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Though they remain anonymous at their request, I was contacted by an editor and they've helped me go through the Master Decides. I've been very impressed how they've helped tighten my writing, exposed some repeated mistakes, and just helped out overall. I've reposted the Master Decides chapters, so please take a look and let me know if you like the new versions.

I went through and re-read the story, finding typos, missing words, etc. In particular, one anonymous commenter hated the "txt speak" so I removed it. Nothing major plot wise or character wise changed. I have three chapters of the next story written, but still working on the plot. More to come in a few weeks.

SOL has a long faq about how the ratings are generated and the survey problems they try to avoid by doing so. I don't mind they do this since in the end, they guarantee at least the order remains the same. Like most authors I guess, I've been keeping my eye on the ratings for my new "vignettes" story, in which each chapter will be a scene, but there will be little plot connecting them together. When 10 people had read it, I hit a high of 7.5ish. Then one person rated it a 3 which brought the overall score down. Interestingly, the person who rated it a 3 has evidently gone back, reread the chapter, and moved their score from a 3 to a 2.

From the chart which indicates as of now there are 836 downloads and 32 votes of which 10 of them were "8"'s, it looks like this is the distribution which earns the current score of 6.93. The counts below do add up to 32 which is a good double check. So moving that "3" to a "2" (along with whatever was going on with all the other stories I didn't write) moved me from the 7's to a 6. Very interesting to me, I hope you find it so as well. I'm not really complaining, just sharing some of the stats I can glean from behind the scenes.


Score - Count

10 - 5

9 - 8

8 - 10

7 - 5

6 - 3

5 - 0

4 - 0

3 - 0

2 - 1

1 - 0

Update: One more person gave me an 8 which brought my score DOWN to 6.92, so really only 9's and above help a score, relative to all the other stories. Several people responded in email, so thanks for the pick me up

Wow - that was a lot longer of a story than I expected. I really had fun writing it, but was most surprised by the comments and feedback from readers and fellow authors.

All of it greatly appreciated.

Plenty of ideas where to take it, but I have some travel to do before I can write again.

Enjoy!

When I get an interesting anonymous comment, I'll post it and see what people think.

Last time, a post on the description of women generated over 45 emails, some from long time authors here who I've read for years. I wish I could summarize all the excellent advice they gave by more than "do whatever you want", but it really was all over the map.

In this case, it took me a second to even understand what they were complaining about:

Please avoid informal things like text-speak it
makes for poor reading, and makes you come across
as uneducated, or sloppy.

These and similar things you might have used in
other chapters should be corrected:
pls - please
Txt - Text


I thought for a second they were going to ask I was a millennial, but it's a reasonable point. In one of the chapters, I did use abbreviations that have become almost universal in work email, and not just in texts. I have a major re-edit on the the whole series coming up when I finish it, so it's likely I'll clean this up since it's not related to the story at all. It just surprises me that after quoting or mentioning Acton, Thompson, and Maslow that they'd think I was uneducated :) Hmm, wonder what they think of smiley faces.