I am deeply saddened to say that I have been advised that Doctor Bart van de Ven, an internationally recognised maxillofacial surgeon specialising in facial feminisation surgery has very recently and suddenly passed away. Whilst many people may not be familiar with Doctor Bart, he was well known here in Europe and had set up the 2pass clinic in the Netherlands.

His website and business is still currently running (https://2pass.clinic/en).

A number of you have very kindly been worried after 'Cassandra' - Chapter 20 failed to materialise a timely manner.

First of all please don't worry, I'm fine and the story is definitely not being deserted. It's just that real life got in the way.

Here's the story. I'm currently retraining as a high school teacher (US) / teacher - KS 3 - 5 (UK). My year long college course to be certified as a teacher started on Tuesday and the last two weeks have been manic keeping me busy with 10 hour plus days.

I'm terribly sorry to everyone, but I will not be posting Chapter 19 of Cassandra tomorrow (Monday). This does NOT mean the story will be abandoned. I'm planning to have it ready by Friday

Some of you might have noticed I added in a dummied up newspaper article and included it in the latest chapter of Cassandra (Chapter 8).

It took me a bit of time to work out how to do it, so I thought some of you might wish to tuck this little 'how to' away should you wish to do the same in one of your stories.

Step 1 - Create Clipping
The online resource I used was https://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp.

It's been ten years since I posted my very first attempt at fiction here at BCTS (or indeed anywhere). For those of you who have been around that long it was 'The Healing Dagger', a short story of about 18,000 words set in the aftermath of a global pandemic. I try not to go back and read it now. Far too embarrassing!

Play nice.
No games.
Or BCTS SOF take an interest.
(:

We had some fun discussing a few favourite epic fantasy genre stories and I discovered some great suggestions I hadn't come across before. As a result I thought it might be interesting to try the same for Science Fiction genre stories. In my definition of Sci Fi I am excluding 'superhero' powers.

A year or so ago I read a brilliant story... and I can't remember it. Could anyone help me remember where it is please?

A young boy is a talented artist attending a catholic school. His family however are not very supportive of his talent.
He enters a statewide talent contest having forged his parents approval and gets through the preliminary round. The only problem is his covert
alter ego is a girl.

Her winning art series is based on the 'manners of death'

If you could help it would be very much appreciated. Thank you

Persephone

The weather channel has decided to ignore the election. So if you are feeling both insomniac and apolitical tonight here is one safe channel.

:)

https://t.co/JC2lsKAlwf

After a long day at work I started browsing. A comment caught my eye and I followed the link.

That led me to Easy as Falling off a Bike Episode 88.

I then looked at the comments and saw this…

It's remarkable
Submitted by Jo-Anne on Sun, 2007/10/21 - 1:55am

I was trawling through my hard drive this evening (yes… I know… utterly boring… until I reread what I had written).

Just over four years ago I started my journey to acceptance and transition. Rereading what I wrote then made me think… it might be useful to someone on the path. So here it is.

An Epiphany on the Journey – 13th October 2011