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Good one, but it's for the other story. I went with Julius Caesar. The WW2 quote is too far off topic.
The other one is a variant of the elite quote: as easily as spotting the Imperial elite in Rome, fat capital of the Imperium. Of course, that one's a little rude and long. Caesar will probably win by default.

Of course it's insulting. The book makes all kinds of insane commentary about modern society.
I was born in Quebec. Surely they wouldn't get upset at one of their native sons?

Just a wee bit.

I typically get kicked out after about 15-20 minutes.

That's what I've always read. It makes sense really since they can't make money if the same material can be had for free. I doubt that prevents you from posting a small number of the poems on social media platforms as a teaser to build a following. One of our other members, who writes sci-fi and fantasy books, started building his social media presence in the last year or so. He has his own website, where he announces new releases of material, offers free companion stories to his novels in return for signing up to his email distribution list, and posts monthly newsletters about the writing process and his opinions of writing tools he uses. So, you could post poems that won't be available in book form. That's a win/win for you and potential publishers.

With regard to keeping your poems available for free at present, keep in mind that the internet has a long memory.   I posted a short story (fan fiction) set in the Dune universe, which I obviously can't publish for profit since I don't have any rights to do so, and discovered later that it had been nicely repackaged with a e-book cover on another site and made freely available. Cool, but thankfully, it was meant to be distributed for free (all my short stories from this site are posted here with the widest possible visibility, including the internet). I'll probably leave instructions for my executor to make my books available for free after my death as well, assuming I ever finish one.

If you ever need a good laugh, check out my (very) short story called Ms. Bunny Divine, which is itself just a teaser of one of my novels-in-progress. Currently it's only meant to attract site members to read/review the novel, but I could easily post it on the internet for free as a teaser for potential book buyers later.

Regards,
Dirk

SolN, I'm still running into many cases where I'm writing a forum post and the site logs me out, sometimes resulting in an entire long post being lost. One of our newest members and I both just got bitten by these timeouts. I know you and Kdot discussed this last year, which I believe was a cookie timeout issue (please contact Kdot for the details of what he found).

Can this be fixed? While it can be frustrating for long-term members (I sometimes inevitably forget to copy my pending post to the clipboard in case the Submit fails), it no doubt makes a poor first impression for new members who are trying to evaluate the site's stability and suitability for their needs.

Thanks
Dirk

Let me see if I can scare up a few people to answer you. The number of views can be misleading since search engines regularly index the forum content. The best way to network here is to see who has posted poems in the past six months or so (since the early October server/backup crash) and then begin reviewing their work and/or send them connection requests and ask if they'd like to trade reviews. I don't believe anyone lost their work except one or two who were using this site as the only repository of their recently written work, who shouldn't have. I personally lost recent forum posts, but I keep my manuscript(s) offline in Word. Our site admin gave everyone enough points to re-post their work if that's what they wanted.

One solution re the low site payments is to see if you can combine some of them in some logical grouping to make bigger chapters. If not, stick with posting them as individual poems, though consider prepending a number to the title of each poem and/or pick memorable poem titles (e.g., 001 - Ode to the End of the World!). Any poem titles you've already used/posted can be renamed easily enough using the site's edit functionality in case you want to prepend a number to each title.

Another option if you don't get enough feedback here is to check our sister site, Booksie.com. It's newer, with new functionality, and I'm virtually certain it supports poems there as well. Not sure how much their forums get used, though. They do not use a points system at present, so the idea is to build a network of fellow authors who give the kind of detailed feedback you're looking for, and trade ongoing reviews with them without worrying about collecting points for posting. The effort is generally the same: you post poems (for free) and develop a network of people who consistently trade reviews with you.

One way to toot your own horn is to review others and ask them in the closing comments to review your poems and that you're looking to network with authors with whom you want to trade ongoing reviews. We'll call that the hit-them-over-the-head approach, which I sometimes use too.

If other sites to which you've posted have a paywall, then it should be fine to leave them up, at least for now, although check the site's policies regarding copyrights of posted work. If necessary, add a copyright notice to each poem. TNBW does that automatically, although that doesn't stop bad actors from re-posting your work elsewhere if they gain access to it. That can happen to anyone, including famous authors, whose books are in great demand. There's no foolproof way to do it though, except stick with well-established pay sites and add copyright notices. You always have the option to self-publish, of course. Consider looking up desirable publishers and agents and ask them about their policies. It's a given these days that most authors use a pay site to help them workshop their stories before submitting them to agents or publishers.

