This is apparently just a bad week. Last night, the hard drive with my nearly finished next book along with a few other works in process went belly up. At first I thought the computer itself was toast. It would never come out of POST. This morning, I just left it on and eventually it did come up. Without that one drive. I'm hoping the physical disc is undamaged and it's just the circuitry that has failed. I'll have to look at data recovery options.
A hard drive may sound like a silly thing to cry about, but there's a lot of work on that disc.
I mentioned part of this a month ago on Facebook, but not here. So I'll go ahead with the whole announcement.
Late in December, after getting over COVID, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Just having a prostate was bad enough, but it had to grow a cancer as well. Early in March, the doctor and I agreed on surgery to remove it.
I keep several short stories going so I have something to turn to when I need a break from working on a book. I was working on such a story this evening when a depressing thought struck me. The world these stories take place in no longer exists. And I'm not sure if it comes back. Most of my stories take place in the "now". But the "now" in the stories I've started, including the book I'm working on is no longer reality. So why am I bothering?
I know I mentioned this not long ago on Facebook, but I just wanted to mention again here the importance of leaving a review on a book you bought on Amazon (and I don't just mean All for Love available on Amazon for $2.99 :) ) The reviews really do help and if you enjoyed the book and want to see more of them from your favorite author, leaving a review helps that along. Just like comments here, only more so. My latest book has been out for several weeks and has managed only one review.
I normally don't do this but I was wondering if some of you could do me a favor. I mean, I hate to ask, but could I get some reviews on Texas Belles on Amazon? I'm not sure what's going on, but I haven't gotten a single one and it's been posted for over a week. Someone told me they posted a review but Amazon rejected it without reason. So I'm curious if Amazon is just not allowing reviews for that story. On Goodreads, there's been a review and several positive rankings.
I started a story about 2 years ago and have been working on it off and on since. Lately I've been putting more effort into it as the direction of the story has evolved. I've set the story in a high school. A real high school and the protagonist is involved in one of the real groups. I'm not using any real world names; everyone is fictional. The school is being used as mostly a backdrop but the activity the central character is involved with is a real entity. I have characters using phrases used at the school. I did this because I thought it'd be fun to use a non-fictional setting.
This might be a bit premature to say anything about as it will take quite some time to complete, but I started working Reluctant Co-Ed tonight. For the longest time I resisted writing this story because 1) Chrissy isn't reluctant anymore and 2) a Tgirl in college has already been covered. But I felt the books really needed something between Prom Date and Bride.
I'm also going to have to take some of Reluctant Bride to use in the story. I'm going to have to completely re-write Reluctant Bride for publication any way.
I seem to have a few serialized stories that have not been completed. So I'm curious which one would y'all most like to see re-started? I don't mean any serial in the last 12 months or any story that came to an actual end. Some of these stories I just ran out of steam or the story started meandering. I don't want to lose ground on any of my current stories, but I thought it might be fun to revisit an "orphaned" story.
Due to circumstances beyond my control (namely kids off for the summer), I haven't been able to do much writing lately. So hopefully by the end of August, I'll start having some time to write with one back in school and the other out of town at college. I have several projects languishing, and some new ones I want to start, plus I want to get a novel published.
While I don't have a high output to begin with, I suspect it may drop off for a few weeks. The kids are out of school and when they're not tying up the computer, they're still up and about. It was much easier to write around them when they couldn't read...
I only mention this because I know some readers are waiting for continuations. But my available writing time, which was small already, has shrunk a lot.
I usually don't make my life's frustrations public, but sometimes it just feels like the world is working against you. To add to my growing depression and frustration at my inablility to do any writing lately (I have at least 5 projects in various stages of being written, but last night my computer's main hard drive had a catastrophic failure. I had just cleared the secondary drive to move stuff there to free up space, but it was late and "I could do it tomorrow." The loss is immeasurable and among the causalties were the "source" files of several stories.
It's funny how stories tend to get away from you. I came across two things last night that I guess I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. On Crystal's Cyberboard, there was mention of a TG story site I'd never heard about and clicked on the link. On the site were the first two installments of "The Relucatant Girlfriend" which they never asked if it was okay to post. I guess it's not a big deal since I was still credited and at one time, those stories were on at least six different sites including one translation into French.
I'm sure it's been discussed here before, but I was curious if there are any rules or discouragement for a story that might be considered "fan fiction"? I ask because I was developing a story that involves the setting, but none of the characters of a commercially published work. Do you just need a disclaimer or should derivative works be avoided? I don't want to cause the site any trouble.
Checks can be made out & sent to:
Joyce Melton
1001 Third St.
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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.
