Our December Holiday Luncheon, is a special event. 

 

It is NOT just a casual, relaxed lunch with great food where we can enjoy each other's company in a more social setting and be able to mingle and talk to one another without disrespecting the special guest speaker. I mean, it is all that, and that alone makes it worth going to, but it's much more!

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It is also one of the two annual events where the winners of two of our annual $500 grants (one for publishing, one for marketing) are selected and announced. (The other is our June meeting, which also includes the swearing in of a new slate of officers.)

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And because the winners are selected in a blind draw, anyone can win the grant!  We've had winners who have been members for many years, and winners who joined us only a few weeks prior. So, literally, anyone can win!  Provided you have put your name in for the drawing, of course. (You can do that here. Go ahead, if you haven't already. I'll wait.)

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Moving on...  There will be other drawings for other prizes, as there usually are. And one more feature:

 

As you probably know (and if you didn't, know from now) our monthly contests are not just a fun event. They were designed as a "pre-contest contest." The 1st place winner in each category can claim an additional prize: The SFWA will reimburse the winner for an entry fee of up to $25 for entering that piece into any major contest, national or international. That's why our entry fee is so low at only $3 or $5. If you win 1st prize in your category, you can then enter that piece in a major contest such as Boulevard Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers, or the Writers Digest Annual Short Story Competition, and SFWA will reimburse you your entry of up to $25.00 if you enter within 60 days and send Evelyn your receipt. It's like entering that $25 contest for only $5. (If your entry didn't win against just a handful of people, it means it likely would not have won against hundreds of competing entries either, and you should try to polish it a bit more.) 

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That option to submit to another contest or for publication elsewhere is also the reason we don't publish the winning entries in the Author's Voice. Those contests and anthologies mostly require all work submitted must be unpublished!  They can still be read aloud in a public setting, though. 

 

Unfortunately, our member readings are limited to 5 minutes or 8 minutes and some of the best winning entries just can't be condensed into that time limit. What Jeffrey and Jonathan and I are doing, is working to get the winners of the Special Merit Silver Shilling Awards, the best of the best, to bring their winning works to the luncheon and share those with the rest of us.

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