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Funds needed - mid-month bills

This site is pretty much a near full-time occupation of 3+ people. As such, we depend a great deal on contributions from our community to meet the expenses of the site and things like internet access for each of us.

If you can help, please do. It's greatly appreciated.

Hugs,
Erin


Many thanks!

Hugs,
Erin, Piper, Cat, Rasufelle and the rest of the crew

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Funds Low - Bills Due

Money in the bank but new bills this new month. Please help if you can, it is greatly appreciated.

Hugs,
Erin

Thanks to everyone who has sent money, even when we weren't asking. We really depend on you, more than you know. :)

Thanks for any amount you can send. All contributions are very welcome. Thanks a great deal to all who have previously contributed here or paid for a membership at Patreon or Hatbox.


Many thanks!

Hugs,
Erin, Piper, Jamie, Cat, Rasufelle and the rest of the crew

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2024 New Year's Contest

If you click on 2024-01 January - New Year's Resolution Story Contest above, you will see a list of the entries.

Contest Closed for entries.

Please post your choices for top three stories and possibly win $50.

Start the New Year right by participating in Jill, Emma, and Joanne’s writing contest!

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Sledgehammer by me from DopplerPress on Amazon

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Sledgehammer on Kindle

  

This is the same story that's been in the Hatbox for some time, now released with new editing and a new cover on Amazon. The story of Jake and Cody, friends--and Freds--for a lifetime. See story for joke about the Freds.

Hugs,
Erin



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This story is 46 words long.

Hatbox funds needed - Today

Cash contributions from our members are how we keep BigCloset operating.

Company account was down to basically $0

If bills hit, we will overdraft.

Amazon is supposed to pay us tonight, but my stomach is cramping now with anxiety about this.

Please, If you can help, it will be appreciated.

Paypal contributions come straight to our account.

Hugs,
Erin, Piper, Jamie, Cat and the rest of the crew

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The Last Holidays - Kindle eBook by Grover Young

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Craig is one of Earth's bio-engineered soldiers in a war against an alien invasion. Unfortunately, when he uses his powers, he turns female. Now Halcyon has to deal with invaders and with Craig's girlfriend's preference for his female self! On top of that, Earth is losing the war.... There must be another way to deal with the conflict or the world will run out of holidays—forever!

The Last Holidays



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This story is 67 words long.

Some years back I read EE Nalley’s Belle Of The Ball story……

And thoroughly enjoyed it. I have been trying to locate it for some time now, a d all I get are references to it being posted on either Sapphire’s Place or Stardust. Unfortunately, I am not able to open either site.

Does anyone know where the story can be found?

Thanks!

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How To Publish...

My use of MS Word seems to be blocked. I have refused to use the "Cloud" because things seem to go missing from there. :( Perhaps another choice would be to use the BCTS utility to write but I have not done that before. I have not tried to write on MS Word, and scan that into BCTS.

I spent 5 hours + trying to go to their place of business. That was frustrating and I failed.

So far.... I feel that I am too ignorant to use something other than MS Word.

Working on it.

Ahabidah, Gwen Brown or what ever...

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Seven Levels of Fantasy

The ol' YouTube algorithm offered up a vid during tonight's random sojourns across the Internet which I rather enjoyed, so figured to share so our authors and readers could also partake and either agree or disagree with this guy's assessment of "The Seven Levels of Fantasy":

The Seven Levels of Fantasy

Hope you also enjoy!! :)

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Intense

That's a different kind of writers block. I like to write in first person and when I do, my best work comes when I get totally inside the head of my protagonist. On occasion, like right now, what's going on in there is intense. So intense, in fact, that I need to take a step back to allow my emotions to settle.

The current effort is flowing nicely at the moment and the main character has reached a crisis point in how he's handling and reacting to the situation he's found himself in.

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I Write Like Stephen King, Apparently. Wat.

Every so often YouTube remembers that I'm a writer and starts throwing random writing advice channels at me. Lately, and annoyingly, it's been people shilling AI writing (a can of worms I am notgoing to open here, but in brief: no, I never use AI, and we'll leave it at that). But this one actually caught my attention. It's a video essay discussing how Stephen King is such a prolific writer, including video clips of the author himself discussing his process, and, shockingly? Me too.

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Microsoft's games.

I am not sure what is going on...I tried to sign on to MS Word to work on a new short story today. I got blocked by "them" and figured that it was time to pay some money. I try to deal only with those online entities where the transaction is easy and seamless. The rest only get CASH.

I may have already shot myself in the foot. They wanted my address, and phone number and kept sending me verification codes until stopped suffering the fools. I may have to make a trip to my bank, only 1-2 miles away to get it sorted.

