GeorgeGlass

Yes, I actually did that myself at one point, before I realized that it wasn't allowed. (I then deleted that "review.") However, when authors do take the time to create review reply threads here on the forum, or use the Promote a Story thread, or otherwise make their presence known in some way, it helps readers connect with them. Case in point? Magusfang. His review reply thread is lively, he and his readers chat in the shoutbox, and you can see the interactions drawing in new people. Of course, you can't make people respond to a thread you create, but his personality comes through his posts, and that works for his readers. I've been making review reply threads (and putting the URLs in the text of the stories) ever since I first heard of the idea, but unlike Magusfang's readers, most of the people who regularly review my stories don't seem to have forum accounts. With the exception of 2 people (Jomahawk and FairySlayer), I have no idea whether anyone has ever read my replies to their reviews. It probably doesn't help my cause that I write a lot of very different types of stories, which means that readers who loved my last story may hate the next one and not bother looking at the one after that. Come to think of it, there probably aren't many successful professional fiction writers who write in a lot of different genres. How many people would buy a romance novel by Clive Barker or Laura Hillenbrand? I also never hang out in the shoutbox, and I'll confess that the main reason why is fear that it will become an addictive, time-sucking activity. I have enough temptations of that sort already. But maybe if I get everything on my To Do list done today, I'll give it a try. That might be a big if, though. Anyway, given all that, I guess I'm pretty happy to have as many regular reviewers as I do. I'm also happy that a good portion of them go into detail about what they liked or didn't like. So I can't complain too much.

Done! Teenagers need laundry exposure. I was shielded from laundry responsibilities far too much when I was growing up, so when I got to college, I had barely a clue about how to wash or fold anything, let alone iron. As for my household: My wife will probably be fairly understanding. But hard as I try, I have yet to convince even one of my four cats to clean their own litter boxes.

You know, I think she taught my eight-grade English class. Yeah, trying to write and rewrite at the same time is death. There's no way I'll be able to keep up with the word count if I don't freewrite shamelessly. Well, I decided to go for it and signed up for the site. I don't quite know how the buddy thing works, though.

And each site seems to have a different way of approaching this. Just for fun, I'll break it down for the 4 sites I frequent. AFF: Archives and forums are separate. Mechanisms for uploading, chaptering, and tagging are highly sophisticated. A feedback system exists, but it's one-way; any discussion must be conducted by other means. Hentai Foundry: Archives and forums are separate. Mechanisms for uploading and chaptering are sophisticated, but the tagging system is crude. Discussion is possible through comments and replies to comments attached to the story. Inkbunny: There are no forums; all discussion takes place in the form of comments and replies to pictures, stories, or journal entries in the archive. Mechanisms for uploading are decent, and there is a sophisticated tagging system that allows readers to suggest tags (authors can accept or reject the suggestions), but chaptering mechanisms are nonexistent. Lolicit: The site is virtually ALL forum. Stories are uploaded in the same way that any other forum post is; the mechanisms are fairly user-friendly but not glitch-free. Discussion takes place in the story thread, and new chapters are uploaded as new posts to that thread. This is crude, but it facilitates commenting; as a result, comments are more frequent on Lolicit than on any of the other sites even though the total number of views is much lower. Yeah, I get that; it must be like trying to sew a giraffe's head to a horse's body and make the resulting creature live for more than 10 seconds.

I'm considering it. I've never done it before, because I never had a novel I wanted to write, but this year, I do. I'm not sure I can handle the time commitment, but it's not like I'm going to have a month in the next 2 to 3 years when that concern will be any less, so maybe I should just go for it.

I'm not sure quite how to put this, but here goes: AFF's greatest strength is its inclusiveness. It attracts writers from every genre and every fandom and welcomes them all. Content-wise, almost nothing is forbidden. There's a section in the archive for everything anyone might want to write. The forums are similarly designed: lots of forums and subforums for every topic. But the archive and the forums are essentially separate entities. Becoming a member of the archives does not automatically make you a member of the forums, but you can't join the forums without having an archive account. From what I can tell, the vast majority of AFF's members do not have forum accounts, so the population of the forums is a tiny fraction of that of the archives. As a result, the forums are a little like one of those huge, old English mansions that has hundreds of rooms but, in modern times, only a few dozen occupants. And sometimes I feel like we're all living in different wings of that mansion. Yes, there are a few people in neighboring rooms on the Naruto floor of the Anime wing, and there's a cluster of occupied rooms around Harry Potter Parlor, but a lot of us are just kind of shouting across the courtyard at one another--we don't have a common fandom or genre to discuss, so we talk some about writing, a little about reviews, and a little about random other stuff. I know there's nothing to be done about this, and it's not intended as a bash of AFF; if anything, it shows that AFF has incredible infrastructure and a great operating philosophy. And the people here are great. But despite being a member of this community, I don't always feel like I have much to talk about at the dinner table. I just wanted to get that off my chest. If you have read to this point, thanks. If you haven't read to this point, then...wait, what?

I'm bumping this thread because Halloween is coming around again, and I thought some folks might be in the mood for a feel-good Halloween story.

The same thing famously happened to AnonyMPC, who one day learned that one of his stories was for sale on Amazon. He chose not to fight it, though, because (as his name perhaps implies) he values his anonymity more than his copyright. I was plagiarized once (that I know of)--some little creep stole two of my stories, changed the titles, and posted them as his own work on DeviantArt. (Fortunately, it only took a threat of reporting him to the site runners to make him take them down.) I got pretty angry about that, so I imagine I would be absolutely furious if someone actually charged people money for my stolen work.

