GBA(s)FC #2 is officially open!

If you want to link to the contest, use this page.

The topic for this contest is "growth," which we are defining here as:

–noun

• 1. the act or process, or a manner of growing; development; gradual increase.
• 2. size or stage of development: It hasn't yet reached its full growth.
• 3. completed development.
• 4. development from a simpler to a more complex stage: the growth of ritual forms.
• 5. development from another but related form or stage: the growth of the nation state.
• 6. something that has grown or developed by or as if by a natural process: a growth of stubborn weeds.
• 7. Pathology. an abnormal increase in a mass of tissue, as a tumor.
• 8. origin; source; production: onions of English growth.

–adjective

• 9. of or denoting a business, industry, or equity security that grows or is expected to grow in value over a long period of time: a growth industry; a growth stock.

Your story should include a character or an event which touches on one of those definitions for the word growth.

Here are the rules:

Submissions will be accepted at any time after this post is live on the site (right now) until 11 pm CST on May 7th, 2007, at which time the contest will be closed to new entries. Voting will commence on May 8th and close at 11 pm CST (GMT -6) on May 14. Winners will be announced on this site on May 15.

Submission Guidelines: Total word length of submissions must not exceed 500 words, and must have an obvious correlation to the topic specified for the contest. All entries must also be in English. Entries will be submitted via email to TheMoonTopples@gmail.com, pasted into the body of the email. I may request a resubmission if formatting of your piece proves difficult. It is the author's responsibility to point out any formatting errors once the story is live on the site. Entrants will remain anonymous until the end of voting so any links entrants may wish to add from their websites or blogs should link to the contest itself, and not their specific entry until voting has closed and winners have been announced. Entries must not have been previously published in any form (including the author's website) until the contest completes on May 15. Non-fiction and poetry entries will not be considered for this contest. All entries will remain on this site, updated with links to the author's website unless they request I remove them. The email address used to submit your entry should be the one you use for logging in to Amazon dot com, to aid in the prize distribution. This email address will not be shared on the site, or published in any way. I respect the privacy of the entrants.

Entries will be assigned a number and posted to this site in the order received. Entries will be predated by one year for the submission portion of the contest, and moved back to the actual submission or post date once the contest concludes. This means they will not appear on the main page of this website.

I reserve the right to deny submissions based on content (the only thing I can think of is if something is genuinely hateful or incredibly inflammatory), suspicion of plagairism, or if the writing does not otherwise meet the requirements of the contest. These submissions (which I doubt I'll receive) will be discarded without reply to the author. They will simply never show up on the site.

Entry Format: Please include "Growth Fiction Contest" in the subject line of your email. Inside the email, please also include the following:

Name: John D. Annypenny
Screen name: Lennypenny Smallfellow
Website: annypenny/joojoo.edu
Country: Fredonia

A real name and valid email address are considered mandatory for submission, to avoid multiple entries. Exceptions to the real name component may be awarded in individual cases. Real names will not be published on this website at any time, unless they are part of the screen name or website you provide in the additional fields.

Prizes! All winners will receive a badge for their website or blog, as well as specific prizes below. All gift certificates are in USD. Winners will be selected in each of the following categories:

Writer's Choice: Five winners to be determined by the entrants to the contest themselves. Entrants should submit their five favorite entries numbered in order of preference via email. Entrants are to use the same email address used for the initial contest submission, and may not vote for their own entry. I will weigh the votes cast in this fashion by assigning five points to a first choice, four points to a second choice, and so on. When voting closes, I will simply add up the numbers to determine the winners.
Writer's Choice Prizes:
1st Place winner will receive a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate
2nd Place winner will receive a $20 Amazon.com gift certificate
3rd Place winner will receive a $15 Amazon.com gift certificate
4th Place winner will receive a $10 Amazon.com gift certificate
5th Place winner will receive a $5 Amazon.com gift certificate
All winners in this category will also have the warm glow of knowing they were chosen by their peers.

Jury Prize: One winner to be decided by a secret cadre of readers. Jury members may enter the contest as a contestant, but will be ineligible for this prize.
Jury Prize winner will receive a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate

In the event that one entry qualifies for prizes in both the Jury Prize and Writer's Choice categories, the submission will be awarded the Writer's Choice prize for which it qualified, and the next highest vote total from the Jury Prize category will determine the winner in that category.

All prizes will be sent via the email address provided with the entrant's initial submission.

What's different this time:
In addition to some reshuffling of the prize categories to add more weight to the peer voting, the elimination of the Reader's Choice prizes from last time (which didn't really work very well) means that each entry will have comments enabled from the start, so that you can offer feedback on the entries while the contest is still live, and the authors don't have to simply sit around and wonder whether anyone liked their tale.