Valkyrie

The southtowns here got snow, but where I live we only got some sleet, hail, and graupel. It felt more like mid-November vs mid-October. Thankfully it's a beautiful fall weekend here, even if all the storms got rid of most of the leaves.

Themes can make or break an anthology, as our recent Anniversary anthology showed. The theme spoke to a lot of site authors and exceeded my challenge to have twenty stories for GA’s twentieth anniversary. The next few anthology blogs will be focusing on theme selection, writing for a theme, and submitting ideas for next year’s anthology. I’m excited to announce we have a guest blog post for next week. CassieQ has written a great article about how to write for a theme, so be sure to check it out next Thursday. So, what makes a great anthology theme? It needs to be broad, concise, and open to interpretation. Anniversary is a perfect example of this. There are many different types of anniversaries, as the stories featured showed. When I say concise, I mean it needs to be between one and three words. Here at GA, we limit the theme to a maximum of three words because it gets too clunky otherwise, and we risk losing the broadness of the theme. On the Road is one of our past themes which fits the above criteria. Now imagine if had been On the Road – Tales from Vacation. Still open to multiple interpretations, but far less broad. Now how about On the Road – Tales from Vacation in France. Very limiting, and also difficult to fit onto a banner. In the past, we’ve featured two themes per anthology, and recently started offering potluck themes as well, which gave authors a larger variety to choose from. I’d like to hear thoughts about how many themes authors would like to have for the anthology. Keep in mind that our anthologies are inclusive, not exclusive, so the theme does not need to hit the reader over the head. A tangential link to the theme is just fine. Cassie will go into more detail about this next week. I’ve created two polls to get opinions about next year’s anthology(ies). Please check them out to help the anthology team decide if we are featuring one or more anthologies, and also how many themes those anthologies will encompass. https://gayauthors.org/forums/topic/48114-number-of-anthologies-for-2023/ https://gayauthors.org/forums/topic/48115-number-of-anthology-themes-for-2023/

I loved this story! I don't think I've read anything of CJames' that I didn't like.

Thank you! The story was inspired by an actual real estate listing of a white Craftsman house with a purple front door. I saw the picture and immediately knew I had to write about it.

Maybe you should pick up a pen Sounds like a great idea for a story

Exactly. Sometimes we expect one thing, but it turns out completely different, hopefully in a good way. Thank you! I'm glad you liked it.

Somehow I missed this when it was first posted. I gave it a 'like' because I can't give a 'love' for all the abuse you've gone through. I'll give a ❤️here as a gesture of caring. I can understand your reticence about writing, since some scumball tried to take it and twist it into something other than it was. Setting boundaries sounds like a good thing. I hope you are able to find a place to write again.

Happy Thanksgiving to our neighbors to the north! 🍁 I won't be dressing up for Halloween, but I have a Halloween shirt and socks I'll wear to work and when I hand out candy to any trick or treaters I get. And before Steve asks, yes I will be wearing pants too I haven't had time to read the final few anthology stories, but I'm hoping to soon. My brother and niece are visiting so I've been spending all my free time with them.

Thanks so much When I first conceptualized this story, I imagined it being about Greg and Josef's story, but Marshall ended up playing more of a prominent role. I was really happy with how it turned out. I agree with you about David.

Thanks for reading! I'm glad you liked it

I still have the last set of stories to read and comment on, but I plan on doing that this weekend.

Thanks again to all the authors and poets who contributed to this amazing anthology, the readers for leaving so many comments/reviews, and all the members of the anthology team who helped pull it all together! Keep an eye out soon for discussion about next year's anthology.

Thank you!

Congratulations! You're not the only one behind. I just finally caught up on comments for my own story. It will take me a few days, but I'll start reading the rest this week.

David would have definitely approved. I imagine Sauerwood stuck because once you name something, even if it's a dumb name, it's known as that forever afterwards I haven't watched that show, but I've watched a bunch of similar type shows on YouTube and also 'like' some FB pages where people share pictures of abandoned properties. I find the whole process fascinating. Thanks for reading!

Thank you for reading and commenting. I'm glad you liked it!

Thank you! And thanks again for the lovely review

Thank you! I'm glad you liked the descriptions

Thank you so much!

Thank you! I'm so glad I got the renovation part right. I went by experience with my own home, but not quite to this extent!

I can see the same thing. Thank you for reading and commenting!

Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment and review. I really appreciate it and am glad you liked the story!

I'm glad you found Greg's story welcoming, and that the parallel of both Greg and the house being restored during the same process came through. Thank you for reading and commenting

Awww thank you And thank you for reading.