Disclaimer and Privacy Policy

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DISCLAIMER:

Everything published on Otherspect.com is either my (Gaines Post's) opinion or an opinion or story from someone who has given me explicit permission to write about it. (If you send me an idea or story or image via email to use for a blog post, you are giving me permission to write about it or present it however I choose, though I will of course keep the source anonymous unless instructed otherwise; and even then, I reserve the right to keep the source anonymous to protect your privacy and mine.)

I make no claim to be correct or objective or fair in anything I express on this site. My opinions are my own, and while I mean no offense to anyone, it is inevitable that someone will feel offended by something I write or depict here. However, I make no apologies for that, because I cannot control how you react or feel about something, nor would I want to. You may feel however you want about what I write, just as I may write however I feel.

That said, I acknowledge that I am imperfect and can make mistakes, just like any other human. Please know that my intention is never to cause harm or stress of any kind. On the contrary, it is my sincere hope that these blog posts will be able to help someone, even if that simply means bringing a smile to the face of just one person.

I run this site as I please. This will not change, as I am not beholden to anyone in this endeavour; it's a 100% solo venture. I have no corporate backers, and I run no advertisements. This means I do not, nor will I ever, accept money in exchange for placing ads on this website or the Otherspect discord server or anywhere else related). This, too, is not going to change. So, if you offer me a million bucks to place something on my website etc, I'll happily take your million bucks, but I won't do what you want me to do. If you aren't cool with that, then don't give me a million bucks. No harm no foul. :-]

While I do welcome you to join the conversation by contributing ideas via email for blog posts, Otherspect is ultimately my project, not yours, and you have no rights or ownership to anything I publish here. If you send me an idea for a blog post and I agree to write about it, the blog post I publish will still be written by me, not you; I will word it however I choose to, adding to it or subtracting from it as I please, and the finished product will be mine and mine alone. You do not get a vote on this. I will of course give credit where credit is due by mentioning you as the source of the idea or story etc (even in situations where you are to be kept anonymous; I'll either make up a name or call you "a friend" or "someone I know" etc etc). I do not plagiarize, nor do I cheat. That's just not me. I also will of course try to be respectful and faithful to the story or idea you send me, as I am to the core a reasonable person, but at the end of the day, I am the one who decides what is appropriate for my website, not you, and by sending me something, you are giving me the express permission to write about it or not in whatever manner I see fit.

I also do not claim to be constant or immutable. My opinions on something might change over time, so please do not expect there to be any sort of consistency across these blog posts and online journal entries, which stretch all the way back to 2012, in terms of theme or opinion or viewpoint or anything else.

Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, organizations, locations, events, incidents, stories, and situations mentioned on this website are either the product of the author’s (my) imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or locations or businesses or organizations, is purely coincidental. If I do happen to mention a real person, business, company, organization, location, event, incident, story, etc, I do it because it was on my mind, as a blogger, I am within my legal rights to mention such entities by name as long as I am not doing it to defame or commit libel etc etc. If I mention anyone or anything, I do so only as a reference, and not as an attack or anything else negative or derogatory. I might dislike Google, for example; I am well within my rights to say so on this blog (I don't actually; this is just an example). That does not mean I am attempting to defame them or commit libel or anything else ugly like that.

PRIVACY POLICY:

I, Gaines Post, owner and operator of the Otherspect website, promise that I will NEVER, under ANY circumstances, sell or give away ANY of your information or data for ANY reason unless you have expressly asked me to do so (such as in the case of having asked me to publish on this website a piece created by you).

If you purchase anything from me directly via the Shop, rest assured that I do not keep ANY of your financial information on my computer or other devices OR in the cloud; thus, your info is secure, at least from my end. To be clear: I DO NOT KEEP YOUR CREDIT CARD INFORMATION. It does not even pass through my hands. The payment gateways I make use of are Stripe, PayPal, and very occasionally Square; click on those links to read those companies' privacy policies if you wish to learn what they might or might not do with your information. It's pretty standard stuff.

