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Depends on your notifications: https://www.gayauthors.org/notifications/options/ For content you follow, you'll get online notification if the left check mark is checked. And Emails if the Right check mark is checked. In this case, I do NOT get emails. Stories also allows for notifications for other things: In theory, if you Follow an Author, you'll get alerted if they post a new story. If you follow a story, you'll get alerted to new Chapter. If you select any of the options in Stories section of notifications (Shown above), then you should get notified in those cases as well. I'm saying should here because we've had an issue with not everyone getting notified every time when they should. Something we're still working on.

There has been a lot of news lately about Privacy and information breaches all over the place. Combine that with the new EU law, GDPR, going into effect on May 26th, and every internet company on Earth has been bombarding you with alerts, messages, and requests for re-agreements. The amount of regulation that you have to deal with as a small business is frankly crushing. As the laws were written by technical half-wits (and I'm being generous), the law is written in such a way as that everyone is in violation of the law in some way or another unless you have a large team of well-paid lawyers making everything more complicated and messy. The USA wasn't to be outdone and passed a moronic Anti-Sex Trafficking Bill... that basically puts every company that operates on the Internet in harm's way....unless you have an army of lawyers. Expect more changes as we make adjustments to make sure we are well inside what's allowed by these laws. In the meantime, you can find our most up-to-date Privacy Policy linked at the bottom of every page: You can find the Rules/Terms of Service/Guidelines for the site under the Help Menu as Guidelines: The Terms of Service Short form is here: https://www.gayauthors.org/terms/ It links to the full Guidelines as well. Opt-in for Site News We have the capability of emailing members from time to time via the system. This is a strictly opt-in system and we had people cycle that some time ago. If you wish to change your current status for on-site email contact, you can go to your Notification settings here: https://www.gayauthors.org/notifications/options/ For people that Subscribe to the Read! Write! Enjoy! site newsletter, there will be a new opt-in going out soon so that we comply with the new EU GDPR law. Keep an eye out for that.

This is an oldie but goodie. The visuals in this movie are stunning, especially when you consider it came out in 1984. It has long fueled my thoughts of space and space exploration. It is also a much tighter story, unlike the very plodding 2001. Sci-Fi movies suffered from long, slow scenes to soaring music in the 1965- 1980 timeset. You can see this in the first Alien movie, the first Star Trek Movie (The Motion Picture), and to a lesser extent Star Wars. I think Star Wars was the one to start breaking towards action faster. Anyway, someone beat on Arthur C. Clarke to get him to cough up some explanations for the weird near acid trip of 2001: A Space Odessy. I'd like 2001 a lot more if it cut out about an hour. 2010, probably over-explains, but it makes more sense. Anyway, I strongly recommend this movie, just for the cool visuals of Jupiter, though it is also well acted.

This and Mario have me looking. I figured a couple other things would pop up. I'm really liking the look of Detroit: Become Human. Those more narrative games are good for relaxing at times. The only thing stopping me from going out right now is that I don't have time to play anyway. lol. So, I'll wait until a big sale comes along and snag something.

This is one of the games that have motivated me to put PS4 (Pro) on my buy list. There are a handful of really good single player games on PS4 and Switch that have me looking outside my Xbox and PC.

@Reader1810 This is definitely something that should go over better when someone that has some life experience in how the world works.

There are a handful of things that would finally get me back to Nintendo, at least for awhile. Zelda would be one of those things.

As an engineer, I have always been fascinated by how things work. You can boil down most engineering to "Problem Solving". Problem solving is a skillset. The most popular problem solver in popular culture when I was growing up was MacGyver. Lock the man in a room with some spare parts and a knife and he'd make an airplane. The people that make the world work are real-life MacGyvers. In our world, there are not a whole lot of people that fall into this category. Atlas Shrugged is a book that asks the question, what if the people that make things work suddenly stop and disappear? This book is absolutely despised by 'progressives' because it torches socialism like the dungheap it is. It's maligned by the left because it torches their sacred cows and it is maligned by social conservatives because Ayn Rand wasn't too fond of religion either. The big concepts are great. The romance in the book is cheesy at best. There is a cool bro-mance thing going on too. And there is a tendency to monologue, at least by John Galt. If you've never read it and only heard it's evil or some 'progressive' snowflake melted over it, it's worth your while to educate yourself. Enough people out there that make the world work, feel as the characters do in this book. Who is John Galt?

The server is currently locked up on that task and is tied to ongoing issues. We are working with our programmer and support to deal with it.

Don't forget to pay your author with feedback

I'm an Xbox guy. But I have to say, Sony is banging them out of the park one after another with their games lately. To the point where I'm going to end up picking up a PS4 so I can hit some of these games. (God of War, Detroit Become Human, Spiderman, Last of Us, etc) And look how real these people/androids look.

It is time for another Anthology Flashback. This week we are featuring Spring 2011 's People are Strange anthology. Anthologies 2018 Spring Anthology: Now or Never - Due May 15th 2018 Spring Anthology: Encounters - Due May 15th 2018 Fall Anthology: Fight Back - Due Nov 15th 2018 Fall Anthology: Good Intentions - Due Nov 15th Would you mind taking the time to leave a review for our writers?

