Renee Stevens

@Cia I looked as well and in @northie's album "Ruin and History" it states there are 25 images, but when i counted, i only counted 22 images in that album.

So much feeling in this, sean! I'm glad Mac Sir gave you this writing task and the finished product is amazing.

These are part of my Christmas plates every year

Ingredients 1 (15.25 ounce) pkg. devil's food cake mix 1/2 cup vegetable oil 2 eggs 1 pkg. Andes Mints Instructions Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine cake mix, oil and eggs. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a baking sheet. Bake for 6-9 minutes. Take baking sheet out of oven and while cookies are still very hot, place an Andes Mint on top of each cookie. In about 5 minutes, the mint will be melted. Take a spoon and smooth out each mint like frosting. Note: I have found it easier to buy a bag of the andes mint pieces (can be found with the chocolate chips). I mix some into the batter, and then melt the rest to drizzle over top of the cookies instead of using full Andes Mints and having to wait for them to melt and then spread them. You could also melt the extra pieces and dip the cookies and place them on wax paper. *Recipe courtesy of Six Sisters

Are you thinking The Long Way by DomLuka? I think it was originally on the site as "The Lo(n)g Way"

It's that time of the week again! In case you missed any of what's been going on this week, never fear, because we'll take a quick peek at everything that we looked at from Monday on. Are you worried you might have missed a story update from one of your favorite authors? We'll help you out there too with the story updates from all of GA's promoted authors. Contests Halloween Short Story Contest - Due September 15th, 2017 Anthology Announcements: ***NOTE: All Deadlines are for submission to the Anthology Proof Team*** 2017 Fall Anthology: The Fall Out / Secret Spaces - Due November 15th, 2017 Premium Updates: Negative Splits by Cia *Premium* Classic Updates: Down a Darkened Path by Ronyx Signature Updates: GFD: Fanboys by Comicality Mine! by Cia One Hundred and Fifty-Five Sonnets by AC Benus; Book 5 of Verse Rivers of the Dead by Cynus So Weeps the Willow by Cole Matthews Spirit of Fire by Stellar The Castaway Hotel: Next Generation Book 2 by Bill W; Book 11 of The Castaway Hotel The Secret Life Of Billy Chase 9 by Comicality; Book 9 of The Secret Life Of Billy Chase Promising Updates: Buy One, Get Two and Three... by Caz Pedroso Changes by Mikiesboy Cozy Contemplations by Headstall timmy's poetry by Mikiesboy

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. Prompt 606 – Creative Tag – The Class Your job has decided that everyone needs to keep up with the rapidly changing workplace. Everyone has been signed up for various classes at the local university, completely paid for. When you arrive for the class it only has ten students all super attractive and smart, When the professor walks in your stunned silent. What is the class like? Prompt 607 – Creative Tag – First Line “How much longer do we have?” Did you write a prompt response last week? Don't forget to share it below.

