The Official Authors' Hangout Winter Holidays 2025 Support Thread

[EmilyMiller]

I just wish I trusted the sweeps to actually pull those.

The sweeps won’t pull those, they are done by someone who is both familiar with the rating system and who has thought for five minutes about how sweeps work. Back to back ones bombs are like herpes: unpleasant, likely to recur, and you’re stuck with them.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I don't know exactly. Maybe around noonish ET today? Another one by itself this afternoon. I mostly shrug, it is what it is. My stories tend to do really well here, so I'm not overly upset about it, but I do wonder how high I could score with some of them if not for the bombers, because I don't trust the sweeps anymore.

I actually have a story, one chapter of a serial, not even the most recent chapter, that somebody tried to knock down a peg last week. It peaked at 4.9, and then four of the most recent five reviews knocked it down to a 4.77, all in the span of two days, all more than a month after release. Sure, those are legit.

There is a group that seems to be very protective of the top lists. Seems you ran afoul of that.

 

[Duleigh]

I’d disagree with this.

• There was the ongoing submission issue
• There were stories that weren’t published until after midday rather than midnight
• There were multiple stories that didn’t initially make it to the comp page (one from memory which never did)
• The final comp sweep was both just one pass - rather than multiple - and the least effective I can recall. It was like an intern was running it
• And the degree of one bombing across the comp works was higher than normal (based on feedback from multiple authors)

Other than that, it was perfect.

View attachment 2577123

Compared to day one of this one - mostly smoothly.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Compared to day one of this one - mostly smoothly.
View attachment 2577246

If used in a Douglas Adams kinda context, maybe.

 

[talemestories]

And I am in.

Good luck to one and all.

 

[DEFCOM5]

Here is my time to highjack the thread and tell you of my progress.
I am not sure anyone of you care but it motivates me to do so
I am 14K plus in the story and the sexy time is about to start.
I might be able to have it ready for my beta readers by the weekend if nothing gets in my way.
Thank you for your support and motivation!

 

[ChloeTzang]

Here is my time to highjack the thread and tell you of my progress.
I am not sure anyone of you care but it motivates me to do so
I am 14K plus in the story and the sexy time is about to start.
I might be able to have it ready for my beta readers by the weekend if nothing gets in my way.
Thank you for your support and motivation!

Hah! Neck and neck. 15k words drafted, and the sexy time starts at 8k which is where I am editing and reworking from.....

 

[talemestories]

And I am in.

Good luck to one and all.

If we are looking at approval times, mine has already been approved to be published on 11/14/2025.

I posted on the forum right after I published.

Now I can start reading some of the other stories.

 

[Duleigh]

I finished my #1 A Harmonica for Hanukkah and my editor is giving it one more once over, but I'm going to hold off on posting it because for some reason TPTB kicked a story this morning that's been in Pending Purgatory for far too long. Several readers asked that I keep publications about a week apart so I'll submit it on 11/19 and hopefully my #2 Buffalo Snow (the name will probably change a few times) will be ready to submit shortly after

 

[ChloeTzang]

And the list is growing......

 

[NaughteeDragon]

I just finished the draft and re-read of my story. That done, I sent it off to my beta reader with apologies.
Am I Broken is a T/I story about a young woman that is ACE (asexual) and trying to come to grips with what that means. She turns to the only two people she can trust enough to help her, her parents. In the end, she gets the best Christmas gift of all: understanding, love, and acceptance of who she is.
It came in at a whopping 29,700 words. It was supposed to come in under 20k. it would have been shorter if I would stop using sex for character development. I'm blaming my proclivity for that on all of the really good lesbian stories I keep reading.

 

[Duleigh]

Interesting - just ran my nightly numbers. Views are down farther than they've ever been, Votes were quite high, and I had two stories swept.

It's safer not to ask questions

 

[DEFCOM5]

Interesting - just ran my nightly numbers. Views are down farther than they've ever been, Votes were quite high, and I had two stories swept.

It's safer not to ask questions

Confused. How can they sweep before the contest is over?
How can views be down? You lost view? make no sense to me.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Ohhhhhhh we are doing well. More stories............

 

[Voboy]

Confused. How can they sweep before the contest is over?
How can views be down? You lost view? make no sense to me.

Most prior contests have involved more than one sweep. For quite some time, there were generally at least three. There always used to be one after submissions closed, for example.

I've not noticed anything yet in this one.

