It’s December, that special month where a variety of different celebrations happen and we spend time with our families and give gifts and whatnot.
So why not send in some holiday-themed stories so 50WS can join in the festivities?
If you have a story about Christmas, Hannukah, or even Festivus, I want to see it!
As always, you can submit your stories by email to tim@fiftywordstories.com. Full submission guidelines can be found on the Submissions page.
I’d like to again apologize for the inconsistency on the site for the past couple of weeks. I’m on a business trip and working 12+ hour days, and I’ve just been forgetting to schedule stories in between working my overtime and having Skype conversations with my wife and son back home…
Next week should be better. I’m going to prepare the full week’s worth of stories in advance (what an intriguing concept!).
Sorry again!
I apologize for the lack of a story today. My only excuse is that with the new job I’m preparing for, which includes a cross-province move, my attention has been thoroughly divided, and I simply forgot to approve and schedule something from my slush pile of submissions.
By the time I realized that I’d forgotten, it was already almost noon, so I decided it would be better not to do a disservice to a guest writer by giving their story only half a day of exposure. I’ll do my best to make sure that there are no further omissions in the coming weeks, though continued transitions and associated busyness make it difficult for me to promise perfection on that front.
Thank you for your understanding.
It’s contest time again, which means you’ve got a chance to win some great prizes by sending in your stories!
This time around, I’m looking for stories based on a Back-to-School theme. Interpret that however you want, as long as there’s some connection with school or the autumn season.
Prizes!
What kind of contest would this be without prizes?
There are five prizes available for the Back-to-School contest.
Contest Rules and Submission Details
Send your stories by email to tim@fiftywordstories.com. Please send each story in a separate email. Include the title of the story in the subject line of the email and copy the story itself into the body of the email. Please limit your entries to three stories per author.
The submission period starts now and is open until Saturday, September 1. Winners will be revealed during the week of September 3 to 7.
Stories will be judged by Tim Sevenhuysen.
Stories not chosen to receive prizes may still be featured on the site at a later date.
This coming week I’ll be posting five stories from guest writers, and won’t be writing any stories myself. Why? Because my wife is due to give birth on April 3!
We can’t pinpoint exactly when she’ll go into labour, of course, but it’s likely to be some time next week. I have lots of great submissions waiting to be shared, so I thought this would be a good time to get some more of them out there, and save myself a little bit of time and work at the same time so I don’t have to worry about keeping up with things whenever Larissa feels the baby start to worm its way out. (That’s how giving birth works, right?)
Enjoy the great lineup of submissions next week! I know I’ve enjoyed reading and vetting them.
Pirate Week has been, I think, the most fun I’ve ever had running a contest. It’s had the biggest prizes, the highest number of submissions, and the most reader involvement, through the Audience Choice Award voting. Thank you so, so much to everyone who sent a story in, commented on and rated their favourites, and voted like crazy in the Audience Choice poll! I’m blown away by the number of votes the poll received.
I want to send out a special thank you to Todd Battaglia and his Grade 7 Language Arts classes. Todd assigned the Pirate Week 50-word story challenge to his classes and sent me the results of what his students came up with. I was only able to pick five stories out of that collection, to avoid flooding the site with too many stories all at once, but I read, enjoyed, and appreciated every story I received. And that goes for all of the other submissions that I wasn’t able to post on the site, too!
The Results
Now here’s the information everyone wants to see! First, the Audience Choice Award, as voted on by the readers, goes to Brandon King for his story Hospitality. Congratulations, Brandon! As a prize, I will be emailing Brandon to get his input on the next Captain Blackbird short story.
On to the Grand Prize winner and the runner-up prize winners. I know this is “the thing to say,” but it’s really been difficult for me to choose a winner from among the five finalists. After deliberating long and hard, however, I’ve come to my conclusions.
The Runners-Up will each receive
The winners of the Runner-Up prizes are… Cameron Boyce for A Golden Opportunity and Brandon King for Hospitality!
The Grand Prize winner will receive
The Grand Prize winner is… Abby W. for Night-Time Stories!
Congratulations to Abby, Cameron, and Brandon, and also to King Kool and John H. Dromey, our other finalists. Your stories were all really excellent! I will be emailing you soon so you can claim your prizes.
Arrr, maties. Thanks for writing in and reading along, everyone!
It’s time to vote!
Help pick the winner of the Audience Choice Award from the five finalist stories that were posted today.
The finalists are
[poll id=”2″]
Voting closes on Tuesday, February 28, at midnight.
The five stories going up tomorrow (Friday, February 24) are all finalists for the Grand Prize and for Audience Choice Award voting. Here’s how it’s all going to work:
The five stories will go up over the course of the day. After the last finalist has been posted, I will post a poll for Audience Choice voting. The poll will remain open until midnight PST on Tuesday, February 28. Whichever story has received the most votes by the time the poll closes will win the Audience Choice Award.
On Wednesday, February 29, I will post the Audience Choice Award winner and the winners of the Grand Prize and the two runner-up prizes.
I hope everyone has been enjoying Pirate Week, and I’m sure you’ll all enjoy the finalists!
Did you think the awesome collection of prizes for Pirate Week was big? Well it’s about to expand again!
In addition to giving out prizes to one winner and two runners up, I’ll be making a selection of stories available on Friday for Audience Choice voting. Whoever wins the Audience Choice Award will be given a very special prize: they will have input into the next Captain Blackbird pirate adventure short story I write!
I hope everyone’s looking forward to reading all the great stories that are going to be posted this week. I’ll be posting about six stories each day, so check back throughout the day if you won’t want to miss anything.
Also, since I received so many entries I won’t be posting any stories that I wrote myself this week. I have enough work to do scheduling them all and doing the judging! :)
Have you entered the Pirate Week contest yet?
If you haven’t, here are some more reasons to do so! In addition to the prizes that have already been announced, the winner will receive a felt eyepatch and a pirate-themed corner bookmark monster, made by my friend Tally Heilke of I Could Make That fame.
I’m also expanding the runner-up prizes to include an ebook of your choice, alongside the Fifty-Word Stories ebook.
That brings our total prize pool to the following:
Read up on the full contest rules and enter now! The deadline is February 17.