Ahhhh! The plot is thickening. The characters have developed perfectly. You have balanced your pace so there is riveting action, informative scene setting, and a richness to your tableau. Everything seems to be going so well, and yet, your beta reader drops a bomb on you.
"It's just falling flat."
What are you supposed to do? Where do you turn? How can you enrich and round out your characters? How about a little emotional rescue?
Let's try filling in the back story of y
Monday, Monday, Monday. What could we possibly have for you on a Monday? Oh yeah! We have a new featured story for you. This week, courtesy of Timothy M., we are taking a look at The Navigator by Cynus. Hopefully you'll like what you read and it will prompt you to go and read the story itself!
The Navigator
Cynus
Reviewer: Timothy M.
Status: Complete
Word Count: 93,473
The title of this story is sheer genius, and I’ll never forget the person or the concept which
Almost time to start a new week, but before we do that, we get to take a final look at what happened this past week! Before we do that though, Myr has been cleaning up around the site a bit, so make sure you check out the following threads on the forums:
And now let's see what happened in the various GA news blogs!
Anthology Announcements:
***NOTE: All Deadlines are for submission to the Anthology Proof Team
2017 Fall Anthology: The Fall Out /
I hope everyone is having a great week! It's time for this weeks prompts, supplied by our prompt guru, Comicfan. Just a reminder, and for those who haven't worked with the prompts before: prompt responses under 1,000 words must be posted as part of a collection. Hopefully you'll find something in this weeks prompts to spark an idea and get you writing!
Prompt 576 – Creative
Tag – First Line
How much longer do I have, doctor?
Prompt 577 – Creative
Please join the Author Promotion Team in congratulating Mikiesboy as GA's newest Promising Author! Mikiesboy, or tim as many know him, has been a member of GA for almost two years. During that time he has written a total of 21 stories, both prose and poetry, and has touched the hearts of many members. If you want to check out Mikiesboy's stories, and check out his new banner and author bio, you can visit his author page.
Please join us in congratulating Mikiesboy on his well deserved
I hope everyone has had a great week. Before we get into the wrap up, I want to remind everyone that the deadline to get your anthology story to the proof team is TODAY! Don't miss your chance to enter a story in the 2017 Spring Anthology. Another reminder, Invision is discontinuing it's chat service after today and at this time we have no immediate plans to replace it. For the time being, we will be focusing on bug fixes, completing Stories 2.0, as well as development of Stories 2.1 and 2.2. Wi
Well, April is nearly over and can you believe it's snowing outside! I hope y'all have much warmer weather than we do, but if you don't, why not stay inside with a nice hot drink and try your hand at one of the newest writing prompts! Don't forget to post links to your story in the appropriate thread for a chance to have it featured in the blog.
Prompt 574 – Creative
Tag – List of Words
Use the following words in a story – an emerald, a concert ticket, a bowl of
The following are blog features that site authors can participate in. If you would like to be included, please send me a PM with the information required. If you want to participate in multiple ones, please send a separate PM for each one. Please make sure the subject line of your PM specifies which one you're wanting to participate in.
Improve & Encourage *NEW*
The idea is for an author to read a story by a fellow author and provide detailed feedback, both positive and nega
So... who wants an extra month to read Caz Pedroso's Unison Island series? I hope you're all raising your hands because with everything going on, I completely spaced sending her the interview, and then I thought I had another week before I started to panic this morning because I realized that and then thought I had another week. But no... I just ended up being the flake. Sorry!! So, fortunately for me, Caz is very understanding and we picked a CSR Feature with a lot of content for you to enjoy,
Well, that's it for another week! Before we get too deep into this week's wrap up, please check out this blog entry from Myr.
There has been a lot going on at Gay Authors this week. We've been updating the FAQ and there was a recent update to the site that fixed a few of the issues plaguing members including the one that kept the second page of story comments from being read. You can read about the recent fixes here. Also, there's a possible new blog feature if enough authors are intereste
Hope everyone has had a great week so far and is looking forward to the weekend. What better way to start it off than with brand new prompts! If you've been feeling stuck, or maybe just want to do something a little different, maybe one of these prompts will jump start a new idea. A reminder: Prompt responses under 1,000 words must be posted as part of a collection.
