Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

https://storiesonline.net/d/s2/t8452/k-pelle#po215363

Thanks for the info. I always liked her stuff, sad to see it going away.

It isn't going away, it's coming here. Along with almost all of the other stories there.

Great!

Along with almost all of the other stories there

That's great, there are some good ones there by other authors that are not here (yet).

I really hope that the other authors'stories come here too.e.g. Asa Strong.

I really hope that the other authors'stories come here too.e.g. Asa Strong.

That likely would take getting in contact with the various authors and getting their permission. The one exception might be if the terms and conditions to post on Gina's site allow her to transfer those stories to another site.

As it stands, I know of one author whose stories will not be coming across from that site (there may be others I don't know about).
Wes Boyd. Wes had his own site - which is still active - and his heirs would have to give their permission. They have already said "no" once, although I suppose that could change.

Glad to hear they are being preserved. If I could make a suggestion I would like to see all the content from BTFH in it's own area, maybe even label it 'BTFH'. I have a lot of those stories already downloaded, but it would be nice, and kind of a tribute/show of appreciation if they were kept together.
I realize there might be an issue from the other authors who have posted there, and I really don't know enough to know how permissions to do that could be obtained,

I realize there might be an issue from the other authors who have posted there, and I really don't know enough to know how permissions to do that could be obtained,

Even now that her site is gone, she could sell the rights to the site (say for $1) to WLPC, transfer the backup of the content to WLPC and BTFH could become the fourth story site here. No need to get permission from the other authors on BTFH. IF they are unhappy with the owner change they have to become active and remove their stories from BTFH.

HM.

Do you remember/know if her 'spitfire' story meets the age limit here? I have a poor memory of the MCs being below 14. Hopefully I am mistaken. Was the first of her stories I read on asstr, that started my reading of her stories.

Firstly, the 14-year-old rule was originally only applied to stories posted after September 2011.
Secondly, I *think* that story is "clean" in that respect.

It is a very long time since I looked at her "Tom's Diary" but I'd very surprised if that one passed the 14-y-o test.

I forget the beginning ages, but Tom had a license and was driving before the end. I do not think he had one of those hardship/farming licenses either. Have to reread it to see if the females were under 14. Tom's Diary' is grandfathered on here. Spitfire would not be, since it would come as a new story on here.

Tom's younger (and only) sister had her first period a day or so after having "been" with her uncle. She hadn't bothered with birth control because she thought she was too young.

In the beginning of Spitfire, the MC describes himself as almost 14.

And her site is now gone.

Account Suspended!Please contact our support team for further assistance.

So, we should not expect the incomplete and inactive stories to be finished. :(

Far Side Two or Kinsmen of the Dragons?

So, we should not expect the incomplete and inactive stories to be finished. :(

No.

From what I have read, the reason is more of her poor health than just dropping/stopping stories for lack of interest.

From what I have read, the reason is more of her poor health

Yep.
She's been unable to write for some time, and her health has been steadily declining.

Hence her decision to shut down her site when it came up for renewal from the site's host.

Hence her decision to shut down her site when it came up for renewal from the site's host.

... and her earlier decision to post story snippets that she knew she would never develop further. When these are posted here, they are immediately flagged incomplete and inactive. (It would be nice if the original posting date on btfh was included, perhaps as part of the story description.)

her earlier decision to post story snippets that she knew she would never develop further.

My impression at the time was that she had not given up yet, she had a "health disaster" some time around 2009 (a guess) and was slowly recovering from that, then her more recent problem was diagnosed. For a while she thought she would be able to write again but - with small exceptions - that turned out not to be the case.

(It would be nice if the original posting date on btfh was included, perhaps as part of the story description.)

Or in the copyright line. That only gives the year a story was posted but who needs an exact timestamp anyway?

Gina's aren't the only stories either. I'm trying the remember one other that used a different pen name on Gina's site (I think I got it, Bruce Bretthaur posted on that site and as Prince von Vlox on SOL.)

I noticed his excellent families sci-fi series is now on SOL.

I thought 'Firestar' was the first story in that universe.

I thought 'Firestar' was the first story in that universe.

... but is there one that is better to read first? (Do we know a publication order?)

