I may or may not be around at the time things publish today, so hopefully everything goes smoothly with the scheduled release. I am going to an afternoon showing of Rogue 1 and looking forward to it with great anticipation... especially since everyone I know who likes Star Wars has had good things to say so far. Crossing my fingers that it doesn't set off something in my theatre trained critical brain that makes me grumpy about it... which, unfortunately, happens all too often.

What doesn't make me grumpy, though, is when come through a period of having barely enough material to keep up our weekly posting and we get a convergence, where a number of authors finish works at the same time. So, a little shuffling and planning is going on behind the scenes as we decide which order to release things in... and, it looks like the start is going to be Elrod's contribution for Fall '07, as Kayda returns for her first full year. Of course, before she can start getting into trouble in this new year, she's going to have to answer for a Summer's full of mishaps and misadventures. And let's not forget the little brother...

Here is is, Kayda 10, Part 1 "There's No Place Like Poe" by ElrodW!

Ready for a little more of "Dawn of the Aurora"? Here's part 2 of this new character by Elrod as she makes her official entrance as a canon character. And brings you all one step closer to seeing our cast of players for the Fall. Enjoy!

There is a nice long list of work in progress, between the Gen 1 and 2 authors... as well as some Library pieces (El's got a MAU piece he's been showing around and E.E. has some more of his Star Wars story in the works). And Morpheus has several pieces ready for Summer to be over and the timeline clock moves us into year 2. Unfortunately, none of it is currently in the feedback/complete stage today for me to release.  Check back tomorrow or Wednesday... there might be one or two things that aren't on the list that we can release late.

On the 'good news' side of things, JG popped in for a visit this week and has some things he's interested in working on when he gets caught up a bit - including potentially a conclusion to Caitlyn's story, and more on the Grunts and Outcasts. We also heard (less publically) from Maggie this week, who has been struggling with some health issues and is now doing better.

We're adding some Artwork to the site: which explains the ferret invasion in the left sidebar. I haven't quite pinned down a means of submitting art directly to the gallery at this time, so for the meantime please insert it in a forum post in the Fanart suggestion thread and I'll get it copied to the right location. 

I've also added some places to put offsite links for recommended places in a couple categories: Webcomics, Fiction, TG Fiction, and Writing Sites. Authors have access to a submission panel for new links, anyone else that thinks we should link someplace... poke an author. I also set up a fifth category of links called "Sponsors"... that category will be for those sites that put up a Whateley Academy ad on their site, buy an ad on ours, or financially support us in some way.

Thanks all and remember to check in for the possibility of a late release!

And its Tuesday and here's a great big late release. It's not Whateley Academy, but it weighs in just shy of 50k words. Enjoy Part 1 of "Longing" the First Book in the Cylsteth written by Phoenix-Spiritus. It's over in the Library, under Unique Fantasy like Nagrij's "Dim Prisons and Drakes". 

Halloween is my favorite holiday (that's today, by the way, in case you are caught up in work and hadn't realized it). It happens in my favorite season of the year and its one of the few I try to take time to celebrate. Part of that is the whole pagan thing... part of it is that I just like costumes and masks

For those who haven't been visiting the forums this week, we've been having a bit of a discussion about reader / fan traffic and what things we can do (all of us, not just the site admin and authors) to bring more people to visit the site. Some people raised concerns with the glare caused by a white background, so we're playing around with an offwhite background. We might move away from our traditional blue and white to find something that gives us both a cohesive look and can still be functional in that way. We've tried to do some clarifying of the fan fiction policies... that there aren't any rigorous (or even very time consuming) restrictions on getting a story posted in either the forums (the lowest tier of visibility) or the open WhatIF level (the middle level). Yes, the top level (Featured WhatIF) stories DO have to undergo a lot more effort; but the end result is meant to put these stories on a pedestal. And the effort is relative to that (and equivalent to what the canon authors are required to do).

We've also chatted a bit about how it is difficult to get good feedback... something that is easier, of course, when the population is larger and more active. We talked about advertising/promoting the site through the interwebs... and other things. If you have an interest and ideas on keeping this community alive, healthy, and growing; please drop in and join the conversation.

In some of our recent releases, things have gotten somewhat dark. And one of the brighter, sillier groups of students was put through a period of rough times. But today's story should help reassure you. Wondercute might have taken a bit of a beating... but what these girls start endures... and even years later, Whateley Academy (in the 2nd Generation timeline) still has a group dedicate to all things cute and fluffy. Enjoy Morpheus' "Following the Path of Cute." You'll find it via the Latest articles panel... or in the Gen 2 story collection.

Some recent changes to the core software that we use for the site has finally allowed me to do some more involved changes with the CSS without losing it every time we update the software. I've done some things to make parts of the forums pop a bit more and put some color into the way the site layout goes. I'll be adding and playing around with some additional things as I have time, mostly as an experiment in whether we'll stick with this template or more to something more modern when the next big Joomla update happens (after all, this template is supposed to become obsolete once it does). A completely new template might result in a complete rework out of necessity... or we may want something new due to added features that simply aren't possible in this one.

Activity has started to pick back up as we settle into Fall, though we aren't nearly as active at the moment as we were last winter. It's difficult to tell whether that was a result of all the efforts to move old stuff here from to its new home or something else... obviously, forums discussions boost site activity in general. What sort of things are we missing that would bring people in to chat more often? Contests? Short stories at 20 paces with Halloween themes but set in the WU without using existing canon characters? We could probably arrange for some prizes. Do we need to advertise? Are there similar sites out there with web links that don't mention us? Ask their admin's to include us? Person that gets us the most new traffic as a result of getting added to web comic or blog site link pages wins something? 

While we ponder ideas to increase traffic, you may be happy to hear that tonight's content is the follow up story to Phoenix Spiritus' "One Woe Doth Tread Upon Another's Heel"... it's a piece titled "Life's But a Walking Shadow"  Enjoy!