December 2016 Newsletter Posted

[nelyo-russandol.livejournal.com]

Our December newsletter has been posted over on our site!

http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/news/december2016.php

This month we continue with the "Companies, Clubs, and Cliques" challenge, which asks writers to imagine character groups, both formal and informal, that might have existed in Arda. During December why not gift a story to someone who inspired or encouraged you over the last twelve months, as we are revisiting "A Gift of a Story"?

Our News section prompts you to help us expand the Library of Tirion, presents 10 Things You Didn't Know the SWG Archive Could Do, provides an update on Mereth Aderthad, and calls for Back to Middle-earth 2017 Moderator Volunteers, amongst other topics.

This month's character biography is on Emeldir the Manhearted, written by Robinka. Before there was Eowyn, there was Emeldir, barely mentioned in The Silmarillion but the savior of her people whose brave deeds allowed the survival of one of the most important family lines among the Edain.

As usual, if you're looking for something to read in our archive, our newsletter lists new and updated stories, short works, poems, and non-fiction. Around the World and Web brings you featured articles and publications about all aspects of the Tolkien legendarium and fandom beyond the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild, from a biopic on J.R.R Tolkien to a fanfilm on the untold story of Glorfindel, and to the published results of a recent fandom and sexuality survey.

Many thanks to our contributors this month: Angelica, Dawn, Rhapsody, Elleth and Robinka. We all hope you enjoy our December newsletter!

Comments

[dawn_felagund]

Well done, everyone, and thank you for putting it all together, Russa! :)

[hhimring]

Thank you! That 10 Things list will be useful, I'm sure.
I used to get the impression that quite a number of authors might not have realized that they hadn't got their review notifications switched on.
And I hadn't known that you can use the series function a bit like a HASA reading list, apparently--to compile a collection of fic by others?

Is the cut-off for eligibility for Library of Tirion still that the stories have to have been posted before 2007?

[dawn_felagund]

I'm glad the "10 Things" article was useful even to an experienced user of our site! :)

eFiction defaults to not sending emails. I've thought about tinkering with the code to change that--even I could probably do that--but at the same time, I don't like people to have to opt out of being contacted by us; that seems potentially annoying.

I would personally love to see more creative use of series! :)

Library of Tirion stories are those posted before 2007. The rationale is that our archive didn't exist then, so those authors could not have posted with us even if they wanted to. And since there was a mass exodus from the Silm fandom circa 2005, a lot of them weren't even around by 2007 to know we even existed.

[hhimring]

Thank you, Dawn! I do understand the rationale for the 2007 date-- it was your mentioning the HASA closure that made me think the policy might have changed.

And I'm impressed that you're tackling the aging software.