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I have concluded that the rating system on SOL is prone with loopholes and contradictions and have suspended all voting on my stories. You want to read it, read it, You want to tell me it is crap send me a message. You want to tell me it is good and you want more of that storyline send me a comment. I had one reader tell me that "Popularity" is no indicator of the quality of the story but that the SOL rating system would tell readers what is good and what is bad. I frankly think nothing could be further from the truth. If a reader sends me a comment and tells me why he or she hated a story I listen and try to do better. It is the anonymous supposed "readers" who send in a 1 or a 2 or even a 3 rating and in my opinion have not even read the story that make the SOL rating system not worth the effort.
In order to be up front and honest, I disclose that Tony is a pen name amongst several other pen names that I use to help organize my writing. I might have a problem with split personality but it is more comfortable for me to write in this manner. I personally like Tony because he is my favorite alter ego. He is truly a "wild and crazy" guy. My primary pen name is a disaster in organization and needs drastic revision and editing of almost a thousand stories. I find that when I write in the style of a certain pen name I change my way of expressing my thoughts and that is self-satisfying in a way that is difficult to explain. It is compounded by the fact I also use several female pen names with distinctly different personalities and styles of presentation. Some of my female writers are naïve innocents and others are jaded "done it all" women of the world. I even have a pen name that is in the gender bending category with happily confused outlooks on love and life. I try to avoid interaction of a personal nature with the female pen names because I feel that is far too deceitful. I have found that when I write "Romance" it is better received from a female writer than from a male writer especially from a female reader's point of view. Conversely, men seem to look at erotica from a woman with a different eye than if it came from a male. I guess that is simply human nature. I have found over the years that some publishers and editors and even other writers look at gender related issues in different perspectives and that the gender of the writer causes sub conscious and unintended bias. I once read a report that stated 8 out of 10 fiction readers in the UK are female. That certainly was a startling statistic but might be a reason why most "Romance" stories are written by supposed female authors and why a lot of the stories are carefully edited to exclude macho expressions. Tony is sort of a macho guy and he views persons of the female persuasion as "the enemy" to be approached with caution at all times.
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