I think we can all agree that EM-DASH was one of the best things to come out of FIYAHCON last year. The brainchild of L.D. Lewis and Brent Lambert, the game combines the “anything can happen” nature of Chopped with the brilliant imaginations of SFF writers instead of chefs. The inaugural game had plenty of laughs, a great audience and spectacular writers participating. And most of all, there were demands for more. You can check out the replay of the game below, featuring Mark Oshiro, Martin Cahill, Ashia Monet, and Shiv Ramdas.

As with anything involving FIYAHCON, we strive to make sure whatever we do is done with care and consideration. That being said, we are officially launching our EM-DASH Tournament today. In the link below, you will find where you can sign up to participate. There are going to be monthly games except for July and August coming in with two so pick the date that best works for you.

We will have eight games leading up to the weekend of the convention and the winners of those eight games will be broken up into two Finalist games and out of those, two champions for the tournament will be decided!

…and it wouldn’t be us if we didn’t have a new element to add into the mix. Prepare your engines and get ready to dash!

RULES

4 contestants compete in three rounds to draft a completed piece of flash fiction using random, mandatory “ingredients” usually selected by our Twitter community. They have 7 minutes in the first round, 6 minutes and an additional ingredient in the second round, and five minutes with an additional ingredient in the third round. After each round, the contestants read their stories to the audience, and the audience selects one story for elimination via Twitter poll. The contestant with the strongest story using all 6 ingredients, wins.

Starting today, we’ll start taking contestant applications for our second game in April. We’ll be announcing the contestants for our first game soon. In the meantime, check out a replay of the first game at FIYAHCON, below.