Welcome back, Crys.

You were sorely missed. I hope you will quickly and fully recover from your medical issues, and not just because I want more stories from you. I won't deny wanting more but that isn't the only reason.

Don't worry, Wiffy is not a ghost 'ship! These forums may be little used but IKOLY2 and the Wiffy Goodness C2 stories are added to and updated frequently. And new authors are appearing all the time. We may not discuss much here, but there are still stories being told. Wiffy lives and loves on.

Your fan,
Howard

I get my own topic? Thanks for the welcome home, Howard. Believe me, I missed it all and everyone as well. I'd love to be able to write again. I still remember everything that will happen in the Vampire Stories and how they end. Thank you for the new sites for stories. I'm glad to see the 'ship' is still sailing strong. I'll enjoy reading and looking forward to meeting the new blood.

Merry met,
Crys

Well, I think you deserve your own thread as your stories are among my favorites in the fandom. It's good to see that you're back.

I actually smiled when I saw this. Ask Howard how rare that is.

Val

Howard, how rare is that?

Thank you Val, that's nice to hear. You're some of that new blood I have to check out, yes? Well, new to me, fav around here for a while, no? I look forward to it.

Merry met,
Crys

I'm not sure how new you'd consider my blood to be. I've been writing in the fandom for nearly five years. *shrugs* Feel free to check me out. That's part of why I do this.

Val

It's very rare. She's a grumpypants.

But she makes up for it by being a very talented author.

You read her stuff and I'll reread your stuff. How's that for a deal?

Cheers,
Howard

<g> Then I hope no-one was scarred to badly.

I started to read. Began with the shorter works. Trouble is, the writing is real and my brain is oatmeal. Still, it's worth trying the longer pieces. Anything more I should feed the author directly.

Reread as you please, but feel no obligation. I don't think they're like fine wine soaked blood and get any better with time.

Apparently in a weird mood,
Crys

Nope, still strange, having a thread. Anyway, the idea of welcome back, of coming back, it has nagged with a chisel. And the brain, it has been recovering some. And the passion of fandoms in general if not any fanfics in particular, have been stirring the coals of obsessive fire. So, the writing, I'm trying. Also, into the broader land of fandom I'd thought I'd wander. Dreamwidth, AO3... nope, still hate livejournal.

One thing I've noticed so far... there's no opportunity for solid private feedback. There's no email address to the author available. Or at least the norm, the correct response to a fic, is to just leave a short public comment. It's very empty and I think it shows in the fics. Forgive the 'back in my day' shit, but if that was the case when I was writing, Howard and I wouldn't have 'met'. Reading detailed feedback, having that back and forth, often times made me 'man up' when it would have been so easy to slack off.

To that end, I remain a firm believer in having an email address available to readers for direct feedback. And mine has changed after all these years. So, I am taking the time to go around and try to update it. Here included, just in case. It's now crysloch at frontier dot com

Now, I just need to finish the next story so someone has something to talk with me about.

I'm thrilled. It'll be interesting to see what you come up with. I'm here if you need anything.



That last thing is unfortunate. I'm not sure that I like LiveJournal myself, but it has one of the most active Buffy communities on the internet. I went there for that and easily doubled my exposure.



Yeah, that's uh...

You see there are these things called bots that go out and fish for openly published email addresses. Back when I first put up a fic website, I posted my email address and I went from no spam to about 100 garbage messages a week. I ignored them and went on. It's gotten a bit better, but I still get scads of email advising me that my penis is too small. Umm...

And despite their sage advice I remain penis-free.

LJ and DW have a PM system that allows for direct feedback, however open comments are now the standard. As I have it, it is very rare for a reader to openly email an author.

Progress.

I hooked you up with an edit to hopefully limit a bit of the ickiness. I hope you don't mind. And sorry I was so slow getting around to it.



I do appreciate your stance that candid feedback is different.



I look forward to it.