CONTEST WINNERS NOW AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
We have recorded audio files for our contest winners. You'll find links to the audio version at the top of each story. We're also interested to know what you think about this feature, so please let us know at letters@flashquake.org.
In case you forgot the rules, review the contest guidelines.
From our Contest Judge, Glenn McCartney:
The majority of entries were actually rather excellent stories. Certainly there were those that required a touch of diplomacy to create a comment on them (and for those who know me they know what a real task that is!) that wasn't impolitic. However, as I read through them I found myself enjoying the experience immensely. The vast majority of your entrants required me to be much more choosy in my first narrowing of the field than I was prepared to be, as evinced by the large number which made it into the second round (I think it was something like 63 of 160 or at least pretty close to it).
The second round was even more difficult, because now I had only those that had, for one reason or another, evoked some kind of response in me. Much of this task fell more to getting very picky about such details as grammar, spelling, and the like. Getting these down to just ten was very difficult- the first run through I think I had something closer to fifteen real favorites, and just as many second favorites if not more.
This required a third round to finalize the last few, and those were chosen very, very carefully. To make it to this group the story had to evoke an emotional response, suspend disbelief, have engaging main characters, and be easy to read while still giving enough detail not to be confusing.
All this in 500 words or less???
Yup, and they certainly did it, too. I'm a novel and technical writer, so I'm more wordy (ok, long-winded might be closer to the truth), so the authors truly impressed me, and made this a very enjoyable experience.
Thank you for the opportunity to judge in this contest. It's been my honor to participate.