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Hear ye, hear ye! The Writing Season for September is underway and this forum post explains the rules and the prize. A Writing Season on Write With Me is a seasonal writing theme comprising a select set of genres/sub-genres (represented by Post Tags) or prompts. It also doubles as a monthly contest. Your Post will automatically be considered for the contest if it meets the Season's criteria and complies with general rules of the Contest. You don't have to do anything extra to submit an entry. **SEASON CRITERIA** Literature language : English Theme : Your fantasy or sci-fi world is drifting through a period of relative peace. But your character(s) catch(es) an early glimpse of the despair that lies in wait. Start date : September 01, 2026 End date : September 30, 2026 Qualifying tags : fantasy, sci-fi Minimum word count : 2000 (solo), 3000 (collaborative) **CONTEST RULES** 1. Submission window : Posts must be created on or after start date and published within midnight of end date. 2. Tags : Your Post must contain at least one of the qualifying tags, meaning it should fall into at least one of the genres/sub-genres represented by the qualifying tags. 3. Number of entries : Any user can have multiple entries in the contest. E.g., an author can have 3 solo entries and 2 collaborative entries with other co-authors. 4. Edits after publication : Posts can be edited even after publication, as long as these edits are made within midnight of the end date. We may take up to 1 week, after the season ends, to judge all entries. So, within the period it takes to go through all entries, you might be able to get away with a few last-minute edits, but there is no guarantee we will judge based on that final edit of yours, because we might have already gone through an earlier version of your entry by then. Hence, it is always safest to complete all final edits by the end date. 5. Prize : Only one Post will be chosen as the best short story of the Season. If it is a solo post, the sole author of that Post gets the $25 eGift card. If it is a collaborative post, each co-author will get their own $25 eGift card. **HOW WE CHOOSE THE WINNER** The winning Post will be chosen at our discretion. The Post with simply the highest word count will not necessarily win. The completeness of the scenes or story arc depicted in your piece is more important than the length of those scenes or the arc. We are not expecting impossible amounts of depth or world-building in a short story. Rather, we will be looking for a sense of depth and believability conveyed by the story’s world and its characters. **HOW WE DELIVER THE PRIZE** The prize is a $25 USD eGift card to an online bookstore. Right now we can only send Kobo or Barnes & Noble eGift cards. After we announce the winner, we will email you at the address on your Write With Me account. Reply with: 1. whether you prefer Kobo or Barnes & Noble, and 2. the email address you use on that bookstore account. You need to have a registered account at the store you pick. Respond to our email only after you have successfully opened an account at your preferred bookstore. The Write With Me email and the bookstore email do not have to be the same. We will send the eGift card to the bookstore email you give us. Once the store confirms that the card was sent to that address, we have delivered the prize. After that, redeeming and spending the card is between you and the bookstore. We can point you to their help pages, but we cannot fix a failed redemption, a lost email, or a problem with their store. Which store to pick : Barnes & Noble is built for US customers. If you live outside the US, you may not be able to buy their ebooks. Choose Kobo unless you already use B&N in the US. Kobo has a store for your country. Remain signed in to your regional Kobo store before you redeem the gift card using the link in the email. Kobo converts the $25 USD into your local currency when you claim the card; the exact amount depends on their rate that day. **DISCLAIMER** Write With Me and its contests are NOT affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Kobo or Barnes & Noble in any way. All gift cards are subject to the issuer's terms. Write With Me terms that also apply to Contests : The full Terms of Service ( https://www.writewithme.app/terms ) still apply. Two points matter most here. 1. You keep the copyright in your Post. Publishing on Write With Me grants us a REVOCABLE license to display that work on Write With Me. You can revoke it by deleting the Post (collaborative Posts need both authors to agree). If you delete it before we name a winner, that entry is withdrawn. 2. Fan fiction is not allowed on Write With Me. Contest entries must be your original work. If a Post is found to use someone else’s protected characters, setting, or text, or otherwise infringes copyright, we will disqualify it and take it down.