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ANNOUNCING THE MERRIWEATHER WINNERS!
The Merriweather Committee and I are proud to annouce the winners of the Vignette category:
First Place: One and One Make Two, by Jenni Debbage
Second Place: All Sewn Up, by Meredith Knight
Third Place: The Envelope, by Paul-Gabriel Wiener
Honorable Mention: Sunrise, Sunset, by Allyse Smith
To everyone who participated, we say wish to say "thank you." The judges had a great time reading such wonderful fanfic and admitted it was hard to choose the best one.
If you sent in a story and want to know your score, along with comments by the judges, please feel free to e-mail me. I will provide this information only to the entrants. Submitters are free to share their scores and comments with their friends and post them to this board, if they so choose.
Again, thank you to everyone for terrific submissions and I'll see you in late April when we announce our next category!
Katrina
katrinavannote@yahoo.com
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Beat Reporter
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Beat Reporter
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Wow! I turned on my computer and found this. Congratulations to the winners! Especially my friend and long-time beta reader, Jenni Debbage. See? I *told* you that it couldn't hurt to try it!  Hm. Never seen Sunrise, Sunset--anybody know where I can find it? Laura
“Rules only make sense if they are both kept and broken. Breaking the rule is one way of observing it.”
--Thomas Moore
"Keep an open mind, I always say. Drives sensible people mad, I know, but what did we ever get from sensible people? Not poetry or art or music, that's for sure."
--Charles de Lint, Someplace to Be Flying
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Merriwether
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Merriwether
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I don't know if I have read any of those!
I've converted to lurk-ism... hopefully only temporary.
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Pulitzer
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Pulitzer
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Congrats, all  And thanks for your hard work, o anonymous judges  PJ (on cold meds)
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Top Banana
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Top Banana
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Congratulations!! Way to go Jenni, Mere, Paul and Allyse! Know what would be really great? Perhaps the winners could either post links to where we can all find their stories or post the stories themselves. I certainly would love to read them. Also, to the rest of those who submitted, it would be fun to see your entries as well. Perhaps we could have a new thread set up for everyone to post submissions? Good job, you guys!!  Lynn
You know that boy'd walk on water for you? Or he'd drown tryin'. -Perry White to Lois in Just Say Noah
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Features Writer
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Features Writer
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Congratulations indeed!  I've read the first three stories listed, and love each and every one of them. Like Laura, I haven't seen "Sunrise, Sunset", and would also like to know if it is posted somewhere... Kathy
"Our thoughts form the universe. They always matter." - Babylon 5
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Pulitzer
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Pulitzer
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Congratulations to the winners!!  See ya, AnnaBtG.
What we've got here is failure to communicate...
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Hack from Nowheresville
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Hack from Nowheresville
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 Congratulations, Jenni, Paul and Allyse! I'm hoping to read your stories soon. Are you planning to post yours, Jenni and Allyse, or can they be found online somewhere? For those who don't know, my story All Sewn Up was written some years ago as a challenge fic and is on the Archive. Thanks to the Merriweather committee and judges, whoever you are - you must be very proud of this first landmark step. Would it be very inquisitive to ask how many stories were submitted for the first contest? Thanks again, Mere
A diabolically, fiendishly clever mind. Possibly someone evil enough to take over the world. CC Aiken, Can You Guess the Writer? challenge
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Boards Chief Administrator Emeritus Nobel Peace Prize Winner
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Boards Chief Administrator Emeritus Nobel Peace Prize Winner
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Congratulations to all the winners! As Mere says, her story - plus Paul's - can be read at the Archive. And soon, the Archive will have shiny new icons beside the winning stories. Thanks for forwarding those along, Katrina. LabRat
Athos: If you'd told us what you were doing, we might have been able to plan this properly.
Aramis: Yes, sorry.
Athos: No, no, by all means, let's keep things suicidal.
The Musketeers
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Features Writer
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Features Writer
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Jenni's is on the Archive too. I think where people might be confused is that the title underwent a slight change, and is now Sure as One and One is Two . Kathy
"Our thoughts form the universe. They always matter." - Babylon 5
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Boards Chief Administrator Emeritus Nobel Peace Prize Winner
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Boards Chief Administrator Emeritus Nobel Peace Prize Winner
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Thanks, Kathy! /me grumbles as she's just finished sorting out the icons for forwarding to the Archive and thought she was done... LabRat
Athos: If you'd told us what you were doing, we might have been able to plan this properly.
Aramis: Yes, sorry.
Athos: No, no, by all means, let's keep things suicidal.
The Musketeers
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Columnist
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Hi, I just want to say that I am totally stunned... and, judges, I'd like to thank you so much for awarding me first place. KathyM, I didn't even realise I'd changed the title slightly. So thank you for posting the link -- that was very kind of you. Oh, and LabRat, I'm sorry for confusing you. As you'll see, I confused myself. Congratulations to the other winners. Yours Jenni
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Columnist
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Congrats everyone. I too haven't been able to find Sunrise, Sunset or stories by Allyse Smith.
