Life is so fragile, and so brief.

In late November Tiffany (aka crazypagangurl) passed away suddenly. Then, about a week ago, I got a phone call from a friend saying her wife had barely survived a health scare, and she was shaken to the core. Then one of my cousins tripped and fell and broke her shoulder, and was told a few inches difference she might have broken her neck instead. Now, Drea's wife has been taken from her.

What I'm saying is, tell the people you love that you love them. You never know when it will be the last time you speak to somebody.

I am sorry to say I must pull my story, Cindy at Music Camp, from the 2019 Reader Retention Story Contest.

What? Another book. My muse wouldn't let go. I hope everyone enjoys this new installment in the series.

Word count: Over 77,000 words

Summer Bridesmaid, the eighth book in the Lee Corcoran series, follows Lee Corcoran, who has just completed his freshman year in college at the University of Michigan. His life keeps taking unexpected turns.

There is one universal truth in writing - the need to edit, edit, edit. The lack of editing can kill a good story, changing the read from a pleasure to a chore. A good story shouldn't be a chore.

A character in a story I'm writing now is a scientist who, due to a discovery of his, is very well off. I'm thinking of asking him for a loan or gift. Has anyone ever done this? Does anyone know if it will work? Probably won't, since the story and the characters are fictional. I'd probably just receive fictional money. Oh, well. Maybe it's worth a try.

Big Closet is a silly place.

At times it seems to lack common sense.

In a world where its users are under harsh political attack Big Closet steadfastly refuses to engage. The logic behind that decision is anything but foolish.

Yet this is a silly place. Defying all economic logic – Big Closet continues to try to exist on donations, knowing full well that a large share of its users are indigent. Big Closet knows that BECAUSE a large share of its users are indigent it MUST exist on donations because a fee-based site would not be able to serve them.

Okay with all the snow and such keeping me outdoors trying to keep a path open from the house to the car and the drive clear enough so the car can get in and out, I've been a bit busy. As the weatherman is predicting yet another storm to come through over night to dump more snow on top of the couple of feet we can't get rid of now, I had planned on posting the rest of Morningstar in one last single post.

First, let me state that I am more than slightly disappointed by the response to my previous blog. I posted here in the hopes of possibly finding someone who might be interested in sharing a home - someone who could perhaps benefit from my situation by the fact that I truly don’t need them to contribute financially and they would be able to share a nice home without it becoming a major financial burden. My take away from this would be that it would help to prevent me from falling into the trap of enforced solitude that I have known before. Nothing more, nothing less.

I've been authorized to share this: Yesterday, Andrea DiMaggio, one of our long time contributors here and a personal friend, suffered a terrible loss. Her wife, Tracy was struck by a car and died in hospital a short time later.

Please join me in sending Drea our hugs, prayers, and support at this most difficult time.

To any of you from the northern part of the US and wherever else this cold front hits. Stay warm! It’s supposed to drop to record lows in some places so do us all a favor and stay warm!

I've been pretty sick the last couple of weeks. Nothing serious but heavy dose of the flu then a cold right after and between that and Work being busy because literally everyone has this combo this year it's been all my spoons just to live through the basics let alone write stuff.

I will try to finish the story for the readers that liked it but it's unfortunately going on the pile of want to do stuff instead of the list of things I can do right now.

Sorry everyone.

I'm having trouble finding out how to delete my stories from the site here. I've already figured out how to delete blog posts easily enough but deleting the story post eludes me. I'm trying to delete the double short-story collection entries so I can repost the stories individually but I can't find the option to. Would anyone be able to help me? Thanks in advance.

I highly recommend going to the web page for the accompanying pictures and other links that may be of interest.

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/south-korea-male-beauty-ma...

The Lat Day of Our Acquaintance

A few days ago, I put a posting on Facebook somewhat in reaction to the latest SCOTUS decision. Transgender in the military is a major part of the story in “Soaring with Eagles”, the seventh novel in A California Saga, a series of nine novels that were originally posted on BCTS. I had to remove them when I published the books on Amazon KDP. I felt “Soaring with Eagles” was a good story. It required quite a bit of research.

