Hi Everyone,

Just a reminder that the deadline for your Gay Like Me submissions is February 25th, less than a week away now. I see lots of stuff has gone up here in the forum, which is great. I want to remind you though that in order for a submission to be official, it must be emailed to me at Gaylikeme@samersguild.com. Don't worry if it isn't as polished as you'd like it to be. We have three fine editors that will work with you to make your pieces the best that they can be for the book. This is one of the reasons that they need to be submitted, so that the editor assigned your piece can contact you directly to work on it with you.

Here are a few more things for you to consider:

1.) If you have other friends who want to submit (non-members of Oasis), it is the concensus of the editors that they need to register as members and submit their material under their Oasis member name. If there is some reason that they cannot register at home, at school or at the library (I really can't think of too many reasons that they couldn't do one of those three), then let us know and we will consider each case seperately. Basically, you should consider that registration is a requirement, and if we decide to include a non-member piece in the publication, it would be the exception rather than the rule.

2.) You may submit multiple pieces. If we have more material than we can use, we may choose from among those multiple submissions rather than publishing them all. Whether or not a piece is included is ultimately up to the editors and will depend on both space availability and content.

3.) Each editor will have multiple pieces to work on, so if you don't hear from anyone right away, don't worry. If you have not heard from anyone within 2 weeks of the deadline (February 25th), you can write to me at gaylikeme@samersguild.com and I will check into it for you.

4.) As far as the publication itself, we will be leaving it up to Jeff whether we publish this ourselves using lulu.com or whether he would prefer to shop it around to a real publisher. If he decides to publish it commercially, all profits from the book will go to Oasismag.com. If we publish it ourselves, we will be selling it for just enough to cover the publication costs, so there will be no profits. If we publish ourselves, we will offer two editions: one will be a low-priced edition with a color cover and a B&W interior (all artwork will be B&W). The other will be a much more expensive edition with a full-color interior. We are doing this because the difference in price between the two is staggaring and we want to have an edition available that everyone can afford.

I think that's everything. If you have any questions, go ahead and reply to this post or email gaylikeme@samersguild.com. I hope that everyone that said they were going to do artwork is actually going to submit some because I have seen none so far. We really need artwork guys and gals (and those of indeterminate gender). If you need more time to submit it, don't worry. There will be a grace period while we work on the written pieces. The same goes for written works submitted late. You may submit works to us after the deadline up to a point. We will post a notice on this forum when the project is officially closed to further submissions. That may be a week after the deadline. It may be two weeks. We won't tell you ahead of time, so work as quickly as you can to get your stuff into us, okay?

Thanks everyone for all your hard work. Thanks to all of you, I know this project is going to be a great success. Editors: if I've missed anything that I should be announcing here, please let me know.

Hugs to all,
Patrick