It's been a long time since I have written new stories and continued existing ones and I apologise for that.
Since 2013 we moved from our lovely home in Lincolnshire to live with my mother in law as she was finding it hard to cope on her own due to Alzheimer's.
Anyone who has had experience of dealing with this condition will know that it never gets easier. Since moving I have been trying to re-build my IT business from scratch and helping my wife to look after her mother.
I'm finding it hard to find the time to write as much as I would like to.
Looking after an elderly Mum (with my wife) and having a job all take up a lot of my time and energy.
I have two stories ongoing at the moment, Sisters Forever and Get a Life. I am very conscious of the fact that these have taken a long time to write. I hate the idea of not continuing and then finally finishing them and I would like to ask for your patience and understanding at the moment in the hope that I can increase my output as soon as I possibly can.
But some authors are putting up several stories/episodes at once. This is a bit unfair as the front page is somewhat taken over with these stories and gives other authors less time on the front page and listing on the shortcuts.
Once a story goes off the front page, read counts go down considerably, so the longer a story is visible, the better chance an author gets for her work to be read.
Please think of others when posting several things at once.
Eagle eyed readers might note that I have withdrawn the story.
I think that I might have painted myself into a corner on that story and anyway some clever people who were kind enough to comment, stole my thunder and gave away the twist. Also, through another one of you clever so and so's, I realised that what I was trying to get my characters to do, wasn't legal and wouldn't stand up to close inspection.
Here was I thinking that I was a clever writer, but my readers are much more intelligent than me!
I published a book on Kindle. It took some time to get it right and I had problems with the cover page, but eventually I completed things to my satisfaction and published.
Real life has intruded and stopped me from doing much.
Firstly, we are trying to move and the sale is being a bit of a b*g*er. Secondly, my work is taking up most of my spare time. thirdly, I am in the middle of changing over to the Dark Side and am converting to an Apple Mac.
Hopefully, things will settle down soon and I will be able to inflict my woeful writings on my unsuspecting public once again.
According to 'Who's online' on the right hand side of the home page, we appear to be having very few guests. Normally the guests by far outstrip the number of registered users.
Just wondering if the hit counter is acurate at the moment.
Total hits on Football Girl~Season 2~Chapter 21 is standing at 360 and the number of kudos is 89; that is 24.7% of the hits. That is wildly out of proportion ot my previous chapters.
My lovely, wonderful, funny cat Biscuit is no longer with us.
We got him from a rescue centre and he was the cat with the loudest purr. He was a one off individual who loved to show how big and butch he was. Mind you, he ran away at the slightest sign of trouble and so was a bit of a fake in the matcho stakes.
I put on another chapter of Football Girl 23 hours ago. Having just looked at the home page, I note that there have been no less than 25 new stories put on since then.
Is this some sort of record? I wonder if that 'other place' with the initials FM get that sort of new story count.
It's a great testament to Erin and her hard working co-workers that this site is so successful.
I write a little thing called Football Girl. Since losing our lovely Gabi last year, I have not had an editor. I have just re-read the last chapter and am a cringing wreck as I have noticed several bloopers of the first order.
Being dyslexic means that I miss things, forget things, misspell lots and generally lose the plot.
I have a dent in the wall where I keep banging it with my head with frustration sometimes. The occasional glass of wine helps dull the pain - well that's my excuse anyway!
Here I sit in Sue Towers, quill pen in hand - well it's a keyboard, but what's poetic about a lump of plastic.?
Outside it is dark and the wind is coming up, (too many curries). My typing finger is wearing down to the bone as the story just gets longer and longer.
First I thought that I could do the story in one, easy to manage and digest lump. Then it got too long and as I know that some readers have a short attention span and anything over one thousand words might cause a brain freeze (that's an ironic joke by the way as I am exactly like that) I decided to do it in two parts.
I am lucky, as most of my stories have a good number of comments and kudos.
However, some very good stories by brilliant authors don’t get many of either and that’s a shame. I am sure that some writers are put off by the apparent lack of response when just a few more comments or kudos might give them the encouragement to continue.
The reasons are probably many, a few of which are the very success of the site, the sheer number of stories to read and the lack of time to read everything.
There are number of reasons why I write, the main ones being because I enjoy doing it and giving pleasure to others. I also love getting comments that reflect that people are moved by my stories. I get a fair number of kudos too, which is the icing on the cake.
But, and there always is a but; increasingly, it appears that I am upsetting some readers. In particular, at the moment, Susan in Football Girl is going through a hard time and things are happening to her that are unpleasant, to say the least.
The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered:
“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money
to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future
that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not
live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to
die, and then dies having never really lived.”
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.
