Hello wordsmiths and scribblers,

Between the change over in our group hosts earlier this year and the continuing changes that have been made to Red Bubble (particularly to the disruption of group/host communications) getting myself started as a new host of Short Stories has been a little bit of a mish-mashed dog’s breakfast.

At first, I thought I would try and pick up where the incredible efforts of Damian and Kate left off… so I poured through old forums and challenges to get a feel for the Short Stories pilot controls. We had a challenge in over the April Easter long weekend that received three entries – thank you so much to Alison, Zolton and Dark for jumping in and participating. Since then, activity has been waning in the group and I realised that I needed to start a-fresh here, especially since the changes to our Bubble feeds and interactions with each other seem to have settled (for now).

My grandmother always told me that the best way to start anything new was to take a wander first for fresh air. So today, I’ve wandered through the last ten pages of stories in our group and plucked a fresh now bouquet of snappy pretty lovely little words as our group features, along with featuring the authors as well. Nothing like a little injection of kudos and motivation to get the wheels turning.

You might also have noticed that works submitted to Short Stories are moderated now: this is mainly because there was too much poetry clogging up our short story shelves. I love poetry… but this is not the place to best display your delicious stanzas. The same goes for artwork – any artwork accepted will have to relate very obviously to the craft of your short story to be accepted. This is group has an amazing collection of words and a strong group integrity so I don’t want to go diluting it now.

Make sure you keep an eye on this new forum thread for all future group news, chatter, musings and what not, and the next group challenge that’s on its way. Also, keep your pretty peepers watching for new group messages in your My Bubble group listing as that’s the only way I can alert to you group goings on without bmailing you all individually ;) For maximum exposure, when the next writing challenge is launched, I’ll be posting details and forum thread links on our group overview homepage.

If you have any suggestions, please make sure you plonk yourself here and let them be known.

However it’s unraveling, I hope today’s the wordy kind for you. What part of it could be the first few strands of a new story…?

Holly :)