I've got a meeting next week with a Psychiatrist and I am very afraid. I'm pretty sure that she will try to get me back on Psychotropic Medications again and the prospect is chilling to me. From about 2002 until 2007 I was on drugs that really messed me up and I believe caused me to lapse into Suicidal Ideation several times. In my opinion Psychatric folk are egotistical and can act without good reason.

I had an idea about my bipolar condition.

I think it is kind of the foundation for my other issues.

What I mean by that is that if for example I'm struggling with PTSD, whether I'm manic or depressed at the time will affect what symptoms I will have, and what strategies might help me get through it.

I think that means that I am going to have to try and be aware of where I am on my bipolar cycle whenever another issue is present, or I may not be as successful in coping.

Still got lots of work to do, I guess.

despite dry roads!

A few years ago, I read all or part of a story in which an Administrative assistant is feminized by his boss. I have no idea what the title or author of the story is.

Gwen

Apart from having to deal with all the other issues and problems in your life, the poor response to the May challenge must temper your enthusiasm to spend your time organising another.

Today, I found a fairly large scratch on my lower right leg, and as occasionally if not often happens, I have no idea how it happened.

I feel like maybe I should use the technique lepers use - Visual Survey of Extremities - in case I had seriously hurt myself without knowing.

I honestly don't know what else to do.

Yep, the ten day forecast suggests we are keeping the bright weather for a bit, we might even reach 25c! The downside is an almost constant stiff breeze, not exactly a Mistral but annoying nevertheless.

I apologize that I have not worked on these two as much as I should…it has been slow due to having to deal with the insurance company on why we’re still in a hotel.

Hey everyone! I'm getting very, VERY close to finishing Dear Rylee Book one, and unfortunately, as I move into Book Two, I'll be moving off of BCTS - let me explain why.

Dear Rylee hasn't gotten a ton of engagement on BCTS, unfortunately. It's typically, not THAT much of a problem, but I had to add markup to the story every single time I post on BCTS and Book 2 (Dear Ariel) will have 15 to 20k word chapters. I just don't have it in me to add markup to novella sized chapters that get so little engagement(comment wise).

We got a message today that my dad's sister had passed away last month.

We had heard she was in hospice care, so its not a total shock, but I'm still struggling to process it.

See, I don't remember actually meeting her in person, even though apparently she came with her husband to visit us when we lived in Germany.

Mind you, the only things I remember about Germany was being fascinated to discover "Kindergarten" was an actual German word, and being confused about being asked to line up with the boys.

for days - i'm sure we are just hours from announcing a drought!

So, I came across a tweet and wish I could figure out how to post it in its entirety, but here's the link:
https://twitter.com/archer_rs/status/1660621791444836353
I know a tiny bit about France, enough to be dangerous, but I remember the punchline's significance. It starts thusly:

I am trying to learn to be grateful for the small gifts.

Like yesterday, I went over to Mike and Carol's to check on their kitties while they are away for the weekend.

Already that's something to be grateful for - that they trust me enough to do that.

While there. I got a chance to say hello to Blanca, who as always met me with her list of complaints, and then I noticed Lucy sitting on the couch.

So, I was just cruising the web this afternoon when suddenly I was at a site that I did not recognize that had about 25 or more photos. One caption said that it was the server room on the east coast and another caption said BCTS. I don't know what was going on and it seems to have cleared now. I had previously visited a site called "Chat GPT" that did not interest me, so I left. I don't know if this caused BCTS any grief and if it did, I am sorry.

Gwen

Hi everyone! For anyone who is following my current series, Always and Forever, I'm changing my posting schedule to twice weekly until the series is complete. My plan is to post Monday evenings (GMT-5) and Friday mornings.

And for those of you who aren't following it . . . I hope I can entice you! :-)

Hugs,

Emma

Okay, so strictly speaking its still spring but with blue skies and long days it feels like summer.

Yep, the weather continues to stay quite warm and sunny and the forecast is for more of the same for the next week as we head to the Spring Bank Holiday weekend.

At least a little bit.

Just a reminder, there's still 10 days on the May 2023 "Free Comic Book Day" Story Challenge.

