I have some interesting news. My first quarter submission to the Writers of the Future contest has been put “on hold,” following the untimely passing of the contest’s coordinating judge, K.D. Wentworth. Here’s the email I received this morning:
Dear Entrant,
I wanted to let you know that we have a delay in the handling of the 1st quarter due to the loss of our coordinating judge, K.D. Wentworth to cancer last week. Please bare with us while we get over this difficult time and organize the continuance of the contest. We do have another judge that is taking over and will make that annoucement soon.
Your story was placed in the hold category while K.D. was reading the hard copy submissions. You will be notified in the next month where you stand.
I’m sure you can understand the delay and thank you for being patient.
Best,
Joni Labaqui- Contest Director
From what I understand, this means that K.D. read my story and didn’t assign it a rejection or honorable mention, but put it in a pile of stories to read leader. It’s possible, of course, that the story could still receive a flat rejection, but it appears that most of the rejections have already gone out, so that’s probably unlikely.
The story I submitted is the first part of a novel which I hope to publish as soon as I hear back from the contest. If it wins or makes published finalist, however, those plans might be put on hold. I’ll let you know more as it happens.
If I do win, I’ll probably end up spending all the prize money just to come back to the States to accept the award. My Georgian co-teachers think that’s hilarious.
Actually, if you do win (Good luck!), the Contest will fly you out for the workshop and awards ceremony, even if you’re living in another country. They’ve had quite a few winners from Europe and Australia.
So I won’t have to live poor even by Georgian standards to come out? Sweetness!
Hi Joe,
I’m on hold too, I got that same e-mail. There’s a couple more of us over on the WotF forum, and all three of us have gotten semi-finalist places before so I too am hoping this means we’ve escaped the reject pile. But I guess we’ll find out in time!
Congratulations on the hold! KD mentioned on her forum at sff.net that the “maybe” pile is divided into Silver Honorable Mentions, Semi-Finalists, and Finalists, so I’ve got a running hypothesis that all of you people on hold should at least receive a Silver HM.
Just out of curiosity, the title of your short story isn’t the same title of your novel, it is? Posting the name of your short story on your blog might compromise your anonymity, since the judging is blind. It would be terrible to DQ after earning a spot in the hold pile. Good luck this quarter! (And do consider joining us sometime over at the WotF forum: http://forum.writersofthefuture.com/index.php )
Hmm, I didn’t realize that I could be disqualified by compromising my anonymity. Thanks for pointing that out. Hopefully, no one notices, but if you guys found me through the pingback on the SFWA site…well, let’s just hope no one notices. Thanks for the tip!
Anonymity isn’t part of the rules, is it? As in, the contest judges go searching around the Internet for information on the stories? How strange. I’d never heard of that before.
Good luck!
Anonymity isn’t explicitly part of the rules, but it does say that the judging is supposed to be blind, which means if you willfully compromise that you could in theory be disqualified. I just figure it’s safer to pull the title than to test that theory.