Issue 5 – Editorial

Welcome again dear readers, to our 5th issue. [Jump down to the Search Term Challenge entries.]

This will be a short editorial, since I’m still half brain-dead from following the livewriting event by MCM, and Anna is still unavailable to edit out all my silly mistakes.

In the last two weeks, some of you have endured great dangers, by taking on our Fantasy Quest. The brave ones amongst you have even won a spiffy Sphinx Badge. If you’re curious what it’s all about, it is never too late to take part in the fun!

For the next two weeks, we have something entirely different in store. Over ten stories will compete in our first Search Term Challenge. This time, the terms were provided by Merrilee, and the main rules for contributing were as follows:

1. Write a short story that contains at least four (4) of the search terms below. It must start with one, end with another, and have another two somewhere in the middle. Kudos if you get all the search terms in there somehow.

• bellowing bastard brothers
• dirty house
• extra sex
• give one to me
• sideshow fables
• stillborn
• writes longhand

2. Any topic, genre, or rating allowed. If you write web fiction, it can be set in your universe, as long as the story is understandable to someone who has not read your work.
3. Your word count must be between 1,000 and 2,500 words.
4. The winner will be picked based on reader voting. Therefore submissions will be posted anonymously for fair voting purposes so the winner is picked based on meritocracy. Please do not post the story elsewhere. Do not tell anyone which is yours. You’ll be free to do all that after voting closes, okay?

Our gameplan is to publish a story anonymously each day, plus on Wednesdays when we’ll have our usual Webfiction Wednesday and Interview at the Café.

After two weeks of stories we’ll leave it up to you to decide which story was best. After the poll, we’ll reveal the winner and runner-ups and unveil the mysterious authors behind them. Since the terms that needed to be included were quite disturbing, it is only fair to warn you that the competing stories aren’t for the fainthearted.

We hope you enjoy the stories!

Jan

**This post has been slightly edited because we found two additional stories in our spam folder, which were submitted before the deadline. This means we have 14 stories total, and will be publishing stories on Wednesdays too. We’re sorry for the mistake, but we’re learning as we go.

******

The Entries

1. Cleaning the Sty With a Jigsaw Homemaker
2. Stillborn
3. Sideshow Fables
4. The Last Brother
5. Evil Wishes
6. The Feud
7. A Silly Tale of Little-To-No Consequence
8. A Second Chance
9. Long Way Home
10. The Carnival
11. My Extra Sex
12. Medusa’s House
13. Quota
14. The Subtle Profession

**EDIT: Now that all entries are up, voting is open.

Voting is closed! Winners have been announced!