Site Terms

on September 7, 2011 in

This web serial and its related stories are provided for free on an as-is basis. All attempts are made to keep a consistent and predictable update schedule, and failing that to simply provide updates often enough to keep the audience interested… but real life is unpredictable and writing an entertaining story isn’t a matter of sitting in front of a computer and pressing the right buttons often enough to make stories come out of it. Even if I had an infinite number of monkeys and keyboards, I’d still have to sort through their output to find the one with the right words on it. The bottom line: creative work is work, but it’s also creative. It cannot be forced. This is why throughout the history of professional artistry, deadlines have had to contend with artists as much as artists have had to contend with deadlines.

The price you pay for this free entertainment is that I, the author, will sometimes ask for money. Note that this does not involve you or any person in particular having to pay any money. But you do have to put up with me asking for it. If you have a problem with that… with any aspect of it… then you should in all conscience stop reading. By continuing to read or comment on the site, you are consenting to see solicitations for money.

Any money you do choose to pay is taken as a sign of appreciation for the entertainment value you’ve received and a way of ensuring that you continue to receive it in the future; reader contributions enable me to keep writing Tales of MU, but sadly they do not change the nature of the beast described in the first paragraph. Money allows me to keep writing. It does not turn the creation of prose from an art into a mechanical labor.

Readers are invited to comment on the story. Comments are expected to be at least reasonably on-topic, though I’d rather see a robust and wide-ranging conversation than a narrow and stilted one. Suggested corrections (of typos or continuity snarls) are welcome. Criticism is also welcome, but comments that attempt to treat personal tastes as universals may not meet with a warm reception. Feel free to tell me what you like and don’t like, but if you come at me with what everyone likes or what no one likes, you’d better have some data to back that up.

I reserve the right to remove the ability to comment from anyone I feel is not making a positive contribution to the discussion. This is a rarely-exercised right… you don’t have to worry about comments being deleted or you being banned merely for having something negative to say. Both of the individuals who are permanently blocked as of this writing were blocked as a result of long-running and intractable personality conflicts, and both received ample warning. Criticizing the author is not a bannable offense; persistently irritating her is, and also not a smart thing to do if you profess to enjoy reading the story.

If you have any thoughts about the moral correctness of my practices regarding any items addressed in the preceding paragraphs, you may please keep them to yourself. If you find yourself unable to do so, you are advised to go somewhere far away and form a religion around them because I can’t be bothered to hear them.