So shall we start with a weather update Today was the first day this week where it didn't snow. And it was cold 🥶 I'm thinking my Australian and Southern Hemisphere friends need to have a visitor Anyone has a couch I can borrow for a month or two?
Shall we look at the Weekly Renee Wrap Up this week. Someone was busy
Monday, Renee brought us a Featured Story from @mollyhousemouse on a story by @Mikiesboy
Wednesday, who wants to have some fun with Author Guess Who?
Thur
Attended the memorial for the wife of a faculty member today. They had planned on retiring this year (for the second time), take a position back with his Alma Mater that involved less work (his idea of retirement), and enjoying their time together. She was a sweet, kind, lovely woman -- but don't mistake that for weak. Not sure exactly how long they've been married, but longer than I've been alive.
Between that and the weather changes making me ache, I've been mostly awake since 3am.
Who's ready for some more stories? It's time for the next set of anthology stories to go live. I know there hasn't been a lot of stories each grouping, but we had a lower than expected number of stories, so only a couple new ones are added each week. We have two more stories to post next week. If you haven't seen your story yet, you can PM me to make sure it's one of the two. Happy reading!!!
stories!
An Abomination's Love
Comicfan
Semi Charmed Life
CassieQ
*Part 3
Who's ready for another episode of Author Guess Who? The reveal will happen on Christmas Eve, so you have a couple of weeks to get your guesses in! Happy guessing!
What is one thing that most GA members might not know about you?
Hmm. Maybe that I used to study Japanese. I have forgotten all but a few words and phrases of it now, but I used to practice on a friend of mine who was from Japan.
What prompted you to write your first story?
Music. I was listening t
Is it Monday? Yep, it is! That means it's time to take a look at another great review. Today's review comes from a long term site member, @mollyhousemouse and is a review of @Mikiesboy's story After the Past. Enjoy!
After The Past
Mikiesboy
Reviewer: mollyhousemouse
Status: Complete
Word Count: 33,386
In the world tim has created, a virus no one remembers, decimated the population. Now, more men than women survive; farming, ranching, the rural lifestyle is the best chance to
Our community is so much bigger and more diverse than many of us believe. With a lot of new-ish terms and labels out there detailing identities some may not be aware of, I figured a brief list of definitions might be helpful for someone somewhere.
I shall begin with the four letters everyone knows. If you're here, you already know what these mean, but I'm including them anyway.
L: lesbian - a woman who is exclusively attracted to other women
G: gay - a person who is exclusi
Anyone who doesn't celebrate the Christmas season, unfortunately is going have tolerate us that do for the next 3 weeks 🎅
We had our department Christmas Party at work yesterday and there was about 30 of us all out for a late lunch and a Secret Santa draw. Everyone had a person they were supposed to buy for with a $20 limit. Our department is maybe 60/40 female to male, but it was great to see that everyone put in an effort to get something that reflected the person that they bought for. Bi
Lucid Love is my new story that I'm working on and right now I'm two chapters in and I can't wait to go on with chapter three. I guess it's because I am a writer that I keep working on it - I can't just sit here and do nothing because I don't write that great. Lol. Even though I may not be a good writer, or good enough to entertain people then I'm still going to work on this project. Why? Because it's a story that I really want to write. This story involves the emotional connection that I
This is a article first posted on my external blog, A Pencil Is Best. In the writing universe, November is NaNoWriMo - it's a chance for writers to concentrate on their work in progress. Here, I look at an alternative of doing different writing-related activities, and reflect on their meaning.
When I persuaded my friend and editor to take part in one of YeahWrite's fiction/poetry grids, I was pleased for a number of reasons. His Views From Home were a masterclass in writing a kimo, i
Who's ready for the next set of stories? You'll recognize some of them from last week, but I've added one story from each category. Happy reading and don't forget to comment and let the authors know what you thought of their stories!
Judgement Day
Headstall
Shaken
Northie
*Part 2 of 2*
Semi Charmed Life
CassieQ
*Part 2 of 4*
Before the Fall
Thorn Wilde
*Part 2 of 3*
Beyond the Binary
Valkyrie
*sips tea for throat* What happened during November? Well. I wrote a lot.
Okay so let's break it down. I was keeping pretty good on keeping on track with the base amount of words. I did a lot of small things to get started and I continued a few older things that I've been wanting to play with.
A list:
A Santa Needs a Mate story - 31 chapters in length. I'll post it when I'm done with it.
Obscurity: A Morally Grey Harry Potter story. I need to reread the first 20 chapters t
We were granted a reprieve. I’ve received several questions since last month and Ask an Author will remain a feature for the next couple of months. Of course, that does not mean I am done asking you to submit new queries.
Seems asking several authors the same question’s becoming a thing. I kinda like it, since it allows us to explore different outlooks. Here’s this month’s question, and for the record, it does not matter if it has been asked before. Authors are listed in alphabetical
Please join the Author Promotion Team in congratulating Carlos as GA's newest Signature Author! Carlos has been a member of GA for over six years and manages the popular Ask An Author feature in the GA blogs. He has over 900,000 words in the novels, novella, and short stories he has posted here at GA, including the very popular CJ series. If you want to check out that series and the rest of Carlos's stories, such as his latest story, Singer, you can visit his author page. I'm sure you'll enjoy w
The confusion when it comes to these two words is understandable. A lot of people write 'lay' when they should write 'lie' (as in lying down) and, however more rarely, vice versa. So here's a quick guide to how they are different and how they work.
