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Welcome to your weekly update brought to you by yours truly! Big reminder to all our site authors, you only have until October 31st to get your Anthology into the Review Team. If this is new to you, see the anthology info below for more details. Monday readers got a glimpse into The Thousandth Regiment by AC Benus with a review by Parker Owens on the humanization of war and the power of poetry. Please check it out! Want to brush up on your Word-smithing? Learn what these words mean in Myr's luftmensch cumshaw enhance chimera reverie duopoly volant Friday brought a refresh to Wayne's Prompt #7. Please look forward to a return of this feature coming soon from some new Prompt Volunteers!! Comicality created dread in our Saturday Writing Tips, and if you're an author and you don't know what that means, take a peek now! Story goals for October have a lot of red! Can we bump these up before the end of the month? Upcoming Anthology 2021 Anthology #2 Top Theme 1 - A Winding Path - Due October 31st, 2021 2021 Anthology #2 Top Theme 2- An Unconventional Gift - Due October 31st, 2021 2021 Anthology #2 Pot Luck Themes - Due October 31st, 2021 Anthology 101 - In the Anthology Forum. Everything you need to know about GA Anthologies Ask an Author 3.0 - Submit a story you like and 3 questions you would like to ask the author about. Send them to @astone2292 or @Renee Stevens **Please submit so Aaron can have a bank of stories and questions** Blog Opportunities Guess the Author: Open to all GA authors. PM @Renee Stevensor @wildone to participate Story Review: Send it in to @Renee Stevens or @Timothy M. Now, let's look at new stories and chapters posted this week! Premium Updates: On Fire by Cia *Premium* Classic Updates: Bloom by Dabeagle Stuff People Do by Ronyx The Brilliant Boy Billionaire by Altimexis Signature Updates: Ancalagon by Cia Gap Year by Mark Arbour Larkspur: A Sidewinder Tale by Headstall On Fire by Cia Picture Me And You by Comicality The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry by AC Benus The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Prose by AC Benus Promising Updates: Never Too Late To Believe by northie Let's get those goals up.... Read, Write, and REVIEW!!! (and Recommend with a share to the forum topic!)

“Aren’t you hungry?” Cheisumn asked. “You must have traveled a long way.” “We did. But these pleasures are not meant to be eaten alone. Please, can we have the use of some cups and a bowl?” She rolled a table over, the dishes upon it clattering on the bumpy rug. “Anything else?” “No, but thank you for the hospitality of your shop.” Garjah flicked something from his pocket to her, and she caught it and winked. “What was that?” I hissed. “Cred card.” “A what?” I scrit

Wishful thinking. The market was chaos with Four Arms everywhere, but all eyes were on me. If the Kardoval were looking for us, and people wanted to turn us in, we’d be easy to find. I had to hope the rebels here would accept Garjah. I wasn’t sure if they’d be more or less suspicious with me in tow, but he’d refused to leave me in the shuttle. Bouncer had been equally insistent on coming with me, so he paced at my side. Maybe they weren’t staring at me so much. The predator with poison

Who wants a happy ending? 😆 Come now, I meant this month's feature, Happily Ever After, Ltd by @Richie Tennyson. This lighthearted Cinderella remix is just what the season ordered! Happily Ever After, Ltd. by @Richie Tennyson Length: 62,791 Description: Prince Charming goes missing from the pages of Cinderella, resulting in chaos in the offices of Happily Ever After, Ltd. The manager of the Cinderella division, Dorothy Weaver, has to try to salvage a happy ending. She temporarily replaces Prince Charming with nineteen-year-old Ryan Hooper, without realising he’s gay. Inside the fairytale, Ryan tries his best to find a happy ending … A Reader said: This fantastic story is a modern day re-writing of the Cinderella, but not as you would expect. ~Chris191070 Don't forget to come back to share your thoughts on Monday, October 25th!

I leaned heavy against Garjah, and he gripped my hips with two hands, locking our lower bodies together. Despite being on top and having leverage, and two sets of arms, there was no way I was getting away from him. Good thing I didn’t want to. “We don’t have anything to slick the way.” His voice was a low rumble that vibrated against my chest. “Hmm, guess we’ll have to do something else.” I wormed a hand between our bodies. My shaft was slender beside his, but rigid. He was flexib

I can't count the number of times the touch screen flubbed me like that when I first started using them way back when (OMG that makes me sound old, lol).

Oh, no, phrasing... 😋 It was meant to be "comment below if you enjoyed the story but first (read) my interview with her". I've featured Renee for the CSR once before but it was years ago.

