To keep myself from losing track of:
all the contests I've entered,
all the contests I've volunteered myself as a judge (or let myself be voluntold into judging),
all the books I've had to read as a contestant or as a judge,
all the deadlines,
a...
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I haven't yet decided whether I want to enter this one or not. I need to get off the fence.
The judges want new material. It's been decades since I thought in poetry. Do I want to give it a try?
UPDATE (10/16/2024) - I entered some microfiction and a short story from my new anthology, Morsels: Tales of Love and Passion. No poetry.
UPDATE (12/4/2024) - All five microfiction stories were longlisted:
"A Tale As Old as Time" - I don't remember entering that one. Surely I must have, though?
"A Rose By Any Other Name" - another one I don't remember entering.
"The Alpaca Yarn Incident"
"One Of the Girls"
"The Muse"
"Parliament of Rooks," my short story, did not make the longlist.
Two works of blatant erotica, one of which involved a positively brutal caning and the other of which had Beauty making love to her Beast (yes, in Beast form) made the longlist.
Full stop. Let's chew on this for a minute.
Clearly, we have proof that what I wrote had literary value, did not appeal to prurient interest, and was not porn. The Shortys are judged by Wattpad Community Ambassadors. If anybody knows how community standards work, it's the Ambassadors.
Never mind whether or not any of the stories make the shortlist - or win the contest. My erotica just got the ultimate validation.
