Myr

The start of a new year is a time of reflecting. I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately. I'm in the process of searching for a new employer so that I can move. We're coming up on three years since dad passed away. I've more than quadrupled my visits to mom since then. Most of the summer and fall, it was every weekend. It's not a horrible drive, but I'm tired of it. Mom wants me to move back in with her and I'm good with that. It would let me take care of the stuff she needs and let her take care of her parents. (Grandpa is 86, Grandma is 83). My career is flexible enough, in theory, to move and get a new job and with the economy going finally, this should work in theory. But I am getting rather sick of working for other people. When you step back in look... there are 168 hours in a week. Scratch 50 hours for sleep. Scratch 60 hours for work, going to work or getting ready for work. Scratch another 10 hours for chores/bills/other requirements of life. That leaves 48 total hours in the week. then GA. figure 4 hours a day averaged out for what I do. That leaves 20 hours. chances are good that not more an 2 or 3 of those hours are consecutively available. And by the time all that is done, I don't want to be on the computer anymore. I usually read or occasionally I'll get time up in gaming. This pattern has been pretty much the same for 10 years. So, I'm working on breaking that pattern a bit and get into a pattern of writing more. Some of this is the blogs. I'm now handling three site blogs per week. Some of them are fairly simple, but the Tech Tuesday blog is a lot more involved. I'm also thinking of doing just a general sort personal blog, like this one, once a week. I'm also looking more into alternative revenue sources for the site. One of those options is what they call affiliate marketing. That is, we link to products that other people are selling and we get a small fee if you buy after clicking on our links. Since I'm a gadget kind of guy, I've thought about talking about some of the gadgets I get in my blog and putting up an Amazon link to it so that if you decide you want to try it too, the site can get a cut. Also thinking of doing the same with books and movies. Writing and posting blogs regularly keeps me in the writing mood and helps prompt me to write more in other areas. I'm currently reviewing my Harry Potter and Parliament of Dreams story so I can finally complete it and then focus on new stuff that is wholly my own. I'm also targeting the anthologies this year. Slowly but surely I want to get myself back into a regular writing habit. Time will tell! Let me know what you think.

4 letter slang words for upper and lower female anatomy. Google really loves flagging those words. Obnoxiously insulting word starting with an N for people of African descent. Also highly flagged. Posts in this topic using those words appropriately as examples were blocked automatically because Google only flags the word, not the context. @Timothy M.And yes, I'd love to have everyone subscribe and kick touchy advertising rules to the curb.

I should point out that the system now automatically moderates certain words. If you have those words, the system will block the post. This is so that Google doesn't punish us. Please keep the public areas teen friendly. If you want to have a debate on that, I suggest The Pit, which Goggle does not access. Those words are allowed in stories, but should be rated appropriately.

Thank you for the information. We'll contact folks in private if we need more. The issue has been reported to the programmer, but we'll be unable to patch for awhile. He is working on the new version of the software.

Thanks and welcome to the site. I'm glad you enjoyed the story.

Welcome to the New Year! We are wrapping up the last of the Writing Tips before launching our new weekly article feature. Be sure to check these out and let Comicality know what you think!

It has, yes. The Story Banners are an option for the promoted authors, yes. I'd say more a Publisher (Gay Authors) Standard. Please see the topic in Writing Circle I've made about this.

Only the Author and Staff can see unpublished chapters.

@Timothy M. Thank you for reporting that formatting issue. I'll have the staff work with him to correct the problem as that looks awful. And no, there is already a Story Detail (Table of Contents) page that does exactly that function. Chapter Text is for chapter text ONLY. People that are not following this will eventually be contacted because this is a display quality issue.

I usually use the hammer but you keep telling me to be nicer

A great time to Review the story folks. Read and Review. Encourage the authors to write more... or come back in some cases. (also a great time for authors still around to let us know the description and the tags so we can update the story) @Graeme

There is a chapter title field for the chapter title and the chapter text field is for chapter text only. There is no need for the title to be repeated in the chapter. As a general rule, text sizing and style should be stripped when you paste into the editor. As a side note, there is also a "Chapter Note" and "Chapter End Note" for author notes. Again with these, the Chapter Text field is for Chapter Text ONLY. Please avoid putting anything other than cleanly formatted chapter text in the chapter text field. It's likely that it will cause issues with the chapter text controls and require you to fix in the future.

I thought I'd start off 2018 with a reminder to everyone about computer security. In the past year, we've seen major security breaches that gave away pretty much everyone's personal financial information and worse. It was bad, to put it mildly. So, first, I'm not a security expert but I'm offering some common sense items for everyone. Use different passwords on all of your accounts. Use Strong passwords( 8+ characters, mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters like $#@!) If this sounds scary to you, use a password manager. I use LastPass personally as it works on all my devices. Use Two-Factor Authentication on your major email addresses and all financial accounts. This could be an authenticator app, using the option to get codes texted to you, or setting up security questions. Keep your computer software up to date! You can change your password in your Account Settings. It shows you how strong your password is as you type it. Go for green! (a password Strength indicator shows up when you start typing) Gay Authors offers two-factor authentication as well. Either questions or the Google Authenticator App. Or both. Further resources from MIT: https://ist.mit.edu/security/tips I also use Secunia PSI for making sure all the programs on my machine are updated. It's free for home use: http://learn.flexerasoftware.com/SVM-EVAL-Personal-Software-Inspector

Me too! But reading on a mobile device is great. And if you want to avoid the ads, get more stories, and keep us updating and open, there is Premium:

Gay Authors uses a responsive web design that works quite well on mobile. Developing a separate app would not be a cost-effective way to spend our limited resources at this time.

Happy New Years Everyone! We'd like to thank everyone here at Gay Authors for a great 2017! Looking forward to the new year, we hope 2018 is the best ever for Gay Authors.

As a big fan of history, this is a great reminder of the past while tying into the chain reaction anthology theme. Great essay!

A good little short story with a great message!

It certainly evokes the feeling of the darkness of winter.

This week, we start posting articles by Comicality. These are in our Writing Tips category in the story system. When we catch up on all those tips, we'll start posting new ones directly right in this blog. Keep an eye out! In the meantime, check out these tips by our very own Comicality:

There is a lagtime and caching thing going on, most likely. Not all of this stuff is live. I'll make a note to check deeper into it when there is time available.

It's never too late to swing back and leave a review for the authors and for people that go to read the stories in the future

@Timothy M. I am glad you liked it

Um... Just scroll down past the ebook.

We hope you had a great Christmas! As we march closer to the end of 2017, did you get the chance to read our previous holiday anthologies? Our 2004 Christmas Anthology: https://www.gayauthors.org/stories/browse/category/7-2004-anthology-christmas/ Our 2006 Winter Anthology Blizzard Theme: https://www.gayauthors.org/stories/browse/category/11-winter-blizzard/ Our 2015 Secret Santa Short Story contest: https://www.gayauthors.org/stories/browse/category/80-2015-secret-santa-short-story/ Also, this story was strongly recommended: We'd also like to remind all authors that we have four anthology themes for 2018 and a novella contest: Contests 2018 Summer Novella Anthology - Due April 15th, 2018 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