Thanks! ^_^ Always nice to know someone's reading (or skimming as the case may be, hee). And thanks for the friend invite too, but I'm afraid I only accept those from people I've known for a while. ^.^; No offence.
Well, there's no internal forum system for story or author updates, unfortunately; PM updates is something authors do by choice, but it's not a habit of mine. Really the only way to tell if someone's written something new is to check the front page regularly, or search the user's recent posts. There's always the Fanfiction Catalog, too; that has a list of authors by genre, but it's not completed yet, alas.
Hope that helps you work things out somewhat, and welcome to the forum. ^_^
