Updates
December is usually a quiet month for us, and it’s a busy time for many of you. But we do have some Sirens and Narrate Conferences news to share before we go into hibernation until the new year!

Chat
There is no December chat, but we’ll schedule one in January.

Art!
The downloads page on the Sirens website has buttons, banners, icons, and more with our 2011 monster artwork.

If you’re using a Sirens button, banner, or another download on your personal site, check out our banner exchange page to see if you’re eligible to trade links. We’d love to feature you as a supporter!

Narrate Conferences Boot Camp
For those of you interested in staffing a conference, now or in the future, boot camp is a great way to learn about the planning that goes into even a small event. More information can be found here. The application deadline is December 15, 2010, and we’d love to have you.

Sirens Review Squad
We asked if you’d like to be more involved in reading and sharing reviews at the end of this year’s Sirens, and we were encouraged by your response! We’d like to move forward with this project, so if you’re interested in reading and reviewing fantasy books by women authors or that include important female characters, please read on.

We’re seeking a small group of reader-reviewers to contribute to pilot this project. Each contributor will be part of the online project from January to October 2011, and will write 6-12 book reviews of 300–600 words each. Here are the parameters:

• Contributors’ reviews can be written in advance, and must be complete two weeks ahead of their scheduled publication so that the project coordinator can ensure that they’re lightly edited. (We expect that there might be a few typos.)
• About half of the reviews should be drawn from the Sirens reading list or Books and Breakfast reading list, and the other half selected with input from the project coordinator to ensure that there isn’t too much overlap.
• You can revamp a previously written review, but it’s nice if you put together new content. Once your review is published, we’ll ask that you give us an exclusive for one month before you can re-post it.
• Reviews need not be wholly positive, but contributors are encouraged to review books that they’d recommend rather than books they wouldn’t.
• Books reviewed should be women-authored or feature female characters; reviewing books that analyze fantasy literature is an option as well.

We’d love to be able to include everyone who’d like to contribute, but the reality of starting a new project prompts us to keep the pilot group small until we know how many people we can realistically include. If you’d like to be considered as a contributor, please write to (help at sirensconference.org) by December 31, 2010, with the following information:

1. The name (and pen name, if that applies) that you’d like to review under
2. Your e-mail address
3. Three books you’d like to review from the Sirens reading list, and why (a sentence or two about each is fine)
4. How you’d like to focus your non-reading list/contributor’s choice reviews (for example, would you be interested in focusing on picture books, or short stories available online, or novels written in the 1980s, or anthologies, or…)
5. If you’re open to receiving advance copies of books, please let us know and provide your mailing address
6. If you’re familiar with any particular blogging platforms or similar software
7. A link to three book reviews you’ve written and posted online OR the text of two sample reviews that we can read, pasted in the e-mail

Thank you for your interest! If you have any questions, please feel free to post them here or to write to (help at sirensconference.org).

Have questions? You can leave them here in the comments section or e-mail them to (help at sirensconference.org).

Have a happy holiday season, everyone!