I hope you all enjoyed the last Improve & Encourage feature, because it's time for another one. These features are meant to both provide feedback to authors and, similar to story reviews, point out stories that readers might not otherwise have found. It's similar to a review, in that the person doing the critique tells you what they liked about the story, but it differs in that they also provide constructive criticism. Each author signed up to participate, and sign up's are still open! These will post once a month until we no longer have content. Once that happens, I will critique the last author that posted. If you'd like to provide a critique for the blog, sign up in the thread. I'm hoping to have a lot more authors sign up, and just remember, by signing up, you are also volunteering to have your story critiqued and featured. Hard Choices Comicfan Critique By: JayT Please give us a short summary of the story you chose. Sean, a twenty-five-year-old business owner, meets Will one day when Will hires Sean’s business for a job. The two become fast friends, with Will giving Sean thoughtful gifts in hopes of brightening his day. The morning after their first official date, Sean literally runs into Caesar and finds himself attracted him. Now Sean faces trying to choose between the two men. He knows this choice will affect his entire life; who will he choose? What do you see as the strengths of the story/poem? The story is well written and told all the way through, leaving the reader with no lingering questions. Comicfan did an amazing job of developing Will’s character, almost as if he wanted the reader to fall in love with Will. Although there was potential to tell more of this story, Comicfan kept it short, bringing the tale to completion in one chapter. What do you see as the weaknesses of the story/poem? Though they are few, there are some (maybe three or four) grammatical mistakes; common ones that I myself make often. The main weakness of this story is character development and growth. While Will’s character was developed nicely, the other characters hardly grew at all. We, as readers, know that Sean is attracted to both Will and Caesar, but he never lets on that he loves Caesar at all. It was almost like he was settling for Caesar because Will left. If Sean had said ‘I love you’ to Caesar, letting the reader know that it is true, the story would not have been as bitter. How do you think the story/poem could be improved? There will always be the “what if’s” of life, but we cannot linger on them and be happy where we are. If Sean had shown any other emotion besides hurt at the end, letting the reader know that he was happy and in love, the story would be greatly improved. What was your favorite part? (scene/sentence/etc) I think my favorite part of the story, although I say favorite reluctantly, is the breaking of the Pez Dispenser. This scene symbolizes the end of Sean and Will’s relationship, making it one of the most influential scenes of the story.

Happy Sunday, y'all! I hope you all have had a great week. Just a quick reminder that there's only about 2 1/2 weeks left until the Halloween Contest deadline, so make sure to get your stories in by the 15th of September. Contests Halloween Short Story Contest - Due September 15th, 2017 Anthology Announcements: ***NOTE: All Deadlines are for submission to the Anthology Proof Team*** 2017 Fall Anthology: The Fall Out / Secret Spaces - Due November 15th, 2017 Premium Updates: Dreams of a Father by dkstories; Book 2 of Dreams of Humanity *Premium* Negative Splits by Cia *Premium* Classic Updates: Down a Darkened Path by Ronyx Signature Updates: A Man in a Room, and other poems by AC Benus; Book 6 of Verse Black Widow by Mark Arbour; Book 16 of Chronicles Of An Academic Predator (CAP) Blue, Brownie, and Wedding White by comicfan Caesura by aditus; Book 2 of The King's Mate Fanfic by Comicality; Book 0 of Fanfic Mine! by Cia The Best Year by Krista The Castaway Hotel: Next Generation Book 2 by Bill W; Book 11 of The Castaway Hotel The Secret Life Of Billy Chase 9 by Comicality; Book 9 of The Secret Life Of Billy Chase Promising Updates: Buy One, Get Two and Three... by Caz Pedroso Changes by Mikiesboy Cozy Contemplations by Headstall Poems, Old and New by Caz Pedroso Ripped by craftingmom The Watcher: Part Two... Beginnings by Headstall timmy's poetry by Mikiesboy

Hope everyone has had a great week so far. It's time for this weeks writing prompts. If you're stuck, or you're considering writing for the first time, these might be perfect for you. Don't forget that stories under 1,000 words must be posted as part of a collection. Prompt 604 – Creative Tag – List of words Use the following words in a story – a coach, a white stallion, a gold ring, a cat, and a pickle. Prompt 605 – Creative Tag – The Change Pat laughed as Barbara complained about her boyfriend and her period being late. Barbara was just a normal girl, unlike Pat. Pat was one of a growing number of people afflicted with the change. Every seven days their body completely morphed into the opposite sex. Both sexes lived independently of each other, and could even be gay and straight, bisexual, or even transgendered. What is Pat like? Did you write a prompt response last week? Don't forget to share it below.

There's a free program, open office, that is similar to Word, that will work as well.

I use scrivener, but when I'm going to post a story on GA, I copy the chapter into Microsoft Word or another GA editor friendly program, make sure my formatting is correct, then copy it from there into the GA editor.

My guess would be you had it set to only search the forums and it was a blog topic, not a forum topic.