When you make a purchase from me using those payment gateways, you are asked to enter your email address and, in cases where physical goods must be delivered to you, your mailing address and phone number. The phone number is necessary so that I can tell the printer whom to contact in case shipment / the delivery driver gets lost. Regarding all this information, once I have successfully sent you the product you have ordered, I delete your mailing address and phone number; as such, I am unable to have anything else shipped to you unless/until you make another order -- i.e. if you wish to order something else, you will have to enter your phone number and mailing address again when you do. Now, sometimes PayPal, Stripe, and Square offer the ability for customers to check a box that says "save my shipping address for later" or whatever. That has nothing to do with me; it is for your convenience, not mine, and I neither possess nor keep any record of it, as it is stored within those companies' interfaces, not mine. Now, as for your email address: This remains in my sales records on PayPal, Stripe, and Square in case I ever need to get in touch with you directly about your order. In addition, by purchasing one of my books or other products, you consent to being added to the (never-more-than-once-monthly) Otherspect Newsletter mailing list. (More on the Newsletter below.) The reason is twofold: 1) It is a not-so-intrusive way I can contact you in case there are any problems with your order, as mentioned above; and 2) it is a way that I can inform you if & when the sequel comes out to whatever book or story you bought from me. This is a bit of shameless marketing, I admit, but I do try to not be a pain in the ass about it. As an independent author, I have to rely on word of mouth and direct communication to get the word out in order to build an audience and (in theory) sell more books. You are of course free to unsubscribe from the Otherspect Newsletter at any time by clicking the "unsubscribe" links in the Newsletter emails (which, like I said, do not come very often at all -- in fact, as of this writing, I have not sent one out in over two months). Other than that, I will never spam you, nor would I EVER abuse the privilege of having access to your email address by selling it, sharing it with anyone or anything else, etc etc. You have my word. Even in this day and age of lies and greed and selfishness, a person's word still means something. It does to me, at least.

Another item worth mentioning is that I get a tiny commission through links to works -- works of mine, that is, such as books I myself have written -- that are for sale at Amazon.com via that company's Associates program. It's miniscule (literally a matter of a few extra cents I earn from Amazon, not dollars), but I am required to disclose it.

Okay, next:

Even if you have not purchased anything from me and/or do not plan on purchasing anything from me, I invite you to submit your email address via the Newsletter submission forms on Otherspect.com if you would like to receive news and updates about blog posts, new publications, etc via my monthly Newsletter. What happens to your email address if you do? It gets automatically added to an email list that is for my eyes only, which I will use to send out the Newsletters and for no other purpose. The service I use for this is Mailchimp, and while I myself can promise not to share your email address with anyone else (I do promise this), I have no control over how your information may or may not be stored in Mailchimp’s servers. Apart from this, I do not retain any of your information for any other purpose, commercial, technical, or otherwise (and again, I don’t sell ads here, so I don’t run any third-party software on this site other than Google Analytics, which basically just tells me how many people visited my site in the past month, that sort of thing -- but tells me nothing personally identifying about them except for general statistics such as what country they are in, what type of device they were using, etc... none of which I ever actually look at anyway). However, if you should click an external link that takes you from this website to, say, Goodreads.com or Amazon.com or Discord.com for example, then what you do on those sites or any other external site is your business, and I am not responsible for what happens to any information you might enter there.

Any comments you make in the Otherspect Storytelling and Discussion Fora on Goodreads.com and Discord.com are public and can be seen by others, including me, and are subject to Goodread's or Discord’s content and privacy policies. The same goes for comments made on my videos on YouTube.

If you send me an email with an idea for a blog post to write for the Otherspect blog, and if I agree to write about it, then I will keep your name and contact info and any other names involved anonymous and private. Only if you wish for me to mention your name in the blog post will I consider doing so, though I do still reserve the right to keep it anonymous, in order to protect both you and myself. And I will always keep any other person or persons you mention anonymous so as to protect their privacy.

I built this website by myself, on my own computer, using html and css code typed straight into Notepad (the simple Windows program), and I use Gimp 2.0 (open-source software) for image-editing. I do not use any other software or apps to build and maintain this website, nor do I ever intend to, and this fact makes me able to state even more confidently that your information is safe with me, as none of the website's code is "hidden" from me. I wrote it, so I know what's there and what's not.

DISCUSSION/COMMENT POLICY:

You are welcome to comment in the Otherspect Storytelling and Discussion Forum, but as fair warning, please know these two things: 1) Any information you enter there and any comment you post there is subject to the privacy and content and other policies of either Goodreads.com or Discord.com, depending on the location of the comment, and I am neither liable for your actions nor inactions; and 2) I, as moderator and administrator of that storytelling and discussion forum, reserve the right to moderate and administer as I choose.

I personally loathe censorship and love free speech, and will do my level best to welcome and include a very broad range of opinions and viewpoints in any discussions that happen in the Otherspect Storytelling and Discussion Forum (or Fora). At the same time, however, it is my wish to create a peaceful, inclusive environment in which any conversations and debates that might arise are kept civil; to this end, in case things ever get out of hand, I will delete any comments I consider to be too offensive or inappropriate, and will even ban you from the server if I feel it necessary. Again, you do not get a vote on this; this is not a democracy.

All that said, I hope we can all get along and celebrate our differences rather than fight about them, so that I don’t have to resort to such ugly measures. :-)

Thank you for reading :-)

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