Posted by Kerrigan Sheehan

...and May flowers make people sneeze.

The featured theme for May was not, in fact, Moderator Appreciation Month. It was actually stories involving animals.

A (not quite) Traditional Faerie Tale by DragonSilk (Original Fiction, All, dragons)
Feathers and the Like by Circe (Katekyo Hitman Reborn, 13+, birds)
Frog Prince by Animeangel10632 (Kingdom Hearts, 17+, talking frogs)
Put a Stethescope to my Heart by CelticWolf (D. Gray-Man, 13+, dogs)
Real Men Love Kittens by Kitsuchan (YuYuHakusho, All, cats)

Next month, as part of Summer Double Header Month, we're going to have two featured themes, each of which can have up to six stories featured. The first theme is non-prolific authors, and the second theme is collaborative works, including round robins and cowritten stories. For more information about what qualifies and to nominate, go here on the forums. Because of the fact that there are two featured themes, please use the form provided in that thread when nominating to keep things simpler for the mod writing June's announcements.

Hikari_no_Kage and I decided it might be fun to bring back monthly writing challenges, so in May, we'd like you to write (or at least start) a story about heroes or summer. Once you have at least one chapter, link it here on the forums. (There are more details about the challenges in the posting thread, so please read that before you start writing.) At the end of the month, the challenge stories will be gathered into a series and the series will be linked in the next monthly announcements.

There are also two fic trades starting soon. You can sign up for one or both. These fic trades are somewhat different from past rounds, so check here and here on the forums for registrations and more details. Registration lasts until May 10th.

We would also like you to submit your suggestions for featured themes and monthly challenges on the forums. See here for details.

Now, for your monthly public service announcements.

1. Your moderators would like to take this opportunity to kindly remind you that the site is not responsible for lost content. Also, when things are deleted from the queue, they're actually deleted completely from the site, not put into some backroom file bin. We can't retrieve them for you. It is your responsibility to back up your own work.

2. When writing multifandom books, please refrain from putting all of your categories in at once. This is misleading. We have had several complaints about drabble books that have many fandoms listed and only one or two stories posted, so we ask, on behalf of those in the community who have complained about this, both publically and privately, that you add categories to your works only when you add stories to that piece for that fandom. (Note that this does not apply to actual crossover fics, which usually only have two or three categories anyway, just to books containing separate stories of any length that use different fandoms.)

On a related note, we respectfully request that if you already have such a piece posted, you remove the categories that have not been used yet. Thank you for your cooperation.

3. Lastly, the OF category is not an appropriate place for fanfiction of any kind, even if the fandom hasn't been added yet. You should request any fandoms and characters you need to have added to the archive in this thread in the forums. If, for some reason, the forums don't work properly for you, email me (kerrigansheehan [at] yahoo [dot] com) directly, since I've been doing most of the category additions lately.

Edit by KS: Due to the ongoing forum error (Yes, we know about it. Yes, Sally knows about it.), fic trade registrations will be extended. The date for the end of registrations will be specified when the forums come back up. Thank you for your patience.