I can't believe it's the end of September already! This month has flown by, unlike the 56 weeks it took for Renee to write her 1k a week Wednesday Briefers flash fiction story, Thwarted. Did you read it? Make sure you share your comments below, but first my interview with her! Chocolate or Vanilla? Chocolate What's your favorite room in your house? Do you plot or write there? My favorite room in the house is my craft room. I don’t really plot or write there though, partly because that room is honestly disorganized chaos. It definitely needs an in depth cleaning. I do mostly sewing in that room, as well as crafts for my at home craft business. What is your favorite book? It’s been so long since I’ve been able to do any reading, that I honestly couldn’t pick a favorite book. And many of the books that I read now are the books that I read to my little man. And while I cherish being able to read to him, I wouldn’t say any of his little books would be my favorite. What do you like to do when you’re not writing? My favorite things to do are camping, fishing, just being outdoors. Lately I do a lot of crafting, and playing with my little guy, but for the most part I love to share my love of the outdoors. We haven’t got to do much camping the last couple of years, for various reasons, but hopefully soon our summers and fall will be back to spending time at the lake or in the mountains. Ironically, camping is always where I seemed to do my best writing. It’s been a while since you had time to write. What’s the best part of being an author you miss? Losing myself in the story. I used to be able to sit down and write and everything else just fell away. It let me get whatever I was feeling out, and at the same time allowed me to focus on something other than whatever was going on in life. I tend to bottle things up and for some reason, when I would be really into a story, everything just kind of melted away. I miss the release I got from writing, but I’m still hopeful that I’ll get back to it. The stories are there, I just struggle to get them out since I can’t stay up until all hours of the night, which is when I did most of my writing. If you could give advice to yourself when you first started writing, what would it be? The first one would be not to post until something is finished, with the exception of these 1K chapter stories. It puts too much pressure I think and trying to rush it in order to post can affect the story. The other thing is to not worry about it being perfect, just get the story out, as it can always be edited to fix major mistakes. What is the best part of writing a 1k a week story? The hardest challenge? The best part is that a 1K chapter is easily doable in a week, so it helps to keep an author writing. In fact, if I ever manage to get back to writing, I may very well start with flash stories just to get back into the groove of it. The hardest part is keeping chapters to the 1K word limit and have smooth transitions. In fact, while I really stuck to the 1K format for the first half or so of the story, in later chapters I have many that are a bit longer. Did you connect more with Mark or Trey when you wrote the story? I honestly can’t even remember. But that being said, I will say this. When I write, I have to have a good connection with all the main characters, or the story doesn’t get written. I’ve had stories before that I completely changed one of the characters because they were just not someone I could connect with. That wasn’t the case with Thwarted. I stayed connected with both Mark and Trey throughout and their characters never strayed from who they were to begin with. It’s been nearly 10 years since you wrote Thwarted. Would you change anything about it now? I don’t think I’d change anything about the storyline, but I would like to go back into it and smooth things out a bit. Maybe combine chapters and provide better transitions. Do you have a favorite scene or line from the story? It’s been so long since I wrote Thwarted that I really can’t remember any specific favorite scenes or lines. But, if pressed I’d have to choose the first prompt line, which was “Count sheep? I’d rather count…” mainly because it was the prompt that started it all, and I really think that scene kind of set the tone for Mark’s relationship with Jackie and Brent.

