The Official Authors' Hangout Valentine's Day 2018 Support Thread

I would recommend putting the exact phrase first followed by a carriage return before the rest of the Notes.
 
Ohhhhhh I'm in for January! A Valentines Day story. :heart::heart::heart:

"Screw your Roses, Asshole" - coming right up!

Wooo hooo. On a roll here. Número uno done and working on my second. Anyone know how to fly an Apache?(the helicopter, that is).
 
I admit I'm struggling.

Thought I'd finished one, but put it over night and went back and read it. Bleargh.

Then I got stupid and thought I'd write about my wife. Way too soon.

When I finally recovered from that debacle, I've been toying with other ideas. But, everything just seems to faceplant after the first few paragraphs.

Not saying I definitely won't have a horse in the race. Just that I'm not where I should be to be comfortable. Still working at it, though.
 
Share prices in Intel just went up.

Well, LOL, funny guy. :D - got 5,000 words in before I had to abandon my keyboard for the day. The start's done, the ends done and the outlines done. The ending is soooo sad. My eyes are going to be red from crying soon. Sob! Leaving the hot sex until last, next is the Apache gunship scene. Thank god my beloved has hundreds of military action novels. Going to go find some hot shoot em up scenes with helicopters and see how you do it. Those guns on those Apaches sound like they make big holes in things.
 
I admit I'm struggling.

Thought I'd finished one, but put it over night and went back and read it. Bleargh.

Then I got stupid and thought I'd write about my wife. Way too soon.

When I finally recovered from that debacle, I've been toying with other ideas. But, everything just seems to faceplant after the first few paragraphs.

Not saying I definitely won't have a horse in the race. Just that I'm not where I should be to be comfortable. Still working at it, though.

There you are. You have it on one. A romance. A Horse and his Girl (to paraphrase C S Lewis and Narnia). Horse, girl riding. Girl meets boy who needs rescuing. Girl rescues boy. Boy gets a woody. Making out on horseback.....
 
There you are. You have it on one. A romance. A Horse and his Girl (to paraphrase C S Lewis and Narnia). Horse, girl riding. Girl meets boy who needs rescuing. Girl rescues boy. Boy gets a woody. Making out on horseback.....

Making out on horseback sounds better than it is when attempted.

If the horse is walking? OK-ish.

Trotting? Hard on the knees?

Cantering? Getting dangerous.

Galloping? Someone is going to break something...
 
Well, LOL, funny guy. :D - got 5,000 words in before I had to abandon my keyboard for the day. The start's done, the ends done and the outlines done. The ending is soooo sad. My eyes are going to be red from crying soon. Sob! Leaving the hot sex until last, next is the Apache gunship scene. Thank god my beloved has hundreds of military action novels. Going to go find some hot shoot em up scenes with helicopters and see how you do it. Those guns on those Apaches sound like they make big holes in things.

Wasn't there a movie with Nick Cage and... uh... Tommy Lee Jones(?) where they were Apache pilots? I want to say Cage was the newbie and Jones (or whoever it was) was his trainer. Seem to remember a scene where they drove around in a car with Cage driving with a periscope thing taped to his head.

(ETA; Found it. Seems like I recall a lot of cockpit shots if that's the sort of thing you are looking for.)
 
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This will be my first contest entry.... and might be my first Loving Wives Story.... What could go wrong?
 
This will be my first contest entry.... and might be my first Loving Wives Story.... What could go wrong?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing could go wrong.

Seriously, welcome to the asylum and the bestest of luck. Great to see more new faces in every contest. Says the one whose been here two and a half whole entire years and half a dozen contests. Lol.
 
Nothing. Absolutely nothing could go wrong.

Seriously, welcome to the asylum and the bestest of luck. Great to see more new faces in every contest. Says the one whose been here two and a half whole entire years and half a dozen contests. Lol.

Well thank you for the encouragement! I look forward to the experience.
 
I don't think I can manage to submit the one I started on last night. Not with a straight face anyway. If I can get it finished, and if I can manage to make myself submit it, it would have to go in humor since the "Fuck Up Fairy" filled in for "Cupid".
 
I don't think I can manage to submit the one I started on last night. Not with a straight face anyway. If I can get it finished, and if I can manage to make myself submit it, it would have to go in humor since the "Fuck Up Fairy" filled in for "Cupid".

The "Fuck Up Fairy" often does. I think that fairy is a manifestation of Cupid when drunk. How many possible romances should never have started?
 
I'm 3,500 words into a new story for Valentine's Day. I have several part-written stories in my ancient pending for this contest file. Are any of them worth continuing?

Nothing will happen to stories tomorrow. It's the belated family gathering for Christmas with excited grandchildren.
 
Do plot bunnies get born, or do they hatch?

Mine's hatched, I think. I’ve got a bunch of paid stuff I’m currently sitting on, but I think I’ll be able to squeeze in some time and effort for a V-day fling. Might as well.

I’m not into “first time” stories, but this one will probably be the closest I come. Better check what the deadlines are.
 
I have always found the V-Day contest hard. This year I'm hoping to finish a story I started last year, which is a Singles Awareness Day (S.A.D.) story. If you don't like the theme, bend it :)
 
Category?

I haven't done a contest entry before. Should it be a certain category? Or do some categories do better than others??

Thanks for the info!

~Jen
 
I haven't done a contest entry before. Should it be a certain category? Or do some categories do better than others??

You can put it in any category you want. Some categories will generally score higher than others, just like for stories that aren't in contests. For instance, SciFi&Fantasy rates stories high and LW rates them low. On the other hand, individual stories can defy those trends, and the broader readership you get in a contest and the contest sweeps may offset some of those differences.

I'm not sure if this is always true, but in last year's VDay contest two of the three winners were published in Romance and the third was a GM romance. The Romance category isn't large, but it does have an engaged community that reads, votes and comments. The down side to the category is that if the Romance readers don't feel like your story is right for the category then they will rate it unmercifully.
 
I haven't done a contest entry before. Should it be a certain category? Or do some categories do better than others??

Thanks for the info!

~Jen

A few years back a BDSM story won the Valentines Day Contest. Anything is possible.
 
Historically, Romance had a strong advantage across the board, but especially in the Valentine's contest. In this contest, that was the law of averages, because such a large percentage of the stories were in Romance.

As the site has grown, and new categories have regularly attained enough votes to qualify, that advantage has contracted.

( There were around a dozen that rarely managed to get the 25 votes when I first started, and that was years after the first themed contest )

Romance still has an advantage, but you're also competing with many stories in the same category. With the hubs drawing more of the story-seeking traffic away from the main new stories page, it's possible that a bad roll of the dice could have you fall off the hub's new story list before day 1 is over, which could hurt.
 
I have come to the conclusion that writing romantic and sexy while fighting the flu is just not possible for me. So, guess I'm going to at least wait until the vomiting and sneezing (often at the same fucking time) stops.
 
I have come to the conclusion that writing romantic and sexy while fighting the flu is just not possible for me. So, guess I'm going to at least wait until the vomiting and sneezing (often at the same fucking time) stops.

Get well and remember, you still have lots of time.
 
Get well and remember, you still have lots of time.

That's what I said a couple of competitions ago and I got Sammi Woo in 20 minutes before the deadline after some marathon writing binge or something. LOL.

Good luck Puckit.
 
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