The Pygmalion Syndrome: What Was New in 2005?

21 DECEMBER:I AM NOW HOSTING THE LIVING DOLL HOUSE site following its deletion by Geocities. Fortunately I had cached all of the surviving pages, although there were some files missing. With the help of the Wayback Machine I was able to retrieve most of the remaining files, although a few of them remain elusive, and also found a couple of items on earlier versions of the site that I felt were worth restoring.

The files I'm still looking for are:
ldhead2.gif
sharon.gif
eicke.jpg
prishide.jpg
~~elena01.rm~~ (file found)
If anyone's got them, please send them to me. Please include a relevant Subject line to avoid being shunted into the Junk Mail folder.

31 OCTOBER: NEW FEMALE STORY: Soulsnight. My first Halloween story, and to date the only story I’ve written to a deadline.

13 OCTOBER: Added new thumbnail and image link to Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux page. Also updated source code to CSS and made some revisions to text and layout in the process.

21 AUGUST: NEW SHORT MALE STORY: The Plain of Ice. No overt sex, but based on a mental image I’ve had for a while. Although it’s an ice story (though not necessarily a nice story) it was written during a warm summer afternoon.

8 AUGUST: Following long and tense negotiations (well, OK, one friendly e-mail) I have restored Argo Forg’s World of Phantasie as a sub-domain of this site, following its deletion during the recent Many-Realms domain crash. Just a small gesture of respect to one of the people who’ve supported my work over the years, as well as an attempt to preserve some of our (ahem) glorious heritage for posterity.

16 - 21 JUNE: On June 16 I noticed a sudden large spike on my site stats which it turns out was caused by Portal of Evil giving me a Featured Site link.

I tried logging on to their message board for a friendly chat, but most of the replies were just spiteful so I gave up and left. After a few days the stats went back down again, but I hope there may at least be a few new visitors who are interested in this site for its own sake, rather than just to sneer at it.

5 JUNE: NEW ILLUSTRATION to Male story Mist in Stone.

The picture arrived completely unsolicited as an attachment to an e-mail from computer artist Brian 56321, more of whose male artwork can be seen here. Brian’s timing might have been a coincidence, but I couldn’t have asked for a nicer 5th anniversary surprise.

29 MAY: 5th Anniversary. NEW FEMALE STORIES: Valley of the Domes and Shalvi. Hope you enjoy them, and if you do please feel free to tell me so.

23 APRIL: Happy 441st birthday, William Shakespeare!

Shrank all the navigation buttons to save a bit of space and ensure that they all fit above the fold. My pet name for this was Project Smallbutt. What can I say? I’m a comic genius.

Original size
(150 x 71)

New size
(106 x 50)

Also reduced some font sizes on the Portal so that all the important links are scroll-free.

19 APRIL: Added an overlaid Ketrin Part Six logo to the Portal logo and converted the logo to an image map. Clicking on the female or male statues takes you to the Female or Male Stories indices, while clicking on the Ketrin logo takes you directly to the story. Clicking on whatever’s left of the logo takes you to the Site Introduction. This works so well that I’ve decided to stick with it. From time to time individual stories will be advertised using overlaid banners on the logo, and clicking on them will take you to the stories themselves.

17 APRIL: NEW MALE STORY: Ketrin Part Six.
I’ve been writing the Ketrin series on and off now since September 1999, busting a gut to figure out the plot details, and for all that time and effort I have only received a tiny amount of feedback. What I have got has been generally positive, so I’m determined to stick with it to the end. Whenever the hell that will be.

2 APRIL: Put up the new 5th Anniversary logo in preparation for the actual event at the end of May.

Well, I call it an event, but from all the feedback I get around here it could well be the non-event of the season, if not the century.

Nobody ever seems to write to me these days. Was it something I said? Look, the e-mail link is right there under the page title, see? There’s one on every page. Here’s another one. I realise that everybody’s busy and people tend to neglect e-mail. I’ve been guilty of that myself sometimes. All I’m saying is, it would be kinda nice to have a little recognition for half a decade of effort.

