HASA news - May 2009

The general news bulletin for May 2009, focusing on birthdays, challenges, reviews and stories.

To start with, some very good news: thanks to the generosity of our donors, costs for May are covered! Thank you all!

Of course, money (though welcome) isn’t the only way you can "donate" to HASA. Just as much as money to keep going, HASA needs you to write stories, make comments, perform reviews, post to forums etc. If you would like to donate, but your budget won't allow it, pick out a favourite story and post a comment. It just takes a minute and it will make that author's day!

Birthday Cards

If you have a birthday in May and would like a drabble about your favourite character or topic, you can request it here.

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

Reviews

Right now, there are 19 stories waiting for reviewers (remember to log in first).

If you are an active reviewer, why not go and check one out?

If you’re not an active reviewer, but would like to be one... If you've been a member of HASA for thirty days and think this might be an area you'd like to get involved, it's easy to get started. Read the links below, and then click "Reviews Home" and click on the link to "Activate my status now." You'll be taken to a list of stories awaiting reviewers. Click on the title, read it, and enter your review.

(please note: you need to be logged in for these links to work):
--- Reviews Overview
--- Review Policies
--- Review Criteria

As you can perhaps guess, member participation is crucial for reviews. The more people are involved in the review process, the more opinions will be represented. Having more people involved also means that stories pass through review more quickly - which is good for everyone.

Here's a simple thing to try. You're all familiar with the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." By submitting a story for review, you are asking nine other members to read and evaluate it. So why not do until 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 Nuzgul

Alas, there are no current open Challenges, but perhaps you have ideas you’d like to see written? Grab that nuzgul 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

Resources

The HASA Research Library is a very useful resource for writers as well as for online discussions on book canon. You can find entries on characters, settings, events, and items, containing cited quotes about the item you are trying to find more information on. This portion of the site is available here.

Would you like to get involved with Resources? If you like researching and want to help develop this section of HASA you can contact the Resources & Research Library through the contact form at http://www.henneth-annun.net/about/contact.cfm.

Some recent articles in Resources:

Timeline Events:
Frodo and Sam set off for Mordor
Éomer pursues the Orc-raiders towards Fangorn

Character Biographies
Nerdanel
Isengrim Took II

Places
Argonath
Caragdûr

Things
Shire-reckoning
Shire-reform

Good luck researching your story! If you enjoy this section of the site, why not tell the researchers (they’re listed at the bottom of every entry).

April 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. Why not go to http://www.henneth-annun.net/ and read the currently featured story?

Many talented writers are publishing every day. In April:

--- 6 Reviewed Stories were published or updated.
--- 37 General Stories were published or updated.
--- 6 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!