Badges? Yes, We Need… er… Badges…

Just to show you how non-bloggy I've been the last month or so, and how fully immersed in NaNoWriMo, let me confess to you right here and right now that it's been so bad that I completely forgot to even mention the writing contest that I won earlier this month.

Well, this brief post is to remedy that.

Just before Hallowe'en, Protagonize held a "Tales of Terror" competition, and I decided to act on a bizarre and disturbing idea I'd had for a number of months (nearly a year, actually). There had been a thread on the site back in January and February called the Diabolically Villainous Challenge, and though I did come up with a scenario for it, I never added it, because at the time I thought it was too disturbing and that I'd have trouble writing it (or nightmares after writing it).

Evidently it had percolated long enough, because when the "Tales of Terror" competition came along, I decided to get the accursed thing out of my noggin and into readable form.

Good thing I did. I won the contest.

Also, it turns out that thinking about writing it was far more disturbing than actually writing it. Go figure.

Now that Nick (the Protagonize founder and chief poo-bah) has made lovely ribbon badges available for myself and the other two winners, I decided I'd better correct an oversight and give myself a shout-out for being so darned clever and all.

And would it be too immodest of me to say that this was the first time I'd ever written a horror story? Probably, but there it is. One must take the opportunities as they arise, mustn't one?

My story is called "A Slice of Life", and the other two winners were "Irrefutable Evidence" by lostmidtranslation and 17abbi and "Human No Longer" by JackRubashevskiy.

We all had a terrifyingly good time, and we hope the readers did too.

Mind the gap. And the creepy dark shadows.