The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood
spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a
few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted,
usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries,
determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to
Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.
You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link.
This
time the challenge was to write a microfiction fiction
piece keying off the word, “outpost,” whatever the writer might
interpret that to mean. As usual, the results have ranged from amusing to disturbing. Without further ado, then, the winners are…
First Place: “Ivy’s Tower” • by Gretchen Tessmer
Second Place: “Sending Love” • by Kimberly Ann Smiley
Honorable Mention:
“Lunar Ghosts” • by Sylvia Heike
“Anagram Ed” • by Ron Ferguson
“Trash-Talking Space Honky Trips Over the Finish Line” • by Brandon Case
Questionable Mention:
“Roadside Stand” • by Pete Wood
(Sometimes Pete can’t resist entering his own contests!)
Thanks
to everyone who gave this challenge a try, and we look forward to
seeing what you can do next month with the next Pete Wood Challenge!
If you like the stories we’re publishing, join our crowd-funding campaign today. We do Stupefying Stories out of pure love for genre fiction, but in publishing as in tennis, love means nothing. To keep Stupefying Stories going at this level we need to raise at least $500 USD monthly, and rather than do so with pledge breaks or foundation grants, we’d rather have broad-based and ongoing support. If just 100 people commit to donating just $5 monthly, we can keep going at this level indefinitely. If we raise more, we will pay our authors more.
If you really liked this story, tell your friends about it! Remember, likes and hearts are nice, but shares and retweets boost the signal!
0 comments:
Post a Comment