Here’s a suggestion. If anyone is actually reading this, please read some of my female or male stories - even just one of them - if you haven’t already done so, and then write and tell me what you think of it. Or view some of the works of art in the Art Gallery section and tell me what you think of them. Or write and tell me what you think of my logos, or my page layout, or my fonts, or the weather in your home town. Just to let me know I’m not just pissing in the wind here. Otherwise I may end up celebrating the Anniversary by banging my head against the desk all day. (And no, that will not be webcast. Nor will me pissing in the wind.)

31 MARCH: The site’s original address is now gone. Anyone who still has bookmarks or links to "http://www.lmendham.freeserve.co.uk/storyindex", or anything else on that domain, PLEASE CHANGE THEM NOW TO REFER TO http://www.p-synd.com/.

22 MARCH: Added a new (stopgap) ending to Female story Jaskri IVa: Silent Witness - The Arrival. I originally wrote it way back in August 2001, intending to write the second half as soon as I’d finalised the plot. Well, as you might have guessed, I never did finalise the plot, and so I’ve finally decided to add a quick (though hopefully no less well-written) ending to the existing story, just to give it a bit of closure until such time as I can finally conjure up the planned second half. Oh, a writer’s lot is not a happy one, as Gilbert and Sullivan undoubtedly meant to say!

18 MARCH: LAUNCHED BLOGMALION. Yes, I did attempt something by that name a few months ago but it wasn’t a proper blog and didn’t really work. This time it’s a real blog, which I will use to expound upon everything I can think of. Um, which at the time of writing isn’t much more than “Hello”.

3 MARCH: LAUNCHED PYGMALION YAHOO! GROUP (free membership required). It’s going to be really cool, just as soon as I can think of something to put on it.

26 JANUARY: I know things have been a bit slow around here lately, but bear with me. I’ve got a couple of stories in the pipeline, but personal commitments have meant I don’t have so much time to devote to writing at the moment. Despite this I’m setting myself the goal of writing at least six stories in 2005 (I managed eight in 2004 but a couple were very short).

For male freeze fans, Ketrin Part 6 is progressing slowly and will hopefully be done by the spring. And then...well, I’ll play it by ear. Meanwhile, there’ll be a new Valentine logo on the portal on 1 FEBRUARY, and I also hope to do a full update on the Cool Links page, with lots of new weird and wonderful sites to visit.

In the meantime, feel free to write. My inbox has been a very drab and empty place just lately.

1 JANUARY: HNY2U. Launched new What’s New page, as usual with a format makeover.

8 new stories (total 35).
DECEMBER: Posted Cendriller, a mere 35 months after first announcing it.
JULY: Began converting entire site to CSS.
JUNE: Short-lived feature "Blogmalion", later relaunched as a proper blog.

3 new stories (total 27) - not counting Avo & Ivo, which was incorporated into Ketrin Part Five.
JULY: Launched p-synd.com domain. The additional webspace allowed me to move the Art Gallery back onto main site.
MAY: Long-awaited appearance of Ketrin Part Four (only two years late!).
MARCH: Art Gallery running out of space.

3 new stories (total 24).
SEPTEMBER: Added navigation buttons.
MAY: Joined The New ASFR Webring (now obsolete)
New article: The Library of Frozen Men.
JANUARY: Announced forthcoming story Cendriller. Unfortunately this took a little longer than expected to complete.

7 new stories (total 21).
SEPTEMBER: 9/11 tribute.
AUGUST: Moved Art Gallery to new server (now obsolete).

5 new stories (total 14).
DECEMBER: Separate Male and Female story indices.
NOVEMBER: Launched Geocities mirror site (now obsolete).
AUGUST: Began Ketrin series.
JUNE - JULY: Site began appearing on search engines.
MAY: Launched site with 9 stories.