Flayrah's timing issues started a couple years ago as Crossaffliction stopped editing, and with GreenReaper busy doing admin for multiple sites, Flayrah languished for the better part of nine months in 2016. When Sonious and I got editing privileges, we had to catch up on months of Newsbytes that needed archiving, and there was a good pile of articles that people had submitted, which hadn't been cleaned up or greenlit. We gradually worked our way through the pile, and when we finally got around to posting the last one, it had been waiting a year.
Some of the submissions had been time-dependent and had become useless. One of my submissions was in the pile, and I had updated it every couple of months because things had changed. But I think the slowdown had started a little before 2016, and Fred appreciated timeliness, so that's mainly why he switched sites. He still sent us book announcements - instead of using Flayrah's submission button, he'd e-mail them to me directly, with a polite emphasis that it needed to be posted before such-and-such con, because the book would be new and on sale. Interestingly, although he stopped sending us book reviews, for a while he kept sending us stories about animated films. But as he threw more and more of his energy into editing anthologies, the animation posts became less and less frequent.
For a while he also mailed me anthologies to review, which I did, until I felt burnt out. Writing literary reviews is something I find daunting - partially because my day job involves books, so when I get home, recreational reading takes a huge hit. The last book review I really enjoyed sinking my teeth into was Five Fortunes, because those were novellas. A collection of 20 short stories requires not writing one review, but 20 mini-reviews, all without trying to spoil stories that are... well, short.
Due to the burn-out, I've ended up with a bunch of furry books I bought years ago that I've never gotten around to reading. (Fumbles in a closet) - Yeah... Bryan Talbot's Grandville Noël (2014), The Complete YARF! Volume 3 - not too reviewable, that one's more for historical purposes, to show folks what old zines looked like (I put my old zine collection into AC's charity fundraiser) - Gods with Fur (2016), Inhuman Acts (2015), Roar Volume 5 (2014), Donna Barr's Stinz: Charger, The War Stories, the second Lackadaisy Cats volume (acquired recently, thanks Tempe!)...
...And a non-furry non-fiction book that I don't even remember being given, must be a family Christmas present (The Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West) - plus one or two other furry books. I sat on Blacksad: Amarillo and the two French Jack Wolfgang comics for a while, but I did get around to reading them! Just not reviewing them.
I should get around to reviewing these, in Fred's spirit. It's way too late and some of them are out of print, but hey, Greyflank sent us reviews of older stuff from his personal library, so that's something I could do.
These days, in terms of the site, Sonious and I keep in touch when things in our lives slow us down. Like in the last year, he was moving, and at my end, from late July through October I had cons, social obligations and work to juggle. These days we're much better at article turn-around, assuming it's post-worthy. We can have an article cleaned up and posted in a day or two, or at worst a week if we're simultaneously busy or if we need to ask the author to clarify or re-write parts of it. The triple movie review I just posted - that had been on the back-burner for months. This last week was a chance to do some writing at long last, a chance I hadn't had in ages - and what a doozy of a week. Losing Fred, plus Stan Lee, plus Douglas Rain (the voice of HAL in 2001), plus William Goldman (the author of The Princess Bride). Whoosh.
Flayrah's timing issues started a couple years ago as Crossaffliction stopped editing, and with GreenReaper busy doing admin for multiple sites, Flayrah languished for the better part of nine months in 2016. When Sonious and I got editing privileges, we had to catch up on months of Newsbytes that needed archiving, and there was a good pile of articles that people had submitted, which hadn't been cleaned up or greenlit. We gradually worked our way through the pile, and when we finally got around to posting the last one, it had been waiting a year.
Some of the submissions had been time-dependent and had become useless. One of my submissions was in the pile, and I had updated it every couple of months because things had changed. But I think the slowdown had started a little before 2016, and Fred appreciated timeliness, so that's mainly why he switched sites. He still sent us book announcements - instead of using Flayrah's submission button, he'd e-mail them to me directly, with a polite emphasis that it needed to be posted before such-and-such con, because the book would be new and on sale. Interestingly, although he stopped sending us book reviews, for a while he kept sending us stories about animated films. But as he threw more and more of his energy into editing anthologies, the animation posts became less and less frequent.
For a while he also mailed me anthologies to review, which I did, until I felt burnt out. Writing literary reviews is something I find daunting - partially because my day job involves books, so when I get home, recreational reading takes a huge hit. The last book review I really enjoyed sinking my teeth into was Five Fortunes, because those were novellas. A collection of 20 short stories requires not writing one review, but 20 mini-reviews, all without trying to spoil stories that are... well, short.
Due to the burn-out, I've ended up with a bunch of furry books I bought years ago that I've never gotten around to reading. (Fumbles in a closet) - Yeah... Bryan Talbot's Grandville Noël (2014), The Complete YARF! Volume 3 - not too reviewable, that one's more for historical purposes, to show folks what old zines looked like (I put my old zine collection into AC's charity fundraiser) - Gods with Fur (2016), Inhuman Acts (2015), Roar Volume 5 (2014), Donna Barr's Stinz: Charger, The War Stories, the second Lackadaisy Cats volume (acquired recently, thanks Tempe!)...
...And a non-furry non-fiction book that I don't even remember being given, must be a family Christmas present (The Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West) - plus one or two other furry books. I sat on Blacksad: Amarillo and the two French Jack Wolfgang comics for a while, but I did get around to reading them! Just not reviewing them.
I should get around to reviewing these, in Fred's spirit. It's way too late and some of them are out of print, but hey, Greyflank sent us reviews of older stuff from his personal library, so that's something I could do.
These days, in terms of the site, Sonious and I keep in touch when things in our lives slow us down. Like in the last year, he was moving, and at my end, from late July through October I had cons, social obligations and work to juggle. These days we're much better at article turn-around, assuming it's post-worthy. We can have an article cleaned up and posted in a day or two, or at worst a week if we're simultaneously busy or if we need to ask the author to clarify or re-write parts of it. The triple movie review I just posted - that had been on the back-burner for months. This last week was a chance to do some writing at long last, a chance I hadn't had in ages - and what a doozy of a week. Losing Fred, plus Stan Lee, plus Douglas Rain (the voice of HAL in 2001), plus William Goldman (the author of The Princess Bride). Whoosh.