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Blast From The Past!

Don't you just love these? I do. This is from the third edition of the newsletter in December 2006.   For those of you who don't know Vlista, or Vance, is one of our oldest Hosted Authors. He has been 'away' for a while and I miss him. So, here is a little insight into Vlista as an author and a person as well.   Member Interview-Vlista   GA: Hi Vance!   Vance: Hi GA! How are you?   GA: Great, how are you?   Vance: Not too bad!   GA: Ready to be interviewed?   Vance: Yep I think
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Prompts

Writing Prompts #110 & #111

It's Friday! It's Friday! Whoot! Time for some jolly good reading. Our prompts this week are: Prompt 110 – Creative Cue – Creating Evil No one is just evil. They work from their own point of view. Your job is to create an “evil character” but you have to explain why they are that way. What happened to turn them into the person they are and why do they find that “evil” lifestyle so appealing? Prompt 111 – Creative Cue – The Quick Fix Everyone knows that there is no such thi
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Writing Tips

Writing Tip: Creating A Credible Villain

You know we all love a bad boy. We all love them better in our stories. But can we write them? Today's tip talks about... Creating a Credible Villain by Renee Stevens When creating a villain for your story, there are many things that need to be considered. Villains are not ALL bad. While they will have mostly flaws, they most likely will also have something about them that is good. This could be anything. A serial killer could also be a devoted family man. Your villain
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Reviews

Whats New?

Here lately I've been asking a lot of people to write reviews. Not just people I interact with all the time, or even interact well with. I thought it was important to bring that up. I also thought it was important to bring up that in many instances, old news is put aside so new news can be brought to you the reader. And for that I would like to thank my reviewers... all of them. I also think it's important to point out that the blogs do not have a spellcheck function that I can find, so if you d
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Writing Tips

Writing Tip: Motivation

Motivation. What makes a writer start writing and keep at it day after day? I asked Mark to write something for the blog, and that was the topic he chose. So, let's all take a peek inside Mark's head and see what he thinks... Chronicles of Chronicles: How I wrote “Chronicles of An Academic Predator” I’ve learned that when someone really hot, really charming, really bitchy, and/or really sinister asks you to do something, it’s usually a good idea to agree, especially if they have
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Featured Stories

Featured Story: It Stays In Vegas

Some stories are so good they need no introduction. That's how I feel about this one. So with no further hullabaloo I present --       It Stays in Vegas by Jack Scribe reviewed by Renee Stevens   I have read all of Jack Scribes “Vegas” series and a couple of them I have read multiple times. The first story in the series, It Stays In Vegas, introduces many of the main characters that we see throughout the series.   When Bob Harrington takes a trip to Las Vegas to celebrate h
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Weekly Wrap Up

Weekly Wrap Up...

Greetings on this Superbowl Sunday from your friendly blogging team. This week has been a hoot! It started off by dragging out an old favorite by DomLuka:   Desert Dropping   You know, I really wish more of you would review these stories... make an author feel appreciated. Anyway, our reviewer really did just that. And got quite a bit of feedback. Good job!   Of course that was just Monday, we still have a whole week to look back on. Tuesday was a peek at the psychology of the
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Prompts

Writing Prompts #108 & #109

This week Comicfan brings us two new prompts: Prompt 108 – Creative Cue – List of words Use the following words in a short story: obituary, ice cream, red dress, fish, and apartment. and Prompt 109 – Creative Cue – Poetry Write a poem about your favorite person. Try to descriptive and give life to the person you are writing about. The poem can take any from a series of haikus, to free form, to an established pattern. In response to Prompt #107....   Lifetime Gu
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Writing Tips

Writing Tip: Physical Description

While poking around in the forums the other day I found myself in the Editor's forum looking at a thread concerning physical descriptions and how authors handle writing them. It seemed the biggest concern was how to get the info across without the story sounding like something plucked from the Nifty's "First Time" collection. I'm not going to repeat all the discussion from there to here, if you are an author, you should read it. If you are a new author... please read it. What I am going to
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Featured Stories

What's New?

So... What's new? Today we have two new stories for you to take a look at... Pitch Perfect by Intune and Red Light by Robyn. So, go, take a look and review, review, review!   Pitch Perfect by intune   reviewed by EmDee   After reading the first chapter of Pitch Perfect by intune, I was instantly hooked. In fact, I knew even before I finished reading all of the currently posted 10 chapters that I would be writing this review for the GA News Blog.   Pitch Perfect is an in progre
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Writing Tips

Writing Tip: Out Of The Ooze

Well, yesterday was an interesting day... I would like to go on record as saying I did write today's tip. Take it with the intended humor is it written with... Out of the Ooze by Lugh Please understand that what I am about to share with you is a personal experience. It is not based on any research nor is it scientifically sound; take it with a grain of salt. Better yet, save the salt, you may very well need it when you get to ‘The End’. I have heard authors speak repeatedly aga
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Featured Stories

Featured Story: Desert Dropping

Ha! Time to rile up all the lazy Domaholics on the site. This week's featured story is by their missing favorite author Dom Luka, which of course everyone wants out of hiding... well everyone that is except maybe our reviewer.... Desert Dropping by DomLuka published on GA December 27th, 2010. 36 chapters, 389,678 words.   It was a tried and true—if overused—premise. The protagonist, a typical closeted teenager named Rory, is thrust into a new environment and famil
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Weekly Wrap Up

Weekly Wrap Up!

