Some New Stories!

[Cainanite]

Hey, uh, I hate to be an ungrateful author especially after that unpleasant exchange, but I can't find my newest story ("The Vow") anywhere on the story site. It's linked from this thread, but I don't see it in any of the indexes.

My apologies.

The stories are indexed to the main site when our chief cook and bottle washer, talula, has the time. Until then this thread will have to suffice.

Trust me, it will show up.

[talula]

The stories are indexed to the main site when our chief cook and bottle washer, talula, has the time. Until then this thread will have to suffice.

Trust me, it will show up.

All done. Indexes are written. Looks like "The Vow" has 5 stars.

[warmermonths]

Cainanite, talula: Thank you and sorry - I didn't know how it worked until now. I appreciate all the time you put into this site!

[Paolo]

Hey, uh, I hate to be an ungrateful author especially after that unpleasant exchange, but I can't find my newest story ("The Vow") anywhere on the story site. It's linked from this thread, but I don't see it in any of the indexes.

My apologies.

With 4 posts, you appear to be new, so it's a valid question for you. No problem.

[gellyfregy]

As others have said, there are some besides the Gatekeeper (Cainanite) who are willing to help with proofreading/copyediting and perhaps even getting a story formatted.

Cainanite has been helpful too, but I'd guess he has finite time available, and I think we'd prefer that he have enough time to post the stories and write some more of his own. Others of us can share some of the work.

It's sounding like the criteria for getting a story published are becoming fairly objective: check off all the boxes and the story gets published.

Authors might feel their time is not well spent doing it, or that the criteria are stupid or arbitrary, or they aren't familiar enough with how to do it. But I think most of the criteria do not take away from the artistic value of the story, just simple things like how many blank lines between paragraphs and such. If the story is good, but the author isn't up to meeting the criteria for whatever reason, let's find someone who can do that rather less creative prep.

I for one think it is worth helping authors a bit to get their story published, since they are so rare. I'm not criticizing Cainanite for not having infinite time to spend, since he already spends lots of time on our behalf. Maybe there are others who can't write great stories who can nevertheless help authors who can.

(I also have trouble with the tags. When I try to assign one, I can readily argue for or against, in lots of cases. For example, there are stories tagged "Gay" that consist of an adult forcing sex on a young person. That seems to me to be rape, so I hate to tag it either "Gay" or "Straight" -- but maybe others feel differently ... Perhaps after the rest of the stories get restored we can think about what the tags mean and how they get applied.)

[Cainanite]

There are a lot of folk online here who are willing to be beta readers, if only they are asked. I think between the author and the beta reader formatting the story should be fairly simple. I wish more authors would use beta readers. It is a really positive arrangement.

[Uncle Flo]

In the long history of this site (at least by internet standards) we have gone from a one man show to a group of dedicated, nearly serious and talented small crowd of decision makers. While going along this unmapped road the story submission standard has ranged from "anything that will show up on a monitor" to "I don't like much of anything at all". We have matured (?) into a reasoned set of criteria for stories that can be posted for our very patient readers to enjoy. There may well be more changes made as time goes on but we now have coherent guidelines and people willing to apply them. It works well. --FLO--