Hey FoLCs!

I know it’s still 2013 but it’s also time to start thinking about the 2014 Kerth Awards.

The Kerth committee for 2014 is Annette Ciotola, Elena and Tricia Walpole but we couldn’t do it without all the FoLCs who dedicate their time and energy to making this ceremony even more fun. Amber will be coordinating and organising the quizzes. She will be asking for some volunteers to help very soon. So keep a look out for their post. Amber will also be coordinating the Kerth Ceremony and will need volunteers to assist her. Kathy MacFarlane, our external auditor, continues to help us tally the votes. And most of all, we’ve got all the writers and readers, without whom the awards wouldn’t exist at all!

Here’s some information about the staff and about the 2014 ceremony. Please take a moment to read this.

Staff organization

Tricia is our Kerth Coordinator. Decisions are taken collectively after being discussed among all K-Com members, but as coordinator she gets the last word if there's a disagreement. We usually tend to agree, though. *g* Tricia will also handle the PR side of things. She will make the official posts.

Annette and Elena are our techie geniuses. They maintain the website and they’re our official security guards, i.e. they check for fraud in nominations and votes. They know everything there is to know about IP numbers and such.

Tricia is in charge of the nominations. She receives each nomination form, counts all the noms separately, compares the numbers to make sure there’s no error and then tallies them so the official ballot can be released within two weeks at most. Annette and Elena check to see that all the data is accurate.

Kathy MacFarlane and Tricia are our official vote-talliers. Both get your forms and count them to make sure there’s no error.

Amber is the Kerth Ceremony coordinator. She will be asking for volunteers to assist and be IRC tech people for the ceremony.


2014 schedule

The quizzes will commence on Monday 13 January and finish on Thursday 20 February.

Nominations will run from Saturday, February 22 to Sunday, March 9, midnight EST. The official ballot will be released two weeks at most after all the nominations are in.

Voting will run from Saturday, March 29 to Sunday, April 6, midnight EST. That will give us a week to tally the votes and prepare the list of winners.

The ceremony will take place on IRC on Saturday, April 12, time to be decided.

2014 categories

Best Super Short (1-10k): Very short stories.

Best Short Story (11-50k): Short stories of any subject or tone.

Best Mid-Length Story (51-200k): Mid-length stories of any subject or tone.

Best Long Story (201k and over): Long stories of any subject or tone.


Best Revelation Story: Stories which contain a revelation about Clark being Superman. The person finding out can be Lois or any other character.

Best Original / Supporting Character: Rewards a special character from stories which strongly highlight a supporting character from the series or creates a new, interesting character that plays an important role in the story. No size restrictions. (Sorry, but versions - no matter how altered - of Clark or Lois do not qualify as Original or Supporting Characters)

Best First Kiss: No size restrictions.

Best New Author

Best Overall Story: A story of any type that is outstanding overall. No size restrictions.


And if there’s still a question we haven’t answered, feel free to email me. We’ll be happy to help you!


The Kerth Committee
(Tricia, Elena and Annette)

Michael

Wow! Kerth time already!

(I better hope the girls let me catch up on my reading!)

Actually, I was seriously wondering why there are no genre categories. Why is everything based on length?

What about best comedy, best adventure, best romance etc?

I also think there's only 3-4 Epics that have posted to the Archives this year, because I never got my act together and sent in the first third of Wrong Clark vignette (the first year there's an Epic category and I don't have anything ready to submit

Wait a minute. /checks watch, checks calender,

Wait, no best comedy? Please say it ain't so!

Please add me to the list of those confused by the abbreviated categories. So sad to see the others gone!

Just realised that there is also no New Author category. I know I'm not the only one that would be eligible for it. There's been quite a few new authors join this year.

That's true! I always like to see the New Authors list, because some people post straight to the Archives and some things I just miss entirely. It's good to give recognition.

I'm speculating, of course, as I'm not part of K-Comm, but cats are generally dropped because there haven't been enough stories written in that cat during the year to form a reasonably competative ballot.

So if you think there have been you can send a list of stories that you think apply in any particlar cat to Tricia and I'm sure she'll consider them.

The NA cat is different to the rest as the eligible pool has no minimum requirement. It's made up of all new authors posting that year. So I have to think that omission is a simple oversight that will be corrected. Again, sending Tricia a list of NAs this year might help speed things along.

When sending email, you should be aware that Tricia has now left town on her annual Christmas vacation, so it may be after the holidays before you get a reply.

LabRat

Looking at this thread it seems that these categories were decided to be dropped in May, well before it could even be known whether there would be enough eligible stories or not.

The reason we are having size-based categories is to make the process fairer. Over the last 3 years very few people nominated stories and lot of those people only nominated 1 or 2 stories. One story can receive 4 nominations but in 4 different categories (1 per category). Another story can receive 2 nominations but both in the same category - this story appears to have more nominations and with that low number will probably made the ballot for that category. With size categories, the story that the most people nominate will make the ballot. This is much fairer.

We will have size categories this year and see how it goes. Unfortunately, the long and epic categories have to be combined. There are only 8 stories. The categories will be as listed above. However, we can add the Best New Author, even though the numbers are extremely small.

The Kerth Committee

It's not the size of the story or how many there are, but the quality, and we certainly have some good newbie writers this year. /Psst. Keep 'em coming, please./

It's my opinion (and always has been) that all newbie writers should be included in the final ballot for Kerth, especially when there are so few contenders. (i.e. bypass the nomination process altogether). If there were 10-15 new writers, then I'd say let 'em duke it out for the top five slots, but otherwise everyone should be allowed on the final ballot.