I hope you guys don't mind, but I would like to take you behind the scenes of Mercy for a moment.

A while back, I felt really stuck on this story. What I wanted to do was get Faith to a point where she had grown enough and learned enough that I could bring back Brand for a final confrontation, but I simply didn't know how to get there from where the story was at the time.

So realizing that conflict drives stories, I asked for help in creating an opponent for Faith.

Trying to remember Author and Title

Not in order just how they are remembered

Alien artefact mistaken for Egyptian Sarcophagus and is displayed in a museum.

Artefact is either a stasis pod, or a regeneration pod, and also has powerful computer.

Protagonists gender is changed, and becomes host to the mind of the Alien.

Chase across the world to find another artefact.

Protagonist and Federal Agent fall for each other.

I'm just letting everyone know that there may/will be some delays to the updates for my fanfic "Dragonfly". The third part will be posted on time Thursday as I planned it but I can't say for any certainty that I will be able to keep to that schedule. I've been bogged down with work which ate away at bumper I tried making and I have also been dealing with some depression that started creeping up on me again which really saps my creativity and desire to write.

Saw a notice posted to a light-pole outside my residence today.

Humanities 101

Free University course in writing,
Location UBC Point Grey Campus
Tuition, course Materials, bus fare, lunch, UBC Student ID free for residents of the downtown Eastside of Vancouver.
sign up at
( multiple community centers listed, one wednesdays, 2 on Saturdays. specific day and time for each center )

Hey Everyone.

I wanted apologize for the delay in getting the site back online today.

What happened is that one of our many elves happened to click a wrong button causing all of the "Author Taxonomy" to disappear. That may sound like an easy fix, of just rolling back the database, but in doing so we would have lost a couple new stories, and blogs that we didn't want to disappear.

I've been reading posts all day, debating whether I should say anything and if so, what should I say. I finally decided I will and what. A good bit of this will go over many heads, but some may understand.

A couple of people have been PMing me wondering if I've fallen into a hole or something, I just wanted to post this to let everyone know I'm ok. I've just been trying to figure things out creatively with a couple of stories of mine. i hate leaving things unfinished but more often then not, it seems to turn out that way. Especially with me as of late. It sucks too because things go so well and then I just can't seem to get the rest of it done :(.

It is now 9 days since the latest Bike was posted.

Certainly an eventful 9 days both world-wise and personally.

I don't know about anyone else, but I am missing Cathy and Co.

Do we get together a petition to send to Ang? I hope her studies aren't preventing her from writing at all here.

J.

Practicing some radical distraction, I was cruising YouTube when I found an hour long video of "Similarillion", a JRR Tolkien story about the beginning of all things. I was actually quite lovely. Then moving on I found a series of beautiful and astonishing videos by Skyrim that were so impressive to me. How do they write the code to do that and then to make the figures move so realistically? Then the scum on the bottom included some Rape Fantasy videos, apparently many countries outlaw them, but it does not seem like America does. :(

In honor of Remembrance day, here is "In Flanders Fields",

IN FLANDERS FIELDS POEM
The World’s Most Famous WAR MEMORIAL POEM
By Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved: and now we lie
In Flanders fields!

Given the very tepid response to my most recent story in the Rachel Torres series I think I'm going to cease writing on that one. I write for my pleasure but also for the pleasure of the readers here and if I don't get any feedback and very little response in the way of views than I see no reason in continuing. I've noticed that the number of views I get for every new chapter of something drops rather sharply so it's time for me to think hard about continuing at all.

When I wrote my first blog entry, I went into it with the thought I would speak about three things. As time has gone on, I realized I haven’t done any of it. The first thing I was going to do was talk about my stories. For some reason my ego stops me from doing that. I don’t want to sound like I am bragging about my story,so I kind of shelved that idea. I will answer any questions that people have, but I don’t want to blow my own horn. The closest I have come to this is the mini story I added the other day as a companion piece to Alexa.

In this age of Twitter and texting everything seems to get reduced to a few short letters or worse, an emoji. The beauty of words gets lost when reduced to a few short letters.

I am sure that it lends a certain verisimilitude to a story to drop in the current vernacular of acronyms but somehow LOL does not carry the same impact as imagining someone actually laughing out loud. In this attention deficit designed world I am sure there are many who assign their own meanings to common acronyms thus widening the breach of understanding rather than narrowing it.

I am SO. FREAKING. BEHIND.

I think everyone here's seen just how dead my writing, or even reading on the site has been of late. I could make excuses, but there's really only one reason behind it all: I just can't seem to make myself do it.

PFH? 1/3 done. Phoenix Soars? 2/3. I have various other projects hovering between 1/4 and 3/4 done, and plans for oh so many more, but it seems like if I manage 500 words in a month any more I've pushed myself hard. It's just... ugh.

Okay, plunge taken! The first two books are now live:

Now available for Kindle from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com

Any one fluent in Spanish hereabouts who'd be willing to do a little bit of proofing? I have a few lines of spoken dialogue in my story that are in Español, and I want to make sure I've translated them correctly.

Whoever offers their help will get a hole heaping pile of nothing, unless my undying gratitude and an honorable mention in my author's rant counts for something.

Everyone have a delightfully demented day,

D.A.W.

Question.

Do people have a preference for how soon a gender change occurs in a story especially if it is a long story?

I'm curious because I have stories where the gender change occurs quickly, and ones where it's not until almost the end that it takes place. I myself don't have a preference. Since I was thinking about how I feel about it, I started to wonder what other peeps prefer or think on this subject.

The Gods are Bastards by D.D. Webb is a sword-and-sorcery Western. There are two trans characters among a large and diverse cast.

So a busy bit of week, lots of writing, a nice day visiting my daughter and you get a chapter too!

Click here for Book 12+1 ch 37

Sometime this week i'll have Book 17 finished, The full volume should be out next weekend, part 4 could be ready for Wednesday if you are collecting in smaller chunks!

I'm not sure how, what, when or even if this will happen but I hope it will. I guess like most if not all on this site I love writing stories. I've written a few bedtime stories for my kids probably pretty much like all parents. My eldest son was my biggest challenge and is pretty much the reason that I did this. You see he hated sad endings so when I told stories like the three little pigs I had to invent a happy ending for him. So, I guess it all went from there really.

As before, these are notes which explain my thought processes and decisions while writing SEE, provided here as a service (or a warning!) to other writers.

These three chapters have only minor adjustments in general. The usual things like Capitalization and fixing typos. There are a few cases where I have changed "Yes" to "Aye" but in the main it will be difficult to spot most alterations. I have slightly changed one or two speeches but nothing that has any major significance.

Okay, I need help remembering the name of a story.

It was a Whately story, about a girl with gadget powers, who was forced to make weapons for this guy, and when rescued, went to Whately with a lot of trauma and even wanted a UV armband.

Anybody know what I'm looking for?

I've been thinking about a chapter of the Hala Story that deals with very cynical account of the years from 2020 though about 2050. One of my protagonists would be involved in more war in Syria, Iraq, and Turkey with Daesh and finally the Russians. Thank God the US runs out of money to prosecute this war.

Not really sure I even want to write this chapter because I think there are enough Vets on this site that it would just traumatize them. Maybe all this can be handled in a paragraph or two. There is no glory in war.

Gwen