Kiva.org

Thinking about giving this year? It’s a big decision, everyone wants his or her money to go to the right place, to the right people, and how can anyone be sure that the people are actually benefiting from the money. What if instead of giving money with no hopes of ever seeing it again, you decided to loan money? You can, at Kiva.org.

At Kiva.org instead of giving money you loan money. It only takes $25 to loan to an individual in another country. The money goes to individual that seek to open or expand their business. In many of these countries it would be impossible to get a loan from a local bank, so that’s what the lenders become.

You may have heard of Kiva.org on The Oprah Winfrey Show, or from Bill Clinton, but forgot to look into it, or you were not sure how it worked. Here’s how:

1. Field Partners, that volunteer to visit other countries to find qualified local entrepreneurs to post profiles on the website: Kiva.org. The entrepreneurs either want to start a business, to expanding a current business. Anything from product sales, to agriculture and more.

2. Once the Entrepreneur profiles are on the site, the lenders may loan money to them. The loans are in $25 increments and usually it takes 10-15 lenders to raise enough money to meet a loan. The lenders are allowed to pick from country, to gender, to type of business, as long as that kind of business is available. You give money through a PayPal account. This can help secure your own accounts, but it sometimes makes it difficult to get repaid.

3. After the loan is raised the money is sent to the Entrepreneur, they have a set time to use the money and repay the loan. They have anywhere from 6 to 12 months to repay the loan. So far there has been a 99.7% return rate. The repayment comes from the business that the entrepreneur has created or expanded. The entrepreneurs profile is updated regularly to allow the lenders to know how the money is being spent and how the business is growing.

4. After the loan is repaid, the money is placed back into the Kiva.org account; the lender can then choose to either loan again or withdraw. Withdrawing may prove to be difficult if the lender does not have a PayPal account. PayPal is easy to set-up, safe, and free, but lenders that do not have a PayPal account maybe charged a fee to retrieve their money.

The saying goes, “Give a man a fish; feed him for a today. Teach a man to fish; and you feed him for a lifetime.” That’s what Kiva.org is all about. The lender does not give money once; he or she lends money to create a livelihood for the borrowers. It is a great way to give money and it’s possible to do it several times before withdrawing.

Recently with all the press coverage and the $2 million worth of gift certificates over the 2007 holiday season there have been more lenders then borrowers. Sometimes there were zero borrowers, so it might take some patience to loan. But the operation is working to expand to serve more borrowers, and if you’re interested in field work you can volunteer to be a Kiva.org fellow! So it’s not just money that is needed, services and people are needed as well.

So if you are thinking about giving this year think about lending some of it to the Kiva.org borrowers. It’s a great way to change someone’s life, and who knows it might be yours.

Lucky Seven

I always thought Lucky Seven would be long, and tough, but now that I'm knee deep in it I'm just trying to stay a float. I already have all seven pairings, including Wendy and Thomas, picked out for Stan to date, and I have pairings for all four of the main boys. I want to show actual relationships and break-ups with each pairing so it cannot be a simple as a few words on each pairing but a few chapters.

Then there is Cartman, he was supposed to be a minor character with the look of a main character, but he decided that he wanted his own part in the fic. Plus there is Kenny who is like the stick glue of the whole fic.

I love this fanfic, but it is really taking on its own life form. It takes planning before I even start the chapter. I planned on taking at least two years with this fic, but it looks like it will be taking longer, but it will be a very long fic, so that's the reason. In the next chapter you will find out Kyle's next partner!

New Chapter for Fate's Wish

I posted chapter 29 today for Fate's Wish my Yugioh fanfiction. I cannot believe I have 29 chapters to that fic. It's amazing, but I still don't think it's half done. I think it has really got some great fans! I think that Once Upon a Time still might have more fans, but I think Fate's Wish is going to out do it one of these days. Which is amazing since Once Upon a Time has normal slash pairings and Fate's Wish has darkshipping.

In this chapter Touzoku is nearly buried with the former Pharaoh, but escapes with the help of his monster. However the monster does not save him when he is casted to the current era, 2012, or around the time the series YGO is place under. I have lots of plans with both Touzoku's character and Atem's, so don't worry, just because the two are separated does not mean Atem will not be seen.

