BronxWench

The encouraging news is that our tech admin has been able to get here a bit more often recently. I don’t know exactly where you are in the queue, however. I’ll try again to get this expedited.

Forgotten by traxie

The stories were all removed by c0p13r himself. He set a deadline of January 1, 2018, and then pulled every last story down. This was his decision, and we at AFF ask that our members and visitors respect that decision.

I just tried it myself, and was able to add a story from my Currently Reading list to my Recommended Reading list, and it appears in both lists. I’m not quite sure where this went wrong for you, but I was able to do it just now.

I can see your account, and you show as registered, but there is no actual login data, so let me go through the checklist. Check to make sure your browser is up to date and that you have it set to allow third-party cookies. Also check to make sure your anti-virus or firewall programs haven’t blacklisted us. Your password should be at least 8 letters and/or numbers long, but no more than 12 letters and/or numbers long, and it’s case sensitive, so if you use a capital letter when you create the password, you must always use a capital letter in that place. If that’s all fine, then please clear your browser’s cache, history, and any AFF cookies which might have been set. Close the browser entirely, and I’d even recommend restarting the computer to make sure the data is cleared. Then log on to AFF and it should allow you access.

Quite frankly, I was in Minor2 territory when I discovered sex. When you’re talking about 16 and 17 year old kids having it off, no one really gets out a pitchfork. But I think the 13-and-under set will always be something publishers, and even some distributors, will treat with caution. That’s not to say a great many mainstream fiction novels don’t have scenes of child abuse, including sexual abuse, and that’s not to say there haven’t been novels which had consensual sexual contact with or between children 13 or younger. But that will bring out the pitchforks faster than anything, and get the novel dropped like a ball of hot lava.

You might have to self-publish, since that’s controversial even for the more fetish-oriented publishers.

I have never had my work pre-edited. Honestly, I’ve never even really had a beta reader. My fandom stuff is too obscure for most people, and I’d need to find a beta who’s willing to read original fic that might be MM, or maybe MF, possibly fantasy-based, post-dystopian, alternate historical, or just plain controversial. I’m all over the place as far as settings and content.

In a nutshell, that’s the biggest issue—the cost. I’m pathologically stupid when it comes to any sort of graphics, but I know people, yourself included, who can do brilliant cover art. I can handle formatting a document, and I’m fairly decent at grammar and punctuation. But I need that editor, and the only way I can afford it is to publish via a small press, and have their editor review it. Yes, I share royalties with the publisher, but I get the editing I need, and the cover art I can’t do to save my life. It seems fair to me, and either way, I’m going to have to market the daylights out of myself once more. I’ll do my bit and work hard, and be grateful for the editing.

You can do the whole CreateSpace thing for free, absolutely. But that brings you back to readers being irate about spending money for a hard copy of an unedited book. They’ll leave cranky reviews, and since CreateSpace isn’t offering books through their own online store anymore, it means those cranky reviews will be on Amazon, its parent company and now sole distribution hub. Revising and editing are not the “fun” part of writing, to be sure. The first time is like cold water in the face. You’ve sold this manuscript to a publisher, and no matter how small the press, it’s pretty exciting. Then you get the first round of edits, and you wonder why they even took the book, if so much was wrong with it. But here’s the thing. As the writer, you know what you want to say, and you have this whole world in your head. You think you’ve put it all down for the reader, but guess what? You left out whole bits you think are obvious, but which aren’t to readers, including your editor. Or you’ve gone into such exhaustive detail, your editor fell asleep during the painfully precise description of the outfit your MC is wearing (right down to the designer brands) which took fifteen paragraphs over two and a half pages. You want to be sure they have that picture in their heads, too, but the readers have already put the book down. I had an editor comment to me, “They drink a lot of tea.” I looked, and sure enough, every time my characters needed to talk about something, they had a cup of tea while talking. The poor bastards were floating in tea. It was just so overdone as to be sort of a joke by the midpoint of the story, and it was taking away from the real point of the discussion, because tea, again?!? It made sense to me for them to be doing something while talking, but I was wrong, and I spent a good deal of time editing that out. Every time I’m facing edits, I remind myself that Stephen King gets edited, too, and I’ll bet he doesn’t let Molly (aka The Thing of Evil) bite his editor, either.

