Aside from joining and actively participating in the ring forum, you should drop by my ring management group, join that, too, and post a message indicating your interest in joining the Fiction Ring. Don't just say "your ring" - I run more than one, and won't know which you mean. This is how you ensure that I know that a pending application will be present for me to act on. I don't get those very often, so getting my attention matters - I might miss your email, otherwise. The spam filter might grab it by mistake. Things go wrong, so please take a little initiative, in a polite sort of way.
You don't have to stay in my ring management group in order to stay in the ring, but doing so (if your application is approved) will mean that you'll be one of the first people to get my ear when new applications are submitted for approval. This is a community (of sorts) that you're asking to join, so perhaps you might want to be heard, when decisions are made that will determine what sort of community this will become? Yes, this is a dictatorship, but it is a benevolent dictatorship, and if my current membership has concerns, I'd like to hear about them.
When you've done all of that, and I've told you to go ahead and that I've opened the ring for you - please remind me about that if I forget to mention that - follow this link, fill out the form and add your site to the ring. Then be patient, because this is part of what is going to happen:
1. I'm going to read your site. Yes, I mean it.
2. If I enjoyed myself, I'm going to go out on the town, talk to other people about it, get them to visit, too. In case I've been unclear on this, yes, I do try to increase the visibility of the sites on the ring.
3. I'll listen in on the feedback I get from the members in the ring forum and on the ring management list.
4. I'll sleep on it.
Then I'll come back and give you a decision. At the very least, you'll be getting some added exposure for your site, if I don't respond fairly quickly, and if I'm in, at the moment. This is a volunteer job, so I do give myself vacations from it, especially during the warm weather. But I do take it seriously enough to try to do it properly, and literary quality is something that one doesn't judge well, quickly.
If that sounds acceptable, then please continue. If not, no hard feelings. There are plenty of rings elsewhere on which the process is more streamlined, and perhaps one of those would be to your liking.