In the spirit of Kris Traverse (RIP), I offer "Frankie and Julie in Bed".

It is a chapter of "How I Became Transgender" told from a different perspective.

Caution: it is more adult than the other parts.

Sorry, but I haven't been around. I have a new notebook, after my old one crash, so I had to figure out what my password was. Anyway, I hope to have a few more of the stories up. I wrote one which had a few of effindumb's characters in it so I hope if he is around, he'll let me.If not, I'll have a change a few things before I post. Oh will...See you soon...

Can a teenage crossdresser find happiness in his sister's closet?

I enjoy when authors share backstories of their work and creative process. I hope you enjoy my story of “How I Became Crossgender”, came about.

I started to try my hand at an ever popular, a nerdy boy discovers girl inside, conquers the world as a girl story.

I started what was tentatively called “Boy or Girl or Golden Retriever”. Mostly the backstory referred to, but with psychologist telling mom “The way you have raised them, they don’t know if they are boy or girl or golden retriever.” I got bogged down after killing off Jane (post-death discussions are not much fun).

Just posted the last part. I hope everyone took the time to view the inserted videos. They truly were my inspiration for the story. They are very moving, the Sound of Silence pulled my heart as did We're not going to take it. Both are emotional and from the heart.

Yup, just a quickie.

“Wish for some money,” I urged him.

 
Preview for BigCloset Patrons on Patreon

The book told us a lot about what could and couldn’t be done with my magic but mainly it repeated in several ways that I was stuck. I was going to be female and under my master’s orders for as long as seventy years or more.

I didn’t feel nearly as bad about this as I thought I should. The idea of serving Travis by granting his wishes, magical and otherwise, appealed to me on some level I didn’t understand.

Maybe I really had become dumber. Sigh.

If I need something from Amazon, I usually take my browser there via one of the links on BC, to pop a coin or two this way. The various direct links on the BC home page have disappeared, did I miss something while I was away?

I would like to talk about writing for a moment, if you guys dont mind.

See, I have a theory about my stories.

I dont think that writing is like a carpenter making a table, but rather like a woman giving birth.

For I believe my stories have a life of their own.

And my latest story is a good example of what I mean.

Because when I first conceived the idea, it was going to be a horror story.

Over the last few days, there has been some discussion about Hits, Comments, and Kudos.

Years ago, a few authors did an extensive study on Fictionmania about what s seemed to make a story more popular.

They concluded that the single most important factor was story length.

It was suggested in a recent BS blog that there’s a formula of x% of hits for comments and x% of hits for kudos.

I am repeating the afterword to my story "How I Became Crossgender" because I feel this is a better location for discussing questions, I hope it raises. Is Charli(e) crossgender? What is the danger/advantage of a cis-gender person pretending to be crossgender? What should the role of mental health professionals be?

Afterword

“Butterfly,” a British production premiering Friday on Hulu, is a thought-provoking, emotionally realistic issue drama on the subject of gender identity in young people — well, really, just one particular young person, 12-year-old Max Duffy (Callum Booth-Ford) from Manchester, who would like to be known as Maxine.

I wish I was dead! I just read Shalim IV by Casey Brooke. I loved the story though I did have a problem with it. The Earth gets new planetary members by intelligence work first. By swapping bodies with a member of that society to learn the easiest method of getting them to join. If that doesn't work then it's a force of arms.
The issue I have is more the body swapping in other stories where someone switches bodies with someone to take over their life, I have issue with. Oh, in Shalim IV story, I was not rooting for Earth. Though I love the main character.

Thank you all for the comments. Let me assure you that if I continue to get comments like this, there will be more.

I see many of the authors here begging for comments. I know it is very demoralizing not receiving comments. Many of us fledgling authors need encouragement, not demoralization, so please readers comment more, not just on mine, but on all the stories you like or feel you could help make better. And PM if you don't want it in public or it might embarrass the author. You might make a friend, and you can never have too many friends.