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New blood and posting mutiple chapters

It seems to me, of late we've acquired several new authors. At least there's a number of authors whose names I'm not familiar with posting stories. Some of them are quite prolific. Unfortunately, for me, only one of them consistently posts stories that scratch my itch. :o(

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Posting a rewrite of Wildcat Fall

Dear Readers,

When I took a break from writing Wildcat Fall, I ended up rewriting the story from the beginning. It's working better. But I was confused about how to reintroduce a story from the start.

So, I reinserted the newest version in place of the older one.

I know that sounds complicated, but it would be helpful to start again from the beginning.

Leslie

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666

Ok, full disclosure: I have nothing to do with the beast or the number thereof. I just used it to get your attention.

However, some of you might have noticed that I have an obsess... eh fondness for numbers. I blame that on nature and nurture (accountant father, mother who made a career out of statistics, engineering school and so on (I don't include dabbling in the black art of Business administration since most people in that field can't count)).

Get to the point?

Oh all right. Today two significant milestones regarding my stories were passed.

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Open Arms Chapter 5: Wheel in the Sky

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I am working on the next chapter of “Open Arms” and I’m going to mix it up a bit with this version’s storyline about the Joels, in order to set in motion the reasons they are intertwined with the Robison family,
Here is a painting of Damion Joel that Greg sees hanging on the wall in the Joel’s living room.

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More "Angel of..."

Something from the revised version of the first "Angel of..." story which becomes pertinent in the one I'm working on:

She chopped a few carrots, then thought of something. Melody caught Aaron's eye.

"Which brings up something I've asked about before, but not actually asked _you_ about. How do you - you, personally, and those you work with - manage to get so much done? I mean, even with superhuman intelligence, physical acts still take a finite amount of time. Arielle said something about you being able to boost your speed, but I don't..."

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Wildcat Fall Update

So, this is killing me. I've written almost 40,000 words and twenty chapters of the book and I'm dying to get some feedback. But posting it here didn't go so well.

I've thought of simply sending out a PDF of the rough draft to some readers interested in just reading. No proofing or editing, just a read through for some feedback.

Does that work for anyone?

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My muse is at it again.

I'm determined to finish some of the stories in my bone pile. To that end, I've been working on one that I call "Extra Credit" about a young man will graduate middle school in June. The hang up is he's not been doing his homework and his social studies teacher counts homework and 50% of the grade. He gets A's and B's on his tests, but his fall term for the class is a D. His mother wants to enroll him in a top tier prep school. But with that grade pulling his GPA down he'll never be accepted.

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Heatwave!

Yes i know some of you get higher temperatures but for this little island sitting above 50 degrees latitude, that's north of the major Canadian cities and all the USA except Alaska, doesn't often get temperatures into the 30's C.

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So readers what next?

So readers what one of my characters to write next?

Vantier
Meagan's tail the mermaid
The Drow twins Shadowsblades
in high school
or as adults?
or the adult twins VS the CIA?
Warriors way-The Amazon with the greek armor

I am kind of lost and lacking feed back on what you all might like?

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Writing Challenge from Erin in 2008

Greetings Top Shelf Writers and Readers,

I wanted to bring back from way back in the Big Closet a writing challenge that Erin made way back in 2008:

"What might happen to such a person {'a troll'} who ran a foul of some of the mythical beings who lurk in the back of the BigCloset? :)" ~ Erin Halfelven

I take joy in being a part of this website as it has served transgender readers and writers. I answered the challenge back in 2008 with my story From Troll to Triumph . I would love to see what can be done in 2025 with this classic prompt from Erin.

Talk among yourselves.
.
.
.
.
That's enough.

Now go forth and write!

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Opening Doors

That, folks, was the end of 'Closing Doors', as the last sentence carries a huge amount of freight for those who know the full extent of Mike's story. I feel it wraps up the story arc neatly, and didn't want to over-egg things. As I explained in a comment, it is the reason I chose Diane as the narrative voice, so as to bring neutrality to events that will have left Mike incoherent.

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Kern - A little help for patient readers!

EAT SUMMER.jpg

Hi everyone! For you hardy souls following the Kern saga, I know the story gets pretty involved, and there are a fair number of characters, both major and minor. What with the story being posted over the course of half a year, I imagine it’s easy to forget who’s who and how they are related. So I thought at this point it might help to post my notes on Carmen’s family tree as of the summer of 2024, when the story takes place.

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My biggest problem with stories posted as serials

It used to be that a good story was posted a chapter or two at a time and I got sucked into the story and invested in the characters; then without warning, the story was abandoned. That doesn't bother me so much any more. There seems to be very few of them that have had that happen.

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