Where have all the updates gone?!

I can imagine that a lot of people are thinking: "What the hell has happened to you? Why stopped updating?" In fact, I've had many people writing to me and asking why I have stopped writing and am I still continuing. Well, the answer to that is - I am still continuing!

I realise that there have been some authors who have pulled their stories from Fanfiction.net and Twilighted because of a so-called database that collects fanfic stories and stores them so in case an author decides to publish that story, there is a place you can still read it for free.

I can understand why many readers will be disappointed with the authors for pulling their fics when they haven't been completed yet (I am sad at the end for Finding Bella by ekimmuh - it was one of my favourites!) but really, look at it from an author's point of view and try to understand what they're going through.

Writing Fanfiction, as I'm sure a lot of you will know, is extremely time consuming. Yes, you can complain about all these authors not updating enough, but imagine balancing a busy real life with writing! Professional authors don't finish a novel in a few days, it takes years to get it just right - as does Fanfiction. A lot of time and hard work goes into these stories and you guys get to read it for free. We don't get paid for writing Fanfiction and yet there are authors out there who are getting paid a bloody load of royalties for published work that in some cases, is worse than Fanfiction.

So, my view on this database is that if the authors want to pull the story because they could potentially be making a sum of money on their work, then so be it. It's a luxury that we can read these high quality stories for free so if the story stops, that's just bad luck for the readers I'm afraid. However, there is a silver lining in this cloud. If the author is pulling them to publish the story, then hopefully we can rightfully buy the book in the future!

So before you have a go at these authors, put yourself in their shoes! For all you readers & especially reviewers out there, imagine if you were told that your reviews were worth I don't know, a few hundred each, just so long as you took them off a website? You'd do it, wouldn't you?

Anyway, those are just my views. I've seen some abuse some authors are getting for this and I don't think it's right.

On the brighter side, I'm settling into my new job and new life now, so I'm planning on getting the Fanfiction back and running as of next week/beginning of December. Thank you all for being so patient.

Edie