HELP!

We're in the top 150 matey. I ought to have said formally, I have left local authority legal work and the intellectually demanding but morally draining world of contract behind and now do family work in private practice. If just one per cent of abc-ers sent their divorce work to me, I'd hit my target easily I think.

ooooh andrew! congratulations ... i didn't realise you were moving on ... just wait til ABC gets named in a divorce case ...

I'd be grateful if someone who knows me would email my jayne email address once the site starts to resolve - that email account seems to be working today, as I had five Karl-related mails. I also represent parents whose children were removed as a result of neglect Fish - so abc involvement there could be cited. Not to mention all the slap-happy brigade... (joke - please do not start that debate again anyone)

please indulge a very mild case of professional curiosity, Andrew. top 150 according to whom? not Chambers.

I am now getting some strange messages in my abctales account. I have asked whoever is sending the emails to identify themsleves so I can better respond to their email. I don't understand them at present. iceman

Oh I don't know, it was in some sort of press release. I've been to most of the magic circle firms and I wouldn't want to work there, though it is nice to have indvidually wrapped jelly-belly beans in your office. I didn't know that you were one of us Chant. I think our writer of the month is a lawyer type too, as I recall.

one of you? *faints* *gets up again* no, i just used to work as a journo for Chambers and Partners, that's all.

well, I managed to access the tech forum just now but the last ten is deadly slow, sometimes it lets me in and at others it gives me the same old crappy error message or connection failed page. I have seen two different front page pics today too. one is the same one ofanthony in a red shirt and the newer one is of anthony with a man exposing his chest. right now i have the red shirt back. I have sent emails to both your accounts Andrew over the last week.

I got one from you last week Stormy - but did you get either of my replies? One from each account, as your message suggested you hadn't had a reply. I think I'm going to take this week off, do some rewrites and come back when my time on the site is productive rather than frustrating. Chant - well, I thought not, but your writing does have a precision to it that rings a bell.

The problem is, now I have a lean and pacey 40,000 word piece. To turn it into a novel is going to involve taking all of the pace out of it, which I don't want to do. If you read it alongside Cuckoo and Magpie, which are sort of the earlier two parts of a three-part novel, then it works out as an okay length. I like that it goes from one event to the next without any dull bits (hopefully), and doing anything else with it is going to kill the only aspect of it that actually works. Sorry guys. What's even worse is it seems to have brought a real sense of finality with it - I can actually see it being the last thing that I write, not because I can't think of anything to write about but because I feel done, for the first time in about seven years.

Andrew I posted a new piece this morning and that was the last I saw of it. Its pants at the moment. Ralph

No I haven't been able to post any new pieces for days now.. and I can't get access to the last ten entered.. so haven't been able to read any of the latest stuff either. I did manage to access the last ten entered yesterday; but it took nearly ten minutes to load the page.. and today I can't get access to it at all. I can't read the story or poem of the day. In fact it's a struggle to read any of the stories or poems. The little bar at the bottom of my screen is just chugging along as if it's fighting some unseen force that keeps trieing to push it back.. can't log into my e-mail either. It keeps telling me I'm an invalid user and to try again.. even though I'm typing in the correct password. But I can log into the rest of the site fine. That's no problem. The author search works fine.. but when I try to read a piece in someone's abcsets. I can't seem to get access.. the bar starts doing the struggling thing again - moving at about 1mm an hour.. so can't really read anything except the front page and the forums at the moment. But my friend wasn't having any trouble last night or today.. so maybe it's something to do with different people's Isp's.. I don't know.. I'am not sure.. it should be sorted soon though. Anyway you're not the only one whose having trouble reading the stories and poems. So if quite a few people are having difficulties; I should expect there won't be many pieces that you have to read through.. * touch wood *

I haven't tried to post anything, but I was able to look at one of my own pieces from the "submit/manage" link. I clicked that one just to see if the link was live, and it is. I am able to log into the new "squirrel mail" but as of yesterday, all of my old emails are not there. Fingers responded that the old emails exist, but have not been transferred over (this was as of yesterday or day before, I forget). I've deliverately avoided doing anything other than check the forums, just so they can sort the tech issues easier. Of course, that doesn't do anything for your problem, but it's been my experience.

