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November 17, 1997
LETTER FROM WILL
Talk about an embarrassment of riches! In this, the third of
our erotic short story contests, there were over 250 entries--how
much over even I can't say. Those that came in formats other than
ASCII, or without the author's real name and copyright statement,
I would simply delete unread if the authors didn't respond to
my follow-up letters. There were a number of these that weren't
ever counted. Likewise, I deleted those that were sent with forged
addresses.
I had an enormous slushpile by October 15, and it took me weeks
to pare the list down to six. In that time I developed a true
hatred for ellipses. There are...many...people who...write like...this.
Except if you took the ellipses from my sentence you'd have a
sentence, which was not generally the case in the works I read.
And while I air my grievances, it is frightfully disconcerting
to have characters suddenly change names halfway through a story.
I'll comment briefly on the works I chose. "The Finkelstein"
reads like a lost tale from the Brothers Grimm, and you can have
great fun reading it for symbolic meanings if you like. "Their
Cabin" (which I think should have been titled "Snowbound") would
have been even better had there been more done with the circumstances.
Here's this couple trapped in a cabin far from the whole world.
She couldn't escape even if she wanted to. Now, that's a wonderfully
helpless situation for her to be in, and that point should have
been underscored. But no matter: what there is, is really good.
"Kira's Dream" I won't spoil with commentary. I really like the
ambiguity of its ending.
The three works I chose for honorable mention were ones I couldn't
quite justify as place winners. "Capri" reads like the first chapter
of a novel--and if it isn't, it should be. It isn't a short story,
and for that reason alone, I couldn't honor it as fully as I thought
it deserved. "The Store," likewise, is an episode, not a story,
but what a wonderful episode it is. Finally, "My Darkside Fantasy"
I consider more a powerful first draft than a finished story,
and had its elements been fully integrated (and the characters
fully fleshed) it would have been among the place winners without
question.
The stories speak for themselves, and without further ado, here
they are.
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