Whew! What a week two. I hope everyone took the time to go check out our Featured Story this week: From Behind Those Eyes by Viv   And while you were out there looking, I hope you stopped by all the other great stories we talked about on Wednesday: Quonus10's Second Shot and The Trial of Jordan Colmar and Dee's story, Low Down and Out. And on Friday we found a poem by JOeKEool in the Prompts and some people learned that the prompts aren't just "silly little things" any more but real
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Author Interviews

Grab Bag!

Today we have an author interview with Mark Arbour. Many of you know his stories, but do you know anything about him and how or why he started writing them? Hopefully Marzipan’s interview will shed some light on this subject for us all. but first... an announcement... Today is the last day for the Reader's Choice Award Nominations. Get yours in. Now on to the interview -- I’m going to start with an easy question. You are hugely popular author in GA. What do you think appeals in
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Prompts

Writing Prompts #106 & #107

Time to go haunt Comicfan and see what he can drag out of the inspiration file for this week. Seems we have two new challenges. One is a Point of View challenge -- those are always interesting -- and one has the goal of animating an inanimate object. You've got a week. Make life interesting. Prompt 106 – Cue – The Fight Remember the last argument you got into? Change it into a story about two other people. The challenge is to tell the story from the other person’s point of view
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Writing Tips

Tip Thursday

Herm, we've had a resource, a writing tip, an editing tip... how about a site tip?   How to promote your story on GA:   Just as you'd find with a book placed on the bookshelf in a store, your story can get lost on GA among the other stories if you don't make it stand out. Most importantly, imo, is to have a story that engages and interests readers and then try some of these other tips to help improve your fan base.   1. Post regularly if you are writing a serial work. We ask that you don't
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Featured Stories

What's New?

Well, here we are at Wednesday again, and it's time to look at something new. So, what shall we look at this time? Decisions, decisions...   How about a promising author? Quonus10, known affectionately as Q10, has been writing here for about eighteen months. During that time he has made quite an impression on everyone who takes the time to stop and say hi.   Well enough gab... here we go!   What people are saying about Q10:   TrevorTime on The Trial of Jordan Colmar:   And on Second
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Writing Tips

Writing Tip: Structuring & Punctuating Dialogue

Everyone who has ever tried to pass eighth grade knows what a pain grammar can be, and one of the worst things in my personal opinion is punctuating dialogue. As many of you know, Cia edits for me, and one of her favorite things to do is smack me around for not putting proper punctuation around my speech tags. So, in honor of my favorite fallacy she agreed to educate everyone – enjoy! Important rules about structuring and punctuating dialogue: Definition of a speech tag: Any descriptiv
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Featured Stories

Featured Story: From Behind Those Eyes

It's Monday again! Time for a new Featured Story Selection. Today, Tiger brings us one of his favorites, From Behind Those Eyes, by Viv. If you like stories about teenagers who play sports with a bit of angst about life and coming out -- well read on, this may be something you like. If not, well, it might surprise you, give it a try anyway.   From Behind Those Eyes   By Viv review by Tiger   About a year after I joined GA, someone pointed out From Behind Those Eyes as a must-read
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Weekly Wrap Up

The Week In Review...

This week we did so many things -- our Featured Story was   Working it Out by Don Hanratty   which a few of you read and commented on. I'm really hoping the rest of you will take a chance and do the same, this one is really worth a look.   Sharon gave some great advice to authors, James suggested a book on writing, and we dregged up a Blast from our Past newsletters to make you laugh. Also, over the week, you had the chance to become aquainted with two of our newer stories, Ugly Dav
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Writing Tips

Writing Tip Joke

How about a Blast From the Past? This was printed in our 2007 Vol2 Ed 4 Newsletter under Jokes: How To Write Good 1. Avoid alliteration. Always. 2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do. 3. Employ the vernacular. 4. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc. 5. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary. 6. Remember to never split an infinitive. 7. Contractions aren't necessary. 8. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos. 9. One shoul
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Prompts

Writing Prompts #104 & #105

Each week, our Writing Promp Guru, Comicfan, brings to you two (or more) prompts in the Writing Prompt forum, a subforum in the Writing Workshops forum. Writing Prompts are exercises for your writing muscles. They can help you get through writers block (creative prompts) or train specific muscles (technical prompts). They can even focus your writing muscles into new thought patterns (challenge prompts). Here are a few things to keep in mind to keep everyone safe, sane, and successful.
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Writing Tips

Writing Tip: The Essential Writer's Reference

Today you are being brought a book selection. The Essential Writer's Reference is an outstanding resource if you can get your hands on one. They do come used, and very cheap. If you would like more books for writers, both old and new, there is a thread in the writer's corner where they can be found. The Oxford Essential Writer's Reference Berkley Press, 2005. This is an excellent writer's reference that is current and more relevant to the task of creative writing than the Little, Bro
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