Catching Our Breath!

Okay, that was quite a ride!

I never expected the submissions to fill up in three hours. You were all just straining at the starting line, weren't you? Wow.

There seemed to be quite a bit of angst, too, over getting your confirmation emails. For future reference: I do not have an auto-responder set up. I respond personally to each submission. In the past, I've gone through the responses and sent the confirmations, then created posts later. This time, in order to streamline, I decided to respond as I created the posts, so that I wouldn't have to go back through the entire list a second time. As a result, my response time was slower.

Also as a result, a lot of you assumed your original submission hadn't arrived, and so you re-sent. And that made things a tad more confusing. Especially since I was desperately trying to keep up with the count, since it was filling so fast. I didn't realize that some were duplicates.

(Okay, disclaimer: Perhaps I am Easily Confused. It's a distinct possibility.)

Also, G-mail has an interesting way of stacking emails from the same address. So some of you, in re-sending, ended up pushing your original submission to the back of the queue. Which made your response time even longer.

Rest assured that I'm going to keep working to streamline things! But in the meantime, please take a deep breath before you re-submit something. Because, unless your original email bounced back to you, the likelihood is high that I have, indeed, received it.

The email address for our contests is ALWAYS facelesswords(at)gmail.com.

At any rate, the entries will be posted tomorrow morning beginning at 10:00 am EST. Critting can begin immediately, and can continue through the weekend. Our winners -- and our Secret Agent's identity -- will be posted on Monday the 19th.

Okay, I think that about covers it. THANK YOU SO MUCH for your enthusiasm! As always, there's some great writing in the bag.

What an amazing group you are. I do mean that.