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At the challenge of a fellow writer, I am asking you, my readers, to consider the following. It has been suggested that I could secure an 'off-shore' website provider to work with me anonymously via bitcoin.
However, as I don't make a cent posting my works, are you, my readers, willing and able to each contribute some to support such a site? The cost per month to keep the site up is pretty minimal if the site is just for me, though there might be an issue with the securing of a domain name and an SSL cert. (I would have to see what I could do about that.) I could handle all the coding for the site, so I would not need to hire anyone. All could access the site anonymously. I would be the only one who needed to login. The site would look like my site on ASSTR, except the URLs would be different.
I am not a writer of procedurals. You know, change the name, change the city, and run the same script all over again.
I tell stories that, hopefully, have some meat on the bone. Something new to tell. Something worth pursuing; A question that needs to be answered; A problem that needs to be resolved; An itch that hasn't been scratched yet and what happens when it does. They are stories placed in a locale that many of my readers will never have visited and never will. They are stories seeped in a culture with values, and realities, so different from that of the reader's that digressions, explanations, and collateral information is needed for some, but not all. And so, not wanting to bog the stories down with the minutia, I use all the technologies available to me in telling the tales. They are not ascii text on paper experiences. They defy the use of cookie-cutter third-party formatting.
It took a while for me to find my voice, my way in this process of bringing you into my world. I found a home in the one place that allowed, without limit, for me to tell stories as I needed to tell them. It was not here on SOL, but on ASSTR.
Soon enough that place in the ether will be gone and with it most of my work will be gone, too. What will remain is my early work, before I fully found my voice.
As the problem of reaching ASSTR became so very real, many have reached out to me saying where will you post next? One wanted to know, essentially, if I would admit defeat and come back to SOL.
The simple fact is that SOL, as much as I respect it and what it offers, is not a place for me for any number of reasons. I suspect the webmaster here, a great guy for whom I have only sincere respect, will agree with me, especially should he have reason to review my later work, the works that cannot be posted here.
Sadly, there is no place for me, once ASSTR is gone unless I opened up my own website and I can't do that. You might be safe, in the country where you live, if you did it, but I would not be safe at all. I, and those who live with me, would be at great risk. I love to write, but not to the extent that I am willing to open us up to danger. I tried to push through a replacement for ASSTR but that ended in failure. So, once ASSTR is gone - and it isn't yet - my new work as a writer will not be posted anywhere, and the other pieces will only exist in the earliest forms, if at all.
To see how to get on ASSTR, read my previous blog post.
The domain name was 'updated' by someone five days ago.
I have no idea if this is a hack or someone with rights to the record is trying to make the live site 'disappear' from the net based on a bad registry listing.
Here's the the record of that I pulled from Internic.net
Registry Expiration: 2021-12-09 05:00:00 UTC
Updated: 2021-03-16 17:17:12 UTC
Created: 1998-12-10 05:00:00 UTC
For those of you using Windows, you need to edit your 'hosts' file in c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc. Open the file with notepad as an administrator!
For those of you using a flavor of Linux, your 'hosts' files is in /etc and made sure you open your text editor with sudo.
Add these lines:
64.71.155.222 www.asstr.org
64.71.155.222 ftp.asstr.org
Reboot and enjoy for now!
If you want the updated collected works with the fixed Bayan Na and the new The Ark included, give me your email address and each will be sent 24 hours separating Volume One and Volume Two so that those with limitations on their inboxes can clear the first out before receiving the second.
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