The good morning, good night thread

[ozmosis7]

Will keep him in our thoughts here, Carey. Hope all goes well, and a speedy recovery.

[Geoff_N]

My gran used to say bad news comes in threes. So following Cathy's news and hopefully - not really bad news from notsoscarey - I report that my daughter's best friend discovered her brother had died a few days ago. He was only 33 and apparently training for a marathon run on Helsby Hill near us in Chester. He was found barely alive and taken to hospital on Nov 2 but couldn't give his name. He died a few days later without family because they didn't realize the unidentified man was him. His funeral was today. Heopfully, it is good news for the rest of the weekend.

[ozmosis7]

Ugh! Sad news. Will keep your daughter in our thoughts, as she goes through this tough time with her friend.

[Geoff_N]

I'm attending the rebel breakaway SFF book group in Chester this afto. We're discussing that fascinating book A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller. Should be entertaining. I wonder if they discuss my books when I'm not there?

[notsoscarey]

Thanks.  I hope things start looking up for everyone soon.  I'll start looking up right now, if only to confuse the cats.

[LashSlash]

this in from ed [part of it] after an exchange of pm's:-

,,,,,,,Glad to see I misunderstood what you were saying. ........I reckon it would be a good idea for you to say something about the misunderstanding on the good morning good night thread, just to smooth the waters a little with the rest of the forum members.......

what i said in a cryptic post, that i have since deleted, was: [non cryptic version]:  - fenriswolf, i am the ap[n]ointed resident chickenshit-arshole of this wwwsite and if you think i am going to let you [him-fenriswolf] usurp my position as mr unpopular, you [fenriswolf] should best fuck-off and go somewhere else with your bullshite, cus nobody wants [or likes] you over here, mostly myself.

.... well i hope that clears things up, amd if my infamous post made me more  enemies than friends --  at this stage of the game it doesnt bother me one way  or the other. all i can do is remind you-all of the review i wrote about cafedoom, when i failed to ingratiate myself in days of yore. [i'll search it out and edit in a link]

 

[LashSlash]

i coudnt find the link -- i found this in my files:-



Café Doom is more than the run-of-the-mill wwweb lit-site – it’s a hangout for ardent devotees of Horror. As its name says: it’s a café; take a seat, chill and hang with friends, if you dare: your waitressa could very well turn out to be a Zombiessa, out to eat you.

At last count there were 355 members [though some are probably more than half-dead when it comes down to actual participation on the boards,] this is a respectable membership for any forum. Some more stats, if it’s of any interest: 37162 posts in 3412 topics… stats are stats – whichever way you read them. It’s the here & now that counts.

Here & now at Café Doom - the Home Page:
‘Release the hounds of hell’ is the top line of the page. Vaccinated canines or not, I didn’t actually shiver in my boots, though the page itself was black. The horror genre is far removed from my own spheres, as far as far can be, so I must admit it was with some trepidation that I skipped the home-page and entered Café Doom’s forum.

Here & now at Café Doom – the Forum:
‘Yikes’ – another black page! This one filled with the normal run-of-the-mill threads we find on most sites, with one notable exception – ‘The Dark Arts’ forum. Here I discovered a world of art devoted to: not letting you sleep at night, and if you do manage to drop off - don’t dream. Writing skills aside, the posters of some of the images are talented artists in their own right.

I have always thought the mainstays of any self-respecting lit-site to be a flash-challenge comp and a works-in-progress section where peer critique and help are exchanged on a quid-pro-quo basis. Both these are instrumental in developing and honing writing skills.

The Doom Flash Challenge operates quite adequately. The turnout for the comp is adequate and the turnover is adequate too. Personally, I enjoyed more the entry poems than the fiction, which was rather genre orientated.

Unfortunately the Ye Olde Workshoppe, the works-in-progress thread, is largely dysfunctional. I used an old ploy to see if I could draw some Zombies out from their crypts [if that’s where they hang out] – I posted some smut. It seems Zombies like smut…

In general helpful feedback was short and short in coming. Something was missing and on investigation I discovered an inner room to the Doom Café - an inner critique workshop.

This inner critique workshop provides the best formal critiquing that I've found anywhere. Join it, if you can. I asked around and was told: ‘The only downside is the workload. They use a rigorous template for critiquing, and in the first week of each month that you use the workshop you need to write substantial and well thought out critiques for at least four of the stories posted - and these may be thousands of words long each. Still worth it, in my opinion.’ And I tend to agree. If you want to make the effort to improve as a writer – it’s all there, there for the giving and the taking.

Some literary fora are boring. In general the forum banter in the Doom Cafe is jovial, witty to a degree, and acceptably sophisticated. Lit-forums can be touchy places - indicative of a closely knit website, of cyber-buddies, hyper-sensitive about their own work and hanging out with each others' foibles. In some lit-sites this does not bode well. In a flash things can go terribly wrong when rudeness takes over and sarcasm rules and 'in-cliques' vie for wank-supremacy.

The great thing about Cafe Doom is the lack of cliques and all those associated bad feeling some forums get. There is an opinion that this happens because horror writers get rid of all their angst in their stories, leaving them as some of the most well-adjusted and normal people in their 'real' lives that you'll find amongst any set of writers.

I was told this: ‘I joined originally because of their annual (free) short story contest. I stayed because they're a great bunch of people and it's one of the friendliest sites around.’

Take a look at ‘The good morning, good night thread’ – over two thousand one hundred posts of people sharing and caring for each other. This says it all!

[JonP]

Gosh, Cathy - only just seen this. Really sorry to hear your news. My sympathies to you and your husband.

[marc_chagall]

Thank you Jon. Appreciated.

As Daniel has just said, "Take a look at ‘The good morning, good night thread’ – over two thousand one hundred posts of people sharing and caring for each other. This says it all!"

This is a good place to be, in good times and bad.

[Rev. Austin]

I'd like to offer my condolences, too, Delph. And Carey - hope your dad doesn't have to stay in hospital too long!

No bad news in my world at the mo - tonight sees Tinpot do our first Film Club (we're showing The Lost Boys). We've got the use of what used to be the Scunthorpe Screen but is now a youth centre. Proper old cinema room, with ragged red seats. No idea how many will turn up, but we're hoping enough people show up to the first few we do to make Film club a worthwhile event. I did find out the other day, though, that there's some weird backstabbing stuff going on in the local council that's put us in a bit of a catch-22 situation: if we, as an independent arts company, can prove that we're capable of running a successful event, we'll be given sole use of the centre. This means it'd be taken away from youth services and all the staff associated with running it will be out of a job. And some of them are currently helping us with the Film Club.  Awkwaaarrrddd.

[Geoff_N]

The wind was too gusty and unpredictable for cross winds for a long bike ride today. I would still have gone -- just a little slower to avoid the sudden lateral displacements, but wife pleaded. At least she offered compensation... Hope the wind farther north hasn't caused problems for Doomers. I know a writer friend in Canonbie who now has her chimney in her garden.

[akaShoe]

So what're the rules in regard to posting home movies of your cute kids?

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/yQy8VotjZEE?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/yQy8VotjZEE?version=3&amp;amp;hl=en_US</a>

[JonP]

Hehe. Neat

[marc_chagall]

Nice one!

[notsoscarey]

Adorable!