Myr

Good Lord... which pile Tim? I can see 10 different bookpiles from just where I'm sitting.

@CassieQ yeah... I've found that to be the case from the ones I've read.

As I said in the reply to Carlos, we are aware of the problem and looking into it.

@Carlos Hazday Once again per the big red header in the forum, please post a new topic when you have a new issue. We have a story feed issue reported to us that we are checking into. I do not think it is tied to post dating, but more likely the software update we recently completed.

This week I want to bring up the Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling. All of her books seem to touch on one LBGTQ issue or another. Nightrunner though stars the adorable, naive Alec. From Amazon: I really enjoyed this book. It is a slow burn on the Alec thing. This is a pretty long series and I don't think I've even read the last two yet. I think the first one is my favorite though. If you like fantasy stories, this is absolutely one that is worth checking out.

This week's Anthology Flashback brings back to the Summer of 2007 and for Endings and Beginnings. As always, we thank all these authors once again for participating so long ago. If it is not too much trouble, would you be willing to write a review for these authors? Even if some of them are no longer around, I'm sure other readers will appreciate the effort. The authors are are still with us surely will.

I thought I would talk this week about the use of quoting and mentions while you make posts and comments on the site. There is a certain etiquette to this to keep topics flowing smoothly without making a nuisance of yourself. So, first up, some definitions: Quoting is when you press the "Quote" button and it pulls in the entire comment Quote This is when you highlight a portion of text and a small "Quote This" box pops up that you then click. It functions the same as Quoting, but only for the highlighted text. Mentions are when you type the "@" symbol followed by a name. The system prompts you to create a mention @Myr Users are then alerted that someone mentioned them. (example of "Quote This") You shouldn't ever really use the first option unless the post you are quoting is short. Most people have just read it and there is no reason to repeat the whole thing, especially if it is long. That ends up being more irritating than helpful. A great alternative is to highlight the small section you are referring to and using "Quote This" instead. Now, I understand that this is harder to do on mobile devices as well as other circumstances, so a great alternative there is to use Mentions. The system can get squirrelly if you use a lot of them in a row, but you usually shouldn't need such a thing. Just a note that is forum software bug more than anything, if you are using post dating feature, if you use a mention, the person will be alerted, even if the post/blog/whatever has not posted yet. I think that is supposed to be patched, but I know from experience that it sends the notification as soon as you submit it, not when it posts. Of course, I have previously made a video on how to use mentions. It is here on YouTube: Would you be willing to like and subscribe if you found the video helpful? It lets me know whether or not making further videos is worthwhile.

That's on my list. Since I only read the first two books and never read the other two. However, I'm reading "Closer to the Chest" by Mercedes Lackey. (finally)

This movie is very clearly aimed at visual delights. This is where my you must pay attention comment comes in. There is a lot of things that are left to visuals only so if you're not giving it attention, you miss stuff. So, I don't see it working at all if you can't see it.

A bug issue with the software control. You should be able to link in notes now.

It is a sign that Chapter Text is for Chapter Text only. Notes, links and the like belong in the Chapter Notes and Chapter End Notes.

Well, this movie is a bit different. So, right up front, let me say that I liked this movie a lot more than the critiques. Sci-fi and fantasy are definitely in my wheelhouse. I also enjoying watching Dane DeHaan. Kris Wu is also a nice in the eye-candy category too. The movie's special effects are outstanding. The plot, which those critiques complained about, requires you to pay attention. Not Inception levels of attention, but not casual watching either. I enjoyed the movie enough to watch again. It's worth checking out if you like Sci-Fi, for certain.

Welcome back! I think most people will be happy just seeing a steady flow of new stuff. So bring on whatever you feel like writing

For those of you that haven't figured it out by now, I'm a compulsive researcher in far too many ways. I end up all too often with far more research than writing what I was supposed to write. Having said that I picked up these two books a number of years ago to give a story I was working on more accurate flavor. It didn't get posted, but it is in the backlog of things that I'm sure I'll polish up, complete and post some day. Anyway, I found both of these books interesting and informative. The SAS guide is more technical and the other guide is more hippy gone wild. They both serve their purposes, especially if you're writing about a disaster-struck modern world.

Summer Anthology 2006 in no particular order:

Although @BHopper2 covered this, I wanted to make sure it was fully clear. There is no such thing as the creation of genres. They are pre-existing on stories and you just select them. For tags, on stories only, you must select pre-existing tags. If a tag does not exist for something you need, then you can request it and if we feel it is necessary, we will add it. For everything else on the site that allows tags, they are freeform and you can type your own thing. If you wish to know more about adding a story, please visit our YouTube channel (link at the bottom of the main page and bottom of forum main page, and watch the "Add a story" video. Please see topic in Announcements "Story Tags" if you feel there is a tag you need.