'To lie' is an intransitive verb. That means that it's something you do, but not to something; it's an action without a direct object. You lie down. 'To lie' is conjugated: lie, lies, lying, lay, has/have lain. As you see, the past tense of 'l
Can you believe we're at the last month of 2019 and our final CSR story for the year? I've yet to hear any suggestions from members/readers on what they'd like to see on the first/last Mondays of the month blogs as an alternative... any ideas? In the interim, we have a great story for this month, an oldie but funny from Palantir, Hypno-trouble. Sure, I could have picked a holiday story or something light-hearted, but I totally thought something from the naughty list might be more fun. Enjoy!!
Like in Independence Day....Hello Boys! I'm baaaaaaaack
Well, also you gurls, actually everyone! Thank you Renee for taking my place last week
So I'm dried out from last weekend, which is a good thing! Last weekend I was at a football game, outdoors and it was hovering around 0C or 32F. Quite pleasant football weather (oh, North American Football I should say). Now this weekend, -30C or -22F, and I'm not enjoying this weather 😠 I'm thinking of all of you in Florida, or Australia or e
We have added a new feature on the site... Reading History.
This is a special collection that you have to opt-in to use. It shows you the last 50 stories you've read for 30 days. (stories will drop off the list if they are there over 30 days. The oldest will drop off if you have more than 50). The history is not public. Only you and staff can see it. As you can see from my screen shot, it also shows you the last chapter you've viewed and gives you a link to it.
The plus sign
HAPPY THANKSGIVING for those celebrating today. Anybody ready for some new stories? We have some great offerings for you as part of the 2019 Fall Anthology. Wondering when the anthologies would start to go live? Well, wait no more! Today we have 4 stories for you to enjoy, and each week I will make another set live. I tried something a little different this time, for those who tend to write longer anthologies. I don't know if it will become a thing, but it never hurts to try something new. Sto
Eek! Sorry all, this was supposed to go up yesterday, but things were crazy. The author in Guess Who #5 was.....
Timothy M.
Did you get it right? Check out these stories by Timothy M!
I posted this to Twitter earlier, so I thought I might as well share it here too. I've seen some folks trying to use this older form of the second person singular pronoun in stories, poetry, song lyrics and so on, but getting it all kinds of wrong, so I made a handy little guide.
thou - subject (see: 1st person 'I')
thee - object (see: 1st person 'me')
thy - dependent possessive (see: 1st person 'my')
thine - independent possessive (see: 1st person 'mine')
Examples from Shakespea
Happy November! Are you ready for Thanksgiving, my US friends? Maybe you can take some time this break week (if you have one) to enjoy this story, if you haven't already. I hope you have, though, and can share your thoughts on Arran's story, Those Cerulean Eyes, after you enjoy this interview!
Do you eat your fruits and vegetables?
Definitely. There isn’t a fruit or vegetable that I don’t like.
If you were an animal, what would you be?
Probably a puma becau
Wow, it's been quite a while since I've done one of these, but @wildone asked if I could fill in this week, and I told him I'd give it my best. Between life with a little one, and many other things going on, I just want to give a huge Thank You to Steve for continuing to do the Weekly Wrap Up's for me!!! Currently, it's getting our Christmas light show set up and ready to go by December 1st (have you ever tried to make 7 pvc stars and wrap them in lights?), among chasing a 16 month old Baby J a
I thought Cia was up to tricks, and she was 😮
I got 2 correct by just listing the authors she listed in order of the stories listed
@Gary L and @Mikiesboy, I was so onto you both
Congrats to everyone who participated not only in the writing and editing, but participating in the blogs (should we call it the blog of liars 😮).
A huge shout out to @Gary L, swept the floor with his first Secret Author contest. Take a bow
Huge thanks to @Cia who always does this
Just the facts:
CALMNESS Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
CALMNESS Synonyms: 128 Similar and Opposite Words | Merriam-Webster Thesaurus
CALM Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Calm vs. Calmness | the difference - CompareWords
The concept of calmness in storytelling acts as a structural anchor that gives meaning to action. Just as music requires silence between notes to create a melody, a narrative requires moments of stillness to give impact to its conflicts.
Emotional Counterbalance:
Accentuates chaos: Constant action leads to audience fatigue. A period of stillness makes the next dramatic peak feel far more impactful.
Allows digestion: Quiet scenes give the audience time to process major plot twists
The word calmness combines the root calm (from the Late Latin cauma, meaning "heat of te midday sun") with the Old English suffix -ness which denotes a state or quality. Historically, intense midday heat in the Mediterranean caused winds to stop and the sea to grow still, shifting the word's meaning from "burning heat" to a "quiet, resting state". The shift from describing weather or the sea to describing a peaceful human mind occurred around the 1560s.
According to the Oxford English D