It's not me, I'm in disguise! 🥸 🤡 😜 In the absence of your usual wrapper, you get me... sorry, I'm simply not nearly as entertaining. Well, unless you watch me stumble around the classroom trying to to kill myself on all the student's things strewn about. That's hilarious. 😒 Last weekend Wildone said he was older than dirt and this week I'm a clown in disguise. I certainly entertain the students enough. Fortunately, we have one more day of weekend to enjoy. Why don't we take a look at what was shared this week in case you missed that! Myr made some BIG updates to Stories. What were they? Spoilers, a death knell for readers! Follow his blog, or click below to read all about it. Did you get started on your anthology story yet? It's coming soon! All week long Myr posts words of the day. Some features this week are wyvern, veridical, nidus, and will-o'-the-wisp. Which words do you know, and which ones are new to you? Check out all his Word of the Day blogs through this gif link: Monday I brought you this month's Classic Author feature, Topher Lydon's Sigil of the Wolf. Now, this SOUNDS like it would be maybe medieval or perhaps paranormal. If you just go by the title, not the genre, that is. But it's a pretty compelling sci-fi story. (psst, keep reading for more about the importance on genres at GA from Myr) Wednesday I tempted readers with a snippet of story. I do so live spacey stories, and these are long and... well, what genre would you put them in? Thursday Renee Stevens whet your anthology appetite with a revisit to Wombat Bill's story. Saturday Myr revealed survey results that are driving a new format that will help authors and readers sift through the genres on GA to really drill down into both what is wanted for reading and what authors like to write (or wish to explore). Please check out the amazing information he collected and ideas on how to move forward! How did we do with our goals so far this week? Down to just one red bar. Let's get that fixed! Upcoming Anthology 2021 Anthology #2 Top Theme 1 - A Winding Path - October 31st, 2021 2021 Anthology #2 Top Theme 2- An Unconventional Gift - October 31st, 2021 2021 Anthology #2 Pot Luck Themes - October 31st, 2021 Anthology 101 - In the Anthology Forum. Everything you need to know about GA Anthologies Ask an Author Ask an Author 3.0 - Submit a story you like and 3 questions you would like to ask the author about. Send them to @astone2292 or @Renee Stevens **Please submit so Aaron can have a bank of stories and questions** Blog Opportunities Guess the Author: Open to all GA authors. PM @Renee Stevensor @wildone to participate Story Review: Send it in to @Renee Stevens or @Timothy M. Now, let's look at new stories and chapters posted this week! Premium Updates: On Fire by Cia *Premium* Classic Updates: Bloom by Dabeagle Stuff People Do by Ronyx The Brilliant Boy Billionaire by Altimexis Signature Updates: Ancalagon by Cia Disasters, Delights and Other Detours by Parker Owens Larkspur: A Sidewinder Tale by Headstall My Only Escape by Comicality On Fire by Cia The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry by AC Benus The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Prose by AC Benus Promising Updates: Never Too Late To Believe by northie Don't forget.... Read, Write, and REVIEW!!! (and Recommend with a share to the forum topic!)

Thank you for sharing feedback on links that you use. Myr is currently working on the homepage to make it more compatible with Google's neverending changes for this or that dominant aspect to be relevant in searches. Please bear with us as things shift around or are adjusted. I know it's not a single click option, but if you go to the main Stories page, click on the filters drop menu (in gray just above the first story) and set the story status option to complete and apply that filter, it's really just 2 steps to get the stories you hopefully are looking for. Hopefully that helps!

It's not just stories I go nuts on little stuff, BTW, I emailed a college instructor last week because the online unit text had an example that used the phonetic spelling for garçon as garyon and then spelled it in the narrative explanation as gargon. I was like... "Um, no it's pronounced garson and use the cedilla please. Please tell whoever pushed this out to you to push out to us to fix it or stop using it." It was in the language development unit for heaven's sake! 😆

Hopefully you caught Monday's feature for Topher's popular 2nd novel in the Falcon Banner series. If not, check it out! For such a long story, I thought there would need to be a nice long glimpse at Darien and his mission... but will he be playing right into his enemies' hands? Want more? Click here

Cooperation was one of my mother’s three basic tenets for first contact. These aliens had protected me, fed me, healed me, changed my body to be like theirs, and probably forever isolated me from the rest of humanity when they did that. Someone would find the crashed skimmer and make the wrong conclusion. Sonez wouldn’t check too extensively, just order a scan of the surface of the planet from orbit and examination of a few days travel in either direction of the spot. There were plenty

I went in the opposite direction, and I'm bringing you Book 2 in Topher's popular Falcon Banner series as this month's feature. Yes, this is a super long novel, and yes, you should read it! Length: 173,703 Description: Darien Taine has resurrected a forgotten hope, freedom to his people, and set his sights squarely on Earth. Shadows of the Empire's dark past reach out to ensnare that hope, a fallen General strives to restore the one symbol that would unite the Empire again. The architect of the fall of mankind weaves a dark net; to lure the Excalibur into his clutches as he brings an ancient superweapon to bear. And fate, wielded as a weapon by a man 300 years dead, is Taine’s last recourse A reader said: Another excellent story, and follow up book to the first in the series. Well written, and thought out, it kept a good pace. However, it ends on a cliffhanger. If you read the series, just on this site, then you are left wanting more. ~ Brayon If you want to spread the word about Topher's story, download the graphic below and add it to your signature! Make sure you come back on Wednesday to see the excerpt I chose to share!

