After (almost) a week of suggestions and feedback, it's officially time for the first-ever post of . . .

In this, our inaugural posting, we are tackling the weird and wacky world of adults in a theme simply called "Grown Ups."

All of the stories featured below have point of view characters or protagonists aged 19 or older, and as is the premise for Ready Reads, every story is complete on BCTS!

So, without further adieu, let's get into our reader-submitted suggestions!

That's right, I have another, yes, another book, live right now and ready to sell, sell, sell, on Smashwords!

Enamored: A Transgender Romance Fiction Two pack!

If you like my stories "Romeo and Roomiette" and "Little by Little," then this is the pack for you! Enjoy both on your favorite reading device for the low, low price of only 1.99 USD.

I have a desktop again! And a job! And the two are related!

Okay, so as I've shared here before I've been trying to make something akin to a work from home situation work for me for a while. I've been trying to find indie devs interested in some of my music work, and I've had a couple of jobs lined up, but the death of my computer a couple of months ago almost killed that opportunity for me.

Until I re-negotiated one of my contracts.

It looks like I will be building a new computer.

The motherboard, it seems is better toasted than we had thought. While it boots to BIOS fine upon pulling my CMOS battery there was a nasty burn ring on it, and trying to boot a few different Linux distros from USB returned issues every time, with the system trying to boot in only to start throwing errors and then crashing.

We had family visiting the last two days so sorry for missing my Friday posting schedule on these!

This next week's 3 words are:

Hand
Needless
Route

A quick breakdown for 'em:

Hand. An extremity used for grasping and moving things. To pass something to another. A selection of usable options. Helping hand, hand of cards, the hand we're dealt, idle hands, hand of fate.

Needless. Pointless. Inane. Meaningless. Or, alternatively, "needless" could apply as in someone or something without any needs, something complete.

Since I'm unemployed for the moment I figured I'd put some hard work into getting a few books done for Amazon. Rather than plugging away at my edit jobs for the two BCTS conversions I'm working on, though, I have a number of never-before-seen stories in the works I'm focusing on first, including the one I've chosen to focus on right now, a silly little short(ish) romance novel.

But . . . there's a problem.

Hmm.

Tomorrow I SHOULD be posting the second set of challenge words for my "random inspirations challenge," but as of yet I haven't seen any stories posted for the first part (unless I missed them?)

If nobody has any interest in this challenge then that's okay, though I hope it's not because of the lack of a prize.

Melanie E.

The tag is set (see above for evidence,) and it's time for the first week's challenge words!

Ready folks?

At least assuming we're not gonna see any entries from Japan/China.

As a reminder, everyone has until the end of February to do their reading and voting (these were a bit longer than your average contest entry story after all!) I'll announce contest winners at the end of the first week or so of March!

Thanks again to everyone who entered the contest. It's been really special to me seeing how enthusiastic everyone, both readers and authors, have been about this one, and I'm really glad we all did this together.

Holy cow!

Thank you SO much everyone who's already chipped into the new contest! Wow! I've already got a ton of stuff to read, and I still haven't finished all the entries from the LAST contest (sorry Angie!)

Y'all're all awesome :)

Melanie E.

PS: Call it a bit of ego, but I was thinking of running a Henry Harrelson's Custom Fit Boots contest for March if there was enough interest: otherwise I'd come up with something else. Opinions?

I'll try to make sure I get one up this coming weekend. Life be all hectic like, yo, know what I'm sayin'?

Also, STORY PROGRESS. More on that eventually if it actually goes anywhere.

Melanie E.

Details are somewhat settled on the prize front, and this time we've got something super special for all of you avid readers out there: book bundles!

Yep! Miss Erin's putting in some overtime to help with this 'un, and we're going to offer two bundles of (platform free) ebooks for our top two prizes!

First place: 15 Doppler Press eBooks, 12 curated by me and Erin and the other 3 winner's choice

Second place: 10 Doppler Press eBooks, 8 curated by me and Erin and the other 2 winner's choice

Sorry people! I know the delay has been problematic, but at last I'm ready to reveal the results of our Double Dip Story Contest!

It's time to announce the winners of the July story contest!

We had a lot of great entries this time around. I want to make sure every last author who wrote for the contest knows just how much I appreciate their hard work. It's the stories that keep a site like BCTS alive, and without your dedication and effort none of us would have this wonderful place to call home.

Just a reminder to people that the Staycation story contest closes entries on Tuesday, July 31st at Midnight whatever-the-heck-your-local-time-zone-is, so if you've got an entry waiting to be written then hop to it, and if you've got one waiting to get posted, then what's the hold up huh?

:)

It's been a week, and huzzah! The votes are in!

All the stories in the contest did quite well, but two in particular managed to grab the most thumbs-up from our readership, and those two were:

Cursed, by Nuuan

The Fairy, by Bru

Congrats, young authoresses! I get paid this coming Thursday, upon which each of you will be given your prize, a three month subscription to the BCTS Hatbox!

Just a reminder to anyone with plans to enter still, today is the final day of my Fairy Kiss-and-Tale contest! I'm working on the honor system here, so as long as you have your entry in by midnight your time (May 31 2018) we'll call it gravy.

We've had a lot of great entries, and I've already got plans for another contest here in July! Sadly I actually haven't finished my OWN entry for this one yet, though since I'm ineligible for the prize anyway it doesn't matter much :)

Melanie E.

So who's ready for another not-in-any-way-sanctioned-by-management story contest?

Melanie E.'s Fairy Kiss-and-Tale Contest

Dates: May 1st 2018 - May 31st 2018

Everyone loves a little romance, and everyone loves a good fairy tale, right? Well, here's your chance to write your own mash-up of the two!

I've said it before here, and I'll say it again: I'm a huge game geek.

I've been looking to re-obtain a 360 for a while now, since I have a stack of games for it and the original Xbox I've acquired over the last couple of years via yard sales and thrift stores because they were too good of deals to pass up, even if I didn't have the console at the moment.

That all changed last night, when I traded a friend of mine at work a spare NES I had lying around plus a few carts for his old 360 he doesn't play any more. Now I can play all those games, horray!

Spreadsheets.

Word documents.

Games.

Email.

Skype.

All of these things, when used on a modern PC, rely heavily on a keyboard. I use mine constantly, and though I'm not what I would normally call a particularly picky user... I'm starting to have some issues.

I may be on the early side of that particular designation, but I'm pretty sure I qualify, right? Born in the late '80s, some college but no degree, blah de blah. Yep.

So here's the deal. I've spent the last 3 months looking for a new job. I've applied for quite a few, as a receptionist, at call centers, more than a few sales positions from Best Buy to Target... all in all, I've sent out probably 10 or 12 resumes/applications.

I've gotten a call back on all of 2, and an interview out of only 1.