Saturday Post!!!

by Kittyinaz | Jul 11, 2015 | Uncategorized

This is to remind you the polls close at midnight CST.  So please read, vote, and review.  That is all.

Enjoy your weekend!!!

Last day…kinda

by Kittyinaz | Jun 30, 2015 | Uncategorized

Ok, I’m awful.   I’ve been sick all day, and forgot to do this earlier.

So, to make up for it, you have until midnight tomorrow to get your entries in.   Hopefully I will be feeling better, and will start working on the banners tomorrow.

to recap, I took a sick day giving you an extra day to get your entries.   Sorry no fancy stuff, but I’m on my iPad.

This Mess.

by Kittyinaz | May 21, 2015 | Uncategorized

I am so upset.   Truly.  This has made me unable to sleep, sick to my stomach and so forth.

From what I understand, I am to blame for losing notifications in my Facebook feed.  I’m sorry.  I get hundreds a day, and I try to keep up with them.

Then there is so much talk of corruption in the awards.

Let me tell how it works.  We open nominations up on Poll Daddy, and set it to one answer per IP.  That is the strictest setting you can make it on the poll you get for free.

Once they are in ONLY the person who makes the poll can get the answers.  This has tripped up my admin and I in the past, but we got it figured out now.  I don’t do polls. This leaves it in the hands of one of the most trustworthy people I know.  How much do I trust her?  With my digital life.  Seriously.  For me this means everything I do since I do everything online. Many of you trust her with your sites as well.

After that we go in and verify the dates for the nominations we received from the readers.

We have no idea who is what, we just got the input that even with the top ten, there was still ties.  We decided again that the readers decide who gets in with the wildcard place.  Again, not us.  So for any award that had ten places, and we opened it up for voting, EVERYONE who was nominated was given to you guys to decide who will make it in to fill the remaining spots.

Then we post the results days ahead to see if you guys see something we missed.  I know I disqualified All I Want for being a TB/SVM.  And Gyllene and Jessica both kicked out entries that did not fit categories.  Of their own.  Some we gave benefit of the doubt since we went with the reasonable doubt that is good enough for a murderer to walk free.

From there we opened it up to the readers again to make the decision.

I heard there were tales of favoritism.  Last year kjwrit received a bucketload of nominations as well as California Kat and others. We did nothing different this year.

I spent a day agonizing over my nomination.  Authors were getting one shot.  If they were named in one category they didn’t get another.  Did I have to rearrange a couple of times?  Yes. And I worked solely out of the information given to me.  We didn’t offer this information since that would be unfair to authors I don’t read or stories I don’t read.  I asked for authors to donate their information time and time again, but got few responses.  Me giving that information would have have been one form of favoritism.

If others didn’t do this.  It wasn’t our fault.  Last year we tried contacting people for more information, and was not answered.  This was unfair to everyone, to us trying to verify the information, to the person nominating that we picked the wrong variable and to the nomination itself. This year we said no.

We have already said oops and sorry for the multiple vote.  We didn’t know any better.  This is our second time trying this.

It takes days to make the banners.  One person does it.  One person has who was nominated, but not the same person.  One makes the rules. And one or more verifies the nominations.  We have checks on each other.  It’s the same kind of set up we do for my writing contests.  But with tons more people affected by it.

I didn’t even know I was nominated until they came out.  And no I did not win the wild card, that meant to me that people thought highly enough of me to write me in more than once.  What an honor!!!

I get words of stuffing the ballots.  That this is an exercise in corruption.  What the heck guys?

Here is a fact.  People vote for favorites.  Most recognize the author 80% of the time and vote for them.  But if the author is in more than once that LESSENS the chance of being chosen to vote.  If they have more than one, people try to vote for the underdogs unless they really like the story.  Or they play eenie miney mo.  I’ve done this.

I’m so sorry for everything turning out so hateful.  We are NOT complaining about the criticism, but that no one came forward about it.  I got apologies and asked why.  That is how we found out.  I’ve been busy, trying to do the database, and then relieve some pressure on writing.  I have RL issues that are not big as they were before but time consuming.  Shoot I’m training dogs to use a dog door!  I’m being bugged every ten minutes by one or both dogs wanting a treat after they run through the door.  Not a huge deal, but time consuming.  If I don’t make sure they go out, we have accidents.

By the time we found out, we had been hated on to the point it had turned from helpful criticism to hurtful.  People were being blamed, fingers pointed. Our first question was, how can we fix this?

Then as we found out more and we saw the hate emerging, it came to, why are we doing this?

Finally you had a bunch of hate being slung over the course of days, being received in less than 15 minutes.  It started out where if someone came to us, it would have been an, oops, let’s throw out the votes as is, and go forward with one vote per IP which is how strict we could make it on a FREE website.  We give days up for this.  You can’t blame us for not wanting to put our own money in.  Especially for something used once a year.

By the time it was over I was sick at heart, frustrated, but unable to do anything, and angry.  Which not being able to vent made it too much.  None of us felt like continuing, we frankly didn’t care since we were being accused of stuffing ballots and so forth.  Of being crooked.  For what?!?  Something no one cares about in a year, shoot in a month?!?

