Melsiebug

I have just posted the first part of a three part seasonal special called "Midwinter Alchemy". It's a short(ish) catch up with the characters from "A Kind of Alchemy". As regular readers will know I'm tech challenged so I don't know how to link to it, but you can find it in my stories written section. As always feedback would be appreciated, reviews or emails, and other than that please read and enjoy! LL

I was just browsing the forum and saw this thread, something must have changed because for the first time in over two years I recived a review notification email today. This made me very happy because since the upgrade I haven't been able to look at my stories in my profile to see if the number of reviews have changed, and I'd have to check each review board one at a time to look for new reviews. So whatever it is you've done thank you very much!

Thanks anyway, I didn't think there would be.

Okay, I'm an idiot, please feel free to roll your eyes or faceplam as necessary, but I accidently deleted a review I didn't want to delete and I'm wondering if there is any way of me getting it back?

The first chapter "Exit Wounds" by London Lampy is now up. It's the sequel to "Second Exit" and I'll be updating on Wednesdays and Sundays as usual. Feedback is much appreciated, either via the review boards or an email directly to me, please feel free to tell me what you like, and what you don't. LL

You mean exact measurements down to the last mil of length and girth are not sexy? Damn, I was just about to write that, lol. I like the word cock too, sometimes I think I write it way too often, although I don't like people using too many synonyms either. I've read some stuff where the writer ends up sounding like some kind of porn thesaurus. I hate using the word prostate, it sounds far too medical, and internal gland is even worse (I've never used that one), but there is a limit to how many times you can put sweet spot in a single story. Anyone got a good sugestion for that one?

Author- London Lampy Title- A Kind of Alchemy Feedback- As always, yes please. Either via the review board or Londonlampy@hotmail.co.uk Fandom- Original Warnings- Slashy smut and fun, but as always no non con or horribly violent sex This is not part of the "Exit" series, but is set in the same universe, indeed the same city. It's the story of Sam, who if you've read "The Boy With the Golden Eyes" you might remember from the first chapter (if you don't/haven't he was Jack's first back in the village). The crossover between the other stories is minimal, so you don't need to have read them to follow this. Thanks for taking time to check this out!

So I finally completed and posted it, the ficlet about the encouter between Vin and Exit that Exit refers to at the start of "Second Exit". I don't think it's ever taken me so long to write 10,000 words, but my life has been somwhat busy recently, and I apoligise for just how long it has taken. As always reviews are greatly appreciated. Mel

Thanks for explaning, I didn't think I'd turned it on, and I think the problem with spam on the review bords predates me (yay for recapture). Perhaps the default should now be changed, I'd imagine quite a lot of writers never realise it's on and quite a lot of readers can't be bothered to log in, or arn't members in the first place. As writers we really don't want anything that puts possible reviewers off, and I can only see you need it on if you are having a troll problem.

This may have just been me being really stupid, but a few weeks ago I posted a new chapter and got no reviews for it (I normally get at least one), so at the bottom of my next chapter I left an A/N saying that I hadn't had any reviews for that chapter, ( in a polite non review whoring kind of way). I got quite a few responses, and one of them pointed out that I had "don't allow anonymous reviews" on, that as a reader if they see that on they normally can't be bothered to log in just to review and assume that the writer is scared of getting reviews/flames. I had no idea that I had that box checked, I hardly ever change my profile. I'm not sure if it's on as default or if I checked it by accident but since I unchecked it I've been getting more reviews, and from people who's screen names I haven't seen before, one of them even congratulated me on unchecking "that stupid box"! As I say, this could be something everybody except me knows about, but if you are suffering from lack of reviews it's worth making sure you are making it as easy as possible for people to review you.

For anyone who's interested, I posted the first chapter of the sequel to my story "Exit Strategy" today, it's cunningly called "Second Exit", here's the breakdown. Title- Second Exit Author- London Lampy Rating- Adult + Summery- Sequel to "Exit Stratery" Feedback- Oh yes, concrit always good Fandom- Original slash URL- Don't actually know how to include that, sorry, if anyone who knows could tell me... If you read and liked the last one then I hope you'll check this out, Mel (aka London Lampy)

Saw sis Sunday, wasn't looking at me funny (thought she might be) discovered she hadn't read any further so still waiting...

So, got a text back from sis, she's enjoying it, she's got to chap 3. First sex scene is in chap 4, seem to remember it's pretty vanilla, I work on the theory that you have to build (whole thing is 46 chaps long), but she has never read any of this stuff before. Her response to that is going to be interesting...

