[Slynt]

Ho ho ho, December is upon us.

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful. ~Norman Vincent Peale

Personally I am not that fond of Christmas by the way, but I do have a soft spot for magic wands.

For centuries men have kept an appointment with Christmas. Christmas means fellowship, feasting, giving and receiving, a time of good cheer, home. ~W.J. Ronald Tucker

All right, Christmas isn't that bad. Feasting (gorging) on delicious food, seeing the excitement in the children's eyes, meeting family...it's all good, in a sense. But still, Christmas traditions keep reminding me that the world is a cruel and unfair place and so I find it difficult to derive too much pleasure from it. Children these days - in Norway at least - are given so many gifts it borders on the insane. The amount of food gobbled up and drink quaffed down is amazing. Maybe I'm too much of a pessimist to enjoy this season of over-consumption.

So, December 2011's flash fiction competition:

Your flash fiction should include a magic wand and some kind of commentary (whether positive or negative) on over-consumption (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-consumption). Christmas not a necessary ingredient. The commentary can be as veiled or blunt as you want it to be.

All submissions should be in by December 27th, at maximum 1,000 words length.
Winner of the competition will be the master of January 2012's competition obviously but also get the honorific title of "Yuletide Wordsmith". :)

[MLSawyer]

Hmm... I've been away from the FF world for a little while so lets see if I can swing back in and back away from the 90k plus works back to sqeezing it all in under 1000.

[robotosaur]

Oooh, yay! Thanks for the fun theme, Slynt, and congratulations on your win!

[Cirias]

I enjoyed your piece very much Slynt. I'm going to have a crack at this month's FF and see what I can turn out. Will be my first entry to date.

[Daddy Darth]

A very different challenge, Slynt. Interesting. I am going to give it a go cuz my ss is in the can.

[Slynt]

And here is the obligatory question to ask the mods for a sticky :)

[Cirias]

Here's my entry, titled ICEBINDER: http://sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32887

[Slynt]

Can I join my own competition or do we have rules against that? (I kind of wish I came up with something different because right now I don't have a clue lol)

[MrBF1V3]

An overwhelming majority of the time the taskmaster joins in. In theory she/he keeps a level field by not tailoring a theme to match a story already written. In practice, it doesn't matter. The point is friendly competition and meaningful feedback.

Besides, after the second month of ruling the contest, it's almost like work.

I have an idea. Let's see if there's a story in it.

B5

[Zero_Blue]

Here's my entry (which I forgot to label as such in the thread title, grr)

Alternative Energy (http://sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?p=668138#post668138)