To Everybody;

In the spirit of the season, and recognizing the multi-cultural nature of our group, I want to wish all of you a Happy Holiday season!

Wren (Ho Ho Ho!)

I know writers love to have their stories noticed and a comment is perhaps the most appreciated. This isn't a plea for more comments rather a plea for those so carefully written missives to find their way onto the list.

Just recently I've made some erudite(?) comment and found, to my surprise, it wasn't where I expected to find it. At first I thought I'd made some dreadful mistake and Erin had deleted it. Then I realised I'd fallen foul of the double layer posting regimen and clicked off the story without confirming the comment preview.

I'd just like to wish everyone a merry time over this festive season.

Pen's working this morning, but from lunch time she's on holiday. We've got all our family obligations out of the way and I think it's going to be a time of rest and relaxation. We've got some pretty good movies to sit back and relax with, so it's going to be out with the crisps, nibbles, beers and Bacardi cokes... heaven!

I hope you all find your own little piece of heaven - even if it's only over the few days of Christmas and the New Year.

Bigs hugs to you all!

Nick B

The good news is that after 19 months of unemployment I finally got a job. Just in time for Christmas, too. It's a research lab doing some very interesting work and my co-workers seem to be a great bunch of people. The pay is even almost the same as the last good job I had. Another plus is that bluejeans are the shop uniform. Not as good as dressing up but a lot better than many places I've worked.

The bad news is that I have had to give up my mornings reading the stories here at BC. Oh well, only 4 more years until I retire and can take up my reading habit again.

Ricky

Properly capitalization in the title box really isn't that hard. In most browsers, if you just start typing the new title, it will fill in the most recent one, then you backspace over the number and retype that and the title is correct. But there have been a lot of misspelled, misspaced and miscapitalized titles lately. They look bad on the story and they look bad on the site. Sometimes titles are in ALL CAPS and if they are more than one short word long, I feel that should be fixed, too.

How should I deal with this:

Hi folks,

well, today is a very happy day for me, so I thought I might share some news with you. First for the fans of the Gabyzone IRC channel on Cyberbrats Network - Fiona and me will moving the European hub to a less expensive and more powerful server. We're taking every precaution possible to avoid any service disruptions but... we can't guarantee for anything, so there might be short disruptions in service.

The other even better news is: The court in Potsdam decided about my name change application and from today on my name is official :) One of the best xmas gifts I ever had.

well, the latest piece i produced was by far both the easiest and the hardest. The hardest, because it is NASTY. Despite having no sex, no violence, and no swear words, it is a very, very, hard read. I was a wreck this morning, cried until i could produce no more tears, and then went to work feeling like i was on the brink. Halfway though my shift, this piece started coming, and when i got home, i just had to write it out and exorcise my demons that way. And that's why it was also the easiest to write, it just flowed so fast, i had it done in under 2 hours.

I find it odd that an Ice cold bitch who doesn't love anyone except herself like my mother can be considered a woman when a person like me can not.

I have never wanted to hurt anyone and am quite willing to leave the place I am if I feel I am making someone uncomfortable with my presence, yet I'm the one considered the less than human freak?

Could someone please explain this to me?

The blog this morning about dropping your phone in coffee made me stop and think.

I’m a living, breathing anachronism.

The only phones I have couldn’t be dropped in coffee . . . unless you had a massive urn.

Over the last week or so, i have been struggling in various degrees with bouts of anger. It feels like when i havent wanted to curl up and cry i have wanted to shout or even hit something. A friend of mine has suggested that this might mean things are coming to a head inside me, and i will have to make a choice of letting Dorothy out, or losing it. And since the barriers to doing the former remain, I feel like i have been backed into a corner with no way out. The only place i feel human is online where i can just be me without those costs. Real life sucks.

If you haven't seen it, The Digital Story of the Nativity is worth a look.

Prophetic Sometimes

"Depression is such a cruel punishment. There are no fevers, no rashes, no blood tests to send people scurrying in concern. Just the slow erosion of self, as insidious as any cancer. And like cancer, it is essentially a solitary experience. A room in hell with only your name on the door."

I was hoping someone at BC could answer a question or two about the section known as 'The Rocks' and whereever Sydney's main business district is.( Where the big banks are. Is it the Rocks or another part of Sydney close to The Rocks. ). If someone can help me out, I'd appreciate it. Please PM me or leave a comment here.

Thank you.

Hi I just joined the real world no more dial-up I have high speed now but I saw an old friend who has the most wonderful stories listed as a new author and I wanted to leave a comment but I just keept getting you are not authorized to post comments messages and had problems staying logged on
or getting to see any of my info after a number of trys I got to most of my pages and now I had to say I am so happy to see Emmie Dee

A hermaphrodite dog gets a sex change? How can something which is both sexes have a sex change? Obviously to catch the headlines.

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/850665-hermaphrodog-has-sex-cha...

This type pops up every so often, a woman who married another woman thinking she was a man - naive or what?

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/odd-news/minati-khatua-d...

