Hi Everyone!

It's Jeff this year asking for your help to keep our sites up and running. You may well know our sites are run almost entirely on your generous donations! When your donations do not cover all of the cost, the difference comes out of our pockets. We have no ADs on our sites and no Premium Tiers and No Pay Walls! There is no charge to our authors for hosting their stories nor any charge for you the readers to read them. That was the original agreement in the beginning and we work hard to keep our promise to keep it that way. Of course we would appreciate it if you could find a way to donate any amount to help us in our mission keep our sites AD-free and running. So please check between your couch cushions and under your car seats any amount will be gratefully accepted. No amount is too small. Seriously!

We thank you very much for all of your help over the years.

So you know, our last offer is still on the table. We are still running the following promotion, simply put, make at least a $10 USD donation and say that you are interested, you'll get a random autographed copy of one of the soft cover Joel Books directly from Ted Luis himself. I don't know how many copies are left but while he has them, he's happy to send them to you all as a thank you. Mine is on a shelf here in my room and it's probably one of my favorite keepsakes.

The Original Offer - Repost:

Have you considered helping to keep these sites up and running? Are you also a fan of Ted Louis' "Joel" series? Well, Ted has informed us that he found a case of assorted Joel books. Yeah, "actual" in print books! He decided that for anyone willing to make a $10 or larger donation within the US to the hosting service paying the bills for the Fort Family Community of sites, he is willing to send you your very own copy of a random book in the "Joel" series, autographed by Ted Louis himself as a thank you! An amazing keepsake from an amazing author!

What to do:

1. Click on https://dsshosting.net/donations/donation-form/ and click on "Donate Now".

2. Make a qualifying donation of $10 or more.

3,. Email your name and mailing address to joel-offer@fortfamilyforums.com (Yes, a P.O. box, relative's address, next-door neighbor, total stranger's address... is fine. As long as you are able to intercept the mail ;)

4. Once the donation has been confirmed, Ted Louis will send a random autographed copy of one of his books to you directly.

(One book per donation. This offer will be withdrawn once the limited number of books has been sent. The early bird gets the worm! Unfortunately, only US residents due to expensive international shipping :( We'll take down the offer as soon as we confirm that no copies remain.)

Originally Posted by AC

Just a quick note, we are working in the background to replace the missing Ark Speak in some CSU Chapters. It is a slow process so please be patient with me/us.

TSL

Clan Short Archivist

Dear Authors and Readers,

It is that time of year again. Yes, it is time for our Annual Pledge Drive to keep the lights on and our Fort Family of sites servers running.

So please give us a helping hand to keep our sites alive. No donation is too big or too small, all donations are greatly accepted and appreciated.

Remember none of our sites have ads or Premium Fees!

Please help us keep our founder August Christopher's dream alive.

To Donate just click on the Donate Button in the left side panel on any site.

Thank you for your help over the years,

The Fort Family Admins

As Archivist of the Clan Short Universe, I hereby declare and confirm that the author known as SamIam has successfully completed the necessary requirements to be awarded the title Clan Short Universe Author and confer upon him all the rights and responsibilities which are consistent with the title.

On this day, September Fourteenth, in the year Two Thousand and Twenty-Two, let it be known that the story Oh Can You See has been reviewed and accepted as a Clan Short Universe Core Timeline story, and is considered a canonical part of the main storyline.

TSL Clan Short Archivist

Welcome to the CSU SamIam, as usual, all of CSU Stories will be co-hosted here on the CSUhub as well. This is the only place for all the CSU Stories, Images, and Resources.

This post has been approved by The Clan Short Archivist.

Portions of the post have been contributed by ACFan Creator of The Clan Short Universe.

(PS: Temporal Tranquilizers are in the third drawer on the left!)

Back on October 22, 2002, I caved in to the request of Comicality and tried my hand at telling a story that was bugging me as a constant dream. I had no idea just what this entailed, and really only planned to write a couple of chapters to say I did it. Fast forward to today, December 31, 2019. Not only is that same story still running, but I have side stories that run with it, and have had the honor of working with some awesome authors who thought my idea could use the additional support of their own ideas.

A recent email chastised me for not spending all of my free time writing. This was brought on after I decided to share some of the resources that I used prior to releasing the chapter that they were used to write. I released them so the reader could see what I was seeing, and I developed them to ensure I could maintain continuity in the future.

Since that slow start back in 2002, I have written around one and a half millon words, and over 145 chapters. There are well over 800 characters that I am either directly or indirectly responsible for creating or developing. I have spent time writing after working a 12 hour day just because I had an idea come to me of where to go next, and in the past year I managed to still put words down while in the middle of moving with no help.

Once a project has reached the proportions of Memories and the stories surrounding it, continuity becomes a very real concern. You can't just count on notes, sometimes you have to go back and re-read what you've written before to ensure things are right. It takes less time to draw a house once than it does to continually have to go back and look up which side of the stairs a bedroom is on. It takes less time to develop a graphical family tree and then update it than it does to have to search for family members. Every single character in my stories is there for a reason, even if I do not make that reason obvious for ten or twenty chapters; part of the glue that holds everything together is getting those characters right.

I am proud of the detail and continuity that the CSU authors as a group have managed while creating a universe that is staggering in its proportions. To be told that a tool that I shared for the benefit of the readers is "cute" but that I really should be writing instead is an insult at so many levels that I really can't describe it. I could easily crank out less detailed chapters at a frantic pace; my recent Thanksgiving and New Years stories were both written in a matter of hours. I will NOT do that with any of my CSU stories; I have over 17 years invested in this project, and no matter what anyone says, I will NOT reduce their quality just to meet some random deadline. I don't release the chapter unless I am happy with it, if that means re-writing a scene ten times, then so be it.

The next time you think a serial author is screwing off, think back to what was said here. It takes a LOT of dedication and control to pull off a believable serial story, and in the background there is a lot more necessary to do than just toss words on paper. Sometimes it is just a web search, sometimes it means developing a supporting document to put there vision into something they can refer to to put the words on paper, and sometimes it means a LOT of re-reading of stories to make sure that you remember things right. After all of that, the author re-reads the story to make sure it is right, and most also then have to wait for a also-unpaid editor to have time to go through it with a fine-toothed comb to catch the errors an author never sees himself.

Before I get off of my soapbox, I have one more thing to say... I have seen some great authors hang up their keyboards because of readers demanding they write faster or telling them how the story has to progress. Before hitting that 'SEND' button, really think about this: do you really want to be the one who is the last straw, the one who is the reason that an author leaves a story eternally unfinished? If the answer is yes, delete the email and never go back to the story; if the answer is no, then find a way to express your concerns in a positive way.

ACFan