Cia

Enh. I dislike my 'mothers' completely and I rarely ever see them. Right now my kids still love me, though 2 days ago my daughter literally told me, "You piss me off! It just can't take you anymore." She's 8. First I told her not to use that phrase, I didn't care she was mad and she had to re-write her paragraph anyway, and then I went to my room and giggled my ass off.

Well wasn't that a sap fest!

A wonderful way to approach the goal of writing a great story by making your characters real!

First, if you have the story and the idea-write it! Make it your own somehow, because there are 'lab experiment/betrayal by docs/love stories' stories out there. Heck, I did one-though mine was a futuristic/alien story, lol. My biggest bit of advice? Get yourself a beta reader and/or an editor. You've a few misspelled words in your write up-bare and witch are both homophones. You should've had 'bear with me' and 'which he very well is'. If you look up those words you'll see they each have very different meanings. The words we choose when writing are very important and those types of mistakes are easily caught by an experienced team to help support you. Also, it seems you are doing a modern fantasy. I like to read and write that mix of genres quite a bit and I've written up a few thoughts on that lately. The most important thing for creating a fantastical element to your story is to make sure you follow the rules of your world. What powers does your main character, Roary, have? Do they develop over time? If they weren't unlocked before he finds out about the experiments, how did the doctors know he was a super human? Is his power scientifically explainable and that's how they figure out to give them to other kids? OR do the doctos go blind into it and not care if it fails on the off-chance that it works? When they take his DNA and put it into the other kids, do they develop the same powers? Do they have different powers? If anger is his trigger, do they have the same trigger? How do they control their powers? How do they learn that control? A lot of questions, right? You have to think of all of that when you write something that isn't already explainable and 'known' to readers. You have to explain your fantastical element and then stick to it to make it believable. That is your goal, even when you are making things up! Good luck Jonathan, and don't forget we have a huge resource in the Writer and Editor's Corner forums.

You got some good advice in here but nothing beats an actual doctor giving you actual advice after actually seeing the spot in question. Definitely get all the information on the types of gloves you wear, the chemicals you deal with and the type/length of exposure and then go see a medical provider.

Happy Birthday!!

Looking for a read last night, I came across this story. One of the many thousands on the site, I wanted a quick read and this fit perfectly. Enjoy! The Third Fire by Lugh Status: Complete Word Count: 1,450 Reviewed by: Cia Did you ever feel in the mood for just a tidbit of a story? Our Hosted Authors aren't good just for long, serial stories. Quite a few also provide us with great quick reads just right for that fifteen minutes you have on the bus, train, or those short times when you aren't expected to be doing whatever you are responsible for in life. For me that was between putting the chicken in the oven, nagging the kids to clean their rooms, and when I had to have dinner on the table. For my reading pleasure, I chose Lugh's short story called The Third Fire, one he wrote before my tenure as one of his betas. The tags were interesting, including coming of age, religion, and mages. They piqued my interest, wondering how they could possibly mix together. A short time later I knew. The story is a great mix of finding that moment when you leave childhood behind and become that person who moves ahead in life knowing who and what you are - what you're supposed to be doing. For Azrael, that came one night as he is claimed by a goddess, and a man, all at the same time. I loved the uncertain nature of Azrael's thoughts up to that moment of realization. The story was told from his point of view and we get a sense of his confusion, uncertainity and then ... BAM. His moment came. Literally, lol. Lugh's ability to create a picture in few words is one of my favorite things about him as an author. He creates intricate worlds and characters, but he can keep it simple and still enthrall me every time. I've read most of his stories and can't think of a single one I haven't found myself enjoying. That isn't to say his writing is perfect. As usual, he forgot the rules about when mom and dad become Mom and Dad, and there were a few missteps in the story I'd have called him on if I'd been a beta for the story. However, none of that took anything away from my enjoyment of the story. I love fantasy, and I love when it makes me think. I liked the fire symbolism in the story too. So, if you don't have the time to start reading one of the many serial stories by our Hosted Authors, pick one of the many short stories available. Start with this one if you like fantasy, or coming of age stories, you won't regret it! Don't forget to a leave a few reviews as well. Happy Reading!

I'm glad hun. Hopefully this will continue to improve with your dad.

Sorry hun, sounds like you've been through the wringer again lately. We're always here to listen though!

Often times lack of direction in what you are writing can create that type of a problem, I've had that happen. For me, it is usually when I approach the end of a story and begin trying to tie up every darn detail that I get a tad tripped up. Creating a plan can really work to prevent those issues. If that's not it, GA's 'sister' site FSO has a blog I wrote up last week that gives some tips to get you writing if you find yourself blocked for one reason or another. You can read it here.