Well, I found out the girl at my daughter's daycare is taken, so that's a no go, I guess. The funny thing was how RELIEVED I was when i found that out. I had escaped having to take the next step and try and ask her out, which I was not sure I was capable of. I am also not sure where that leaves me for finding someone to love, however. There are a couple of possibilities from among my friends online, but in all honesty, I am uncertain how that kind of relationship works.

A Hope that got your attention. LOL

I like every other writer out there does this for free, nada, zilch, zip, nothing! Well, except for one thing, your comments and Kudos!!

I was looking at the numbers on the stories currently being offered and I noticed something. Well, it's not REALLY hard to guess, but there is no correlation between the number of comments or kudos AND the number of readers. Sooo...

Please Erin, do not be offended. I know that you are very busy, so I just thought I would post this question in the open so that anyone having time could answer it so that I did not take your time.

On Chapter 1 of Lt Katia, I cut and pasted it to MS Works, straighened it out and then cut and pasted it to BCTS. It went in flawlessly and I did not have to insert any paragraphs or any thing.

A little about my writing.

I just thought it would be helpful to talk to some of the newcomers about my point of view in writing. Yes, I am Muslim, and was fairly heavily emersed in that culture until just recently. So, my understanding of the cultures is somewhat better than some. I have no Military experience in the Middle East. Mine was during the Vietnam war and I was a non combatant. Yes, I was Military Police for 3 years … It’s complicated.

Merry Christmas to all of you, and please accept my well wishes for any other holiday you prefer.

I was raised to honor Christmas, and I still do it, though I do know there are other holidays and beliefs that are important at this time of year.

May all of you, have the best holiday possible and maybe some will get a miracle. You don't know how much I wish everyone could have one. But please, be well, share the holiday with someone, and let all the other problems go for at least a day.

All my best to all of you.

My love.

Maggie

One small step, but a step in the right direction anyway.

New chapter for everybody to enjoy. This one was just over 4k words and thus one of the longer chapters in the story, but since it involved Thanksgiving it made sense to make it longer than normal.

This one goes to several interesting places. One of my more favorite was the information about Sarah Lawrence. The term is real. I had a student there tell me the term when I was presenting at a Conference there, talking about Transgender Autobiography. That has apparently been a thing at the school for quite a while, apparently before the late 60's when all the cool kids were doing it.

If anyone would like to save the story and ancillary materials as they now exist, this would be a good time, or any time before New Year's day. I'm going to unpub it, not delete it, so any comments and such will continue to be available through special request.

Liorah, with bright blessings

My friend Danielle told me about a billboard she drove past in downtown LA. It was an advertisement for a Cosmetic Gynecologist. She was asking what that meant and I told her that it sounded like it could be a new creative term for a Sex Reassignment surgeon. LOL!

Part 19, A New Boyfriend?

Pansy finds she needs a male in her life--but will accept only an upper-class man who can help her climb from her low status. But can a dark-skinned peasant girl form a stable relationship with such a man?
 
 
February 8

To all of my readers,
It's come to my attention that the story of Seeking the truth is under the incorrect section and will therefore from now on in be placed under fanfiction.

Cliff

Well, as of yesterday, "Santa School" has become my most successful piece to date in terms of comments left, surpassing even "The Dead Kid". Fifteen people have taken the time and effort to say something publicly about it, and that is wonderful, and I wish to thank them, as well as everyone who left a kudo. Regardless of how it does in terms of the Christmas contest, it has been an uplifting experience for me. There is only one fly in the ointment so to speak, however. I showed it to my mom, and she said she found it sad.

We've only had SEVENTEEN stories posted today. What's the matter with you people? :)

For the past month, from November 16 to December 15, we've AVERAGED over 19.5 stories a day.

For the past week, we've averaged almost 17000 visitors a day! For the busiest five hours of the day, we're averaging about 1000 visitors an hour. Sometimes, there are as many as 390 people all visiting a page within the same five minute window!

No wonder the searches were bringing us down!

Is it me, but when I read a story in the present tense, it kind of puts me off.

The stories. I am sure are fine and well crafted, but I am much more comfortable with past tense.

Am I being a silly girl and should I get a life?

Hugs

Worried Sue from the UK.

I would like to issue a public apology to Angel. I sent a personal message to another person here that was inadvertently forwarded to her. It was a criticism that was based on nothing but innuendo and was mean spirited and erroneous to boot. That it was sent by accident doesn't change the fact that it was hypocritical of me. I have preached on numerous occasions to be kind and to build each other up. Because of my words, two people have been hurt. The third party deserves an apology as well, but I won't name her here.

I think that now makes me an old git. if not an old git, then a grumpy old bastard :)

I never thought I'd get this far and if I hadn't stopped riding bikes and driving cars like a complete maniac, I probably wouldn't have.

That means that by rights, I should now live forever...

God help you all.

Nick

The second Tuesday of every month is update day for those whose PCs have windows operating systems. My laptop is one, it has vista. It downloaded the updates yesterday and before I went to bed, I shut the computer off so to install them. Guess what, my laptop won't boot this morning.

