Saturday, February 23, 2013

Donations needed for February and March

HASA is in its tenth year of providing ad-free, fee-free JRRT fanfiction that is owned and operated by the fandom, not corporate interests.  There are no tests to take to join, all genres, characters, ratings and story lengths are welcome. If you become a member, your contact information is not for sale to marketeers. We get hundreds of readers a day, which makes HASA a great place for readers and writers. To do this HASA depends on donations from members and readers.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Hobbit challenge last month the HASA account was able to catch up and pay for January and most of February. The February payment will be due in a few days; it would be good if we can stay positive. If we had more subscriptions, that would help a lot.

Our PayPal account has three ways to donate, see link below:
• Monthly subscriptions - set up a monthly recurring donation in amounts from $5 to $25 dollars.
• Yearly subscriptions - set up a recurring annual donation in amounts from $15 to $50 dollars.
• "Just because" donations of any amount.

http://www.henneth-annun.net/about/donations.cfm

If you're a little short on spare change at the moment, donations of time are always appreciated. There's an archive full of stories just waiting for comments, authors who would dearly love an email complimenting them on their work, challenges that need entries, playlists that need to be created, and forums begging for discussions. If you are a reviewer, check out a story today. If you aren't a reviewer, no better time than now to sign up. If you are an author, please consider donating a new story.

Thanks for enjoying HASA!

Julie

Saturday, February 16, 2013

HASA How-to February 2013

How do I...

...save a story to my favorites and update the bookmark?

Of course you can just bookmark a story in your browser, but there are also two ways to bookmark a story on HASA itself: Save to Favorites and AddThis.

AddThis is available to all readers, and lets you print a story, bookmark the page, email the URL, or link it to a service such as Facebook, Twitter etc.

On every story list and every Reader Toolbox, you will see a bright orange button with a plus sign on it. This is the AddThis button. How it works:

  1. Hover your mouse over the button.
  2. A pop-up window appears with various options (print, bookmark, send to..., etc.).
  3. Click on the option you want.

Save to Favorites is available when you are logged in, and saves the story to your Library on HASA. This means you can get your story list no matter what computer you are on because it is part of the site, not bookmarked on a particular computer. Your Favorites list is available on every page of the site in a drop-down list at the right hand end of the site header.

To save to favorites:

  1. Go to the Stories section of HASA.
  2. Click on either the overview or any chapter of the story you want to add.
  3. In the Reader Toolbox that appears at the top and the foot of these pages, click the button that says "Add Story".
  4. The page refreshes and the story is added to your list.
  5. If you are on the Overview, the first chapter is bookmarked. If you are on a specific chapter, that chapter is bookmarked.

For multi-chapter stories that you have already Saved to Favorites, you can update your bookmark to set it to a new chapter by using the Set Bookmark button in the Toolbox in the chapter you are reading.

And that's all there is to it!

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Reviewed Stories February 2013

Since the previous Bulletin, 3 stories passed through review while there are currently 9 stories waiting for reviewers. Make an author's day and review a story!

Member participation is crucial for reviews. The more people are involved in reviewing, the more different opinions are represented. Having more people involved also means that stories pass through review more quickly – which is good for everyone. If you are an active reviewer, why not go and check out a story?

Or, if you are a writer, take the plunge and submit a story for review; and when you do, please remember: Put one in, take one out.

By submitting a story for review, you are asking nine other members to read and evaluate it. So why not do for the other authors who have a story in review what you'd like other reviewers to do for you: check out one of the stories already in review and give it a read.

Becoming a reviewer

If you're not an active reviewer, but think you can spare a bit of time... – even if you just review one or two stories in a month, every review is welcome. If you are logged in, you can sign up here if you've been a member of HASA for thirty days or more.

Daunted by the idea of reviewing? Don't be, reviewing at its simplest comes down to asking yourself: "Would I recommend this story to someone?" Then, whether the answer is 'yes' or 'no', you can make a choice from the capsule reasons to clarify your decision. If you want to, you can add a few more words to convey what you (dis)liked about the story, but just the capsule reason is perfectly fine as well.

And remember: even if you think you're too critical or not critical enough: your review is only one of nine, and all points of view are welcome. Not every reviewer has to review every story and in the end it does all level out to a balanced judgement.

Reviewed story spotlight

These stories have passed through review since the previous bulletin. Congratulations to all authors; well done!

The Memory of Trees by WindSurfBabe
Rating: Adult
Genre:
Drama
Era:
3rd Age – Ring War
Summary:
Memory unites an unlikely pairing. Written a contest.

Elanor's Yuletide by Armariel
Rating: General
Genre: General
Era: 4th Age
Summary: A homesick Elanor Gamgee anticipates the season of Yule at Minas Tirith.

A Powerful Absence by curiouswombat
Rating: General
Genre: Drama
Era: 4th Age
Summary: A simple accident, some years after the end of the Ring War, leaves Elladan coping with life in Middle Earth without his twin. Complete.

Make an author's day, review a story or post a comment.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

HASA news - birthdays, Challenges, stories

First, a warm Thank You to everybody who took part in the Fundraising Challenge in January, either as a pledge or as a writer!

February Birthdays

Is your birthday in February, and would you like a drabble about your favourite character or topic? You can request it here.

Not sure what the birthday cards are about? Have a look at stories written for previous requests.

Challenges

Just as Challenges come from Prospective Challenges, Prospective Challenges come from Nuzgûl, and Nuzgûl need attention to grow from tiny ideas into big stories. Step into the Nuzgûl hutch. The bunnies don't bite (much). And who knows what ideas you may come out with?

The Nuzgûl of the Month!

The all-new February Nuzgûl: Courtship – any time, any place, any race. And if you think you can come up with ideas for Nuzgûl of the Month later this year, please post to the discussion thread as well.

January Stories

All writers love feedback. It is the lembas and miruvor that sustains us as we write our story, and leaving a few words about a story you read is always a nice thing to do, whether the story is new or old.

Every fifteen minutes HASA highlights a story chosen at random from the Reviewed and General stories in the archive. Read the currently featured story on our front page.

Many talented writers are publishing every day. In January:

---6 Reviewed Stories were published or updated.

---50 General Stories were published or updated.

---2 Beta Stories were updated.

(Please note, you need to be logged in to view beta stories.)

Thank you for reading at HASA. Enjoy!