There has been quite a bit of discussion lately on the benefits and detriments of editing and proof reading.

Hello Big Closet:

Very happy to be here. I am not any way near the caliber of writer of anyone here so my meager dribbles will hardly be noticed. So no threat ;-)

Hi y'all, just wanted to let you know I am still "in-progess" on Nothing Stranger than Life. Life continues to intrude on my endeavors, but I will continue to persevere. (I hope!)

Much thanks now go to aardvark for his thoughtful remarks.

Over the past few days, I have been giving a lot of thought to the recent unpleasantness. Usually, I send my comments to authors privately. I have said before and maintain that I don't like to post comments that might be seen as negative in a public space.

I have somewhat of an issue with that, though, because a free exchange of ideas in a public forum is one of the tools that can help our community grow. It is paradoxical that we are unable to offer positive criticism without risking censure of our own.

The results of the poll:

1. Transitioning - Stories of transsexual adjustments
2. Magic Transformation - Wishes, tricky spirits, vengeful ghosts or the like
3. Crossdressing - Crossdressing adventures or misadventures
4. Science Fiction Transformation - Misguided aliens, accidental superscience or what have you

So the first chapter of "Being Christina Chase" is posted. I'm not sure what the response is going to be considering that it's a chapter of a novel as opposed to a self-contained story. Also, it's pretty damned long, and there's no tg content to speak of. Not that there won't be any tg content, just not in the first chapter. I hope people like it; I know I sure as hell wouldn't read anything that long, But I digress...

For some reason, some comments have been disappearing and others are linked to wrong titles. I may have to do a database cleanup which might cause more comments to disappear. Hopefully, not any stories.

Hugs,
Erin

This is pretty off topic, but I need to get a plug in.

There are parts of my life that are actually going well. Not all of it reads like the Perils of Paul(ene). =)

There's an aspect to post-op life that not too many people talk about... depression.

The fifth and last chapter - at least for the near future - is now available. I hope my first story managed to extract a few laughs and tears. As always, I'm eager to hear your thoughts.

Today I added chapters 3 and 4. They are both rather small, so there will still be a chapter 5 following at a later date, probably tomorrow.

Big step for me, small step for mankind: my first two chapters of my first story ever are now - hopefully - published right here on TopShelf. I ended chapter 2 with a cliffhanger so I can find out how many readers actually care about the story from the complaints about it. *evil grin*

I intend to keep this series very small, probably only one or two more chapters. Right now, it's more a matter of wetting my feet, but I plan to keep the option open to perhaps add some more chapters later.

On a morning on which I have almost no time, I'm faced with one of the heavy questions.

How much responsibility does the author have for the interpretation a reader gives a story?

Hello Everyone! I'm blogging here because I was concerned that the Comments for my Deal or No Deal Story was getting a little off tropic but I decided that I did have more to say.

For those of you that read the teaser for Coeds, the entire story is now completed and posted on Stardust.

Bob Arnold

I don't want anyone to get the idea that I don't want to see lots of comments after the recent blowups. We go along for months with lots of good comments then one of these brushfires breaks out and fo a while it seems people are afraid to comment.

Hello everyone! I have finally posted my entry for StarDust's contest. You can find it of course at StarDust! Strange Happenings in Ragnorak County was my third try at a entry since the first two started going way way over 10K words. Many thanks to Holly Logan, H.E.R, Paula, and special thanks to Angel for their help. Enjoy!
Hugs!
grover

Hey everyone,

I took the site down today for a cool down. Things had suddenly gone from a few posts trading mostly civil comments to five or more hot flames in half an hour then five in five minutes. I had to leave for a bit and didn't feel it would be wise to leave the site open to comments that might stay up for hours and inflame more passions, so I shut things down. I'm back, but later tonight I'll be going to sleep and tomorrow I will be occupied with taking my mother to see the cancer doctor. Let's all try to be nice to one another.

Hugs,
Erin

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.