Oh, and as far as the "Let's do this every month!" idea is concerned -- right now my brain can't handle even thinking about that. Let's approach that notion again a little into February, after the submissions have stopped flooding in, and we'll see if there's a volunteer willing to administrate the whole mess on a regular basis. I'm happy to commit bandwidth and even some money to doing this more often, but I can't continue to commit the time to word-count all the stories, post them, coordinate with the authors, etc.
I'm also very attracted to the idea of getting an ongoing critique group going for longer works. Again, that's a logistical discussion I would love to have after January 31 is behind us.
I'm not saying this to discourage anyone from bringing up the ideas -- they're great ideas, and worth discussion. I just wanted to stick a placeholder in here to say "Yeah, cool enough, and just give me a few days to catch my breath." >8->