I pride myself in being as honest as I can be.  And being accused of not being so has so broken my faith it’s not fair to anyone.  Being told I was not a good enough writer that I can’t get a nomination without cheating.  That is the message you sent me and the other ladies.

You want to sling mud at Gyllene and Meridian about the count of nominations?  Well here’s a tosser.  I’m very close to Meridian.  So if anyone would stuff it for her, it is me.  She never has done anything for the awards but answer a question about her own fics. I love the woman to death, and would walk on fire for all the help she has given me in the fanfic world and my own personal hell.

I wouldn’t.  It would be unfair to her.  She is great enough to get in on her own.

I’m taking time away.  I need to decide if it is worth working so hard to keep a fandom alive as well as helping others.  If my writing contest are worth the time, if the rec pages I am working on for authors is worth it.  If the reviews I do to introduce readers to our world and to hopefully give boosts to stories I love is worth the time and work it takes me to do them.  If I want to continue writing new stories in a fandom who I feel that I have given so much of myself to, that reduces me to a pitiful mess and questioning myself. To where some of the ladies I have great respect for imply I’m a liar and a cheat, or are being called one themselves.

To where I am standing here torn apart, not knowing who or what is going to call me names now.

Yes, I’m telling myself over and over the few vs the many, but guys, it is hard right now.  Cause those few?  I trusted those few and tried to help them.

I’m sorry it has come to this.  I’m sorry for my part in it all.  I’m sorry that I missed a notification in the hundreds I get a day. I’m sorry for it all.

But then sorry doesn’t cut it.  I’m not sure what can fix this mess.  People are upset.  They feel put upon on both sides of the issue. There are pointed fingers, and people are upset.  Why?  Because they feel the finger is on them, so everyone is defensive.  It’s not nice is it?

It is how we felt about it all.

Just think on it. And please.  Don’t write comments. Don’t inflame this.  I just want everyone to think about what I said and decide on your own how you would feel.  I needed to say my piece. Now I’m going to go, and try to make peace knowing I am to blame for this as much as the next person.

And pray we don’t lose anyone in the fandom because of this.  But I won’t blame you.  If the muse won’t work with what they feel is negativity, then don’t force her to work for something we don’t get paid to do.  That is what I’m trying to decide on.

So instead of commenting, please think on it.  Seriously think on it.  I’ll catch those remaining on the flip side.

Wendy.

Updates

by Kittyinaz | May 7, 2015 | Uncategorized

So everyone got the nominations are closing tomorrow right for the You Want Blood Awards, right? (if not, click on the banner above to be taken to the site to nominate.  Put in I don’t read this in any spot you don’t have a nomination.)

And everyone is aware that we are going to have to go through all those nominations, and have to attack the internet to determine if they meet the rules… (If not, yes we do this.  We go through each nomination and go to the sites to determine if they are valid.)

This takes ALOT of time.  So to help streamline it, I have been working on that rec database.  The stories from Fanfiction are finally in (not all of mine, I still have to add in all the rest from there of the different fandoms I follow).

There are so far 700+ stories in there.  Again, not all TB/SVM.  Some are crossovers.  Some are from before I concentrated on TB/SVM.  But alot of them are from MissAliceSub who is taking time out of her free time this week to help.  She is starting at the bottom of the list.   But it really takes alot of time.  We copy all the story descriptions, the html for the specific stories, as well as determine who the pairings are, and if it is a one shot, or multi chaptered.  If it is complete and when it was finished (for the contest) and when last updated (again for the contest).  Also, fans want to know if the story is complete.  I can’t keep up with updating when you guys update, that would be full time job!  I already have one in writing.  lol

It looks like when I am done, that this may actually be bigger than anyone of us thought it would be, so there are rumors of it being moved to a site to make searching for new stories to read much easier.  I know the Twilight and the TB/SVM are very popular, but I am adding Harry Potter to the mix and we will see.  But I am thinking there will be well over a 1,000 stories in this rec page.  Once the story is complete, it will be up to the authors to have their stories (And yes it looks like you can also search by authors too on the new one, but again, I am only hearing rumors from the great one 4Padfoot!!!) updated besides the times we can go through and check.  We will be happy to switch the focus of a story to another site if the authors let us know.  Right now, where we find them is where we are putting them.

I know I go on and on about this, but you guys should see the stats I see on my pages, and you guys visit the rec pages alot.

TO help us out, for the TB/SVM side especially (since we are the ones that spread out across WordPress!) please contact me on filling out a spreadsheet.  I know for me, it is easy peasy to add my stuff in, but for another to come in and check out the dates and so forth would not be so easy.  Some people post identically on Fanfiction and other sites, some post on WordPress only, and yet others, like me, post on my site first.

So, please help us out, and help get the You Want Blood Awards out for voting by helping us out.  Thanks…

Kittyinaz

Sorry I put the wrong link in!

by Kittyinaz | Apr 20, 2015 | Uncategorized

It’s now right in the post as well as this one.