Update 2013-01-02:

For those who are curious, here is how I'm judging the stories:

Right now, I'm reading through all of the entries without strictly grading anything. While doing this, I'm separating and ranking the stories into three tiers, with Tier 1 being the highest/best and Tier 3 being the lowest. These tier rankings are determined by execution of the fantasy genre. Part of it is creativity (the twists and original elements you put in) and the other part is development (how much and how well you explored and explained the concepts/setting throughout your story), and more emphasis will be placed on the latter. Since the tiers are comparative groupings within the entire pool of entries, some of the stories might shift tiers as I read more entries, should I decide that they fit in better in one tier than another. After reading all of the entries, I'll have a final tier ranking for all of the stories, and I'll make sure each of the stories I place in one tier are indeed better than all of the stories in the tier below it.

Once the tiers are fixed, I'll examine the Tier 1 entries in more depth and score and rank those based on writing style (minor grammatical errors will not count against you). The top four of the Tier 1 entries will be the winning stories. If there is a tie in the scores, then the story with greater overall appeal to me will be the higher ranked of the two. When I announce the winners, I will provide a short paragraph with my comments on the winning stories. As mentioned in the FAQ, if anyone, winner or otherwise, wants an in-depth review of a story, please request those at my review shop (which I also need to tend to, OTL).

Update 2012-12-31:

The contest is now closed! Thank you to everyone who participated, and congratulations to those of you who finished. I hope that those who did not finish will still continue and complete your stories since I still want to read them, contest or no. Everyone is now free to get feedback on your stories from betas and reviewers, but no altering your stories until the judging is finished, please. As of right now, the projected date for announcing the winners is the 7th, but depending on the lengths of the stories, it may take a while longer to get through all of them. I'll keep you updated on that. Happy New Year!