Blogs, Topics, Weblinks, Forms, Polls etc.

Founding Fabulous Fun Fresh Feature -- Friday Featured Freelancer!

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Edeyn Okay, I asked earlier this week what kind of possible new feature you all would like to see added to the Shortcuts! box, and got very little response. But, I'm going to explain the one feature idea I do have the details for, and I'd like feedback on it -- if you'd rather tell me in a PM, do so.

The Friday Featured Freelancer

This will be run as a raffle of sorts. Any author on the site that wishes to may enter her or his name, and each week on Thursday night, the names will be dropped in a randomizer and the winner will have a feature page for the week, linked off of the Shortcuts! box.

There will be no favoritism, but only an author herself or himself may put in her or his name. The pool is emptied every week (meaning that you must re-enter every drawing, there is no carryover from week to week), and the only 3 limiting factors will be that

  • you must be an author with works on BCTS
  • if you are featured, you must wait a certain amount of time before you can enter again
  • you cannot be a member of the Admin staff

This is NOT in effect yet, as I want to know what you all think of the idea. Discuss, please. Hee!


Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? No, wait, that was God... Sorry, common mistake to make...
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A big, little change for me.

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Confused about the opening for this blog? Well, don't be concerned. The big, little change, has to do with getting a new drivers license...with my NEW pic on it! Yes, that's right. I'll no longer have to worry about being stopped by some over-zealous public servant, and having to explain, however patiently, why I don't look like the picture on my license.

I hadn't even thought it was something I COULD do, or would be allowed to do, but I checked and found that I could, indeed, have a new picture taken and placed on my license.

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Jwargod's story contest (Work in Progress)

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Heya, been working on a contest when a writer suggested I come here for questions and feedback. Seems Crytal's isnt providing much of either at the moment. Going to post the contest info, but keep in mind its always being updated especially here: http://www.tgcomics.com/forum/index.php?action=vthread&forum...

Here's the info (looks alot better in Word):

Jwargod’s Uncommon TF/TG Story Contest!
(Still a work in progress)

Despite Detractors, Dear Diary's Delinquincy Defined Daily Delimitation Deposed

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Edeyn Have you all noticed that I REALLY love alliteration?

No matter.

There will be postingness from me on Friday, 13 March 2009, and there will be NO changes to the latest chapter of Dear Diary, but there will be an explanation added.

Also scheduled to resume that day are at least two other pieces that people have been waiting for. There may be more, but I cannot say for certain.

Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? No, wait, that was God... Sorry, common mistake to make...
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God and the Big Bang

Garden News

Hi folks,

Things are developing at Hypatia's garden. Right now there is a discussion about ... well, you've already read the headline. So, if you're interested, please go to Hypatia's Garden


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who was that author?

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there was a story a few months ago, it was a part 2 (of 3) it was about a military guy that had gone back to uni studying engineering and back to crossdressing, she had some adventures with a rich girl and her family, there was a robot excavator that she provided tech help on.

if i recall the author left the site and removed her story, can anyone recall her name or the title?

i've finally got a few dollars to spare and was thinking of buying the parts 1 & 3, of course with a comp crash in the interim i lost the author and title.

thanks

Amanda

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Offer from Maddy Bell

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I was just perusing the forums at gabyzone.com and found an interesting post from Maddy herself. For those not up to snuff on Maddy, she has authored quite a few stories besides the Gaby and Hostess (Nina) series. If you check her library page at maddybell.com you can find a wide variety of stories besides the kid biker and the bus hostess. All are good, with a wide variety of tg/ts/tv/corsetry/tattoos/dom,sub/other themes. The post at the Gabyzone can be read by non-members (members to post etc)so just click and go look.

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Favourite dark/horror stories?