There’s a very strange correlation I’ve noticed over the years when it comes to reading on a free archive. Unless you make it almost stupidly easy and nearly unavoidable to leave feedback, readers won’t bother. I’m going to hazard a few guesses as to why. First, I think most readers don’t really know what sort of feedback to leave. They see writers grumbling about the “Loved it! Write more!” reviews which don’t offer the writer a clue as to what the reader loved about a story, or chapter, but at least affirm someone read it and liked it. Second, it could be where and/or when the reader is reading your work. On the way to work? Right before bed? Maybe it’s not a good time to leave a comment, and the reader plans to come back later and review, and… I am personally guilty of this one. Third, the Review [insert story name] link is at the bottom of each chapter, but it’s small, and easily missed. It’s also frequently confused with the Report Story link, as I can attest based on the number of reviews I get in the guise of abuse reports. And yes, I do ask the reporter to leave the comment as a review for the author, but I can’t do it myself, sadly. And finally, people like quick buttons. The “Like” buttons on FB and Twitter have conditioned people to want to be able to just leave that instant feedback. It’s fast and requires no thought. We had a ratings feature here, but because it was scaled, it was abused more often than it should have been by readers voting down a story because it wasn’t the One True Ship, or other nonsense. I personally would be fine with a button which only records a “like” or “recommend” on a story. If you don’t like it, there’s no option for abuse. You simply don’t click. One factor I don’t think really matters is the notion of allowing anonymous reviews. It’s an account-wide choice here, so you can’t cherry-pick which stories on which to allow anon reviews. Allowing them opens you to trolls and flamers, and disallowing them discourages readers who aren’t logged in, or who might not even have archive profiles. But I think it is probably the least relevant factor in getting feedback.

I’m going to be the fly in the ointment here, and comment on the notion of skipping an editor when self publishing. Unless you are supremely confident you can catch POV shifts, and have buttoned every thread up, unless you know you haven’t slipped in the chronology, and events take place in a reasonable/explainable span of time, unless you are self-aware enough to pick up on repetitive phrasing and overuse of certain words and phrases, you need an editor. (I tend to be vague about time lapses, and I’m insanely obstinate about abusing certain words myself. I try to make it up to my editor by being quick to turn around the comments, and not whine a lot about the work I need to do to fix my mess. ) I like to check out new authors, and I do a lot of poking about on blogs and review sites, where I can see a bit of an excerpt. I might be captured by a summary, but when I read the excerpt, if I hit that wall because even in those roughly 500 words I encounter sloppy editing, I don’t buy that book. Why? Because sometimes the poor editing is enough to take me out of the story, and I wind up wanting to leave the author a review begging them to pull the book, and have it edited as a mercy to readers. I’m far less forgiving when I’m asked to pay for work that hasn’t seen a beta reader, much less an editor and proofreader. It’s unprofessional, and it’s sloppy to put a book out there, ask for my money, and give me something that looks like a first draft of a manuscript. I can read better here for free, thank you. The preponderance of us in this thread write original work, which is why I’m sort of focusing on this. Self publishing is not a bad thing, but having a bad review or sharp concrit here is one thing. Having it happen on Amazon is crushing for authors who could be really good, with some editing and polishing.

Editors are essential for things like making sure you haven’t dropped a thread, or messed up the chronology. They help with POV conflicts, and the overuse or outright abuse of words. I’d never want to put anything out there without editing, and without a separate proofreader for the grammar and punctuation stuff. But in the end, the story, and the voice, need to be mine. If the editor suggests a change that I don’t think fits, I can say no, which is the lesson I learned with that story. The re-release will be so much better.

My mistake was listening to that editor, who was also doing a contemporary MF with some D/s tossed in, miles removed from my post-dystopian MM sequel. The characters were established in the first book, and it felt like I was supposed to rewrite them in the second book to conform to the other work she was editing. On the bright side, I would up meeting a terrific photog in St. Petersburg, and using one of his models for the covers, so that was something.

I actually changed a story I was publishing because my editor thought it needed some things to make it more, I don’t know, appealing, or relevant, or engaging. I forget the word exactly. But the changes never felt right to me, and now that the book’s been accepted for republication, I went back and deleted all the stuff I added at that editor’s urging. The thing is, I never really got feedback from readers non this book, so I have no real idea if they liked those bits or hated them, but I’m much happier with the manuscript without them, so… I’m taking a deep breath and going with my gut.

Hi, The URL is the link to your archive profile. For example, mine is http://members.adult-fanfiction.org/profile.php?no=1296892487 You can copy it from the top of the profile page, where it’s displayed in the browser bar. Just paste it into the forum field, and that’s it.

I believe our tech admin would most likely email you, but if I hear anything, I’ll post it here as well.

I’m trying to find out the status for you. I wish I could do this myself, but I can’t, so let’s see if I can get any more info for you.

As best we can tell, all stories by this author were removed from the Internet. dpiloff has no account here, and never did.

If someone has saved the story, our policy is: do not offer, solicit, or attach copies of any story (unless you are the author of the story willing to share it, or the author trying to obtain a copy of a work you no longer have on your own hard drive (yes, it happens).)

Honestly, since we’d never had an issue with them, I don’t have a record of the author’s name. I’m sorry! Maybe someone else who reads/writes in the fandom might remember.