I know I still haven't gotten the list of stories completed for last month's challenge posted as a blog. I'm REALLY sorry about that. I'll get that, as well as the information for the June challenge/contest, up either tomorrow or Monday, depending on how things are going.

The trip to get my stuff, and the resulting issues due to losing the car, have kinda had us in a bit of a fuzzle around here, and I just completely blanked on it until just now.

After our experiences on our Arkansas trip, Melanie and I have been taking it easy at home in California.

Meanwhile, a bit of drama we were not involved in directly happened in New Mexico: the insurance and the body shop managed to lose the car somewhere between the shop where we left it after being towed off the freeway and the body shop where it was to be evaluated for repairs. :)

At the moment, in addition to writing scenes for my own future works (alas, each time the impulse takes me, it's a different story concept. I'm not sure this is the way to make progress on a story.)

So I'm feeding the printer-friendly versions of stories into a text to speech engine on my iPhone. (I can recommend Voice Dream, on the app store. It's seems to take the most file formats.)

This approach has terrible problems of cadence, intonation, and basic pronunciation (some of which could be solved by building a phonetic dictionary file.)

I'm posting this as a courtesy to my wonderful, loyal readers. I felt the need to explain the rather inconsistent publication of my two current stories, "Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves" and "Out of the Past."

Ladies give it more than trying to blend in. In all my years it isn't the girl or the woman who looked like everyone else who caught my eye. From observation the same goes for everyone else even if they weren't consciously thinking about her but admiring what they saw. Lots of compliments from both sexes. A couple men asked for a date. Had to be the skirt and blouse? Let's be realistic, I'm way past the "sell before date"

hell – that concept fits me to a 'T' – to most of you but I could use a reader for something I am attempting. It isn't exactly Trans... but it isn't exactly NOT Trans. (How's that for a convoluted statement?)
Said reader must have some military background, a bit of science, and ( I presume ) everyone here has the Trans knowledge if not the experience.
My older sister was Trans. Originally my older brother she became my sister when she was around twelve. She was evicted to Europe shortly thereafter but she and I kept in touch.

He took both my hands in his, startling me. “I’d like to make it up to you."

I wanted to ask if there was any traction to continue with “Virtually Yours”.

well it is, the fourteenth such day of 2023!

Apparently they don't use the term Aspergers any more. Instead they use PTSD or CPTSD here on the west side of the pond. I don't know how those on the east side see it. I'm thankful to live in a place where they don't badger me to be a social butterfly, and the solitude agrees with me.

I see that I have written about "Spem in Alium" and other classical pieces that I find agreeable. It is doubtful that others would understand my love of "Queen" , "AD/DC" and among others ELO. Suffice it to say that my soul lives on that, Science Fiction and my quest for knowledge of the Creator.

This is what i am getting a lot. it works the fist time i look at a page but not the next one. then about 40m it works again. this website works for this browser if "Cloudflare" was not actively blocking it.

"

bigclosetr.us

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We're home, we're home!

That's right, as of 2 AM this morning we are back at our place, with my things unloaded, and I'm typing this from my own computer for the first time since January!

My keyboard is much clickier than I remembered :D

I apologize for wasting everyone's time.

For over twenty years I've brought a passionate level of involvement to this site.

Lately, that passion has resulted in less than satisfactory results.

Recently, I was characterized as "cold, unprofessional" and accused of driving writers away from this site.

Recently, I was told that my involvement in a thread had caused a meaningless fight which had wasted everyone's time.

Well everything seems like its out of step this week.

Back in the before-fore times I contracted an editor to look over the 4th draft of 11th Sun. They were... unkind. Disappointingly so. And unfortunately the important question I needed answering, whether the 4th draft was better than the second, was never answered. I have my own thoughts about the job they did, and whether the were interested in helping me in the first place.

Belated, but here it comes!

So, day 3 was the trek through the rest of TX, OK, and AR to get to our destination town there. After spending the night in a little place with a surprisingly nice room just off Route 66 (America's Best in V, TX: we'll give more details after the trip's over,) we started the day bright and early, with only a minor hiccup when I didn't get everything out of the room and we had to nab a spare key.

