• Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.

    This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.

    Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…

    • Don't give offence
    • Don't take offence

    We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.

    You can dismiss this notice by clicking the "x" box

Welcome… I’m New Here! Hi, my name is Chris, and I'm a writer.

Select this prefix to introduce yourself here!
Joined
Aug 31, 2025
Location
Australia
LitBits
8
I suspect this is what introducing yourself at an AA meeting is like (thus the subject line), and I'm only doing it because it's expected of me.
I'm not a hugger, and I'm not a shoulder to cry on.
Take a look at my avatar, a picture and a thousand words, and whatnot.

I write fantasy because I like the escape. I'm prolific because I'm a grumpy old man, prone to disliking people in general, and I'd prefer to ignore them and everything else and hide in my fantasy world.

My fantasy world still has heroes. Often reluctant, stupid, and broken heroes, but heroes nevertheless.
This world, not so much.

I've reviewed three submissions so far, and I'm liking the process.
Sooner or later (my guess is sooner), I'll offend someone. I won't mean to, it's just a natural talent I've been honing for so long, it's just muscle memory and reflex at this point.
So, until I get booted for not being "nice" enough, I'll crack on.

Now, stop wasting your time reading this guff and get back to writing.
I'm going to.
 
Last edited:
Hi @Gatchemo

Welcome to Litopia.
I'm glad to see you've got stuck in with Lab critiques straight away. Keep up the good work.
If you haven't already, please check out this video: How to use the lab and more
And just a note about the Lab User request form if you haven't seen the message I put out last week - it's not always working, so DM me too when you're ready to post to the Lab and I'll fix it.

So, until I get booted for not being "nice" enough, I'll crack on.
You don't have to be nice, but you do have to be civil. We won't tolerate misogyny, sexism, anti-gay, ant-trans, racism, disablism, ageism (55 is not old btw), hate, willful misinformation or intolerance of any kind. Basically, be respectful, and you won't get booted.
Please read the Prime Directive if you haven't done so already.

Any questions or queries about the Lab, give me a shout. But it's great to see you're finding your way around already, and we'll see some of your work there soon.
:)
 
I suspect this is what introducing yourself at an AA meeting is like (thus the subject line), and I'm only doing it because it's expected of me.
I'm not a hugger, and I'm not a shoulder to cry on.
Take a look at my avatar, a picture and a thousand words, and whatnot.

I write fantasy because I like the escape. I'm prolific because I'm a grumpy old man, prone to disliking people in general, and I'd prefer to ignore them and everything else and hide in my fantasy world.

My fantasy world still has heroes. Often reluctant, stupid, and broken heroes, but heroes nevertheless.
This world, not so much.

I've reviewed three submissions so far, and I'm liking the process.
Sooner or later (my guess is sooner), I'll offend someone. I won't mean to, it's just a natural talent I've been honing for so long, it's just muscle memory and reflex at this point.
So, until I get booted for not being "nice" enough, I'll crack on.

Now, stop wasting your time reading this guff and get back to writing.
I'm going to.

You don't have to worry about not being nice enough. As long as you critique the work and not the author, people here have extremely thick skin*. We know the process. We NEED brutal and honest feedback, or our work won't get better.

*Those that don't, don't stick around.

Welcome to the colony.

J
 
Welcome to Litopia. I hope you find what you're looking for. I did, but I'm unsure what it was I was looking for in the first place.

Us writers are all people with varying shades of robustness, so tread softly on our dreams. We're all children of the universe (as an old song once intimated).

I hope to engage more with you in the fullness of time. Take care.
 

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