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Outside the Foul Lines  [message #76536] Wed, 12 February 2020 08:34 Go to next message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



Rick Beck paints worlds in a very few words. There are few authors whose work I almost accept unread, and Rick tempts me every time. I've learned about worlds I never understood by the mastery of his imagination, and Outside the Foul Lines is no different. I have no idea what a 'Foul Line' is, but I do know a yearning gay teenager when I see one in print...

[Updated on: Wed, 12 February 2020 08:35]




Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: Outside the Foul Lines  [message #76548 is a reply to message #76536] Tue, 18 February 2020 22:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



I guess I have a kind of advantage as publisher. I know how many books are in the series - 6. I know how many chapters are in each book - some few, some many.

What I never quite know about, but always wonder why I never expected it, is the simple raw emotion that Rick Beck gets into his tales, his characters. I find joy in how his characters grow up, age, and how their words, their styles, they change with them.

This is a story series for the long haul.

[Updated on: Wed, 13 May 2020 07:20]




Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: Outside the Foul Lines  [message #76881 is a reply to message #76548] Wed, 13 May 2020 07:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



I look at the portfolio of tales on the site. I know why I publish each of them nowadays. In the early days I went a lot on trust because I was publishing a heady mix of serials that sometimes petered out together with the short stories that cannot do so. Rick Beck is an author whose work I bumped into before the site was started. I've always loved his work, his flow, his ability to get inside the characters he draws with meticulous accuracy. He has taught me things about the USA that are grounded in reality, yet are crafted to make me suspend disbelief.

In this tale I am learning about a sport that has never interested me, and in such a manner that it and its characters interweave and make it compelling reading. I can see a game. I can understand why decisions are made. I have watched baseball on TV, and found it more incomprehensibly tedious than cricket, and equally arcane. How wonderful to be tempted, now, to watch a game.

Doubtless a pedant might expose all sorts of faults, and yet, even were they to do that, who cares when the tale flows so well?

We are in book V, a long book. Book VI is to come. I hope you're looking forward to the final two books



Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: Outside the Foul Lines  [message #76884 is a reply to message #76881] Wed, 13 May 2020 23:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Teddy is currently offline  Teddy

Really getting into it
Location: USA
Registered: October 2006
Messages: 484



"timmy wrote on Wed, 13 May 2020 00:13"

We are in book V, a long book. Book VI is to come. I hope you're looking forward to the final two books

--
Has it been that many books? I could have sworn I've read them all. I might have to go back and doublecheck! Smile

Whatever the case, Rick is masturful as always in this particular tale, and riveting in his descriptions of the sport of baseball from a player's POV. One of the better ones out there, to be sure.

My all-time favorite tale from Rick is the "Billie Joe's Journal" Trilogy on this site. Perahps the reason is due to an acquaintance I made, some years prior to reading Rick's story, with a young man who was thrown out of his home at age 14 for being gay, actually dropped off on a street corner in West Hollywood by his father who was a pastor on staff at an internationally famous christian radio broadcast ministry. The young man lived on the streets, survived as HIV+, and went on to graduate with honors from USC. Rick was masturful in his descriptions of living and life on the streets and described well, the horrors, of that fate, as described to me by my friend.

[Updated on: Wed, 13 May 2020 23:36]




“There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.” - Terry Pratchett
Re: Outside the Foul Lines  [message #76885 is a reply to message #76884] Wed, 13 May 2020 23:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Teddy is currently offline  Teddy

Really getting into it
Location: USA
Registered: October 2006
Messages: 484



Speaking of Rick Beck stories, I notice that the entirety of the "Corey Wade is Missing" tale is indeed missing from his story list even though the heading and story description are still hanging around as a clue to it's former existence...?



“There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.” - Terry Pratchett
Re: Outside the Foul Lines  [message #76886 is a reply to message #76885] Thu, 14 May 2020 07:21 Go to previous message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



It is not yet missing. It is merely not yet present, a bit like the rest of the chapters of thre current book. Rick sent me the material, and I was worried I'd misplace the description

[Updated on: Thu, 14 May 2020 07:32]




Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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