@Sam Wyer @Timothy M. It's in the site fun blog:

Happy Sunday, y'all. What do you think of the snazzy look of GA? Yep, we had an update yesterday. If you find any bugs, make sure to go and let us know in the help forum, but remember, only one question/bug per topic. This update also included Clubs, so go check out what's available. If you're an author, make sure you join the Writer's Circle. If you were a member of The Pit, make sure you go and join the club as The Pit is being moved to a club. So, let's take a look at what happened outside of the update! (And if you're in the US especially, are you ready for the eclipse tomorrow?!) Contests Halloween Short Story Contest - Due September 15th, 2017 Anthology Announcements: ***NOTE: All Deadlines are for submission to the Anthology Proof Team*** 2017 Fall Anthology: The Fall Out / Secret Spaces - Due November 15th, 2017 Premium Updates: Negative Splits by Cia *Premium* Classic Updates: Down a Darkened Path by Ronyx Signature Updates: 319 Winesap Lane by CarlHoliday A Man in a Room, and other poems by AC Benus; Book 6 of Verse Black Widow by Mark Arbour; Book 16 of Chronicles Of An Academic Predator (CAP) Mine! by Cia Northern Exposure by Mark Arbour; Book 8 of Bridgemont Spirit of Fire by Stellar The Castaway Hotel: Next Generation Book 2 by Bill W; Book 11 of The Castaway Hotel Promising Updates: Buy One, Get Two and Three... by Caz Pedroso Cards on the Table by Headstall Changes by Mikiesboy Choices by LitLover Lyrical Laments by Headstall Ripped by craftingmom timmy's poetry by Mikiesboy

Thank you, Sirs. i for one certainly appreciate the care, protection, and guidance that You both have given me, Sirs. It allows me to be myself.

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. Prompt 602 – Creative Tag – First Line Just tell which room is his, now! Prompt 603 – Creative Tag – Promises As a child you had promised a creature your friendship and protection if it would fetch the ring you had accidentally dropped down the well. The creature retrieved the ring, you took it and quickly shoved it back into your father’s jewelry box. Now an adult, the creature has unexpectedly showed up demanding you keep your promise. What do you do? Did you write a prompt response last week? Don't forget to share it below.

As molly said, Sir.

Happy Birthday @Cia !!! Hope you had a great day!

