Hi there!
I’m not going to renew my membership. Not that it matters, but I thought I’d share my observations and reasons for not renewing.
This site has changed, it seems, in terms of its members (since 20 years ago). Some of the best stuff I’ve ever read have come from this site, and, depending on your tastes, still comes from this site.
I find the variety of genres has shifted more towards sci-technical, modern tactical battles, military, plenty of horror, with a smattering of very good self-improvement ideas. There’s still memoirs, that’s good. Best one I ever read was on this site (I miss you, Gina).
Less are the whimsical fantasy books. I’ve found a few and was pleased to read them all the way through and left my comments. It didn’t matter to me that the authors hadn’t been active in years and never responded, I didn’t expect them to, I simply enjoyed the reads.
In addition, many books here are in progress. It’s difficult for me to wait a long time between chapters of several books at once to remember details and to better judge the pace of the story. I feel it’s a disservice to reviewing — in my case, at least.
That said, I’ve done a fair amount of reviewing since I returned — thoughtful ones. Not as many reciprocations as I hoped, but that can be due to the simple fact that I’m not a preferred genre (either memoir or fantasy). Not all the genres mentioned above are my preferred taste in reading, so I get that.
I learned something this time around. A reviewer who starts reading your book on Chapter 45 can have viable advice, grammatically speaking, and supportive comments about your style (or not), but the meat of the book, the story and flow itself, is left untouched.
Bottom line: Not getting much feedback here with my stuff. Not to say that I won’t be back with the next book I write, but for now at least, I’ll bow out from the current selection of reading material when my subscription runs out on the 19th.
Y’all keep writing(comma) and edit, edit, edit, edit.
whatta
P.S.: If Sol ups the prize money for contests it might attract new subscribers. A thousand bucks would be nice. Five hundred for second.
