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There seems to be an unwritten rule out there for websites and publications everywhere that the last week of the year is the time to do a year in review wrap-up sort of post. This is the one for Gay Authors. 2017. What a year! This was the year we jumped 50 versions of software to finally break free of the 3.4 version of the forum software and break into the world of 4.1 and then 4.2 versions of the software. We've had hundreds of Stories archive software updates in the same timeframe as we've worked through all the bugs from going through a complete software rewrite and carrying a ton of existing data along. The good news? The biggest part is behind us for now. It took considerably longer than we wanted to get where we are, but the system is mostly working as intended. There are some outstanding notification bugs and quirky language that will be the target of a patch sometime soon. The important thing here is that we made it! We had a much smoother transition this time around. It's time to look ahead at 2018. Just what is coming? Blogs and Newsletters: Sunday Weekly Wrap-ups Blogs - These will continue. Sunday Newsletter -This will continue Monday - No change Tech Tuesday Blogs - I'm hoping to keep this going as a weekly feature to highlight features on the site and new features that will be coming. Wed Blogs - No change Thursday Anthology Blogs - We will be featuring a previous anthology (or two) on a weekly basis. We will also be reminding authors about new anthologies and contests coming up. Friday Prompts - This will continue Saturday - Writing Tips. We will be wrapping up the previously posted tips next week and then we start with new content provided by Comicality, a (20 year!) veteran of writing on the web. We'll also feature other author's tips along the way. Tech updates We are testing the bug fixes for notifications and wonky notification wording now and hope to patch that soon. This version is also going to streamline the story pages so we have a standard listing everywhere instead of the odd front page we have now. Very large advanced search improvements will be added as well to make it much easier to sort and filter stories in the system. This will include being able to do so by author. Example, if you want to look at all of Comicality's Fantasy Stories, the filter bar on his author page will let you do that with a couple of clicks. It will look similar to the filters you see on the Activity Streams. The major update after that will be Reading Lists. This will allow you to have "Favorite Stories", "Favorite Authors", "Reading History", "To Read", "Recommended" and custom lists of stories and authors. The intention is to make things clear and easy for you. The Reading History list, which will be private unless you choose to share, will include the chapter you were last reading to help make finding things easier. We'll go into more details when we get closer. The major update after that will be aimed at authors. We are working to provide far more robust stats on what people are reading so an author can see how they are doing. We'll also be working to provide more stats for authors on what readers are looking for. This will appeal to authors who like writing for the market and challenging themselves to appeal to that market will differentiate themselves. We'll go into more details when we get closer to this one as well. The final currently planned update for Stories is to improve the Story Queue. This will automate some of the rules and let us do mass updates. For example, the plan is for you to be able to post all your chapters at once so they are in the queue, and then you can just click a couple of buttons saying to post weekly on Friday at 9 am. Stuff like that. We know it is a bit tedious posting multiple chapters currently. We'll get a lot more into this later in 2018. The forum software 4.3 updates is also expected earlier in the new year. The only announced features we are aware of right now are Improved search, Emojis support and Club enhancements to make them more visible when they have activity. We'll post more as we know about it in our Tech Tuesday posts. My personal 2018 Stuff: I am planning on writing an entry for the anthologies and novella contest for this year. I am hoping to complete my Harry Potter and the Parliament of Dreams story finally. 16 years is really procrastinating. I am also hoping to spend more time writing in general. And I'm making an active effort to be posting on the site regularly. A good portion of that will be with the various writer clubs. Thanks to everyone for making 2017 so great for us! Here is to all of us having an even better 2018!

It could also be you need a driver update. Go to Settings, Updates and check for windows updates and make sure everything is installed.

Everyone here at Gay Authors wishes all of you and your families the best on this day. Merry Christmas!

Question: How do I use the Chapter Text Controls? Short Answer: See full post for details View full question

Week 3 of our Writing Tips Article Review is upon us. This week, we have an article from Don H and sat8997.

I was never able to get myself into WoW. It was probably my budget and schedule when this thing launched. Of course, even when I do play an MMO, like Star Wars: The Old Republic, I tend to solo my way around. I'm a lone wolf in so many things.

I'm glad you liked it... and.. well... it is a Christmas story

As we head into the final days before Christmas 2017, it might be a great time to take a break from the hectic holiday season and reread some of our anthologies from Christmases Past. 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/ We'd also like to remind all authors that we have 4 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

One of the most important aspects to our Stories software is allowing members to make the reading window fit their need for reading. Whether that is to adjust the text size, the contrast, the indents or the width of the text window. Here are the controls: Text size should be obvious here. The green highlight, as shown here, means that the current text is larger than the default text. If you have no highlight, then you have default text size. If you have A- highlighted, then your text size is set smaller than default. Text Window Width is whether the entire window is filled or not. This is mostly used on the desktop with a wide screen. There is no need on smaller screens. Contrast Mode shows a dark background. This helps to save battery and your eyes on mobile devices. I hope this blog helps you understand the power of our text controls. You can have any combination of the controls and it is stored on your device so you just need to set it once and it'll remember.

On the menu marked "Help" there is a rather extensive answer to your question.

I adjusted the setting. So, it shouldn't.

You have to re-upload it. It might have gotten corrupted. Not sure

@Timothy M. It was just the widget setting to "last updated" versus "Started"

Great advice! Embrace it!

This game has been out for awhile now and is both PC and Xbox One (and other's I'm sure). Anyone playing it? What do you think?

Did they ever figure out what that was? I saw somewhere that they were investigating it for signals and such

The lighting is fine... but the clipping through objects is a bit distracting and the ground combat is bordering on embarrassingly bad. Space combat was better though.

Welcome to Week 2! As we continue to highlight previously posted Writing Tips, we'll bring you something old and something new.

Well, I did give it a try. I played a few missions. It's not bad on console. Looks a bit aged.

You can just type code for emoticon, by the way. Also, the ones you use the most often appear in the "Recently Used" section. The Emoticon system is... a legacy system in the software and I suspect will be finally replaced with Emojjis in a future version in the not too distant future. Emojjis work now, by the way. All the modern operating systems have them built in, as far as I can tell. 😎

Just go to the Editors list: https://www.gayauthors.org/stories/browse/editors/ Then click on your own name. Yes, you can type your member number in the link I gave above for Tim... but that's hard for a lot of people.

I assure you both that I'm busy enough and I'm not looking for new things. There is no need to coordinate and tag team requests. That said, we do have a new update for Stories being worked on right now that specifically addresses Sorting and Filtering of content and this request was included at the start of that project. I'll also add some more instructions about the Editors listing of stories and Beta Reader's listing of stories be a bit easier to find.

Looking into it.

Um... Just click your name on the editor list. https://www.gayauthors.org/stories/browse/?editors=18045