Yahoo! Groups Planned Downtime, Monday April 13

On Monday, April 13th, 2009 Yahoo! Groups will undergo scheduled maintenance. During this time your group will be unavailable for 30-60 minutes.

The outage is currently scheduled to begin at 1 pm PT, 8 pm GMT. At this time, 1/4 of all Yahoo! Groups will become unavailable while the team services these groups. Once maintenance is complete on that 1/4 of Groups, they will be made available again, and the next 1/4 will become unavailable until all of the groups have been serviced.

In total the maintenance period should last around 5 hours, with the maintenance concluding around 6 pm PT, midnight GMT.

While your group is being serviced, all features of your group, including messages, photos, attachments, etc. will be completely unavailable. However, once your outage time concludes, your group and all of its features should return and any messages that were posted to the group via email during this downtime will be sent out. Please note that your group's outage should only last
around an hour.

In an effort to better communicate to all of you, a blast message will be posted to all groups starting today and continuing on through April 13th, 2009, linking to this message on the blog. This blast message is visible on all groups to all members and moderators.

Thank you for your patience—during the outage, the blog (http://www.ygroupsblog.com) will remain up (and comments will remain open) and we will update you all as information becomes available.

Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager

2009 Derringer Awards Voting

My congratulations to this year's Derringer finalists. The finalist stories are posted here to be read and voted on by SMFS members. To be eligible to vote for the Derringer winners, you must have joined Shortmystery before February 1, 2009. This cutoff is in place to prevent ballot-stuffing and recruiting people to the group simply to vote for any particular finalists.

Voting opened April 1 and will end April 30, at 11:59 PM ET. The Derringer polls record members' Yahoo! IDs so Awards Coordinator Nikki Dolson can check that each voter joined the group before February 1, 2009.

The automated results are unofficial. Nikki will do the official vote count and announce the winners on May 1.

2009 Derringer Finalists

The finalists for the 2009 Derringer Awards are:

BEST FLASH STORY (Up to 1,000 Words)

Black Pearls by James C. Clar (CRIME AND SUSPENSE)
Incident in Itawamba by Gary Hoffman (TEACAKES AND AFTERNOON TALES)
No Flowers for Stacey by Ruth McCarty (DEADFALL: CRIME STORIES BY NEW ENGLAND WRITERS)
No Place Like Home by Dee Stuart (MYSTERICAL-E)
This Bird has Flown by BV Lawson (ARMCHAIRINTERVIEWS.COM)
A Killing Season by J.F. Benedetto (WOMAN'S WORLD)
Rainy Day Fund by J.K. Cummins (WOMAN'S WORLD)*

*Correcting an oversight discovered late, "A Killing Season" and "Rainy Day Fund", tied for sixth place in the judging, were added as finalists.

BEST SHORT STORY (1,001-4,000 Words)

Independence Day by Allan Leverone (CRIME AND SUSPENSE)
Regrets, I’ve Had a Few by Allan Leverone (TREI LITERARY MAGAZINE)
Stalkers** by Lew Stowe (CRIME AND SUSPENSE)
Taste for It by Sophie Littlefield (DARKEST BEFORE DAWN)
The Cost of Doing Business by Michael Penncavage (THUGLIT)
Wishing on Whores** by John Weagly (THIEVES JARGON)

**tie score in the judging

BEST LONG STORY (4,001-8,000 Words)

Bonnie and Clyde Caper by O’Neil De Noux (EQMM)
Dead Even by Frank Zafiro (MEDIUM OF MURDER)
The Art of Avarice by Darrell James (POLITICS NOIR)
The Big Score by Chris Holm (BACK ALLEY)
The Quick Brown Fox by Robert S. Levinson (AHMM)


BEST NOVELETTE (8,001-17,500 Words)

Haven’t Seen You Since the Funeral by Ernest B & Alice A. Brown (AHMM)
Jack Best and the Line in the Sand by Steve Olley (MYSTERICAL-E)
Panic on Portage Path by Dick Stodghill (AHMM)
Too Wise by O’Neil De Noux (EQMM)
Vegetable Matters by Terry W. Ervin II (MINDFLIGHTS)


Congratulations to the finalists! And a HUGE THANK YOU to the judges without whom this never would have happened. But now folks it's your turn. The stories are in FILES section of our group page. Head there to read our finalists stories then head over to the polls to place your vote. The polls be up shortly.

Remember to be eligible to vote you need to have joined SMFS before Feb. 1st.