Hello Kiserlovski! First of all a big congratulations on your awards! You have had one story before Caja Rural which was short but sweet, and in just your second attempt you’ve found great success. What is the winning formula for Caja Rural?
Sometimes I wonder what that could be as well. It's fair to say my first attempt was a flop, partly because I didn't really enjoy playing with the team myself. I learned never to play with a custom one again (the only two teams I ever reached season 2 with are both real).

I have no clue as to what exactly is the winning formula but the team roster is pleasant to follow I think: young, more unknown riders are growing along with the team while more experienced riders finally get the chance to ride for themselves (look at Ion Izagirre or Intxausti). To my mind it's a nice mix, and on top of that they're also winning.

You obviously have a much-admired graphical aspect to your story. Whilst budding story-writers aren’t all graphic artist of the year nominees, what advice can you give to make stories easy on the eye?
Go for a lay-out you like yourself. Also, the forum has lots of interesting tools hiding amongst the buttons below. In any case, don't put too much focus on it. It will attract attention but won't make up for bad writing. Although I don't like stating it that way, I think the last sentence's message is clear.


What are your biggest motivations and inspirations for writing?
I have always like to read as a kid. I find it incredible how the ideas or wordings of one/ a small amount of persons can captivate thousands of people. Growing older, I wanted to be capable of doing that as well. But writing using a language that is not your mother tongue proved to be really tricky.

Daily's story section of course is a much smaller scale, still I enjoy writing a lot. And no other motivation is due when recognition is this present.

As a long-running writer of a team story, what is your opinion on editing the save game database through the story?
I have done so in the past so I'm not dead against it. Yet the changes are restricted to replacing folded teams with other, adding new National Championships and limiting potential stats to 83, apart from FTR.

Do you have much time to read other stories on daily, and if so which ones?
Less than I used to, yet I still try to keep track. I rarely leave comments (in general, not only on stories) but I'm still a regular reader. Past ones that jump to mind are Gora Euskadi, Martijn North, aCross The Road, J.H.B/ Fdj.fr, Daniel Martin...

The current ones include One in a Billion, Novo Nordisk, Euskaltel and Tamijo's Aram story.

There have been many great victories and moments throughout the Caja Rural story so far, but what has been your favourite? And what is your goal for the future?
That is a very tough question. Changing to the extreme difficulty gave me a hard time but each and every win is something special since I did. I'll go with coming 10th at RvV as my favourite. My cobbles team is rather modest and it's a very difficult race in-game.


For the future, I'd love to have Ruralvía breed Spain's next GT champion.

What method do you use to write your reports?
To avoid mixing up images from different stages or races, I always write reports right after I have played them, before playing the next. I cut the images, then resize them to my usual width. Afterwards I compress them to avoid a long loading time for the forum pages.

As for the writing, I just write using the 'Preview post' button to make sure the text fits in the quote boxes properly. Once I have finished a report, I save it in a strategically named .txt file on OneDrive. Alphabetical prefixes make sure I remember what order I should post them in.

Anything else to add to the readers?
Many thanks are definitely due.

-
Abhishek Sinha claimed his first ever Ardennes win in La Fleche Wallone


- Franck Signori is taking names and a stage as he looks very good in Le Tour, poised to take yellow.

- The talented young Sam Vandenborre is still very much in the GC fight in La Vuelta heading into the final week.

- The Vaillenos brothers started their European season strong in the U23 hilly races.

- And finally, Jonas Duurhuus is having a very cool Tour de France with his leader Quintana sitting pretty on GC and the man himself with some nice stage results.

There was a strong line-up for this award but no surprises in the final result as Kiserlovski01 took out this award with a massive 43% of the vote following his stunning work on one of the best stories in recent times, Caja Rural. Second was zuff for his consistent quality in another edition of his 80s-set series, Be A Pro.

In third was a true legend of the stories forums, Mresuperstar, after returning to the scene this year with his work on Vantage Point. Another legend in cunego59 (Emmanuel Buchmann) as well as jandal7 (The Life and Times) were tied for fourth, rounding out the nominees.


The only tie of the awards came here as two of the finest stories of the past few years got the nod from the community. zuff's Be a Pro in the 80s returned for a third edition this year and was as good as ever, doubling up after winning last year in its PCM16 iteration. Well known for its fantastically presented newspaper style and quality reporting, it was a deserved alongside One in a Billion by AbhishekLFC. This story has only gone from strength to strength in 2017 and is consistently delivered and of the highest quality. Chronicling the journey of a young Indian puncheur-climber, it (like Be a Pro) is required reading for anybody looking to catch up and follow current stories.

Behind them rounding out the podium was jandal's story-driven The Life and Times. Unlike the other two you're not missing much, the characters here are still whiny teens who aren't real cyclists yet Next was Mre's (solved) mystery Vantage Point and the ongoing chronicles of the prodigious classics man Jonas Duurhuus by dominox. Both are well worth checking out.


It was a clear victory for Caja Rural from Kiserlovski01 here, one of the best stories for a long while. Always of a high quality, fantastically presented (who knew BBCode could be so good-looking?) and consistently written, for many voters it was a no-brainer. Also on the podium were the two longest-running active stories on daily, both still of very high quality and consistency in Novo Nordisk by sutty and the Fantasy Neutral Story written by mpardo.

Also nominated was the high quality journey of the Euskaltel revival, chronicled by Croatia14, and Aquarius97's story from earlier in the year, Cepsa - Estrella Galicia.


Congrats to all the nominees and winners across all the categories, your stories provide entertainment to many and you've made for a great 2017 in the story sections!

ICL started with two sprint classics like usual as the Kiwi talent Ross claimed a rainy win in Brazil and in the WT van Poppel outdid Phinney and Nizzolo for the first win of the season. Indonesia is ongoing with Nerz in the driving seat and new team Vittel also making a big impression. Previews, quizzes and trivia have also been released, so far courtesy of Ripley and AbhishekLFC, which is well worth a browse!


This month The Carbon Throne has been signed up and also had its first race as Evan Berger of Somfy came around 365’s Thorvaldsson for the win atop Willunga Hill. Some dramatic sprint stages have also started off the first stage race in South Africa where Krka blew apart the race to give Jan Zepi� the lead.

In the absence of too much story game action I thought I’d share some ideas and thoughts for the magazine and the story section.

For me just doing this alone as I have for the last couple of editions I can’t do this monthly - I’d put them out when I have time. Sometimes taking a hiatus, sometimes two months in a row. With help it could be a different story, so if you are interested even just doing the occasional article give me a shout. Someone who can do this layout lark better than me seems like a must-have right now I'm also looking at redesigning the interview section, to get fewer questions and more interviewees giving their take on them to change it up.

However I do have some bigger plans I’d like to put into action. The first is a constantly updated and pretty complete version of DiCyc’s story library, with a layout similar to what TMM suggested in that thread. This would be moderated by a user group rather than one person or a shared account.

The second, which enables the first and vice versa, is a new, restructured story section, similar to what was suggested by Re Leone a few years ago (link below this image). It would have this magazine and the story library stickied and would allow for the user group to moderate the library. I believe this will make for a better archive of stories which is more accessible and interesting for users and story readers old and especially new. Both of these would require both people to want it and admin support (obviously), but just my two cents.