1 hour ago, Bill W said:

I'll have to think about this one for a while, since nothing popped into my mind when I saw the theme.  

Keep in mind that the theme doesn't have to hit us over the head.  The nice thing about this theme is that you can write pretty much anything.  Maybe one of your characters has a pet kitty or dog or dragon or whatever.  That will fit the theme, even if it's subtle.  I'm sure you will come up with something  

6 minutes ago, CassieQ said:

I'm not sure how I feel about the anthology theme being taken completely out of the hands of the authors.  Seems weird to me.

In the 20 years of Anthologies, we've done it a lot of ways, including setting the theme up front.  There is always a mix of conflicting feedback no matter which way it goes.  That said, the selection of topics by soliciting members and then voting on it all is a lot of work on the staff side.  As our volunteers are rather busy, and to keep this going at all, we are reducing the workload so it remains possible to continue without overloading our volunteers.

36 minutes ago, CassieQ said:

I'm not sure how I feel about the anthology theme being taken completely out of the hands of the authors.  Seems weird to me.

Myr stated it perfectly.   This year, for a variety of reasons, this was the way to go.  That doesn't mean we won't go back to having a committee for theme suggestions and then site-wide voting in the future.  

11 minutes ago, BendtedWreath said:

Do anthology entries need to be complete works?

Yes.  They need to be complete stories that stand alone and not require prior reading of a story.  They cannot be chapters in a serial.  I will work on updating the guidelines for participation, but I don't anticipate any changes from last year's guidelines.  I anticipate having them completed and posted shortly after the new year.