Garjah tapped the screen on his transport. He tapped it again and growled. “What?” I asked. I was sitting in the seat opposite him and Bouncer was crowded in close. To say the meeting hadn’t ended well was an understatement. Garjah was pulling an implacable unmoving object on the Kardoval, which scared me. Everything I’d overheard, or was directly told before we’d arrived, was about how powerful they were and how much everyone revered and respected their unique abilities. Maybe I hadn’

“Why didn’t I get this report?” Garjah tapped his screen, but it remained dark. He frowned. “What is going on?” “We have temporarily blocked all the signals to and from this location,” Mereval said. “Why? Security has been breached, and I should respond.” The rest of the Kardoval marched into the room, and the aide stiffened. He saluted with one hand across his chest and backed against the wall. Seedrah had followed suit, his skin paling. Garjah stood, but he didn’t salute. He dro

Try doing log in with a class of 3rd graders who were given a qr code last year and are expected to use their email and password (8 digit birthdate) this year on subpar tech. I had to give one kid 4 Chromebooks before it would even GET to the log in page! Poor kids and poor me. That teacher totally switched from the writing lesson to tech after I walked in, I swear!

Happy September, we're in the home stretch of 2021! This month, in honor of Labor Day in the U.S., I'm featuring a story about soldiers. For all those who work with their hands, who build, who labor, thank you! I hope you enjoy reading Renee Stevens' story, Thwarted. Maybe we can lure her back to writing again with some comments! Thwarted by @Renee Stevens Length: 62,434 Description: After getting out of the military, Mark is unsure what he wants to do with his life. Then he meets Trey, a current soldier in the US Army. Sometimes it seems like everything is conspiring against them. Can they make it or will they be... thwarted. A reader said: Finally managed to read the last chapters. I've enjoyed the story and your great characters, and I like to think they will have a happy life together. A sequel sounds good ~ Suvitar Don't forget to come back to share your thoughts on Monday, September 27th!

Wow, you guys have gotten REALLY good at dissecting 1k chapters and picking up on some of the "subtle" cues. Or I'm losing my touch! I won't say who is right or wrong, though. You'll have to wait till the next few chapters come out! 😈

“This is in English.” I glanced at Mereval. “You can read it.” “Yes,” she said. “But we don’t understand it.” She pointed at the screen. “Why would you cut off your nose to spite your face?” She grimaced. “We weren’t aware that humans took part in body mutilation.” “We don’t,” I said automatically. Then I backtracked, thinking of all the genetic modifications made in the womb that produced what seemed like, to me, some pretty freaky looking people. Not to mention what modern cosmetic s

All the subtle geekiness!

