Graeme

Not one of mine, but I think @DynoReads is correct -- it's by Maxieplus. Check Nifty as I think amost of their stories are posted there.

Don't confuse correlation and causation. One of the key criteria for Promising Author and Signature Author is quality, but it's difficult to judge quality on a small sample, so naturally there's a certain minimum amount of writing required to allow the quality to be assessed. So there's a correlation with word count but there's not a causal link.

Thank you, that's a great summarisation! Small communities can be tight-knit, which is a great advantage, but sometimes it's also a disadvantage. This is an example of where it's a disadvantage, but you can also see how the community holds together and support's each other...up until a point. Scott's heart was torn in two by the situation, but the community is being torn in two, too. Scott, with Gramps help, has resolved his conflict. It remains to be seen if the community will resolve theirs, and what that resolution will be...

Thank you! I've always loved Grandpa -- a crotchety old man with a heart of gold.

We've lost someone great... Rest in Peace, Carlos

Late to the party, but congratulations!

I will admit I was surprised by the recent accusations levelled at Hawthorn regarding their treatment of Aboriginal players. I don't know enough to comment, but I always keep in mind that things are rarely as simple as the media presents. I suspect that there is an element of truth in the accusations but that the reality isn't exactly how the media is showing it.

Please join the Author Promotion Team in congratulating Dodger as GA's newest Signature Author! @Dodger has been a member at GA for more than 10 years and is best known as the author of the very popular The Cockney Canuck. But don't forget his other stories, such as A Soldier's Guide to Single Parenting which is this month's CSR story. Have a read and then share your thoughts on Monday 28th November! Congratulations, Dodger!

Please join myself and the Author Promotion Team in congratulating @kbois in becoming GA's newest Promising Author. She has been a member at GA for just under five years, and in that time she has posted over 900,000 words across ten stories. Writing mainly romances, she's the author of the popular shifter novels Spirit Wolves and Shadow Effect as well as the very entertaining The Devil is Gay short stories. You can find all of her stories on her author page so please don't be shy about taking a look. Congratulations, kbois!

On theme interpretation, I remember one of the older anthologies had a theme of "A Rainy Day". How can that be interpreted? Probably lots of stories about rain, but it doesn't have to be that way. Inspired by the idea of "saving for a rainy day" I wrote a story about a day of challenges for the protagonist. It didn't make that particular anthology, but I submitted it for the next one with the title of "A Rainy Day" instead. Another author had a story about a massive forest fire and firefighters being parachuted in to fight it. When I read it, I interpreted that as "praying for a rainy day", but the author later on told me that it was actually inspired by the song "It's Raining Men." Similarly, if you go back over the older anthologies you'll find lots of stories where a 'non-obvious' interpretation of the theme has been used. Use your imagination to make the theme an inspiration, not a straitjacket...

Please join the Author Promotion Team in congratulating northie as GA's newest Signature Author! @northie has been a member since 2016 and in that time has posted over 500k words across 35 stories including the popular Never Too Late series of novels. If you haven't read them yet, don't hesitate. You can find these stories and others at northie's author page.

Thank you! As I said in a previous comment, several elements were drawn from real life situations that I read about in the local newspapers. The street prostitution including selected streets formale prostitution and the locals helping the street kids, these were things reported in that area of Melbourne back in the 80s. Thankfully, things are better now, but some of the underlying issues are still around.

Please join myself and the Author Promotion Team in congratulating @astone2292 in becoming GA's newest Promising Author. Aaron has only been a member at GA for just under two years, but in that time he has posted over 600,000 words across eight stories. Writing mainly paranormal romances, he's the author of the popular Cerrunnos shifter story as well as his current novel Death in the Shadows, the third in his In the Shadows series. You can find all of Aaron's stories on his author page so please don't be shy about taking a look. Congratulations, Aaron!

Please join myself and the Author Promotion Team in congratulating @Mawgrim in becoming GA's newest Promising Author. Mawgrim has only been a member at GA for less than two years, but in that time he has posted over 700,000 words across twenty-three stories. While many of his stories are fan-fics set in Anne McCaffrey's world of Pern, he also writes in other genres including his current intriguing mystery Hidden Secrets. His most recently completed and popular Pern story, Empty, Open, Dusty, Dead, is part of his series based in the Eighth Pass while his current story, To The Weyr is one of his stories set in the Ninth Pass. If, like me, you're a fan of the Pern stories, don't forget to check them out! You can find all of Mawgrim's stories on his author page, so what are you waiting for? Congratulations, Mawgrim!

Just to complicate things further, the burned vs burnt is also an English dialect issue. In American English, burned is the norm, but in British (and Australian) English, burnt is the norm. So, you'll words that end with a "t" instead of "ed" more commonly in writing from countries that also use words like "colour" instead of "color". That's one of the things I've "learnt" while developing as a writer... Here's a link on British vs American irregular verbs. It's only a sample, but it shows some of the complexity in the different dialects of English. The Cambridge Dictionary site has a list of irregular verbs in British English.