Tuesday, June 29, 2004

I Filked


I drabbled, too. I had been talking to Dwim about the fact that I thought it might be hard to write a drabble. Just 100 words to tell a story. A short story can be hard in that you have to find a full story that only takes place in a short time--and a short amount of pages. But 100 words? That's a snapshot. Terribly brief.

She encouraged me to try. I should have known better than to trust her.

I looked at the wishes of those with birthdays in June and yes, one of them caught me. Tar-Miriel. I ended up writing two drabbles because the first one turned out non-canonical. Both are up at www.fanfiction.net in the Books/Silmarillion category. I haven't posted them to my site yet.

And the filk? I don't know what possessed me. I can't write humor and I can't write songs.... But for some silly reason, I tried. The only song I could think of the tune of was Amazing Grace. So I tried "Amazing Elf..." and went on from three. 4 verses, I think. And witty. It's at www.fanfiction.netin the Books/Lord of the Rings category.

Of course, you could always just do a search on my name to find all three of these new pieces.

MEFA Update? We've gotten a few more author approvals. And an author decline. There are still 9 stories needing approval. Other than that, we're doing good. Check Ballot Season has only today and tomorrow left.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Check Ballot Season nearing its close


And thankfully, the edits are getting smaller and smaller. Our final count of nominations is 573, though we still have just over a dozen waiting for author approval and one with a link that is not working. If we don't hear from the authors by June 30th, those stories will drop off the list. The one with a bad link will also drop if we can't find a link for it that does work.

I've put out three drafts of the Check Ballots thus far and the edits poured in. But finally they seemed to have slowed down. Which means less errors. Check Ballot Seaon ends June 30th, so hopefully we'll have all (or at least most of the important...) errors fixed by then.

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Nomination Season Closes!


And I think you can say it was successful. We've got 550 nominations and counting! There are still some that need to be collected (they are already submitted) and we still need some author premissions. It's possible we might hit 600 by the time all the nominations are in!

If you're a member or planning to participate in the voting this fall, I can't say this enough: Vote Early!

By that I mean, read the stories, write up your comments, and save the comments in a file on your hard drive. Then you can cut and paste them into the ballots this fall. Write the comments while your memory is fresh about the story. Keep in mind that the more you write the more points you are giving that story. So rank them accordingly.

And "vote early" for authors too. There will be author categories. Every author who has a story in a category will be automatically nominated for that category. So write what you like about the authors esp. in regards to that category, as their name may come up more than once and you want to vary your votes at least a little.

If you are a member now, you'll see Check Ballots soon. Look over them. If you see a story you know that's in the wrong category, has the wrong author, a bad link, etc., let us know. That's what Check Ballots are for!

Also, if you see an asterisk (*) by someone's story, it means we don't have permission yet. We're giving authors until June 30th to give permission. So if we get it, we'll remove the asterisk. If not, we'll have to remove the story.

--Ainaechoiriel

Monday, June 07, 2004

Dwim, the Nuzgul-Flinger


For those of you unfamiliar with Henneth-Annun, a "nuzgul" is a vampiric plot bunny of the Lord of the Rings type. Well, last night when I was talking to Dwimmordene, she flung one at me. She encouraged me to write a drabble.

What's a drabble?

It's a short story. A very, very short story. It has to have 100 words, no more, no less. So it's even less than a vignette, just a snapshot in time, a moment.

Turns out, I've now written three. Presently they are all at HASA and you must be a member there to see them. Two can be found in my stories discussion (called Immortal). The third can be found if you look up my stories.

As they are my first ever drabbles, I'm awaiting some feedback before I post them anywhere else.

Friday, June 04, 2004

The MEFAs have moved!


The web site the Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards was on kept going down. In fact, I think it's still down right now. So I've moved it. The web site, not the YahooGroup.

The new site can be found at http://home.earthlink.net/~ainae/mefa/index.html

The old site is still up, to a point. It mainly just contains a "We've moved" message.

Thursday, June 03, 2004

Off to Boston!


Well, not for awhile yet. But I am going. The exhibit I saw in London is coming to the US. It will start Aug. 1st, but a group of us from the internet (LOTR Costumers Gather group mostly) are going on Oct. 4th. I already bought my ticket. I should be able to get there with frequent flyer miles. I just need to find a place to stay. Cheaply.

The ROTK DVD is out, of course, and I have mine. Watched on the way out of town the last weekend. And dashed off a bunch of screen captures to make Awards Banners out of. There are at least two more I want to get from the Black Gate, but I have already made about 30 ore more. You can see all the banner submissions (not just mine) at the MEFA site. We've still got a few categories with no banners, but some are really getting up there. The Grey Havens has 12 or 13.

Oh, that's right. I haven't written about that yet. The Elves category changed it's awards. We now have, in order, The Lothlorien, The Imladris, and The Grey Havens Awards. And the Morgoth Award became the Morgoth Bauglir Award, just to make the title sound better. I do prefer longer titles.

We have almost 400 nominations for the awards now, and about 130 members thus far. We still have some we are seeking author permission on and some still need to be added to the database by the categorizers. We have a little lesss than 2 weeks left of Nomination Season.

There is still plenty of time to join in the MEFAs. You can still nominate until June 15th. And after that you can vote this fall. And, of course, you can make all the banners your heart desires! I do screen captures, but you can be as creative as you like. Just keep them smallish. We want banners or buttons, not splash screens.