no one is around...it's late...I need to talk

I've been in a lot of accidents, bounced around by machinery, always walked away. Sometimes serious scaring but no real damage. On an earlier blog we talked about swimming and I always sank like a rock, never could float. If I wanted on top the water, I stayed in motion. At my height I have never manged to get below 135 once I matured even when I had a twenty one inch waist.

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

Please follow this link to read this part
or
follow this one to read all four parts.

Eager to make full use of his incredible opportunity Jim begins playing with menu options despite Alex's protests. If he had known what was to follow, he wouldn't have been so enthusiastic.

For those reading my current series, Just Friends?, I'd like some input about these specific topics: pacing, disclosure and interest. In the latest installment (part 5) I received some comments that gave me the impression that I was pacing this story a little slowly; that the continued non-disclosure of the problem Rick (one of the protagonists) is having is becoming maybe a little frustrating to the readers. So all of this has me wondering if the above might be causing some to lose interest in the story.

Dragon Princess by S. Andrew Swann (DAW, 2014) is a comedic fantasy novel with a transgender body-shuffle plot. Frank Blackthorne, a thief, is on the run from the government of one country, and flees to the neighboring country, where he’s recruited by a wizard to kill a dragon and save the princess he’s kidnapped. He objects that he’s a thief, not a hero, and the wizard responds by giving him an ancient sword with enchantments designed for killing dragons.

These days, with all that's going on around us, I'm having a very hard time managing things, as I am sure some of you are also. Certain things are triggering me worse than I can ever remembering them doing. I promise, no drama, as much as I can manage it.

A close friend of mine sent me a short article that explains a bit, so perhaps it will help some of you also?

http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/30/abused-children-may-ge...

Much peace.

Gwen

I remember my first boating experience. Now please remember, for me boating was this new fangdangled thing. I live in manitoba, we have a number of lakes of various sizes, rivers, and many "creeks" usually called rivers anyways.

So there I was young about ten, my hips had widened and annoyed the heck out of my mother. Up top I was straight as an arrow with shoulders that did not widen to match my hips, another annoyance to my poor mother.

I'm just curious if any of you all deal with this kind of issue. I've been fighting off and on getting my muse to cooperate for awhile. I actually had a four day weekend thanks to work being slow and MLK day today. I thought oh my god I have four days to write, I can get a good portion of what's left to Alternative written out... One might think that, I mean I thought I could... When I first started posting stories I made myself a promise that I wouldn't actually start writing another story while I'm in the middle of writing another...

Thanks to all my readers and friends. The rehabilitation hospital people are doing their jobs, I feel a lot better, and hope to start writing soon. I've almost forgotten where I am in my story! So give me a little time to refresh my memory, and start again.

My thanks to Bronwen for keeping everyone up to date.

Hugs, Karen

As is often the case, things didn't go to plan after my previous blog. I am embarrassed that you haven't seen the level of output from me you might have been accustomed to.

Then, Monday 14th January at 00:45 in the morning, my father died. I can't blame him for much, but his death just makes one more distraction for me.

I just felt like I had to tell this rather than just put it behind me. This last week we buried my next to oldest brother in Arlington National Cemetery. Weather put a monkey wrench in things, no horse-drawn caisson or honor guard marching along side. He did receive a 21 gun salute and there was an honor guard graveside. It was kind of eerie, the blanket of snow covering everything. The cemetery was closed to normal traffic and the snow muted what sound there was. It was a very solemn ceremony.

I was reading an old story by her, I remember someone saying she had passed, but I would like to know more, She was a fine author.

Sorry, that Tommy is a bit late. But, I've spent the past two days recovering from a computer problem. Luckily I caught, thanks to my computer guru, that my hard drive was about to die (things were running slower and slower) and I've been rebuilding my PC's applications on a new machine. Not a fun job, but that the Great Spirit for good backups.

The next chapter of Tommy should be out tomorrow.

Teddie

Another Dottie Flash-fiction special is up! https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/77588/perfectly-reaso...

I really like reading Science Fiction and T fiction as long as the story is well written and does not beat the T aspect to death.

Archeological and Anthropological research is very interesting, especially in respect to the artifacts of Iran, an Central and South America. Lately it has become abundantly clear that most Science Fiction written in reference to those areas is likely true. "Prometheus" the Movie is especially troubling.

Gwen

Hi there everybody!

My name is Jamie, and I am BigCloset's personal assistant. Well, Erin mostly, but I help out when I can.

Erin is not feeling very well today, and we have had some bills pop up that had to be paid right then and there. Everybody here in the inner workings of this wonderful site gets thrown a little off when this happens, and Erin does whatever she can to move money around so that we are taken care of.

I received a report from Karen's cousin Sue today and I'm pleased to report that she is improving in health and has been moved to a rehab hospital. Sue will be taking in her laptop and cell phone on Thursday so she should soon be able to contact her friends again. We can hope that our thoughts and prayers have been answered
Bron

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.

So where are the comments?

I posted my story "Choices" about a week ago. It's an old story, I admit, but I have been asked several times in the past, to post stories here that were already posted elsewhere.

Some years back, I was asked to write the 8,000th story for FictionMania. Instead of one long stories, I wrote right short one. "Choices" was one of those eight. It was an attempt to write a TG version of the classic tale "The Lady or the Tiger."

TED Talk by Paula Stone Williams and Jonathan Williams at TEDWomen 2018.
The story of a parent's transition and a son's redemption