Gay Authors 15th Anniversary

September 13, 2017

Gay Authors has a big date now upon us.  On September 13, 2002, Gay Authors was officially started.  It is our official 15th Anniversary.  We started off with just Comicality's and my stories hosted.

We didn't really start building the community until July 31, 2003.  In order to celebrate this remarkable milestone, I've asked a bunch of authors and members to reflect upon their time here at Gay Authors.  I list Comicality first with the comments to honor the fact he was here from day one.  Everyone else appears in no particular order.  I want to thank all of them for taking the time to give some commentary for me.

And I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart.  Our authors and our community are the very things that have kept Gay Authors going strong all these years.  To many more!

Myr

From our very first author, Comicality

"Has it been 15 years already? A decade and a half of quality gay themed fiction. Stop and think about that for a moment. Drink in the idea of how extremely rare something like this is online. Out of countless platforms providing gay stories and erotic fiction...how awesome is it for Gay Authors to be one of the first choices among them?

Being a part of this site from the very beginning, I can say that the attention is well deserved. Well earned. Standards of quality and integrity have been upheld over the years, and I am so proud to be a part of something that has worked so hard to be a beacon of light for its audience and an inspiration to the new talent to sprout up in the future. Make no mistake, the Shack wouldn't be here if it wasn't for GA, and their belief in me as well as others! I never once had to doubt that I was on a winning team here, and I want to take a moment to wish you guys a happy anniversary! Here's to the celebration! And here's to many more anniversaries to come!

((Hugz)) All around!"

From Bill W

Not only am I one of the oldest members on GA (in chronological years), but I'm also one of those who have been around since the beginning.  Myr asked if I would like to become involved back in August 2003, and I humbly accepted his invitation.  Back then, each of us had his own website, but they were all united under the GA umbrella.  I was one of the last to have my site absorbed into the new format, and I think it's much better and easier for the members to view the works of all authors now, since you can find each of them at one location.  I've also seen GA become a very active and vibrant community during this time, adding new members and an influx of new authors along the way.  May GA's future be just as bright and productive as the fifteen years since its founding.

From Renee Stevens

I can’t believe that GA is 15 years old, or that I’ve been part of it for over half that time. I’ve been here nearly 8 years and honestly, I don’t even remember exactly how I found GA, but I did and I started posting in the old eFiction. I became staff within a couple of years, and I helped with the transition from eFiction to our current GA Stories software. The story section is so much better now than it was before, ask anyone who was around during the eFiction days, and the site just keeps growing and improving. I can't wait to see the ways in which it continues to grow!

I’ve seen members come and go, and saw some great authors develop their talent thanks to the feedback they have received from the wonderful community here. I’ve also, thanks to the help and feedback I myself have gotten, managed to publish a few of my novels. I owe a huge thank you to GA, not just for helping polish my craft, but for all the friendships that began on-site and have just grown stronger over the years!  Happy Anniversary GA!!!

From Dolores Esteban

I joined GA in 2008. My writing had progressed from role playing and fanfiction stories to original stories. GA seemed a good place to share my work. I remember how excited I was when I submitted my first story to the Anthologies. Later I worked with the story and poetry prompts provided by GA staff and members. I found that poetry was definitely worth to explore. GA was always the one place to share my work. I think my writing improved over the years. The site is to me both a challenge and a source of support. There was change over the years and I remember community issues in the past, things I disliked, but overall the change was good and there was steady improvement. There were real life issues that kept me from writing, once for more than a year, but I always come back to GA. The site is the one place for writing that I visit daily, although real life still keeps me from engaging more. My thanks to GA staff and member who keep the site going, and Happy Birthday, GA.

From Graeme

I have been a member of GA for over 11 years, and been a moderator here for almost 10. In that time, there have been a lot of changes as both the story system and forums have evolved. I have to congratulate Myr on his effects to continuously improve and refine the capabilities of the site, and the success GA has enjoyed can be largely laid at his feet and the feet of the other Administrators. However, in all that time, there have been two constants: great stories and a wonderful community. I have made a lot of friends here, some of which have moved on to other things, and others that have, sadly, passed on. There are many past members that I still miss, but I have many new friends to enjoy, too. As an author, a gay dad, and a member of this community, I'm proud of what we have here and I look forward to many more years of being part of what makes GA so special. 

From Mark Arbour

Gay Authors celebrating 15 years: what a ride it’s been! I was asked to spend a paragraph reflecting on the time I’ve been at GA, but as one of GA’s most prolific authors, I decided that I’m allowed to take more than that.  I joined GA on February 24, 2005, following Domluka over here like the loyal slave to him that I am.  That makes me one of first wave of people to join this organization, so I’ve been around for the growth, the growing pains, and much of the drama, some of which I caused.  I wasn’t always one of the easiest people to deal with:  It took me all of three months before I got my first warning notification from Myr, who suffers fools badly. 

Before I’d spent time at GA, I’d never known that I could write anything, much less a whole story.  I never knew that I could build plotlines and stories and make them flow together, and I never dreamed I’d be able to wind them together to create whole sagas.  Yet with examples from other authors, support from my team of editors and beta readers, encouragement from the GA community, and tolerance by the GA Admins, I’ve been able to do just that.   As of September 10, 2017, I’m working on my 16th story in the Chronicles of an Academic Predator (CAP) saga, and the 8th story in the Bridgemont adventure. 

