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Posted by: Zyngaru
« on: December 29, 2018, 05:20:45 pm »

Quote from: Jack on December 29, 2018, 04:48:33 pm
Thanks.

I do hope to be able to continue Club Red at some point.  I would like to publish it as it was originally intended, but only Paul Atreides knows if that will happen.

Then I will need to have a talk with Muad'Dib and see what can be worked out.
Posted by: Jack
« on: December 29, 2018, 04:48:33 pm »

Thanks.

I do hope to be able to continue Club Red at some point.  I would like to publish it as it was originally intended, but only Paul Atreides knows if that will happen.
Posted by: Padraig
« on: December 29, 2018, 11:49:24 am »

Whatever you decide is right for us. Thank you for your efforts. I liked the story and could easily read more of the club...  ;)
Posted by: Zyngaru
« on: December 29, 2018, 09:47:57 am »

Being first Pentecostal, then Baptist and now Messianic, I had no idea what Advent was when I first saw it here.  I enjoyed reading the Advent Calendar stories without knowing what Advent was.  It really didn't matter what the meaning of Advent was at first, until Jack asked for volunteers to write something to fill in some holes he had in the calendar.  That is when I looked it up.

Being one of the newbies here I didn't know it was originally intended for multi-author stories.  By the time I arrived Jack was writing everything.  I thought that was how it was supposed to be.  The only reason I wrote something for that one series was because Jack asked, otherwise I would have felt like I was intruding on his project.  Like I said.  I didn't know it was supposed to be lots of different stories from different authors.

I think it would be interesting to go back and have multiple stories from different authors again.   But that is just me.  I know it is difficult to write a fresh Christmas story every year.  I haven't been able to do it.  I can only come up with a new idea every other year or so.  If others are like me, then I can see how the multiple story idea from different authors wouldn't work.  We can't force ourselves to have fresh, new ideas.  They either come or they don't.

So I understand Jack wishing to discontinue the Advent Calendar Series.  It has had to of been tough on him to try and write, teach and take care of his brood of boys all at the same time.  And that isn't taking into account the personal stuff like his mother and other people in his life.

I support Jack in his decision.  I support him if he changes that decision to something else.  Basically I support Jack in whatever his endeavors are.  I am willing to try and help where I can and stay out of the way when I am not needed or wanted. 

I did enjoy this years Advent story.  I would love to read the full story as to how Jack originally envisioned it, but know with his workload, that story will probably never be written.

Thank you Jack for sharing with us.
Posted by: Jack
« on: December 29, 2018, 08:27:20 am »

Quote from: db105 on December 28, 2018, 09:31:18 pm
I respect the decision. The calendar must be a lot of work, and I prefer the real-life stuff anyway, although I found last year's A New Family stories really enjoyable. This years' was not as fun for me, because I don't enjoy consensual spanking stories as much.

Sorry it wasn't as much fun for you.  Things that work for one person won't always click for another.  I do think you'll enjoy what we have planned for next year, however.
Posted by: guest50
« on: December 29, 2018, 03:05:52 am »

I want to offer my thanks to you, Jack, for the incredible amount of effort you put into the Advent Calendar event this year. I respect your decision and look forward to next year when the alternative posts. Thank you again, Jack.
Posted by: db105
« on: December 28, 2018, 09:31:18 pm »

I respect the decision. The calendar must be a lot of work, and I prefer the real-life stuff anyway, although I found last year's A New Family stories really enjoyable. This years' was not as fun for me, because I don't enjoy consensual spanking stories as much.
Posted by: afinch
« on: December 28, 2018, 02:36:50 pm »

I will be very sorry to see the Advent Calendar go.  So long as there will be a series of Christmas/holiday stories, I can live with that.  And even if I couldn't, there isn't much I could do about it anyway.  I've been here for about as long as the site has existed.  These stories are one of my favorite things in Bransom.
Posted by: Jack
« on: December 28, 2018, 08:20:34 am »

I have decided that 2018 will be the last year for the Bransom Advent Calendar.  There are a number of reasons for this decision.

Let me pause to say that, while I have a good memory, it's not perfect.  In this bit of background, I hope everything is right, but allow me to issue apologies in advance if I miscredit or miss someone completely.

