After
assembling my own anthology for publication (Young Adventurers, due for release
in December) I thought I was fully ready to help judge a short story contest that
would result in an anthology for fellow publisher. Well… maybe.
Nancy Sakaduski of Cat & Mouse Press invited me to be
one of the six judges for this year’s Rehoboth Beach Reads Short Story Contest. I was honored, but
still didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. Nancy is tapped into a
pretty vital writing community in Delaware, which resulted in more than 130
submissions! When I got my first batch of 40 stories to review I figured I’d
blow through them pretty quickly. I just needed to pick my top five choices
with no reviews, comments, or explanation
required. We were judging the stories based on their creativity, quality of
writing, their suitability as a beach read, and how well they fit the beach
theme. Eliminations should be easy, right? You know a story’s too weak by the end of the first page.
The problem is, almost none of them was weak. This was a
pretty darn good bunch of stories. I wanted five great reads to float to the
surface, but it was more like twenty. I had to get really picky to choose the
5.
But then we all needed to read the entire group of
semi-finalists. Six judges, five stories
each. That means thirty counting my
five, but surely there’d be a lot of overlap that would reduce that number,
right? Well, not so much. We had 28 semi-finalists to consider. And shoot,
almost all of these were really good! Plus there was the apples vs oranges
issue: is this really well written romance better or worse than that well
written humorous story? Or the thriller? But hard choices had to be made. We
each shared our top three choices (although I couldn’t resist mentioning two
that were an eyelash away from the top three.)
Finally, we judges met to hash out which of these fine
efforts would be declared first, second and third place winners. There was
lively discussion but no conflict really. These people were definitely my
respected peers and we all made passionate arguments for our favorites. Ultimately
we all loved the top stories to some degree so settling on final winners was
not that hard. And we each got to give a Judge’s Award to a favorite that didn’t
make it into the top three.
It was exhausting but SO rewarding, and I now know
several authors I want to pursue for a Intrigue Publishing. If you are an
accomplished writer you should look for an opportunity to judge. It’s a
wonderful experience.
