They’re heeere!
With the revival of The X-Files now in full swing, and tidbits about next year’s Twin Peaks return giving us pins-and-needles as they gradually trickle out, the time is ripe for these 10 flash pieces of the strange and surreal, the otherwordly and indescribable. Tomorrow’s Flash Phenom mega-issue has shaped up to be one of our best contest issues yet.
Great work on your Flash Phenom entries, everyone! There was an incredible amount of imagination put into this contest by you tremendous writers, making our jobs all that much harder. Just the way we like it.
As always, associate editor Mary Bond and I burned the midnight oil to comb through your entries. A big thanks to her for ensuring that we stayed on task and honed in on the very best tales of weirdness. Metaphysical high-five!
We were very pleased to see another strong international turnout. Writers from nearly a dozen different countries participated. We haven’t made it into South America yet, but we’ve seen entries from every other continent over the course of these contests (yeah, yeah, minus Antarctica too).
Here’s where I’d usually mention that our next contest theme will be #FlashFelon (crime-related stories), which will overlap with our first ever Poetry contest (guidelines up within days). But you’re probably skipping over this section anyway, so I’ll get to the good stuff.
So many entries remained in contention until the final rounds of deliberation that we have a lot of non-cigars to pass out. Close-but-no-cigars go to:
Sarah Lee, David Novak, Fiona Kyle, Jono Naito, Corinne Mahoney, Kathryn Wilson, Lauren Malone, Colleen Maynard,
Jennifer Knight, Tiff Sisman, Christina Dalcher, JT Williams,
RJ Murray, Chris Milam, Kate Murdoch, Daniel Hughes (2),
Voima Oy, Liz Schriftsteller, and Sylvia Heike.
The Top 10 that you will find below will all be published in our forthcoming Flash Phenom mega-issue, and they will be included in this fall’s Prize Winners Anthology print issue, which will feature the Top 10 finishers from four of our quarterly contests. (You can check out last year’s Prize Winners Anthology here).
Time for me to shut up and put up.
Honorable Mention
10th Place – “Finding Moonlight” by James R. Gapinski (USA)
9th Place – “Aria” by Seth Augenstein (USA)
8th Place – “A Man of Many Hats” by Aeryn Rudel (USA)
7th Place – “The Cave” by Premee Mohamed (Canada)
6th Place – “Wisdom Tooth” by Leanne Radojkovich (New Zealand)
5th Place – “Waiting” by Jan Kaneen (U.K.)
4th Place – “The Summer of Infinite Possibilities” by G.G. Silverman (USA)
And now onto those who brought the big lumber…
3rd Place ($50)
“Dream Logic” by R.A. Roth (USA)
2nd Place ($100)
“Season of the Dead” by Robin Jeffrey (USA)
1st Place ($200)
“House Spiders” by Shane Page (USA)
Congrats to the winners and a huge thanks to everyone who participated in the Flash Phenom contest.We literally couldn’t do this without you. Check back soon for the Flash Phenom mega-issue!
The Molotov Cocktail 