Pre-submission Reminder

Good morning! This is NOT the call for submissions. Submissions will open at noon EDT.

As promised, here's a repeat of the new information for our contest. Bear in mind today that this is the first time we're going *live* with the new, automated system. It's working beautifully! But if some little quirky thing happens to go wrong, I beg your grace and patience.

Actually, I'm not too worried. Michael's done an amazing job.

At any rate, please review the new information so that your submission goes through without a hitch:

1. Your email must be formatted EXACTLY THE WAY I ALWAYS ASK YOU TO. Like this:

SCREEN NAME: (you must include the colon)
TITLE: (you must include the colon)
GENRE: (you must include the colon)

{and your 250 word excerpt here}

If your email is missing the screen name, title, genre, or colons, YOUR SUBMISSION WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY REJECTED.

2. Word count is set at 255 to allow for sentence completion. If your word count is too high, YOUR SUBMISSION WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY REJECTED.

3. THERE IS A NEW SUBMISSION EMAIL!! PLEASE make note of this:

authoress.submissions(at)gmail.com

If you send your submission to my other email address, IT WILL NOT BE INCLUDED IN THE CONTEST.

I'm going to type the address again:

authoress.submissions(at)gmail.com

4. If you submit early, your submission will be rejected.

5. If you are one of the first to submit AFTER the 50 slots have been filled, you will assigned as an alternate. All this means is that, in the event that one of the original 50 is disqualified or asks to be redacted, you will be given the empty slot number.

PLEASE READ YOUR AUTO-RESPONSE CAREFULLY. If you have been assigned as an alternate, you will receive an alternate number that will only be used if one of the 50 slots becomes available.

IF YOU RECEIVE A REJECTION: Please read carefully. The exact reason for your rejection will be included in the email. Depending on how fast submissions are coming in, you may or may not have time to resubmit. Please do try anyway.

And for those of you who are wondering, starting next month we will have two separate starting times, each for 25 entries. I can do things like that now with great ease! But I didn't announce this contest that way, so we're sticking to first-50, noon.

Post questions below! I will try to get to them before submissions open.