 

[iwatchus]

Interesting - just ran my nightly numbers. Views are down farther than they've ever been, Votes were quite high, and I had two stories swept.

It's safer not to ask questions

I had two votes disappear on an older story about a week ago, which surprised me. It was a story that had gotten its 100th vote, appeared as number one all-time in a category, then received three 1's to disappear off the list. It lost one of the 1's

I wonder if they are running the sweeps over very small chunks as some testing since it went so poorly for Halloween.

 

[DEFCOM5]

Time to highjack the thread and give you an update on my progress that you could not give two hoots about.
I am 16.3K in the story. I finally hit sexy time. Part A.
I need to do Part B and a Part C I just thought about.
Then the epilogue.
After that, I will be sad because I will have to say goodbye to my characters.
What really scares me is showing it to the great authors who agreed to be beta readers. What is this story, which I really love is actually a piece of trash?
Highjack ended.

 

[Duleigh]

After that, I will be sad because I will have to say goodbye to my characters.

That's the worst part of writing - separation anxiety. It's the main reason why I write these monstrous series. We're a Wonderful Wife 376k words, Stormwatch 508k words, Enchantress 414k words, Andi's Dream 743k words, and more. The Andi's Dream universe is linked to several other series so the "Andiverse" is 1,728k words... not looking for fame and fortune, but because I love my characters, I want to see then grow and prosper.

BTW - what's a DEFCOM? I know that DEFCON = Defense Condition (1=Nuclear War, 4=Global Peace)
Asking for a friend...

Press on with pride my friend! It only gets easier and you get used to dealing with imaginary people!

 

[DEFCOM5]

That's the worst part of writing - separation anxiety. It's the main reason why I write these monstrous series. We're a Wonderful Wife 376k words, Stormwatch 508k words, Enchantress 414k words, Andi's Dream 743k words, and more. The Andi's Dream universe is linked to several other series so the "Andiverse" is 1,728k words... not looking for fame and fortune, but because I love my characters, I want to see then grow and prosper.

I would love to write follow up stories on these characters I love but I do not see the sequel making any sense or adding to it. I wish I could revisit these charactrers.

BTW - what's a DEFCOM? I know that DEFCON = Defense Condition (1=Nuclear War, 4=Global Peace)
Asking for a friend...

It was an attempt as a pun. DEFCON 5 means every thing is good, nothing to worry about.

The M meant COM (communication) so DEFCOM5 means my COM, my writing is all good.

It was a joke because my writing is far from being good. When I read talented writers, I ask myself why bother but I think my stories are worth telling, even if the medium (i.e. my writing) is not that good.

Press on with pride my friend! It only gets easier and you get used to dealing with imaginary people!

I am pressing on.
I want to enter, not because I believe I have even a remote chance of winning but because I hope to get some feedback on my story.

 

[iwatchus]

Write an Incest story. Make it the most cliché thing you can imagine, but give it a title that draws in the readers.

This will immediately satisfy your craving for views. Once you've got that out of your system, you can experiment with whatever weird stuff the Plot Bunny dumps on you.

So I'm blaming this one on him. I swore I would never write a T/I story, but I wrote the cheesiest Christmas mommy in my lap story ever. Santa's Lap is now submitted for the contest.

 

[StillStunned]

I'm the muse of Erotica in disguise. Worship me, mortals!

 

[iwatchus]

I'm the muse of Erotica in disguise. Worship me, mortals!

I'm having submitter's regret now. I just realized your advice was probably the 90% of what you say I'm supposed to ignore. Maybe it will get stuck in pending and I'm off the hook.

 

[Ian_Snow]

Really enjoyed "The Velvet Ribbon" by @RoyalAuthor and "Milk from Cookies" by @SamanthaBehgs, both of which got similar comments from me about their originality. Fantastic concepts for stories and both were really well-written. Looking forward to checking out more stories. Good crop of them this year.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Really enjoyed "The Velvet Ribbon" by @RoyalAuthor and "Milk from Cookies" by @SamanthaBehgs, both of which got similar comments from me about their originality. Fantastic concepts for stories and both were really well-written. Looking forward to checking out more stories. Good crop of them this year.

You are too, too kind and thank you so much for the comment there as well! It was so fun to create and I might (after the contest is over) have to create some sequels.

 

[Ian_Snow]

You are too, too kind and thank you so much for the comment there as well! It was so fun to create and I might (after the contest is over) have to create some sequels.

Hope you do! I'll be reading them.