Exile Asylum Winter 2009 Writing Contest

We have many writers on Exile Asylum and would like to extend the opportunity for them to participate in a community contest. This community is not exclusive to modeling contests, we would like to feature every form of expression as a contest in due time.

This year we are presenting a fiction short story writing contest for the 2009 Holiday Season.

HOW TO WRITE A GOOD STORY:
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE STARTING YOUR STORY


HOW TO ENTER:
1. Sign up to Exile Asylum.net to enter
2. ALL entries must be posted on this page and cannot be double posted, if you need to post 2 or 3 comments to complete your story, then do so.
3. NO group entries.
4. ALL entries must have a title in "Quotations".

PRIZES:


JUDGING:
1. All stories will go through a 2 step judging process.
A. 5 finalists will be picked by the Exile Asylum Staff.
2. The 5 finalists will be voted on by the community.

EXILE ASYLUM STAFF'S JUDGING CRITERIA:
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE STARTING YOUR STORY


RULES & REGULATIONS:
1. No entry fee is required, and all rights in the story remain the property of the author. All types of science fiction, fantasy and dark fantasy are welcome.

2. All entries must be original works, in English. Plagiarism, which includes the use of third-party poetry, song lyrics, characters or another person's universe, without written permission will result in disqualification. Excessive violence, determined by the judges, will result in disqualification. Entries may not have been previously published in professional media.(NOT PUBLISHED OR ONLINE, WRITTEN JUST FOR THIS CONTEST)

3. To be eligible, entries must be works of prose, 500-1000 words in length. We regret we cannot consider poetry, or works intended for children.

4. The Contest is open to those who have not had professionally published a novel or short novel, or more than one novelette, or more than three short stories, in any medium. Professional publication is deemed to be payment, and at least 5,000 copies, or 5,000 hits.
*IF YOU HAVE BEEN PROFESSIONALLY PUBLISHED YOU MAY ENTER, HOWEVER YOUR STORY MUST BE WRITTEN SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS CONTEST**

5. Author retains all copyrights, but grants Exile Asylum the right to re-post the winning work in blog & forum posts to further promote the work.

6. The main character in each story must be an original creation of each author's making. We know only his age, name, his parents' names and that he was born in the United States. We know nothing about his personality or appearance. Any entries containing characters taken from other stories will be disqualified.

7. Entries CANNOT include sexually explicit material.