@Timothy M. I'll remind you once again that the vast majority of the people reading on the site are "guests" as in not member or not logged in and unable to like or comment in such a state.

We are actively developing a change to the story system that will go with our forum software upgrade. There are a lot of things going on under the hood, but there is a fairly sizable visual change coming as well. Clicking on Newest Stories currently shows you this: Our still-in-development software update shows you this: A couple of notes here on the image: This is a work in progress and subject to change This is in the default color scheme and has not been updated to GA colors yet The idea with the interface is to put all the story sorting options right in front of you and have the listing update as you make changes. For example, if I wanted to list all the stories by either @Cia or me, I can do this: Or maybe I want to see the Premium Stories? We are working hard to make things easier for everyone. The Stories Archive software offers some really powerful features, but they are a bit fidgety and in out of the way places. The idea of the new update is to put the power right in front of you. Like... show me just the stories that I follow: Do you think this sorting method will be easier for you? Do you think it will be helpful to find specific stories? Now is a great time for feedback!

I stumbled across this site while poking around for 3d printer information. Wowser. I subscribed. https://makezine.com/ Now, I just need time to read it. lol

This is great @Comicality Feedback is fuel for so many authors and it is best to not foul that fuel source...

This week's flashback brings us back to Winter 2010. Haunted. Check them out: Anthologies 2018 Spring Anthology: Now or Never - Due May 15th 2018 Spring Anthology: Encounters - Due May 15th 2018 Fall Anthology: Fight Back - Due Nov 15th 2018 Fall Anthology: Good Intentions - Due Nov 15th

This week is all about help. We have a pretty extensive help system here on-site where we've taken the time to write up the answers to the most frequently asked questions. We've also made videos for some of the features on site to make it that much easier. So first things first, help your fellow members with a quick link to the appropriate help section. Help is on the red menu on every single page of the site. Don't be afraid to click the menu. Help -FAQ - Brings you to the list of common questions. You can search for the what you are having issues with the "find on page" or "Search" function of your browser. (Ctrl-F in Windows) Or you can just read through the list. Links bring you to the proper topic in the FAQ database. You can open a Support Request by clicking "Support". We prefer you don't do this for simple things, as it'll take awhile to get to you. You'll probably get a faster response to a topic on the forums. The only exception is Premium Content issues. Those you should use the Support Request for so that we can see your account information and can troubleshoot your issue easier. Staff - Shows the list of our volunteer staff on-site. Guidelines - These are the rules. About Gay Authors - This gives you a bit of a history of the site. 15th Anniversary - This was the page we ran to celebrate our official 15th birthday. Extras - Not everything fits where we'd want it and, to avoid scaring people, we hid some of the links here for those who wanted them. Editors - List of Editors on Site. (These are people listed as an Editor on a story in the Stories archive.) Beta Readers - List of Beta Readers (These are people listed as a Beta Reader on a story in the Stories archive) Categories - List of Categories in Stories. Also available in side menu on the Stories Archive homepage. Online users - List of members currently on the site. If you wish to jump straight to the help topics, you can go here: https://www.gayauthors.org/faq/ As an example, here is a Step by Step guide to posting a story on the site: Be sure to let us know if a help topic needs to be updated. Also, let us know if we need to do a video on a specific subject to make it easier to understand.

I tend to be a minimalist, so my editor @Cia tends to be the "add more here" type. (and fix this, this, this, that, those, these and all this too)

Authors! 3 Days left to submit your Contest Entry! See link for details. Contests 2018 Summer Novella Anthology - Due April 15th, 2018

I've started my new job and I'm getting settled in. I'm hoping my schedule settles down soon as I've been going a bit bonkers. lol. Anyway, we stealth upgraded the site a few days ago and since no one complained, things appear to be working well. We also updated the rules on the site on Sunday which triggered a request that you agree to the rules again. This rule updates and your agreement with them is now recorded so that we comply with the upcoming EU debacle, the GDPR. (General Data Protection Regulation) This update has also put in place a new function in stories that I mentioned a couple weeks ago about allowing us to put the posting rules for Stories right there where you are posting your stories. I'll be updating those this week, so keep an eye out. On a more interesting note, I got an update image from our programmer that deals with the User Interface improvement for sorting and filtering the story data. The system we are working eliminates the need for "advanced search" as you'll be able to build your search live right on the page and have the page update automatically. There will also be a few preset search options (like latest completed stories or most reviewed or newest stories under the Quick Search menu). This is a work in process, so there will be variation. We are working hard to make the system easier to use, but having it just as powerful in being able to find the stories you want. I've mentioned in a previous blog that we have started tracking reading statistics on stories over time. We'll be adding stats features so authors can know how many people are reading their stories and if it varies by time. (right now, the system only shows totals). I'm happy to report that we now have over 3.3 million story views in less than 90 days. The data is still collecting, so when we roll out the new feature, it'll cover back to the start of 2018. We are working hard to make things better for everyone.

@BabyXander1990, please read the Help section. that is what it is there for. Please do not ask random questions in the middle of topics.

Thanks, Tim. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I've got some preliminary stuff started for a follow up to this story.

I'm literally surrounded with piles of books, movies and games saying that same thing to me. To say nothing of the electronic stacks of things to read I'll get there eventually. Just need to get rid of all these boxes first!

You can thank @Renee Stevens for that one