A while ago I told my sister I had been writing stuff and posting it online, I knew she couldn't read it as she had no internet acess, but then recently she told me she was getting broadband and asked where my "novel" was, as she put it. I couldn't tell her not to read it, but I kind of needed to warn her as well, or she was in for a bit of a shock. I'm not sure how much she got of what I was telling her, she'd never heard of slash, or come across the world of online smut writing, and although I don't write it she'd never even heard of fanfic either (I guess you miss a lot not being online for years), and I'm not sure she got just how explict it is. I don't know if she's read it yet, I think I may text her right now to find out, I really have no idea what she's going to make of it.

Yeah, I'd imagine being left handed would cause a problem with wet ink, I get inky enough fingers and I'm not a southpaw. I spend so much of my life on trains it makes sense to do something useful with the time. On the way in at least half the passengers are doing work of some kind, I tend to get a very late train home most days and then half the train is drunk, which can either be entertaining or annoying, depending on my frame of mind. I often find people looking over my shoulder to see what I'm doing, I can hardly complain about this as I do much the same to other people, but if I'm writing a mucky bit I use a piece of paper to cover my work, I do find that worse the line the more it jumps out of the page, sometimes I shock myself that way!

I write longhand in notebooks then type it up. It's a convience thing, I do more writing out of the house than in it and I can't carry a laptop everywhere I go. I have an hours commute to work on the train and I often use that time to write, and I always use spiral bound hard backed note books as they are the best sort for balancing on your lap. I hate the typing bit, it makes my shoulders ache and gives me blurred vision. At work we do these DSE courses which are about how to set your desk up correctly to avoid RSI and that kind of stuff so I know that typing at the kitchen table sat on a small, hard wooden chair is not helping matters, but it's either that or balanced on the couch which makes things even worse. I wish I could touch type, at school we were given the choice of typing lessons or craft lessons, an hour spent hunced over a typewrited or an hour spent messing about with clay, which do you think I chose? Gah, I think it's too late now, I have too many typing bad habits. I know what you mean about getting excited by a trip to Staples (I also really like Ryman, not sure if they exist outside the UK), I'm very into buying pens at the moment as I go through a lot of them, I like liquid ink rollerball with the finest point I can find (less than 1mm for preferance) in either black or blue, don't like writing in fancy colours, and I never use biros, they make your notebook pages go all crunchy. Just read that back, I really am a little obsessive aren't I? Well, at least it's a cheap hobby, I have friends who are just as obsessive about things like snowboards and musical instruments, and they cost a fortune.

Thank you for starting this thread, it's helped me to come to a decision over a similar problem I have. I've been trying to decide if I should edit my story codes to include "Abortion". I didn't include it at the start as I wasn't 100% sure I was going to go in that direction with it, but now I am I've been a bit torn as to what the right thing to do is. On the one hand it's a subject that people often have very strong feelings over, and I really don't want to upset anyone, I've just had my knuckles rapped by a reviwer for not including "AU" in my synopsis. On the other hand it's an "offscreen" event that I have no intention of describing in detail, and as it's a slash story (not MPreg) it's clearly not going to be happening to one of my central characters. However my main reasoning for not including it would be it acts as a spoiler, and like the originator of this thread I can imagine people reading thinking about when it's going to happen and who to. Reading the thread has made me realise editing my story codes is the right thing to do, so thanks again.

Thanks, I thought I tried that last time, but I guess I didn't. I am a total technoklutz, sorry to have bothered you.

I am almost finshed writing a story and want to update my status from "WIP" to "COMPLETE" when done. I recently posted a new story and when I checked on my synopisis found I had made a typo. I corrected it but couldn't find a way to just scroll through and as the box is so small I had to delete everything as far as the mistake then retype it. As "WIP" is the second to last thing on there do I have to delete almost the whole thing to change it, or am I being stupid and is there an easier way? Thanks.

While it's not entirely relivent to the original question it did occur to me that there is one sort of fic where the characters almost always have a very large age gap between them. I'm referring to vampire stories, where it's not unusual for the gap to be one of several hundred years. I agree with the feelings of the other posters, two people of similar age getting it on is fine, but I wouldn't want to read a pairing where one was twenty and one was eighty, that would be squicky, but then why do I happily accept this if one is a vampire? Is it a matter of attractivness? After all vampires don't age physically, but then even if someone was a very fit, youthful looking eighty year old human I still wouldn't want to read then with a twenty year old. As I said, kind of irrelivent, but an interesting point, sort of.

