Exciting news I’d like to share with you, my cherished supporters! And a good lesson for my writer friends to be persistent with submitting our work. Almost 30 years ago, I entered a year-long international writing contest where writers were given a fresh prompt and had to submit a vignette of no more than 250 words by the end of the week. The fifty-two weekly first place winners were then judged at the end of the contest year by twelve professionals in the publishing industry. Two of mine placed in the Top 10, one of them taking the Grand Prize and the Writer of the Year award. First place … out of some 30,000 entries.
I then created two stories based on that prizewinning vignette. One was a longer surrealistic story, the other a shorter science fiction flash story. I sent them to every pro market in their respective genres that appeared over the years, all to no avail. But I knew the core of these stories was solid, having won against improbable odds. I never stopped believing over the years that at least one of the stories would touch the heart of an editor and get bought and published.
Enter the new literary market Story Unlikely and their annual short story contest. I submitted three stories to this blind contest. They had 2500 entries that year out of which nine finalists were chosen. From the nine were picked the first through third prizewinners. While I didn’t win, all three of my stories placed in the top nine. One of them was “Grasshoppers Against the Jar,” that story I had been submitting to markets for almost thirty years.
The editor also bought it for publication.
I am happy to announce “Grasshoppers Against the Jar” has now been published. Persistence yields rewards.
It’s free to read at Story Unlikely. It’s short. I hope you’ll check it out. Enjoy!