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Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa and Happy Hanukkah from the Shur'tugal staff!

With Christmas right around the corner, we're happy to announce the winners of this year's Inheritance Carol contest! We received many great entries and unfortunately had to narrow it down to the best three. Every song submitted, whether recorded or not, was fantastic! You can view the top three songs as well as all of the submitted audio and video for the contest on the Inheritance Holiday Carols page! Winners can expect their prizes to be shipped soon after Christmas.

Christopher Paolini released a short video message today wishing fans happy holidays as well as thanking everyone for their support for Brisingr over the past few months. You can view the video after the jump! [...]

There is still over a week left to write and submit your Inheritance Holiday Carol! If you missed our big contest announcement you can read up on it here. Information on prizes for this year's Inheritance Holiday Carol Contest can be found after the jump! [...]

Shur'tugal is happy to announce our transition to our new news viewing and comment system, hand coded by our very own Robert Cox over the past several months. The new system is a transition over from our outdated news posting and commenting system to a fresher, easier-to-work with system. A full list and explanation of our changes comes after the jump.

Update: Comments should now be shown in the correct order (newest at the top, now). [...]

We're happy to announce our first wave of available staff positions! We're now recruiting qualified applicants for the following positions: Book and Movie Review Author, Columnist, Newsletter Author, Column and Reviews Editor, Wikipedia Editor, Programmer, Graphics Designer, and Flash Designer. Detailed information can be found on our Job Openings page. Thanks in advance for your interest!

The holiday season is upon us once again, and the staff here at Shur'tugal want to celebrate with our fellow fans with our second Inheritance holiday carol contest!

Everyone has heard the same old holiday carols, year after year... but what would a Holiday carol in Alagaesia sound like? We're tasking our visitors to write their own Inheritance holiday carol either to the tune of an old holiday carol (Jingle Bells, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, Let it Snow, etc.) or to a completely new tune of your own creation. Please feel free to make your song as creative, tacky, or funny as possible!

You can base your carol around anything in the Inheritance universe, including the fandom itself, so you won't be running out of content any time soon. When submitting your carol, please include a written version of the carol in the email or as an attachment and make sure to state whether or not it's based off of an old holiday carol. Please also include your name and address for prize distribution purposes (your personal information will not be shared and will be used strictly for prize distribution only). Fans who submit an audio or video recording of themselves singing the carol will automatically receive an extra prize as well as having their video or audio featured on Shur'tugal.

Send your entry to shurtugalcarols@gmail.com by December 20th in order to qualify! Entries will be judged and the winners will be announced on the front page of Shur'tugal on December 22nd. Contest prizes will be announced on the site over the next few days. Good luck and happy holidays!

Many of you comment and email to ask us - what's next for Shur'tugal? With a good amount of time to wait before we even know the name or release date of Book 4, what are we going to do with Shur'tugal? There certainly is a lot of room for expansion and improvement, and after a good amount of brainstorming, we're ready to announce our tentative plans for the future of Shurtugal.com.

We have compiled all of our thoughts, ideas and goals into one easy-to-read blog entry on our Development Blog. Our main focus is on making the main page of Shur'tugal more relevant, up-to-date and captivating by focusing our attention largely on news, commentary, opinion columns and more. We're also discussing our plans for a content shift to Shur'tugal's Inheritance Wikipedia as well as unveiling plans for Shur'tugal's sister site, a fantasy book and movie review and news source.

So we invite all of you, our visitors, to read our blog entry and contribute your thoughts, feedback, constructive criticism and ideas to help us build the future of Shur'tugal to be what you want it to be.

You can read the full blog entry at Shurtugal.com/Blog.

Fresh from his successful Brisingr tour, Christopher sat down to update us on the latest happenings in the Inheritance and Paolini world, including:

- his book tour is complete!
- tour stories - board games, babies, tattoos, sugar gliders
- the deluxe edition of Brisingr
- and a few words from Book IV!

So what do we have to look forward to? Christopher is in the process of illustrating two drawings for the deluxe edition of Brisingr (release date still unknown, some time in 2009). Christopher also lets us know that the deluxe edition will contain deleted scenes from Brisingr.

Not signed up for Alagaesia News? You can do so here (for free)! If you missed out on this newsletter or any of the past newsletters, you can view them in our Alagaesia News archive!

Our friends at Random House have let us know that due to the high demand, they're releasing a second batch of signed first edition copies of Brisingr for sale for only $75 per book. You can purchase a signed first edition on their website.

Random House has also started their second annual Strange Lands correspondent contest! Entrants can win a trip to interview Tamora Pierce at the New York City Comic-Con and have their interview published in the Strange Lands newsletter! All entries must be in by December 15th, 2008. Interested fans can learn more at their contest page.