This is why I don't currently use a beta. I post two chapters a week, this is a challenge I have set myself and it keeps me focused and writing, but I would never expect another person to keep up. She needs to respect the fact that you have other commitments, are you able to give her an estimate of when you can get her chapters back to her? Perhaps if you had an arrangement whereby you guaranteed to get her chapters back in say three weeks or whatever (I don't know what a realistic timescale is for this kind of thing) then you would both know where you stood. Maybe you should also sugest she looks around for someone else, it can't be easy to beta a fandom you don't know well (I'm assuming you don't from your comments about disliking Twilight)and if she's ignoring most of what you suggest it doesn't sound like a good working relationship.

Why did the captain think that Exit knew any thing about Topher's attempt to get Jasper punished? Well, I fucked up a bit. In my original draft of the chapter Quint just orders Exit to accompany him and the others to his cabin, when I read that back I realised that their was absolutly no justification for this whatsoever, and that if I didn't think it made sense I couldn't expect anyone else to either. I didn't want to have to compleatly pull apart the chapter and re write it, and clearly Exit had to be there, so I considered my options. I could have moved the whole scene and had it played out on the deck in public, but firstly that would have made Quint behave very ooc, he just wouldn't want the crew to see all that, and secondly I wanted to get rid of Jasper during the actual sorting out of the punishments, otherwise he would have been a total pain in the backside arguing every point with the captain. So I kind of fudged it a bit by throwing a line where Quint asks him if he knows anything about what's going on and Exit stalling, that was my justification really, perhaps I should have made a little more of it to get the point across. I don't think it's unlikely that he would have asked Exit about this however, he's the only person other than Quint who spends any real time with Topher, and he's clearly noticed that they are getting on a lot better than they used to. On that subject, yes, this is the catalyst that will speed up the shift in their relatioship with one another, I don't want to give anything away but I hope readers enjoy the upcoming chapters.

I would love for my reviewers to give me a bit more in the way of concrit, I even tried gently suggesting it in an A/N but to no avail. Oh well. I can see some people would be put off doing it in case the writer took offence, as I assume some have, but theirs a world of diffrence between a "this bit of the plot doesn't make sense/why did so and so act so occ" type comments and outright flames. Personaly on many occasions I've been very tempted to post a review along the lines of "For the love god either work out how a spell checker works or get yourself a beta!" (I would really put something a little less blunt, but you get the idea), but I don't want to upset anyone so maybe I'm just as guilty.

A reviwer brought up the question of why the admral would bother to give Exit a history lesson as he is just a pet and not an offical part of the family or crew. Their are reasons for this. The admiral is is retired, and like most men who have given up an all consuming job (is pirating a job?), he is a mixture of relived and very very bored. He knew he couldn't carry on and he had trained his son from an early age to take over, but he still misses it greatly and is happy to take any chance to talk to anyone about his family and life at sea in general. A newcomer is great news to him as they wouln't have already heard all his stories . He also feels that everyone who lives on the island or is any way connected with his family should know the history, all his servants would have most likely been dragged into the portrate gallery when they first started and given a much longer version than Exit got (there was cake downstairs to be eaten after all), and the young femail ones would have also got a little light sexual harassment as well, I imagine he's a big one for pinching bottoms. In fact if someone came the door selling god bothering leaflets (which they wouldn't because they live on their own island, but go with me here) they would end up knowing more about pirates and sailing than they ever wanted to. Quint never bothered, and he's not excatly being truthful when he tells his father their hasn't been time, it simply hadn't occured to him to do it, he is much more of the "just a pet" opinion, although he is very fond of them as well in his own way. It may have also occured to some readers that the admiral doesn't seem like someone who was considered a strong leader and fearsom pirate in his day, just remember that this is the retired version of him, at some point in the future we will see the other side of him, and it won't be pretty.

Was browsing the books section of the iphone app store and came across this- "Lesbian Short Stories, Part 1. This book contains over 30,000 decadent, erotic words...inspired by many great true-life and internet stories..." It's the "inspired by many...internet stories" that's bothering me, there's no citation of where the stories or their "inspiration" come from. I downloaded the first chapter as it was free, it was very average f/f stuff that I would be embarrased to have written, but more importantly the authors name was at the top but nothing else. If someone posted a story on here and put something like that on it the mods would be all over them for a citation at the very least, but these people are making money out of this and my feeling is that puts it into a whole diffrent category of wrong. Or am I just being over sensitive? I'd love to know what others think about this.