My Notes from the Field

It’s quite simple. These are my notes about the stories posted here, as well as other work related issues that do not belong in an index. It is a kind of a blog except that I do not allow comments from others here. So if you want to interact with me you still need to go to the bottom and fill out the form.

25 April 2013
Hiatus and a peeve about SOL

              I am on a prolonged hiatus from my writing. I may tweak a story from time to time, if I think a word is wrong, or a sentence needs rework, but there will be no new tales for a few months now. I will continue to answer emails. I am watching the US Immigration law activity in the US Congress. It has the potential for making for some very different stories, because it carries the potential for a different reality. If unskilled / low skilled workers will be able to get work visa’s then importing multiple mistresses becomes possible.. under a guise of low wage employment.

              Some of my stories continue to be posted on Storiesonline.net. There, the site gives stories scores supposedly based on user voting… But it isn’t, because the scores are manipulated to satisfy other needs the site administrator needs to remedy. My criticism is that the manipulated scores get posted to the potential reader as the true scores for the work. In the past the site admin would allow the authors to see the raw scores before manipulation, but no more. Now we just get less helpful bar graphs, but even those shows how wrong the scores are that the reader sees. As the scores drive what people read on that site, I guess it irritates me. Better that there should be no score posted, than post a manipulated score. Here’s are three examples. In each the posted score is listed. Clearly, my readers think more of these stories than the score reflects. If my readers did not like my stories, it would be on my back. I either need to write better stories or accept that I can’t. But displaying manipulated scores is just wrong. Readers do not see the graphs. The graphs are for the authors ONLY.

1 April 2013
Current Work COMPLETED: Retirement

              The final chapter of Retirement has been posted.

31 March 2013
Current Work : Retirement

              I have completed the first draft of the final chapter of Retirement. It still needs to go through a rigorous editing and proofing. I have no new project in the works presently, though I have a few ideas I am toying with writing. We will see.

21 March 2013
Rework during Hiatus: Trifecta

              I re-read Trifecta and decided it needed some changes. I added a few paragraphs, a few other sentences in other places, changed the tense in a couple of places. I added a footnote. However the arc of the story remains unchanged.

20 March 2013
Hiatus

              I guess I have been asleep as to what the US Senate is doing on immigration reform. I gather they want to kill off family visas entirely. If the change passes, you or your Filipina-American wives can't even bring members of your family over (her/your underage children excepted). This sucks and is just stupid. The Senators claim they want to do it, to ease the heavy backlog of cases at the USCIS. That is bullshit on two levels. First the fees are supposed to self funded the program. So what they are really doing is taking to money that is funding the program, spending it on other things and starving the USCIS, so that it can't do it's work! And then they cry over the backlog. This is bullshit. Second they want to do the change so to allow for more qualified worker visas. But one type of visa should not have anything to do with another. Why are they so afraid of immigrants that they have to go draconian on limiting immigration? I urge those of you who are US Citizens and Republicans to tell your Senators and Representative that they should lighten up on all type of LEGAL immigration. There is nothing to be afraid of. I would ask this of the Democrats, but from what I have heard, it isn't the Democrats who are pushing for this; but I guess it wouldn't hurt if you Democrats contacted your congressional delegation too!

18 March 2013
Hiatus

              My note about the guy who wants to immigrate to the Philippines, was not related to anyone who reads these stories. The guy in question has no idea I write at all. However I have been getting a surprising number of emails from from readers of this site saying that they are interested in moving to the Philippines. Just to be clear, on a factual basis, at this time, unless you are married to a Filipina, you can not immigrate to the Philippines. You can stay quite a while, but you have to get extended stay visas and you still have to leave and reenter the country on a regular basis. You could go on an extended stay Visa, marry in the Philippines and stay then apply for the immigrant Visa, but to get the non-quota immigrant visa, marriage is required. There are fifty (50) quota-based immigration visas, per country, (they do not require marriage,) but the likelihood that you will snag one of these is not realistic.

17 March 2013
Hiatus

              The next chapter of Retirement will have to wait a while. Too much is happening IRL right now. There's a new guy who needs help immigrating. Who knows, maybe there will be yet another story in it. There will be a big party here today. The girls have been cooking for two days.

10 March 2013
Current Work: Retirement and a new idea

              The scare of losing all access to this web site has passed. For five days no author could post here. There were no explanations. The authors access was simply down. It returned yesterday. In the hiatus, I was feeling like there was no reason to write the next chapter of Retirement as there was no where to post it. This next chapter was going to be a hard one to write and I didn't want to sweat over something that I would never be able to post. Then after close to a week, the access was restored. I have now only begun Chapter 19. This one is going to take a bit.

              In the mean time, I am playing around with the concept of a story where the federal government has passed a law stating that life begins at conception. There are protesters. They are angry because in their eyes, the law is arbitrary and doesn't go far enough. In the eyes of the protesters, life is created in the eggs and semen of adults. Any many who masturbates is a murderer. The State of Missouri passes a law defining life in this new way. Cameras are set up everywhere, including bathrooms, bedrooms and closets. Computers are trained to evaluate hand and body movements to catch male masturbation in the act... As you can tell, this is a horror story. I think it would make a great movie, too. You can get the Supreme Court weighing the right to Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness against the right to privacy. As the Right to Life comes first as the most important part of the constitution, the court rules that the right to privacy must give way. I'd love to collaborate with one or two really good writers on this last piece.

