On GA we like to allow members to discuss a variety of subjects relating to writing, reading, gay fiction, the LGBTQIA community, and more. There are many places on the site to post topics and information, depending on where the conversation fits best. In recent months, we have discovered that topics regarding 'inclusivity' regardless of the subject being sexuality, gender, culture, etc... continually veer into either a heated debate or political commentary or themes. Due to this creating a repe
Now that the forums are consolidated, one of the features added to the system years ago is a LOT more useful. You can now select Fluid View and see all topics in a single list, instead of having to go to different forums to see the most recent topics. You can see them all in one go and filter to see only the forums you are interested in.
If you are not a fan, you can still use the Traditional view, which is the button next to the one with the giant red arrow, shown above.
Okay, so it's almost bedtime for me, but I wanted to get this out so that everyone knew some of the stuff going on before the upcoming anthology deadline.
Author Incentives
Participation was down for the last anthology. After some discussion, it has been decided to offer some author incentives. Incentives seemed a good way to possibly encourage authors to participate. After the final set of anthologies has been posted for the spring anthology, I will be doing a drawing. Authors get a s
So what is Steve doing writing a blog outside of the Weekly Wrap Up?
Well, once every four years something happens that affects our site in an unusual way. It overtakes a lot of the US of A as well as the rest of the world. What am I talking about? The US Presidential and Term Elections is what.
Now before you hit the report button and report me for talking about politics outside the Pit, please read on.
As many of our long-term members know, and I imagine new ones as well, polit
In our last blog post here in news, we looked back at 2019.
This week will look forward to 2020. The year has already started off with plenty of drama out in the real world and it promises to be an even crazier roller coaster for the rest of year. Let's make Gay Authors a bastion of peace where we can all relax, shall we? Read, Write, Enjoy!
Anthologies
The four themes have been selected. Get a good start and try to have an entry for all of them this year. I know I'm going
Recently Updated 'Premium' Stories
The Singing Cup by Rigby Taylor
Geist by CassieQ
Wide Open Spaces by Renee Stevens
Romance is Real... or Just False Advertising by Cia
Deal or No Deal by Valkyrie
Heartache & Terror by quokka
The Passenger on Platform Six by Drew Payne
A Leg to Stand On by Valkyrie
Harbinger by Cia
Recently Updated 'Signature Author' Stories
Our Christmas Cookbook by Valkyrie
Spirit of Fir
As we head into Gay Authors' seventeenth holiday season, and the end of the decade, I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on our community in this past year.
With that in mind, first and foremost, I want to thank all of you for making Gay Authors what it is. We wouldn't be here without our authors writing stories, our readers reading those stories, and everyone talking together about those stories. That is the root of our community, and that focus is what we should keep in mind as we
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
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
We've updated Stories again!
Story Collections
All members will now have the ability to create a list of stories
List can be public or private
List can be ordered or unordered.
The feature also allows for Curated lists of stories to be created by the staff. For example, we can create a "Gay Author's Classics" collection of stories. Or any number of other options.
Review link added to Last Chapter of Complet
It's the Halloween Hunt Short Story Reveal Day on All Hallow's Eve eve! Which story will scare you the most? The rule was for authors to check their comments, then write a story being chased by their story creation. A criminal cyborg, a vengeful spirit... Who did they get? Read the following and find out. Don't forget to share your appreciation via some likes, comments, and reviews!
The system has gotten all the story level stats built and it is still working on the chapter level. I have written two quick FAQ entries for this for those that are interested in the feature.
Hello everyone! It is that time again. The Stories Archive software on Gay Authors has been updated. We've had a whole lot of bug fixes and a couple of new features added.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Stat's are Rebuilding for the next few days. You'll know when it's done because not every story will be ranked #1 with 0 views.
New Features
Site level Story view statistics are now available. We have been collecting timestamped story/chapter views since Jan of 2018. That is just shy of
Thank you to everyone who voted for the 2020 Anthology themes! We had a lot of great themes to choose from this year, and after the first round of voting, we narrowed it down to 15 themes for the final vote. Of those 15, only 4 could be our themes for next years anthologies. This year, I didn't even need a tie breaker vote as the top four were very clear! Before we get to those themes, let's have a quick reminder of the upcoming anthology!
