Andy78

The Kindertotenlieder feeds on children. join it on its hunt.

It's not very often we get to see the pre-beta and post-beta work produced by an author, so many thanks for sharing these snippets. A good beta can be a very important part to the creative process, a bad beta is more trouble than they are worth IMO. It is however very important for an author and their beta to gel, and to be able to have a frank and honest exchange of views over the story and any suggested amendments.

Many happy returns Dave. Here's to many more

Wow, a teen story recommended by Cia Must add it to my next to read list

File for unemployment, then you can spent the time writing - I know that's what I'd do

My Russian isn't great, but I think it's: National Park - Russian Arctic

I'm lucky - I've always enjoyed the super-duper, turbo-charged site with all the extras, bells, whistles and behinds the scenes interviews. Thanks to Myr and everyone who keeps this site going, and thanks to all of our authors and members who make this the fun place it is.

Happy Birthday TJ

Thanks for the review Mike. I take your point with Jake, and given another 5k or so I might have been able to drag the story out a bit, but then it starts turning into a novella I might explore James a bit as a separate story. I want to know what happens to him as well

About time we saw some writing from you Good luck with it all

GA is definitely unique among all these gay story sites. There truly is a sense of community here, that is lacking in many other sites. Long may it continue.

I love Tintin as well. The pratfalls constantly suffered by Thompson and Thompson are hilarious I read a bit of Asterix as a child, but never really got into it.

Thanks for the review Dolores.

It's also probably has a lot to do with the programming behind the site. If we start having "forum likes", "story likes", "blog likes", will the coding that the mod queue relies on, be able to cope with having multiple formulae in order to determine when an author no longer needs their stories modded prior to posting? And as we know, when computer coding becomes more intricate, it just means that there is more that can go wrong. I have always seen the whole "rep" thing as in indication of how engaged a particular individual is with the site as a whole. So those who post multiple blogs, regularly post in multiple forums and post multiple stories are more likely to have a higher "rep", than those who post say one story (no matter how good that story is). Anyway, we can all see how many forum posts we've made - so that kind of works a bit like a forum rep. Just my tuppence worth.

A great article by Comsie, sharing some of his memories of the early days. Sounds like it's been a great ten years, and here's to the next ten. On a side note: How come I've never read this in any of the FAQs/site guides? Or did I just happen to miss it?

I've spent a lot time in chat over the past year and have never encountered or seen anything like you have described. In fact, I'm stunned that anything like that has occurred in chat. One thing you have to keep in mind is that many of the members of the site have been here for a while and feel quite comfortable having a laugh and a joke at each other's expense - think how you have a laugh with colleagues at work and laugh at someone's taste in music, films or even who they find attractive. If ever it goes to far, it will either get reported to one of the mods, or one of the other chat users will call people on comments they've made. There also tends to be a mod or one of the site admins in chat at some point of the day. It can look quite daunting to newbies when we go all out in chat, but I find it very hard to believe anyone says anything in chat with any malicious intent. However, if you feel someone has said something inappropriate to you, then you should report it to one of the mods so it can be looked into.

The dialogue thing is something I'm definitely working on. Thanks for continuing to read, and I'm glad you're enjoying the story.

They say love knows no bounds, but we'll see what happens.

Yeah. The chapter got a little away from me. Hope you're not reading this on a bus or something The ritual is up and coming.

Thanks for the review. Alex has just bared his soul to Thomas and now it's up to Thomas to decide what to do. The next chapter will tell.

It was really hard deciding what way to go with this, but as you have said in your review, I'm not sure the possible romance between Alex and Thomas would be possible with a truly dark Council.

The Council definitely had a darker side, and I think this chapter came as a big shock to a lot of readers. I'd like to explore this darker side to the Council, so who knows what's coming up.

So many readers afraid of chapter 7, I'll have to put a warning sign But yeah, it's one of the darker chapters so far, so tread carefully.

It's a lot harder to weave in the factual history than I thought it would have been. But it's nice to know so many readers appreciate the effort.

It took me while to get this chapter to feel like it flowed as part of main story, and not to seem just like a story within the story.