A big reminder to all our Deputies that today, at 11:59 PM EST, is the deadline to submit your entry for the Final Deputy 26 contest.

When you’ve completed your story, post the cards and paragraph in a blog on your profile and flag it as “cool”.  We want to make sure that everyone’s submission is counted, so if you’re having trouble posting, please let Site Admin Jason know.

I will personally be reading all the entries over the next couple weeks and we’ll have a winner for you soon.

What’s at stake? A trip for the winning deputy and a +1 of their choosing to Los Angeles during production of the cyber-bridges for Dark Prophecy, Book 2 in the Level 26 series. We will provide coach flights from one airport (thus, if your plus one is flying from another place, they’ll have to pay the difference), a hotel room and make every effort to visually put you in the cyber-bridges.

We’ve had our ups and downs during the Deputy 26 process but overall I couldn’t have been more pleased. I’ve watched this site grow from a handful of members to over 61,000 users on the site. The book is available all over the world in several different languages and we are eagerly beginning prep for Dark Prophecy’s release this fall.

Even though the teams will be dissolved that doesn’t mean that you, the Deputies, aren’t still an important part of the site and the building of this community. I still want you guys to be vocal, to get the word out, to help those having trouble on the site. This is YOUR community. You are the early adopters. You are the ones who will help us get to 100,000 members, to get to books four, five and six, to cement the Digi-novel into the hearts and minds of not only the United States but the world!

Our mandate, from here until October 14th and beyond, is to sell as many books as possible. We want to be a New York Times Bestseller. But we don’t want to just be #18, right? We want to be #1! We need to sell 15,000 copies, so let’s spread the word: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, whatever you can do.

Thanks for everything, Deputies. Can’t wait to see what you’ve got for me.

Zuiker