The login.cgi file on the new www3.abctales.com site is empty. There is no body and it only has a basic header. This may be what the browser can actually see from the server side file, but it may be that the file has inadvertantly been edited The system announcements url is http://phorum.abctales.com/list.php?f=6 but when requested returns http://phorum.abctales.com/? which then returns a blank page. Although I have been able to posts several new pieces this afternoon about twenty minutes ago I was logged off from the server. Apologies for technical stuff here, but I cannot access the System Announcements phorum. The hyperlinks in some of the pages still point to www.abctales.com instead of www3.abctales.com Thanks iceman

www3 shouldn't be necessary now (though it won't do any harm) - it's the same machine and web server. From all the six machines I can check it with, the DNS records have been updated. Iceman: I'm not (and neither are 5 people I've checked with) able to recreate your not being able to see the forums. I do, however, notice that both you and Andrew are on Freeserve. There is, right at this moment, a short outage on the database server, which I posted a warning about on the System forum 45 minutes ago. It should be back in the next 15-30 minutes. Andrew, if you're having problems accessing your mail, then asking for a response without giving me an email I *can* contact you on is in no small way - what's the right word? -unproductive.

Isn't the Thought Cafe a marvelous website, and working as well.

John, I will check again now, noting the time of your post. Thanks. Yes I do use Freeserve. I can log off and check with my GTS Netcom account as well. iceman

John, I can login again but one of my sets which I posted earlier this afternoon before the outage has disappeared.(Harborough) Should I repost everything I uploaded and recreate the set or hope that it is temporary? iceman

Andrew, the last email I had from you was dated 17/6 and was about the number of words in your story. I emailed your home account on 19/6 with a quick comment and sent a full review on 24/6. On 28/6 I sent a note to see if you had received the previous emails. I then sent one to your abc account in case your home one was not working. I have not received any replies from you at all but am getting email from others so I think my aol account is working OK.

Iceman: re-uploading won't cause any harm either way, certainly. Tell me if doing so removes any remaining issues...

I reuploaded and re-created the Harborough set as I mentioned I would. Thanks iceman

I got this error Error opening ../data/default_pref Could not create initial preference file! ../data/ should be writable by user nobody Please contact your system administrator and report this error. when logging into the email part of the site. iceman

well, as i haven't been having any trouble getting into the last 10, or posting, i thought it would be a good time to unveil my 600,000 word novel to the world, posted in chapters, about 10,000 words a chapter. oddly enough, the only other person capable of posting seems to be SweetKitty. i notice she's been making good use of the opportunity (as always). plenty for you to look forward to then, Andrew.

nope, not accepting that. what about writing 30,000 or so words from the female character's perspective, and then alternating chapters?

well, I haven't been able to get into the tech forum since Friday either. It still loops me back to the forum list page as mentioned above.

Anyone had an email from me in the last ten days? Stormy - I will send my email to you again - save to say, I was very grateful for the feedback, most of which was not only right, but is being incorporated. But no, I am not putting it into past tense third person (yuck!)

i had an email from you yesterday ...

I have lost all the email from my abctales account. I guess it will appear at some stage. iceman BTW On GTS Netcom tonight I can't a line to Freeserve

I haven't been able to get tech forum - as above. Its not being able to see (or be seen in) the last ten which really bugs me. And I've added a couple of new stories which are there in my sets but can't read them. I wonder though if I was more patient and waited hours for it to load ........... I am really missing abc! maybe everyone should start posting their work on the forums.

Thanks Andrew, I was just concerned that my email may have vanished into cyberspace. If you did re-send your email I have not received it as I type. I didn't think you would want to change the tense or the viewpoint because it would become a different kind of story with a wholly different atmosphere from that which you have written but it was worth a shot. I still think you have enough material there to write a medium sized novel instead of a novelette.

Yuck! The rewrite is going slightly better this week than last, but it is a damn sight easier writing 5000 words than adding 5000 to something that already exists. There are a couple of points in the plot where I could take a breather - the bit after the cab journey with Chesterton for one, so I'm trying to think of something worthwile to put there. I have upped it from 30k to nearly 40, so it is already quite different to the episodic one you've both seen. If my email ever starts working again, I would like to chat with you both about this piece, as your views have been very helpful so far.

John - problem is, that according to other people, my ordinary freeserve account is not working properly, in an unrelated problem. Hence my heads-up on this forum. It is my only way of communicating with anyone at the moment.

Chant: by alternating chapters you mean changing the POV of the person speaking to the reader? Done well it works, done badly it is like reading two books at the same time.

looks like you're doing your lawyering business again today, Andrew. is Langleys ranked in the Chambers Guide to the Legal Profession?

i'm sure Andrew would do it well.

please forgive me for intruding on a private conversation, but if you're talking about TATT, then i was mightily disappointed that it seemed to end up as a novelette, rather than a novel. *gives Andrew a kick in the pants.* get back to the writing desk, you lazy son of a ...