Just found out that I received my second Honorable Mention with the Writers of the Future Contest for the short story adaptation of my planned series Skyland.

I’m glad I got an HM, but I’m a little disappointed.  Which might sound bad, but let me explain.  My first HM was for a story that I thought was decent, but Skyland was truly the best thing I’ve ever written.  It was leaps and bounds beyond my first HM story.  Which is why I expected it to do better.  And now, I have to figure out what to do with it.  I might submit to some literary magazines and see what happens.  I could self-publish it as is.  I might see if I can expand it into a full novel.  I’m not feeling the serial aspect anymore.  When I changed it to be a complete story, it made me realize that the other story wasn’t necessarily needed.  So, who knows what in the world I’ll do with WindChasers (the planned 2nd book when it was going to be a serial).  I struggled a lot to write that, but I did write enough words that it feels odd to just throw it away.  But it ties in heavily with Skyland, so, it’s stand alone, and has a complete arch, but has an open arc, too.  Hmm…

I don’t know if I’ll enter the Writers of the Future Contest again.  I’ve got a lot of projects at the moment (2 short stories are for actual publication, sort of!  It’s this whole thing that I’ll explain when it’s closer to release.  I want to have the contracts all good and signed first 🙂 ) And, if any of my submissions do well, then I won’t be “amateur” anymore, and I won’t qualify for the contest.  That would be a pretty great disqualification.

So, we’ll see what happens.  For now, just trying to be happy with my Honorable Mention.