2024 New Year’s Writing Contest — Prizes, Awards, and Recognition!!!

Okay!!! It’s time to stick a bow on our 2024 New Year’s Writing Contest!

First, a huge thank you to EVERYONE who participated, whether by posting a story or leaving a comment. You helped make this a true community event.

Now: Let’s get to the part you’ve all been waiting for. We have a few prizes, but in the end, not enough of them, because so many wonderful people submitted GREAT stories.

Erin will distribute all cash awards; please contact her if you're a winner for payment specifications. PLEASE NOTE: While Erin has graciously agreed to act as paymaster, funds for this contest were 100% donated for this purpose and do not come out of Big Closet's operating budget. The awards will be available within a few days.

With only one item of “further ado” — note that the author and story names below are links, to make it easier for you to get to author and story pages — here goes.

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Jenny North Beauty and the Beast

Erisian Blue Silk

 

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We weren’t going to do this. We really weren’t. But the scores for the top stories were all so close, we had to. On a scale of one to one hundred the score for the fifteenth placed story (averaged between Jill’s and Emma’s independent scores) was just 2.50 points lower than the tied score for second place. There were twenty-two stories with average scores in the nineties, creating a logjam for top honors. An additional twenty-five stories got a 90 or above from one of the judges.

We can’t give forty-seven prizes, or even twenty-two. There’s no great cut-off point, either (we won’t release any scores, but trust us on this). So after much discussion, Jill, Jo and Emma collectively decided to give awards of fifty dollars each to the authors of nine additional stories that scored a virtual tie. Please believe us when we say that there were many other stories that were truly exceptional.

Here, in alphabetical order, are the additional stories we just had to recognize with a prize:

 

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One of our key objectives for the contest was to attract new authors — and new readers. We were ecstatic to get great submissions from eight authors who had not posted stories here before. Welcome to BC, Columbine, dkfenger, Intrigue75 (Polly J), Kimberly Read, Marissa Lynn, SuziAuchentiber, Suzie Dalkin, and The Court of Consciousness ! We look forward to reading many more of your stories. :)

There were twenty-one stories eligible for this award. The winner is:

If Marissa Lynn should decide to publish a novel through Doppler Press, Melanie E will provide free cover art. Jill and Emma will also provide beta reading and editing as requested.

 

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BC authors love comments and honestly can’t get enough of them; it means a lot to get feedback on a story. To encourage more comments, we offered a $50 prize for the best comment, with Joanne acting as sole judge. We didn’t realize, when we voluntold Jo for this duty, that she would have to review over 1700 comments! But she womanfully did her duty, and The Decider says that the two best comments of the contest were:

Holy Dystopian Megahorrors, Batgirl, by Maeryn Lamonte, commenting on Girl Park New Years, by Melanie Brown

This Was Freaking Hilarious, by Jenny North, commenting on Why is the Robotic Weasel on Fire? by Sunflowerchan (Rebecca)
 

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We had two drawings for $50 prizes in the contest.

The first was for BC members who sent us the names of non-BC authors they had invited to participate in the contest, with each invitation earning a separate ticket in the lottery. Thank you to everyone who reached out to additional authors! The winner of this drawing is:

The second drawing was for people who submitted the names of their three favorite contest stories in response to the blog we posted on February 15. To be eligible, responses had to provide the names of THREE contest stories, and couldn’t say anything negative. Fourteen eligible responses were posted — and a big thank you to Astrid Eriksson, Dee Sylvan, Dorothy Colleen, Eric, Gillian Chambers, Greybeard, Jenny North, Jo Dora Webster, Kristine Read, Lucy Perkins, Marissa Lynn, Rachel Moore, Sara Keltaine, and Sunflowerchan for sharing your thoughts. It is important to understand that with so many wonderful stories, a different pair of judges could easily have made different choices.

The winner of the “pick your favorites” drawing is:

 

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With the awards listed above, the contest kitty is now empty! But we wanted to add a bit of recognition, at least, for some notable achievements.
 

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The contest inspired a lot of activity on BigCloset — 120 contest-qualified stories, an additional twelve contest-inspired stories, and lots of reads, kudos and comments! Since all of that energy was exactly what we were hoping for, the totals shown in this section reflect both contest-qualified and contest-inspired stories.

