Christmas Engagement Win
Today it was announced that While You Tell Yourself the Truth tied for the "Most Adventurous" award for SIYE's Christmas Engagement Challenge. This will make it a "Featured Story" on SIYE.
While I'm thrilled and grateful to be so recognized, I also have some mixed feelings. For one thing, the story tied with
sovranspecific's magnificent story Phoenix (which also won Best Overall), and the two aren't even in the same league. I'm not being modest, here: I'm a fair judge of my own work, and WYTYT isn't my best. I enjoyed writing it (it was lots of fun to try my hand at fluff and action-adventure), but it isn't anywhere near as good as Counting to Five Thousand, which didn't even come in fourth place for the "Best Angst" award for December. Phoenix, by contrast, is a gorgeous piece of work on many levels (including some sophisticated use of third-person narrative to illustrate character change); it's an honor to be named in the same breath as that story, but somehow it doesn't seem entirely fair.
Meanwhile, congratulations to dearest
stmargarets, whose sweet story These Three Words won the award for "Very Romantic" and who is a multiple-champion at these Challenges -- although it may be that this particular award is complicated for her too? (Look at her Year in Review posting, where she calls it "the worst writing experience I've ever had.")