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I always like dark stories of evil bodystealing, possession, hostile takeover, identity thief or bodyhopper by males or female who want to have a certain new body, or be a certain specific person. The male/female participant must be unwilling to give up his/her body and life and villain triumphant in his/her new body. I also like stories that have evil end or horror TG story. It gave a thrill to me when I read it maybe i'm a bit sadism

My favourite stories are:

All of bodyhopper stories

A force of habit by Jessica Drew

My first entry

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...Just to put my work into context, I am retired, in that I have ceased one job, but am too young to stop working altogether. I need to work, but the financial climate is such that my line of work is suffering from corporate budget cuts and streamlining. I therefore have more time to write and am working on seventeen full length novels, several of which I shall post free here and on other sites. Some of them are sequels to works I have already posted.

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A prayer answered. Two new chapters

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I've posted two new chapters to "A Prayer Answered. I hope you enjoy this story as much as I am writing it. I have to go on a business trip for a few weeks Tuesday which may give me free time to write, but posting will be imposible. So be patient.

I am now asking for a proper gramer and word edit by someone here. Please if you like go ahead and edit this for me. Thanks Again to all those who have responded to this story. My plan is to take this story into Sandra's twenties.

Huggs
Sara D.

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Why Do My Votes Vary?

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For a long time when I've voted the register has shown 2 hits. Recently it has sometimes been registering 3 hits and the other morning I even registered a 4 (lucky TD). I'm not complaining. I just wonder why it varies. If I knew I was going to score a 4 I could be a big help to my favourite authors, or maybe there's a market for votes. Any offers?
Joanne

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My writing

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I am apparently incapable of, "... ever producing an idea without stealing it from someone more talented than..." myself. I have received 37 emails and 1 PM here accusing me of such in the last 12 hours, in addition to a PM from a friend who pointed out similarity in one of my stories to hers. In addition to THAT, one of the other admin just informed me (between Previewing this blog and actually posting it) that I "needed" to change my story, because I'm stealing the driving theme behind the main character of a friend's story. So... I suck.

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Feature Presentation

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Edeyn It has been very nearly a year since any kind of new dohickey was added to the Shortcuts! box. It's time to add something new. But, in keeping with getting feedback FIRST... I'd like to know what kind of suggestions folks have. Now, I want folks to PM me full details of their ideas for something fun or useful (or both!) to add, and I'll give it a few days before I post up the suggestions... not for voting, but for discussion! Talk about the pros and cons of each idea. The reason I want them PM'd to me is so that the ideas are known only to me and the rest of the staff. Comments are disabled, but that Write to author link should work fine.

Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? No, wait, that was God... Sorry, common mistake to make...
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Introduction

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mbs001.jpg      

Hi
I'm Mary Beth Sanford

This is my first blog entry...

This picture, taken some number of years ago, was always my favorite. The photographer was from San Francisco, developing a pictorial study of transgendered people (never saw the end results - if any). It was at a monthly meeting in Walnut Creek (California) and I was then, a member of the "Lost Girls". The lost girls were a loosely organized group that often went out to "mainstream" places first (mostly dinner) then off to one of several alternate life style or meetings places around the Bay Area. Anyway, if I had to show a picture that I felt represented me - this is the one.

Did I tell you how much I love this place! I do!

Hugs
Mary Beth



 

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Most probably won't want to but... pics of BC readers/authors?

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I know that, for a lot of us, our appearance is something that we can be a bit touchy about. For some of us, it can be an issue of not passing well, or even at all. Regardless, I thought it might be interesting to see who here was brave enough to stand up and let their face be seen. There are a few of us who have been so daring as to use image sigs or images of ourselves in posts before. For me, this will probably be the only time you see me post an image anywhere on this site. I just thought that, since the age question is out and running, why not a pics thread?

New New Server and Possible Site Outages

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The server is up and is running a version of BC and it looks pretty good for moving the site tonight or tomorrow. The problem will again be propagating the domain so that bigclosetr.us/topshelf will take you to the right site. So, I'm going to set up a temporary URL that will take you to the new site if you can't reach it through the usual address.

Stay tuned for more info.

