Today's update is brought to you by the letters "M", "I", and "NTBABY". Fans of hers who've been following her lovely Sally Regal series of fanfics will probably already have read these, but no matter! Here they are again for you. Happily Ever After is new to the RPGamer.com Fanfic archives, while the previous three are reposted not only for your reading convenience, but also because the versions previously kept in our archives were outdated.

Meanwhile, if you're reading this that means that submissions for the current fanfic challenge are now open. The rules for this challenge are below.

1. Write a fic that takes one of the following real world holidays and "localise" the holiday, making it relevant to the world/universe of the game you're writing the fic for. Holidays you can choose from are: New Year (Western or Eastern), Valentine's Day, Easter, April Fool's Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, St. Patrick's Day or Christmas. Feel free to refer to any traditions or religious significance related to the holiday in question, whether it's Christian or 'pagan' (for want of a better word), or cultural, or whatever. As long as we can recognise the holiday for what it's supposed to be in the real world.
2. All standard guidelines apply. Click the link on the right.
3. Fics should have a length of between 500 and 1500 words. This will not be strictly enforced but see it as a useful guideline to follow.
4. Other than the usual reviewing criteria for fic acceptance, we will also be judging each fic heavily on ORIGINALITY and CREATIVITY. I know Valentine's Day is on the list, and it's next Monday, and is going to be the easiest to write about, but if you do a VD fic it's going to have to be really good.
5. Also, try not to write for games based on the real world already. If you do a Parasite Eve fic with Aya celebrating Christmas in New York, it's going to score pretty low on creativity unless you do something really wacky with it. Surprise us.
6. Submissions will open on 23 February 2005, the last day of the Lunar New Year. Any submissions received before 23 February (by my system clock, GMT+8) will be discarded and not taken into consideration.
7. Submissions will close on 11 March 2005. This gives you a 7-day window during which to send your fic to us, and a total of 28 days (one lunar month) to write and submit your fic.
8. Send your submissions to fanfic at rpgamer dot com with the subject line "[FANFIC CHALLENGE]" followed by your game and fic title as per a normal submission.

Joel Pan