Prompt 572 – Creative
Tag – First Line
What do you mean you are leaving now?
Prompt 5
Please join the Author Promotion Team in congratulating Aditus as GA's newest Signature Author! Aditus has been a member of GA for five and a half years and was first promoted to Promising in March of 2015. Since joining, Aditus has written a total of 33 stories, including his popular novel, Red Running Shoes. If you want to check out Aditus' other stories, and check out his new banner, you can visit his author page.
Please join us in congratulating Aditus on his well deserved promot
Did you miss out on the feature on Monday? You can still visit it here and download your copy of the signature banner featuring Andrew Q. Gordon's story, Chosen of Honorus. It represents this scene chosen by Caz Pedroso as her favorite in the story. Let's find out why Caz picked this particular scene:
Caz Pedroso said ~ I picked it because I like this bit because it shows a lot about Farrell. It shows that no matter how scared, tired, or unprepared he feels he will stand up for himse
This month we're featuring another one of our Classic Authors who was nominated by Caz Pedroso. It's my great pleasure to share some thoughts on Andrew Q. Gordon's high fantasy novel, Chosen of Honorus. Did you know this went from free to Premium to published? And the 4th book in the series with just published with Dreamspinner Press Publications! Talk about a GA author success story!
Chosen of Honorus
by Andrew Q. Gordon
*Premium Story*
Length: 115,380
I'm not going to do a huge intro today, instead, let's just take a look at what happened in the various GA News blogs today! Oh.... and.....
And for those interested, Cia has started a Treasure Hunt in the Games and Humor forum!
Myr has also updated his Bug blog entry!
Anthology Announcements:
***NOTE: All Deadlines are for submission to the Anthology Proof Team
2017 Spring Anthology: Jagged Edges / Unintended Consequences -
Happy Friday, Y'all!!!!! Hope everyone is looking forward to the weekend, I know I am! To help start your weekend off right, it's time for some new prompts. Hopefully one of these great prompts will inspire you, and don't forget to share your responses (at least a link) so that they can possibly be featured next week. Also, as always, remember that prompt responses under 1K have to be posted as part of a collection.
Prompt 570 – Creative
Tag – List of Words
Use
It's time for another author promo! I'm completely out of these promos, so if you'd like to promo your own work, take a look at the thread for guidelines and then PM me. For this month, our featured promo spot is for Headstall. There were three questions that Headstall had to answer for each story. The questions were What gave you the idea for this story? What was your favorite thing about writing this story? & Please tell us something about this story that is not already in the description.
I hope everyone had a great weekend, but now it's time to start off a new week. A great way to start the week is to take a look at a story that can be found on Gay Authors. Today's feature is Hypnotic by Cia. Litlover was nice enough to provide us with this great review. If you haven't already done so, maybe it will inspire you to take a look. If you do, don't forget to leave Cia some comments. Enjoy!
Hypnotic
Cia
Reviewer: Litlover
Status: Complete
Word Coun
Are you ready for a new week? Before that happens, let's end the week with a look back at what happened this week in the various GA news blogs.
Anthology Announcements:
***NOTE: All Deadlines are for submission to the Anthology Proof Team
2017 Spring Anthology: Jagged Edges / Unintended Consequences - Due April 30th, 2017
2017 Fall Anthology: The Fall Out / Secret Spaces - Due November 15th, 2017
Premium Updates:
Negative S
Please join the Author Promotion Team in congratulating LitLover as GA's newest promoted author! LitLover has been a member of GA for exactly 3 years (Today is her GA Anniversary as well!) and during that time, she has written four stories to share with the members here at GA and has written over 1,000 reviews! Her current novel Choices is at just over 30,000 words and still going strong. If you want to read more from LitLover, you can visit her author page (plus you can check out her snazzy new
Ask an Author #48
Welcome back to another quirky question and answer session with your favorite authors!