Hugs,
Erin

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Blog disappearence?

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Hey, I was just curious about something. When someone submits, perhaps, a post as a forum thread or blog or something... Does it have to go through a process of "approval" or something? Is there any reason why someone's blog that may have been posted was not actually... posted? What would be the cause for when I actually try to visit the link of it, only a "Page not found" message comes up, hmm?

Fred

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Edeyn Was not just being named for my uncle, but sharing a BIRTHDAY with him. He attempted to 'rescue' me from my grandmother -- anyone remember those disc players from the early 80s? The ones that tried to vie with Betamax and VHS for the market... about the size of a laserdisc, but was in a sort of cassette casing, 2-sided? He had one of those players. I remember him coming over and informing my grandmother that I was going with him to his house for a while (when my mother was away)...
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Dear Diary

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Edeyn There will not be an entry tonight. And possibly not tomorrow. My uncle died this afternoon. The only one of my mother's brothers to be worth anything. I was originally named for him. He was the first of her brothers to accept me as a girl. He was the most gentle and caring man I've ever known. His standard being impossible to live up to is probably part of why I am a lesbian.

That is all.


Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? No, wait, that was God... Sorry, common mistake to make...
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Coming Soon!

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Edeyn March 13 will see the TopShelf exclusive premiere of my Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time fanfiction effort that I've been waiting on posting for so long. If you're curious as to what I'm talking about, go ] here [ to see the Teaser I posted in January 2008 -- It's part of Chapter One, which will be reposted in its entirety one week after the Prologue is posted (13 March 2009).

Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? No, wait, that was God... Sorry, common mistake to make...
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A Stern Ribbing

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I injured myself last Friday. Nothing of the usual home injuries. Didn't take a fall, step on a pin, hit my thumb with a hammer, pick up the business end of a soldering iron, or bang my head on an open cupboard door. No, I executed a sudden maneuver. I was outdoors, testing a type of lightweight fabric used for roofing, when my sample started blowing away from me. I lunged for it after chasing it across the roof a few feet, to catch it. Something happened in my ribcage and knocked the wind out of me temporarily.

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looking for some one

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hello Topshelf well i was wondering if any one has heard anything from the author of unexpected mommy or new of any way to get a hold of that person please if so could you please let me know in a PM i would really like to talk to the person again
well bye bye till later i guess
or maybe now where i could find some more of their writings

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Response to CoyotePuma's comment

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Edeyn Started this as a 'reply' comment, but realized it was way longer than merited... so moved it to its own blog!

Only a bit short of 2 years ago, I found TopShelf by way of a friend pointing me at a piece of fiction here (Leeway, by the way) and was rather pleasantly surprised. You see, a large amount of my friends figure that if it has any TG content, why, since I'm TG I must like it! Well, I'm not especially fond of forced femme, not especially fond of one-handed fiction as a whole... and in past experience, that's pretty much what was out there.

Now, over the years, there had been some excellent pieces of fiction that I'd been pointed at. I always tried to read them if only to be fair. I would save the ones that were, in my opinion, well done!

Then after enjoying Leeway so much, up to the point where it had been finished at the time, I decided to go ahead and look around the site.

Wow.

I was pleasantly surprised. In the past, TG Fiction sites seemed to specialize in the stuff I didn't like and maybe 1 in 1000 were something I liked. Now, this isn't to say that those sites were BAD. No. Just not the kind of thing I was into.

TopShelf, however... it was like the ration was the other way. There was about 1 in 100 that I didn't like!

Why, most of the stories I'd archived over the years were here, too!

I settled in and began to explore for a few months. There were a lot of really good TG stories that I had never seen or even heard of the authors! Then I started to think... "Hey, I can do this..."

And so I did. In 11 days, I wrote and posted as fast as I could, the first 8 pieces of Sk8r Grrls and to my surprise... people loved it.

Now, at that point, Erin was ecstatic about the fact that she was up to the point where her authors were posting an average of a story per day!

