Is anyone else having problems accessing Sapphires Place? Or has something happened to the site?

I haven't finished Part 2 yet; it currently stands at just over 30,000 words with a fair bit of action to go. However, I'm going to start releasing it.

I've posted some additional information. For Ma'at - A pointer to some pictures of the Temple of Ma'at that is located in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, and a link to an article about the mummy of Hatshepsut being found.

For Amazon, there are pictures of Nicole's "Journey" earrings and pendant, a layout of the apartment she shares with Angela Ogle, and pictures of the Tanner's house.

All this, and a kitten going postal, at http://itinerant.fictioneer.org

The first post is like falling in love... I hope what I say will help you feel attracted to me and will make you come again to see if I have said anything new. I have a great challenge to attract you only with my words. I am sure an image would have been nice, moving images might have been better and even better would have been a three dimensional presence.

The longest time for a page request I've seen in the new software, other than during a file upload, was 6 seconds, normally it is 2 or less. Compared to an average of 12 to 18 seconds and as high as 30+ for OTS. And I don't even have caching or the other speed enhancements turned on. :)

- Erin

I'm sorry. The best laid plans and all that... Reality got a little too up close and personal today (not traumatic in any way, just very busy). I have Julie's finished story, and just need to finish formatting it for posting.

From November 15, 2006 through through January 7, 2007, original holiday-themed stories posted to BigCloset TopShelf will be eligible for cash prizes!

I found this poem a year or so ago, and it moved me very deeply. I came across it again while doing some online research and thought I would share it here.

The following musings are not specific to this particular site, but to all sites of the genre. Actually, it has more to do with a discussion I was part of in a chatroom, said discussion having left me a bit irritated and in need of a soapbox to publicly expound upon. This, then, is my first blog entry.

I thought it might be a good time to tell you the background for my handle/id.

I have been a life long fan of animation. In my extensive collection I have examples ranging from the 1920s to the latest CG stuff.

Taralynn's Desk now has Chapter 3 of "Crew Shift" posted. Shamelessly I point out that I helped out on the artwork, but she did the "inking" of the sickbay scene! Taralynn has a site worth visiting and features her stories Raven and Crew Shift. The link is at http://taralynn.sincomics.com/.

My apologies, but here come the jokes, inspired by a thread on Donna's story.

* * *

A girl walks into a bar with a dirty duck on her head. No one says anything to her while she takes a seat. She sips her drink quietly and shares a few peanuts with the duck who is frankly, quite filthy.

Today I went to professional author Wen Spencers Blog located at http://wen-spencer.livejournal.com/69789.html to look for an article about how to go about getting your writing published. Her Blog has some really good information, because she detailed her own struggle. Todays entry was good for it talked about her and her husband playing on-line games. The funny part was Wen was playing a male character and her husband playing a female. People was making the mistake that he really was female and he couldn't convince them otherwise! A case of virtual TG? LOL!

Ok all, first a Very Merry Christmas or Holiday season (being politically correct) and a Happy New year to all.

I can't take credit for this, because my Brother inlaw, who is a Luthern Minister, told me these two things, so I'm just relaying it to you. I thought they were cute.

I have enjoyed the wonderful stories presented here for Erin's Christmas Contest! The new writers, myself among them, have posted some very good and heartwarming tales. It's going to be very tough for the judges to make a ruling on these because they are all good.

Hi there to you all and Merry Christmas!

I'd just like to say a really big thank you to all who are involved with BC from the people who run it to the people who just like to read from it, you've all been very generous in the reviews you have given my stories. This is by far and away the best site of this type on the net and it pains me to have to take this rather enforced break from being able to read from and add to it.

Yet again a possibly good site goes down the main stream and states that says - Welcome to the best in EROTIC Transgender (CD, TV & TS) stories on the Web! And the only premium TG story site. Where does an trans-author not interested in erotic stories go and publish there work. A lot of the readers have stated that my work is good, but words don't pay the bills.

Session Start: Sat Dec 09 16:00:03 2006
Session Ident: #Main_Room
* Logging #Main_Room to 'logs\MainRm1209.ZappedNet.log'
* ScottRamsey has joined #Main_Room
{@Bob_A} hi Scott
{ScottRamsey} Hello

The site has been slow this morning because of a harvester operating out of an IP address in Bratislava, Slovakia. Moreover, I took the server and website down three times while reconfiguring things to block this creep.

Some experimental work on the site caused a few crashes between about 11:45 pm Sun and 1:30 am Mon. Sorry about that if you were on and did something because I had to restore the database so anything done in that time period is gone.

Today, I found that comic-book artist Dave Cockrum had passed away. As an comic and X-Man fan, I'll miss him. Dave created or help create many of my favorite X-men characters: Night Crawler, Mystique, Storm, and many others.

Today is Thanksgiving Day, and I'd like to take a moment to count the blessings I have been given.

First off is my health. Some very dedicated doctors have kept me going far longer than even the most optimistic projections when I was a baby. Now, there are some who might argue that it's not that good a thing, but I'm not complaining! So Thank You, Dr. Lawrence, Dr. Miller, and especially Dr. Rebecca, my current physician. I suppose I should also thank the various pharmaceutical companies, but my substantial cash "donations" should take care of that! ;-)

I've got some software setup on the new server to help create a community of authors and readers. Each member would have their own homepage, free, with quite a bit of control of how it looks, who can add to it and what appears there. I'd like to test this out before opening it up to everyone so if you are interested in trying it, send me a PM at Erin and I'll send you back the web address for trying this out.

