You've read the "qualifications" and your story is definitely in that catagory. Now you want to make sure it's archived here. This is the place to find out exactly what you need to do and it's not as hard as you might think it would be. I'm going to list exactly how to submit in HTML and how much you can submit here. Please follow these rules carefully, because the easier for me to get stuff up, the more stuff there is for people to read, the more people are going to be attracted to this site, the more chances the writers have of getting feedback. See how it works? Remember, if you follow all the rules here, your story will definitely go up on this archive. Violate any of them, and you take your chances.
You must send the story with a "teaser" or risk that it goes up without one.
What is a teaser? A teaser is a few line summary of the story which goes up in the library. The purpose of it is so that people can read a bit about the story and see if it is something they would like to read. A good teaser should be no more than four or five lines.
If you have other little things you would like to "say" about the story, you can put them in "author's notes" If it is a multi-part story, we will put those "notes" in the index page. (If you look around this site, you will see examples of that) If the story has only one part, the notes will be at the begining or end, wherever the writer puts them.
If you do not send a story with a teaser, I will most likely put it up without one. Why? Because to be honest, I don't always have the time or the motivation to write one. Especially if I'm only seeing the first part to a multi part story. Also, I honestly admit I don't always read everything that is submitted here. I do my best to skim read everything, but I just don't have the time to read every story completely. No offense people, but if I did that, I would never have time to do anything. Look at it this way, by having your story here, hopefully you'll get other people to read your story. Think of me as the librarian. The story must have some HTML work done for me.
Nope, I'm not going to put up your story in text format. Why? Because I like the fact that all the stories on this site are in HTML. It looks nice.
I am not asking for a ton of HTML work here. The biggest thing is to put paragraph marks. It's not that hard, actually. I've even done a guideline for HTML you can look at, so you can learn how easy it is. I'm not expecting people to put headers and/or footers for their work, make the index pages, or put up the links. I will do those things myself.
WARNING: IF YOU ARE TAKING THE STORY OFF YOUR GEOCITIES HOME PAGE AND SENDING IT TO ME YOU MUST TAKE OUT ALL THE JAVA SCRIPT. FOR SOME REASON, THAT JAVA SCRIPT CRASHES MY COMPUTER WHEN I TRY TO WORK ON THE STORY OFFLINE. ANYONE WHO SENDS ME A STORY WITH THE GEOCITIES JAVA SCRIPT WILL NOT BE PUT ON THIS SITE. TAKE IT OUT OF THE STORY BEFORE SENDING IT. THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER WARNINGS ON THIS SUBJECT.
How to submit
There are two ways to send me a story. The first is within the body of a letter. How you get the story into the body of the letter is your concern. Some people actually write the story in the body of a letter, do the HTML work and send it off. Most people write the story in a word processing program and then cut and paste the story into the body of a letter. No way is right or wrong, no way is better than another.
The second way is to send it as an attachment. Since e-mail programs differ, I cannot tell you how to attach a file, you'll have to consult your e-mail program for that. Most e-mail programs make it simple. The biggest thing in sending the story as an attachment is that you must convert it to a text or html file. And you must convert it too, you can't just change the extention to .txt or .htm. Otherwise, the file will get messed up. There are a lot of word processing programs out there and I don't have all of them. Even if I did, I'm not going to try to figure out what program you used.
Since word processing programs vary as well as operating systems, I can't tell you how to convert a file either. In most programs it's a simple matter of using the "Save as" button and then picking the Text option
Do not send more than one "section" in the body of an e-mail or as a single attachment. Send a separate letter with each section. Stories sent to me with mutiple parts in the body of an e-mail will be deleted.
All submissions should be sent to this address: midnight@shifting-sands.la.ca.us
Double check your work before sending too. We get a large number of stories where people forget to put in closing tags, so suddenly half the story is centered or in italics or some other such stuff. Taking the time to look over your work and fix these things saves me a bundle of time and effort. And it will save you possible embarassment, in case we don't find the problem and fix it.
If you're looking for a WP program, I (Darqstar) recommend Word97 and up. It's a great program. Especially if you don't want to have to worry about learning any HTML at all. You can type up your story and just save it as HTML and all the work is done for you.
How much stuff can I submit?
These are guidelines for how much stuff you can send me in a week. What do I mean by a week? No, I don't run this archive from Monday to Sunday or anything like that. What I mean is an actual 7 days. So if you submit something on a Tuesday, that begins a week for you.
1: No more than one new story per week, per writer. New stories take more work, so I'm setting limits on how many brand new stories I get from any one person in a week. If you are working on a series, each new story in the series counts as new story too.
There is one exception to this rule and that is an X-S story. If you have a new story and an new X-S story, you can submit both of them in a week. Remember, all X-S stories go to Darqstar
2: No more than six (6) things submitted in a week, per writer. How you want to split this up is up to you. If you want to send me a new story with six parts, that's fine. If you have three ongoing stories and you want to send me two parts to each, that's fine too. However, any more than six parts in a week and I won't post it.
Even X-S stories are part of this rule.
How does this work? Okay, if you submit a story on Monday, you can submit up to five additional parts to the story, or five parts to another ongoing story durring the week. The next Monday the week begins again. So if you have another new story, you can send it then.
There are to be no exceptions to this quantity rule. If you send me more stuff than is allowed, it will be deleted. No, I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm just trying to make things fair for everyone. By limiting the amount of stuff one person can submit in a week, that gives everyone a chance to see their stuff up. It also saves our sanity. That's a good thing, trust me.
Things you should make clear when submitting a story:
What name you want the story listed under. You know that you want all your stories listed under a penname, but that doesn't mean We do. So make sure we know the name you want to use.
I have a terrible memory. :-) You may have written me two weeks ago about this story, but chances are, we won't remember what was discussed. So if there is anything we need to know before posting the story, make sure you send that information with the story. (or in a separate letter sent at the same time you send the story)
I think this covers it. If you have any questions that wern't covered on this, write and ask.