I'm trying to figure out the best explanation for why mass-casualty weapons don't work on or near Megiddo, where Connor, De Rosa, their human armies, angels, and demons face off at the end of book three. Originally, I thought no functioning electronics whatsoever (e.g., no tanks, armored vehicles, drones, etc.). However, that still leaves both sides with pistols, grenades, shoulder-launched missiles, as well as semi and fully automatic assault rifles/machine guns. Needless to say, that's still too lethal. So, in addition to no electronics, explosives don't work either, which includes bullets. That leaves horses, swords, knives, arrows, spears, and catapults (and probably a number of things I'm forgetting).

I can either justify it as the Father not wanting mass-casualty weapons used at Megiddo, where the Lord will soon appear, or the Father wanting to prevent further mass casualty events across Earth prior to the Lord's return. The latter is a difficult argument to make since the final months, weeks, and days before the 2nd Coming are filled with (super)natural disasters. I don't recall offhand, though, if any of the "elect" (those intended to be saved) are harmed during that period, but I believe so. Of course, that depends on which denominations one talks about since a Catholic interpretation of Revelation is somewhat confusing. I don't recall at the moment what some of the events in Revelation mean from a Catholic perspective.

I know Catholics do not generally believe in a final battle against the Lord's hosts, which is why I created a different battle, primarily De Rosa vs Connor, with angels and demons joining in to protect each side's human armies. A third possibility is simply that only Old Testament weapons work at Megiddo without trying to explain why that might be the case. For some reason, modern technology has stopped working there leading up to the Lord's return.

Since I prefer not to cherry pick too much among different denominations when it comes to what Christian perspective I'll most closely follow, I'll stick primarily with Catholicism, except for some major deviations like a final battle. At the end of book one, Connor sets up the idea that he (as Christ) will try to sway all Christians toward Catholicism since it's easier to manage one denomination than it is 45,000. There will be Protestant characters in the book, but I simply don't have enough years of life left to dig deeply into Protestantism, Islam, Jews, and the many non-Abrahamic religions. :-)  Connor will use the same approach with the other religions: try to convince them that he's God and that they should follow him. Since Jesus is not God in Islam, Connor will probably topple Islamic holy places until they come around to the belief that he actually is Allah. Anyone who doesn't want to believe at that point will simply be ignored until Connor and Satan have destroyed Christ.

I'll let others answer your questions about publishing.

Since you want to combine the poems as a book eventually, you could post it here as a book if you like. You can post individual poems under the Poems section but that becomes unwieldy for 100 poems (see below). For 10K words, I believe you'll need about 31 points to post all that as chapters, which on this site equates to posting about 4-5 chapters of a typical fiction book. Totally doable. If you post each poem as a chapter, you'll eventually end up with 100 or so chapters, which is the limit to how many chapters you can post per book. Anyone who has ever hit that limit simply starts a second book here and keeps going.

Fyi, the reason having 100 posted poems becomes rather unwieldy is that the site doesn't give any indication to reviewers who visit your portfolio (part of your profile) which of your poems they've already read. If they can't remember, they'll have to click on each poem to determine whether they did or not. Memorable poem titles would definitely help in that case. If they read them in the order you post them, then it's easy since they'd simply read the next poem in your portfolio.

If you choose to post your poems as a book, be sure you have the word Poems somewhere in the title so people can see at a glance that that's what it is. Normally, poetry fans look for poems under the Poems section of the home page, so you may need to inform fellow poetry writers that you're posting under books/chapters. Any connections you have to others will automatically let them know via email that you posted another chapter, assuming they haven't disabled email notifications.

However, you should know that the points math for poems differs from books. I believe poems pay you more points per word reviewed but also cost more to post under Poems. Since you'll probably be reading and reviewing poems, the difference in math between the two types of works means it should be fairly easy to accumulate points from reviewing poems and use them to post chapters.

Regardless of which section of the home page you post to, be sure not to include internet when choosing how widely you want to make the posted work visible. Professional publishers won't publish something that's already available for free on the net.

Clear as mud?
Hope that helps.

I think hetero prisoners having gay relationships is the rare exception, not the norm, otherwise it would come up all the time. There are a considerable number of Americans who still think homosexuality is a choice, and they would seize on every opportunity to make their case, just as they used to point to men who, following conversion therapy, declared themselves straight. Problem was, some of those shining examples blew up spectacularly, when they went back to being gay. I remember one of them, a very vocal convert, was caught inside a gay bar (or club), and he wasn't there preaching the joys of conversion. :-)  There's a reason why conversion therapy is increasingly banned for minors.

