Before eMuse kicked off as a site, our founders ran a small writers group where we took great pride in tossing out writing prompts and then awarding fabulous prizes to the best contributors. We have grown leaps and bounds since then, publishing our quarterly literary arts journal and featuring the most amazing talent we could find on the net. Last summer, we had our first official eMuse contest, the Summer Camp for Writers. eMuse Summer Madness kicks off now, and we're locking you all up in the nuthouse and prescribing art therapy!



eMuse and author J.C. Hutchins are teaming up to bring you an amazing contest. As many of you know, J.C. is prepping to release his new book: Personal Effects: Dark Art through St. Martin's Press this June. The novel takes place in an insane asylum, and we thought it would be fun to break out the straitjackets and put together a contest to support the new book.

Since we are a literary arts magazine, we will be accepting submissions in three categories: Art, poetry and fiction. The central focus of all submissions must be an insane asylum, but need not directly relate to Personal Effects: Dark Art. Poetry must be at least 15 lines long. All short stories should be at least 1000-1500 words in length. We may consider longer pieces in cases of exceptional storytelling. Please submit one to two pieces of art, saved as a .jpg files and attached to your email.

I know you're begging for us to get on to the fabulous prizes, so here it goes... Not only will the winning submission in each category be featured in the September edition of eMuse, the lucky three will also win an autographed copy of Personal Effects: Dark Art. This book is amazing. Not only is it insanely creepy, it's an interactive game. You can find out more about the novel by visiting the official site: Personal Effects: Dark Art.

You may start sending in your submissions on Sunday, April 19, 2009, and we will accept them through June 6, 2009, at midnight EST. Winners will be announced along side my own personal review of Personal Effects: Dark Art in the June edition of eMuse, which goes live on June 15, 2009. Please title the subject of all emails: eMuse Summer Madness Contest and mail your submissions to:

art_submissions@emuse-zine.com fiction_submissions@emuse-zine.com poetry_submissions@emuse-zine.com

Spring is in the air, and as all seasons change, so must we. The remaining founding members of the site have decided that it's time to move on into the future. Our first step in this endeavor was the creation of eMuse. eMuse has really taken off, and we are so proud. Our next step will be a complete site makeover and name change. These changes will be taking place over the next couple months.

Along with these changes we will also be returning to writing prompts and holding occasional competitions (complete with prizes). We will be working more closely with eMuse, often offering opportunities for competition winners to have their work showcased in the Zine.

We've come a long way, since we broke off on our own from the original site that brought us all together. At he time we had big dreams and hopes of expanding, and while many of the original members have dwindled away over time, the central core is still here and we are still striving toward those dreams that brought us together.

We hope you will continue on the journey with us, and encourage you to bring along your friends as well. We will still be offering critique experience on a password protected, membership-only archive, so after critiquing your work you will still be able to send it out for publication. We will also still maintain the forums, and encourage everyone to join us there so we can get to know you.

Finally, the latest edition of eMuse has gone live. We are also available on Twitter, where we update submissions calls, talk about what we're reading, dish about writing and more. If you tweet, join us on Twitter by following this link: eMuse on Twitter, and if you don't tweet, there's no time like the present to get started.

We hope to see you there, and look forward to stepping into the future with all of you beside us.

Best,
Llew

CoC is banding together with all members who will be participating in NaNoWriMo this 2008. So far we've got 4 members signed up, and hope a few more will join us. Pop into our thread at the NaNo forums:

Crones Koffee Klatch

The archives are also open to anyone who wishes to host and workshop their NaNo project during and/or after the November deadline. Don't forget to check out our forum for a NaNo central section as well as some awesome resources for writers.