to clarify, what labby was saying about the archive deadline was this:
if you want your story to be uploaded to the archive by dec 31 (and thus be automatically eligible for this year's kerths), you have to send it in by dec 1.
that gives enough time for it to be GEd and to let the archive staff space things out. a lot of stories get sent in at the end of the year, precisely for the dec 31 deadline, so the dec 1 rule was established to give the archive staff time to deal with the flood. stories sumitted after dec 1 may still be uploaded in dec, depending on how things go, but there's a chance they'll be bumped over to jan.
now, stories uploaded in jan are still eligible for the kerths. they just have to wait until the next year's ceremonies (unless they were posted elsewhere first and you let k-comm know that you want it to be eligible this year).
of course, with everyone looking to get their stories up in dec, jan tends to be slow for uploads. so, if you don't mind letting your story wait, it'll probably stand out better in jan (being uploaded with only a couple others) than it would in dec (one among many).
Paul, posting unofficially from memory