Given how shameful it was to be gay in centuries past, it doesn't surprise me that some married, perhaps had kids, and "dabbled" on the side. I have to wonder, though, how many of them were actually bisexual instead of homosexual. Either way, I'm betting some of their spouses weren't thrilled with the sex life. :)  Another common alternative was to move away from home.

I remember hearing (reading?) a quote from a gay activist who said that if straight people want to know what gay people think of straight sex, those straight people should try to picture themselves having gay sex. I may have Connor say something like that, although the scene with Connor's homosexual views in the book are already likely to be too long and need trimming. As usual, he's also trying to piss Satan off. :)

Connor expresses fairly liberal opinions on homosexuality which isn't surprising since he's bisexual. His willingness to push his lover, whom he's grooming as a young leader to gather other young people as converts, to adopt less conservative views is an attempt to cast a wide, inclusive net to appeal to not just gays, who are a small minority of the population, but to the many young people who strongly support gay rights because they consider the bigoted views of older generations incomprehensible.

Christ (Connor) is woke!

One of the details I'm still working through is Satan's reactions to all this. He's repeatedly having to explain away Connor's reckless behavior toward visiting dignitaries, including many Protestants, who come to the Vatican to see for themselves whether Connor is Christ. They make the mistake of asking Connor to show them a miracle once too often. As a result, he chooses a Protestant minister's two sons as volunteers for the demonstration. He offers the sons a drink, which Connor also consumes, containing a relatively minor, short-acting poison.

The sons become sick (Connor doesn't) at which point Connor explains that he poisoned them, but that he's willing to save one of them, whichever their father picks. Connor quotes from the Bible that you should not put the Lord to the test. Fortunately, one of the sons (his future lover) recognizes the words and is able to name the chapter and verse for each instance where words to that effect appear in the Bible. Connor "cures" both sons in response to that and invites his future lover to stay at the Vatican.

Satan has to sit there throughout all this, on the verge of a stroke. :P  I may have Connor comment to that effect: "Angelo, you don't look well. Are you having a stroke?"

This version of Connor is so much more fun to write than in book one.

I sketched out part of Connor's seduction of the gay teen. It's pretty tame (lame?). In fact, Connor tells the kid twice that them having sex is entirely his decision. Although, Connor does add an incentive once he's sure the kid is gay: "If it helps, I know where all 63 erogenous zones are on a young, writhing, naked male body. And you won't find those on Google." Naturally, that worked.

I'll probably take out one of the aforementioned assurances that it's the kid's decision. Although, I would never write a scene where Connor forces himself on someone, he doesn't need to be overly proper about it, either. After all, he is trying to seduce the kid, both for sex and as part of his indoctrination.

One of the advantages of introducing a genetic switch in Connor that gives Satan unnatural influence over him is that I can write Connor as a little s--t, but it's largely the result of that switch, which he learns halfway through book two. Connor has an intense need to please Satan, like a serious addiction, but he doesn't even know he's addicted. Of course, that doesn't mean he can't get pissed off at Satan.

Regarding teenagers masturbating, since they supposedly have no need for ejaculating before marriage, why would God give them the ability beforehand? It serves no useful purpose. Murdering someone = killing someone, although for unacceptable reasons. And killing someone is sometimes necessary (e.g., in defence of yourself or others).

I don't know about Protestantism, but Catholics believe the Old Testament points forward to the coming of Christ. Verses take on a whole new meaning when read from that perspective. Some scholars think there may be more than 300 prophecies about Jesus, but it goes beyond that. If you know what to look for, much more of the Old Testament is believed to be about the coming of Christ, even when the verses don't seem to be about that. It's been too long since I read that, so I don't remember any examples.

So, the fact that Catholic Bibles include more books than Protestant ones means some of those prophecies and verses that point forward to Christ are disagreed upon by the two major denominations. They can't both be right, can they? If either one of them is incorrect, then billions of Bibles are in error. Given the many denominations in Christianity, especially in Protestantism, and given that many of those denominations arose as a result of differences in the interpretation of the Bible, that supposedly inerrant book has led to billions of people being led astray. Granted, the Bible could still be inerrant, even though most or all denominations (save for one) are interpreting it incorrectly, but what's the point of declaring the Bible inerrant when billions of Bibles may be wrong, and there is no consensus as to which denomination actually has the correct Bible and no way to find out so as to reach a consensus.

Just to be clear, I'm putting forth Connor's arguments, not my own. I may even have him declare the Bible to be full of errors at some point. He'll definitely espouse beliefs that conflict with the Bible, but he won't push the envelope so far that most people would conclude he's not Christ. He's merely using his arguments as a means to an end: follow him, not some ancient book.