How membership in the site works:

That was $1560 which I put on a credit card that I had paid down with the money received last month. We're not doing to badly this month with raising enough so I can make more payments, considering that Piper is also asking for help with her planned move. We've got $861 in the Hatbox and most of that came in in the last week.

Four or five of us have editing priveleges for comments. Usually this is used to prevent comments from destroying the look of the site by editing any bad HTML. If you think about it, you will realize that we have to have this capability. Usually, we leave a note when we edit something like this: [Redacted bad HTML - Editor]

When someone is half awake, as Piper was last night, it is possible to hit the edit button instead of the reply button and then hit the save without realizing that one is not on the screen one thought one was on.

This kind of fell between the cracks and didn't get announced but there were five winners in the April Fools and Other Wise Contest. Check here to see if you were one of the top four winners and then PM or email me to tell me what you want done with your $35 prize. Since there was only ONE vote between fourth and fifth place, we decided to go ahead and give five prizes.

Sometime in the last three days, BCTS passed a milestone; there are now more than 20,000 stories, chapters and episodes of TG fiction in our archive!

Congratulations to everyone!

Hugs to all,
Erin

But her plane coming back from Thailand blew up on takeoff and made a soft crash landing. Birds got sucked into an engine and caused it to explode. She'll get a plane out later today (it's tomorrow in Thailand). She's shook up but okay.

Hugs,
Erin

Cheap shipping is available at Lulu now though Friday for US addresses. This applies to people buying books and to authors buying discounted books for personal sales.

It's the time of month again, bills are coming due and to be completely honest, I spent about $1100 bucks on vacation what with hotel room, meals, transportation, kennel fees, miscellaneous and stuff I bought.

Tired, sweaty and footsore; according to my pedometer I have walked something over 30 miles in the last five days.

Not sure I can afford to go on such a long vacation again though, while at the kennel someone taught Cuddles how to fart. You all almost read about it on the news, woman and dog found asphyxiated in their car on the I-10. HOLY SHIT, BATMAN! So to speak.

I'm hoping it was just because she only got kibbles to eat while in the kennel.

Got back to the hotel, ate some chips and salsa and worked on the site for an hour or so and fell asleep. I probably would have slept straight through except some guy outside my window about 11:30 couldn't get his car alarm to shut off. Either that or he was stealing a car. I got up to look out the window, my car is still there but by that time, I was awake and hungry so I made a trip down to the snack machines and here I am.

Well this year I finally did it. I applied for a professional badge and listed what I have done in comics over the years and they gave me one! It's very cool to have. :)

I'm stressed out by things that have happened back stage this past week. I need some time off and Piper's real life is kind of nightmarish lately so I hate to dump any more responsibility on her. My other assistants are really not experienced enough to do what I do here.

I'm going to be gone to the San Diego Comicon from Wednesday the 11th to Sunday the 15th. I'm thinking of shutting the site down while I'm gone or maybe just Thursday to Saturday since I'll be able to work on it Wednesday and Sunday. But really, the place would have burned down if I had been gone three days this weekend.

Today is Alan Turing's 100th birthday. He's the man who helped crack the German ciphers in WWII and pretty much invented the basics of computer science.

It's June 16th and we're a bit in the hole. We didn't make the subscription goal for last moth and this month is half over. I know not everyone can do so, but if you can, please, send us a few bucks via the Hatbox Membership request box on the side bar. It really does take about $40 bucks a day to keep this place open.

Thanks and hugs,
Erin

One of my favorite cartoonists, Chris Baldwin, sometimes gets work at MAD. Here's a vaguely relevant cartoon he did from the MAD site:

Ray Bradbury died last night at the age of 91, a unique voice whose writings will be treasured for centuries.

http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/decisionsselection/36767/2012-...

Voting closes tomorrow, May 28, 2012, before midnight Pacific.

Remember you can vote for more than one.

Hugs,
Erin

What with vet and doctor bills, repairs to the house and other expenses, I just had to borrow $800 to pay this month's bills. Accordingly, I've increased the amount I'm asking in the Hatbox because, quite frankly, the time I spend running the site could be spent doing something that would earn money. Expenses on the site have gone up also, since running websites and servers is Piper's actual job, I feel I have to pay her at least some for the time she spends working on the site and the servers as well.

We passed 19,000 stories on Sunday, 19,001 to be exact. We'll probably hit 20,000 sometime in July; Fictionmania may get there first. :)

I'm on the phone with her right now. She's been having difficulties, some people ripped her off and the bank and police are giving her a hard time. She needs some local friends in the Tampa area.

Hugs,
Erin

BigCloset is not a social media site, it's not chaos and it's not a place without rules. One of the rules is don't post as a story something that isn't a story. A piece of a story that doesn't have a title yet, that's perhaps posted to draw comments and be developed later into a story should not be posted as fiction. It should go probably as a blog or as a forum post under one of the writing categories. There are places here for such posts but they don't belong with the stories.

It's another contest! The 2012 April Fools and Other Wise Contest will be open for submissions from 1 April, 2012, 12:01 A.M. until 5 May, 2012, 11:59 P.M. PDT.

Submissions should be original stories or stand alone chapters in a series or serial, not posted elsewhere before or during the contest and voting, and should have some transgender content. Length is arbitrary but should probably not be much over 10,000 words because we want people to have enough time to read all the entries if they want to.

What do you all think of allowing readers to write tags to stories? This would be an opt-in for authors to allow or not and readers would have to spend buttons to be able to write tags, maybe. I'm just thinking out loud sort of but I found a neat module someone has already written. We'd also need a couple of three "tagerators" to keep the new tags coherent and appropriate. Perhaps authors could moderate tags on their own stories?

Hugs,
Erin