Mel's Forum?

What happened to it?

This is the way a forum ends
This is the way a forum ends....??

Ann

alj wrote:

This is the way a forum ends
This is the way a forum ends....??

Ann

I don't understand???

They bored each other to death. lol

Keeping a forum going takes new members so that the topics gain diversity of opinions and input from a variety of experience levels and goals. This forum actually has quite a variety from those published in big houses with lots of experience to those just beginning.

LC wrote:

They bored each other to death. lol

Is that a pun?

dkchristi wrote:

Keeping a forum going takes new members so that the topics gain diversity of opinions and input from a variety of experience levels and goals. This forum actually has quite a variety from those published in big houses with lost of experience to those just beginning.

The disagreements that don't flare to personal insults are the best.

2/22/2011


I hate to sound dumb ...Who's Mel ?


Cheers..Joe

One of PA's biggest fans.

2/22/2011

You mean he was a big supporter of PA ?
Some of these people I never knew ..So
what did he do that was so awful ?


Cheers..Joe

alice wrote:

alj wrote:

This is the way a forum ends
This is the way a forum ends....??

Ann

I don't understand???

The website, like the poem, ends, "Not with a bang, but a whimper."

It's from the last stanza of "The Hollow Men," by T. S. Eliot.

Quote :

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Sorry, Alice. I used it on another thread to explain what happened to a thread on the PAMB.

Ann

2/22/2011


Evidently no one gave me an answer, so I guess this
Mel person was a nobody, not important..Who cares..

Cheers,,Joe..

Joe, you have a PM.

Ann

I liked Mel. She did her best, I think.

Sometimes people who post on forums forget that everyone is a real person with real troubles, feelings, loves, hates and all the rest. It is so easy to discard on the internet. Perhaps that is the way it should be. Perhaps it is like the jet stream in the ocean. It moves so very fast and you can tag on and get slung off at jet stream speed. That is not all bad.

Love,
Betty

The main thing I remember about Mel was the old PAMB thread she shared with Charlie. Things happen, circumstances change, and people respond based on their own experiences and perspectives.

Betty is right.

Ann

Deleted by author

alj wrote:

It's from the last stanza of "The Hollow Men," by T. S. Eliot.

In high school drama class I was required to read a selection with no preparation. The teacher handed me a copy of The Hollow Men. I did okay until I got to, "here we go round the prickly pear," which cracked me up. And the audience. It became my favorite of Eliot's poems. I use a different stanza from it to introduce the prologue to my book, "The Shadow on the Grassy Knoll"


Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

It fits the plot in every way.

("...this is the type of thing I dislike on forums, that is a thread where some people are in the know where others are kept in the dark, so please, who and which forum then..." requested the goblin now, feeling that either it was open to all or it should be kept to PMs instead)

It isn't a secret. I'll fill you in on a little history. PublishAmerica has 30,000 authors. Back in 2005 there where around 12,000 authors. Some of those many authors met on the Publish America Message Board (PAMB) and exchanged books for review. Those reviews were posted on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The PAMB was open to the public but was not a great place to discuss other avenues of publishing. So I set up a forum and invited members of PAMB to join: Carol and Betty joined along with other PA authors.

Then a group of "bashers" from the AW (AbsoluteWrite) forum joined my forum and started to belittle and berate the PA authors for being stupid enough to sign contracts with PA. The arguments became so heated, I deleted the board. Members contacted me about how sorry they were to see the forum fold so I set up a new forum. That lasted a little longer but, eventually, I deleted that too.

Then I moved away from "forumland" and joined LilraryThing. I set up the Children's Fiction group and worked extremely hard building up the group by sending out individual invites to LibraryThing members (a tedious task!). The group still survives but, without my direction, the postings have dropped and the group is not the hive of activity it was in the early days.

Then I set up the Published Authors Network on Ning. At the same time, Jeff Miller, another PA author, had set up Author Society and members from the forums I had set up joined his forum. Mel was a moderator of that forum. I knew Jeff quite well and I recently wrote a recommendation for him on LinkedIn. However, I hardly knew Mel -- although we did have a few interactions on the PA board -- she thanked me once for spelling her name correctly, that's about all I remember.

The Author Society forum was attacked by "bashers" and eventually the members left and looked around for a new place to meet. I invited Dick Stodghill to join the Published Authors Network and he did. However, he didn't know how to use it so I set up this forum, and when it became obvious that the Author Society was dead, I invited Dick to join this forum. He invited the people he enjoyed communicating with on the Author Society forum to join here.

Mel joined this forum for a short while but she objected to the way I ran things here. She decided to have another stab at running a forum and set up Writer's Voice with Don Stephens. What happened next, I have no idea.

Meloni started out as a PA supporter. She eventually became upset with them. She then became a moderator on Jeff Miller’s forum, The Author’s Society, and many of us posted there. Mel then began posting on Absolute Write, voicing her opinion against PA, and the disagreements began. To be truthful, she and I had a very serious argument that went on far too long. I knew the kind of work PA did, but the fact is that they lived up to the contract I signed with them. Most of the anti PA bunch didn't want to hear that. Of course, that bothered me to no end. Then Mel gave up the forum and another woman began moderating it, and she made things much worse. Please remember that this was during the time when the anti PA bunch, who, by the way, never amounted to much writing talent, liked to strike in force. Mel finally stopped posting so much at AW, she and I didn't correspond for a year or so, but we have since renewed our friendship and get along very well. I don't post here all that much now, but I will post in defense of the people I like. Mel is one of those. So is Alice, Betty, DK and some others who still post here. I haven't visited the AW boards in a long time now, preferring to spend my time talking with people who actually can write, and not the losers that over ran that board. Not that all of them were losers, but they certainly had their share. There are some talented writers here, and Alice's new book is proof of that, as is the recently published work of DK. Some of you I don't know, but I do see some that appear interesting. As always there are a few who are just wasting space that could better be filled with third or fourth graders.

I don’t know if Mel didn’t like the way Shelagh ran this board, but I do know that the reason I left here was mostly because of Shelagh’s terminology about her absolute power, to which I objected (and still do) quite strongly.

I rule here.

Long live the Queen!

E.Don,

Can't you see? She only says it to goad you! She probably forgets it until you remind her.

If you can forgive Mel, forgive Shelagh.

Alice, I've known that for a long time.

I appreciate Shelagh's research and candid reflections on many things. I am far from perfection and don't expect it from anyone else. I also appreciate each person who posts here and hope those with experience keep adding their two cents worth as it makes the writing experience richer for all of us. I have a facebook page, but I find it most unsatisfactory as it seems like one way words into space. I do like the way Don greets the day, though.

And Don, I am still haunted by your rose story - and hope you enter it in contests now and then. It was superb writing. I have no idea how well our anthology, The World Outside the Window sold, do you? Anyway, that story of yours was truly a piece of literature.

E.Don,

You need to be here. You can express yourself better here than on Facebook.

"...you writers are so funny..." went the goblin now, adding "...the publishing world is in deep decline, and still you choose to play "king of the molehill" again as if it mattered one bit, while all around you this forumland is just expanding as more and more people turn up ready to read the very posts that most of you writers disdain as not being writing at all...", in fact, the goblin wrote atrociously, anonymously, in third person, and with pictures too, and yet at least it proved that the wicked witch was far more tolerant than those other writers would give her credit for, so the goblin just confessed "...my pen is hers then, and I am here because the posts feed me, she has a great forum..."