Hey everyone, Raven here!

Just an important reminder that today is the final day of 2024 in EST, so if you have a book you'd like to submit to this contest that you haven't published yet, today is the final day to do so!

I will make it so you can publish it up until 11:59 p.m./23:59 in EST (New York's time zone—it is 5:19 p.m., or 17:19, at the time of writing this, so about six hours from now).

I do want to clear this up though: submissions will still be open until all slots are filled. So, no, today is not the last day to apply. You can still apply all throughout January as long as the books are published in 2024, not 2025 or 2023 or any other year. I'm just making this reminder so if you wanted to publish a book to submit to this contest, today is the last day to do so.

If you wanna be strategic about it, remember we aren't judging for a few weeks yet, so if you just post one chapter, that still counts and we will accept it, and you can add more chapters later.

The next update will be the judging announcement! I'm surprised with how fast the categories are filling up. All of them are judge-able, with most being well over halfway full if not full. Wow. I'm astonished, honestly.

We will announce what categories we are judging sometime in mid to late January, and we will say which specific categories we are judging.

Important: I'll say it again later, but when we post results, in the results chapter itself, we will say which categories we are judging next, so please check the results chapters even if it's not your category since we will always say which categories we are judging, that way you can properly prepare. We will put the next three categories on our list in the intro of the results chapter. We will bold it so it's easy to see.

Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year, everyone! I'll be being an absolutely responsible adult and not consuming any 21+ beverages, so I will not be around tonight as I am going to be way too responsible. Super, duper responsible. I'll answer any questions or forms tomorrow!