A new SIM will be starting soon, called 'Second Chance'. For all those interested, new and old members, head on over and grab a character here: Second Chance

We're proud to announce that we have a new skin... well, actually it's the old skin but with new shiny banners. We have just put up a rotating banner consisting of (for now) 12 banners featuring the characters.

We've played with admin power to have more or less everyone set to that skin for you to look. You can of course reset to your old skin or for those we have missed with putting on that new skin, you can sneak a glance under the *PretenderRotate* in the skin changer.

Tell us what you think and enjoy clicking through the sites while getting new banners 

It appears we are having some problems in ie6 with the site. Pretender1 seems to be displaying a little incorrectly.

If you have not updated to ie7, we urge you to do so, or try firefox or opera. The ie6 browser is out of date and cannot cope with some of the new coding unfortunately, although I will be trying to find a way around this.

I believe email notifications for reveiws and author responses are now going out. YAY

For the author responses, if you are not logged in when you click on the link, it will tell you that you are not authorised to access that function. If you are logged in, then it will take you to your page of reveiws.

Unfortunately, there is no order or sequence on that page, so it doesn't really help you find the response. We are working on this and hopefully will have an update soon.

Also, if you have joined the Gallery and are having problems, this should now be fixed, if you still are, let me know and we will get it sorted out.

Picture by ICD

The Pretender Sim has just added a new RPG (role playing game, or "sim" as we tend to call it), and we're looking for new people to take on the characters.

So far pretty much all of the characters are up for grabs, but that can change fast, so if you're thinking about saying yes, then do it before your favorite character is taken. To sign up for a character, or just see what all the fuss is about, go here

If you have your own idea for a sim then we'd love if you started one, there's an FAQ on how to do that here

Don't worry if you've never done it before, it's all for fun and doesn't need to be perfect. If you're really nervous, why not start out with something small, like a sweeper?

To give everyone a chance to be involved from the start the sim won't start up until Tuesday 22. but signup starts right now. You can of course join after Tuesday as well.

Hope to see you soon. And just so you know I'm everybit as new with RPG'ing as you are, so that's not excuse not to claim a character.

ETA: Have reactivated shoutbox after Broots did his magic. Hopefully he will live up to his reputation and we will now be safe from spammers.

I have put the shoutbox on inactive for now. We've been spammed so often in the last 24 hrs and it's becoming bloody annoying to delete ads for viagra and other things.

So for now the shoutbox is out until Jacs decides what to do with it or until we get a fix for the bug that's probably in it.

Sorry about the hassle

ETA: It may be on again, off again, as we strive to sort out what the problem is.

Have added a shoutbox as a trial run. Hopefully it won't get spammed or abused badly. It is a quick way to report problems, Pretender news, and items of relevance and interest.

Please do not use it to plug your story or review/flame others.

There seems to be a problem with authors responding to reviews, which at this point is looking like a bug in the 3.2 upgrade. We apologise for this and are trying to get it fixed ASAP. For now you can still submit reviews but authors will be unable to respond to them until this is fixed.

Once again, apologies for this new hassle.

If you really want to get that response in, drop me an email at jacci@pretendercentre.com and I can hand code it for you until this problem is fixed.

Updates on Steven's travels can be found here

There is something wonderful the Pretender has done for a very special little boy, my cousin, in England who I have never met.
 
His name is Steven, he will be 8 soon and has some severe, as yet undiagnosed, chromosomal disorders.

He goes to a special school and had an assignment to send a drawing of himself around the world to see where it would go.

They sent it to me in Sydney Australia and i sent it to Karen in the US.

From there it is now going around the world, and so far everyone it has been sent to is active in the Pretender fandom. It is as if he is travelling along with Jarod.

Pretender fans have been so wonderful in helping me with this and I cannot express my gratitude enough. Despite finishing years ago, the spirit of the show clearly lives on.

The project stated one person per country, but I would love to add an email onto the end of this with a list of all the other Pretender fans that helped Steven on his way (even if that country is already represented.) That way we can see how many people we can get from all around the world since the package itself can't get to everyone. Let's see just how long we can make this list.

If you would like to become involved, that would be fantastic. This seems like a very 'Jarod' thing to do.

You can add your details to the list here.

Please include your first name and your city and country and I will add that to an email when it gets back to England and Steven can show where he has 'travelled' and how wonderful all the Pretender fans are.

Or you can leave a comment on this news item if you prefer or email Jacci

To follow Steven's travels click here.
Thank you so much
Jacci

Beta Search added!!!!!!

We are very happy to announce an extra search feature we have added into Missing Pieces, which will allow searching for those that have volunteered to be beta readers. If you go to the authors or members browse link, then use the dropdown to change to beta-reader, you will be presented with the list of beta-readers available.

If you would be interested in volunteering as a beta, you can do this by selecting yes in your edit bio in the beta-reader option.

A big thanks to Tammy who developed this for me.

We have just updated to efic 3.1 and hopefully any bugs that we were experiencing before, especially in the search, should all be fixed. If you find anything, please let us know. Thanks.

Missing Pieces is once again open for submissions.

Efic 3.0.2 has been installed and hopefully we won't have too many teething problems. If it is looking a bit odd, refresh the page and hopefully that will fix. Unfortunately, the upgrade does not seem to be faring all that well in ie6, so if you are using ie6, some pages will not display correctly. We have spent a month trying to fix this and cannot unfortunately. It is fine in ie7, mozilla and opera though and I reccomend using those browsers instead of ie6.

There were less troubles than we have expected, but one thing happened after all. We had to delete the Characters in the database and due to that we lost them in the stories descriptions as well. We have a back-up and are working on putting the characters for each story back, but with 2055 stories this will take time.
If anyone wants to help out on that, please do contact us. If anyone wants to correct that in your own story, please tell us so as well.

We are having some problems with the search function and the broswe by ratings. Sorry for any inconvenience and we are striving to get these sorted out.

Hope you enjoy the new features, including co-authoring and if there are  any problems, please report them here.

MERRY CHRISTMAS everybody. On behalf of the Missing Pieces team, I would like to wish everyone a great Christmas and I hope you enjoy your holiday season, wherever that may be.