I've got some exciting news!

I've invited the writer of this episode "Vampire Weekend"  , Terri Miller, to come along to a special chat session so that we can ask her questions about this episode and anything else you'd like to know.  I'll post more once we have a date/time settled.

This will be a more formal session than our regular chats are and there will be some rules people will need to follow, I'll post those soon.

Terri Miller, Castle Producer and Writer of this week's episode "Vampire Weekend", has generously agreed to join us for a chat session this Wednesday night. "Vampire Weekend" is a Halloween episode and airs tonight at 10/9c.

The chat will begin at 9:30pm eastern time and Terri will join at 10pm. For times in other zones please see the bottom of this post.

There will be some strict rules in place during the session and failure to abide by these rules may result in you being removed for the remainder of the chat session.  If you are unsure of any of the rules, please speak to one of the moderators before the chat session begins.  These rules are subject to change so please look them over again before the chat session on Wednesday.

Please READ the rules, there is important information you must be aware of.

The chat room can be accessed at http://www.castletv.net/chat. We look forward to having you join us!

Special Guest Chat Rules

1. Only registered users can enter the chat room.  If you haven’t registered you may do so right away via http://www.castletv.net/chat
2. Always remember to be polite to our guest and to others in the room.
3. Important messages from our moderators may be posted throughout the chat session, these messages will be posted in red. If you see a red message, please take the time to read it as it may contain important information.  For this reason, please do not change your text colour during the chat session, all users must use the default black.
4. Questions can be submitted in advance so feel free to start thinking now.  You can submit questions via our forums at http://www.castletv.net/forums…..at-session.
5. There will be two rooms running during the special guest chat session.  The Question Room will be for people to submit their questions and the Guest Room will be where the actual chat with the guest takes place (this is different to our usual set up of General and Episode Chat).
6. The chat room will be open for 30 minutes before the chat begins to enable people to start submitting questions in the Question Room.  Our moderators will track all the submitted questions to be asked once our guest arrives.
7. Once our guest arrives everyone will be invited to move over to the Guest Room.
8. A moderator will post the questions and our guest will be invited to answer them.  If time allows and our guest is willing we will open the floor for direct questions and general chat later in the session.
9. Think of this chat session as a Q&A with a guest on stage (like at a convention).  It is important that when someone is speaking – either to ask a question or our guest answering one do NOT interrupt.
10. DO NOT send private messages to our guest.  Anyone caught doing so will be removed for the remainder of the chat session.  Please respect our guest’s privacy.
11. During the chat session please avoid using smileys as they can be disruptive.
12. If the guest agrees a transcript of the chat session may be posted to our site after the chat is over.
13. While every effort will be made to ensure the chat goes ahead we ask you to understand that there may be circumstances under which the chat will be rescheduled.

Technical Issues

1. We haven’t had the opportunity to test the chat room at high capacity, please be aware that if we have a larger than expected number of people attending this may cause issues with the server.  We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
2. There are some known issues you may encounter, please read below carefully.
   1. Internet Explorer 8: If you are using Internet Explorer 8 you must turn on compatibility mode.  There should be a button to the right of your browser’s address bar to turn compatibility mode on.  This will prevent some layout issues caused by this browser.  The chat room seems to work best in Firefox so if you have FireFox on your computer we recommend you use it for the chat session.
   2. Timeouts: There is a bug in the system that causes some people to time out even when they’re active in the chat room.  If you see an orange bar with an error message saying you are not connected, please refresh the page.  This usually solves the problem.

TIME ZONES:
The chat session will be open starting from the following times (half an hour before our guest arrives).
USA: Eastern Time 9:30pm,  Mountain Time 7:30pm,  Pacific Time 6:30pm.  UK: 1:30am (Thurs).  Australia: Eastern DLS: 12:30pm (Thur)

Just an update on the special chat, it will still go ahead and hopefully still on Wednesday.  Anyone who was in the chat last night will know that it went kind of crazy, we had lots of people come in and it crashed the server.  Unfortunately I had to make a deal with the hosting company to disable the chat room so that the castletv.net hosting account wasn't cancelled permanently.  Of course, this is pretty sad news for the regular chatters and also all those newbies who had stopped by this week.

I'll post detais on where things go from here in another thread so as not to hijack this one more than necessary.

That's true Nalissa – while it's painful to have this happen it couldn't happen for a better reason :)

you can certainly come in late, so long as the room will hold more people – how many it will hold is yet to be discovered

Ok everyone, Terri has confirmed she's coming so the chat is on!

The chat system is totally new so if you haven't tested it out yet you might want to do that. You will need to make sure Java is installed on your computer and not disabled by your browser