Every once in a while, we like to providing some writing tips to both new and seasoned authors. One thing I've learned as an author is that we never stop learning. Today, Graeme has written up a writing tip for you on the use of speech tags in your writing. Enjoy! Speech Tags Graeme Speech tags are important to stories, but they can be easily misused and abused. What do I mean by speech tags? Speech tags are the little bit of narration that proceeds or follows dialogue and is explicitly linked to dialogue. They're used to indicate whose dialogue is being reported. The simplest and most common example is the word "said". So what is there to talk about with speech tags? The answer is plenty. The first comment is simple: 1. Speech tags should be avoided as much as possible. Why? Because not only can they clutter up a story if overused, but often they are unnecessary, and alternatives can actually make the story stronger. For example, It's more verbose, but it's clear that Michael is the one speaking because of the narrated action, and so stating who spoke isn't necessary. Including the action also tells the reader more about what's going on because the speech isn't happening in isolation of any other activity. When possible, use that activity to not only inform the reader of what is happened, but who is speaking. By combining descriptive narration with dialogue, it's often possible to eliminate speech tags. Of course, the flip side is that you don't want to overload your story with description when it's the dialogue that's important, so using speech tags to identify the speaker is fine in those situations. This, however, brings us to the next comment: 2. Keep speech tags simple. What do I mean by this? I'll demonstrate with an over the top example: Yes, that's extreme, but all those different speech tags distract from what's being said. What's happening here is the author (okay, me) is trying to tell the user what's happening through the use of speech tags. This is almost always not needed, or even possibly inappropriate. In the above example, the "I apologized" and "I proposed" are not needed. All the readers will recognize the words spoken as being an apology (in the first case) or a proposal (in the second case) and they don't need to be told again through a speech tag. These lines could be left as simple dialogue, unattributed, if it's already been established that there are only two people present. If something is needed to indicate who is the second person in the conversation, narration can be used to indicate the speaker, as per the technique shown earlier: The "Michael sighed" speech tag is borderline as to whether it's useful, though I personally would recommend using something to indicate his disappointment. However, a speech tag is unnecessary for this purpose. The words make it clear that he's unhappy, so a simple piece of descriptive narration is all that's needed. Changing the comma to a period is all that's necessary to allow the reader to come to the same conclusion, but the sighing is now an action, not speech. As an aside, while it's possible to sigh speech, it's only appropriate if the speech is short. As an exercise, try sighing the this paragraph. I suspect you'll find it's impossible. You can sigh a handful of words, but not long sentences. The above also contains three examples of where speech tags have been used inappropriately: The first line has Michael grimacing dialogue, the second has the narrator laughing dialogue, and the third has Michael grunting dialogue. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't grimace, laugh or grunt statements (though I can come close on the last one if it's a single word). Grimacing and laughing are things you do alongside dialogue. I can speak while laughing, but I can't laugh a sentence. Laughing is not speech, it's an activity. Speaking happens before, after, or in parallel with that activity. Similarly for grimacing. Speech tags such as grunted, hissed, and growled, can sometimes be okay, but you should be careful. For example, you can't hiss something unless it contains sibilants. Growled implies a deeper tone which isn't always appropriate for the words being used. Overall, it's better to use a different option to portray what you want, rather than a speech tag. In the above example, the last line is better as: Though even that isn't that great. Personally, rather than a grunt, I'd have Michael roll his eyes, shrug, or maybe even smirk, either before, during, or after the dialogue, depending on what emotion I'm looking at portraying. Overall, it's better to keep to a handful of speech tags: 'said', 'asked', and maybe 'replied'. Other speech tags should be used sparingly, and even the simple speech tags should be used with care. If they're not needed, don't use them. In the above example, the opening statement was exclaimed. What other ways can you use to show someone exclaimed something? The answer is via a descriptive narration: My final comment is on the speech tag companion: adverbs. 3. Keep adverb use to a minimum. Adverbs are often used to strengthen speech tags, but it's often better to replace them with description narration: This is a good example of where description could be used instead of the speech tag and adverb. Sometimes, rather than trying to use an adverb to show the tone or volume, showing the response is stronger: becomes This avoids the adverb while also doing character development by informing the reader of something about both Michael and the narrator. Yes, it's more verbose, but it also reads better. Alternatives could be: That's not quite as strong, but it still gives the sarcastic feel to the dialogue without the use of an adverb. Remember, most adverbs are a shorthand for an observable action/reaction. As such, it's often better to show that observation and let the reader interpret it themselves, rather than spoon-feeding them with how they should interpret the dialogue. Even better than using narration would be change the dialogue to make the spoken words provide that information without support, though that can be a challenge at times. Beginning authors often use adverbs as a crutch to support weak dialogue. As an exercise, each time you've used an adverb, try to work out if you can change the words to make the adverb unnecessary: could be re-written as That last example also shows how you can use a speech tag to indicate a slight pause. The two statements are separated by the speech tag, and the reader will naturally view that as a pause between the two sentences. It's stronger than putting the speech tag at the end: Having said all of that, there are times when adverbs are very useful. In particular, when you want a contradiction between the words spoken and the tone used. For example: You can certainly write this to avoid the adverb, but it's simple and gives the reader the impression you want. This is not a common situation, but when it occurs an adverb is definitely a viable option. So, in summary, use speech tags carefully. Don't over use them, and try not to get too fancy. Try to avoid using speech tags and adverbs to support weak dialogue. Make the dialogue stronger so it carries the emphasis you want without support, or try using description narrative to support the dialogue. Both are both better options most of the time.