Hugs, Cheryl

Almost two years ago I published a little book called Prom Changed Everything. It was, honestly, a passion project that initially I hadn't even thought about publishing. Back during those days and long before them, while I loved to write I never considered myself good enough to actually publish. Whether that was due to self-esteem issues, not feeling what I wrote was anywhere good enough quality to consider publishing (which in all honesty most of it probably wasn't), or I simply didn't see a means to accomplish it in the first place, I held off on even attempting such a feat.

Every time I post a new book on Kindle, I have a lot people asking me on site what happened to this story or that. I thought I'd get in front of this time and tell everyone that I unpublished Burning Bright from the site because I just put it up on Kindle. I'll try to have a link for it up as soon as its officially published.

Not sure if the problem is on my end or not, but I've notice that the cute picture that used to accompany my comments and replies seems to have gone. help, anybody?

Not completely sure about this. I lifted it off a spanish page. It appears that Facebook is closing, and it is dated 2019.

Bobbi transitioned at age 72 - RIP

Bobbi Swan, whose secret lives explored the frontiers of drone technology and sexual identity, died Dec. 26. She was 88.
Born Robert Rowland Schwanhausser in Buffalo, N.Y., he was publicly recognized as an expert on military surveillance drones, which he helped develop at San Diego’s Ryan Aeronautical and its successor, Teledyne Ryan.

Just posted the Chapter 53 of Time on My Hands, this is the 1 year anniversary of it's start. I hope you've been enjoying it.

Second item is I started a part time job driving school buses this week. It's been rough getting up early for the morning run after 2 1/2 years of retirement & sleeping in.

As I've promised to Erin, I'm going to double my Patron donation using part of the pay. I'm doing my best to support BC and urge others to do the same.

As I said in my last blog entry, I've been asked on occasion to post a story here on Big Closet that I'd posted elsewhere.

I recently was looking at a story that I wrote some years ago that was set in a neighborhood bar called "Magee's Irish Pub." The story included some fancy layout that gave the folks at FictionMania a bit of a problem.

I’m working on NeverWorld, a sci-fi future story and I’m trying to design an Artificial Intelligence that would narrate part of my story and be the one who runs NeverWorld, an alternative interactive world.

I've written down some questions and hoping to start a discussion here, if anyone has the time. Here are my thoughts.

I have received several suggestions lately to create an index or a list showing the proper order for the stories in “The Cynthia Chronicles.” Quite frankly, I don’t have the skill to put the stories in the proper order that might show in a side bar. I also create a problem by not necessarily writing the stories in chronological order. I did, however, create a time line in order to keep track of events in the series. Sometimes I catch temporal errors, sometimes I don’t.

Hi Everyone,

I'm sorry to report that the news on Karen Lockhart (Kevin) is not good. He is still in Intensive Care in hospital. After a brief time out in a general ward he had to go back to ICU. As before, your prayers and thoughts are appreciated. He knows that his friends in BC are thinking of him, and appreciates the good wishes you are sending.

Bronwen

I've been busy (slowly) writing a story and with real life but I promise that I will indeed write the next chapter in Neko Necro and the follow up sequel to Soap. But in the meantime I was wondering if I should separate the stories in my double short story collection. Since it would affect you readers, I thought the decision to should be left up to you. Would it be easier separating them into their own posts so you can read the story you want without having to scroll past the one you don't? Or is it fine as is and continue this with other short stories in the future.

They have such a weak hold on their own sex, someone else changes and they become fanatical. Most of us have read the lies and disinformation spewed forth as research, medical and scientific studies. Which is basically no research and a repeat of flawed data gleaned from newspapers or other sources. All from those who have never researched or met anyone transgendered but are a self proclaimed authority on all things mental and physical pertaining to those who are trans.

The final part of "Solomon's Test" is up:

https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/77420/solomons-test-p...

Some of you authors might be interested in The Writing Excuses Conference 2019 to happen from 13 to 22 September 2019 on a caribean cruise departing from Houston, Texas.

Greetings,

Jessica Nicole