Is Story Site missing or gone away. I know that it was reported that the site was undergoing a reformat, but long gave up hope that it would revive. Now it seems to have disappeared. Anybody know anything?

In commenting about the characters in a popular serial on this site, I made some rather unflattering, but honestly felt comments about several of the characters in the story. I felt, and I expressed it before, that they were seriously flawed and should not be held in very high esteem. Well, I received a comment to my comment saying that my outlook was far too dark, and that I didn’t understand the characters at all, that my life experience was such that I had no business making the comments I did make.

I am fighting a serious temptation right now. To put it in simple terms, I want to give up, to surrender. I am not talking about killing myself, but just shut down again, like i did as a kid. I have even considered finding a dom/domme and just be a slave, so I dont have to think or feel anything again. I will resist it, but i could use help, and prayers

My dog has food allergies. Poor Cuddles when she gets exposed to corn, soy or wheat breaks out in a rash and runs a fever. I had a solution to this problem in that for six months I fed her nothing but homemade dogfood, guaranteed not to contain any of her allergens.

At the end of that time, I started adding back in small amounts of commercial dogfood touted as not containing any of those ingredients. Slowly her allergies returned. Yesterday, I made the decision to go back to homemade dogfood, at least for another four or six months to clean her system.

I hear various people saying that kudos or kudoses or kudi or whatever they are in the plural, are no signifier of a good writer or anything else, which might question why we have them.

So, the last two weeks the respiratory junk has slowly been overtaking me. The sum of it is, I have a bad cold on top of a dry hacking cough, and I'm pretty miserable.

As a result, my mate and I stayed inside yesterday, concentrating of making Christmas presents (quilts, decorative pillows, etc). She sews, I cut, and I do the machine embroidery. All day long I'd been smelling something hot but I just thought it was the steam iron, or the adhesive spray I use when doing embroidery.

I have a question I'm hoping for some answers too. Coming up in the story very soon, there's a moment where the story has a possibility of branching off into a
side story. What I want to know is if I should branch off into the side story at that moment, taking the narrative away from the story for a few chapters or if I should continue the narrative as it is and post the side story chapters afterwards.

I would like to talk about my last two pieces together, because the one led to the other. I started working on "tears of the phoenix" because I was struggling with flashes of attraction toward men, and it was scaring me. As I had jean say, I felt like i was losing the last part of my male self, and i didnt want to. This struggle formed the first half of the story. At the same time, I was struggling with grief over Misty's "Out of the Ashes". I really hurt when Dolores died, and i wanted to say something about how her death affected me.

Well, I'm close to 3000 words into my new story. That's between 2 chapters unfortuantely.

I'm 2 scenes away from closing out Chapter One, and have a good start on Chapter two. The 2 scenes I need for Chapter One are probably 2 of the more important ones for that chapter. The ending scene is already written but those two scenes just don't want to come out, even tho I seem to know in my head what will happen.

Thanks again for all those who welcomed me here and those who have PM'ed me feel really welcome. I've been trying to post where I could, however I lost a lot of my links when my laptop hard drive, just 2 days after my first post. I'm still trying to find all the stories I had linked and say thank you to all the wonderful authors for sharing their stories with us. I will get to you all (I hope) and thank you all.

Also I've been asked I if write ... I have a short story about 500 words that if anyone is willing to proof let me know.

My gender journey has reached an interesting point. Sometimes, I am in such pain i dont know how to function. But then, there are days like now. the pain level is less, but more steady, like Chinese water torture. I am not sure exactly what I can do about it. I have done all i can right now, or at least thats what it feels like.

Something that may be of interest to Whateley-ites and Retconners - an infographic about Marvel ®, courtesy of an outfit called "Online Schools".

They normally expect it to be embedded in pages, but since it's about 4,700 pixels tall, I thought it more prudent to link to an embedded copy elsewhere - i.e. the site where I found it.

So, if you're interested, click on this link to view.

Just saw Scotty's blog posting on dressing up as Lolita. I hope he finds the bits and pieces of outfit he needs to pull it off, and I'll be looking forward to pictures.

Let me turn the topic now to... me, because like a lot of people I either like talking about me, or am so completely insecure that I need to, always with the hope that people will somehow offer me some support and acceptance, and if not love, then at least "like." Self-esteem... some day I should get me some.

A new chapter and things change yet again. Poor Geoff can't catch a break can he. Man, I hate it when that happens.

Well something certainly seems to have broke free at some point.

I took a story idea, made a few changes, and have written about 800 words tonight.

It's not a lot, and I don't know how far till it's gonna be ready, but this probably won't be a short story, although it might have short chapters.

Last night several things all came together. I was looking over the first couple of parts of my story 'Catwalk Confidence'. The first thing I noticed while looking it over was boy do I need to go back and clean this up a bit. The second thing I noticed was that within the storyline, it has been almost a year since young Alex started writing in his, excuse me, her journal.