Hosting Guidelines

I have just recently started accepting hosted stories again. The reason I stopped before was that I got swamped with them and was just too busy to spend time formatting them all to get them ready to post. As a teacher, I’m still very busy, but I would like to be able to post more new content on my site on a regular basis, so I’m going to try the hosting them again. I do have a set of qualifications that your story must fit though, so please read this page thoroughly before you send me anything. Thanks!

• First, the story must be about the Backstreet Boys. I think that’s an obvious one.

• I won’t accept most teenybopper stories. If you’re not sure what I mean by this, please read my list, You Might Have Written a Teenybopper Story If...

• I won’t accept visuals or slash. Explicit sex scenes within a novel with an actual plot are perfectly fine, but your story must have a plot other than sex.

• The story must be well-written. This means not too many English errors (spelling, grammar, paragraphing, dialogue, etc…). A few are okay, but the story shouldn’t have so many that it’s hard to read and understand. Just a couple tips that will really help your chances – always start a new paragraph when a different character speaks and put a comma after a quotation. (ex: “Let’s go,” he said, rather than “Let’s go.” He said.) It’s also a good idea to spell check and proofread your story before sending it to catch stupid typos and mistakes that you wouldn’t want posted online.

• If you don’t feel confident with the grammar/mechanical aspects of writing in English, please read my tutorial, The Mechanics of Writing. It should help you learn to write more correctly and edit your writing for errors.

• When you send me your story, you MUST send it as an attachment [either a Microsoft Word document (.doc) or Notepad/Wordpad text file (.txt)]. If you just copy and paste it into the body of an email, it screws up the formatting and makes it look funny when I post it, and I don’t have the time to go through every line and fix it. You can send me the story chapter by chapter or all in one file, whichever is more convenient for you.

• If your story is not finished when I start hosting it, please make an effort to update it on a fairly regular basis. If you’re struggling with updates or decide to discontinue your story, please let me know so I know what’s going on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had authors just stop sending me chapters without a word, and I’m left to wonder what has become of them and their unfinished stories, and that’s not really fair to me or the readers.

• One more thing – no list of characters and their pictures and stuff. That’s pretty pointless. The characters should be described in the story, not in some list. And to post all that, I have to save all the pictures and take up extra space in my account, and I’m not going to do that. So don’t even bother sending me it, cause I usually won’t put it up with your story, unless I think it’s necessary to understand the story (like if you have tons of characters, for example).

If you think your story fits the qualifications, please email me at rokofages75@dreamers-sanctuary.com with the following included in your email:

• Your name
• Your age
• The title of your story
• Status of your story (complete or incomplete)
• Genre(s) of your story (drama, romance, action/suspense, sci-fi/fantasy, comedy, short story, etc…)
• Main Backstreet Boy(s) (if it has three or more as main characters, just put ‘group’)
• Summary of your story (If I decide to host it, this is most likely what I’ll post for the summary, so make it good.)
• If your story is already posted somewhere on the internet, put the URL in there. If not, please send me a portion of the story (if it’s short, the whole thing, or if it’s a novel, a few chapters) so I can get an idea of your writing style and the plot of the story.

That’s it! If I decide to host your story, I’ll let you know within a few days. If you don’t hear from me within a week, chances are, you’re not getting hosted. I won’t email you if I don’t accept your story. If you aren’t accepted and are dying to know why, feel free to email and ask, but be prepared for a critique from me. I always try to be constructive in my comments and will tell you what I think you could do to improve your story, but I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Just a fair warning. :)

Thanks for your interest in being hosted here!