Contest are fun and seem to increase involvement in the site. So I'm thinking of a contest to run from April 1 to May 5. Since there are several important calendar dates in that range, including April Fool's Day, Passover, Easter, IRS Day, May Day and Cinco de Mayo, I'm thinking of offering a choice of themes for contest entries, like these:

We've added two new sets of categories, one for fiction (also story, wysiwyg, storylink) and one for blogs.

Writing here is for amateurs, amateurs in the original sense of people who do what they do for the love of doing it. If you're not happy about how long chapters are or how often they are posted, be polite and kind because if you simply make demands you might as well kick the authors and tell them to stop having fun.

Doing the administration here is not easy, keeping things friendly and focussed on stories, storytelling, reading and commenting on stories. Maybe I should do away with the blogs.

Twice today I have had to remove comments for being unfriendly, both times because some reported news event and someone's fairly innocuous comment sparked replies that got political and maybe a bit unfriendly. Whenever this happens, it has nothing to do with my own politics, sometimes I have to remove posts that I agree with because not doing so eventually leads to flames, in my experience.

If your main comment about a story is that you don't like the genre, theme, premise or morals of the characters, then you don't have a comment, you have a complaint.

It's not criticism, it's simple whining that someone did not write a particular story to fit your requirements. Get over it and go read something else.

Fell while walking the dog. Ripped up my left hand on the concrete.

Hugs to all,
Erin

Genre-based attacks on stories posted as comments are not allowed. I'm tired of this unfriendly behavior. Multiple and repeated attacks of this sort MAY NOT get further warnings and MAY result in banning from the site.

If you don't like the genre of the story you are reading, exercise the muscle between your ears and stop reading it! You don't have to tell anyone publicly about it either.

If you like BC as a place to come and read the kind of stories you like, allow other people the same dignity and respect you would like to have.

Hugs to all,
Erin

Contest results will be announced tomorrow. Sorry about that.

Hugs,
Erin

It's down to 55F in the daytime and water falls from the sky every half-hour or so. Some locals think this may be the last days but I've seen this before, it gets worse before it gets better. I think we'll survive. :)

Hugs from Sunny (not so much) California,
Erin

I ran across a phrase today I had never heard and it inspired a story idea. It's just that I don't think I'm the right person to write this story and besides, I already have too many things to do and write now. So, I thought I would just throw it out here and see if anyone wanted to do something with it.

Today, September 19 would have been my mother's 87th birthday. It's also International Talk Like a Pirate Day. This curious fact gives me one of my favorite memories of my mom.

Sometimes I'm not sure. :)

I just learned that author Jaye Michael, BigCloset author, passed away earlier this month. Jaye's story, 'Neath Quicksilver's Moon, is being continued by Levanah at Jaye's request.

You can do almost anything you like here in a TG story.

Crystal Hall is now running on the lilypad server. A few of the links are not working yet but the site itself is up and running. :)

Hugs,
Erin