Amazing Grace

That's what Michael and I have been offered over the past 24 hours or so, and I want to thank you.

Yes, there were glitches yesterday. Yes, many of you were disappointed to not be able to get your entry in. Or you never found a response email. Or you couldn't understand for the life of you why your word count was rejected.

So much potential angst going on. And no one took it out on me.

That's right. No one.

Thanks for that. If only you knew how the Perfectionist Me writhed each time someone sent an email asking "Why?" Not because I wanted everyone to drop over in amazement at the power and perfection of Michael's creation. But because I wanted things to go RIGHT for EVERYONE.

Who, me? High standards? (It's amazing, I tell ya, that I've survived the querying process this long. If anything, this journey offers ANY writer an amazing opportunity for personal growth. Truly.)

Anyway. We've got some "stuff" to wade through today--formatting doo-doo, a couple of duplicate entries (believe it or not!). But the excerpts will post tomorrow on schedule and the Secret Agenting will begin.

I know I say it all the time. But you really are a wonderful bunch of authorly people.

*hugs*

Submissions Are Now Closed

Oh. My. Goodness.

Well!

Hmm.

Thank you for your patience. Some of the problems encountered during the submission process were due to user error.

As in, you didn't follow directions.

And some were due to odd, unforeseen circumstances.

And a bunch were caused by the goofiness of hotmail. If you sent your submission via hotmail and were not able to get qualified, my apologies. It seems hotmail's silly signature (tagged onto the end of all your outgoing emails) messed things up and included itself in your word count.

That was an unanticipated problem, and I apologize. Then again, I hate hotmail and have no patience for it.

*takes a moment to breathe deeply*

Specific Issues:

*People submitting more than once for no apparent reason
*People not formatting the SCREEN NAME/TITLE/GENRE the way I told you to.
*People making spelling errors in the SCREEN NAME/TITLE/GENRE fields (not your actual titles/genres, obviously)

Anyway.

We've got our 50 entrants and 2 alternates.

I thank you for giving us grace. I apologize (sincerely!) if you were unable to get a qualified entry in and you couldn't figure out why.

I tried to cover everything prior to the opening of submissions, but it's impossible to anticipate everything that may be a problem.

So. Chalk it up. We'll do an in-house critique session very soon, which will help us to further work out the kinks. Overall, the system worked well.

Oh. And if you couldn't get in and you are baffled, please forward your original entry to me at facelesswords(at)gmail.com and explain to me exactly what happened (i.e., what rejection message did you receive).

Please DO NOT send your questions/concerns to the authoress.submissions address. That address is for contest entries only.

*HUGS!*

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.