Monthly Archives: February 2013

Free EBook: A Steampunk Valentine

We are very proud to announce the release of A Steampunk Valentine, our first ebook. This little volume collects all forty-one entries from our Valentine short short story competition into one easy-to-read form. And it turns out that a lot of little things add up after a while as the book clocks in at almost 30k words.

The book is available from from Smashwords for Kindle, Nook, and other ebook readers. We might be a little biased here, but we think it would make a wonderful Valentine’s Day present for the Steampunk aficionado in your life. Hint.

Tell your friends. Heck, tell your enemies; maybe they’ll become friends too.

And above all, have a happy St. Valentine’s Day!

St. Valentine’s Short Short Competition – Winner!

Well, at long last we have a winner.

Thirteen of the authors cast votes. All were invited to, both on the site and by email, but only thirteen did. Voters were asked to pick their first, second, and third choices. These I then scored as 5 points, 3 points, and 2 points. These numbers were chosen so that two choices on a lower level would outweigh one choice on a higher level. The thought was to allow stories that lots of people liked, but didn’t place first, to still have the chance to rise to the top.

Given these criteria, “Nuts and Bolts” by GoldfishGal is the winner with 23 points.

Congratulations, GoldfishGal! I’ll give your contact information to the folks at Corset-Story and they should be in touch with you shortly.
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St. Valentine’s Short Short Competition – Reconciliation

As mentioned earlier, there have been some irregularities in the voting for our little contest, which have made it difficult, if not impossible, to fairly pick a winner. I cannot prove who was behind this mess and I do try to think the best of people, so I will not disqualify anyone.

Several of the authors from the contest suggested that they, the participants, should be able to determine the winner and I believe this to the correct course of action at this point.

So, authors (and only the authors please), post a comment on this post giving your first, second, and third choice for the winner. Tomorrow morning I will tabulate this and we might finally have a winner, albeit probably too late to receive the prize in time for Valentine’s Day, which which I am sorry.

And thank you for your participation. Despite this mishegoss at the end, I hope you enjoyed this competition.

St. Valentine’s Short Short Competition – Results Delayed Due to Shenanigans

Well, this sucks. I tried to run a nice little competition here and people have cheated. We’re pretty much out of time to redo anything if the winner is to receive anything by Valentine’s Day as was the intention, so instead I’m stuck going through thousand of votes in the logs to try to figure out what to do and who should get the prize.

Want an example of the evidence of cheating? No problem.

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St. Valentine’s Short Short Competition – Final Match

This one is for all the marbles, and more specifically, for the Steampunk Corset being generously provided by the good people at Corset-Story. It’s been a long tournament. Now it is time to pick a winner.

#25 – “Submerged” by Empress Annde

vs

#6 – “Dana stood at the edge…” by Katey Springle Lempka

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