Xalir: Blog

I just posted Chapter 5 for submission and it should be up soon. It covers a lot of John's Monday after his fight with Barb.

I want to take a minute to thank everyone who responded to the blog post I made last night about the negative feedback I'd received and want to reassure everyone that I'm not going to stop writing. I get so much positive feedback every day that no single voice, no matter how negative could possibly convince me that I should stop writing. So thank you all for your solidarity and support. I intend to keep writing and each post I make is a stand against letting those people affect the content on SOL.

My latest story has ruffled a few feathers and I thought maybe it's time to stand up and have a word with one and all about responsibility. I recently got a message on here and the tone is one that I've seen from other messages over the content of Trading Up. This is the original message that was sent to me:

"Is this the story of your pathetic life (MMA excluded, obviously)? Why would you write such a pussy of a main character I don't know. No spine. No self respect. Total fail."

Charming, right? I've gotten a few letters like this that range from constructive to downright personal in the attempt to attack me personally for creating John as a character. I'm posting my reply to him publicly here:

"Then feel free not to read it. In the future, if you don't like a story, move on. Being abusive to the author is disrespectful to the community here. I don't particularly care. I'm thick-skinned enough to roll my eyes at the whining and move on, but SOL is a place where fledgling writers tell the stories that they want to share. Some of them may be bad. Others may be very well-written, but revolve around subjects that you don't find engaging. Lashing out at the writer for something as childish as the fact that you don't like the fictional characters they created for their story is not only demeaning to you as an adult, but can have the consequences of discouraging someone that may be very shy about their writing, or worse, do damage to an author who may be writing a very personal story and be writing as catharsis for something that affects them deeply. Have more responsibility for your actions."

I think that's the message I want us all to take on. Be responsible for the things we say and do. What if that story HAD been personal and I'd beaten (or killed) my wife and her lover and this was an expression of remorse on my part? What if it had happened just like that and I still carried the deep psychological scars of the betrayal and the deep-rooted shame of being treated like I mattered so little to someone I loved so much? Fortunately, no psychological damage has been done over this, but it gives me pause to wonder how many of our writers have been driven away by people that no longer understand that their rights end where other people's begin.

So, please, treat each other well. There have been stories that I've hated because they go in directions I don't find entertaining. I once read an entire 25-chapter story on here that turned out to be awful just for one thing in the story tags. No one's going to blame you if you don't like a story. No one's even going to blame you, if you criticize a story, but keep it constructive. Personal attacks to someone who's contributing to the larger community is a terrible way to treat those writers, yourselves and your fellow readers.

Sorry this was so long, but I felt like I needed to speak out about it, since John's sparked a peculiar amount of vitriol. Thank you all for reading this rant, which may be long enough to be its own story. LOL

The first chapter of My Journey posted on August 18th, 2016. One year later, I'm still thrilled with the response from everyone who reads my work. So, with that in mind, I've posted chapter four of Trading Up as a bonus chapter.

We didn't quite make 1,000,000 downloads today, but it was close. SOOOOO close. Maybe tomorrow. LOL

I put chapter 3 in the queue and it should be up shortly. This answers some of the question about how life goes for John in the wake of Barb's revelation, at least in the short term.

Thanks go out to everyone who's supported my work over this past year. We're only 4 days away from that 1-year mark, but it seems like just yesterday that I was agonizing over whether to post Book 1 or put it off until I had more of the story written. How the time flies.

I just put chapter 2 up for posting. I've seen the numbers moving on all my stories and I wanted to give a thank you to all the readers that are trying to get us to 1,000,000 before the 18th. Hopefully we'll get there.