Wow!

Nifty!

Gee willikers!

... and I watched the site grow.

... and grow...

... and grow! By January 2008, we had an average of 8 to 10 stories being posted daily! Why, some days there were lots more... there were even the rare days with over TWENTY stories being posted in a 24 hour time period!

Stories were being posted so frequently, in fact, that they couldn't stay on the front page for more than a few hours and people were missing some really good stuff!

So I had an idea. I asked a few folks about how it would be received, and then took it to Erin.

She said, "That's a great idea, but it's awfully time consuming. I don't have time to do that. If you code it and post it and do the updating, sure, I'll add it."

So I joined the admin team here on 2008 January 19, with the introduction of Shortcuts! and over the next few months expanded it to give the Holiday of the Day, and then a link to information about that holiday, and provided a way for folks to be able to see what they'd missed that day without having to click through pages and pages of links to figure out what they'd read and what they hadn't.

The point being, that the method of posting here, making it so that the authors add their own content, is a great deal of what makes TopShelf so special -- it's constantly updating. Glad you're enjoying it!


Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? No, wait, that was God... Sorry, common mistake to make...
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Stories Posted Elsewhere

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Why can't authors posting stories which have been previously posted, state that and where they've been posted. I'm all in favour of recycling, and have posted stuff here that appeared elsewhere but have usually said so. Why can't others do the same?

Angharad.

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FictionMania is BACK! (Not a Joke)

For those of you that have been waiting.... FictionMania is BACK and LIVE, but temporarily at a new address: http://www.fictionmania.tv/enter.html

But There appears to be a lot of things still wrong/not working with the new server.

Here is a repost of a posting @ StorySite:

Hello again,

There has been some difficulty getting the fm.com url switched to the new server. Therefore, when we go back on line, we will be using the new address of:

A Study of the Transsexual Creature.

I don't know if this counts as fiction so I decided to put it here. This is a somewhat humorous explanation of what a transsexual is. The original is posted on http://mylittleplaceinspace.com All comments about the text are very welcome.

The Life of the Transsexual Creature

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Tip Thompson's Crossdressing Tips

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Today's (Sunday, March 1) Skin Horse comic, tooncasted at the bottom of every blog page, has Tip's humor-tinged crossdressing tips. The strip changes every day, and I think this one is worth keeping around, at least for some of us, so I went in search of a "permanent" link. If you liked this one, and want to keep it, click on and then bookmark this:

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/skinhorse/seri...

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Hajib

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Found some online instructions on how to put a hajib on, and I'm sitting here wearing it.

I have to say, it feels wonderful. Nothing that I dislike about it, just wish the scarf was longer.

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A Broadcasting Legend Is Gone. Paul Harvey Has Died

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Paul Harvey has died at the age of 90. Whatever I might say about him would be understatement. He was a legend, and his unique views and broadcasts will be missed by millions.

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Oh Where, Oh Where have Erin's Quick and Easy Picks Gone?

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What has happened to Erin's Quick and Easy Picks? They were such an improvement on what we had and are sooooo useful, giving helpful info such as total votes and new comments. Please may we have them back?

Gabi.

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I is being back! (Edeyn Updatishness)

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Edeyn That's right. I have returnéd. Sorry about the long hiatus. There have been much happenings and occurrings. I'm back in Kansas City for the time being, with plans to jump the Pacific in late July or early August for at least 3 months, more likely 6 months -- during which time other than the travel time itself, I'll be able to continue on here.

What the near future holds:

Content from me will be increasing, as the plan for all of this requires me to do more writing. I've missed the lot of you wascawwy wabbits, and will be continuing on my list of things to carry on. There will also be content of mine posted on ]Fictioneer![ in the near future, and there will be a few of you I will call upon for opinionation of pieces that will NOT be published online, to preserve the ability to publish them in dead-tree format.