Now, let's see what the authors decided for
Catfishing
I’m sure you have heard of it, and I’m sure you know what it is, but here is the definition that I found on the word:
INFORMAL•US
lure (someone) into a relationship by means of a fictional online persona.
"he was being catfished by a cruel prankster"
Being that we are an online community we are always prime for catfishers to join and then lure possible members to lie to.
We do have members who come and for their own personal sense of saf
We have posted a new version of Stories on the site. Things are going well so far. It correct a number of small issues. We've also added the ability to put up a goal box for feedback items.
You'll see it on various points on the site.
Be sure to do your part in hitting our goals to give Authors more feedback!
Please join myself and the Author Promotion Team in congratulating @northie in becoming GA's newest Promising Author. Northie has been a member at GA for over three years, and in that time has posted over 340,000 words across twenty-three stories including the popular Never Too Late series about an older gentleman coming to terms with his sexuality. You can find all of northie's stories at their author page, so settle back and have fun reading the stories of our newest Promising Author!
After dropping back from 2 years of weekly newsletters to monthly updates in 2019 on our outside email newsletter, we have decided to stop using the outside service altogether after the final newsletter which will be sent on Sunday, July 28th. Going forward, we'll be sending emails with the news members want and need to know directly from Gay Authors! If you wish to receive the occasional email newsletter from the site, then please go to your Notification Settings and chose one of the two boxes
If you receive GA's monthly newsletter, you know we’re looking for feedback from YOU! Now’s the time to share your thoughts on site features and potential future changes. *Let’s be constructive and give ideas on what will help encourage new membership and activity among current members, not just what you don’t like, please!!*
Forum Moves and Shake Ups
There have been changes to the forums. Some forums were moved or removed with their content moving to new places, some Clubs remov
As part of keeping up with changing times, we have done a consolidation of forums and clubs and have removed stuff that was not getting enough use. This will hopefully consolidate our active content into less places as well as making the "Fluid View" of the the forums more useful.
The changes we've made:
Clubs
o Closed Fanfiction Club and moved topics to Writer's Circle - Specialized Fiction Forum
o Closed Sci-Fi Writers Club and moved topics to Writer's Circle -
Please join the Author Promotion Team in congratulating Tim (Mikiesboy) as GA's newest Signature Author! Tim has been a member of GA for almost four years and was first promoted to Promising in May of 2017. Since joining, Tim has been a prolific author and poet, with almost 400,000 words posted, including novels, novella, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction stories about his own life including how Tim met and married his husband, Michael. If you want to check out that story and the rest of Ti
First thing this morning, I applied a new Stories Archive software update. This was a minor update that was mostly focused on bugs.
Added new feature on forum posts that shows how many Stories you have reviewed and how many story/chapter comments you have made
Added "Story Review Guidelines", "Story Comment Guidelines" and "Chapter Comment Guidelines" feature that pops up a box when clicked that can offer general site guidelines for posting comments and reviews. If you click on
We have changed the way the editor behaves due to the difficulty in maintaining the code for it. It used to work that when you hit "return" it would go to a new line. Now when you hit "return" it goes to a new paragraph.
Example:
This is a new line from Example
This is a new paragraph.
If you would like a new line, instead of new paragraph, hit shift-return.
This was part of what caused the double space error you see in some stories. Now, some posts will seem oddly space
Today, we are upgrading the site to the latest version of the forum software. While there are not going to be a lot of visible changes, there was a ton of things changed under the hood that is geared towards making the site faster loading and to operate better on mobile devices. It is going to take a few days to sort through the various settings and getting things operating properly.
I'm going to post here several times as we go through this process.
Some changes that have occurred p
Please join the Author Promotion Team in congratulating Parker Owens as GA's newest Signature Author! Parker has been a member of GA for almost four years and was first promoted to Promising in September of 2017. Since joining, Parker has written several short stories, a couple of great novels, and a multitude of poetry. If you want to check out Parker's stories and poetry, you can visit his author page. It's definitely worth a visit!
Please join us in congratulating Parker on his we