October 2015 Newsletter

[nelyo-russandol.livejournal.com]

The October 2015 edition of the SWG newsletter is a little late this month, but it's now available on our website.

http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/news/october2015.php

September was quiet at the Silmarillion Writers' Guild. This month we bring you news of temporary moderation changes at SWG and welcome five new members to our community.

This edition features a biography of Brandir, a character who was unfortunate enough to cross paths with ill-fated Túrin Turambar. A healer and an example of a character with a disability, Brandir struggles to be regarded, especially after the arrival of Túrin. This biography focuses especially on how Túrin overtly and subtly undermines Brandir's authority, driving him to his ruin.

Are you looking for something to read, or for some fan artwork? Check out the story list, full of lots of quality stories, finished or updated over the last few weeks, as well as poetry and artwork. Our Around the World and Web section includes links to several interesting articles on a variety of topics, from maps to writing resources, as well as announcements about fannish events going on in the Tolkien community in the near future.

If you're looking for something to write, check out our challenges section. "New Beginnings" is our featured challenge this month and invites you on a journey to settle into foreign lands. "Seasons of Change" is our revisited challenge this month.

Thank you to this month's contributors--Himring, Rhapsody, Elleth, Dawn, and Angelica--who created all of this month's content. Additional kudos to Dawn, who provided step-by-step instructions for pulling it all together so that my task as an apprentice editor was a matter of copying and pasting. Fingers crossed, all the links will work. Enjoy!

Comments

[hhimring]

Thank you very much for stepping in while Dawn is occupied!
The newsletter looks great to me and any links that I clicked on worked.

My bio seems to show up only as part of the newsletter at present. When I click on the links in the Most Recent box or, when I'm logged in, in My Account, the Brandir chapter is still invisible. Not much of a problem at the moment, really, but I thought you might not be aware of the fact. If it could be fixed sometime before the next newsletter, that would be great.

[dawn_felagund]

I just validated it so it should be showing up now.

Russa, it seems that my attempt to make things super-easy has a tiny hiccup after all. Because of the redirect in the chapter, it's going into References rather than the proper validation screen, so it has to be validated manually through the database. I'll change the post over in our forum to reflect that.

[nelyo-russandol.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I definitely validated something, so I didn't realise it wasn't working.

I'm sorry Himring. I can post a follow up note to warn of my botched validation attempt and ask people to click again, do you think it would be a good idea?

[dawn_felagund]

When I saw Himring's comment this morning, I had an inkling of what had gone wrong, and went and tried it myself. Having done validations before on MPTT, I realized a step was missing. It should have occurred to me when I proposed pre-uploading the redirect files but it was A Week!

[hhimring]

Thank you very much for fixing that so quickly!
No need for follow-up notes, thank you! I imagine anyone who really wanted to read it, found it through the newsletter.

[dawn_felagund]

It looks great! It's weird going to read a newsletter that I don't know every word of already ... :D

[nelyo-russandol.livejournal.com]

LOL, yes, it must be weird. I read everyhting at least once to check there were no typos or broken tags, etc.

I actually enjoyed doing it! As you left everything so spelled out, I was able to do it in no time. Thnaks for sorting out the validation hiccup!