It's been a long month, but this month's feature was a long read for you to enjoy! Did you read Mrsgnomie's Still You Want Me? Make sure you leave your thoughts in the comments below, but first, enjoy this interview with her! Have you ever gone out in public, realized your shirt is on backwards, and just don’t care? Backwards, inside out, see through with black bra (not on purpose like the current trend). I wouldn’t say I’m a hot mess, but I’ve had my moments. I tend to embrace them. Life is too short to fret over trivial things like this, plus, it might bring a smile to someone’s day! What do you like to do when you’re not writing? Traveling. 100%. I never left Oregon until I was 24. Never went on a flight until I was 26. I’ve spent the last 10 years making up for lost time. The value we gain from visiting other cultures is paramount. I’ve grown more in the last 10 years then I did the 26 before that. I want travelling to be so normal for my kids that they take it for granted. If you were writing a book about your life, what would the title be? From Acorn to Oak Tree. What brought you to GA? I published Still You Want Me on a different site. It got pretty good feedback. Some of the best feedback. Someone emailed, we became friends, then she directed me to GA and told me to post here. I admit, the feedback on GA wasn’t nearly as good as the other site. Looking back, I didn’t know GA well enough and the learning curve was a little harsh. I almost didn’t post my second story, Three Strikes, but I thought, why not? What do I have to lose? I’m glad I did. Now GA is my go-to and the other site is an afterthought. What’s the best part of being an author? The hardest part? Best part and the hardest part of being an author is the readers. The best because they are awesome, encouraging, and insightful. They’ve made my stories better because of their comments and foresight. They keep me accountable, they keep me writing, they keep motivated. Knowing they enjoy something I crafted from scratch is a high like no other. But it’s a double edge sword, because they can be brutal. I got a email a few months ago from a reader who RAILED me because I depicted Seamus’s family as being trailer-trashy. Well, let me tell you, this reader had some things to say (1k+ words) about that! Evidentially, because of Covid and the negative effects it had on people, this depiction was heartless, cold, and alienated my readers. It wasn’t Seamus’ family’s fault for needing to be on assistance. A) covid is not referenced in my story. His family is generational white trash, by choice. Needless to say, they were beyond offended and “will no longer be reading any of my stories”. But yeah, it can be hard to read negative feedback even if it is part of the process. Did something specific inspire you to write Still You Want Me? I guess, my own reading desire inspired me to write. I was enjoying (insert the many tropes you’ll find in SYWM) but I was running into a brick wall finding similar stories. I decided to take a stab at it myself. What you can’t find, you write. I’d read some pretty terrible stories, so the bar was kind of low. The story has Drama, Comedy, and Romance as the genres. Do you feel one dominates the plot? I was going to say, no, I think they’re evenly distributed. But then I was like, who am I kidding? Drama. Definitely drama. Do you identify with either Colin or Charles more, and if so, why? This is a big fat neither. Don’t get me wrong, each character has something about them that was taken from me (Colin’s love of tea. Charles’ love of eating out and being the best hostess) but overall, both Colin and Charles are so different from me. Probably why I wanted to write them. But, if my hands were tied and a gun was pointed to my head, I’d say I most identify with the second-half-of-the-story Charles. Once you strip away his ego, money, and status, Charles is extremely thoughtful and kind…just like me. What is your favorite quote or scene from Still You Want Me and why? Okay, first of all, this is rude. I haven’t re-read this story since I posted it back in 2018, so I had to go back to find a quote. Now I’m eating brownies and cringing. It is clearly my FIRST ever attempt. That much is obvious. Like, could I have used more exclamation points? *shudders* I think my favorite scene is when they go to the gym. Colin is still in denial about his feelings but seeing another guy hitting on Charles sends him for a loop. He gets territorial and the claws come out. It’s all very out of character for Colin. Plus, Colin’s nicknames for his competition crack me up. Shorty McDouchebag, Short McFlirt, Shorty McUglyface, etc. The un-beknownst-to-Colin jealousy amuses me. This line from Colin to Charlie: “Can you try to focus on me instead of Shorty McFlirt over there? I don’t want the weights to fall and crush me because you’re too busy ogling some twink with a bad haircut.” Can you share a little of your current and/or future work with readers? Absolutely. I’m currently 4 chapters deep on a spin off from Boss Nanny. Jay Petermeyer is the first football player to be drafted as out and proud. He’s been playing professionally for 10 years and in that time, he’s built a stellar reputation. You can’t find a smudge to his name. You also can’t find a shirtless photo. It’s not that he’s prude, he just believes that some things should be private—that the world isn’t entitled to every piece of him. Loren, on the other hand, is one of the biggest social media influencers, period. He started as a pre-teen playing video games in his friend’s room. A decade-and-a-half later, he’s got over 20 million followers. Loren is a wild horse. Jay is the patient trainer who can see what lies beneath. The other story I’m working on is called All the Kings Men. It’s not fully worked out but it’s about a group of friends, they’re close. The type of closeness that forms from childhood trauma. A rags-to-riches situation, in a sense. As adults, they’re the it group. The friend group that everyone wants to be a part of. They’re social and outgoing, but at the end of the day, they’re not accepting new members. In the middle of this group is James King. After a toxic relationship isolates him from his friends for five years, they’re finally reunited. Not only are they ecstatic to have their friend back, they’re now insanely protective of him, too. They almost lost him once… Trevor has a the best one-night-stand of his life while visiting family in Denver and before heading on the road to do a few Keynote speaking events for work. As one of the top commercial real estate agents on the west coast, he’s a hot commodity. When he finally gets back home, he goes for a drink with his friends. That’s when he sees the super-fun-one-night-stand guy. He’s not big on relationships but he won’t lie and say he’s not a little interested in James. He’s also familiar with James’s friends. At once point, he wanted to be in their circle because it was the place to be. Now he wanted in their circle because getting to James will never happen without the approval of the King’s Men.

I'm not sure exactly what issues you're having moving your text, but usually you just highlight the text in Word, copy it, click on the chapter text box on GA, then paste it into the text editor. The keyboard shortcuts to copy text and ctrl and the c button. The keyboard shortcuts to paste the text are ctrl and the v button. Then hit the Save button at the bottom of the page on Step 5. If you've completed all the necessary fields required to post a story, it will go into the moderation queue for new authors. If you have other questions, or that didn't solve your issue you can also try to check the FAQ through the Help tab here on GA. It has a lot of different topics for authors, readers, members in general, etc... There is also a step-by-step guide to posting a story in there. Hope that helps!