Changes to Great Hites

Well it was bound to happen eventually. Great Hites is going to under go a few changes. I don't know if these changes are going to be the new thing with GH or if they are only temporary, but these changes are necessitated by my current schedule.

So here is what is going to happen.

* During the month of October you are only going to get one prompt (more on that to follow.) It is due on October 31.


* During the month of November and In to December if necessary I will play these stories so that you will have a whole month of guilt free listening while you work on your NANOWRIMO project. (Like I will be doing)

* At the Beginning of December I will give you another prompt that you might be able to guess at if you think really hard, and you will have until December 31st to finish it.

* During the month of January I will play the stories written in December, so that while you are winding down from the Holidays again you will have a guilt free month of "The Hite of podcast fiction."

So you are worried that from now until November you will have nothing to listen from Great Hites. that is where you would be wrong. I have asked a couple of the regulars to contribute some bonus material. And I will be putting out a 100 word bonus prompts now and again.

With all of these changes there are going to be a couple of changes to the rules so there they are and hopefully they are things that you can live with:

1. Maximum story length is going to be increased to a whopping 10,000 words. I figure if most of the writers were already writing 2000-3000 word stories in a week that they could use the breathing room for a month long project.

2. The rating on these stories will still need to be PG. I am not going to change that. Sorry to all of you that thought that I might but nope.

3. All the other rules stand. I need a story, a recording in MP3 format if you can, and I needs to be in by midnight on the date of the deadline. But you know me on deadlines, ask if you need more time, I am pretty flexible.

4. Please include your Name and "October story" or "December Story" as the case may be, in the subject so I can find it easily I have a busy in box.

PROMPT PROMPT PROMPT, I hear the crowds shouting.

But before I get to that, let me give you two things, 1, #changestoGH 2, #bonusprompts These are the two twitter tags I will be using to discuss the changes and of course the bonus prompts. So if you want to follow the conversations about those things, well you know what to do.

So the prompt:

"Creation, create your own creation story." This can be a birth story, the creation of the universe, life from lifelessness (thank you Star Trek II), an Adam and Eve type story, whatever you like. Used your imaginations this is a wide open prompt so please have fun with it. If you have questions about this please feel free to contact me.

Speaking of contacting me here is how

Jeffrey.hite at Gmail dot com

or you could follow me on Twitter I am JeffreyHite or @jeffreyhite

or you could skype me I am JeffreyHite

or you could leave a comment on the site. Not to worry, if it is a personal question I won't post it but rather just respond to you.


I think that just about covers everything. Except promotion: please please please tell everyone you know about this new prompt and lets see if we can get lots and lots of great stories. Do you remember Week 63? I want that but more, bigger, better and with more gusto.

Thanks
-Jeff

Great Hites Anthology Reasons and Rules

What follows are the rules for the Great Hites Anthology, and the reasoning behind it.

Here is the basic story for this. After the last year GreatHites has gone from being a lonely one man show to what it is you see today. For that I am very, very grateful. But, it is not enough for me. The stories that show up every week in my mailbox beg me to give them more. (Really you should hear them whining.)

In all honesty, they deserve more. You as their writers deserve more. So I have been banging my head against the wall for the past few months for ways that I as a podcaster could give you more. The biggest hurdle to this is that I have no budget for Greathites. That is why the downloads are slow, that is why I don't have a better microphone, that is why I don't have my own domain name.

This is not, however, a pity party for Jeff. I still want to give you guys more. This was the first and best viable option that I have come up with.

The second biggest huddle is Creative Commons License, specifically, the noncommercial part. So I can't make any money on your stories. Really I don't want to, I want you to. So I think this is a happy medium. I want you to know that I will not be making any money on your stories, all the donations, every cent will be divided up accordingly and given back to you, the writers as it should be. I don't think that you will find that kind of a deal anywhere else in the publishing industry. But this is as it should be, these are your stories any money made from them should go back to you.

Just a note on expectations. Mur Laferty said about a year ago on ISBW, that her monthly notations on all her projects basically add to up to beer money. I just don't want you to think you are going to get rich here.


Here is what I am trying to accomplish with this:

1. To get you (the really great writers) a wider audience.

We (GratHites) are getting there slowly but I want these great stories to be shared by lots of people. Podiobooks has that audience.

2. To be able to give something back to you.

Podiobooks does give the reader the ability to donate. I could put a donate button on the GreatHites site, and I still may. There are two major problems with that, first of all, it would probably just be the authors who donated and then that would be you paying you, and that seems wrong. Second, again with the bigger audience thing.


So here are the rules:

1. If you win in the voting your story will be re-published, uncut and unedited in an anthology to appear on podiobooks.
A, In the case of a tie the GreatHties steering committee, Known as the Secret council of three, will determine the winner or winners.

2. You will get a % of the donations that come from podiobooks based on the number of stories in the collection, and the number of stories you have in that collection. The donations will not distributed until the book is complete and then on a monthly basis after that.

3. You have the right to withhold permission to republish the story, after all it is your story so if you would prefer that we don't publish it please let me know.
A. In the case that you decide to withhold permission the runner up will take your place.

4. Once the winner has been announced you have two weeks to resubmit the story with any edits or re-recording that you would like to do. If you are going to need longer than that please let us know ahead of time.


Please feel free to e-mail, tweet, or leave a comment if you have any questions or concerns. I will do my best to address them.

-Jeff