First, a warm welcome back to the talented Rylee Skye who has returned, continuing with Dear Ariel.

If you’re not familiar with the stories, I can’t recommend them highly enough. Rylee has a rare talent for covering what could easily be sordid and disturbing, with taste and grace. The story is intimate in scope, heartbreaking in circumstances, but uplifting in the characters’ growth beyond them. Its people are so profoundly human and so clearly drawn. The writing and editing are flawless.

I was thinking about old stories that I loved and was reminded of Maiden by Decree by Maggie Finson.

Does anyone know where that story now lives? I think it was not at BCTS when I first read it, but I cannot remember where it was or even if the site is still around. I doubt it is.

Also, is there a list of where to find the Caregiver stories? It was not a long run like Whately, but it was a nice Universe that I dearly loved.

Thanks in advance,
Cassie Ellen

Hi Everyone - I'm not sure if it was noticed, but I recently tore down my Patreon, stopped writing Rylee and pulled out of Scribblehub. While it might have seemed spontaneous, there were real world reasons. I won't go into it all because, well, it's a lot of stuff. To make an extremely long, complicated story very short, the consequences of my own actions reared their ugly head and I believed that the world would be better off without me. I left all of my Discord servers, erased my Patreon, and tried to eliminate every trace of myself before attempting suicide.

Reading another of Anne McCaffery's tales, Sassenach Pirate Planet where a senior female naval officer in a space fleet attends a dinner in what seems to be described as a Victorian era ball gown. As one might expect, the different space vessels use present day Naval designations Interesting. And they are using FTL propulsion. All this makes for fun fiction but is impossible by present day standards.

Little Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan — "Students at a small southeast Michigan college are preparing for graduation and navigating a controversy that erupted after the announcement of a high-profile commencement speaker.

There have been a few comments about various stories and authors in the last couple of weeks.
If you want a real treat read Bronwen Welsh's 'A Foreign Country'.

Elsbeth, one of my favorite authors on BCTS, abruptly disappeared 4 years ago today. I made a memorial post a year later. (See the last link below.) Here is what I posted. You will need to go to the original link to see the comments.

We miss you Elsbeth. I still read your stories several times a year.

----------------------------------------

I've met, well read the stories of and messaged with, many wonderful authors here at BCTS. One of them in particular had a large impact on me. Her name is Elsbeth.

so my dentist had to give me the bad news - I am going to need dentures, as my teeth are causing too many issues.

I cant help feeling like a failure. If I could have overcome my tendency to skip on my self care, its possible I could have avoided this.

ah, well.

I’m working on the third book in a series and wanted to know which picture looks the best.

Realized this weekend that it's been a year since the last 'Part' of The Light Between was posted. Time flies! Hmm, though some of those pesky airborne black dots may have been from the sack of too-long-ignored potatoes which were tossed out yesterday...

Well, I just had an odd conversation with Sharon.

She told me that while she cares for me, and always found being with me "fun", she loved me and still loves me like a buddy or a brother, and was never deeply in love with me. She then apologized for not being able to feel deeply in love with me.

I'm not sure what to do with this. I forgave her, but beyond that, I'm kind of stumped.

My nineteenth book has just hit the virtual shelves. It is, of course, the compilation of NYE competition stories from this site, with a few tweaks--surprisingly few, in fact.

My roommate is an aspiring voice actress and is looking to break into the audio book reading industry I was wondering if anyone would be interested, willing or able to help out with advice or a small job here or there please reach out

Many will remember that authors Bryony Marsh and Chris Archer gave away copies of this ebook some while ago, I read it at the time and enjoyed it. I have just re-read it and i really did enjoy it, it captures the emotions of the characters very well and I think the difficulties of young-love story , with all its complications when you include some gender complications as well, and for a change Kate, the older sister of our hero, Danny, is a real brick and very protective and supportive of her younger sibling.

I love winter. I do. I actually love every season. I prefer it, though, when they stay in their lanes. Watching the poor daffodils wilt under an onslaught of sleet put me distinctly out of sorts this morning. Honestly, though, I’m sure it would depress anyone. It would depress circus clowns and hyenas and the people who get paid to record laugh tracks. I’m sure it would even depress Curly, the obnoxiously cheerful protagonist from the play Oklahoma.

There seems to be a disconnect between various parts of the site. There have been no new comments registered for nearly 3 hours and 'Home' shows an entirely different hit and kudos count to 'My Stories'. Even logging in seems to make no difference.

Another reason I like characters with bird wings is one of my favorite childhood books: The juvenile novel Black and Blue Magic by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. Wikipedia says it came out in 1967 and I must have first read it within a couple of years at most. I now have an ex-school library hardback book of the 1972 edition.

I was very much surprised to find some of the works of my childhood, on Kindle. Right now I am reading Dragon Riders of Pern, and enjoying it greatly. I haven't re-sampled Andre Norton yet, but assuming I don't encounter my mortality, plan to. Quite fun.

Ahabidah

Yep, its Easter Sunday, a big day for god botherers, an excuse to eat chocolate for everyone else! And of course, on the right side of the pond the clocks moved forward to summertime last night.