While I have been around for a while in one guise or another, I thought I might actually get active.

Those who read authors' credits and pay attention to such things might recognize me as one of the volunteer proof readers for some of the authors who post here.

High School English class strikes again! I thought I'd share this email I received with everybody, it's certainly good for a laugh or three! For all the aspiring writers out there, do not use any of these in your works! (But I do have to admit, there are a couple here I quite like!)

Hi folks,

Erin and I are working on trying to get the gallery running again. As a temporary measure, you can reach the gallery HERE. Please DO NOT add things to this copy of the gallery since we're not certain that this is a permanent change.

Has the sapphire Site gone down or is it just a Web Update..
Hopefully it is just a web update..

any Info would be great..

Variety adds spice to life. When I was in high school, I once had a summer job working on my uncle's farm. One of my chores was to take care of the chickens. I quickly noticed this one chicken walking around all by itself outside the fence of the chicken coop. I asked my uncle about this and he said watch. He picked up the chicken and carried it inside the coop and set it down. It squatted down on the ground while all the other chickens ran up to it and started pecking it in the head. My uncle then picked it up and carried it outside and let it go. He told me that if he left it in the coop the other chickens would kill it. I've thought much on this over the years, and the only conclusion I could come to, was that the other chickens felt threatened by that one chicken because it was somehow different than they were.

Over at http://morfs.nowhere2go.org/ Britney has updated her site with new chapters on 2 stories.

Like... why does everyone go ape dookey when they find out I hate myself?

For that matter, why does it matter that I realize how fugly I am? As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather be wrong about the truth than wrong about a lie.

Story Discussion: You Have Been Warned, do not continue if you suffer from high pretension, ego intolerance or allergies to things you haven't thought of....MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Hmmm, I responded to a person in email and figured it was worth posting

This is my first effort to write transgendered poetry and I hope that the readers enjoy it. This has been formulating in my head and I finally decided to take it out. I tried to show the magic and excitement felt by crossdressers.

I'm not sure what happened. I did not deliberately turn off comments when I posted Julie's latest story, but there doesn't seem to be any way to change that when I put the story in Edit mode.

I was wondering why I received a few comments in PMs and there were no comments posted for everyone to see -- very strange for a JulieO story!

I don't know how else to put this warning out but someone, whose ISP appears to be in Virginia, is running a webserver on their machine. When I look at my logs, I can see the ip address of the router and that there is a small local network. Evil types could use the available info to break into such a server and hijack it for nefarious purposes.

It's ba-a-ack!

Guess I'll be sinking into pain and misery till I can get to the doctor. I woke up with a sinus headache today and it's only gotten worse. Can hardly stand to look at a computer screen. And since I'm going to ComiCon this weekend if I'm at all able, it may be Monday before I get to some things I promised people to do. Don't hesitate to remind me, I'm terrible about forgetting stuff when I'm in this much pain.

To pout or not to pout or narcissists unite or is that nutters or something..

Last week after a slightly hurtful comment exchange, which normally would not cause more than a ripple, if perhaps a little sulkiness on my part, I 'said' I was leaving.

Who cares? you may ask. Well maybe a few. Was this the response of an attention seeking, petulant drama queen? Or did the real world conspire in a dastardly manner to smack me about a bit, just for the hell of it?

Depends how cynical you are I guess.

I wanted to capture snipets of my online t-life
Lets see what happens

Another writer has left the fold. Why does this happen here every so often? Look around. This site has got to be the kindest and gentlest of writing sites. It is more of a community than any other. Of course that is the reason that it happens here; people’s emotions get spread to everyone. I mean, leave FM in a huff and who would notice? Other sites seem to be very much about one person. (Yea again, Erin. How do you make all of us feel so welcome and a part of this?)

Currently working on coding a massive unification of BigCloset Classic and BigCloset TopShelf with new software. Besides lots of personal stuff, this is why there have been no cartoons or stories from me lately. Hope to have good news this month. :)

Hey everyone, I just want you all to know that when I started writing Chrissie in 2002, I had hopes that someday it would be published. Chrissie - The Pre-Teen Years, will be published by Xlibris Press sometime this year.

I just found the following news story on Yahoo:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch pedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations to 12 from 16 and the legalization of child pornography and sex with animals. The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether.

It's been bugging me for a while, but I just can't seem to get things into writing lately. In fact it's taken me over a month just to get this little ramble into writing. I wanted to be nice and let all the readers of Their Worst Nightmare - My Dream Come True know why I haven't posted part 3 yet, well it is all ready and complete and looks great; the problem is it's all in my head and I can't get it out! AAAAAAHHHH!!

Never look back, something might be gaining on you.

Keep on trekkin'.

Sorry for the long break. It won't happen again. :-)

Also a delay while I figured a way to produce HTML this site would be happy with. The French dialogue in the text is enclosed in cite tags like this and is 'dubbed' into English, there being no way to satisfactorily do the subtitling effect.

In Erin's thread about use of tenses, the writing of explicit thoughts (expressing what a character is thinking at a specific moment in a story) came up.

I'd like to advocate a specific style for indicating that text in a story represents explicit thought. I think I first saw this used in some of Bek Corbin's stories, but Angela and I used it in "Peaches," and I've convinced Itinerant and a couple others to use it.

No thumbnail this time, but even my Mom thought this was funny. :)

Click for latest Beastly Thinking.

- Joyce

The wonder of a singing duck is not how well he sings!