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 Alex and Zach by Greg_A. Aditus 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 Greg_A some reviews. Enjoy! Alex and Zach By Greg_A Reviewer: aditus Status: Complete Word Count: 108,013 Almost every time GA members have been asked to recommend a/their favorite story, Greg_A’s Alex and Zach has made the list. So, one rainy Saturday, I finally read it—all in one go. The story starts with Alex and Zach having a car accident. Luckily, nothing too bad happens, and the reader is compensated for the initial shock with a flashback showing Zach wearing a sexy pirate costume: ‘black half-pants...made of a shiny, satiny material that was very clingy, nearly melding to his skin’. Not only that, but the accident leads to Alex and Zach confiding their love for each other. Happily ever after, right? Wrong! A nagging that can’t be all is put front and center when Alex’s father makes a reluctant Zach call his parents to tell them about the accident. His mother’s only concern is that she and her husband might have to cancel their trip to visit Zach’s brother Mike. We slowly get an idea of why Zach was so sad on his birthday that he didn’t want a party, but just to get drunk by himself. During the ongoing story, we learn how deeply Zach has been, and still is, hurt by his family. It makes him doubt anyone could ever love him, even Alex.Alex and Zach has it all: sad moments contrast with happy ones, scathing words with witty dialogue—one moment I wanted to hit someone upside their head, the next I had to laugh out loud. Next time someone asks me to recommend a story, Alex and Zach will be definitely on my list. Category: Fiction Genres: Romance Tags: gay, roommates, coming of age, coming out, love Rating: Mature

I hope everyone has had a great week this past week. If you missed any of this week's blogs, here is your chance to see what you missed. You can also see what stories the promoted authors posted this week. Enjoy! Contests Halloween Short Story Contest - Due September 15th, 2017 Anthology Announcements: ***NOTE: All Deadlines are for submission to the Anthology Proof Team*** 2017 Fall Anthology: The Fall Out / Secret Spaces - Due November 15th, 2017 Premium Updates: Negative Splits by Cia *Premium* Classic Updates: Down a Darkened Path by Ronyx Signature Updates: Black Widow by Mark Arbour; Book 16 of Chronicles Of An Academic Predator (CAP) Caesura by aditus; Book 2 of The King's Mate GFD: Children Of Sunset by Comicality; Book 0 of GFD: Children Of Sunset Mine! by Cia Northern Exposure by Mark Arbour; Book 8 of Bridgemont The Castaway Hotel: Next Generation Book 2 by Bill W; Book 11 of The Castaway Hotel The Hollow Hills by Valkyrie The Secret Life Of Billy Chase 9 by Comicality; Book 9 of The Secret Life Of Billy Chase Promising Updates: Buy One, Get Two and Three... by Caz Pedroso Changes by Mikiesboy Choices by LitLover Headstall's Reflections by Headstall timmy's poetry by Mikiesboy

Hope everyone has had a great week so far. It's time for this weeks writing prompts. If you're stuck, or you're considering writing for the first time, these might be perfect for you. Don't forget that stories under 1,000 words must be posted as part of a collection. Prompt 600 – Creative Tag – List of words Use the following words in a story – a bloody hand print, a bullet casing, a pink hair ribbon, a pizza, and a diamond cufflink. Prompt 601 -Creative Tag – Stone life There was an asteroid that struck the ocean with such force, tidal waves struck from the tip of Brazil to Alaska, from Russia to New Zealand, and Antarctica. The next day hundreds of volcanoes woke and began to spew lava. Then large rock figures began walking the earth, coming from the volcanoes. What are these stone figures and what do they want? Did you write a prompt response last week? Don't forget to share it below.

Thank you, Lisa!

Thank you for commenting DDK. And yes, this is why, except in certain circumstances, I will no longer post a serial story unless it is complete. It completely derailed Forging Trust and it's taken me 5 years to really get back into it.