Cover art can draw readers in, intrigue or seduce them into reading a story they might otherwise miss. Several authors in the contest made great cover art for their stories. See if these don’t draw you in – and if one does, just click on it, and the story is yours!

But of all of the great artwork included in the contest, Jenny North’s cover for Beauty and the Beast really stood out.

 

 

Finally, we want to leave you with a few snippets — phrases, descriptions, bits of dialogue— that stayed with the three of us after reading 120 stories. A little something to make you smile!

— Outstanding First Lines —
Or, how to hook a reader!

“This would have been a ‘You may wonder how I wound up here’ needle scratch moment, but Ethan Hammond knew exactly how he came to be sitting in The Midnight Hour, sipping on a bourbon cocktail that somehow tasted of chocolate even though there wasn't any in it.”
— Marissa Lynn, At the Midnight Hour

“Clarence sat on a wobbly barstool, trying to ignore the static on the television above the bar and endure the smell of fresh vomit wafting from a drunk man three stools away.”
— Terry Volkirch (Terrynaut), Cosmic Loophole

“It was a shop day, so I had to bring my smiles, despite everything that had happened.”
— Cyclist (Steph C), First Flight

"The moment Becky Stirling heard the voices in the distance, there were two things she instantly knew."
— Jenny Walker, Love Never Dies

 

— Outstanding Last Lines —
Or, how to stick your landing!

"I’ve finally found my soulmate!"
— Dee Sylvan, Fifty and Out

“I found my muse!”
— TiffQ (Tiffany B. Quinn), Finding My Muse

“Same old Cassie.”
— Drea DiMaggio (Andrea Lena), It's Okay

“When she got ready to leave, she asked Sarah if it was okay to give her a hug, and Sarah said, ‘As you wish…’”
— Kristine V. Read, A New Year’s Reconciliation

“You never forget the face of the first person you kill, no matter the circumstances.”
— CTen, New Year Resolutions, Broken and Kept

“Another laugh, which pulled my own from me, and we settled down to our dinner as my shell shivered into fragments that floated away on the wine.”
— Cyclist (Steph C), Reading the Room

“I am your Wingman.”
— Magicshoppe, Who Am I?

 

— Other Memorable Lines —

“Honey, I'm already a work of art."
— Jenny North, Beauty and the Beast

"Still I, I couldn’t escape my life’s STORY: TOO SHORT!"
— Bru, Contest Resolution

“. . . I need a do-over on my life. Too much alcohol, too much exposure to the sun, and too much fried food. My body tells me I spent too many years riding and crashing motorcycles, and my brain is addled by chemicals in Lucky Charms."
— Avia Conner, Convergence

“Skylar: I can’t afford that Cup. I can’t afford anything right now, remember. What kind of a name is Cup, anyway??? Like for drinks???

Cup: Not exactly. It’s a nickname. You’re probably saying it wrong.”
—Lauren Bliss, Go Big or Go Homeless

“Conan the librarian.”
— Cyclist (Steph C), Gooseberry

“Rene wished he could have this relationship with a girl. Well, with a girl when he was a man instead of a girl.”
— Daring Diane (the imaginative creator of Lee Corcoran!), Image Resolution

“I did the smile I practiced on the tourists, but I could tell she was a New Yorker. My teeth were wasted on her.”
— Sabrina G. Langton, Just Another Midnight at the Chapel

“It wasn’t even Irish whiskey, just cheap supermarket Canadian, tasting of kerosene and caribou piss.”
— Erin Halfelven (Joyce Melton), Last Wish

“Check! Set course to ignore the problem, Captain Oblivious!”
— RachelMnM (Rachel M. Moore), New Years Trans

“If he was going to freeze to death on the streets, he would do it under his own skies.”
— Cyclist (Steph C), Prodigal Son

“I had to drink to forget, drink to feel excited, drink to—please, fill in the blank— as every emotion and decision required the opinions of Jack, Jim and Jose. They were terrible friends, but my ex got along with them swimmingly, so we were a party of five for a while.”
— Aylesea Malcolm, Resolution Revelations

“This astromonology is easy, especially when you're properly Libra-cated. Now where's the booze. Time to get well and truly Pisces.”
– Maeryn Lamonte, Second Star to the Right

“Sometimes, hope is a choice. Something you take on faith.”
— Maeryn Lamonte, Yes Ma’am