Go to the below link to learn about the challenge. Please note that you now must be registered at Liberty Hall (mike's site) to participate. The registration is to make our lives easier and to protect your publishing rights. No moaning, please.

The challenge is open from now until Monday, 25 April 2005, 0800 GMT 0 (London, 5 hrs ahead of EST, US)

http://www.munsil.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=299

MaryRobinette is the chooser for this week's trigger, since she won the "Best Use of Flash Techinque" poll. Congrats for a well-done story, Mary.

[edited to add that I'm going straight to mike's bb for the challenge]

I've tested my spinfinder account and nothing seems to be getting through (which could be half the problem), but I also tried from my office account and I didn't get a reply.

I have no idea what happened.

Very odd.

I'll send Mike an e-mail with that address so he can send it to me directly.

So much for that, the Gremlins in my e-mail decided to make this one hellish for me. Instead of writing while it was nice and quiet, I did while the phone was ringing off the hook!!!! Arghh! It must be the full moon or something, because this couldn't have been more stressful if I'd had the sword of Dameclese hanging over my head!

Oh well it's done. I can release. I can let go. I can stop ranting. <deep breath in...and out>

[does happy dance]

I would like to add that it really helps out the people putting on this Challenge if those submitting follow the formatting guidelines (follow the link in the FC#4 topic post). I know it says optional, but if, like last time, 19 people end up submitting, and it takes the mod an extra 5 minutes to format, that means he'll be spending a little over an hour and a half on formatting alone. And that's if the formatting goes smoothly.

So, please, no matter how much HSO has offended you in the past, please follow the guidelines.

Posted that thought on Mike's site and decided I should add it here as well.

On Monday, we will be posting the stories on the FC4 board, which is now private and cannot be crawled over by web robots -- protecting your publishing rights, and making it easier to find and crit a story.

Although, I'm wondering if in the meantime we shouldn't post the stories up to a hidden or protected web page so that those who have already finished their flash challenges can get to reading and critiquing. I could send the web address, login and password with your receipts...

What I could do instead, is set up a separate hidden forum where those who have already flashed or who are not going to flash could start reading. But in phpBB the way to do that involves creating a group and assigning the appropriate rights to that group. Which by itself is not a big deal. However, then you have to approve Group membership on an individual basis, and on the weekends we also try to have lives.

But, I have once more launched into the fray, and submitted a quickie that is only half as long as my first one, for the picture challenge. I am actually proud of writing something shorter, as I have a tendency to be overly verbose and use 20 words to say something that could probably be summed up in less than ten.

We'll see how it fares, now that it has been tossed amongst the sharks . Actually I'm looking forward to having it torn apart.

Good luck to one and all!!!

With just under 24 hours to go, we now have 18 Entries!

Well, you can. All you need to do is email me, and I'll send you a Word doc with all of the stories up to the moment. Please do this only if you have already taken the challenge. If you haven't already written your flash, you will not get the file.

To get the story, the following must be in your subject line:

"Send me the Flash!"

Send it to the flash challenge address, please.

Presently, we have 18 stories ready. If any more come before the challenge ends, they will NOT be added to the file. You will need to wait until Monday to read them on the board.

Actually, there's 19 if you count my story, which comes in at 1400 words (not exactly flash). Naturally, I had time to think it over, so it won't be part of the voting process. I will post it up on Monday, though.

Let me know if you want to read. Send an email with "Send me the Flash" in the subject line.

I've not read any of them, strangely, though I have spent quite a bit of time formatting a few to add in the tags for italics and stuff (for posting on the boards).

Also I humbly plead everyone's patience next week. I'm going to try to relieve HSO of some of the burden of going through all the stories every week by himself, and next week I'll do some slogging. If there are any screw-ups, blame me instead of him, okay?

We have twenty stories in... one more than last week's total. Good thing many have decided to get a head start on their reading for tomorrow's postings. And for those who have, do you like it? Do you think it will help.

At the time of this post, just under 9 hours remain to take up the challenge and submit it.

I'm even proactively writing comments on the remaining 5 or 10 or however many.

"Wow, some great imagery here, but I thought the ending felt a little flat - guess you ran out of time. Neat idea, though!"

Ending was still too abrupt.

All you're trying to do is fake out the rest of us; you don't need to deliver a substantive review.