Updates and a Petition

Again, I'm late with posting. Curse you lazy summer days that make me lazy and summer jobs that keep me busy! Yes, I do have some summer jobs. My grandmother recently had hip surgery (it went well) and now I get to be her chauffeur. I love my grandmother dearly, so I'm happy with the arrangement.

My second job is editing a newsletter my mother's friend is in charge of. If it goes well enough, I'll move up to moving data from websites for a client of his. It's my first freelance writing job!

Enough on the personal life. Let's get to the book/writing news. A couple days ago I had to print out three more copies of the contract to sign and send (Spencer Hill emailed they needed three for some reason). But I've been alerted that Leticia's received them and is sending them to the publisher, so hopefully I can start doing publishing work soon.

I've also started writing my fourth novel. No spoilers here, but I will say it's for an older audience, it's complex, it's big, and it's going to be post apocalyptic/science fiction with robots and holograms and stuff. Did I mention this is big? Thankfully I have the whole plot lined out so I know where I'm going.

Finally, I have a favor to ask you, my loyal readers. Most of you don't know, but I'm a loyal reader/patron at www.fanfiction.net. This is a site where anyone can go and write/post stories about their favorite books, movies, video games, etc. while using the characters as their own. It's a place of great creativity, and some of the stories I've read their are true masterpieces, some even better than real books.
However, as of June 4th, and I quote,
"... FF.net has decided to go through a massive upheaval and remove thousands of stories from its library, some of the best fanfics ever written, gone, never to be read again. They are removing anything involving sexual situations, or violence, or inspired by a song. The list goes on. And we as readers see this as a gross waste of talent and incredible material."
Apparently Fanfiction.net's M rating is for stories with foul language and THEMES of violence/sex, not actual violence/sex. As a result, the proctors are going deleting stories WITHOUT PRIOR WARNING. Some of these people don't have second copies of their stories saved somewhere, so a story that took YEARS to write can be gone, along with all the hard work the author put into their tale.
This is an outrage! Are they trying to make their writers leave the site? Don't they know about freedom of expression and the 1st Amendment? Why can't they just create a MA rating, or a sister site for MA stories, or create adult filters and age restrictions? The technology to do so is available!

Thankfully, we can do something about this. Go to http://www.change.org/petitions/fanfiction-net-stop-the-destruction-of-fanfiction-net# to sign a petition to stop this pointless deletion of stories and look for other options. It'll only take a couple of minutes to register and sign. If you want to know more, check out this forum at http://forum.fanfiction.net/topic/111772/63683250/31/.

Cheers, Colleen
"We're not gonna take it!
No, we ain't gonna take it!
We're not gonna take it, ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!"