I have not written much recently. This is partly due to being unhappy at work. I just get home, eat go to the local pool to exercise ( my diabetes is getting out of control, so I must exercise.) Then come home watch TV and sleep. Rinse and repeat.

One of the reasons I write is to express my feminine side. I still don't know if I am really trans or not. I grew up wishing I was a girl. I was 3 or 4 when I asked why I was not a girl. When I dress now, there is no sexual thrill, just a sense of relief. When I am "made up" I just feel that I am looking at the real me.

I can't even seem to muster righteous indignation let alone anger. Just sad and disappointed.

My story, Loving a Witch has appeared on Amazon

Often, when I click on a link from the NYT, or one of the UK papers, I'll get a pop up about having an Ad Blocker, and them requiring me to jump through a bunch of hoops. So far, just ignoring them and exiting out of that page allows me to go on my merry way. I normally use KOIN for local news and weather, but if I try to use other local internet TV web sites I get the same pesky issue. I've never knowingly signed up for an Ad Blocker. What a crock of nonsense !

So I just got a call from my aunt saying her son is in the ICU after having his heart stop.

He's struggled with mental health and addiction issues for years, but I am still a little surprised.

Anyway hugs and prayers appreciated.

Has anyone heard anything from Angharad? I'm missing her stories.

This story was in my Internet History when I started my computer this afternoon. I have no recollection of reading it recently, so when I checked, I read 4 chapters of it a decade ago, even commenting. Then suddenly the author just stopped and there are no further entries in this story or blog. It was a good story. I would have enjoyed more.

Gwen

Is anyone else not able to save logins? Every time I login, I check the "Remember me" box. Then then next time I come to the site, I have to login again.

Everything works well for me. I'm just wondering if it's something I'm doing wrong or is it just one more little detail that will be fixed when its priority number rises to the top.

Life is so complicated when you have to pretend you have amnesia.

Has anyone heard from Tanya Allan haven't seen a post or story for a year
Charlize

Just tried to post a new Short Story at about 5:00PM, 3/24/2024. I do not see it on the Home Page. I'll go check on some things and then attempt to post it ONE more time and then stop. I will try to see if I failed to do something or it is a site issue.

Gwen

well sort of!

OK, I'm officially jealous. It seems that others have had access to the site for a few weeks and just this morning my bookmark for the site actually brought me here. I've been looking at a 404 error that replaced the temp page that went up a while ago for at least two weeks.

I've only experienced the kind of feelings I had about not being able to login here once before. That's when I quit smoking. I didn't realize how much it meant to be a part of this community. Dallas put it right when she said, "just know you are there," is a big thing.

I didn't want to intrude again on EOF's discussion. I don't understand how my computer keeps running. It is at least 8 years old and is a very linty environment since I live just across the hall from the laundry room. Despite their best efforts to exhaust all the lint from the building, it still seems to get into my apartment.

Well just when I started to get back into developing more story ideas, my computer has decided F you and isn't working properly anymore. Its making weird noises and keeps shutting itself off. I used to have the money to replace it but my account is all but empty now because life sucks. So just when things were FINALLY starting to look up for me, the universe is giving me the finger. :(

I hate posting twice in one day, but I watched about 3 minutes of Piers Morgan hosting a "debate" on Dylan Mulvaney. the amount of just utter hatred towards trans people, the complete lack of respect or even treating someone like a human being was just awful to watch. It sucks to be a part of a tiny minority that has attracted the attention (and hate) of people.

Big thank you to Piper and the elves for whatever you did to fix my commenting problem. As you guys know, I LOVE to comment, and not being able to was driving me crazy.

So thanks, and have a bunch of huggles!

Small problems... multiple.

I want to invite user's to revisit my stories. My stories

So good news! The Natural Gas bill is paid off in its entirety (or will be once the payments we made have been posted to the account), and not only have we taken a chunk out of the electric bill, but the utility adjusted the bill after we noticed they didn't shut off the service when we requested it!

As such, we have lowered our GoFundMe goal to represent this change.

Because of these changes and some extremely generous donations from BC Members, we are more than halfway over our goal!

These last few weeks have NOT been a good time for this site, have they? For what felt like a while, I kept clicking on links to pages associated with this site, only to be met with a blackwall. Apparently the site was having some issues. At first I was worried that the site might end up going down, and I'd lose all the TG stories I've published on here, but that turned out not to be the case. (Although, right now I'm trying to click on the "Home" tab, and it keeps logging me out. So maybe there are still some bugs left?)

I've heard a lot recently about the 'rise of AI'. I've heard a lot about how it might be harmful to creators in the long run. Well... as someone who can't draw for shit, it's actually kinda useful to me. A while ago I used a (very limited) program called Fuse to create images of my characters as a sort-of mental aide. The problem with these images is that it made all my characters look about as lifelike as background characters from Skyrim. So I investigated this 'AI art generator' people were talking about... And I am impressed with its output so far.

Just a quick update.

Gigi's life gets about as complicated as a real amnesiac orphan from another universe could be!