Welcome To The New Home Of The Obsidian Flash Challenge!

[Steven Saus]

Several of us have started our own, self-hosted, flash fiction challenge here. It's on a forum behind a password, so that anything you write and submit is considered unpublished. Registration is quick, free, and pretty painless. You should even be able to use your social media accounts (Google, Facebook, etc) to register and log in if you like. 

Seriously, this thing is the perfect thing for you to do if you think writing is hard (or finding time for writing is hard), and especially if you haven't been writing for a while. It's also great if you have problems with getting past ideas that "you suck" (every first draft sucks, face it) or self-doubt.
 

• You will be able to see the Flash Challenge area of the forum after registering and logging in.
• Save local copies of your work! Old posts and topics may be cleaned up or purged without warning!

Note: If you do not want to do the "challenge" and competitive element, please feel free to SHARE your story and just mark it "Not for voting" at the top.

Here are the rules:

• All stories should be complete, written and posted within 24 hours of the prompt being posted, and can be anywhere from one sentence to 1,500 words in length. Typically the prompt is posted by 8pm EST on Friday, and stories are posted by midnight EST on Sunday.
• You may choose to write your story in any genre.
• Your story should be inspired by the restrictions -- words, themes, photo prompts, word limits, etc. -- provided by the Flashmaster at the beginning of the challenge.
• Once the participants' work is posted, the voting and comment session begins and continues until all votes are in. Time limit for voting will be determined on the spot, depending on how many people finish the challenge. Typically this is within 24 hours of the end of the writing portion, or 8pm EST on Sunday.
• The winner becomes Flashmaster and chooses the prompt(s) for the next contest. Also, you get all the Internet Bragging Points you think you can get away with.

[Steven Saus]

What happened to the old site?

Long story short, the site hosting, domain name, SSL, and software maintenance were not all being done together or by the same people.  We ended up locked out of the account as some of the services expired.

Everything that was there is -- to the best of our knowledge -- gone and not retained anywhere, nor do we have a way to access it.