands up, I'll admit it, the Neo doesn’t have this. When I said it doesn't connect to the internet, I really meant it. It does not connect to the internet at all. If you want to back up and transfer your words, you have to connect the Neo to a computer, open the file and it 'sends' the text, one letter at a time to whatever application you have open. This could be a Word document, a web browser, even an email. So if you were, say, travelling around for a few months and wanting to write about your travels, you could do all this with the Neo, and its USB cord. You'd just go to an internet cafe, open an email in your account. Connect the Neo to the computer using the USB socket, and send your words to the email as if you were typing them in real time. So that's pretty neat isn't it?
Verdict: Alsphasmart Neo 0: Freewrite 1. (Although personally I think the way the Neo works is just fine, but I'm giving the Freewrite the benefit of the doubt.)

Keyboard

The Freewrite has a 'full-size mechanical keyboard, one built on top of wonderfully clacky cherry MX Brown switches.'
The Neo has a full-size keyboard. It also, unlike the Freewrite, includes cursor keys. Useful for scrolling through your words on the screen. I'll say that again, the Freewrite doesn't have cursor keys. I have no idea how you move about in the text you've written on it. If anyone else knows do let me know. The Neo doesn't have a mechanical keyboard, but it does have a nice clacky action that's as strong and satisfying as my Dell laptop's. Do you need a mechanical keyboard with all the jazzy Cherry business? I don't think you do, but only you can answer that for yourself.

Verdict: Alsphasmart Neo 1: Freewrite 1.

Display

The Freewrite has a 'smartphone-size e-ink display.' Sounds pretty snazzy doesn’t it? It's viewable outside in the sun.

The Neo has a chocolate bar sized LCD display. It's not back lit – which for me isn't a problem as I don't tend to write in the dark. I have mine set to display 4 lines of text at once, which is just enough to see what you've written and that's all. Works fine for writing – and remember, that's all these devices are for. Writing.
Verdict: Alsphasmart Neo 1: Freewrite 1.

Durability

The Freewrite has an aluminium body and a handle.
The Neo has a plastic body and no handle. It was, however, designed for use in schools, so is pretty rugged. Allegedly you can drop it from chest height without it breaking. I've not tried with mine, but it's definitely sturdy enough for being thrown into a bag and used on planes, trains.
Verdict: Alphasmart Neo 1: Freewrite 1.

Storage

Without storing to the cloud, the Freewrite can store 'over one million pages' of documents in plain text format to its own internal drive. That's a lot of pages to store. Very impressive really. But is it really necessary? When these devices are all about drafting words which you'll edit on another device? I worked out if you base a page on 250 words I'd need to write 4000 pages or 10 x 100,000 word novels to fill up the Freewrite's storage. So if I averaged 50,000 words per month I could write for 20 months before I filled up the Freewrite's storage. Without ever uploading to the cloud or putting anything on my laptop to edit. Because, remember, there's no cursor keys on the Freewrite. I'll leave that statement out there for now.
The Neo, I'm afraid, is much more modest in its storage abilities. It has 8 file slots, each carrying approximately 20,000 words (I filled one up when I first bought mine, to see how much it could carry, having read wildly varying claims about this storage online). This is 160,000 words. So using the same pages analogy as above, that is 640 pages, or at 50,000 words per month just over 3 months of writing before needing to download to another device.
Verdict: Alphasmart Neo 0: Freewrite 1.

Weight

The Freewrite weighs four pounds which is 'half way between the weight of the 13 and 15 inch MacBook Pro.'
The Neo weighs just under 2 pounds.

Verdict: Alphasmart Neo 1: Freewrite 0.

Battery life

The Freewrite apparently gets 'more than four weeks worth of battery life from a single charge.' No more plug socket anxiety which you'd have with a laptop after 4-6hours.
The Neo, according to the owners manual, lasts 700 hours on the 3 x AA batteries – the ones I used to call Walkman batteries, but now are more often found in TV remote controllers. In normal use, this is likely to be a year. I've seen other Neo users online saying after 2 years of regular use they changed the batteries anyway, despite them showing 1/3 charge. This amazing battery life is due to it not having a backlit screen – which also helps reduce eye strain – and having no moving parts such as fans, hard drives and DVD drives.
Verdict: Alphasmart Neo 1: Freewrite 0.

Keeping things analogue

The Freewrite has buttons for uploading to the cloud and switching between folders for saving documents. This is to keep as much of the functions 'off the device' so it doesn't need manus and avoids feeling too much like a computer. This is great as it keeps things just you and the words on the screen. And as we're only about writing words with these devices, that's perfect.
The Neo is very similar. It has 8 buttons for selecting where to save your documents. It has a CLEAR FILE button and a SEND button for sending to another device, as well as CTRL which accesses spell check keyboard shortcuts and a word count shortcut. So the Neo is admirably analogue too in this way.
Verdict: Alphasmart Neo 1: Freewrite 1.

In summary

If you like buying new technology and the purity and high spec design of the Freewrite appeals to you, I think you'd enjoy the Freewrite. Go on, knock yourself out, spend the money and I hope you'll be happy with it. If, on the other hand, you want a simple way to write new words on the move, outside, without internet distractions and aren't so bothered about the device looking cool or being new, then I think the Alphasmart Neo will serve you very well. OK, so it's not as smart looking at the Freewrite, but for writing new words, in simplicity it is amazing. It weighs about as much as a paper note pad and costs 1/10th the price as a Freewrite. That's why I'm buying another couple of Alphasmart Neos to keep as spares to hopefully see me through the next 10 plus years of writing.

Final Score: Alphasmart Neo 8: Freewrite 7.
So, according to my scientific scoring, the Alphasmart Neo wins, by a whisker. My review doesn't include coolness factor or how swish a new piece of kit looks compared against a second hand device; and undoubtedly the Freewrite would win that. However, let's not forget, these devices are simply for writing – they are effectively an electronic note pad and pen. The Alphasmart won on price, weight and battery life, which if all you want to do on a device is write, they would seem to me to be the most important factors. Although it doesn't look as cool as a Freewrite, rest assured, writing during a flight on an Alphasmart Neo has always started a conversation with the person next to me, and I think that's pretty cool in its own way.

Anyone tempted by the Freewrite? Anyone bought one and like to prove me wrong with this just for fun review? I'd love to hear from you.
Until next time, Liam Livings xx