I recently entered the 9th Annual NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge, a competition consisting of three rounds, the first of which ended at midnight on Saturday.
1,440 writers were divided into forty-eight “heats” and assigned a genre, subject, and character.
My prompts? Comedy, a family reunion, and a waiter.
The results of the first round won’t be released until March 10th (at midnight—see a theme developing?), but they’ve allowed us to post our stories offsite and link to their forum for feedback. So I created a Short Stories tab with the hopes of adding at least a couple more stories from the competition (as I mentioned, there are three rounds), as well as some of my future endeavors.
Also required of the participants in the challenge: create a one or two sentence (max) synopsis of the story—a catchy logline, if you will. Here’s mine:
What’s the god of wine, women, and song to do when his light-in-the-sandals son aspires to be nothing more than a mere waiter? When you’re Dionysus, you gird your loins, take a swig of Mavroudi, and hope to Hades your father, Zeus, is just as understanding.
If you’d like to take a look, I’d love to have you read. Click this link or enter through the tab up top for my submission: Passing the (Olympic) Torch.
Peace,
M.L. Swift, Writer 
Great tagline! Bet you had fun writing that story.
Good luck with the competition. Keep us posted.
Thanks, Alex. Yes, the research and writing was a blast! It’s been awhile since I’ve delved into the mythological realms. Good to see you.
I think you should win just because your name is so writerly.
Ha! That made me chuckle. 🙂 Thanks, Penny. I hope a little skill plays into it as well. Let’s see if I have as much success with the name as Jonathan did. Thanks for coming by.
Excellent story!
Thanks, Loni! I’m glad you came by, and even more so that you enjoyed it.
Ok, well, the concept sounds freaking FANTASTIC, and I love the logline, soooo…yeah I guess I can read it 😉 I’m psyched to, are you kidding?? I’m bookmarking it for when I can sit down and really enjoy it. Soon, I promise!
Liz,
Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it. 😀
You did a perfect job on the tagline and I know how hard those are to write. Loved the story and had a few chuckles “butched him up” being one. Lovely phonetic twist at the end. Very clever. Good luck in the contest.
Thanks, Lee,
And I hope “Sudden Secrets” is taking off for you and becoming ‘common knowledge’ for all your fans! Thanks for reading!
I wish you well in the competition. Yep, it is a catchy logline.
Glad you liked the logline. Hope your year is off to a good start!