The Contest:

Write a story or poem with a theme traditionally associated with the New Year. Possible themes include (but are not necessarily limited to) winter, changes, decisions, resolutions, and deaths/rebirths. All genres/styles are welcome.

Categories:

There will be 2 categories - poem and prose. Any one who is interested can submit one entry in each category.

Contest rules:

1. All entries: by entering this contest, entrants agee to grant first publication rights to Renderosity (i.e. display it on the Renderosity web site.) All other rights are reserved by the writer.

2. Each story or poem must be a maximum of 3,000 words in length, written in English, and must be relevant to the stated theme.

3. One submission in each category will be accepted per Renderosity member, not per screen name. If there are multiple submissions by the same person in a category, only the last submission will be entered into the contest.

4. Explicit descriptions of anatomy, violence, or sexual acts are not allowed.

5. The story or poem must be an original creation by the submitter and not be published previously anywhere, including on the Internet.

6. The contest is open to all members of Renderosity, excluding the judge.

7. Submissions will be accepted until December 24th 23:59, 2002, Renderosity Server Time.

8. The winners will be announced on 1 January, 2003. (Barring any unforeseen disasters.)

Submission format:

Submissions may be e-mailed to retrocity@renderosity.com as a .txt attachment.

At the top of the entry, please include the following:

Screen name
Real name
Title

For prose:

Please single space lines, with a double space between paragraphs. Please do not hit Enter between each line - let the sentences word wrap without truncating to screen width.

For poems:

Whatever formatting suits the poem.

Prizes (to be awarded for each category):

First place: $25 gift certificate at Barnes and Noble if the winner is in the US or the equivalent of US$25 at Amazon.com or the nearest Amazon site for non-US residents. (E.g. Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, etc.)

Second place: $15 gift certificate at Barnes and Noble if the winner is in the US or the equivalent of US$15 at Amazon.com or the nearest Amazon site for non-US residents. (E.g. Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, etc.)

1st and 2nd place in each category will also be featured in The Library.

Judging:

Crescent will be the judge of this contest. The winning entries will be picked based on originality, appropriateness to the theme, and the quality of writing. No authors will be identified to the judge until after the contest is over and the winner picked. retrocity - a fellow Renderosity moderator - will accept all submissions and forward them anonymously to Crescent, indentifying the authors after the winners have been picked.

Questions:

Any questions about the contest can be addressed in the Renderosity Writers' Forum. If there is a specific question about genre/theme, you can submit the question to retrocity@renderosity.com, who will forward it on to Crescent then forward the reply back to preserve the anonymity of the entrants.