HASA news - January 2010

Of course the news of this month for HASA is the launch of the newly made-over site last month. If you haven’t done any exploring yet, jump in!

Also, congratulations to all authors who won or placed in the MEFAs, and applause to the many people volunteering their time to make the awards a success.


Birthday Cards

If it’s your birthday in January, and you would like a drabble about your favourite character or topic? You can request it here.

At the moment there are two requests:
Imhiriel (Jan. 3) would like drabbles focusing on diplomacy (between allies or enemies, successful or not, any age, race, place) and Princess of Gondor (Jan. 11) would like something (romantic!) focusing on Aragorn and Arwen.

Not sure what the birthday cards are about? Have a look at stories written for previous requests.


Reviews

You’ll find a list of stories in review at the top of the members home page. If you are an active reviewer, log in to see the 5 new stories that are waiting for reviewers.

Or, if you are not yet a reviewer, why not sign up to become one? Reviewing is not nearly as daunting as it may seem, and you're eligible if you've been a member of HASA for thirty days or more.

Member participation is crucial for reviews. The more people are involved in the review process, the more opinions will be represented. Just as importantly, having more people involved means that stories pass through review more quickly - which is good for everyone.

By submitting a story for review, you are asking nine other members to read and evaluate it. So why not do unto other authors in reviews as you'd like other reviewers to do unto you: check out one of the stories already in review and give it a read. Put more simply: put one in, take one out


Challenges and Nuzgûl

In honor of the new site, here is a new challenge!

1. Locate the Treasure link hidden on the Challenges home page. That is your story focus.
2. Select a Treasure from any other publicly viewable section of the web site. The public sections besides Challenges are: HASA Home, Stories, Playlists, Forums, Resources, and About.
3. Write a story of any type or length using those two treasures. Drabbles, poetry, vignettes, short stories, longer than that - all are welcome.
4. Link to the two treasures in the story.
5. If you can make use of more than one treasure in crafting your tale, go for it! Just be sure to link.

The challenge runs through January and will close on Sunday, February 7, 2010.

Have fun exploring and writing!


If you have an idea that you'd like at least five people take on, grab that nuzgûl by the scruff of the neck (mind the teeth!) and see if you can get four others to make it a Challenge. Prospective Challenges can be found here

Click here for the Challenges homepage, to enter Challenges, suggest new ideas, and wander through old Challenges (and perhaps be bitten anew?).


December Stories

All of us writers love feedback. It is the lembas and miruvor that sustains us as we write our story, and leaving a few words about a story you read is always a nice thing to do, whether the story is new or old.

Every fifteen minutes HASA highlights a story chosen at random from the Reviewed and General stories in the archive. Read the currently featured story on our front page.

Many talented writers are publishing every day. In December:

--- 16 Reviewed Stories were published or updated.
--- 38 General Stories were published or updated.
--- 4 Beta Stories were published or updated.
(Please note, you need to be logged in to view beta stories.)

Thank you for reading at HASA. Enjoy!

~Nath