Okay. Here we finally are. At the winner's announcements. First of all, I would like to thank all of our authors whom took the time to actually enter this: that was an act of courage. Secondly, I have had a very hard time judging the entries. I could not use my original setup to grade the entries with and I actually had to enlist help from two friends, one of whom kept laughing at me as I was squirming to decide. It was all in good fun. In truth, she kept me on an even keel as she read along with me the entries and had me question each one the same and analyze different aspects of it.
     Another note, I did not receive any offers for upping the prize amounts, but, I felt every author deserved something for entering. I added an extra $550 as prizes to ensure coverage for all the entrants. So a grand total of $1,585 was awarded.
     Now the reason it took so long for me to finish grading these was because of on top of being sick, my spine was acting up really bad and kept me under the weather in pain. To her credit, I would like to personally thank Leila, author of The Squad, for making me fight the pain and grading when I was hurting so much.
 
     Here is the full list of entries that were submitted:

crazypagangurl - Charlie's Wish: A Fair At Christmas Time
Karen Lockhart - Bobby's Christmas Wish
Savannah Maun - For the Love of my Sister
LadyDragon623 - The Christmas Angel
StacyInLove - It's Love (11/19 only inclusive one)
SamanthaMD - The Twelve Dreams of Christmas
SamanthaMD - Dreams are what you make of them
jessicac119 - Must Be Dreaming - (2 of 2)
Shauna - Day's Christmas ~ (Parts 1 - 4)
Melanie Brown - A Girl Park Christmas
Casey Brooke - S.L.E.P. - Sacrificial Life Extension Project / S.L.E.P.- Homecoming
Andrea Lena - Theresa's Dream - 2 of 2
Andrea Lena - The Arrangement
Andrea Lena - Rey of Hope
Leslie Moore - Christmas Suite
Susanj - Love's Gift
Nuuan - The story of Meri Kris Maas
A Zesty Lemon - Christmas to Christmas
Jennifer Sue - A Punsylvania Christmas Gift
Shadowsblade - Shadowsblade: A Christmas Tale
Nagrij - ....Is you
AuPreviner - Cat Six
Polly Adler - The Answer To A Maiden's (?) Prayer Chapter (2 of 2).
Polly Adler - Christmas Presents
tigger - Change of Seasons
Nessa M - This year, for sure!.
Nessa M - Sister of my Heart
Ricky - An Accidental Meeting
SamanthaAnn - Christmas Dreams.
Jengrl - The Belles of Christmas
shiinaai - The Shut-in Santa Doesn't Want To Work.
Maeryn Lamonte - A Dream of Elegance
Ray Drouillard - Christmas Wishes Granted
 
     The authors were allowed multiple entries noting that only one of their entries would count, that being the strongest one. So, in the following categories some of the entries may not appear, and that would be because they were one of the multiples. There were fantastic ideas and it was a joy reading these. However, in grading, and making sure each entry qualified with my beginning premise: "...the enactment of making or trying to make someone else's dream come true for the Holidays. It can be done from the viewpoint of the main character or a secondary character in the author's story. Either the main character or a secondary character needs to be trans, gay, lesbian, bi, or intersexed," I had to also compare all of the stories against one another. I had to separate strong stories from the weak, Ones that clearly performed the stated premise against those that left the premise off, awaiting the proper ending to ensure it fit and whatnot. There were many questions I ran the stories by to arrive at the ranking I placed them in. I would also like to answer any questions an author has about how their particular stor(y/ies) were graded and why. Just pm me and I will discuss the issues with you at length as I did take notes on each one.
 
     Without further ado, these are the honorable mentions of the contest:
 
(12 x $25 awards)
 
Karen Lockhart - Bobby's Christmas Wish
jessicac119 - Must Be Dreaming - (2 of 2)
Andrea Lena - The Arrangement
Susanj - Love's Gift
Shadowsblade - Shadowsblade: A Christmas Tale
tigger - Change of Seasons
Ricky - An Accidental Meeting
SamanthaAnn - Christmas Dreams
Jengrl - The Belles of Christmas
shiinaai - The Shut-in Santa Doesn't Want To Work
Maeryn Lamonte - A Dream of Elegance
Ray Drouillard - Christmas Wishes Granted
 
     Once again, these honorable mentions deserve to be here because they were entries and they all mattered to me. For every contest, the stories have to be somehow grouped and ranked. And these are just as important to me as those that tiered higher. So please, even though they did not place the highest does not make their content any less in mind to read. So I urge all of you, to read these entries that the authors had taken the time to create.
 