To my favorite beta! I don't know what I'd do without you around to chat with, bounce ideas off of, and just generally keep me in line. I hope you have another good year to come!!!

LOL, that's how I got started writing too Dave! Good luck!

'Most' publishers won't take stories already published. Newer ones are flexible though. I've an expanded version of Pricolici being published this fall by a new publishing company, and it was with the understanding that the original version of the story would not be removed from GA. However, as Andy said, pretty much any established publisher, even strictly e-publishers, will not pick up stories already posted for free.

No problem. Number of reviews that could be left was one of the things we looked at when GA Stories was designed. I've seen other sites that allow for more than one review per chapter as well, and unfortunately the few sometimes ruin it for the many. I've observed reviews on stories becoming a place for authors/fans/flamers to get into arguments and meander away from the actual story and it is easier to moderate that outside of the review system. Also, one of the many ways you can search for stories is by the reviews they receive. Obviously, the idea is that the more reviews, the better a story is, for the most part. Allowing only 1 review per reader per chapter, plus the story review, keeps that 'honest'.

You can only review a chapter once, yes, but you can review EACH chapter. You can also only do one story review as well. There is an author forum for authors to create discussion topics if they wish to give their readers a place to further discuss their stories in more depth. You are always able to send comments to an author using the 'send me a message' button on their profile too. If they don't have a story discussion topic, ask them to start one or if they mind if you start one. The review area really isn't meant to be a place to comment to the author, other than on the specific content of the chapter. We have many options for readers to interact with the author outside of the reviews which is why we have it set up that way.

I really enjoyed The Wheel of Time stories. It's definitely not your typical fantasy male/female dynamic in the story.

Oh yeah, you can definitely tell the places that PR their employees to sucker in people. I've been 'Miss' before, with a wedding ring on and 2 kids. Yeah right, I'm a miss. Pfffft. I don't get carded, but then I haven't since I was about 16. I've always looked older, and I hung out with older people, so it never was an issue. Nowadays they card everyone for liquor though. I'm not a fan of rap, but even I had to laugh at that video.

I write without a clear direction in mind quite often. Sometimes I have an idea of where I want the story to go, but case in point with my last completed story, The Experiment, I had no idea Jarauala was the bad alien gal until we'd met her 3 times. With my Carthera series, I had no idea when I started the first one that you'd find out that Mishtar, the rescuer in that story, was the villian mastermind by the 3rd story. I think the difference between writing each chapter as it comes, with only the barest of ideas of what you want the story to be, or none at all, and just writing a story willy nilly comes down to the time you spend editing it. In many ways writing by the seat of your pants is a technique that requires you to be very meticulous in knowing what you've written so far. Just as meticulous as planning your story in advance, imo. If you do that correctly, you will not paint yourself into any corners. You don't have to know what happens next, as long as you know where you've been. Writing without a plan can be interesting for the author as much as the reader. Not knowing what comes next can be very fun and lead to some interesting twists that readers don't expect. It is not, however, pointless. At least not in my experience.

Very teenage angst, which I don't really get into since I'm not a teenager and I haven't been one for a long time. I did, however, notice a few things as I scanned this story for approval. You should pay attention to your dialogue and mix it with body cues a little bit more, rather than large chunks of dialogue and then narration from the character's POV. That will help your readers, 'see' the scene. Another thing I noticed you do, A LOT, is use hehehe when writing. You do it in both narration and in dialogue. Is that a noise? Is it supposed to indicate a laugh? If they are laughing you need to indicate that with narration and cut out all those hehehe, in my mind. It doesn't flow well at all. I do think you've given us a lot of insight into Dylan's character but remember not to make him too one dimensional by always making him so dramatic. Even teenagers are happy from time to time. Angst and dramatic moments are good to create interest, always having a character being whiny or pissy about life will turn off readers. Also, we've seen Dylan's relationship with his mother, but you've always highlighted his negative relationship with his father, and it seemed as though his parents relationship was pretty full of friction as well. You'll need to follow up on those family dynamics if you're going to full flesh out the characters since you've made it all such a big part of the story already.

Nice emotional drama. The writing flow was pretty smooth and I like that Hiro didn't immediately fall apart, even if he was understandably upset. Angst is good if it is believable, this was. Plus, I'm a sucker for a happy ending, lol. Good job!

Interesting beginning. I'm assuming you're going dystopian zombie horror. You did paint some good pictures with your text and Poprocks was quite the quirky character. I liked you having the guy a claustrophile. I know the feeling so that was a nice relatable touch for me to the story. However, the timeline jumps when they are in the car with Tom, then jerk back to when they met him and he picked them up, to the abrupt shift to the zombie attack was extremely disruptive and frustrated me. It pulled me away out of the story because I couldn't track what was happening when and to which characters or why. I had to stop and re-read that section a second time for it to make sense. When I write I try to make it so the reader isn't reading my story, they are in my story. That means have a flow that moves logically from one scene to another is just as important as making sure that sequences of events within the scene make sense as well. Just as a person can't easily get up before they fall, putting your middle before your beginning just doesn't make sense like you did with those scenes.

