Jules - I choose to move on from the discussion. I'm sure we both have far more productive things to do with our time. I know I never have enough hours in the day. Tess

Hey ARM --

The guy who wrote "Don't Read This" is me   I'd been away from the site for a while, then let my membership expire and just recently came back on line.  Thanks fopr your interest in my work.

jaames

www.angryredmark.com

Welcome back, and good luck.


R A Keen

Good to see you, Mark.  I trust life is better for you now?

Has anybody seen my glasses? Oh wait, here they are. Never mind.

Angry Red Mark wrote:

I, Angry Red Mark, officially announce that I exist. Please escort yourselves quickly to the nearest Angry Red Mark story in a neat and orderly fashion. That is all.

*snickers!*

C'mon, folks!  I too suffered ARM's slings and arrows.  That was then.  This is now.  Clean slate all around, ok?

(*Thinking to myself* 'I wasn't expecting to get any posts, let alone four. I don't want to leave comments unresponded to and discourage future posting, since I already get too few of them, and my website is barren of feedback. I better not tick off what little fanbase I have. I still get peeved when Weird Al doesn't return my fan mail, and he's probably a lot busier than me.')
     
    Don't worry everybody. As soon as my year-long membership expires on 22 November, I won't be returning. The only reason I keep hanging around here is because I've already paid for the right to.
     Thanks for taking the time to look jack, but jaames is right here, commenting just before you. I'm guessing you posted without reading the whole forum. Your enthusiasm to do so is appreciated. His stuff is good, by the way. I hope you checked it out.
     And yes Filliam, I don't feel like making enemies. One of the major reasons why I don't post stories here anymore is because I got tired of criticizing other beginners' work. It seems weird to hover over my peers, and I don't know how to do it without sounding like a jerk. I'd rather stick my barbs into established authors that are too big to feel it.

(*Thinking to myself* I hope I was able to tie all these loose ends into a single thread. I really hate how I kept saying 'I'. That's really bad form.')

[This comment has been removed due to legal action by the Church of Scientology.]

I'll post something a few days before I leave. I haven't decided what yet.

Angry Red Mark wrote:

[This comment has been removed due to legal action by the Church of Scientology.]

Going viral ARM?  Or just trying..

I took off “Let Him Go!† from the readers list. I was hoping putting it on would be a fun throwback to my active days here, but instead ended up as a helpful reminder of why publishing in TNBW.com always drove me crazy. Posting something on MY website feels like enshrining it in a temple; here it’s like dumping my cherished valuables onto a company conveyer belt to see it disappear into a desolate horizon after possibly getting probed by a few inspectors. Maybe it’s just a compatibility issue with me.

For any guests that are reading this and wondering whether to join, I’ll try to be straight with you. TheNextBigWriter.com is like a less terrible version of Booksie.com (possibly offset by costing money to join). You know how when you first publish something on Booksie and interest will spike for the first initial minutes, only drop to nothing, leaving you with only a handful of other new members that are only interested in begging you to review their own stuff? And the only way to climb back up to relevancy is to aggressively win friends and influence people, rather than allowing the quality of your work to speak for itself? It fundamentally works like that here, only it’s far less severe.

This means don’t expect any sort of hands-on assistance from the webmaster. After all, you’re not paying him to prep you and guide publishers to your attention. No, your membership fee will likely be pissed away into prize money for some silly contest. Whoever is in charge of this website just hangs back indifferently like he’s the freakin’ Wizard of Oz. I never met the Wizard during my year-long time in this magical land, so maybe I’m just bitter that I lost my chance to wish him for a publishing contract.

Any hope of getting your money’s worth comes entirely from the other members, so if you’re not good at making friends with jerks (I kid because I love), or they shun you after getting a bad reputation, it makes no difference how much you paid to be here. You’re SOL.

But my ranting aside, I don’t fault our overlord for this sad state of things. He’s open to solutions for making the best possible website for new writers, and I honestly can’t come up with anything better. So for any guests who are serious about becoming an author in an increasingly hopeless profession and are looking for a place to start online, TNBW didn’t satisfy me at all, but I can truthfully say that it’s the best one I know of on the Internet.

I can’t leave without addressing maxkeanu about “Let Him Go!† I still think your review was really unfair, (to give one example: The parody is short because it’s the same length as the original.) but I see now that the vitriol came out of a wound I unintentionally pried open, and for that I’m sorry to cause any pain. I was unaware of your personal history, and what happened to your sister was horrifying. The point of my parody wasn’t to mock victims, but to mock the growing legal mindset that ignores justice for the sake of outrageous leniency. I probably did a too good job of betraying it.  (It’s appropriate that I cap off my time here with yet another apology. My year long experience with the TNBW community in a nutshell: Always apologizing for being hurtfully offensive without being wrong.)

I want to end this thread by thanking TirzahLaughs for taking pity and finding me a home on www.angryredmark.com when I was at the end of my rope. You may feel that you nursed a wounded snake back to health and got bit for your troubles, but my thanks are unconditional, so don’t be pressured into liking me in return. Considering the bad blood I left on TNBW, I wouldn’t recommend it anyway.

ARM out.