Hello again. I am sooo sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you. I am a full time wife, full time mother, full time college student with a part-time job and a computer that has developed a non-nocturnal problem---it refuses to connect to the Internet after dark. I am waiting on my computer guru to help me out, but in the meantime I will try and answer everyone's questions. Here we go.
1. Why only stories from 2001 onwards?
The Merriweather Committee is in the process of
reconsidering this rule and opening it up to all
stories of any year. Since a lot of people have
asked about this, the rule will probably be
changed.
Stay tuned.
2. Do stories submitted to the cooking story
category need to contain a recipe?
No. But if it's a cooking story, there has to
be something in the story that identifies it as
a cooking story.
3. What is the deadline for this months'
competition? When do we need to get our story
titles submitted by?
Entries will be taken from Saturday, January 2,
to midnight Saturday, February 5.
4. What's a submission cycle? And is there
going to be a finalized list of categories so
authors know when they should plan on
submitting their story? I mean, if story X
could be submitted in three or four
categories, the author might want to decide
which categories s/he has the best chance in
and only submit to those.
A submission cycle is how many times that
category appears per year. If Revelation
stories are judged twice a year, the same story
can only appear one time per year in that
category. That way, if an author has 4 or 5
revelation stories but can only submit two
stories in that category, they have another
chance to submit other stories later on.
Yes, there will be a list of categories that
will be offered. It will be posted very soon.
5. Is each judge expected to read every story
in a category? Or, if not, are scores from
different judges going to be normalized
somehow to allow for different judges' biases?
It is expected of each judge to read each
story. There is a panel of several judges in
order to achieve balance and a fair score for
each story. If one judge scores a story very
low, another scores it very high, and the rest
of the judges score it high, then the low score
is a factor but not THE deciding factor in the
overall score.
6. Will the judges change for each category?
It is expected that there will be some
fluctuation of judges.
7. Are there any GEs on the panel for the
current category?
I don't know. I only know their names, not if
they are GEs or not.
8. Can you apply to be a judge?
To my knowledge, no. I will ask the
Merriweather Committee about this if enough
people want to be judges. (A question to
everyone here -- does being a judge sound like
something you'd like to do and why?)
9. Will each individual author receive a copy
of all the judging sheets, so he/she can review
the comments and know where the
problems/successes were
in the story?
Absolutely!
10. How strict are the word count guidelines?
If a vignette strays over the 1,500 word limit,
will it be disqualified? Or will it just have
points deducted from the total score? Is there
some room for movement?
I know this is under discussion and I'll get
back to you on it as soon as possible. The
Merriweather Committee doesn't want to reject
any story if at all possible. They believe
that if the author takes the time to submit
their story, it deserves to be accepted and
judged in a professional mannner.
The Merriweather Committee did ask me to make
this announcement: There will be no
submissions accepted during March out of
deference to the Kerth Awards.
Hope this clears a few things up. I'll be back
to check on things tomorrow.
