Tag: nyc-midnight

nycMidnight – Round 2 results are in…

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

After a long wait, the results for Round 2 of the nycMidnight Flash Fiction Contest are in. The authors of the top three (3) stories in each group move on to the third and final round. My story placed…fourth. First Honorable Mention. Alas.

Sometime in the next week or two, I’ll put my thoughts together regarding the whole NYCM experience. I want to see the critique and let my mind settle before I attempt that. Check back if that’s something that interests you.

Avast, matey!

In other news that I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about, I sold a story to an anthology! Very soon, Raconteur Press will be releasing their pirate anthology, Planks & Plunder. They’ve asked that we wait for all versions (ebook and print) are available before pushing out links, but I’ll have them soon.

My story is called “The True Stone and the Faux Blade”. It’s a classic Caribbean-pirate tale (not space pirates, though I have an old one of those you could read/listen to on Escape Pod. Click here to check out “Leech Run”) with plenty of fantasy elements. Driven by vengeance, a girl joins a pirate crew captained by a collector of magical artifacts. But is she part of the crew of part of the collection?

This is the first story sale I’ve made in a long time. A looong time. Long enough that I can’t bring myself to type it. If you look in my bibliography, I guess you can do the math yourself. Some of that I can chalk up to decreased output, but that doesn’t make the hiatus any less frustrating. So it was a huge relief when I saw the congratulatory email. I’m using that boost to fuel a surge in my submissions so I can maybe get another one picked up somewhere.

I’ve seen the cover art. It’s nice. But no…I’m going to hold off until I can link you to it. That should be sometime in the next week. Watch for it soon.

How’s NYC Midnight going?

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

It’s mid-June and the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest is back on my mind. This is an update. If you want my primary report on my NYCM experience, click here.

The only new thing that’s happened with the contest since my last post was that people were invited to share their stories on the forum (password protected for feedback purposes, thus avoids classifying as “published”). I elected to do so. It seems about 10% or so of participants joined me in the experience. The suggestion is that you read some stories and comment on them, including a link back to your own story for reciprocal readings.

So I read one of the first few stories to post and offered some commentary. By then, I had comments start trickling in on my story, so I started reciprocating. And after one day of this…it stopped. No one was reading and commenting on my story anymore. I was a little shocked that it halted at day one, but not as shocked as I was by something else.

As I mentioned in my original NYCM post, I’m used to contests like this through my writing group. That group is composed exclusively of writers with a professional sale or participation in a major workshop with similar selection criteria. (This fact might be crucial in a moment.) For such writing group contests, the participants are the judges, reading, rating, and commenting on every story in the group except your own. The ultimate goal of those contests isn’t just to win the contest but to create a marketable story. Thus, most of my comments attempt to include both positive and constructive comments, to let the writer know what worked for me and what didn’t. In the NYCM forum, I did the same thing. This thing was great; you might want to think about this other thing. However, none of the comments I received included the second part. Lots of back-patting, no recommendations. So either my story was perfect (it was not) or they just didn’t offer those kinds of thoughts.

So my over-thinking brain and I have been stewing on this. Why no constructive comments? Is it because the se posted after the contest deadline so it’s considered too late to change? Or is this just not a community that offers those kinds of comments? Or was my story just too out there for suggestions? (This is possible. The story format was an AI analyzing the factuality of news stories line by line, offering its own explanations and commentary. And the news story in question was about the sun dying. So yeah, a little weird.) And the follow-up overthinking question: did these people whose stories I read want my suggestions?

I hope the participants know my comments were all made with good, helpful intentions. I wasn’t suggesting I knew more than anyone else, just sharing the thoughts I had about the story min case they could be helpful in some future rewrite. So if anyone was under the impression I’m not a guy with anxiety, you now see evidence to the contrary. I guess I’ll just wonder about this until eternity.

I hope the participants know my comments were all made with good, helpful intentions. I wasn’t suggesting I knew more than anyone else, just sharing the thoughts I had about the story min case they could be helpful in some future rewrite. So if anyone was under the impression I’m not a guy with anxiety, you now see evidence to the contrary. I guess I’ll just wonder about this until eternity.