Author has written 3 stories for Romance, and Horror.

I'm an Australian, so you can expect to see the Australian spelling for some words, so don't complain and say I have spelling mistakes! lol

I also have stories on www.fanfiction.net under the same name.

I was born in 1972, so alas no, I'm not a kid. But I am a guy, I won't deny that.

***General rants***

Why does it seem to be currently fashionable to write stories as short as humanly possible? That doesn't promote good quality story writing, it only encourages people to just hurry up the story and finish it. It would be nice if more people weren't afraid to write a story longer than one page, or even half a page.

Another nasty trend I've noticed getting steadily worse and worse is "writers" deciding spelling and grammar - and even sentence structure - are virtually irrelevant, and they will even tell you so right up front, still expecting to get good reviews! Do they seriously expect their story to be presentable and readable if it's completely littered with spelling, grammar and structure mistakes? Hell, I'm not saying I'm perfect - far from it - but at least I try my best to get things as correct as I know how to make them. I do something which the majority of people don't seem to bother with - proofreading my own story. Once I complete it, I go back over it, line by line, and pick up the little mistakes that the spell checker misses, because it always does miss things, particularly grammar. For instance, I may have typed the word "two" when I meant "too". They're both correct spelling, but the word is still wrong for the sentence. When I proofread it, I can then get a good idea on whether certain sentences or words really work; I may need to alter them or completely rewrite them. Sure, it's a bit of extra work, but the story benefits from it in the end. But many people just seem to want to write the story and get it out there as quick as possible so they can move onto the next one. Some even seem to expect readers to do the work for them. Spend a bit of extra time on your current story, and I can promise you that it - and you - will benefit from it.

It's interesting to see how many people say "I'm going to publish this..." as if it's just as simple and easy as ringing someone up and saying "Hey, publish this for me". Oh if only it was that simple! Ask Stephen King. His first novel, Carrie, was rejected dozens of times before it was published and he actually threw it away, until his wife grabbed it again and tried one last time. And many thousands of writers get their works permanently rejected and never get published. Most of the people on here that say they're going to get a story published will get a nasty dose of reality when they start submitting it to publishers. Especially when so many of these people seem to spend so little time in editing their stories. Ask a real author; they have to edit and rewrite their stories many times over before it's submitted to the publishers. Being a published author can be a lot of hard work.

Too many authors here say right up front in their summary that their story sucks big time so it's a waste of time reading it. Then why post it? I think they're after sympathy reads and reviews, or maybe they're hoping to be proved wrong. Whatever the reason, if you knew the story was crap when you were writing it then why just finish it as is, why not try and rewrite it better, or just scrap it? Why post it here if you really think it's that bad? I think most of them don't really believe that it's that bad, or they wouldn't post it, and they're just secretly hoping someone agrees with them. You need to have confidence in your own work, some belief in your ability. And if you don't then work on it until you do. Because if you can do that then your stories have a much better chance of being at least half decent.