Young Writers Society

YWS is now S

My father passed away last week on June 8 around 1:30 am following a three year long battle with cancer. He was a Naval officer in the submarine force during the Cold War, and he had a very long career in consulting in the area of governance risk compliance.

He also loved writing, and my own early passion for creative writing came from him. Unfortunately, he never was able to sit down and write a planned novel about a conflict between Russia and the United States (a novel that he also said no longer made sense as real-world events surpassed his planned fictional world), but he has a number of papers that I'm sifting through and one book that I've had on my reading list for quite some time (Arctic Leverage: Canadian Sovereignty and Security; it's old, but enjoying some new relevance due to the warming Arctic and new great power struggles).

He was also an avid reader, especially of historical fiction and science fiction. Shortly before his death, I was reading Red Rising to him; a book that was on his reading list and which we both wanted to read. I asked him a few weeks ago what his favorite books were, and he answered Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, and Foundation by Isaac Asimov.

The Young Writers Society exists in very large part due to him. He was a reader, a writer, and technophile (he was buying gadgets right up until his death, including a lift for the house). Thanks to him, I've had Internet access since 1991, and that allowed me the opportunity to learn how to code websites when most people didn't even know about the Internet.

I will miss him.

omg HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!
Thank you sooooo much for creating this amazing place <333 this website changed my life!!! have an amazing birthday!!!

Happy Birthday Nate <3

Ayyyyy happy birthday!

Happy birthdayyy!! Hope you have a great day and eat lots of cake. You’re amazing!

Happy Birthday Nate! We really appreciate all you do to keep the gears running here and all you've done to form this wonderful community! 4.0! Hope this is a great year and decade for you!

Happy birthday!
And with this I have realized you are the same age as my mom and that is crazy to me

Still sending prayers and thoughts your way<333

happy birthday, nate! hope things are going well for you and your family <3

Hey Nate,

was thinking about you, your family, and your dad. hope all is well and you're holding each other tight. <3

Look what came in the mail!



@BluesClues

Get your copy

So sorry to hear about your dad. Will be thinking about you and your family <3

So, my activity has really declined in the past month, and I don't want people thinking it's because I've lost interest in the site. What's going on is my dad is really sick, and we're likely to lose him soon. Trying to balance a lot of things, and the easiest thing to drop is YWS.

Saw Super Mario Bros. this past weekend, and it was great. It won't win any awards for storytelling, but it was a lot of fun to watch. Although, the 1993 version will always hold a special place in my heart! I liked it when I was a kid because back then, you didn't have the Internet to tell you what to like and not like, lol.

Also saw Dungeons and Dragons over Easter, and that was a great movie too. Just fun to watch.

YWS has its very first paid employee! There’s a couple tasks that needed to be done but I really didn’t feel like doing them because it involves mundane data entry, so I paid my oldest nephew to do it instead!