DISCUSSION -- October 2015 300-word Writing Challenge (#19)

Luiglin said:
I've had a bit of a confidence crisis over the last few weeks.
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Well, I for one always enjoy your work. :)

And you set yourself the very hard personal challenge of writing a Dark Lord story every month for the 75-worder, which must be incredibly difficult! Tell us the truth now, has it been fun or are you praying for December to hurry up so you're done? :D

Ps. You'll have to do something with all those Dark Lord stories of yours; maybe set up a tumblr or something and post them all up in one place!
 
Juliana said:
Well, I for one always enjoy your work. :)

And you set yourself the very hard personal challenge of writing a Dark Lord story every month for the 75-worder, which must be incredibly difficult! Tell us the truth now, has it been fun or are you praying for December to hurry up so you're done? :D

Ps. You'll have to do something with all those Dark Lord stories of yours; maybe set up a tumblr or something and post them all up in one place!
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Cheers glad someone has enjoyed the awful puns.

Honestly I've had a blast doing them even though a few months were close to pushing genre and theme. I'm going to post all 12 come January probably in the critique area.
 
I had started a list of the bits of every story that caught my eye, as I did once before in the 300, but I have just discovered that "save draft" doesn't save for two days. Bah. I don't know that I'll have time to reconstruct it, either. So, for now at least, my lists:

*Glen -- No Escape from Reality*
HazelRah -- Desolare
Starbeast -- Horror of the Zombies
Travis Woodward -- Monument
*mosaix -- Obsessive, Compulsive Order*
Luiglin -- One Small Step
johnnyjet -- Quantum Overflow
*TJ -- Catullus 101: Inverse, not In Verse*
DG Jones -- The Stormchaser

Special mention to Hex for the electric chicken. :D
 
I shake my fist at you all for making this so difficult.

I simply can't make a reasonable length shortlist, but I did manage to choose three to vote for:

In the Bowels of the Hillock of Sadness by Cat's Cradle -- loved its so-clever collision of overblown Lovecraftian prose and childish toilet humour. By the end of it, I had a grin on my face that felt almost painful.

The Maiden's Canticle by Phyrebrat -- evocative and simply beautiful. Probably one of my all-time favourite 300-word entries.

Baseline by Robert Mackay -- I'm still not 100% sure what to make of this, but I found it utterly captivating over and over again (appropriately).
 
3 stories stood out for my this time around, making my voting easy.

Tim James-Shocked into Sentience. Love the poignancy of this story.
Victoria Silverwolf-Rainmaker. As always, a superbly crafted entry.
LittleStar-My Hero. Poetic forms usually don't catch my fancy but this one really did.

It would have been nearly impossible to pick one from these three, glad for the extra votes :)
 
Here are the votes of the Ursa jury, with the stories in posting order within the categories:


Honourable Mentions:
  • Shocked into Sentience by Tim James
  • Horror of the Zombies by Starbeast
  • Disconcerted Action by chrispenycate
Runners Up:
  • Rainmaker by Victoria Silverwolf
  • The Stormchaser by DG Jones
  • The Maiden's Canticle by Phyrebrat
Winners:
  • Desolare by HazelRah
  • Obsessive, Compulsive Order by mosaix
  • Madiha by Venusian Broon
​
 
Well done Mosaix. A worthy winner. Yeah, I like it like that, too. Well done to everyone. A whole lot of people were in the running and a whole lot more, likke me, had their best month ever. Pat on the back time, folks.
 
Congratulations, mosaix! Well done! (And I'm not just saying that because I voted for you.) :D
 
Congratulations Mosaix​



WELL DONE TO EVERYONE!!!

TheDustyZebra said:
I had started a list of the bits of every story that caught my eye, as I did once before in the 300, but I have just discovered that "save draft" doesn't save for two days. Bah. I don't know that I'll have time to reconstruct it, either. So, for now at least, my lists:

*Glen -- No Escape from Reality*
HazelRah -- Desolare
Starbeast -- Horror of the Zombies
Travis Woodward -- Monument
*mosaix -- Obsessive, Compulsive Order*
Luiglin -- One Small Step
johnnyjet -- Quantum Overflow
*TJ -- Catullus 101: Inverse, not In Verse*
DG Jones -- The Stormchaser

Special mention to Hex for the electric chicken. :D
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@TheDustyZebra Thank you for the Runners Up mention. You made my night :LOL:

Ursa major said:
Here are the votes of the Ursa jury, with the stories in posting order within the categories:


Honourable Mentions:
  • Shocked into Sentience by Tim James
  • Horror of the Zombies by Starbeast
  • Disconcerted Action by chrispenycate
Runners Up:
  • Rainmaker by Victoria Silverwolf
  • The Stormchaser by DG Jones
  • The Maiden's Canticle by Phyrebrat
Winners:
  • Desolare by HazelRah
  • Obsessive, Compulsive Order by mosaix
  • Madiha by Venusian Broon
    ​
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@Ursa major Thank you for the Honorable Mention. You made my night :LOL:




Horror of the Zombies - I originally wanted a horror story, but then I thought about making it into a murder mystery about an astronaut suspected of killing his crew mates for gold that was found in a hidden temple, which was uncovered by a sandstorm on Mars. And I thought I would have a familiar TV detective (if you've ever watched the 1970's COLUMBO detective series) play the part of the investigator. I was delighted with what I came up with.
 
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Congratulations mosaix!! It was a terrific win in a field of worthy contenders. What a great challenge. I wish we could do the 300 Worder again in December. Well, at least we're halfway to the next one!
A final thanks to the folks who listed my story. :)

And a big thank you to JD, AFW, Droflet and HareBrain for the lovely votes, and thank you kindly, HB, for the very nice words about my story. I managed to bulk up my tale with well over 20 examples of childish toilet humour (thank you, HB, I love the description!)...some were obvious, some were more subtle, but for all...I apologize! I will examine my moral fiber, and strive for a cleaner tale in January.

(I blame this all, btw, on a youth spent devoted to the humor of Monty Python, and in particular the timeless joke:
What's brown and sounds like a bell?
DUNG.
Oy...)
 
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Huge congrats, Mosaix!

And lots of thanks to all who mentioned and voted for me - genuinely not expected. I wrote this mainly to build a bit more mythos/background to my stormmage world,so that it did well was a bonus. :)
 
Congrats Mosaix, a worthy winner for the a tough challenge. And a huge thank you to willwallace for rescuing my month with a vote :)
 
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