Ok, for those that follow mialafreve's story "Talking Eyes", you may know that she made this post on February 16th of this year:

http://www.asianfanfics.com/blog/view/1111457

The second beta reader she mentioned is me.  The first I won't name, because reasons, but I am the second beta reader that contacted her, promised to give her a beta read story, and neglected to do so for four months because essentially I am a terrible human being.  No, really.  I am.  I didn't reply for four freaking months!!!!  That is why she outed me on her blog post, but why the hell she didn't mention me by name, I do not know.  Anyway, this is my confession: the beta reader was me, and I am now publicly resigning as the beta reader.

There are a lot of factors that relate to this, but basically I have a lot of things going on.  Truth be told, I have my day job, I have my own business as a designer and I have my own writing.  I don't have a great deal of time to spend to myself.  In three years, I can't remember a time where I have taken a full day just to do my own thing.  Even at Christmas.  When I am talking to friends here, I am still doing some kind of work.  You remember the post I made where I said about people at work who called me when I booked a few days off?  I hadn't gone to a museum or a beach or anything.  I was spending that time at home, working on a project for a client.  I was still working.  On some days I spend about fifty minutes to an hour each day writing my story, and that's the length of time I'm on the train to and from work.  Sometimes, I can spend some time writing blogs here.  And that's another one of my projects - to become a blogger for my own sites.  Here, I get practice in doing that, to be honest.  I get to write posts about things that I could post elsewhere and hopefully be able to generate some kind of revenue from it in the future.  One of my rules of writing is not to stop writing, because practice makes perfect, and that's one of the things that I'm doing here.  These projects, amongst other reasons, have lead me to the decision that I should resign as the beta reader.

Having all of these projects going on at the same time (amongst other things) have also made me even question whether or not I want to stay here on AFF.  It's part of the reason I've been spending time adding code to my own library, and where I will maybe start to make some blogs which can generate money.  I'm going to need to do some promotion for that, but I am meeting with some people in this area to discuss the viability and direction of this as a long term project.  Between you and me, this experience has even made me question whether I want to continue living.  It is only because of the friends that I have made on here that I can say I kind of do.  I don't know what to say to them except thank you for being here now and I hope you will continue to be here in the future and I hope I can be a better friend to you.

So, after this long and useless explanation, which I promised mialafreve I would make and she has not had chance to reply to me about, I want to say this: I have resigned as her beta reader, but please please please, if anyone has more availability than I do to continue this task, please do so.  I have read up to chapter 11, which I have submitted to her just now.  I just do not have the time or the energy to devote to the rest of the story.  If you require payment, I will make this payment to you on her behalf.  I have compensated her 500 points from my account before and will reimburse her the fees I assume she paid to the original store owner.  If no payment was made, I will reimburse her further compensation from my supply of points.  Because of my neglect to complete the work, I am even prepared to compensate her in cash.  I have failed her, I have betrayed her trust and I am sorry.

I beg of you please, if you can take up the mantle of beta reading this story from chapter 12 onwards, please let me know.  Again, I will pay you in karma for your trouble.  To mialafreve, I am truly sorry for betraying you and I hope you can forgive me.  I am not hiding my identity as the beta reader who contacted you, and I do not understand why you kept my identity secret.  However, I hope you can find someone much better than me to take on the role.