Other goings on:

I do plan on emigrating from the United States of America (USA) to Australia (AUS) [ The only two countries either I or my love can think of with anagram abbreviations ] at some point in the next few years, but it will likely be only on a permanent basis after I've already achieved my degree that I've been hard at work on through Ashford University (Social Science with an Education Concentration) -- which, by the way, I'm doing well on. Not the straight 4.0 that I would prefer, but decent enough grades to retain my Pell grant and Student Loans.

What else? Oh. Yes. I am moving toward becoming active again in LGBT issues, primarily TG issues, of course, and I am attempting to find sponsorship and assistance from those who know what they're doing to turn my stories, "A Story With No Title," and, "Too Far," into short films.

I believe that's all for now... post questions in the comments as usual!


Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? No, wait, that was God... Sorry, common mistake to make...
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Mwa ha ha ha ha!

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I'm back in business! Thanks to the wonders of grand opening sales, I am now in possession of a computer again! You know what this means? I can actually work on my stories again without having to worry about being fired if my boss catches me! YAY!

What this also means is that hopefully I'll be posting chapters of my stories a lot more often, since I'll have more time to work on them, and I won't have to wait until I can borrow a friend's computer to post them. So, be on the lookout the next couple of weeks, 'cause new chapters is comin'!

Melanie E.

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This Writing Thing

It's strange one. Anyone that tries it and attempts to put feeling and emotion into it as opposed to stringing a few clichéd idealised fetishes together will I think get what I'm saying.

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Pinky and Perky?

Netflix has a lot of different things available. Among them are some special Ed Sullivan Shows. I just got a DVD with the full shows that contain (I think) the 2nd and 3rd Beatles appearances on the show. To get to my point: The 02/23/1964 show also has a puppet group on it called Pinky and Perky. That caught my attention as both Susan Brown (Billy Two Shoes) and Jamie Hayworth (Susie and Jeffrey) have used those names in recent stories. Were the puppets famous, or is this just a coincidence, or is their another tie in that I'm just not familiar with?

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Tuck?

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Is anyone else having trouble getting to Ellen's Tuck site. I started getting the following message on Tues 2-23 and so far today the same....

quote

Forbidden

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Astronomy buffs?

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I am considering throwing the towel in on much of what I do; giving some of it up as a lost cause. So that leaves me with much time. Years ago, I was very interested in Astronomy and am thinking of taking it up again. Starting very modestly, my dream scope would be a 14" with an astronomical drive and a very nice CCD camera on it. I know that many very high quality Reflectors have been built in a garage; even hand grinding the Mirror.

Can anyone offer me some good advice?

Gwen

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Major Site Outtages

StorySite, GabyZone, ReluctantPress, and TGFiction.Net are down, and will be down for the next several hours. I am re-loading the OS, and upgrading a few things. This isn't a planned outage, but wasn't completely un-expected.

-P/KAF

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Looking for story writing advice

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Lately, when I've been writing stories, I've been feeling a little ... lost. I've been starting to get story ideas again and writing them, but I'm wondering if I'm really reaching my readers as well as I could. While I like telling myself little stories, the ones I write down are the ones I'm hoping others will enjoy. If there's anyone who read any of my stories and has any thoughts on how to make them better, I'd love to hear from you. :)

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still scribbling away - sort of

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Sorry if I've been a bit quiet of late, but writing's been on the backburner for the last few months. I'm still doing bits and pieces occasionally, though not to any great intensity. Before being diagnosed wit MS, I used to crossdress two or three times a week, and my social life was pretty much wholly conducted en femme - I was lucky to find a group of friends who accepted, and encouraged my tv life, and in the end I even had friends who'd never met me in male guise. On becoming ill, I was determined to remain independent, and withdrew from my circle of friends.

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Server ordered

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Bob found a very good deal on a server so I just went ahead and bought it. It's about $1000. I'll have it here by next Friday and start messing with it and perhaps the following Friday, carry it to LA and install it. Then it will be a week or two to get it configured. I'll just have to depend on you guys to make this work. :)

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