In AtA #47, we heard from authors Riley Jericho, SkinnyDragon, Craftingmom, and Roberto Zuniga.
Today in AtA #48 we hear from authors JackBinimbul, Mikiesboy, Palantir, and WolfM.
Please welcome Texan and Author JackBinimbbul to the blog. Jack has been with GA for almost a year but has dabbled in writing for a long time. He’s the author of the popula
This month's feature, Unison Island, is a series of short stories and novellas by Caz Pedroso. It starts with an introduction in... Welcome to Unison Island. What else is there to read? Well, a lot! Check them out below. Read one, or two, or all five, but be ready with your thoughts on the stories and series and any questions for Caz on Monday, April 24th!
Unison Island Series
by Caz Pedroso
Book 1: Welcome to Unison Island 1,108 words
This is an introduction to
Hope everyone had a great week this week. It's been a very busy week here at Gay Authors and we even had the April Fool's Short Story Contest author reveal! There's still some bug hunting going on with the new site, so please be patient. If you think you've found a bug, make sure to check out the blog and the forum to make sure it isn't something that has already been answered. The blog has the most recent fixes as of April 1st. Now, let's take a look at what happened in the various GA news blog
I'd like to thank all of the authors who participated in the April Fool's Short Story Contest! There were a lot of great entries and I'm sure it was hard to choose who to vote for. Thank you everyone who voted for your favorite story and a big Thank You to Reader1810 for collecting the votes. Stories will be properly attributed to the correct authors very soon. Congratulations to the winners!!!!
And in a tie for 2nd place!
Sign Up and get an occasional Newsletter. Fill out your profile with favorite genres and say yes to genre news to get the monthly update for your favorite genres.
I shocked my pals when I used a windlass fashioned out of stuff in the back of his truck attached to an oak tree to pull his truck out of a muddy bog. Archimedes was wrong about using a lever and a fulcrum to move the world. You need a windlass too. Redneck engineering is fun and has gotten me out of so much trouble. I won't say what we were doing in that bog. 😇
Windlass comes from the Old Norse word 'vinda' (to wind) + 'ass' (a pole or beam). The latter part is similar to the Gothic word 'ans' (a pole or pillar). The word windlass was brought into Middle English as an alteration of the Anglo-Norman French word windas around 1400.
Windlass type devices are used in modern ships to raise the anchors, whereas capstans were used in sailing ships. The main difference is windlasses are horizontal and capstans are vertical.
The short story as a form is challenging. It condenses everything about writing into a short piece that can be read in a sitting.
It's a good place for a beginner to start because it forces you to be concise. Every word matters.
You can easily get lost if you try writing a novel first. The short story is a nice, tame hundred acre wood to play in.
Razzle-dazzle, what an interesting combination of words.
Dazzle is an intransitive verb: 1) to lose vision when looking at a bright light; 2a) to shine brilliantly; 2b) to arouse admiration by an impressive display.
Transitive verb: 1) to overpower with light; 2) to impress deeply, overpower, or confound with brilliance.
It’s also a noun as dazzle or dazzler.
Dazzle came into usage in the 15th century as the intransitive verb 1.
It also has a bunch of primary synonyms an
Authors should be cautious about using razzle-dazzle in their prose. If it works, you get the fireworks you were hoping for. If not, you get a messy fizzle.
Write, rewrite, drink heavily, cuss, rewrite and hope for the best.
This is a great article and I'm sure it resonates with many authors on GA, it certainly does for me. I wrote a one-chapter short story intending it to be a one-off, readers loved it and it ended up being the first in a series of stories, some are short one-chapter stories and others are novels of varying length. It's a great way to experiment and find out if there is a readership out there for what you are writing. If you look at Carlos Hazday's CJ series it is a mix of short one-chapter and lon
Our Privacy Policy can be found here: Privacy Policy. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue..