It’s hard to believe that it’s been four whole years since I launched Protagonize one cold winter night in late December, 2007.

In 2011, we saw the launch of group submissions (and in fact the whole of the groups feature), as well as a number of other smaller improvements spread out throughout the site. Performance enhancements and optimizations were the focus of the fall. Statistics-wise, our community has grown to nearly 20,000 authors, with over 25,000 works published and over 104,000 pages of content written on the site since its inception.

All-in-all, it’s been a quiet but progressive year for Protagonize.

While it may seem that I’ve been keeping with the site overhaul I promised a few months back close to the vest, I’ve actually been working away on it since the summer. It’s a pretty massive overhaul from a visual and user experience standpoint, but it also required a lot of work behind the scenes to make the new interface work with our existing site structure.

Now, the announcement I mentioned a few days back in my holiday post: the new interface will be going into testing with our beta group sometime before January 15th. This is a pretty major step in the process of launching the new look, and I’m glad to know we have an awesome group of ~70 beta testers from among our site’s authors.

This time around, we won’t be accepting any new beta applications, but anyone who purchases a Plus subscription ($50 CAD) prior to the start of beta will be automatically added to the the tester group. Once the beta test officially kicks off, automatic beta membership from Plus subscriptions will end. If you’re in the fence, this will be your last chance to help out the site and get to experience the new interface early!

Note: If you already have beta access, you’re all set to beta test when I flip the switch. I’ll be posting more information about how beta will work once we get closer to mid-January.

With that in mind, here are a few actual screenshots of the new, fully-functional reading interface running on an iPad 2. You can click through each image to see the full-size version. (Some bits are subject to change, as usual. :)

You’ll notice some familiar faces, too, I’m sure. Enjoy!

Photo courtesy of Joccay on Flickr.

To all of our authors, readers, and members who celebrate something this time of year, we wish you a very merry Christmas (et joyeux Noël), joyous Ramadan, fabulous Hanukkah, spectacular Solstice, as well as all of the holidays I’ve probably missed. And if you’re an atheist, agnostic, or simply apathetic, we hope you enjoy the spirit of the season, too. :)

Thank you for being a part of our community, and we hope you enjoy this time (responsibly, of course) with your loved ones… or at least cuddled up with a good book and a mug of something warm, somewhere.

We’ll also have an announcement up soon about some very cool (and massive!) updates coming to Protagonize early in the new year, so keep your eyes peeled!

Image courtesy of C. K. Hartman on Flickr.

No, this isn’t a blog post to highlight the important role of the Like button on Protagonize (it is important, right?). It’s just me sharing an “aha!” moment I recently had.

We all like to get riled up by ratings and stress the importance of comments. I’m not here to convince you to change the way you use the site and interact with content. I don’t want to lecture you on the supposed ills of your behaviour. I have plenty of other Ptag posts where I’ve done that already. No, I just want to relate my own experience.

A few days back I was cruising through some of the completed works, looking for something to read. I was craving an ending, y’know? Anyway, I found some stories that looked interesting, gave them a read through, left a few comments and recommended one.

No big deal, right?

The next day I logged in and saw that one of those works was now on the most recommended list. Funny, because it had no recommendations the day before, and my comment was the only one. Suddenly the work had attracted three more comments and two recommendations. Why? I’d like to think that the sudden popularity was all my doing, but I know it wasn’t. Yes, I left that first comment and first recommendation, but I left them for a reason: the author did a great job telling the story!

The Protagonize community rewards those who put time into their writing, as time reflects passion. When you share you passion with others, often times the sharing continues. Sure, not every piece you write will garner a huge audience, and some might slip under the tide of newly posted chapters, stories, and pages. A little persistence goes a long ways and, if you’re here because of your passion for writing, readership shouldn’t be your be-all and end-all.

Then again, seeing those “one new comment was left on your work” notifications at the top of the page are always nice.

So keep on reading and, more importantly, keep on writing!

Image courtesy of Oh Geez! Design on Flickr. Thanks!

I’m told by our publisher that readings don’t do much for book sales, but that they can be good for a writer’s ego. Of course if you happen to be a big-name writer with mega-sales, you probably don’t need much help in the ego department, but if you’re collecting rejection slips right and left like most of us, then I’d say try to give as many readings as you can. But there are other reasons to do readings, beyond a potential ego-boost.

A couple weeks ago we gave a reading from We Wanted to be Writers at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, CA (a terrific indy bookstore). I was joined “on stage” by my co-author Glenn Schaeffer, and by Michelle Huneven, who’s in our book and whose most recent novel is Blame. Both are old hands at playing to an audience. Not me. It had been years since I’d last done a reading, and like most writers, I’m much more comfortable hunkered alone over a keyboard. My wife sensed looming disaster. She made me rehearse, and rehearse again, and while I rehearsed, she played the audience. And a very critical audience, at that. “You’re mumbling,” she’d say. “Look up! Engage with the audience! Slow down! And would you please stop mumbling!”

It was a good exercise. First lesson? If you’re planning a reading, rehearse. Assemble an audience of friends or neighbors who can give helpful advice. Or a hyper-critical spouse if one is handy. You might even videotape the “reading,” so you can see what others are seeing, in all its horrendous detail.

Our reading went well. I didn’t mumble too much. I slowed down, looked up, engaged with the audience. True, there wasn’t much of an audience with whom to engage; it was a hot Friday night in Pasadena, the first week of the new school year, and a horrendous multi-car accident on the 110 led to another of LA’s monumental gridlocks.

But a small audience was quite OK, which brings me back to why readings are a good idea even if they don’t do much for sales. I think the thought — or looming threat — of exposing one’s work to an audience tends to sharpen a writer’s eye and ear. Lots of writers I know read their own work aloud to themselves while they’re writing. I do, too. It’s a good way of catching glitches, awkward phrasing or boring scenes, stuff you might not catch if you’re reading silently. But reading aloud to yourself isn’t quite the same as reading aloud to others. Nothing sharpens the eye more than the potential for embarrassment. So even if you don’t have a reading coming up, now and then, assemble some friends and read to them from a work in progress. And you know what? That’s a reading!

True, by the time we read at Vroman’s, We Wanted to Be Writers had been released. So reading it aloud and finding a few little squeaks here and there in the prose came a bit too late. But I noted these for future reference, which I hope will improve the second edition. Meanwhile, it reminded me, as I think all writers need to be reminded from time to time, to pay closer attention to the work, which can only help with my new projects.

Rather than read straight from the book, I developed a script, which we all read from. What’s printed on the page might be fine when read to oneself, but a listening audience might need something that moves along more quickly, so I did a bit of editing, for pacing. Of course, We Wanted to Be Writers is nonfiction; it can be harder if not impossible to edit a passage from a novel, or especially a tightly written short story, in the interests of pacing. Still, it can’t hurt to look for opportunities, for excerpts that work well together.

We kept the reading portion of the evening’s event to 30 minutes. When it comes to readings, I think less is more. I learned this from going to a reading of Blame, in fact. Michelle read for about 20 minutes, then opened it up to questions and discussion, leaving at least this member of the audience wanting more. So, of course, I bought the book.

Finally, I think it’s helpful to remember our roots, that we are storytellers first and foremost, that before a Sumerian poked a sharp stick into a clump of wet clay and invented writing some 6,000 years ago, storytellers had already been giving readings for tens of thousands of years, probably most often around a fire, maybe also with the haunch of some now-extinct mammal turning on a spit, probably with plenty of beer (invented a couple thousand years earlier), and maybe even a hyper-critical spouse or two.

So while a reading may not do much for sales, a reading can reconnect us with our story-telling heritage. A reading energizes. It connects a writer and community.

Protagonize is a site full of talented authors, so it’s no surprise that we sometimes have to deal with some uncomfortable or suspicious behaviour from unscrupulous users who may be trying to take advantage of some of our younger or more impressionable members.

The reason I bring this up is that our moderation team has noticed some odd behaviour from a couple of new accounts on the site in the last day or so, and I thought it would be prudent to make sure you were all aware of potential publishing scams that float around writing sites off-and-on.

Please beware of things that may seem out of the ordinary, such as:

• Brand new users on the site contacting you (and/or others) out of the blue, praising your work effusively or making unbelievable or unlikely claims, then asking for your personal and/or contact information.
• Anyone claiming to be an official representative of of a publishing firm or company, but not giving you their credentials, or using unprofessional email addresses or linking to web sites they can’t prove they represent.
• Anyone asking you to send them manuscripts or copies of your work, in full.

Please be cautious when dealing with folks you don’t know on the site, and be aware that it’s unlikely that a potential publisher would suddenly contact you without giving you proof of their identity or verifiable credentials of some sort. If anything, they would not be using anonymous or generic email accounts and should be able to provide you with contact information for the firm they represent, along with a legitimate phone number or web site to look them up on.

Here are a few handy resources to educate yourselves about this type of scam. As I mentioned before, it’s pretty common, particularly on sites where thousands of eager, talented authors congregate.

• Warnings About the Schemes, Scams, and Pitfalls That Threaten Writers
• Watch Out For Publishing Scams
• How to Avoid Book Publishing Scams
• Publishing Scams: Six Red Flags That Scream “Rip Off”
• Tips for spotting publishing scams

There’s plenty of information about this type of scam out there online, and plenty of underhanded people out there to make those scams happen. If you plan to write online publicly, in any capacity, it would serve you well to educate yourselves about the potential problems you can run into when doing so.

If you have any questions or concerns about this, or if you’ve been directly contacted by someone misrepresenting themselves, please feel free to contact myself or the moderators, or flag or report any accounts on the site who may be harassing or bothering you. We’ll look into matters ASAP, and we won’t hesitate to ban accounts who are determined to be participating in this kind of behaviour.

Play it safe and be prudent! And if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. :)

Some awesome news for everyone this evening — the ability to submit your stories, poems, and other works to groups is now enabled for everyone on Protagonize!

Yes, it’s been a very long time coming. Thank you all for being so patient, and for being such dedicated members of our community. The feedback and support I’ve gotten from all of you along the way has been amazingly helpful in getting this major feature completed. It may sound like a simple addition, but it was somewhat complicated to implement, behind the scenes.

This is the last major feature to be launched before the major Protagonize redesign goes live this summer, and I think it should all keep you pretty busy until that point. :)

The observant among you have probably already noticed that I’ve had this feature in testing with our beta group for the last week or so. I’d like to thank them all for their help and feedback over the last few days; they managed to catch a few bugs and suggest a pretty useful enhancement that I wouldn’t have added off-the-bat otherwise. I do have a couple more group enhancements coming over the weekend, but those won’t have any impact on submissions, so I figured I might as well get this out the door as early as possible.

I’m sure you’re all wondering how things work, and the basics should be pretty clear over in the FAQ. Make sure to read that bit, before asking anything.

I thought I’d also add a few questions and answers here, as well, to head off any questions that might be obvious enough to cover right away…

• Things look funny, or I’m getting browser error messages…
  Please make sure to clear your browser cache before letting us know about it. You could be seeing old code that your browser had leftover from earlier. Here are instructions on how to clear your cache.
• How do I submit something to a group?
  Use the Actions (formerly Options) menu on any story/poem or whatnot. You’ll see a new option entitled Add to or remove from group. Should be pretty self-explanatory. Groups that don’t allow submissions won’t be listed in the popup dialog.
• How do I remove a work from a group, as the original author?
  See above. Same dialog, just click the X instead of the + beside the group your story is in.
• Where can I see all stories/etc. submitted to a group?
  If a group allows submissions, you’ll see a Read tab at the top of the group. Go check that out. It’s been live all week, but you may not have noticed with only the beta testers submitting works.
• How do I remove someone else’s submission to a group I manage?
  Go to any of the browsing filters on your group’s Read page (i.e. Popular, Recommended, etc.), aside from the Overview. If you’re a group manager, hovering over any work in the group will show a little X icon in the top right corner of that work’s listing. Click it to remove the work from the group.
• Can I configure my group to only accept certain types of content?
  Yes, read the new FAQ entry on this topic.
• Is content in Private groups hidden from the rest of the site?
  Yes. It’s also hidden from your total page/post count. Check the Groups FAQ for more details.
• How many groups can I submit any individual work to?
  Unlimited Public groups, or one Restricted access or Private group. See the FAQ for more details. Basically we can’t have overlapping access lists between multiple groups for a single piece of content, so that’s how it has to work.
• If I submit a collaborative story to a Restricted access group, who can add to it?
  That’s a tricky one. I’ve currently got it setup to allow all members of the Restricted group to add, as well as anyone who had previously added to the story. That’s one of the things I’m testing with the beta group. If it makes more sense to only allow the group members to add and lock out any other participants who are not members, I’ll change it. Opinions are welcome.
• Can I add a new story directly to a group, without posting it first?
  Not yet, but soon. The ability to create a new story directly in a specific group should be available in the next week or so. In the meantime, you’ll need to publish the story first, then add it to a group.
• What other stuff changed in this release?
  The major one is that you can no longer favourite your own works. That was pretty heavily requested. Also, Full View on all stories has been completely revamped. Check it out. The intrepid reader may notice that it looks a lot like our new mockups. :)

Questions, comments? Send ‘em my way via email, or feel free to comment here. Enjoy the new features!

Since I launched Protagonize back in late December of 2007, the site has had a pretty distinctive look and feel — something we’ve all become comfortable with, and which has slowly grown to represent much of the site and community’s ethos, or “vibe” if you prefer.

Over the course of those three-plus years, what started off as a rather simple design has evolved and stretched to fit new content and an enhanced set of features. What worked well back in the simpler days of the site has become a bit cumbersome over time. To the point where I wonder if our once-simple interface is now more confusing and messy than useful.

I’ve spent a long while thinking about how we could refresh and redesign an interface that needs to encompass a significant amount more features than it used to house. On top of that, I’ve considered a lot of new advances in technology since early 2008, from both the browsing side and from the site development side of things.

With that in mind, along with the requests and thoughtful suggestions of thousands of Protagonize users since the site’s initial launch, it’s time for an overhaul. And today, to whet your collective appetites, I’ll be giving you a sneak preview of what’s to come.

So, What’s Changing?

These mockups (they’re not hooked up and functional yet, but don’t despair; they shouldn’t change too much before I take them into production) represent over a year’s worth of consideration and analysis. All of our existing functionality should still be available, although likely moved around and re-organized.

With this new design, I’m targeting and incorporating the following:

• Enhancing readability and usability to make using Protagonize a more enjoyable experience
• Making author profiles and story browsing more clean and professional looking, while retaining much of the site’s whimsy and colour palette
• Adjusting to general usage patterns around the site
• Revamping clunky behaviours to make them more functional
• Tightening up areas that take up too much visual real estate
• Cleaning up the site’s information architecture
• Taking advantage of the latest web tech (HTML 5 & CSS 3) to reduce the weight and download time of the site’s pages and improve performance
• Suggestions and feedback from our members
• Keeping mobile device interfaces in mind with a (mostly) touch and tablet-friendly design

I know that I’ve been taunting and tantalizing our members with the suggestion of a redesign for quite some time now, but it took me a while to figure out how exactly I wanted to go about it. I want our authors to be proud of the way their profiles and their works are displayed on the site, and at the same time I want the site to be a more attractive and enticing place for authors to post their work, so there was some significant deliberation involved.

With all that awesome stuff in mind, may I present you with two key portions of Protagonize 2.0…

The Author Profile

(Click the thumbnails to view the full versions.)

This is the revamped author profile. Some things of note (among many):

• This is the default (bio) tab view — your activity feed, works (sortable/filterable), faves (now visible to everyone) and fans/friends are displayed on separate tabs, instead of all on the same page.
• The general look and feel is much cleaner. More professional, easier to read, but still fun. :)
• The top navigation has been totally revamped, although I did show a preview of this in a prior screenshot. The right-hand column is also gone.
• The new “Explore” top navigation item will encompass the old Read, Authors, Groups and Activity menus. Don’t worry, it’ll be awesome.
• Way bigger profile pics!
• Major profile actions are now consolidated in the ribbon beside your profile pic. If you’re looking at your own profile, you’ll see an Edit Profile button instead of the “Become a fan” button.
• Many of the profile action buttons have been consolidated into the little options dropdown on the right-hand side. Less clutter!
• There is a new “about me” field on the left where you can put a short snippet about yourself, or your current status, or whatever else you’d like.
• Your personal quote (which remains optional) should be a little more obvious.
• Ads are a bit more subtle. Note: They’ll be hidden to others on your own profile if you’re a subscriber (and to yourself, across the board.)
• Your participating groups listing has been overhauled pretty significantly on the bottom left.
• Under your gender/age and location, you’ll see a list of links. You can control those, adding your Twitter, Facebook, blog, or IM link(s) in there (in this case, it’s a sample MSN handle.)
• I’ve decided to highlight only specific author stats (under the “About” block on the left) — other stats will be visible on a separate page (with advanced stats for subscribers.)
• Commenting (the form) and the comments display are much cleaner and easier to read. I’ve also added the option to up/down vote profile comments. Down-voted comments are hidden below a certain threshold (configurable) and highly rated comments get a nifty little “popular” flag.
• The page footer is a lot cleaner/tighter and less bulky.

Note: You’ll notice that I’m hinting at a couple of new areas that I’ve promised in the past — author blogs and achievements. These probably won’t be ready right away when the new interface launches, but they’ll be coming later on.

The Story/Reading View

This is the overhauled reading view. Things to note:

• I’ve kept much of the same styling from our new profile pages, to keep things consistent. You’ll notice that our highlight colour is now green (which should be familiar to everyone who uses the current design) instead of the pale yellows of the author profile.
• Much cleaner reading area. A wider column, black (well, dark grey) text on a white background, and a larger font and additional leading should be much easier on the eyes.
• Pages are still tailored to read best at approximately the length of a normal page of text in a typical novel, somewhere around 250-300 words.
• As with the redesigned author profile, the most commonly used actions will be available front-and-center in the “ribbon” area. These primary actions will vary depending on if you’re looking at one of your own stories, or someone else’s.
• I’m showing the expanded “options” contextual menu on this screen, just so you can see how it works. I’ve migrated many of the lesser-used options when reading into this new menu, along with the contents of the old Story Options menu.
• Page markers now have a much more “e-reader”-style feel. Yes, I was (blatantly) inspired by the iPad’s Kindle and iBooks apps, but it makes sense, works nicely, and it’s a lot more obvious than our old marker system. The new page markers will work exactly the same way, except they should be a lot more user-friendly — the view above is of a “marked” page, as per the green page marker on the top right. When a page isn’t marked, the marker will be greyed out and clickable.
• All references to “branches” and “chapters” have been consolidated into simply “pages“. This should make things a little easier to figure out for new members, and less clunky throughout the rest of the site. It also eliminates the implicit suggestion that each page on Protagonize should be as long as a full chapter in a novel. Note: The way different story types work (addventure vs. standard) will obviously remain the same.
• I’ve added a text sizer widget to the top right. The other icons there let you browse markers you have in the current story or work, get the story’s RSS feed, or navigate back in the story you’re reading.
• Story details and the currently selected Creative Commons license are displayed at the bottom of the right-hand column. As you can see, all of the old functionality is still here and available, just re-organized to make more sense.
• The follow-up branch titles (at the bottom of the current story page) are a little less clunky and more obvious calls-to-action.
• Commenting is cleaned up as per the updated styles on author profiles.

As I mentioned, I really intended the overhauled reading interface to be much more tablet-friendly. I myself spend a lot of time looking at the current site on my iPad, and I’ve been pretty disappointed with the usability from a reading and interface-usage perspective. This new approach should be a much more pleasant experience on mobile (particularly tablet) devices. Try viewing the large version of the thumbnails above on a tablet, you’ll see what I mean.

More to come…

As I mentioned, this is just a preview. You’ll notice that I haven’t shown you the revamped homepage, because I’m still working on it. Things in these mockups will probably change a bit before I officially launch the new interface. I may move stuff around, or change how things work on a minor scale. But most of it is now set in stone, so things won’t change too drastically.

And as for the question I’m sure you’re all dying to ask: timing. As game developers love to spout, “when it’s done!”

Honestly, though, it should be sooner rather than later. Think weeks (well, a few), not months. I’m pretty busy these days, but I have a lot more control over my schedule than I did three months ago, thankfully. I want to see these updates live as much as you do (if not more. :)

I’d love to have your feedback on these two mockups — love it? Hate it? Let me know. I’ve already shown the author profile redesign to our beta group and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully we’ll see a similar response from the rest of our users.

When I joined Protagonize almost three years ago there was no such thing as a Solo story – everything was open for collaboration. There wasn’t even any Author Guidance, so you couldn’t warn people off of adding a chapter to your story. So much has changed in those three years, but I sometimes find myself somewhat nostalgic for the adrenaline rush of hitting “Publish” without explicit guidance.

I got my start by adding a few chapters to various budding collaborative stories, without asking anyone’s permission or having a set of guidelines to follow. Looking back it seems quite daunting. I was new to the site and I leaped in head first. Luckily, other authors ran with my additions, and soon we had a few rapidly developing stories that no-one could ever predict. That came to be my favourite part of collaboration: ending a chapter with some sort of hook, not for the reader’s sake, but to see how the next author would react. Never, not once, did events follow as I would have written them myself.

Great minds may think alike, but greater minds think differently than those around them.

Unfortunately, that’s also one of the biggest stumbling blocks in collaborative writing. Not everyone thinks the same way you do, and sometimes another author may take the story in a completely unexpected and unwelcome direction. For the most part you’ve got to work with the change, but there are some steps you can take to avoid this sort of situation.

If you started the story, make use of your author guidance. Have a development plan for a character? Outline it in the author guidance, it’s meant to be a tool for people adding to the story, not as a summary. If you’re running a roleplay, make sure to say that only certain authors are allowed to write as certain characters, or that the story is closed to further collaboration. If you didn’t start the story, make sure that the person with control over the author guidance is using that feature effectively. Once you’ve added a chapter to a story, it’s your story too.

Here are some things to remember when working collaboratively:

• not everyone thinks the way you do; if you aren’t explicit in your writing or your author guidance, don’t become angry when things don’t go your way
• politeness can get you a long way, and is often much more effective than attacking someone for “ruining” the story
• the story is not exclusively yours just as much as it doesn’t belong solely to any other person
• same with characters: you may have an emotional attachment to a character, but once they’re in the story other authors can and will help develop them to further the story

Nowadays, I often see the word “collab” in discussions and on stories. It’s great to see people collaborating on story arcs, but why not take it a step further and share in character creation, too? Here’s my challenge to you: find another author to work with (the recently featured Duo Madness or the Collaborative Corner groups will be good for this) and work together on telling the story of a single character. Adopting the same perspective and trying to make the chapters seamless as if they were written by a single author is one of the best challenges in writing collaboratively.

And finally, some things pertinent to collaboration that the Moderators would like you to remember:

• if you didn’t write the chapter, you can’t request that it be deleted
• author guidance is just that – guidance; it does not have to be followed, but it is both polite and respectful to do so
• label your works properly! “Collabs” in which each author has exclusive control over a character should be put in the Exercise – Roleplay category.

Happy Protagonizing, and g’luck with all your current and future collaborations.

Image courtesy of jsorbie on Flickr.

One thing I really dislike about traveling is waiting in airports. Connections, layovers, boarding times … sitting there, doing absolutely nothing worthwhile or of consequence for hours on end really makes me edgy.

Thankfully, at the end of the day, it’s about your destination and not the trip there – in this case, at least. Also, some good reading along the way is helpful, particularly when sitting at LAX for nearly five hours between flights. To Patrick Rothfuss, I tip my hat, sir – I picked up his first novel in ebook form on the Amazon Kindle store while sitting at the airport in Vancouver on my way out, and I’ve barely been able to put down my iPad since. I’m hooked. If you’re a fan of epic fantasy like myself, do yourself a favour and check out The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 1). You won’t regret it. I’ve already bought book two so that I can transition over without delay.

(For what it’s worth, Rothfuss’s blog is pretty hysterically funny stuff, too.)

And for you fans of George R. R. Martin out there, don’t tell me what happened. Yes, I’ve read the entire series to date, but it’s been a few years since I read the first tome. I’m really intrigued by the live-action take on it and I’ve PVR’d the first episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Can’t wait to watch it!

Now that I’ve gone off the rails a little, back to the point. I’m in Panama City with my wife right now, sitting in a beautiful hotel in the middle of downtown, crouching in front of my laptop and typing this as we decide what to do with the rest of the day. I’m sure a few of you out there amongst our Protagonize brethren have visited Panama before, but it’s hot and muggy here. Hot. I’m still sticky from yesterday, let alone today. The mid-day tropical rain is definitely a welcome respite from the heat.

That said, I’m going to be incomunicado for a little longer. I’m here until next Tuesday morning (April 26th) and then headed home over the course of a couple of days, with a quick trip to see my family in the Okanagan on the way home — and of course, to pick up el Snowbeast. So for the next week-or-so, please don’t be too irritated if you don’t hear back from me within a reasonable amount of time. I’ve been out and about pretty much every day and I’ve been pretty lax with email.

If you have a horribly urgent question, please get in touch with one of our lovely and talented moderators. They’ll do their best to help you out with your question or issue regarding the site. If you need to reach me for any other reason, I’ll be checking email infrequently, so your best bet is to wait until I get back.

Buenas tardes — I’ll see you next week!

Howdy, Prawntagonizers! Hope you’re all enjoying our brand-spankin’-new format today. It’s the first day of what I hope will be a long and prosperous journey into the world of seafood-related creative writing.

And today, we kick it off with a bang: prawns!

Have you all considered adopting a prawn? It’s really something everyone who has a few spare bucks in their pocket should think about doing.

You’ve heard of Adopt-a-Highway programs, right? Where folks shell out a few dollars to clean up a stretch of highway? Well, the official Protagonize Adopt-a-Prawn­™ Program works quite the same way, except instead of contributing to your local or municipal government’s coffers, you just need to change your profile image to something prawn-y.

If you’re feeling slightly more generous, you may consider participating in the (slightly more expensive) Sponsor-a-Prawn™ program, keeping young, troubled prawns off the streets and away from drugs, prawnstitution, the Department of Fisheries. Feel free to donate to Prawntagonize if this cause suits you. :)

I encourage you all to follow my lead, and prawnify your profiles. Without our support, prawns all over the world will be reduced to mere dinner (or worse yet, lunch.) Show your solidarity, stop by the newly revamped Prawntagonize Pub, and be prawned!