A Reminder to SoWD Prize Makers!

[dawn_felagund]

Prizes for our Season of Writing Dangerously winners were technically due on Friday. If you're still working on yours, that's fine (I'm still working on one of mine!), but please check in with your author here to let them know that it's still coming.

If you've finished your prize, please post a link to the finished piece on the post above. If for some reason you have not posted the prize publicly (e.g., you've emailed it to your author), just drop us a line at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org to let us know. It doesn't need to be posted publicly. But we do want to be sure that all of our winners get something for their hard work. :)

If for some reason you cannot complete the prize you signed up to do, then email us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org so that we can make other arrangements.

And if you've finished your prize and shared it with the author, thank you!!! :)

November 2013 Newsletter Posted!

[dawn_felagund]

The newsletter is a bit late this month due to your site owner crawling out from under her rock this weekend and actually trying to have a social life by hosting an ambitious party last night. Now that the guests have gone and the dishes are cleaned, I can now present the November newsletter:

http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/news/november2013.php

As many of you have already seen, we have finally rolled out the various changes to our Site Etiquette and Terms of Service that we have been discussing over the past six months or so. This is not the most fun news but it is important, since we want all of our members to be aware of rule changes when they happen. The changes are explained fully in the newsletter but concern the requirement of having a working email address associated with your archive account, multiple accounts for a single member, and image use. If you use our archive, please familiarize yourself with these changes, if you have not already.

We are also coming up on the Featured Podfic being one year old! But this means that we are running out of podfic recommendations from when the project first started, so if you have a favorite story on the archive you'd like to hear recorded, please suggest it so that we can work on producing the next round of podfics! (The recommendation form is here: http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/podfic/forms/request.php. And we also need readers, if you'd like to try your hand at recording a podfic: http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/podfic/forms/reader.php.)

Now onto more fun stuff ... our character biography this month is about Lalaith, the little sister of Turin who only lived to be three years old. Yet her character has an impact nonetheless (beyond her death sort of starting off the misery that is Turin's existence) in her role as a symbol of hope in one of the darkest times of the First Age. Oshun puts Lalaith's life beautifully into context to show how her famed laugher--and her loss--might have been perceived by the characters around her who lived to fight on after her death. Lalaith is a character who gets next to no fannish attention--there isn't a single story about her on the archive!--but Oshun has once again coaxed a minor character out of the shadows to reveal her importance.

Our podfic this month is the brilliant "A Minor Talent" by Lyra (read by me). Lyra's story looks at three episodes in Fingon's life that are centered on a particular song by Rumil. Just as in the song, the Eldar catch their first glimpse of the Two Trees, Lyra's Fingon slowly comes to understand his place in his tumultuous family and sees himself as his own person, not a mere extension of his Uncle Feanor's family. I hope I have done justice in reading this story, which I love, and hope you will check out the story and the podfic.

If you're looking for something to read, Rhapsody has compiled a list of the stories added to or updated on the archive within the past month, and Russandol has collected some interesting links to articles for our Around the World and Web section. If you're looking for something to write, we have our monthly challenges, as well as links to challenges going on in other groups beyond the SWG.

Many, many thanks go to Oshun, Lyra, Rhapsody, Russandol, and Angelica, who put together the newsletter content this month!

Enjoy!

November 2013 Newsletter Posted!

[dawn_felagund]

The newsletter is a bit late this month due to your site owner crawling out from under her rock this weekend and actually trying to have a social life by hosting an ambitious party last night. Now that the guests have gone and the dishes are cleaned, I can now present the November newsletter:

http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/news/november2013.php

As many of you have already seen, we have finally rolled out the various changes to our Site Etiquette and Terms of Service that we have been discussing over the past six months or so. This is not the most fun news but it is important, since we want all of our members to be aware of rule changes when they happen. The changes are explained fully in the newsletter but concern the requirement of having a working email address associated with your archive account, multiple accounts for a single member, and image use. If you use our archive, please familiarize yourself with these changes, if you have not already.

We are also coming up on the Featured Podfic being one year old! But this means that we are running out of podfic recommendations from when the project first started, so if you have a favorite story on the archive you'd like to hear recorded, please suggest it so that we can work on producing the next round of podfics! (The recommendation form is here: http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/podfic/forms/request.php. And we also need readers, if you'd like to try your hand at recording a podfic: http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/podfic/forms/reader.php.)

Now onto more fun stuff ... our character biography this month is about Lalaith, the little sister of Turin who only lived to be three years old. Yet her character has an impact nonetheless (beyond her death sort of starting off the misery that is Turin's existence) in her role as a symbol of hope in one of the darkest times of the First Age. Oshun puts Lalaith's life beautifully into context to show how her famed laugher--and her loss--might have been perceived by the characters around her who lived to fight on after her death. Lalaith is a character who gets next to no fannish attention--there isn't a single story about her on the archive!--but Oshun has once again coaxed a minor character out of the shadows to reveal her importance.

Our podfic this month is the brilliant "A Minor Talent" by Lyra (read by me). Lyra's story looks at three episodes in Fingon's life that are centered on a particular song by Rumil. Just as in the song, the Eldar catch their first glimpse of the Two Trees, Lyra's Fingon slowly comes to understand his place in his tumultuous family and sees himself as his own person, not a mere extension of his Uncle Feanor's family. I hope I have done justice in reading this story, which I love, and hope you will check out the story and the podfic.

If you're looking for something to read, Rhapsody has compiled a list of the stories added to or updated on the archive within the past month, and Russandol has collected some interesting links to articles for our Around the World and Web section. If you're looking for something to write, we have our monthly challenges, as well as links to challenges going on in other groups beyond the SWG.

Many, many thanks go to Oshun, Lyra, Rhapsody, Russandol, and Angelica, who put together the newsletter content this month!

Enjoy!