The Official Authors' Hangout Winter Holidays 2025 Support Thread

[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.

 

[old_prof]

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.

 

[old_prof]

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!

 

[old_prof]

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.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Hope you do! I'll be reading them.

That's allowed, right? Once the contest is done?

 

[old_prof]

That's allowed, right? Once the contest is done?

Absolutely!

 

[bmeyem8]

A newbie here...first time contest enterer. How do readers "vote" for a contest story? How does a writer see their votes? What is the deal about "get 25 votes and somethong happens"? Please excuse my naivety. Thank you in advance, especially @iwatchus .

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

A newbie here...first time contest enterer. How do readers "vote" for a contest story? How does a writer see their votes? What is the deal about "get 25 votes and somethong happens"? Please excuse my naivety. Thank you in advance, especially @iwatchus .

A "vote" is someone rating the entry (how many stars you get) and the number of ratings you get is where the 25 comes from. Not sure how new you are - are you familiar with looking under "my works" to see your average number of stars and how many people contributed to that average? If not, I'll screenshot (I'm just super excited to finally be able to help someone. Welcome to the contest!)

 

[bmeyem8]

A "vote" is someone rating the entry (how many stars you get) and the number of ratings you get is where the 25 comes from. Not sure how new you are - are you familiar with looking under "my works" to see your average number of stars and how many people contributed to that average? If not, I'll screenshot (I'm just super excited to finally be able to help someone. Welcome to the contest!)

My stars for the entry are 3.37/240. So foes the 240 mean I met yhe 50 vote thing?. Thank you very much for your help.
BTW: I am a Sam I am too.

 

[bmeyem8]

My stars for the entry are 3.37/240. So foes the 240 mean I met yhe 50 vote thing?. Thank you very much for your help.
BTW: I am a Sam I am too.

My cellphone typing is the worst.

 

[Voyeurkenneth]

My stars for the entry are 3.37/240. So foes the 240 mean I met yhe 50 vote thing?. Thank you very much for your help.
BTW: I am a Sam I am too.

Yes, you're good. The 240 means the number of votes. You've surpassed the minimum number.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

BTW: I am a Sam I am too.

Do you like green eggs and ham?

And like you (and @Voyeurkenneth) mentioned, yes, that means you've had 240 people vote. And just so you know, for the holiday contests (like this one) you are only required to have 25 votes to qualify rather than the 50 that used to exist for the monthly contests (which, as far as I can tell, are no longer running).

 

[ChloeTzang]

My stars for the entry are 3.37/240. So foes the 240 mean I met yhe 50 vote thing?. Thank you very much for your help.
BTW: I am a Sam I am too.

Using this as an example

The 4.79 is the rating
The 2.9k is the number of votes
The heart with the 131 is the number of users who have favorited the story
The 128.5k is the number of views overall
The 139 is the number of comments

As an average, you can expect approx one vote for every 100 views and one comment for every 1000 views - there are wild variations on that of course - it IS an average, but that's an average that's been established over the years

In a competition, you need a minimum of 25 votes to be eligible to be in the running for a place.
It has been known for the odd story with barely more than 25 votes to win LOL Not very often, but it happens