For the last two, almost three, weeks, BigCloset email has been intermittent. Sometimes not sending emails for people signing up or changing passwords or sending blank messages. It took us a while to even notice it but for the past week or so we have been working on this problem.
We think we've got it solved so if you tried to sign-up or change your password in the last couple of weeks and never got the email to complete the process, or got a blank one, please try again.
These guys: http://forum.silicone-breast.com/viewforum.php?f=11 seem to be publishing stories from BCTS without permission. Everything here is automatically copyrighted in the name of the author so these guys are violating federal law. At least two authors have complained to me and I have sent a takedown request via the site's Contact Us link.
I am sure that several other authors are having stories posted without their permission. Have a look and send them a takedown notice.
Awake at three in the morning. It's a contradiction of human existence, I guess.
I'm awake right now because I was having a weird dream. In the dream, Mel Brooks asks what if Buddha had been a nice Jewish boy from Queens?
Siddhartha the Buddha, or as his mother called him, Siddhartha the Bum.
She says to him, Sid, Sid, why don't you get a job? Your brother Marty has a nice job on Wall Street and what are you doing? Sitting under a tree eating plums!
I woke up laughing.
I tried to go back to sleep but Mrs. Gautama kept talking.
I hadn't been able to do much writing for the last two months but I've discovered, or re-discovered, something. Writing energizes me.
One of the reasons I wasn't writing was that I had so much else to do that it seemed wasteful of my time to write. And yet, I wasn't getting all that much of those tasks done either. Just staying even with the site was about all I could do.
A long discussion with my brother about various longform fictions brought up some ideas I thought to share.
Story structure is key to almost all commercial and popular fiction, movies and television. What I'm talking about is what you might call the information flow of the story if you were an engineer (which both my brother and I have been). The segments below could be episodes or chapters or groups of episodes or chapters. In something as short as a novelette, they could be very short indeed.
Newest Update: We have about $1800 due Friday and we have less than $500 in our bank accounts.
Not completely unexpected but we got hit with a tax bill for $800+, higher than expected, and now Felix has to deal with the expenses related to Katie's death, about $1600, without Katie's income, and we want to help out.
Accordingly, we are going to increase the April goal for the Hatbox to $5000. Yeah, I know that's a lot and to be frank, we're not really expecting to make it but we just wanted everyone to know that that is what we are going to be trying to pay out of our own resources.
Checks can be made out & sent to:
Joyce Melton
1001 Third St.
Space 80
Calimesa, CA 92320
USA
Note: $6000 is the operating, maintenance and upgrade budget. Amounts received in excess of the $6000 will be applied to long term debt accrued over the last 19 years.
