Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Donations March site hosting needed

HASA is an ad-free, fee-free Web site, run for the enjoyment of quality JRRT fanfiction. Our monthly hosting costs are $150 US. Currently our balance is at $67.67, which means we will need donations to pay the March hosting bill. The due date is March 8th. If you look down at the bottom of any HASA page you will see a message, "Visitors Currently Online". As I write this it's at 144 visitors. If a fraction of that number can donate $5 each we will be funded for next month. I'll keep you informed.

Thanks for enjoying HASA,

Julie

Sunday, February 1, 2009

HASA news - February 2009

Birthday Cards

If you have a birthday in February and would like a drabble about your favourite character or topic, you can request it here.

Not sure what the birthday cards are about? Have a look at the stories written for the January requests.

Challenges and Nuzgul

There are no current open Challenges, but the Unbelievable AU idea only needs 3 more people to make it into one. Take a look and wait for that nibble on the ankle...

Challenges need nuzgul. Have ideas you’d like to see written? Why not take that nuzgul by the scruff of the neck (mind the teeth!) and see if you can get four others to make it a Challenge?
Prospective Challenges can be found here

Reviews

Right now, there are 14 stories waiting for reviewers (remember to log in first).

If you are an active reviewer, why not go and check one out?

If you’re not an active reviewer, but would like to be one... If you've been a member of HASA for thirty days and think this might be an area you'd like to get involved, it's easy to get started. Read the links below, and then click "Reviews Home" and click on the link to "Activate my status now." You'll be taken to a list of stories awaiting reviewers. Click on the title, read it, and enter your review.

(please note: you need to be logged in for these links to work):
--- Reviews Overview
--- Review Policies
--- Review Criteria

As you can perhaps guess, member participation is crucial for reviews. The more people that are involved in the review process, the more opinions will be represented. Having more people involved also means that stories pass through review more quickly - which is good for everyone.

Here's a simple thing to try. You're all familiar with the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." By submitting a story for review, you are asking nine other members to read and evaluate it. So why not do until other authors in reviews as you'd like other reviewers to do unto you: check out one of the stories already in review and give it a read. Put more simply: put one in, take one out.

January Stories

All of us writers love feedback. It is the lembas and miruvor that sustains us as we write our story, and leaving a few words about a story you read is always a nice thing to do, whether the story is new or old.

Every fifteen minutes HASA highlights a story chosen at random from the Reviewed and General stories in the archive. Why not go to http://www.henneth-annun.net/ and read the currently featured story?

Many talented writers are publishing every day. In January:

--- 17 Reviewed Stories
--- 54 General Stories
--- 4 Beta Stories (Please note, you need to be logged in to view beta stories.)

Thank you for reading at HASA. Enjoy!

-Nath-