Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Summer Donation Request


For over ten years HASA has been providing JRRT fanfiction for all genres, characters, ratings & story lengths. We get hundreds of readers a day, making HASA a great place for readers and writers.

HASA is ad-free and fee-free, and we do not sell your contact information to marketeers. Our server isn't free, however, so HASA depends on donations from members and readers, both one-time gifts and subscriptions. Our balance now is still negative, which means we need donations to cover most of the summer. The July hosting will be due in the next few days; the account should not be so negative for so long.

If only a small percentage of our members and readers donated every year or got a monthly subscription we would be in better shape. If we had more subscribers it would be easier to keep ahead.

Our PayPal account has three ways to donate:
• 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.
• One-off donations of any amount.


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 love an email complimenting them on their work, challenges that need entries, playlists that need to be created, research that needs doing 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!

Sunday, July 14, 2013

HASA how-to July 2013

This month's HASA How-to takes a closer look at stories at HASA.

How do I...

... find something to read?

In this How-to you will learn a bit more about the various kinds of stories at HASA and how to find a story if you’re looking for something specific (a character, a time period, a location etc.).

How to find all stories

There are three kinds of stories at HASA: General and Reviewed status stories are available to all site visitors, and you have to be logged in to read Beta status stories.

Reviewed: These are the stories that have been evaluated by the reviewers' pool and have been judged as excellent stories by the majority of the reviewers.

General: This is a catch-all category. If a story is not Beta and it is not Reviewed, but the author wants it available for others to read, it will be in General.

Beta: These are works in progress by HASA members that the author doesn't yet want the general public to read. Remember: you can only see these when you are logged in, although Beta stories that are entered in Challenges or linked in Playlists can also be read by the general public.

How to find a specific story

There are a number of ways to locate stories on HASA:

Story Sort Bar: The most popular way is to use the story sort bar at the top of every HASA page. Create a custom search by selecting an author, era, genre, character and/or status. The stories are sorted by most recently updated.

Recommended: You can look up stories that have been recommended by HASA members over the years. This is useful if you are looking for a particular kind of story, for instance a gap-filler that deals with family dynamics, or a story that combines humor and economics as a topic.

Keyword Search: Most story pages have a Keyword search form in the side navigation column. This form searches the titles and summaries of stories, but not the story text. Here are some tips for an effective keyword search:

  • Each line may contain one or more search words.
  • Do not use commas - use spaces to separate terms.
  • Separate lines are used as an OR search.
  • Words in the same line are used as an AND search.
  • Partial words will also be searched; for example, "owyn" will find both "Eowyn" and "Éowyn."
  • If you are unsure about spelling, use only part of the word.

How to save a search

Often, you want to read a set of stories that have similar characteristics, such as all having a particular character, all by the same author, all poetry or romances, etc. You also want to know when there is something new or updated with that kind of story. If you bookmark a single story or author, or create a playlist, you can track existing stories, but you may not know when they have been updated. You won't know about new stories. What do you do?

You create a saved search.

  1. Set up a sort filter using the drop down menus in the story sort bar.
  2. Click Go.
  3. On the search result page, you will see a form "Save Search to Your Library".
  4. Type a unique name into text box.
  5. Click "Save".
  6. The page refreshes and your search is added to the Saved Searches list.

To get to your saved search:

  1. Click on the "Stories" button in the top navigation menu.
  2. When you get to the Stories home page, look in the navigation sidebar for "My Library".
  3. In My Library, click on the link that says "Saved Searches".
  4. Your searches appear in alphabetical order in the sidebar menu, ordered alphabetically and stamped with a date when it was created.
  5. Click a search name to rerun the search.

Have fun reading and exploring!

If there is any topic you'd like to see in the how-to, please let us know!

Sunday, July 7, 2013

HASA reviewed stories July 2013

Since the previous Bulletin, no stories passed through review, while there are currently 13 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

No stories have passed through review since the previous bulletin.

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

Monday, July 1, 2013

HASA news - Birthdays, Challenges, Stories

July Birthdays

Is your birthday in July, 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 some recent ones.

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 July Nuzgûl, from Nath: Happy Turin – from an idea by Evilstorm over at LJ: Happy Turin... either a moment somewhere in between all he suffers (and inflicts) in canon, or an AU in which his life is actually happy. Give the guy a break, make him smile!

If you have ideas for Nuzgûl of the Month later this year, please post to the discussion thread as well. Ideas are always welcome!

June 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 June:

--- no Reviewed Stories were published or updated.

--- 22 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!