Science Fiction Contest Results!

You know, when I started this little prequel to my upcoming Victory Universe, I wasn't actually all that sure of what would happen to it within the context of the contest I was writing it for. Would it win big? Would it be forgotten in the entry pile? I honestly feared both options. Premonitions was the very first act of a writer, like the Tin Man of Oz, shaking off more than a decade of absolute rust. I took on the project knowing I wasn't yet at a level where I could do proper justice to the kinds of works I had planned ahead of me. This was a project designed something like a defibrillator; it was a sudden violent shock designed to force the life back into my lazy bones.

I like to think it worked for what I personally wanted it for. It greatly accelerated my plans and made me realize that there were areas where I still had quite a bit of rust to get rid of. That's brought me to the point where I'm working now, concurrently on two brand-new anti-rust projects. Both of these are necessary first-steps to those big projects I've got in the works, not for lore or story reasons but just for redeveloping my atrophied skills. More importantly, I never would have realized I still needed the old oil can if I hadn't taken the time to draft up and submit this contest entry in the first place. This experience genuinely made those future stories significantly better, and for those lessons alone I am eternally grateful.

So imagine my shock that I won an actual award too! Yeah, I didn't manage any of the top 4 podium positions, but at least one of the judges liked the piece enough to feature it prominently! As the first real, honest-to-goodness comment on the story it was also a massive relief for me to see that Bicyclette really did seem to "get it" as well. It's one thing to place some words down on a digital page and understand them clearly yourself, but it's an entirely different thing to correctly convey those ideas to another individual. One of my biggest personal focuses in writing Premonitions was in trying to correctly and concisely convey the complicated story ideas I had rattling around in my head. It really means the world to me to know that my ideas got through the way I actually intended. From the dark world I came from before my years-long hiatus, before working my way back here, it's a truly monumental relief to know I've actually got that much down.

Now the real work can begin.