One would think that would be ode enough to GA, and certainly reason enough to stop rambling, but that’s not what a prolific author does. Besides, that doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of talking about all that I got out of being affiliated with GA.  Writing and interacting within this community gave me an outlet for the gay side of my bisexuality, and helped me grapple with that in a much healthier way than I’d done before.  My offline relationships and my overall psyche have benefitted greatly from that.  Even more importantly, GA, or more precisely the GA community, taught me to be a better person.   I learned some tough lessons on how to behave online, and I learned that online words can hurt just as much as those hurled in person, and I learned that being the one who hurled them is more painful than being the recipient, even if it takes a while to figure that out.  I also experienced the extreme sadness of losing members of this community (Trebs and Vic, you are always in my heart!), disappointment in losing contact with others (Domluka!), the extreme happiness of seeing some of my loyal readers become accomplished authors in their own right, and the true satisfaction of developing deep friendships (Sharon! – I yell that just like Ozzie Osbourne does).  In short, GA civilized and matured me, both online and offline.    So when I reflect on my life journey over the past 15 years, I find it’s impossible to separate the progress I’ve made from my affiliation with Gay Authors.  Even more, I’m quite convinced that if I did, I wouldn’t like the person I’d be without GA and all of you who have helped me become a better human being. 

From Krista

Happy Anniversary GA, congratulations on making it fifteen years. On the internet that is a real recognizable milestone worth noting. Myself, I came to GayAuthors, twelve years ago. I hadn’t been writing very long and all of my posting experience had been on Nifty and a yahoo group - back when Yahoo was actually relevant. E-fiction was the posting place for Non-Hosted authors. There also wasn’t any Promising, Classing, and the pinnacle of writing goal of recognition was termed Hosted.

A friend of mine, a young fan of my stories told me about Gay Authors. It took a lot of convincing to get me to join, but since he kept bringing up how nice the place was. I finally joined. It helped to see that the site hosted some of my favorite authors at the time. I hadn’t been writing very long at all when I first started posting. I had “Something Unexpected,” nearly completed and, “Good Guys Finish Last,” on its closing chapters as well. Still a high school student, with no real teaching in creative writing. I honestly didn’t know where I would be going with writing or how long. I definitely still had a lot to learn.

I began writing just because at the time, especially in Kentucky there just wasn’t a gay culture where we lived. I had gay friends and I didn’t like thinking they felt so isolated. They were also scared, so scared that I honestly never was able to convince them to join the site itself. Even after my experience had been for the most part positive. People seemed to enjoy my writing, I didn’t post much in the forums, but I loved the quality of feedback I got from readers here. So much so that I closed my Yahoo group completely, saying goodbye to over a couple thousand members. I likely wouldn’t have went beyond two stories if I hadn’t joined. My friends liked my writing, but they really weren’t into reading online, amateur fiction. So Gay Author’s audience gave me a bit of a writing bug so I continued.

Gay Authors allowed me to develop as a writer. I doubt I would be able to be where I am today with my writing without this community and forums. I met a lot of great people with similar interests and goals. I saw what the community did for LGBT people like my friends that didn’t have opportunities to be themselves and not be judged or scorned for it. My time here on Gay Authors has been a worthwhile ride, everything from being a Global Moderator, blowing up and nearly wrecking GA.Stories on its debut, calling JSmith a flat-ass, and being the top author on eFiction before its well deserved retirement (speaking of which, when do I get to retire?). Here’s to fifteen more. Congratulations!

P.S. I love Steven, despite his Canadian shortcomings.

From Jamessavik

I joined GA in May 2005. I had some stories on other sites and saw GA as the big time of gay literature.

GA hosts such notables as Dom Luka and Comicality and many others, so I joined to read them and maybe learn a thing or two.

When it comes to sites like GA, people come and go with regularity. The thing that makes people stay is this community. Over the years we have literally watched a number of kids grow up, old friends pass away and you never know when someone new will bring that one brilliant spark that will change everything. 

This is what people were talking about back in the day when we were dreaming about what the web could bring us: a living, breathing, dynamic community.

Happy anniversary GA. Here's wishing you many more. This is a very special place.

From David McLeod

I've been a member of the Gay Author's web site for longer than I thought possible. In those years, so many people... both readers and authors... have offered their comments, thoughts, and critiques of my writing. Some have thanked me for my stories, but the greatest thanks are due from me to them. I've been able to explore style and technique in a safe and friendly environment. Even those who were frank in their criticism were not angry or ugly, but supportive. And that's what has been the best part of this association—the members who have taken the time to read, offer their thoughts, and then read some more. Thank you all for our association, and best wishes for another 15 years, and more. David

From Cia

It’s hard to believe I joined GA almost eight years ago! I lurked for the longest time, reading all the promoted author stories I could because I was a stay-at-home mom with two young kids, ie: no money and picking up a book meant instantly someone needed my attention. So much has changed since then, both for the site and for me. But the important part has stayed the same: I love to read and write, and I visit GA every single day.

Over the years as a staff member I’ve helped on so many projects, the biggest being the move from eFiction to Stories, but my goal has always been to feature the great stories we have on the site and help make them even better—mine included. Without GA, I never would have taken that first step to putting fingers to keyboard and sharing my stories, much less gotten involved in publishing and finding success there. I want to give back, and being a staff member lets me do that, even if sometimes it makes GA a little less fun. The work must be done!  

There are so many wonderful people willing to make GA their online fiction home, even as our active members and authors fluctuate and change, bringing so much to our community. I wasn’t here in the beginning, but I’ll damn sure be here until GA ends… which won’t be until the zombie horde rises up and the apocalypse halts technology as we know it.

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Thanks again to everyone that provided comments.  And to everyone reading this... what has your time here at Gay Authors meant for you?