Contest January-February 2016 Contest

It is with great pride that I announce this next contest. This is our fifth contest and our second January-February contest. I know our last contest was Halloween-themed, we don't want/need every contest to be seasonal but I couldn't resist a New Year's Theme given that this marks our second year of regular writing contests.

Also the year saw Lustria-Online get a major software upgrade. Age of Sigmar was released bringing in new members. Ninth Age was born retaining old members. Kings of War released a second edition, we'll see how that goes.

With all that in mind, this season's theme is "Continuity and Change". Tradition versus growth. Tradition versus stagnation. Progress versus subversion. Lots of directions to go with this category.

-Must be between 500 and 2500 words, enforced by the honor system, we are not going to word count your stories or toss out anyone's work, but be mindful of the people who are reading your work and understand they will probably be intending reading several pieces at once.
-Your name must appear nowhere with the story. There is no point in having an anonymous competition based on skill if we know whose entry is whose.
-You must send your story via private message to Scalenex by midnight (US Central time) on January 31st.
-The story must be new. No dragging up a story you wrote months or years ago.
-No plagiarism.
-The story must involve Lizardmen (or Seraphon or Salamanders) to some extant
-The story must stick roughly within the theme.
-No comics or illustrations. This is a short story contest. Visuals are limited to fonts and text colors.
-Only one entry allowed per person.


In fact, if you send your piece to me really early, you may get unsolicited proofreading feedback, but my real life stuff is getting substantially busier than before so editing service will not be available two or three days before the deadline like before. @spawning of Bob is traditionally willing to give fellow writers advice as well. If all you want is a spell-check I can probably do that a few days before the contest or even shortly after the contest has started.

Last time someone politely asked for a "few extra hours" passed the deadline, and it turned into 6+ hours. I was OCD enough to forgo going to sleep until I had everything in and posted. Not doing that again. When it hits midnight in my time zone, entries are closed.

Then I'll set a poll for 30 days to vote on your favorite or favorite(s). Because February is a short month, the voting will carry over into March slightly. Per usual, multiple votes will be allowed if we have more than six pieces.

Note the new two rules were not put in place to punish Spawning of Bob (that's what my old story "Completely Anonymous Entry" was for). I am somewhat reluctant to make rules that limit stories but I don't think art and stories can compete on the same plane very well.

I don't plan to tweak the contest much, but I did put in two new rules marked in bold at the end.
Most of us don't have time to write two stories in one month within a theme. Any event, our most prolific writers probably have their own long-term projects to keep them busy. Also one entry per person encourages variety of entries and hopefully makes submitting an entry less intimidating.

Anyway as long as we get two entries per contest I plan to make sure these happen every three months. But I hope/expect that our contests will continue to get the impressive turnouts we have in the past. Each contest actually had more writers than the past. I don't know if we keep that up indefinitely but it's a worthy goal.

We can do a visual contest later this year, maybe two I'm thinking two-month entry windows and one month voting.

 

Anyone can write about Oxytol if they want. He's an official canon character so his use is not prohibited.

 

One is the number of entries we have so far, therefore, get writing you lot.

 

We are up to two entries. Both are excellent. Both use a noticeably different narrative style. I would be hard pressed indeed to choose my favorite among them. At the very least we'll have a true contest worthy of generating discussion amongst readers.

That being said, I would like more than two entries, I'm not particularly worried though. In fact while I was proofreading this very post a third entry came in. In every contest so far, over half of the entries have come in the last week.

 

I, Scalenex, decree a prize for the winner of this next contest. Whoever wins the January-February Contest can choose the theme for the April-May Contest.

 

Mahrlect! Get out of my head Bob!