This is the End, My Only Friend

[Bdoomed]

Well, it's over, but if you stick around through the credits, you see the hand of the presumed-dead villain begin to twitch, then ball up into a fist.  That's why you always do a double-tap.

It's been fun, fellow forumites, and we finally have three winners!

Congratulations to Mr. Flyspeck by R.k.Kombrinck, The Violin Family by James Douglas, and Whispers From The Trench by Robert McKinney!

Another congratulations to all of our finalists, semifinalists, and first round stories as well!  This was a wonderful contest, and I had a blast reading each and every one of the stories, and rooting for my favorites.

It was a bit of a bumpy road, as well, and I thank you all for sticking it out with me.  I certainly learned a lot about hosting a contest, and hopefully won't be making the same mistakes again.

All in all, it was a blast, and I hope you all had as much fun as I did.  I also hope you enjoyed my little intros as much as I enjoyed writing them!  They were all plucked straight from the top of my head as I was posting the polls, often sparked by a line or two from something my girlfriend and I were watching on Netflix at the time (anything from Weeds to Charmed).

I will be contacting Shawn with the information about the winners, and I will also urge him to take a look at the stories.  Who knows, maybe he'll pluck a few more from the pile!  Do let me know if you wish your story to be taken out of consideration, be it for other publishing opportunities or otherwise.  Remember, stories in this contest are not considered published, but even so, if you are the author and request your story to be taken down, I will do so.  The thread will remain, but the story will be erased.  To do this, you can PM me here on the forums, email me at bdoomed@gmail.com, or send a message to eaflash@gmail.com.  The best way is probably through my personal email address, but I'll see it one way or another.

Thank you all again for participating and reading and voting and commenting!  The Pod Castle contest should be starting up in July or so, so get those fantasy stories ready!

And remember, have fun!

[benjaminjb]

Thanks for all your work making this contest fun and functional, Bdoomed. I know it can't always have been so easy and I also know how rocky Weeds gets at times.

[Fenrix]

I like it when the stories stay up. Makes it easy to reference when they wander into the review queue. Also, authors have used the old threads to announce publication.

[eytanz]

Thanks for all the work, Bdoomed! And thanks to all the authors who participated, and the voters who voted. I thought there were both excellent stories and excellent discussion in the threads.

[ZombieInkpot]

Thanks for the brilliant contest, Bdoomed. It was very enjoyable and I loved your intros. I wish I could have voted for some of them in the contest!

Congratulations to the winners. All the entries were really strong and I loved reading all the stories.

[Cutter McKay]

This was an awesome contest. Thank you BDoomed for hosting and for doing such a spectacular job. I'm very excited about the winners, even with mine not being among them. They deserve the victories they've won.

Thanks again, BDoomed, and I heartily look forward to the PodCastle contest!

[kelleynotlp]

Thanks BDoomed! This was an excellent experience and I had a lot of fun! So many quality stories brought together for one contest. Not an easy competition at all! You did a great job keeping it all together and updated.

[Thunderscreech]

Absolutely, thanks a bunch!

[Harley Warren]

Thank you Bdoomed.  Congrats to the winners.  All three were really superb. 

[adrianh]

Thanks for all your work making this contest fun and functional, Bdoomed. I know it can't always have been so easy

+N for large values of N

[Sgarre1]

Hello all

I've kept out of this process because just running Pseudopod is more than enough work for me but now that it's all over, I wanted to thank Bdoomed and everyone else for working so hard and making it a success.

As for when the winners will be produced - oddly, the VERY FIRST EPISODE I put together when I took over as editor was the winners of the previous flash contest episode - partly because it was challenging (3 stories) but also safe (I had nothing to do with them) and also as a means of clearing the decks before I got things started up and further just for expediency's sake so that I didn't forget about them.

I'm not exactly sure where the episode will go just yet - could be in October or November or, at the latest, the episode to open January 2014.

And yes, technically there's no reason you can't submit a contest episode to Pseudopod as a normal (flash) submission although I;d ask that perhaps you wait a month until I check on some things with Bdoomed (if you're already submitted it before reading this, that's fine, no worries).

Thanks again everyone.

[Portrait in Flesh]

All hail our Tiger Overlord.

[MCWagner]

Awesome contest overall.  Incredibly impressed with the quality (and quantity) of stories we got, and thank you to Bdoomed for being very open to suggestions about the manner of organization and progression.  I really liked the "mix winners from preliminary rounds for the semi-finals" as it rejuvenated the blood-pumping anxiety of the next faceoff for your own or your favorite story.

The immense final round was a little awkward, but was really the best approach to a difficult situation with such an immense number of entries.  I can't think of a better way to organize it.

[Unblinking]

Well done on running the contest, Bdoomed!  It was fun, if also rather tiring.

I'm just checking back after 2 weeks of leave to celebrate the arrival of wee babby Ian. 

[ZombieInkpot]

Congrats to Unblinking and Mrs Unblinking on the arrival of their baby Ian 

[Jec]

  Thank you Bdoomed! Thank you also for everyone who commented and gave such great feedback on my story. The submissions were great and I enjoyed reading them all.