The Removal of Tuck

This is an open letter on why I've removed
Ellen Hayes " Tuck Saga " from Sapphire's Place.

Lets start with some history.

Many years ago, a first time author tried to start a new series of stories posting each chapter … and yielding no response from it's readers.  At the time, she was going to give up on her idea.

I wrote Ellen and asked if I could feature her new series " Tuck " on my then very popular PointCast Channel. She agreed, and Tuck was introduced to a much wider and more appreciative audience.

Ellen and I worked out a method of her delivering her new chapters to me by posting them as " orphan pages " on her new site. There was no links at this time to any of her stories, it was just a method of delivering the new chapters for me to retrieve.

After about a year or so, I had some problem with my first ISP and new issues of the PointCast Channel became few and far between, and since Ellen had , by then, gathered a following of "Tuck" fans, she started hosting the new chapters on her site.

After PointCast went " belly up " I transformed the Channel into a E'Zine and resumed publishing Tuck with the new E'Zine.

Mind you, for both the PointCast Channel and the E'Zine, the chapters of " Tuck" had to be transformed into HTML code, and I had explicit written permission to do this from Ellen.

A few years ago, the E'Zine also went by the way side, and the "Tuck" stories again were transferred to my Featured Authors Section of the Website. Again, I got written permission from Ellen to continue formatting the stories the way I have been since the beginning. In an email sent just last year Ellen assured me " You do whatever you want to about it, Sapphire. I said you have an exemption from long ago, and I meant it."

On Tuesday, Oct 8th, I received a very terse email from Ellen stating that " Someone has Complained " and that I had to " either correct this by re-acquiring the original files and making them available unaltered, or remove Tucker from your site altogether. Compliance will be checked within one week from estimated receipt of this letter."

I wrote back and asked her why she seemed angry and reminded her of her many letters telling me that it was OK for me to offer "Tuck" in this format. I even added the full text versions of the story in ZIP format to help resolve this problem.

But to my vast disappointment, today I received another terse email from Ellen that she was indeed revoking her permission to present the story in this fashion and that " This has actually bugged me for a long time, and I've gritted my teeth and let it be... but it's gotten irritating enough that I'd like it fixed to conform with the rest of the world.", and that the tone was terse not out of anger but "because I want this done."

While I am sorry that I will not be able to continue offer "Tuck" as it always had been offered before, I believe I need to remove the entire Tuck series from Sapphire's Place, it's first home on the Internet.

I do apologize to the many readers and fans of the Tuck series that have enjoyed it's presentation from Chapter One until now, but I've found that I can't really let the visual quality of the site be compromised, and if the relationship I've had all these years with Ellen has come to nothing, then maybe it's better to remove the " offending " work.

I wish Ellen continued Good Luck and would like to offer her some parting advice.

Remember who your friends are, they are not the ones who heap you with praise, but the ones that stick with your from the beginning, through all the changes life brings. The Fans are fickle and fleeting, but it's the long term friends that stay the course. I was mistaken in my belief that we have such a long term relationship, and that is the reason I am sorry.

With Sadness
Sapphire