Congratulations, @jrhughes, on a superlative short story!

First Place, $20 SBD

Known - A "One in the Oven, One in the Chamber" Stand-Alone Story for Rhino Writing Contest #3

Empty.

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From the first one-word paragraph of the first entry submitted to Rhino Writing Contest #3, @jrhughes held me captive. Like her heroine. Empty. Alone. And in danger.

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"Internet searches turned up empty, and Anna had started leaving messages on boards for siblings separated as children, in the vain hope that perhaps Amelia was looking for her, too. But after six weeks she had nothing to show for it."

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A long-lost sister? I can relate. No need to bait this reader with suspense, peril, and heart-pounding action. Those are hallmarks of the thriller, a genre I tend to avoid. But wait. A thriller with psychological complexity, dazzling insights, and great depth of character? Not many authors manage that, and still fewer can do it with polished, professional prose.

And congratulations on crafting a story that does double duty by taking place in the fictional world your fans will enter in your debut novel about a pregnant assassin. To be in a fiction workshop--to watch a master storyteller hatch an idea and nurture the fledgling along, with encouragement and occasional suggestions from fellow writers--is one of the most exciting things in my world.

Writers like J.R. give us very little to critique, aside from a lot of "ooh" and "love it" comments in the margins.

"Known" is a violent and heartbreaking story with comic moments that make me laugh. That is a rare skill. The ending may not be “happy,” but it is gratifying--so gratifying!--and I’m dying to say why, but it’s so much better just to read it for yourself. Short stories don’t take long to read, and here at Steemit, we can read them for free.

That just doesn’t seem fair, does it?

All the entries to this contest have been a pleasure to read and sheer hell to judge because I love every one of them. I'll have to let comments from other readers help sway me.

I have finally decided:

All the entries are excellent stories. (Wait. I already said that.)

Some have soared far away from the prompt. Do I penalize for that? No.

Some are impressively true to the prompt, to the point that I feel I must reward that.

Some are so well written, no judge with half a brain could let a less professional, less polished story win.

This is not like the annual "Editors and Preditors" poll, where I nominate writers and cast my vote, and it matters, more or less, who gets launched to Number One, and who sinks to the bottom of the pile.

This is just one little writing prompt from Book Rhino, who is notoriously averse to post-apoca-topia (Post Apocalyptic, Dystopian science fiction) dominating the market in recent years. I am even more averse to Tragic Endings. Ah, but throw in a dog (a collie, no less!), or reunite two long-lost siblings, and I'm singing your praises to the highest heavens.

More than any other runner-up, one sweet, humble story stole my heart. Third Runner Up (and I hate to slap a number three on anything):

Global Amnesia: Your Heart Would Remember by: ahmad al-hemmally (ahmadmanga)

One year ago, everyone on the planet lost their memory at the same time. It was called 'The global amnesia' But people here just refer to it as 'the adversity.'

The premise is unusual and intriguing. Yes, it involves a certain type of apocalyptic event, and a Dystopian regime, but in a way that is so unusual in the mainstream market, it really stands out.

The writer is not a native speaker of English. When I saw him write "a lovely weather" at the workshop, I flagged it as non-standard syntax, and followed it with, "But keep it! It's charming." (Like that Asian friend who warned us one Lenten season not to eat at that awful "Silver Long Johns.")

Some of the passages in this story just sing. I'm not going to say which ones. Go read the story for yourself. Alas, it is too late to upvote and resteem, but I tell ya what, this author deserves some attention. He works really hard, he cares, and he tries. And the sweetness in this story is not maudlin. It just -- well, check out the reader feedback:

@anikekirsten (42) · 4 days ago
Lovely work! I got shivers down my arms at the revelation. I would love to read more of this story, the world, the adversity event. It's an interesting concept and I'd like to find out how you write the idea out.

Did I not say that reader feedback could help sway my vote? Ahman, you can thank AnikeKirsten for tipping the scales in your favor.

Because passing over @negativer's story, which is brilliant and moving, is one of the hardest decisions I've ever made.

More on that in a future post, or an update to this one.

UPDATE today 18-Dec-2017 - see BONUS prize - a TIE for second place

I hope you'll visit the comments directly at the site.
@jrhughes:
I think we all now understand the darkness oozing from Neg's prose.
Justifiable. Completely justifiable.

So who took Second Place (on Sunday, that is, yesterday)?

A rug.

Well, not just any rug. On his wedding day, his mother presents him with this gaudy green and red Oriental rug. (His dear, now-departed mother!)

When his wife rolled up and hid the ghastly thing (her opinion, not his), he did not fight for Mom's rug.

The contest prompt comes in when he thinks of his first love, and he needs to find her. Ask her if she's going to their class reunion.

This is a high-impact story, which is amazing, considering that a guy wakes up, brushes his teeth, puts in his contact lenses, thinks about Mom and the rug, makes a phone call, finds out (----!!!), and thinks something he hadn't thought of before.

Deceptively simple.

So much happens, even though it would seem the phone call is the only action outside of waking up and brushing teeth.

