Bumping this back up the list, because I for one would like to see the results of this survey :P
The new story PMs do get on my nerves a bit. If it's a personal message from a friend to me specifically, then fair enough, but these are like mailshots, lol. And it really bugs me when people send the same message several times.
The way I see it, you choose which authors you want to be notified about as your favourite authors and you choose people you want to have contact with or check on with occasionally as your friends. Authors sending mass PMs to their friend list seems to me like they are trying to make up for not having more followers.
I think posting a link on your blog and forum signature is plenty. It's a passive way of notifying your friends. That and talking about your stories of course. I occasionally send personal invitations to individual people to read certain stories of mine I think they will enjoy, and I will make recommendations if the opportunity comes up in a chat.
There are people who LIKE checking grammar? :P
Forgive me if this has been suggested before.
Any chance of introducing a way to "group" your friends? Kind of like the way you can list people on twitter? Either user defined categories, or perhaps just a way to "favourite" friends so they appear at the top of your friend list.
You make it sound like a choice! We can't have great sex AND cuddles? I for one love to fall asleep spooning with my bf every night.
Of course real love exists but something it does require is showing just a little bit of vulnerability. Something that people can be reluctant to show early in a relationship. It has to develop over time IMO.
Innocent. But I suspect sometimes I was on the receiving end once.
Have you ever licked/sucked chocolate sauce or any other kind of food off someone's body?
I write outside of Lush and, for mainstream writing, the following rule is usually true - if your reader has cause to think of you as the writer, the fact that you wrote the story or even that you exist at all, then you have failed to keep them immersed in the story. If you do your job right, the reader should completely forget they are reading a story at all, and simply get lost in the characters, emotions, events and world that you have created for them. That is your ultimate goal as a writer.
So, on that basis I would say that the gender of the writer shouldn't be important at all.
However, the funny thing about writing for this site, is that for many of the readers, knowing who the author is and perhaps trying to picture them in the story or make contact with them once you've read their story is all part of the experience. So the rule above probably applies less here than elsewhere.
Oh I don't know about hot ticket. It suggests "geek" is a balancing point somewhere between "nerd" and "mad scientist"! And only a couple of steps away from psychopath.
There is a difference between believability and "suspension of disbelief."
If you read a story about werewolves it is in no way "believable" but, if the author tells their story well, you agree to join them in their fantasy, to suspend your disbelief and just accept what you are reading. It's a trick that involves creating rules which govern your scenario/world, presenting the unbelievable as normal through the actions and reactions of the characters, and finding ways to associate the unreal with the familiar.
Do I care that a story is believable? Absolutely not, well, okay, maybe a bit when it comes to the physically impossible. Do I care that the author tells their implausible story in such a way that I can suspend my disbelief? Yes I do.
