The results of the first round of the nycMidnight Flash Fiction Challenge are in.

The writers of the top 7 stories in each group move on to round 2. There are 88 groups, each with apparently 30-35 stories. In my group, my story came in 6th. Whew.

On Friday, at midnight NYC-time, I’ll be assigned to a new group. Like round 1, we’ll get a genre, a setting, and an object. Then we have 48 hours to write a 1000-word or less story in that genre, set in that place, including that object. Only this time my competition will be people who have already proven their ability to write a decent flash fiction story.

I’m hoping that this round goes a little mor smoothly for me than round 1. Can I get a genre like sci-fi or fantasy or fairytale or comedy? All those were given to some groups in round 1. Political Satire was quite the challenge for me. I think my odds are good of getting a genre that’s a more natural fit for me, but historical fiction and romance are still out there like landmines waiting to blow up in my face.

I was also at my parents’ place for most of round 1’s window. Honestly, the political friction that exists between my folks and me might have helped the genre part of the story, but otherwise it was a big distraction. Round 2’s distraction (as mentioned in my last post) is the start of the school year. Friday is my first in-service day. Fortunately, the writing window is the weekend, so I’m hoping to avoid too much back-to-school distraction. Maybe I can use that atmosphere to my story’s advantage like I did with the last one.

I’m happy to make it to round 2. I was very nervous that I took too many liberties with the setting and object for round 1. I’m going to need a better showing if I want to make round 3. For now, I’m going to polish up that round 1 story and send it out to and editor. I’m supposed to let 10 days pass before publishing the story anywhere, but a 10-day turnaround for a response would be very fast, let alone sub-to-pub. I think there are some markets that “TruthSerum.ai” would fit into nicely. Let’s find out.