Judgement Day

The fine people at Google have decided 6 days of non-blogging activity was punishment enough for 'breaking' blogger. They have let me come out to play. I just wish they'd give me that missing post back. You remember the one? There were two videos: one where a guy is teasing a dog and the dog is talking back to him. The other had guys trying on an electric dog collar....just for fun. High times.

I won't dwell. I'm prepared to move on to more important things like judging for the Lost of the Rock 2011 flash fiction contest. The lure of wine and nibblies was enough to bring the judges together to rank stories and participate in hand-to-hand combat.  We had it all: 15 flash fiction stories, cheese, crackers, two pairs of
boxing gloves and white wine dispensed from a box in the fridge.

Wine and nibblies on a fine ceramic plate

The stories covered quite a range of subject matter: from death of a loved one, to loss of a relationship. From the loss of moral fibre to the loss of innocence. Coming to think of it, the 'Loss' theme lead to some good stories, but some downer subject manner. *gulps back more wine* Perhaps next year we will run a contest with a more upbeat theme such as "euphoria on The Rock" or perhaps "cuddly animals on The Rock".

The contest was 'blind judged', meaning that we didn't know the names of the writers ahead of time. Surprisingly, the judges seemed to be on the same wavelength as six stories grabbed our attention from the start. The major challenge was putting them in proper order and declaring a winner. We have sent out email notification to the top finishers. These folks will also be given a few interview questions to answer and will be asked to supply a link to their web pages or blogs and also a photo of themselves. Remember...if no photo is supplied, I'll be forced to break out the purple crayon of doom and draw a likeness of that person to run with their interview...



Ripping open the hermetically sealed envelope of authors

Many thanks to all who participated in our contest this year. We appreciate your involvement at every level. Writing and submitting stories, Twittering about the contest, blogging and linking to our posts about the contest...it was all great and we're thankful for such a group of online friends. As usual, it's difficult to narrow it down and we thank ALL of you who submitted stories and wish we could run them all. You're all winners in our books.
We will be waiting for some feedback from the four prize winners over the next couple of days. We will announce the those names, and the names of two honourable mentions, on Sunday, May 22nd along with a schedule of when the stories and interviews will appear here and at Laurita's Calling Shotgun blog.

In other news... I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to Cathy Webster and her review of #fridayflash regular G.P. Ching's book The Soulkeepers at her blog. Drop by and check it out.