James: I dread to think of why you believe any sort of gloating self-satisfaction instantly has to be 'getting off on it'. I would agree that she's enjoying the power trip she's experiencing but making that leap to a sexual pleasure is not logical in my mind. The leash thing is very common. As a stay at home mom, I've seen a ton of kids leashed over the years. I always found it more than a little bit ridiculous. They also make belts with alarms you can trigger if your kid gets too far from you and squeaky shoes so you can hear them walking around. Those drove me nuts. Though I had a 3 year old and 1 year old both moving at one point and definitely saw the draw of the idea of a leash, I never used one. What I did instead? I taught my kids to stay close to me or be punished. At that age it usually meant being confined to a stroller or the sling, or we would go home. Punishment for teenagers is very different than younger kids, I'll grant you that. However, the biggest job is laying down that foundation when the kids are young. If you prove that your kids must abide by the punishment they receive or they'll get a worse one, then it can work when they are older. You just have to know the right lever to get your kids to dread being punished, at all ages. My kids respond well to loss of movie night or computer privileges, and my best friend has a 13 year old and the child would rather wash dishes for 2 weeks as a punishment than lose a week of cell phone as proven by a recent punishment episode. These kids parents have screwed up in the parenting department but one can hope they will learn from their mistakes as well. The kids in the video are definitely shamed and the weight of that is probably huge for many of them, beyond whatever punishment they receive from parents, the school, or the police. I saw a television interview with the kid that did the video and the idiot barely looked up the whole time. I found the conversation of 'you should never let peer pressure get to you' to be too little, too late, but it is a good deterrent for others in the area for a long while I'll bet.

My children's public school district has a 3 strikes rule for the bus. Verbal warning, written warning with 2 days off the bus, parental meeting with a week of no bus... then no bus for the child for the remainder of the year or the next year if the infraction takes place at the end of the school year. It then becomes the parent's problem to get them to and from school. Obviously, that's required since they can't just not send their children to school. Schools can have effective policies in place to prevent problems like bullying, violence, or unsafe behavior. Policies that don't include a teacher demeaning a student, which shouldn't be allowed either. An adult calling a student names when they are supposed to be teaching them not only to be a learned person, but a proper member of society, is acting in a hypocritical fashion. That can't be tolerated any more than teens should be able to talk to teachers or other students in a demeaning way. Otherwise, how can they expect to enforce no bullying and name calling? Yeah, that might be a bit extreme. She wasn't torturing little bunnies or cutting heads off cats. Indication of a discipline problem, yes, signs of sexual abuse and a sociopath developing? I wouldn't go that far at all.

The switch last year was hard for everyone; most people dislike change and it was a complete departure from the old system for both hosted and promising/authors. I think the system is actually pretty user friendly for the most part and other than minor formatting issues I don't get too many 'I just can't figure this out at all' pm's anymore. While posting is certainly more complicated now, the ways of getting a story available for readers is much greater. Another thing that members might not be aware of is that part of the staff, and some lovely volunteers, moved hundreds of stories that were not moved by authors themselves. Either because they had abandoned them or the site, or they just weren't around then. Some authors came back after the move and many more just never posted anything else. I just want it to be clear that just because some stories were moved doesn't mean the authors did it themselves and then abandoned GA due to a complicated posting system. It's entirely likely that we moved those stories for them. Just yesterday we had 3 new stories posted on GA, 2 serials and one short story. We also had 2 chapter updates to ongoing stories. On average each week you can find at least a handful of new stories started and many more updates. Check out the tags and genre listings to find new stories or old ones you might not have read before. Unless their preference is extremely narrow, a reader should be able to find a huge supply of stories to keep busy. I definitely agree, though, that will only be easier if more authors join and post on GA.

That is not true of all school systems though. Clearly, I pointed out that perhaps it is different where she works but here, that is exactly their job. Just last week I was out in the driveway waiting for my 5 year old to get off the bus. The bus monitor was in the front row behind the driver and I heard her say goodbye to my son. When I walked forward to meet him, I witnessed her reprimand another child for being rude and made him move from his seat to one right behind hers. If the elderly woman in the video was not there to protect the kids, then sure, she did what she could logically which was nothing. But here, her job would be to put an end to that and that is exactly what I would expect. There are a lot of nuances to the situation that I'm sure the public isn't aware of. I react as I would to the situation occuring here. It just makes me exceptionally glad that my school district is the way it is.