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I'm going to indulge in a little shameless self promotion here. My novella, Ghost's Sight, is being released today on Torquere Press, and I wanted to share that bit of good news, along with a link: Ghost's Sight by Morwen Navarre There's an excerpt there, but for anyone too shy to venture over, I'll post it here as well: Did I whet your appetite? Good! Ghost and Gerry would love it if you wanted to read more!

Thank you! It's an amazing feeling, and I'm hoping to publish again soon. My editor thinks it needs a sequel...

While I hope that wasn't here, I have the nasty feeling it was. We have a few authors in that section that are the reason some of us call it diva-ville. Frankly, if I'm taking the time to write you a review, and you feel it's necessary to take it personally when I - at least once - note that it's a critique of the work, my response to you is going to be along the lines of "if you didn't want my opinion, why did you post it on the internet?" If that incident was about two year ago, I already have two immediate candidates come to my mind as the ones who would have reacted that way, both of whom have been banned from the site permanently due to repeated terms of service infractions. I have a couple rules when I'm reading here at AFF. One I won't bore you with. The other is simple: does this story conform to the terms of service? If the answer is no, I'm not going to bother. Why? If you can't make your story fit within the simple rules and guidelines of this site (we have a lot fewer than many other sites I've seen), that means you can't take anyone 'hampering' your 'creativity' with things like a disclaimer and chapters that consist of actual story, and other things which irk me as a reader and moreso as a staff member. So if you can't take a little bit of rules and regulations, that likely means that you can't take criticism. Good or bad. And that means that we're going down the "how dare you attack me by saying I need to turn on spellcheck?!" road (only probably with a few misspellings in it). I believe in being open and honest, and if I honestly didn't like your story because your grammar left me cringing, I'm going to tell you that. I'm just going to word it more politely. It might take me a half hour (or more) to figure out how to do so, but I will tell you. I'm going to comment on your characters' traits and personalities - whether they mesh or don't, especially if it's original fic. Why more there? Because if your characters are inconsistent in their personalities from one chapter to the next, unless your writing a schizo or bi-polar story (truly, someone that suffers from that disorder), then you need to know that so you can develop your writing skills. But if me giving you a character analysis translates into a "how dare you?!" e-mail, PM, IM, Tweet, counter-review, etc, I will not be amused, and you will know it. If you're actually bold enough to leave it on my review board, the whole forum will have access to my reaction, because it will be in my response thread. And, yes, I'll definitely consider it 'using the review board for purposes other than reviewing' if there's nothing there relating to my story and I'll screen it and pop up a thread on it in the staff forums for DG to make a call. IMO, if an 'author' can't take criticism, they're not really an author. Think of every published author you like. How many times have they had to suffer slings and arrows? Now think of every published author you don't like. 'Nuff said.