One of the biggest has to do with names. Names is a big theme in the fic because it was big in Ancient Egypt, they believed that as long as someone continued to say, or know your name then you would continue to live on in the afterlife. They also believed that in using a person's name you could gain control over them, which I think stems from the Jewish believe, and the cultures were interconnected. So Atem will be using the name Yami which will drive Touzoku crazy. And there will be many people that insist on calling Touzoku, Bakura, because they do not believe that a person can be named, thief.

Also for the next couple chapters I will be coding the Japanese and Modern Egyptian tongue. Touzoku and Atem do not understand those languages and so it will be difficult for the reader to also understand them. Here is the rule, Japanese will be written with the letter next in the alphabet in place of the one that should be there. So like the sentence: My Dog has Fleas, it would be Nz Eph ibt Gmfbt. Modern Egyptian will be written the opposite, with the letter before: Lx Cnf gzr Dkdzr. Not too difficult, probably it will be more difficult for me, but it will be fun!

Also in the next chapter you'll see some familiar faces, a young Malik, I mean young, about three or four, and his sister will take in Touzoku raising him in the tombs. Atem will be found by Sugoroku Mutou at the ruins of the palace. Later you will meet even more of the Yugioh characters, but you will not meet Yugi and Ryou for a long time...I have a special assignment for them.

Other then that, just look out for many plot twists and some temporary icky pairings! If you have any comments, questions or suggestions go ahead and ask.

Fixed

As I said in my introduction, I am working on a new South Park one-shot for my BDT. The prompt I am working on is fixed, which I may make the title of the fic.

The fic is an intense look at what happens to Kyle and Ike when their father, Gerald runs off with another man. Shelia who has always been on the edge tumbles over it, and locks herself and her boys in her house. Everyone in South Park assumes that the boys left with Gerald, but five years later when neighbors report a strange smell coming from the house they find Shelia dead, and the boys locked up in the attic.

Although the fic starts with Shelia's body being found, the fic is probably going to be a little bit gory. There will be one flashback when Kyle tells Stan about what happened to him. During the flashback both Kyle and Ike are castrated by their mother. I have been doing lots of research to make the castration as correct as possible. There is castration in the fic because it is based off the word fixed.

However there is also another 'fixed' idea in this fic, where Stan helps Kyle fix himself as a person. He helps Kyle recover as much as he can. So the fic has a good ending.

This fic is only a one-shot and I will be done with it within a week, but because of the fic I have not written and new chapters for the other fics that I'm working on. So expect one weeks delay on all of those.

I cannot believe Heath Ledger Died!

My friend texted me this afternoon to tell me that Heath Ledger died! I could not believe it. I was sure she was talking about someone else. I almost texted her back with, the kid from Brokeback Mountain? But I did not, I knew the truth.

After I came to terms with the fact that he past away, I started wondering if this was anything like Owen Wilson's drug overdose last year. It was so shocking to hear about the funny guy Wilson attempting something so drastic, but it was equally shocking to think that Heath Ledger would do something like that. I did some checking, and found that as of now there is nothing confirmed about whether the OD was accidental or not. I sure hope it was not.

Another thing that surprised me, was to learn that Heath Ledger was found in his apartment, in Manhattan, which he rented from Mary-Kate Olsen! It was sort of weird, but not in a bad way.

Anyway, I am still really surprised, and a little upset about what happened. I loved Ledger in "The Patriot," and what slash writer or reader did not swoon 'I wish I knew how to quit you.' I was really looking forward to seeing him in more films. I know he just finished filming "The Dark Knight."

So goodbye Heath Ledger. I feel like we hardly knew you. I hope that people remember you.

Introduction

Hey, I'm Bernadette, most people know me as Bernie however I'm open to anything that is easy to remember. I am 23 and just finished getting an associates degree in Paralegal. I work at Curves a Fitness place for women. I also really like fiction, or in the current case fan based fiction.

I can remember as a little girl thinking up stories and plots and letting them play out in my head. I think my first fanfiction I ever wrote was when I was in Fourth Grade. My teacher made everyone write in a journal everyday. She would always put a topic on the board and I would hurry to write a whole paragraph or more about it so I could turn my journal over and write my 'play' in the back of it. My play, or fanfiction was based on the school's Christmas play about a Puppy that wanted a home. After I wrote a few pages I even started to make my friends practice the play. We would always rehearse lines, even when we were walking home from school!

