No matter what your religious, spiritual, or family traditions might be; I'd like to take this moment to offer my well wishes to all of you. From authors who I speak with nearly every day to readers who never register or actively participate in the community in any way; I hope all of you and your family have a wonderful holiday season. 

For those of you who do not actively follow the forums discussions, I'd like to share something that came up this week. Most people may not be aware but E.E. injured his neck during the summer and has been having more and more trouble as the year progressed. One of the side effects of this alignment problem is that he has been experiencing increased problems with his hands... which greatly impacts both his regular employment and his writing. He has seen a doctor and they believe they can restore things with a series of treatments. Most of this is covered by insurance, but there are still some co-pay and other issues that he will need money to cover. To support this, E.E. has set up a gofundme project. This has already met its base goal due to the extreme generosity of a fan; however, I hope people will still consider tossing something in the hat to help out if you can manage it. I'm sure we all know that when dealing with medical stuff, there are always extra costs... even if its just a tank of gas to drive to the appointments. 

As for this week's offering? 

Let's go with Part 2 of Elrod's "Charging Buffalo, Hidden Dragon". You can find it over in the Canon Content section of the site.

Also, congratualations go out to Dom for being the first of the Fan Fiction Authors to navigate the publishing path for inclusion in the site Fan Fiction section. Part 1 of his story "Fate Sucks" can now be found in the Content->Fan Fiction section.

For the next three weeks, my life mostly revolves around providing a wonderful holiday experience for families in the Sacramento region. This season we're doing a pseudo-Panto / musical version of Cinderella, which means our seating is filled with tiny girls with long braids and tiaras who still think being a Princess is their number one goal in life. My job, amidst the chaos, is to wrangle the noise. Or, more 'officially', I'm the live mix engineer... in a one person sound department.

I have twelve of twenty some cast members in body mics (8 Sennheiser XSW 12, 4 Audio Technica System 10) and use some area pickup to support the ensemble/chorus numbers (3 Crown PCC-160's). Additionally, there's a four person / five instrument (Keyboard, percussion, violin, electric bass / trumpet - yeah, he plays both bass and trumpet, unusual combination, isn't it?)... and while the space isn't really large enough to NEED the band reinforced, they are mic'd or direct lined so I have some control over their volume (and just to have them in the mix so the band and voices sound 'together'). All that is run through our old fully manual Allen and Heath GL3300. Because 'most' of the mix isn't stable until we start doing tech/dress runs (and we only have 1 before we start having audience present), I never have an opportunity to create a prompt script (my hands are busy on the controls at the times I would need to be writing down level changes), So the full mix is done, from memory and based on the live quality in the room on a fully manual board.

So if I happen to sound a little brain dead at any point in the month of December... you know why.

Fortunately, you don't need me to do much more than introduce the next couple week's content releases. And now that that is mostly automated, I should be able to do that even in the midst of my live mix stupor. :)

For this week, we have a bit of holiday fun from Bek: please enjoy "Silver Ghost, Golden Angel"

Today, we see a few more chapters of Sleethr's Whisper - Chapters 36-39... leaving just one more block (of about 90 pages) for the final release of that story in canon format.

And, if you look in the Generation 2 section of our Content menu, you'll see a little article about the Gen 2 Project, introducing the authors and the characters along with some other important information. I'm looking forward to seeing the forums discussions on the new characters and what Whateley will be like in 2016. I know I'm not alone. 

While, from the Public perspective, it might have seemed like a pretty slow week on the site development front; a whole lot happened this week here at The Crystal Hall. We kicked off our Fan Fiction Author publication system, which will allow established fan fiction authors to take their completed works out of the forums and get front page and Content section visibility and comments for their stories. While we are probably still a number of weeks from seeing the first of these work their way through the review/edit/review/more edit/review/omg so much editing/review process to meet our publishing approval; we do have three different authors already with submissions and a start in on the process. 

In addition to the Fan Fiction front, this is also the first week that we are using the author submission system for new content release; meaning that from this point forward, my part in the Monday release process can be streamlined to an editorial run to check format and a couple clicks of the mouse to toggle the story to officially published. A process, by the way, that can be accomplished at any time/day of the week or month between when the author submits the story and the actual day we're going to run it. What does this mean to you? Well, it means that from this point forward, Our content release is going to happen at five (5:00) p.m. Pacific on Mondays... whether I'm at home, awake, overworked, or not. Unless there's nothing in the system/pipeline... I can't pre-schedule non-existent stories, obviously. :)

For this week specifically? We have some Kayda, from Elrod: "Medicine Girl"

As the subject header suggests, it's about that time. We've been down officially for a month now, without forums for the community to meet and discuss. While we never lost our ability to present stories and only took one week off without posting new content; it's clear that the absence of the forums has had an impact on things. On the bright side, we've released some really great stories lately and even with the nuisance value of having to post on BCTS instead of locally, a great many readers have seen those stories and commented on them enthusiastically. So enough with the down time; let's get back to being a viable, active community.

More than a few people have already 'jumped the gun' so to speak, having registered during the building phase of the site. We will go ahead and approve those accounts (mostly) despite the impatience... but for those of you who DID wait patiently and didn't bombard us with account requests or pressure us to open before we were ready, thank you. To those few who tried to register with account names that most sites blacklist... don't expect to actually get those account names here. In fact, Warren and I will talk and if we think you filed those registrations intentionally hoping it would break something or sneak you in somewhere.. you may not be getting an account here at all.

At the moment, we have a forums and PM capabilities and will allow all registered members the ability to post to Public blogs. These blogs DO have to be approved for publication before they will be visible and the privilege will be taken away from those who use it... unwisely. There are official site and forums policies posted in the FAQ/Help section, accessible via the main top menu. I will be adding some basic 'how to' articles on how to use the site appropriately as the week progresses (and we will be converting and adding the rest of the story archive as we have time (its going to take several weeks to do it, even with a bunch of people doing it).

If you are a Fan Fic author looking for access to post in the dedicated forums sections or to publish in the Fan Fiction section of the main site, send me a PM requesting promotion to Fan Fiction author. 

Everyone should take a look at the Site and Forums / Moderation articles now. They won't sound outrageous to anyone who has been a part of the community for any length of time. We don't intend to change our general outlook on policing the forums (we mostly expect people to treat everyone with respect so we don't have to police anyone). As long as our community stays as mature as it usually is, I don't think anyone will experience anything different. But now its in clearly worded writing and we can point at it when we stick our steel toed boots up your misbehaving rear. :)

NOTE: I don't get an email telling me that you registered for the site until AFTER you validate your email. Don't register and then complain that you haven't been approved. If your email isn't taking mail from us, you should investigate that. Now that we have cool stuff like email validation and other working admin tools, subscriptions, RSS feeds, and so on... you need to make sure your side of things is working too. If for some reason you are having problems and can't solve the email validation thing... send me an email from the address that you are trying to register with to  KristinDarken (no space) at this site's domain (whateleyacademy.net).

Also, another note for those of you who have watched the whateleystatus page at wisdomsprice.com ... if you want to change your bookmark, you can. You can also access that status page via http://status.whateleyacademy.net

And: As Announced earlier in the day, we have a couple Vignette offerings for you today. From Morpheus: A Touch of Mischief.   And from Elrod: The Penance Factor.  Enjoy!