The language of this author's stories is always beautiful, story after story. Line after line just leaves me breathless.
I would never guess that English is not her native language. I'm not at all surprised that she has read Shakespeare in Russian. Her prose is just achingly beautiful. Ever read Baudelaire? She's that good.

Always be a poet, even in prose. - Baudelaire

Who else is a poet? Negativer. Hence, the Monday reversal of the Sunday decision.

Sunday:
Twilight of the Long Road Come - ohhh, @negativer, you and I both know this story is superlative. And that the ending is... categorically, catastrophically, albeit cleverly, brutal. I hate irony! I hated Hemingway's "To Build A Fire." No matter how well written it is. (I also despise the word "albeit" - you see what you've done to me?)

But, as I often say in the Discord channels, #GottaLoveNegativer!

Congratulations, @authorofthings, on your fantastic story,

One of a Kind

AND

Congratulations, @Negativer, for also scoring second runner up.

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I have so many things to say about all the stories, but only so many hours in a day. Huge, huge apologies to those I have neglected in this space:

@yahialababidi ("Here is the delirium of my heart laid bare") with Her Unutterable Name

Oh what a beautiful story! So many great lines in it. What finally helped me rule out this one from the Top Three is that a fairly good chunk of the short story is a poem. Oh, I know, I know. What a crime, right? But you try judging these stories and deciding which deserves the biggest reward. (Beautiful pixabay image, by the way)

@Lymmerik, Roast Beef is a funny yet hard-hitting tale, and I loved reading it.

"Old Friends by Duncan Cary Palmer" aka @creatr is a poignant tale, insightful and painfully honest. An old man knows how wrong it was to fall in love with another man’s wife, but the May-December romance was never consummated in the flesh; only in words, traveling through cyberspace.

Lifting a stack of ancient BYTE magazines off the bookshelf for dusting, the old man discovers a small laptop, wedged behind some books. He vaguely recalls having tucked it back there long years before.

Full of insights and quotable quotes, the story leads to an observation that hit close to home for Last-Century me:

Love letters. In times past, they were enveloped, stamped and occasionally perfumed. Banded in stacks, private, cloistered in cigar boxes and stored in closets and attics, occasionally discovered generations later.

I didn't see a title for another entry that tugs the heartstrings: My Entry for the Rhino Fiction Contest by @pyrowngs.

He said he wants to meet his father. Gosh! I haven't spoken to him in almost the same amount of time. Edward... Edward...oh, what's his last name again...? Shoot! It was always a difficult name to pronounce and remember. He was from Russia, and had a very Russian-sounding name. His name is in my house, on a hard drive, somewhere. How many computers ago - how many years ago - did he last email me? Well, I'll have to do some digging.

This story did not show up at the workshop (that I ever saw), or I'd have trotted out the Self Edit Your Own Fiction book that says exclamation points should be used sparingly (like, two per novel, max). I do like this author's use of the prompt. (And how could I not love the title/subject header?)

@cizzo wrote Apollo's Fire with another fresher-than-usual premise. The writing is solid. There is no reason this should not make it into the Top Three, except that there can only be three.
**sigh

Stolen kidney. Drug addiction mingled with VR. Strong prose, enhanced by visionary thinking about future technology and where it might lead. Cizzo, if any beginning authors need examples of hard science fiction, this is a stellar role model of a story.

Caleb @caleblailmusik, so many good things go on in Midnight Run. I love this:

A church, its steeple stark white against the shark-eye sky, and an adult video store, directly across from the church, ironically or intentionally, I didn't know.
I chose the safest, most-incognito option, and ducked inside the ...

Here is another strong entry: Too Many Jonos by @felt.buzz. The story is true to the prompt, with a zinger of a twist in the end.

His name is in my house, on a hard drive, somewhere.
That is what the strange creature told me, its final words barely audible, little more than a dying breath.
I stumbled home, my bruised legs hard to walk on. I gathered my cloak about me, against the night. It's tattered cloth would do little to protect me from the cold, let alone the creatures of the shadows,

....I had no real idea of what i was searching for. My Jono, the first "other" to appear in my home, had a magic block that lit up when he touched it. Was this a hard drive?

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(NOTE: Entries that could have used more proofreading are more likely to be ruled out.)

One author wrote a story two months before the prompt was ever posted, which kinda-sorta disqualifies it, and it really didn't bear any resemblance to the prompt, but @crimsonkate's Man Farm has some timely and relevant themes. Like, what happens if all the sexually harrassed women oppressed by the Patriarchy manage to turn the tables?

--Oh heavens. I'm not even close to saying all that is good about these contest entries. Truly, they are all worthy.

Huge thanks to everyone who took the time to write and enter my contest. Normally I'm able to declare the first and second runner-up and comment on every story within three days of receiving the last entry, but second week of December just happened to be tumultuous.

Stay tuned!

Thank you

@bex-dk - who donated $10 SBD toward the prize pool and
@DJ Mikey Masters [Mikepm74] - who offered $20 SBD in prize money.

Pixabay image by geralt