Firestar was the first story written, it was the first one uploaded (to BtFH) and - apart from one of the shorts - it is set before any of the other ones.
The only (short) story set before Firestar is "Engage the Enemy More Closely" and the timeline there is rather screwed - part of the middle is set during Firestar and the rest precedes it. That one was posted posthumously, I'd guess he was going to fix it but never got around to it.
Boabdil was uploaded to BtFH in 2009, Operation Georgia (which precedes it) in 2010. Apart from that the order given in my post below was pretty much the order they were posted.

Thanks! (I was asking because another post in this thread said that Firestar seemed to be missing background info.)

The Families War universe (not that it's set up as such) consists of six full length novels, a couple of shorter ones and a bunch of short stories. The big ones are:
- Firestar
- Setosha - The Beating Heart
- Operation Georgia
- Boabdil
- Slack Water and The Sickness from Without
- Endgame
The shorter ones are:
- Wolfhound Six (overlaps Operation Georgia)
- The Battle of New Republic (set at the same time as Boabdil and Slack Water)

I'm not going to list the short stories here, there are ten of them and some of them do not quite match up with the main stories. There's even a continuity error within Setosha but we haven't got that far yet.

Right on mate. A dam good series

Speaking just for myself, I found the ending of M+S (in the rewrite) ridiculous.
Irrespective of the quality she had explicitly told Lazeez (in the story description) not to copy that version onto this site. I pointed that out in a BtFH message to her a couple of days before the site died, but have no idea if she saw that or took any steps to remove that prohibition. Of course Lazeez could easily have decided that her later blanket permission overrode that previous refusal - I don't know.

Quoting BarBar, Well, Shit.
(That link is to chapter 20 of BarBar's most recent story, I just felt the chapter heading was appropriate)

I just felt the chapter heading was appropriate

Extremely so.

The entire paragraph would have been better:

However, as I went through her site's archive, I've posted many of her stories only for her to tell me to take them down. She had them published on Amazon, while they were available for free on BTFH, but she doesn't want them on SOL.

Most of the Bruce Bretthauer stories probably belong on SciFiStories, but there's nothing wrong with posting them here. Several of them are earlier versions of stories he later posted on Amazon.

One of the options for downloading is ePub. I use it all the time.

I suspect rustyken "acquired" them from BtFH rather than here. BtFH offered html downloads in an earlier incarnation, but after a complete site wipeout (she was using an older level of PHP, security holes and all, and the people hosting her site upgraded) that capability was gone and never returned.
I remember downloading a Wes Boyd story from BtFH which was in two parts, and each part contained the same chapter numbers. The chapters in the second half overwrote their equivalents in the first half when unpacking the zip. The story may have been Rocinante.

The 'earlier incarnation' of her site had two or three times the authors as the later version, IIRC. I wonder if anyone downloaded from there routinely and has copies of all of the stories. There was a lot of talent on BtFH. Hope it's not all vaporized.

Lazeez has stopped uploading GMW's stories for the reasons given, he is still uploading stories from other authors from that site - https://storiesonline.net/a/Prince_von_Vlox is one example. There are definitely some others, but since I never read them on BtFH I won't recognise them as having been sourced from there.
The final incarnation of BtFH inherited the stories from its predecessor, but by then a lot of authors had either drifted away or died so there was very little new content.

One of the options for downloading is ePub. I use it all the time.

I just checked: this is a Premier feature!

Besides, quite some years ago download as ePub was available for all users on Finestories and I downloaded some back then. The design was quite austere.

So since about the last ten years or so I download the HTML chapters of stories I read and store them on a harddrive.
When I want to reread a story I load the chapters into a template eBook in Calibre eBook Editor, replace the < head > part with my own < head > part (referencing my own extended xht.css) and begin editing it during reading, adding in some cases embellishments, like special formatting of the text of signs, flyers etc. with borders, columns for fees and so on.
A special case are Ernest Bywater's stories. They are devided into SOL-chapters, but EB shows his original layout with Chapters and Sub-chapters in the Table of Content. So I deleted the SOL-chapter headlines and split and merged the files so each of EB's original chapters is now in its own file. Some of his books start with Sub-chapters before the first chapter. Unusual, but so be it, I didn't change this.

HM.

Grrr, the email routine stripped the < head > from the text, edited now with blanks added. Let's see if it will show now.

LibreOffice makes it easy to convert pretty much format into an epub.

I've been using Calibre.

I think Calibre is a forked version (NOT SUPPOSED TO BE PUNNY) of LibreOffice, but the two projects are now at loggerheads because LibreOffice is looking to move into Calibre's territory (collaboration).

Yeah, it turns out I was thinking of Collabora.