The AC is a long running tradition with us here.  I believe it was Kat's idea at first, and I'm pretty sure he was the organizer behind it the first couple of years.  At that point, he had to step back for personal reasons, and I took over.

For those first several years, the Advent Calendar was really that.  Every day, a new story would appear from different authors.  We even used the 'spoiler warning' to hide the stories, so you actually had to open the little door on your advent calendar to get your surprise (I'm Baptist, so I really didn't know much about them before starting to do this).

The problem is, after the first year (when we not only did the AC, but a 12-Days of Christmas follow up), it started getting harder and harder to get new stories.  Part of that was it's hard to come up with 25 new Christmas-themed stories all the time.  I'm sure part of it was that people had personal things.  I do know that part of it was down to a security fear, where we made it harder to find and gain membership here, so things would happen to take members away, but not many new members were coming.  The fact that it's been years since I've been regularly producing stories, thus cutting into the number of new readers who found us, didn't help either.

After a very hard 2014, where I felt like I wrote most of the new stories - often finishing them write as time to post came due, I had severe questions about continuing it, and I came up with the idea of A New Family.  I had what I felt was a strong idea, but I was having trouble getting it on paper, and I went to Wilvalkir to discuss the idea with her.  She liked the idea so much that she gave me a pretty detailed breakdown on the approach and asked to work with me, which resulted in what I felt was a very strong collaboration, which not only refreshed my desire to write, but continued until US politics destroyed my faith in humanity for a while.

In 2016, we had what I feel was a very successful, multi-author project - The Neighborhood.  Kat and Leti both participated, but I think it was Cam's participation that really made it work, since he took over nearly half the workload.

Let me pause to say that I have had what I think were strong ideas for multi-author projects over the last couple of years, but they don't work out.  Many of our most active authors have personal reasons they're not able to contribute.  Some of our most active authors of the past (like myself, to be honest) just aren't that active anymore.  And I still feel that Bransom membership is held back by a combination of my lack of new writing and our current instability after the original forum was closed on us.

Last year, we nearly had a problem.  I had an idea that I liked - a spanko kid stuck in a Christmas-oriented place he didn't want to be... at first.  Still this was not a 25-chapter idea, and it was only because of Zyngaru's All-City Christmas Concert that we were able to make the daily posts.

This year, I had several ideas, but no locked in participation and no idea that really spoke to me.  I was about to cancel the AC all together, when I finally decided to try taking the original idea for Club  Red - which was to have been multiple stories each day, with each character in the club being represented by a different author, who'd be talking about what all of them were doing leading up to the party (and there was supposed to be a contest starting after Thanksgiving and running to the party, with the party being where the results were announced) - and focus on just one of the characters.

While I'm happy with this years AC, I feel like it was an AC in name only.  First of all, there's no surprise to it anymore.  Second, we can't even have people 'opening the door' like we did with the spoiler warnings on the old forum.  Also, for the first time this year, I just wasn't able to keep up and get something posted every day.  Partially that's because I was the only one to produce material this year, for the first time ever (which is okay, because I didn't reach out to any but a very small group), and partially because my situation has changed so much over just the last year or so (with a regular job and homework to grade).

For all those reasons, I feel like the Advent Calendar has outlived it's viability.

As I said, I started thinking about just not doing the AC back in November, and I gave it a lot of thought over the last month, before coming to this conclusion.  If people have been paying attention - especially in chat - they've already seen a reflection of this.

One thing I realized is that it's hard to feel  Christmas-y in August, and it's hard to be real creative when one is under pressure.

With those things in mind, I'm happy to announce that, in 2019, Bransom, TX will be presenting a (more or less) original Christmas Serial by Jack Wells. Thanks to feedback and input from Wilvalkir and Kat St. George, I already have the basic story outlined and annotated and I'm working on filling in the final details.  I hope to pollish this up by Epiphany, so I can put it away with the Christmas decorations, and have it ready to dig out next year when the time comes.

Which is not to say that I'm the only one able to work on this.  While the format of an advent calendar isn't really available, and while I'm not going to stress out anymore if I can't make daily posts, if there is someone else who wants to work in this format and have it appear here rather than MMSA, I'm more than happy to discuss the issue with you.  Having been through this year, and having a better idea what's going to be required, I feel I'll be more prepared for those issues and to get things rolling next year.