Luca E

why was it perfectly fine for men to have multiple wives, but it's never been okay for women to have multiple husbands? In those times men ruled the world, women and children were simply a part of it like everything else, but usually with no power other perhaps than seduction.

It's not a question of pleasing me or anyone else. The "We've always done it this way." and "We are all volunteers." are what, excuses, justification, I don't know, I'm not trying to have an argument. Please consider this: an Anthology is a collection of stories on a theme, it's a book with multiple stories by different authors. The equivalent here would be to post a book titled Unspoken, list all the stories in the forward or prologue with links if possible to each story which is a chapter. Readers can comment on the individual stories in the chapter comments and can review the overall book. That is an Anthology. The fact you only have two contributions for Horizons makes that defunct. Apologies to the authors, but you can't make an anthology with two stories. Individual stories can be upto 25k words and the Anthology chapter could have section divided as in the case of Myr's story. But individual stories should not exceed the size limit, should be complete and have an ending. This is all pretty simply. It gets published, one book, promoted, read and commented. No problems with having the time, forgetting a promo banner link. It seems to me the way you've gone about things has created unnecessary work for yourselves when you don't have the time to give and the result is very messy. If you think I'm wrong and you prefer the way you've always done it then ignore my comments, otherwise you might want to change things next year. An anthology is: a published collection of shorter literary or artistic works—such as poems, short stories, plays, songs, or essays—grouped together into a single book or volume

It looks like you've released the rest of the stories, chapters, for the Unspoken Anthology 2026. Without an announcement I stumbled across a couple of these stories. The link has disappeared from the site. Honestly, it's a bit of a disaster the way you have handled publishing these stories, I feel sorry for the authors whose work is buried. Question: are all the stories published now?

For general info, which is personal, and may or may not be useful. If I had a big event, Anthology 2026, I would give it at least equal coverage as the front page welcome asking if you want help finding stories. I use my phone to access the site and the front landing page contains: Weekly Wrap Up (Oct. 11 - Oct. 17) By wildone in Gay Authors News 3 comments I may be dating myself (not like that, geez ), but back in the days of Johnny Carson... And the previously mentioned help to find stories. Now a plain banner has been added for the Anthology, which is good, but would it attract readers? I admit the link, with blog page and large attractive banner is hidden in the Weekly Wrap Up. However, what I copied above is the first thing I see: I may be dating myself (not like that, geez ), but back in the days of Johnny Carson... That is not anything I would click on, I don't even know what the guy is talking about! Perhaps, the website designer should give a little thought to what takes the prime space on the landing home page? My own thought is that it should not be Weekly Wrap Up. I was looking for the Anthology and I'm not about to click all over the site to try to find it. I don't have the time or inclination to do that. In my opinion you are shooting yourselves in the foot, putting a lot of energy into an Anthology, or it may be something else in the future, but you bury it in the site and give prominence to something, Weekly Wrap Up, of little interest. Okay, it's been addressed with the top banner link, but as an afterthought prompted by this thread and not as attractive as the blog link. The question is about design and attracting readers. Weekly Wrap Up feels like some bizarre local parish newsletter, maybe move it somewhere else?

The Anthology 2026 got published, well half the stories, all as separate stories, not as a book, but anyway there was a thread with the list which I looked at. The anthology was there on the first page, now it's disappeared. I didn't have time to note all the titles and authors or save them or whatever you are supposed to do. It's kind of disappointing they have vanished from view and a shame for the authors who won't get their stories read, because how are you supposed to find them. Really you should have kept the home page link for longer, I mean the second tranch of stories haven't even been published!

I don't think you realise how depressing it is to see the threads RIP .... someone else has died. If you could change the title to CELEBRATING .... I would not fall into a depression and want to avoid coming here. A small change, with a big impact, which would be a brighter, more uplifting way to honour their memory. What do you think? Would that be possible?

I have been thinking about the overall design of Gay Authors. Meaning, take the home page as an example, it designs the site around finding the kind of story a reader might be looking for, which is great. I'm wondering if there couldn't be a parallel route into finding a story you might want to read based on authors. An equivalent home page which would group authors. So where you have genres for stories, you would have labelled groups for authors, such as: Currently Publishing, First Time New Author, Foreign Authors (English is not first language), AI co-assisted Authors, Past Authors (those who published 10 years ago and no longer publish). Well, you get the idea, the ability to search stories by types of author. Meaningful categories would need to be established, but first time is a good one, allowing a search for new authors, currently publishing is another giving access to find stories readers like to be part of through comments. AI co-assisted is a category more for avoidance as several readers don't wish to read those stories. Past Authors is a category where comments don't apply because you won't get an answer. All in all I think it would be nice to be able to discover authors rather than simply stories. I think also it could be developed to reviews for authors as exist for stories. After all it is Gay Authors, not Gay Stories!

At the risk of being called a sycophant @Myr's SA contribution marked him out as a great author for me. I guess that is the huge success of the competition, you discover new authors and it's often surprising!

No. I had to make a difficult choice between two stories I found equally good. You can only vote for one. The deciding factor was one was inspired by a real event and used this as the theme the other was entirely imagined by the author. I thought that better reasoning than simply tossing a coin. I also thought the one had potential to be a book, the other did not. But then again they could all have been created by fairies and magic glitter!

For me it was a choice between two stories Emptying the Library and No Official Reason, I voted for No Official Reason because we have one vote and the story was entirely created by the imagination of the author and with the potential for a book (I hope!).

Definitely the top story so far, well constructed, engaging, emotional, and dramatic. This story exactly fitted the theme and is strongly recommended. Two lives separated by seventy years, two different relationships, an interconnection which is set in a believable historic context. Dramatic and well worth reading.

Totally agree with @Cane23. The interconnection of the two storylines seventy years apart was very well done. The historical perspective well researched. Engaging and dramatic. Well done!

A story for carnivores which mixes the esoteric with culinary invention. It's kind of weird and maybe not to everyone's taste, but I think there's romance in there somewhere!

A story for carnivores, well written and entertaining, but I couldn't stop myself from picturing hundreds of wingless chickens, kind of like frogs legs and all those hundreds of frogs who can't jump. I guess I preferred discovering Kai's saga of hollow souls and an explanation of the afterlife. Where will this lead? A relationship? But there's hardly a hint. Maybe a foodtruck, then restaurant, selling chicken wings. Honestly, I prefer a baraque a frite, pizza truck, or 'Spud-u-like.' Still, a nice story (if I could just get the chicken wings out of my imagination).

A very engaging story. The author carries forward the plot through dialogue, there is little description of places, but it's a choice that works, because it focuses on the two central characters, develops their growing relationship and highlights the obstacles in their path. An excellent story, the best so far of those I've read (more than half), I have no idea who the author is, except they're American and older (as pointed out by someone's comment on the map thing) which I'd never heard of and didn't find on Google. Well done!