03 March 2013
Current Work: Retirement

              I have just now posted Chapter 18 of Retirement. Chapter 19 is not begun. I will be travelling the next couple of days not I have no idea when I will pick this up again.

24 February 2013
Current Work: Retirement

              Chapter 17 of Retirement was posted on Friday night. I have only begun Chapter 18. Other things around continue to keep me occupied. So I am not sure when chapter 18 will be finished.

15 February 2013
Current Work: Retirement

              Chapter 16 of Retirement is posted. I have not begun Chapter 17 yet. Other things around here will keep me occupied for the next few days at a minimum.

04 February 2013
Current Work: Retirement

              Chapters 12 and 13 of Retirement were posted on Friday. Chapters 14 and 15 are already written and will be edited for grammar and spelling this week with an expected posting on Friday. Chapter 16 has been started. For those who wanted additional stuff on Nina who shows up and the end of From Nothing, a little more is dribbling out. Exactly how much I will explore in that direction has yet to be determined.

31 January 2013
Current Work: Retirement

              I found the juice to get back to work on Retirement. Chapter 12 is completed and I am almost done with Chapter 13. I have included a surprise in Chapter 13 for those of you who have read From Nothing. Chapter 12 posts tomorrow, 01 Feb 2013. I do not know when I will post chapter 13.

19 January 2013
Re-Edit: The Interviews

              OK, The Interviews has now gone through a complete re-edit. The story remains the same. Next up for a re-edit is The Joshua Tree, this time using an audio of it.

16 January 2013
Re-Edit: The Package Deal

              OK, The Package Deal has now gone through a complete re-edit, but the story remains the same. Next up for a re-edit is The Interviews.

13 January 2013
Errata: Photos

              I’m looking for background photos for my workstation. I have three displays that in the aggregate use a 5670x1200 pixel photo. The actual horizontal width of the three screens together is about six fee and six inches! Height is thirteen and three quarter inches. I have some great photos of: nature, the cosmos, and architecture. I even have a couple of sexy but fully clothed women. What I really want is some x-rated high quality photos of some beauties that are not ‘blown up” but rather shot at such a high resolution. If anyone knows where such backgrounds can be found, drop me a line below. Work on Retirement is in hiatus.

9 January 2013
Re-Edits: Jake - Ganda

              I have set Jake - Ganda to audio and did a major overhaul of the story. The story, as with the Joy story, did not change but I did a major rework on the story as to how it is presented. Dialog was re-editted. Pesos went from XXXPhP to Pxxx. Many errors were caught. I will look at The Package Deal next. Maybe I need a break from Retirement

7 January 2013
Re-Edits: Jake - Joyfully

              Still hung up on Chapter 13 of Retirement. I have set Jake - Joyfully to audio. It ended up in a major overhaul of the story. The story did not change but I did a major rework on the story as to how it is presented. Dialog was re-editted. Pesos went from XXXPhP to Pxxx. Many errors were caught.

6 January 2013
Current work: Retirement
Re-Edits

              I am hung up on Chapter 13 and so I decided to back away from it for a week. In the mean time, I have set my short (no chapters) stories to audio in an effort to pick up errors that I haven't been able to edit out otherwise. That is done and I have re-posted them all with the correction now made. Nothing changed in them other than the mistakes were removed.

26 December 2012
Current work: Retirement

              I have completed Chapter 12 for both this site and the SOL version of Retirement. The SOL version posting is only up to Chapter 10, the version here (same so far) is now at chapter 11. I will post the on-going version chapter 12 here on Friday night. SOL will get version 11. A week from this Friday, when I post Chapter 13 here, I will post an ending version of chapter 12 on SOL. So unless you are interested in how I truncated the story on SOL, you can forget that and stay with me here. ... Oh, By the way, Happy Holidays!

19 December 2012
Re-Edit: Jake's Journal: Close to Home

              I have completed a full re-edit of Jake's Journal: Close to Home. I used headphones to listen while following the text by eye. It was an enlightening experience. I caught many errors. I found places where it just did not follow correctly or I needed to add bridging sentences. The story didn't change, but hopefully it is better.

14 December 2012
Current work: Retirement

              I have added a comment section at the bottom of Retirement. I probably should have added it earlier, but now with nine chapters, the story has enough legs that comments have some meaning. Early responses were frustrating for me as I had not developed the story enough for any conclusions.

13 December 2012
Current work: Retirement

              There are twelve chapters written. There will be two versions. One will end at Chapter 12, and will be posted on StoriesOnLine.Net. The other version will be here on ASSTR. Exactly how I will rename them – has yet to be determined.

                             I am posting one chapter each Friday.

              Re-Edits: The Joshua Tree

              I just completed a complete re-edit of the story. Some language has changed, footnotes have been added, and errors and ambiguity in the text have been caught and removed.

              I am going to undertake re-edits of the original Jake stories next.