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Following is the list of finalists for groups to keep following the upcoming redo of the group purge/cleanup:

Basic
Premium
Romance
Historical Fiction
Thriller/Mystery/Suspense
Fantasy/Magic/Sci-fi - currently still called medieval fantasy/magic
Young Adult & New Adult
Spirituality & Religion
Memoirs & Self-discovery
Dark Tales - includes Gothic thrillers, horror, vampire/werewolf stories, etc.
New Authors - this will combine the existing groups New Novelists and New Members
Writing Tips & Site Help

Nobody spoke up for the following, so they won't be kept:

This is Us
You Read Mine, I Read Yours
Literary Fiction

Only the Dark Tales group will be truly new. We can add to the above list down the road as needed. However, since we can only each belong to ten groups, no one will be able to join them all, which means we'll need volunteer moderators to keep a collective eye on the groups as a whole.

Please add to this thread if there are any of the above you would be willing to moderate going forward. I know groups can have more than one moderator, although I don't know if there's an upper limit. Based on past experience, being a moderator really only involves keeping an eye out for problems and welcoming/guiding new group members, who are usually new site members as well. However, it assumes you'll be onsite often enough to serve in that role. Ideally, we should have at least 2 moderators per group.

I'll probably be a moderator for most of them initially, at least until I can finish the post-purge cleanup steps. I don't have the cycles yet to kick that off, and I haven't even approached Sol as to when he might have time to redo the mass purge.

In cases where two or more groups are being "combined", that really just means we'll rename one of the existing ones (to give it its new name) and then delete the other ones.

Thanks and Happy Holidays!
Dirk

I'm probably going to end up with either the Sweltering or the Albuma (winds). I lean toward the latter.

I narrowed it down to:
The Egg Poacher
The Sweltering
The Simmering
The Bitch-In-Heat

Any other forms of cooking I missed in the previous post?

Found these online. They're not usable, but they are funny.

Hotter than a Times Square Rolex.
Hotter than a hen laying hard-boiled eggs.
Hotter than a cow giving evaporated milk.
Hotter than Satan's mix tape.
Southern women don't sweat - they glisten.

Thank you for the link. I don't recall which pope started the process, but the Vatican apparently wants every diocese to have an exorcist. One of the things they do is bless buildings, which is considered a form of exorcism, so it's not usually as exciting as little girls throwing up pea soup.

New naming contest. Earth in the distant future still suffers from the aftereffects of climate change in the form of stubbornly high temperatures, the result of the planet experiencing the beginnings of a runaway greenhouse effect in the early centuries of the 3rd millenium, which was only halted because Dr. Narky brought civilization to its knees with her faulty vaccine, causing the population to crash from 10B down to 1B. I had been calling this the Warming, but as Jack rightly pointed out, since the planet actually ceased "warming" long ago, it's the wrong term. I had considered calling it the Broiling (with Terrans nicknamed roast beef by other worlds), but that's too in-your-face, hence boring. I want a term (preferably only one or two words, perhaps an acronym) that people coin to describe "hot as hell", say 5-10 degrees hotter than today. Ideally, the term should also have a humorous element to it.

Here's an example: Apollo could feel the heat of the "Albuma" winds blowing, a word derived from the acronym ALBUMA, which means "a lightning bolt up my ass." Censored of course.  :-)

Hotter than Satan eating California Repears at the Big Bang! No idea what the acronym/short form would be. Sefcabb? Nah.
Or maybe just: Apollo could feel the heat of California Reapers stalking him in the Amazon.
Apollo wore heat-dissipating clothing to keep the heat of the California Reapers at bay.
Hot enough to fry a camel! Hefac. Could perhaps use it as a curse word. As Apollo stepped outside, he said, "Hefac!"
Hot enough to fry fish in a river! Heffir? Nope.

Whatever the final word is, I plan to use it a few times without explaining what it is until later, and it therefore should be cool/funny enough to be worth the wait for the reader.

Etc.

Thanks
Dirk

Ah, crap. What would I use for the military mantra? "For the Sovereign Stars" seems rather long for troops to yell as they charge into battle. "For the Stars" seems weird, but "The Sovereign Stars" could work. I suppose "For the Sovereign Stars!" could be the actual mantra, but troops rushing into battle shorten it.

Absolutely. If I remember correctly, Muslims consider Jesus a prophet but nothing more. Although, technically, Connor could try to convince them their beliefs are simply incorrect, that woud be something he'd be unlikely to be able to sell to most Muslims. However, his performance at St. Peter's Basilica would certainly help. Or, if I wanted to go nuts, I could have many non-Christian holy places "collapse" without explanation around the world as acts of God. Ditto for any places non-Catholic Christians revere but Catholics do not. Those are much more convincing events than mere attempts at persuasion. And, after all, these aren't actual acts of God since any reader of book one will know he's the Antichrist.

Destroying the Dome would fit with a literal interpretation of Revelation, not a Catholic one. Catholics believe rebuilding the temple is all figurative wording. From Wikipedia:

Although I will borrow some elements from a Protestant belief of a final battle at Armageddon (Satan and his armies will gather there in preparation for war), that's merely for show. Christ and Satan both know that the "battle" will come down to Connor's choice of who (whom?) to kill. I may include a skirmish between the angels and demons, which halts when Christ returns, in preparation for Connor's decision.

Also, I don't plan to incur the wrath of Muslim readers by destroying one of their most holy sites, even in fiction. There will be some effort by Connor in book two to convert them, just as he'll try to convert others, but I'm not likely to go into much detail since it would require studying multiple other religions to figure out how best to squeeze Connor into their existing beliefs. TBD.

The islands were renamed after someone named Bezos (who could it be?) from the past (and why were they renamed?). I can't imagine. Everything else is left up to the imagination of the reader.

Minor change: the Eternal Colonies are now the Independent Colonies, which seems pretty clear that they're (duh) independent (i.e., not colonies of the Earth/Imperium, as one might otherwise assume). "Free" would have worked as well, but Independent sounds loftier IMO.