November is here, and the blistering heat has arrived! For the first time since March, you're really feeling the agony of the hot sun on your neck, and the incredible humidity has driven you indoors to hide from the evils of the mischievous natural world in your own little computer room. This is assuming you live in the middle latitudes of South America, of course. For the majority of us, it's getting colder, not hotter. But this is also the month of America's infamous Election Day! This is no time to take the situation of the majority into account!

Anyway, the new Story of the Month, as you might have expected, comes with a new theme. Even more predictably, I will reveal the theme ahead of time, so that nobody has to turn in a laboriously penned work of art only to realize that they went against the spirit of the secret theme and were automatically disqualified.

The theme is...


Yes, that's right. Every story you write must include, or relate to, a party of some kind. It can be a legit Spanish "fiesta" party, it can be a frat party, it can be a baby shower, it can be a couple of sweaty billionaires celebrating their absent friend's birthday in a shabby basement with a few balloons floating around, and it can even be the highly anticipated official Libertarian Party Convention, where politicians with no future nominate themselves in the hopes of screwing up the election in a swing state. I draw the line of where the "party" theme plays itself out at the Hitler Youth attending a Nazi Party rally, but this is an incredibly broad theme all the same. If you can make any legitimate play on words to do with the word "party" or "fiesta" and place the base of your pun in a prominent part of the tale, that's fine, too.

A few rules:

1. Obviously, this story must be inappropriate for Sal's in its content - i.e. it must contain excessive gore, sex scenes, etc. I mean, if you want it to be disqualified, of course. If you don't... well, you know the drill.

2. The story must be 1,600 words or less. This is a fairly generous limit, but pace yourself. If you type the story up in Microsoft Word before submitting it - which I highly recommend - then whenever you want to see how long a certain passage is, go to the bar at the top that has all the "File...Edit...etc" options and pick the word that bests describes you, then select "Word Count" in the list that drops down. If "Word Count" isn't on that list, then congratulations, but let's be realistic here.

3. Be creative! If you write a story about Bob getting drunk and passing out, without anything unique happening in the process, then you're probably not going to win.

4. You must enter your story by PMing it to me by midnight on Saturday, November 21, EST time (5AM in England, 9PM in California). By this I mean that you have all or most of Saturday to work on your stories. I will not be putting any stories up until after the 21st, so if you enter your work early and say so, it won't be obvious which piece you wrote.

5. If you enter, you must evaluate your fellow entrants during the week of voting, however it works. PM me your top three favorites and supply the following information:

Name of work:
Rank:
What you liked:
What you thought was not exactly the hottest part of the burrito:
Any other thoughts:

If you haven't submitted this draft by midnight on Saturday, November 28, EST time (5AM in England, 9PM in California), you will be disqualified. I may be inclined to leniency since I probably won't be home until late on the 29th, but don't push it.

Have fun, and good luck everyone!

I'll definitely be entering

I think the voting should be simpler, just vote for your favourite story. The story with the most votes at the end wins. Simple as that!

We don't have enough voters for that, though. Writers need feedback if they're going to improve, and the less experienced ones even moreso than the more experienced ones!

Well maybe your idea? Top three stories. I just get sick of having to give feedback on every story entered, takes too much time

I'll definitely enter. This will be fun.

THe voting system where you give points to your three favorites is fair enough.

So will I. I've got a couple of ideas for my story already.

for the first time ever i'll enter but I know nothing of the topic

I'm not entering.

This whole contest is a scam.












































Sike.

Good topic, i've already got some ideas. Good luck everyone :]

Let's do the top three stories pl0x.

I'll enter this one. I might think of something...

How do we enter?

Write a story and PM it to Emanick.

I'm almost done writing my story for this. :]

EDIT: Finished it now. 9 words short of 1,600. <.<

I don't know if I can enter Just started my job today. I might not have enough time.

Just finished my story

Submitted mine! I hope everyone likes it, even if no one will know which one's mine.