Having had some time to think about it, I think the simplest solution is for me to remove the "Rape" tag from those two stories, since there is no actual rape in either one. One story has "would-be rapist" in the summary, and the other has the "SH" tag, which should constitute sufficient warning.

Re: "Caitlyn's Punishment" A third and final chapter is in the works and should be ready soon. Thanks for the comment!

This is not so much a request for a new tag as it is for feedback about whether one is needed, and what it ought to be. I've got a couple of stories up that have the Rape tag even though there's no actual rape in them. In one story, a young executive who missed his company's new-employee orientation finds out that, at his new firm, sexual harassment is mandatory and that both his secretary and a woman from Housekeeping have filed complaints against him for his failure to make suggestive remarks about their appearance or to touch them inappropriately. The head of Human Resources informs him that he will need to make it up to his secretary by forcing himself on her. In the other story, a man abducts a woman who turns out to be a Little (a sort of submissive who enjoys pretending to be a little girl). He tells him that he's taking her to the desert to do something terrible to her, she responds with enthusiasm instead of terror ("Can we play I Spy on the way there?"), and comedy ensues. I gave both stories the Rape tag just to be on the safe side, but I know that it will turn away some readers who might otherwise enjoy these stories. Would it be appropriate to have something like a "Rape Play" tag?

Re: "A Little Goes a Long Way" Thanks! The dialogue-only format was new to me, but I enjoyed trying it out. (I'm a big believer in the idea that limitations stimulate creativity.) As for the story itself, it was inspired by the hilarious "The Death of Romance" by Dr. Awkward and Scoundrel over at Hentai Foundry.

Re: "A Little Goes a Long Way" Thank you and you're welcome! (Excuse me, "Yo wewcome".) This was my first experiment with using a dialogue-only format, so I'm really glad you think it turned out well.

That is a high compliment indeed. I tried to make the imagery as comic-like as possible so that readers would envision it that way. That you will. They don't call me Spoiler-Free George for nothing. Okay, nobody calls me that. And I'm kind of glad, because it's sort of a stupid name. Thanks! More beach, bikinis, and busts on the way!

Very best, PW.

I'm jealous; I've written some really vile stories, and I NEVER get press like this.

Thank you! This was by far the most challenging Phineas and Ferb fic I've ever written, so I'm glad that you find so much to like about it. I'm planning to revisit the dream theme again in a future story, albeit in a very different way.

Re: "A Beach Like No Other" Thank you! Yes, there's definitely a bit of mystery to this beach. Hope you'll stay tuned!

Even though I was here long before the HF exodus, I really appreciate this gesture, DG.

Hey, GrayNeko! As a fellow "citizen" of both AFF and HF, I wanted to say, Welcome!

Thank you! Although the description of why Suzy loves thunderstorms was meant in part to illustrate her psycho mindset, given that she loves them for their power and frightfulness. In the episode "Canderemy," it looked like Jeremy was capable of sleeping through just about anything, so that seemed like something Suzy could exploit. I found it a little disturbing just how much I enjoyed writing Suzy's fantasies. I suppose I should concede that, just as Suzy projects her sick sexual desires onto Jeremy, perhaps I'm projecting my own onto Suzy. The more evil they are, the more fun it is to watch them fall. Suzy's defeat was actually one of the first parts of this story that I thought up. Then it was all about how we get from point A to point B and see all the twisted sights along the way. I had been thinking of the episode in which Suzy uncharacteristically tried to help Candace control her brothers, and Candace failed anyway. Thanks! Pants are an illusion! (Bonus points if you get the reference.)

A reader recently asked me whether I had a Twitter account through which I could notify readers about my new stories or chapters. I do not, but I'm thinking about getting one. Before I do, though, I'm wondering what the other options are. What do you all do when you want to let your readers know about new stories or chapters you've posted?

If you're saying that writing in an obscure fandom means that you attract fewer reviewers of the type that KH is talking about, I'm inclined to agree. When I write fanfic, I mainly write for fandoms that are either somewhat obscure (the original ThunderCats) or that don't have a lot of "adult" fic written for them (Phineas and Ferb), and my experience with reviewers of these fics has been extremely positive. By and large, they are appreciative of my efforts, they often go into significant detail regarding what they liked or didn't like, and while they sometimes express disappointment that I didn't include some element they wanted to see, they don't harp on that or make it central to their reviews. Certainly, there are exceptions, but usually those people just leave one-line reviews, not paragraph-long diatribes, so they don't really bother me. I feel very fortunate that my fanfic has attracted such a good readership here. My original stuff, not so much, but I've still had several well-written reviews even there. Besides, this isn't OriginalFiction.org. Thank you, super-reviewers. (You know who you are.)

Thanks, BW. That is very reassuring.

This morning, the administrator of Hentai Foundry announced that sexually suggestive artwork and stories about characters that are less than 18 years old (or appear to be so) will no longer be allowed. Apparently, someone complained to the site's host, which required HF to make this change. This is really disappointing to me, because maybe 70% of my stories involve under-eighteen characters. AFF is now the only site where I have any such stories posted. And not to diss AFF, but those stories tend not to get as much traction here as they do on HF. (AFF readers seem to be more into either fanfics or adult incest, d/s, and rapey stuff.) I guess I'll be using the "exclusively on AFF" tag more often now. Although I have to wonder whether the same thing will happen here.