I'll be honest, TX... didn't impress me much. The windmills were nice, though.

Hey everyone! Thanks for reading my story up to this point! We're getting close to the end of this particular book, and as I move toward the end, I'm going to start diverting further and further into fiction. The story, while exciting in the beginning, turned into 'just life' after the initial six months. So, with that being said, I really appreciate you all being here, and I hope you hang on after chapter 29, which is the natural end for the real life story.

This is just a quick placeholder blog because our motel for the night doesn't have functioning wifi and I'm having to steal Ms. Joyce's phone wifi.

So, the update I'd be putting out tomorrow morning will instead be tomorrow night, when we get somewhere with better working 'net. :)

Melanie E.

I made the decision to place the entire story on Amazon.
And I have learned that my title is in no way original and that page formatting issues have creeped in.

The trip continues!

After leaving WAZ at about 9:30-ish yesterday morning we made a bee line for ANM. We made a brief stop after crossing state borders to get a stretch and a snack in (and watch some absolutely adorable dogs playing in the rest area there,) then pushed on.

Sorry, no bike tonight, I wrote an episode but am not happy with it, I shall try and post it tomorrow if I can sort it out.

Thanks for your patience.

Angharad

(For safety reasons, locations will be referred to by letters rather than name until after the trip is over.)

Yesterday morning about 10 AM we officially set out on our trip for AR! It's about 24-ish hours (driving) to get to our target in AR, so we've budgeted 3 days out and 3 days back, with 1 day there for any visiting and nabbing of my stuff.

Spent a long and interesting day at the Texas legislature. Bigots in the Leg have piled on to the Red State Hate Wagon and are preparing to pass a law to prohibit treating trans kids and making any doctor who did a felon. My wife and I simply had to be there to protest.

For years, I was aware of how dangerous my depressions could be - I've been suicidal more than once in part thanks to the depression

But I really didn't understand that the manic phase was just as dangerous.

its the equivalent of being high as a kite, or being a "happy drunk", in terms of my lack of restraint.

I am so full of happy chemicals just about anything sounds like fun, and boy have I done stuff I regretted once the manic phase wore off.

For the next week, Melanie and I will be on the road, going back to Arkansas to get her things to complete her move to California. That's three days each way, with maybe a day there to pack things and maybe short sightseeing detours.

This is going to cost about $1500 ($400-600 for rooms, $300-500 for meals, and $300-400 for gas). We've budgeted this, but it is going to be tight. It would be nice if we had a bit extra in the BC kitty to cover this.

Sorry for being a few days late on this!

The contest tag for the May 2023 Free Comic Book Day Challenge is now live, so feel free to get your stories up! You have until the end of the month to share them, and I'm looking forward to what people provide!

Just like with getting the tag up, I'm late on collating the stories from the April challenge. I apologize for that, and I'll try to get that done this evening or early tomorrow.

Melanie E.

Okay, i know its tomorrow but i thought i'd get in early (and i don't post Thursdays)

During my business career, I was mainly in marketing. Selling involves a lot of rejection. In order to make a sale you have to take a risk. The process involves a lot of very necessary motivational support. One of the ways I pushed myself was by keeping a myriad of statistics.

This habit has carried over into my writing. I have a massive spreadsheet that records statistics for my stories and books.

During the last three months, the over twenty books Doppler Press has published for me have received more total reviews than they received for the last over ten years.

Erin and I have been shooting the breeze with Erin about the potential of AI generated images.
Forget ChatGPT! Besides, we are writers and we don't need some robot to tell us what words to use - right?
But images ... now, imagine what we could do with images, especially if we don't have the talent or the time.

so we have signed another year long lease for our apartment.

The place isn't perfect, but its as good as we can do, unless subsidized housing comes through for us.

It's the last day of April, which means it's the last day for folks to get their entries for the Take Your Daughter to Work Day Challenge in before cutoff!

As a reminder, being a challenge rather than a contest means that there are no prize. As such, you have until midnight PDT to get your entries in, and I will be collating a list of all entered stories tomorrow.