of A Christmas Story Squared

And Why? It was there, and now it's gone.

Ever since I started my transition I've been very young at heart, in fact if you asked my ex wife she would say, every time, that I act like a thirteen or fourteen year old. I personally blame my second puberty. I'm afraid less, I get more out of life, I have goals, and I'm in touch with the real me. A friend of mine sent me an online test that tests your mental age so I thought I'd see if my ex was right. The test measures things like how emotional and mature you are and such, so it's a mental age test and not an intelligence test.

Hi everyone, missed you. Wow I cant believe how far behind i am in my stories, not to mention reading others. Of course going on vacation, work and helping a friend through her illness does eat up ones writing time. Well, ill be posting soon so I hope everyone has a good holiday.

PS Some evil person got me reading Harry Potter fanfic, I cant believe how much of a time sink that's been reading on 600+ stories on fanfic site :)

Yes, I've been busy, and I thought I would share.

Solo Stories Wanted on Big List

So, today I wound up doing something I reaaaaallly hate doing... I cut a rather sizable chunk of my story. In fact, I can honestly say this is the largest single consecutive piece of a story I've ever cut totaling a whopping 15,000+ words which sets me back to a little over 100,000 words. Ouch. It's rather depressing, but unfortunately it had to be done. The story was headed in a direction I did not like and the only way to back out was to take this rather significant hit. There are parts I may be able to reuse, but most of it is a complete wash.

Sorry had to vent...

There is so much peace in driving out through the desert, but I have never been out there in the winter. Sometimes I see pictures with snow out in the sage brush and wonder how it got there. We used to go out in the desert to camp. I loved looking up at the stars at night. Sometimes I would lay there under the jewel bright heavens and doze. Once in a while I'd wake up and look at the stars and I would notice that the Milky Way had swiveled a little. I remember that sort of like a time lapse movie. The nights when the moon was gone were the best.

I posted about the discrepancy between Amazon's "Click to Look Inside!" preview and the actual purchased copy downloaded. That was here:

I'm going to try to break up the story differently to concentrate on fewer characters per chapter but I'll Likely return to the old format for really large events.

I'm beginning to get the impression that I could be doing something right either that or my eyes are playing up, because according to my kudos counter, I have 140,000 of the little darlin's.

I have been in recent correspondence with another writer who wanted to know why I don't allow public comments on my stories. I said that one negative comment had far more affect on me than 20 positive ones, and I felt I didn't have to take criticism if I didn't want it.

Nowadays, I have the courage to publish stories with public comments disabled. (And there's certainly plenty of moral bullying to imply there's something wrong with you if you don't allow public comments.)

You can thank Kylie for the cool image that goes with my latest story "Scavenger"

Give her a round of applause, folks!

It is time for some GOOD NEWS!!!!

Enough Computer Talk !

"Needless to say, the choice was oblivious."

I wanted to ,ry when i read this line in a story that Jasmine bought from amazon for $u

That and the 13 other typos made be set it for return

http://io9.com/5916970/the-22-rules-of-storytelling-accordin...

There aren't so much rules as bits of advice on how to tell stories, how to get ideas, and how to get unstuck.

This concerns revisions and downloads. I just discovered that the copy of Reclamation that was offered in a 5-day free promotion is an older version. I updated all of my books in June of this year; all of the "Look Inside!" previews reflected that--yet the older version was sent out. Amazon is looking into it with me (several emails back and forth), because they're potentially liable if the book downloaded is not the book previewed!

I am looking to translate my books into French. Is there anyone willing to re-correct/edit my efforts?

Tanya

Just a bit of a heads up if you prefer reading stuff on little screens, more of my stuff has made its way to the Kindle platform!

I found the following article quite interesting.

.
'Preferred' pronouns gain traction at US colleges
Associated Press By LISA LEFF

On Turner Classic Movies they're going to be showing a completely restored version of Topper on the 30th at 2:30am EST 11:30pm on the 29th!

My book Reclamation is available free this long holiday weekend at Amazon. Perfect for your new Black Friday Kindle!

I used to be a regular subscriber to a British magazine called SFX. Rather annoyingly, the front page was always designed so that the 'F' was slightly obscured, giving everyone the impression that you were buying a magazine called SEX, but that's by the by.

The best feature was always right at the end, where considerable space was given to reviewing recent SF and Fantasy fiction. The reviews were often uncompromising. I remember one comment to the effect that any writer who uses the phrase 'in actual fact' should be hung, drawn and quartered.