Well, as of yesterday, "Santa School" has become my most successful piece to date in terms of comments left, surpassing even "The Dead Kid". Fifteen people have taken the time and effort to say something publicly about it, and that is wonderful, and I wish to thank them, as well as everyone who left a kudo. Regardless of how it does in terms of the Christmas contest, it has been an uplifting experience for me. There is only one fly in the ointment so to speak, however. I showed it to my mom, and she said she found it sad.

We've only had SEVENTEEN stories posted today. What's the matter with you people? :)

For the past month, from November 16 to December 15, we've AVERAGED over 19.5 stories a day.

For the past week, we've averaged almost 17000 visitors a day! For the busiest five hours of the day, we're averaging about 1000 visitors an hour. Sometimes, there are as many as 390 people all visiting a page within the same five minute window!

No wonder the searches were bringing us down!

The Stories link on storysite appears to be broken just now, although the home page is there. It points to the mirror site.

Here's the story link: http://www.storysite.org/storyindex.html

I would like to issue a public apology to Angel. I sent a personal message to another person here that was inadvertently forwarded to her. It was a criticism that was based on nothing but innuendo and was mean spirited and erroneous to boot. That it was sent by accident doesn't change the fact that it was hypocritical of me. I have preached on numerous occasions to be kind and to build each other up. Because of my words, two people have been hurt. The third party deserves an apology as well, but I won't name her here.

I think that now makes me an old git. if not an old git, then a grumpy old bastard :)

I never thought I'd get this far and if I hadn't stopped riding bikes and driving cars like a complete maniac, I probably wouldn't have.

That means that by rights, I should now live forever...

God help you all.

Nick

The second Tuesday of every month is update day for those whose PCs have windows operating systems. My laptop is one, it has vista. It downloaded the updates yesterday and before I went to bed, I shut the computer off so to install them. Guess what, my laptop won't boot this morning.

Is Story Site missing or gone away. I know that it was reported that the site was undergoing a reformat, but long gave up hope that it would revive. Now it seems to have disappeared. Anybody know anything?

I remembered a few minutes ago that it had been a while since we had a new chapter for Goddess' Tears, so sauntered over to Persephone's author page to find out more...

...only to find that only the title pages for her stories (Frozen Balance, Goddess' Tears, Healing Dagger) remain, and all the story content appears to have been pulled. I don't recall reading any blog entries announcing her departure, so does anyone know what happened?

Hi all,

After a terrible few months in which I hit bottom and tried to end my life, I discovered the difference between a positive or negative outcome is indeed based upon your attitude.

My dog has food allergies. Poor Cuddles when she gets exposed to corn, soy or wheat breaks out in a rash and runs a fever. I had a solution to this problem in that for six months I fed her nothing but homemade dogfood, guaranteed not to contain any of her allergens.

At the end of that time, I started adding back in small amounts of commercial dogfood touted as not containing any of those ingredients. Slowly her allergies returned. Yesterday, I made the decision to go back to homemade dogfood, at least for another four or six months to clean her system.

I have been expecting to see research like this, and in time, perhaps not so much we will know why we are the way we are.

http:/ /timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Gene-alteration-turns-male-embryos-into-female-shows-study/articleshow/7059503.cms

Much peace

Khadijah

As I get older (each week in fact)my mind remember less and less of the things I knew even a month before.

I can remember reading a story by an author whose name I can't remember about a man who is falsely arrested and tossed into a woman's prison. He slowly becomes a woman to fit in better and ends up being exonerated.

Then he becomes a counselor at the center and falls in love with one of the guards.

I don't remember if that story was ever actually finished and if not whether the author ever plans to do so.

I have a question I'm hoping for some answers too. Coming up in the story very soon, there's a moment where the story has a possibility of branching off into a
side story. What I want to know is if I should branch off into the side story at that moment, taking the narrative away from the story for a few chapters or if I should continue the narrative as it is and post the side story chapters afterwards.

I would like to talk about my last two pieces together, because the one led to the other. I started working on "tears of the phoenix" because I was struggling with flashes of attraction toward men, and it was scaring me. As I had jean say, I felt like i was losing the last part of my male self, and i didnt want to. This struggle formed the first half of the story. At the same time, I was struggling with grief over Misty's "Out of the Ashes". I really hurt when Dolores died, and i wanted to say something about how her death affected me.