     Now, because of a screwup, Crazypagangurl's entry had been left out of my original posting. I have read and graded her entry. It is within the Honorable Mentions category, but due to the glitch and it's subsequent embarrassment for the author, I am awarding Crazypagangurl's entry of Charlie's Wish: A Fair At Christmas Time a prize of $35 for her excellent tale of a tg girl trying to make a memorable time for a person devastated by a disease to spend that time meaningfully together while they could still walk. A last chance to make memories. Thank you for your entry Crazypagangurl and please be understanding. It was BOTH our faults for this mixup, mine too, for not going back and browsing all the stories for potential mismarked entries.
 
Honorable Mention: Charlie's Wish: A Fair At Christmas Time by Crazypagangurl (1 x $35)
 
     The next line of awards go to those stories whom I felt were what completely satisfied the requirements and in addition were executed in particular ways that made them stand out highly. The reason this next category was created is because I had too many Tier 1 entries for the initial separation of stories. I had to create a category between the top 4 entries for Prizes of 1st place and 2nd-4th with what was left. That left me with 11 entries that I felt were top tier but I didn't want to expand the ranking by numbers to show how I graded them entirely. This is my Tier 1.5 category: stories strong enough to make the cut to be in Tier 1, but due to narrowing of the the prize tier to 4 top prizes had to be placed here. For these entries, I have duly awarded a Prize of $50 ea.
 
Tier 1.5 Awards (11 x $50)
 
Nessa M - This year, for sure!
Shauna - Day's Christmas ~ (Parts 1 - 4)
A Zesty Lemon - Christmas to Christmas
Nagrij - ....Is you
Polly Adler - The Answer To A Maiden's (?) Prayer Chapters (2 of 2)
Savannah Maun - For the Love of my Sister
StacyInLove - It's Love (11/19/2017 only inclusive one of 2)
SamanthaMD - Dreams are what you make of them
Leslie Moore - Christmas Suite
Nuuan - The story of Meri Kris Maas
AuPreviner - Cat Six
 
     Now for the honor of the Tier 1 entries that made the top 4 placements. Starting with Number 4, with a story about a wily, true to earth Marine Gunnery Sgt. who made the calls as he saw them and saved Rue and his family after Rue saves him from death, comes Jennifer Sue's entry A Punsylvania Christmas Gift.
 
4th Place Winner: A Punsylvania Christmas Gift by Jennifer Sue (1 x $150)
 
     For 3rd place, we had a newcomer this year to our site family whom brought excellent talent to this contest. She wrote a tale of a person whom had learned forgiveness despite tragedy and dealing with it in a unique way. The ending was quite perfect and made me think hard about how I could try and forgive those that wrong me myself. We had LadyDragon's entry of The Christmas Angel to show us that love can be given, even to those that failed us.
 
3rd Place Winner: The Christmas Angel by Ladydragon (1 x $150)
 
     Our Second Place entry was really an almost first place entry. It was very tough to decide between these two stories for placement. Melanie Brown did a superb job with coming up with a Sci-fi tale of that allowed an old man to live his life as a woman in a machine induced dreamstate: the fantasy of living the right way and being accepted. This story was highly thought out, very succinct in execution and length of scenes. All in all a very enjoyable piece that had the right stuff. I give you Melanie Brown's entry of A Girl Park Christmas.
 
2nd Place Winner: A Girl Park Christmas by Melanie Brown (1 x $150)
 
     Now for our top Finalist. This author wrote a story that in my mind, played out as a very touching movie. A selfless sacrifice that wound up being a quest for the recipient of that sacrifice to seek out the donor. The story had a second part that was not included in the original posting that was added a day or two later that made the entire story come together. All in all, I would love to see this story actually enacted as movie. I give you Casey Brooke's story of S.L.E.P. - Sacrificial Life Extension Project and S.L.E.P.- Homecoming!
 
1st Place Winner: S.L.E.P. - Sacrificial Life Extension Project and S.L.E.P.- Homecoming by Casey Brooke (1 x $250)
 
     Well, that is it for this year. Again, If any of you have any questions please feel free to pm me and I will discuss information pertinent to your entries. All of you did a real great job and I enjoyed reading these. Thank you authors for entering this contest and to all the readers who took the time to read them. Our site is unique in that we have a family atmosphere amongst our authors and every one of your entries was important to me, no matter how they placed. It is a unique part of yourself that you had given to me to read personally. I treasure that. Very much so.
 
     So everyone who has won (And everyone whom had entered did!) please pm me with your decision to have the prize money either paypalled or money ordered to you and the information I would need to get it to you.
 
Merry Christmas and have a happy New Year!

Sephrena