Category Archives: affsdiary.com

Any and all things related to the web hosting and site administration backend.

New Book Release! Aff’s Diary: Blessed Hope

 

Nestled deep in the forest, all is as it should be in the village of Blessed Hope – and that’s how chief hunter Dari Finbarr likes it. Then one stormy night the embodiment of death for Humans stumbles into their home: a Szari girl.

The Szari! A race of powerful beings who sought the extinction of Humankind, and were only stopped by the Tzaro people in a brutal war that is still whispered about in hushed voices. A sole Szari warrior is capable of wiping out entire Human settlements by themselves.

The strange, silent Szari is nothing like how the tales describe however; and though it risks his life, Dari is given the task of guarding her until the wise Tzaro are brought to decide her fate. Until then many questions arise, but no answers can be found in the girl’s sad green eyes.

Without knowing it, the Humans of Blessed Hope have found themselves on a path that will change the future of all the races on their world…

After much blood, sweat and tears, and delays brought about by multiple truly life-altering circumstances, we have finally – FINALLY! – got Aff’s Diary: Blessed Hope published! Available from Lulu in paperback and ebook (epub). Distribution will have it available through other retailers in a few weeks, and when it happens I’ll write about it!

Despite the preview image on the paperback’s page, the actual cover image on print looks very good – here’s the proof copy:

This series is set before the Seda’s Diary series of books. Blessed Hope is our thickest book to date at 427 pages (plus supplementary content). I hope everyone who reads this book enjoys the story!

 

BIG thank you to the beta readers who have stuck with us through the hard work in getting this story out!

An attempt at being silenced

This happened some time ago actually, but I had to wait until Aff himself posted about it first.

The post is at the main site.

Long story short, it’s a network domain registration scam, where a ‘different company’ tries to register an existing domain and then the ‘registering company’ contacts the owner of the existing domain and says they should register the site with them to ensure they own the domain – in this case, the affsdiary.com domain.

It’s rather unusual that this came after my post got Instalanched.

Well, no, not really. This is not the first time something like this has happened.

See, I wrote a little self-published book called Sparrowind, and soon after it was put out, Aff got a takedown notice, based on ‘potentially copyright infringing material.’ Aff responded that as all the contents and the artwork were original, there was no way that the book was in violation of copyright. But, if the original complainant were to contact us directly, we were surely going to be able to discuss this further.

We never got any further contact on that end, and the case was closed.

Periodically we also get emails with rather vague demands to ‘take stuff down’ – I said it was vague. Still, this latest attempt has been somewhat creative, but is clearly unaware of the legal labyrinth that would pretty much result in a loss from the complainant – simply because the domain is registered in copyright according to Australian law, and has been for several years.

This is not the first time there have been attempts to silence me, and honestly, I doubt it’ll be the last.

The silly thing is, I’m a very minor entity on the Internet, and I don’t think I have that many readers. To drag myself mentally out of the grief and depression takes a lot of effort, and afterward I feel as if I’d spent hours doing martial arts training, without the benefit of endorphins to make me feel better. Yet that effort seems small in comparison to the amount of effort there seems to be aimed at driving me off the Internet, to alienate me from the writing communities I’ve joined, in seeming response to any positive attention my works get.

That’s…a rather sad way to spend time, isn’t it?

An Attempt By Yamamanama To Impersonate Me

So while walking back and forth between my computer and my kitchen, checking on recipes while cooking I get an alert on my email saying that “I” had just posted on Vox Day’s blog.

Uhm. What the shit? I head that off right fast.

For future reference, any comments I make on Blogspot, or sites where impersonation of another is possible, will be posted in this thread with the unfortunately necessary diligence in order to prove that I am me.

https://forums.affsdiary.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=52

If anyone is unsure if the person they are talking to is myself, register on the forums, and send me a private message. As the site is hosted by ourselves, we can at least ensure the authenticity of my own identity here, as well as ensure for our own security that the person on the other end is NOT yama.

The online websites I currently participate in discussion in are:

Shadowdancer Studios (my own website) and these forums at Affsdiary.com
According To Hoyt
Mad Genius Club
Monster Hunter Nation
scifiwright.com
TLKnighton’s website
Cedar Writes
Livejournal
(very rarely) Google Plus.

and, as only of a few days ago, Vox Popoli, in order to establish my own identity as Yama had begun to impersonate other people there in order to facilitate his own misdirection and misrepresentation in an attempt to whitewash his own actions and claim victimhood as well as desperately attempting to muddy the waters while he slings more shit around him. He has made false claims that I ‘suggested’ to Vox that someone named Emma be stalked, when in fact I have no idea who this even references. He attempted to make it sound like Jordan179 was ‘in on the plot.’

If it is someone local to him, then he believes that I have, somehow, the magic capability of being able to have the influence and connections necessary to ID his friends, and believes that I have the same kind of inclinations and obsessions he does. If that were the case why am I restricting myself to documenting his activities of harassment online? Beyond where his IP address geolocates (which only goes as far as either Marshfield or Duxbury Massachusetts), I have no idea where he lives, and honestly have no intention of finding out – why would I?! He behaves as if I would do to him what he has attempted to do to me – namely attempted to crowdsource harassment of myself and my friends online – and is now behaving as if I would source harassment of his friends outside of the Internet based simply because of their association with him.

This is a classic Yama projection (believing that I will act, think and behave the same way he does), and has me wondering if he has attempted to do this to me RL as well. I am already aware that he likes to bring me up in completely unrelated places and frequently will do so in places where he thinks he may garner support in encouraging dislike of myself based on his lies, smears and baseless accusations.

Unlike Yama I have a life and a family, and books to write and friends I spend time with. I do not spend all of my time hounding someone I don’t like – I will generally ignore them and avoid them instead.

It is because Yama himself chooses NOT to leave me alone that ensures that this documentation even continues to exist. In fact he came after me when I all but vanished from the blogosphere because I had no time for it and played L2 as my mode of relaxation when I came home from work. There was no reason for him to do this. The game had nothing to do with RL politics, or Muslims, or such, yet Yama felt that my mere presence there was enough for him to go to the forums and then harass people there.

He has been actively stalking me for whatever demented reason he has, that none of us can actually figure out, since late 2009. Andrew P. Marston has made it his life’s work to destroy me online, to try and drive me off the Internet.

Here’s a thought for the people reading this:

Who has he managed to do this to, that he is so determined to keep doing this? How many victims has he had, that I am unaware of, that we are unaware of? From his harassment of Larry Correia, Sarah Hoyt, Vox Day, Tom Kratman, John C. Wright and many other authors, it is clear that I am not his only target in attempts to silence whatever it is we have to say, whether it is politics or our writing books, or simply enjoying ourselves.

Who else has he targeted and successfully driven away from their joys and passion and friends online?

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This post was originally written up for the Stalker Sticky Thread.

https://forums.affsdiary.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41&p=110#p110

Please also be advised that any announcements I make about communications will be reiterated here and on the forums. Any other attempt by other people and sources to pretend to be me and make false announcements about my modes of communication will NOT be able to do that. If it doesn’t exist on Shadowdancer Studios and the Affsdiary Forums, then it didn’t come from me.

Note: I do have some blogger pages but I don’t post there and am not using them. Consider them abandoned for lack of security and privacy control.