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Top Banana
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Top Banana
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Congratualtions, Jenni, Meredith, Paul and Allyse! Also nice to see the archive adding that shiny new icon beside these fics. c
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Beat Reporter
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Beat Reporter
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Just curious here, but I noticed some color-block icons on the Merriweather webpage that have "First Place" etc. written on them. Are *those* the Merriweather Icons?
Laura
“Rules only make sense if they are both kept and broken. Breaking the rule is one way of observing it.”
--Thomas Moore
"Keep an open mind, I always say. Drives sensible people mad, I know, but what did we ever get from sensible people? Not poetry or art or music, that's for sure."
--Charles de Lint, Someplace to Be Flying
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Blogger
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I just want to say that I am totally stunned... and, judges, I'd like to thank you so much for awarding me first place. You shouldn't be stunned, Jenni, you very much deserved it Congratulations to you and to all the Merriweather winners!
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Jenni:
I agree, you are as talented as any fiction author I have ever read, fanfic of pro! This story of Clark's loving vigil over little Clara is truly a gem!
Tag
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Hack from Nowheresville
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Hack from Nowheresville
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I wrote: Would it be very inquisitive to ask how many stories were submitted for the first contest? I received this response in email. Dear Meredith,
I wanted to respond to your question about wanting to know how many stories were submitted for the first category. Your question deserves an answer. I have given the matter a lot of thought and this is my answer:
In keeping with the fairness of the contest, I am going to turn down this request, except to make this statement: there were a lot more losers than winners. The request is declined simply because I want to spare the feelings of those who did not win or didn’t even come close. How would you feel if you knew you’d won because only four entries were submitted? That’s not much of a contest. How would you feel if you found out that your total score placed you #19 out of 22, #45 out of 50? These stories are very precious to the writers and knowing they came in next-to-last would be heartbreaking. This information would possibly discourage anyone from entering it again, which defeats the whole purpose of the Merriweather. The whole point of the contest was simply to have fun, not to create hurt feelings on anyone’s part.
Thanks for taking the time to submit a story and many, many congratulations on your win! I hope that you’ll enter more stories in future categories. Good luck!
Sincerely,
Chairman, Merriweather Committee Of course, the disappointment of those who come last is the self-same reasoning the Kerth Committee used in deciding not to release full voting figures for the Kerths. But I wasn't suggesting a list of scores be released, only the number of entrants, so I'm a little disappointed with the response. This gets to the nub of it: How would you feel if you knew you’d won because only four entries were submitted? That’s not much of a contest. That's exactly why I want to know!  Anyway, it gives me another reason to appreciate hearing about other contestants. Keep posting those stories, people! Mere
A diabolically, fiendishly clever mind. Possibly someone evil enough to take over the world. CC Aiken, Can You Guess the Writer? challenge
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It has come to the attention of the Merriweather Committee that “Sunrise, Sunset” was incorrectly awarded the Honorable Mention award. This was a reporting error, not a scoring error. We would have posted the retraction sooner but the error was buried on page 53 between the obits and the auction notices. We are red-faced over the mistake but will take our lumps like adults. We admit that we should have caught this before Katrina released the list of winners and will be a lot more careful in the future.
We apologize for the confusion. The correct winner of the Honorable Mention is Laura Davies!
We thank you for your patience as we go through our growing pains. We have considered some of the suggestions forwarded to Katrina and will be implementing some changes before the next category is announced.
Speaking of categories: we are currently in the process of deciding what should be offered next. We’re sure many of you have favorite categories that you would like see offered immediately if not sooner. The Merriweather Committee is open to suggestions regarding any category you would like to enter. Perhaps someone would be willing to start a thread on this board for Merriweather category suggestions.
We admit our goof and again, congratulations to Laura on her Honorable Mention award!
The Merriweather Committee
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Top Banana
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Top Banana
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We would have posted the retraction sooner ... Since these awards are something new and are still in the throes of growing pains, I can see how accidents might happen. Can I offer a small suggestion? Since there really is no tangible award - no money being given as prizes, no award ceremony, no big statuettes - perhaps in the case of such an error instead of retracting an award maybe the original winner could keep it and a secondary one given to the rightful winner? Just kind of avoids that mental image of the trophy being wrenched out of someone's hands to be handed over to another. And too, the original erroneous winner still gets something nice to compensate for the disappointment. Lynn PS - I did have one more question. I'm sure that this is the case although it is not posted anywhere on the Merriweather website that I could find, but judges are ineligible to enter, aren't they? Probably a stupid question, but just wanted to make sure.
You know that boy'd walk on water for you? Or he'd drown tryin'. -Perry White to Lois in Just Say Noah
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