There is an old topic on it in Announcements. I can look later when I am not on my phone.

This week is all about the tags. Every part of the system uses them. I bet most people kind of gloss over them if they notice them at all. Buy why are tags important? The honest truth is that the tags are there to help you group like material together. For example, I tag all of these type of blogs posts with Tech Tuesday. if you click on a tag, it pulls up the search engine and shows you everything that is tagged with that item: https://www.gayauthors.org/tags/tech tuesday/ The same thing applies to stories. Say you want to find all the stories tagged with Magic, well, just click on the tag on a story and you'll get your list: https://www.gayauthors.org/stories/browse/tag/magic/ With Stories, you can also go to the "Genre and Tags" page and see the list of all the Genres and All the Tags. Clicking on them will bring you to all the stories tagged accordingly. https://www.gayauthors.org/stories/browse/genre/ Using tags is easy. On every new topic, blog, gallery image, or story, or whatever content you're posting, be sure to place 1-3 of the most important keywords in the tag box. The tags will self-format when you hit the comma. So Tech Tuesday tags look like this: Please note here the item prefix. In some places, you are allowed to add this prefix and it shows up on the subject line ahead of the subject. This should be used sparingly as it is meant for emphasis. Usage of the prefix option does vary by by member group and which part of the site they are using. There are some pretty big search updates coming in the Forum 4.3.0 software that is entering beta test now at our forum vendor's site. Using tags not only helps our system now with searching, it'll make it better in the future. Speaking of future, we will be patching the site soon with some bug fixes and part of that will be that we are going to start tracking readers' stats on a weekly basis. Right now, when you look at a story, you see the total number of views over time. But that could have been 10,000 views four years ago or last week. There's no way to tell. With the new system we are implementing, authors will be able to tell what of their material is trending and when. Publicly, we plan on showing data on what people are reading by genre and by tags. This update will just begin the recording of the raw data. This way, when we get to the real update in a few months, we'll have a lot of data already on hand. For those concerned with privacy, there is no personal data recorded at all. For those wondering, why should I care? This data will be used to understand our market. Stories that get the most reads in a time frame will boost their tags and genres in popularity. Writers who are looking for a challenge, can then write stories that fit what people are looking for... or do that and twist it back to what you're looking for by hooking them good and proper. This ties back to tags. Make sure the tags on your story are useful and actually describe the story. Review your stories and make sure your tags make sense. We are also open to adding more tags that are currently not in the system if you make your case for them.

The birthdate field was a recent addition and the age field is legacy. It will be removed in the future. It is not longer a required field, so you can just ignore it. Myr

@PalantirI have the series in my pile. I haven't gotten to them yet.

I should add that I know Cia uses Edge a lot so she can get her reward points for her gift cards for her eBook addiction.

I use FireFox more than Chrome on the site.. but I do use both and haven't really noticed on real difference. It is very common to have both open at the same time.

So, I use Wunderlist to keep track of my To Do lists. I have a lot of them. Stuff for the site, stuff for the business, stuff for home, stuff for mom's home, stuff for the mancave, stuff for writing, and even entertainment. There are more too. As of this moment, I have 69 things on my To Do list flagged for Today. After 50 hours sucked up by the work week, I'm a bit grouchy that I've got more stuff to do. My nerdy nature doesn't help. I like doing research on stuff. (like reading books on string theory and Einstein-Rosenburg bridges for my sci-fi stuff.) But I'm also reading psychology and marketing books. They go in fits in starts as I get a few moments. I am constantly reading about all the changes to Google that affect our lives. It seems kind of endless. Some of this stuff I can't just let slide either. We have to march to Google's constantly changing beat so we can be found in the search engine so that we can get traffic so that we can get ad revenue so that we can stay open. I don't do this nearly as often as I should be. There are tools out there that help with all this, but the good ones cost a fair bit of money. It's worthwhile to invest in them from time to time to make the improvements, but I need to have more free time when I do that so that I can take maximum advantage of the tool while we have it. I wish I had more time to devote to the site. Short of a sudden 10x increase in subscribers, I won't have that time. Though, if we do get a 10x increase in subscribers, I'd be able to dedicate full time to the site and really do some interesting things. lol. I should probably do some chores, eat breakfast and then triage my to-do list.

@Timothy M. I'm glad I could help point you to some more good stuff

Great advice @Comicality