demeter d · 16 January 2025 · Chapter 0: Caution and explanation
You had to take "Bowstrings II" down to get rid of that messed up review, didn't you? I am sorry. For crying out loud, hackers, there is no profit to be had here, it is just a lot of stories. My Grandma used to say you had to keep certain children busy to keep them out of trouble. {Sheesh)!
Author's reply
Actually, it's a bit simpler and more complicated than getting rid of a messed-up review. I started deleting those bogus reviews, then had a second thought and left them for the site admin to look at in case they might provide a clue to making the site more secure. No, but the hacker deleted that story along with so many other stories as part of the greater breach. Not long before the hack occurred, I deleted a duplicate of Bowstrings II with the working title "All Work and No Play". It was "six of one, half a dozen of the other" in deciding which one to delete. It felt as if it might be disingenuous to republish the chapters under a new title, as if I was trying to manipulate people into leaving reviews by doing that. I try my best to avoid doing anything that resembles jerking readers around. The thought goes against the grain. It had been so long since Larner beta-read the first few chapters, I had forgotten the placeholder I had posted (but not yet published) with the first bunch of chapters. From looking at the publication date (2015), it is probable that I got interrupted by real life before I had the chance to make them public, and when I returned to the fanfic community, I'd forgotten that I'd already started uploading "Farry and Ferdi Go to Gondor" there. I only discovered the duplicate after I had already started posting the chapters again under "Bowstrings II". Deleting the duplicate story with its identical but unpublished chapters seemed like the right thing to do. I liked the title though, so I took that title and renamed "The Thrum of Tookish Bowstrings, Part 2" as "All Work and No Play" and made the "Bowstrings" title a subtitle instead. Frankly, it was probably silly of me. I have five outlines for "Bowstring" stories, and part 2, detailing how Farry and Ferdi retraced the Fellowship's journey as far as Parth Galen, worked out to be the second in the series, chronologically at least. I might have left the title alone, but I really liked the title "All Work and No Play"! (Parts 3, 4, and 5, while related in terms of certain themes, especially Faramir's growing up and coming of age and his understanding of and relationship with his father, fall at later points on my Shire timeline. All are outlined, are mostly written in draft form, and are awaiting editing and filling in any remaining gaps in the draft copies. I don't know if anyone will be around to read them by the time I get the last one done, but I have immensely enjoyed exploring Faramir Took's character arc, for my own part. But isn't that one of satisfactions of writing fanfic?) I cannot begin to wrap my brain around the motivations of hackers. Are they so deprived that they can only find satisfaction in destroying someone else's creations? I am left shaking my head, even as I try to pick up the pieces while also helping others do so as best as can be managed. Thanks for listening. Author Reply: p.s. I'm in the process of re-uploading "A Horse for Bandobras". The next thing on my checklist is to add a chapter to Bill's story, then start re-uploading "Bowstring II" chapters interspersed with new "Bill" chapters. I'm not sure what other stories I might be missing, but I'll keep wracking my brains and making comparisons of my story list with Internet Archive captures until I'm satisfied I've done all I can.