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Com, thank you for continuing to update the timeless classics of New Kid in Class and Kiss of an Angel. I’ve been following the series' for quite some time now; I think from around the time of the “pineapple juice” episodes. A few recent zoom weddings and funerals at which I waved to old friends but couldn’t hug them kicked off heavy bout of unrequited nostalgia for me. ( I am also working through that with the local remnants of our old friend network.) But I had a lovely night queuing up and tabbing between New Kid and Kiss of an Angel from the beginning (and finding Arcade Junkies and Ryan’s Heart for the first time). It was a really fun soak in the lives and stories of your characters. It scratched the itch to listen to old friends tell stories we all know yet one more time, and it somehow gets better every retelling. I’m also glad you continue to update these and have them bubble back to the top part of the “new posts" lists as the anniversaries pile up. I hope new readers are continuing to find these. Because right in with the hilarious comedy and the hot sex scenes are your achingly beautiful and need-to-know moral lessons about trust and honesty and coming out and how-threesomes-are-hot-but-can-jam-up-a-relationship. Follow your heart, dream with your eyes open, and yes, beware that jerks might be trying to mess with you. Ryan’s heart really is the rock at the centre of it all, with all the loves and loyalties, and secrets and anxieties and mistakes and accidents revolving around it. And these stories show us how diverse people can be through Randy’s anxieties, Tyler’s broken (but perhaps mending) heart, Ariel’s minefield of tightly coiled springs of emotional energy, and Cody’s acute analysis, acidic patter and broken-glass-sharp emotional defenses. So, hugs and kisses and Bravo’s and roses for you.🌹🌹🌹 👏👏👏 👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨 I do really mean the ordinary definition of “timeless classic” above: but also timeless as the boys have gone from landline phone drama and skipping CD players and heavy VCRs to sexts and texts on the beach. “There aren't too many arcades left in the world nowadays, you know?" The utterly epic Spring Break lasted for 13 years. And Cody Morneau still feels like a “new” character, although he's been around for about 20 years now. I understand you have a life and many other fruitful and cool writing projects, and you’ve given us so much for so long that you don’t owe me or anybody anything more. But here’s a plea for some back-to-school episodes this September where we find out what school's like for the now out-ish boys and what Hailley’s gonna do next, and whether Tyler banging him until he was too weak to move will settle down Ariel’s kinetic discharges, and whether Tyler can reconcile his troubled past with his exciting present (and how Ariel's gonna handle that! (Or for a challenge, a story in Cody's voice?) Either way, thanks for the stories. 🍍

I've updated my signature, since Worlds and Series can now be directly linked and properly formatted. I'd recommend to authors that have Worlds or Series to use that to share a collection of your works

In case you haven't figured out from my user name, my favorite major book series is the Forgotten Realms series, but my favorite mini series in that series has to be the Shandril's Saga by Ed Greenwood.

This week's blog was triggered by the observation that some authors and members seem to be unaware of a built-in feature of our Stories system. This is the Series function. First, for the readers, you can find Series easiest by using the right-side menu on the main stories page. See below: If the Longest Series is not your thing, you can easily adjust it by selecting "Sort By" and choosing a different option: When you click on a Series Title, say "Gone From Daylight", the stories will be listed in Series order. You'll recognize Series stories in the system because they'll have a Series # followed by Series Title after the Story Title. For example, on the Gone From Daylight Series page, you can see the highlighted Series # and Series Title: That's all great for Readers, but how to Authors make a Story part of a Series? Easy! Edit the Story and right at the top of Step 1 is the Series Title and Series Number: We do ask that Authors not add the Series Title and Series number until there are at least two Stories in the Series posted in the system. Also note, that is a great way to tie related Anthology stories together. Although in the case of Anthologies, the staff will have to edit the story for you. I hope that helps everyone understand our Series function in Stories.

This week I'd like to talk about two of the new features coming to the site soon. I've shared this a bit with the authors, but I wanted to share them a little wider. This is a more focused view for readers. We currently have one way for authors to group their stories: Series links. They work, but I've wanted them to be more obvious. So, with the new version, we're giving a bit more depth to our Series. Series now has a description. We can also add a series banner and special enhanced displays for series that have special circumstances. Authors should take note of the red Xs on the side. We can now very easily remove stories from a series (and yes, it asks to confirm the delete, so no accidents) or reorder the stories by simply pressing the up and down arrows. But a series of stories isn't the only way to group stories in the next update. As anyone who has ever read Tom Clancy, Mercedes Lackey, J.K. Rowling, or Rick Riodan knows, you can have a whole bunch of different series featuring different aspects or couples that all take place, along with stand-alone stories, in the same world. And hence, the next new feature: Worlds. Worlds function almost exactly like Series, except that there is no order like in a series and you can add Series to your world. For the sharp-eyed readers here, you will spot "Contributors". For the purpose of this demonstration, I added dkstories' Dreams of Humanity Series to my Psionic Corp world. Series listing also allows contributors, though I didn't show it in the example above. Also in the picture, you can see that Series has one highlight color (black currently) and Worlds another (Violet, currently). Also, Dreams is tagged with Premium, so that is also listed. I see this feature getting used for authors who share the same writing world or for authors like @Comicalityand I who write stand-alone stories that share the same area. In the example, you see two of my Anthology entries which are stand-alone entries in my Psionic Corp world. Good news too, current existing stories in a series will import in as is. The Author or staff members will just need to go and add a description to the series page, and it'll be good. (if one isn't added, it'll just look as it does now) The browse menu will now have a "Browse by Series" and "Browse by Worlds", as you can see in the right-side menu in the above image. There are other things coming as well. But as you can see from the screenshots, the test server already has these features working

I have some series and every time I click on the series name I get a page with a list of the stories/books. It doesn't work with 'The King's Mate' series though. I looked if I did something wrong, but I can't find it. Help?

I just started posting the third part of a trilogy to my Nemesis series, but I can't get it to be number 3. There is no number 3. Instead it calls itself number 3. I suspect this is because I, under the old series system, added the short story collection Hubris as book 4 before adding book 3, confusing the new system. So now, Loud Like Love is book 4, Hubris is book 5, and there is no book 3, no matter how many times I try to move Loud Like Love up one step. Can something be done about this, so the books show up as the right number?

I checked the Help topic (shown below) but it only mentioned how to add a story of your own to a series. Another option to add a story to a series seems to be choosing the option Add a Story to Series under the Manage button. A pop-up window then asks for the story title. This is the way I added Cupid Central by @aditus to my Viking Valentine series. I wanted to add the new Anthology story A Hell of a Mess as well, but when I typed the story title, the system couldn't find it. In fact, the Story Title pop-up editor would only find stories by me, and not anything by other authors. However, since I'm co-author of A Hell of a Mess, this is still a bit strange. On the other hand, I don't get the option to use the green + button described in the Help topic, so I guess the system is consistent. Do you have a suggestion how to solve this, other than asking a GA admin to add the story ?

@Myr Hey, boss- I tried to rearrange the stories in the series using the arrows but it's not working. Ideas? https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/series/cj/