It was not the first fiction I did. After that day, I would make up skits and plays when my family would visit my Grandma's Cabin. I always tried to charge them, but usually never got more then a quarter.

It was not until I was in High School when I really started to write fanfiction. That's the year we got the Internet. I started out writing fiction at the Nickelodeon (Nick.com) blog site. I still have notebooks full of stories from cartoons like Rocket Power, As Told By Ginger, and even Rugrats. I felt so embarrassed though because I was probably the oldest person on the site. But, I was not over 18 which was the cut off year. I briefly had a fling with Fanfiction.net at the end of that period, but it was short lived. My parents discontinued the serves.

I did not start writing fanfiction again until I was a senior in High School. By then my interest had changed. I was not working at Nick.com, no I was falling madly in love with FF.net despite some of it's flaws, and we had a dirty secret, sometimes I would read slash m/m centric fiction. I was reading Harry Potter fiction when I found the wonders of two males in love, or otherwise. It was so thrilling, so dirty, so wrong. But, all of those things made me open my eyes and think how can it be wrong, it feels so right!

So, I started slowly, with a songfic. Then I moved on with a overly dramatic fic that makes me cringes. Then I started going on to Yahoo!Messenger, and the people on there also liked slash. There were people that like the same things as I did. That was the end of it, het packed it's bags only to return as a minor role. A little bit of Draco/Ron slash here, a little bit of Twincest there and I was hooked. The pairing I'm most know to have like is Harry/Colin, but I can't say that I did not have other favorites.

Then I started getting into other genres, you know peaking over at what the neighbors were doing. Eventually I wormed my way into the Yugioh series, I can count on one hand how many times I actually saw the show. But the fiction there is so numerous and write so well that I did not need too.

I do read and watch other manga/anime series. I also read their fanfiction, although I do not have as many fics for those shows that I would have liked.

Recently, like in the last two years, just as I was officially breaking away from my Harry Potter days I found a little corner of FF.net that seemed like it need some help. There was some really great fiction there, but not so many writers, and not too many stories. It was the South Park genre, back to cartoons. I did not start writing there right away, but there was something that bugged me, each fic although very good looked like they could take a page out of the other. This is fine! It's what sold, it's what got reviews.

But, I said heck with reviews! I want to read something different. So I tried to write it. Now I cannot say that I was the first person to write something different, but I sure helped push the ball along.

Currently I am committed to doing a Big Damn Table (BDT) from fanfic100 (a livejournal community). This simple means that I have to write 100 fics about the pairing Kyle/Stan. Oh but I get help! I get 95 different prompts to help me along. I have done about 12, but I have also gotten sidetracked with fics that don't really fit the prompts.

I'm also doing one fic for Yugioh called Fate's Wish. I love this fic so much. I stared writing it a long time ago, in reply to about ten different prompts I found for darkshipping. I have 27 chapters posted, but I believe I'm only half way done!

I have two fanfics in the South Park Genre that I am really digging into (one of the fics has sort of been put on hold because of these two). One of them is called Christmas in South Park (CiSP), I wanted to finish it off by Christmas, but I miss counted the days, and I am a little depressed about it. I still want to finish it, even though Christmas is over.

The second fic is called Lucky Seven, this will be a really long fic. It's about Kyle's attempts at wooing Stan. He thinks that he needs to let Stan have six other partners before him. He wants to accomplish all this and nab his man before his first year of college. So far Stan is on his second Partner Thomas! The fic will be a work in progress for a long time, but I'm still really interested in it.

Also I'm working on the Prompt Fixed, in my BDT. It's a oneshot, but I want it to be on point.

Okay that wraps up what I have done and what I am currently doing. In my blog I am going to keep everyone updated on my fics, and maybe even give some spoilers away. I love to rant about plots that I can't get down right. When I was writing the last chapter in Lucky Seven, I nearly chewed my nails to the bone! I kept asking Don and Allan if they thought it was okay, but I never felt like it was really right.

I'll try to post a least once a week. But I might to individual posts for each story! If you have any questions or you want to comment you can do so on the individual posts, or this one. I will also update you on things going on in my life, but probably not as often.