#WEP WINNERS : JUNE 2023 CHALLENGE - CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND

 Hi! This is Nila with you for the summing up of the June Challenge and to tell you who all won! 

Before we get into that - thank you to all participants, who as usual blew us away with the variety and depth of their interpretations of the prompt. Our participant numbers have remained the same this year...but I can honestly say that what we've lacked in quantity we've made up in creativity and quality. The writing at these challenges never ceases to amaze!

Let's kick off with a round up of all entries, put together by your co-host Jemi. Hop over and read them for yourself to experience the awesome range of our talent pool. 

Nilanjana Bose - How not to meet an online friend face to face.

Denise Covey - Life can be over in 60 seconds

Yolanda Renee - Even witnessed phenomenon is not proof

Olga Godim - Aliens are just like us. Probably…

Jemi Fraser - Sometimes it's best to trust your gut, not your colleagues

Pat Garcia - The closer she got, the clearer her head became until she stood before Strain Man with his cone-shaped head and dressed in metallic clothing

Jamie - What if you’re an alien to those in your refrigerator?

Ornery Owl - Just who is responsible for this travesty?

NR Williams - Alien Discussion

Silver Tree - Close Encounter with a Vampire Queen

J Lenni Dorner - A fantasy adventuring party of three must cross a river by communicating with a sky creature

Sonia Dogra - The Many Faces Of Truth

Roland R Clarke - Shaped Encounters

Hilary - Close Encounters from life experience

Shortlist

The interpretations ranged from witty humour to fantasy, war to adventure sports - our writers do NOT make the job of shortlisting easy. In fact, they make it more difficult with every passing challenge! Which is exactly the way it should be - because they are a superlative bunch and getting better by the minute. 

What doesn't quite show up here is the long and passionate process involved in choosing the shortlist, each host reads and rereads and defends her choices to the team; there is much discussion and debate before we arrive at a consensus. 

The shortlist was whittled down to:

Ornery Owl

Pat Garcia

N.R. Williams

Hilary

J Lenni

Jamie

Here are the four that the team finally picked to pass onto our judge Nick: 

Ornery Owl

Pat Garcia

Hilary

Jamie

COMMENTING

WEP is a supportive writing environment where you are welcome to try new ideas, take risks, and put forth your latest WIP for feedback. Commenters are asked to be respectful, sensitive and to keep comments positive. 

If you have trouble commenting on blogs, please continue to leave a comment here (we're fortunate that Google hasn't messed up our commenting here) or on our C-Box. And if your blog comments are down and you have a blogger blog, consider changing your comment settings to Pop-ups, not embedded, temporarily, until google provides a fix.

This month's prize is from Lynda Dietz from Easy Reader Editing. 

Easy Reader Editing

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Finally, the Oscars go to...!

Three winners! Three Oscars!

AND NOW IT'S TIME TO CONGRATULATE THE WINNERS!

WE HOPE YOU AGREE THE BADGES ARE BEYOND AWESOME!

THANKS, OLGA GODIM!

THE WINNER OF THE JUNE 2023 CHALLENGE 

~ CLOSE ENCOUNTERS ~ 

IS 

Congratulations, Pat!

Pat's Story The Strain Man was:

Nick says: So beautifully done in a few short paragraphs, hinting towards other worlds and letting the reader's imagination go wherever they want with it. I love how music featured as communication.

Pat, please post this badge on your blog and link it to your winning entry. Tweet it/Facebook it if you desire to share the love! Use the critique prize or pass it on to the next winner if you can't avail yourself of it in the next few months. (Lynda has offered her critique prize twice before and has never yet been asked to critique!) I'm hoping someone will take up her generous offer this time. I'd love a critique from Lynda. She's awesome at what she does.

THE RUNNER-UP OF THE JUNE 2023 CHALLENGE 

~ CLOSE ENCOUNTERS ~

IS

Congratulations, Jamie!

Jamie's story Kitchen Counters and the Refrigerated Kind was a ton of fun!

Nick says: Whimsical, enchanting, laugh-out-loud, a brilliant idea done really well.

Jamie, please post the badge on your blog and promo any way you wish!

THE ENCOURAGEMENT AWARD FOR THE JUNE 2023 CHALLENGE 

~ CLOSE ENCOUNTERS ~

GOES TO

Congratulations Ornery Owl! 

Ornery Owl's poem Gross Encounters of the Worst Kind was also a lot of fun!

Nick says: Just a good dose of pure fun. Puts a smile on your face and sometimes that's all that's needed.

Ornery Owl, please post the badge on your blog and promo any way you wish!

WEP 2024 FLASH FICTION ANTHOLOGY - to be released approx. May 2024.

All winners are automatically invited to submit.

Anyone involved in WEP in the past is invited to submit.

Nila is in charge of bringing this baby home. For now, any questions, please post in comments so all can see the answers.

TO ALL INTERESTED PARTIES WHO LOVE WRITING FLASH FICTION:

 You are personally invited to submit a flash fiction piece of between 500 min - 1,000 words max to our upcoming anthology. This will be a work of prose fiction – no poetry, although a poem may be included within your predominately prose story.

 Many of the finer points of the anthology are still being finalized, but we have a concrete theme -- Gone!  Gone! Gone! All stories submitted will be written to this theme from which the WEP team envisage many possible genres - thriller, romance, fictionalized memoir, horror, crime, women's fiction, paranormal ... and others. By the August post, you will know all there is to know.

 What do we want? We want standalone, complete, previously unpublished stories - no extracts of a WIP or serialized story, photo essay or opinion piece. A solid flash fiction. This will be submitted to technical guidelines to be announced in August. This is when WEP will publish an Anthology Page on the site where you will see various ideas for stories, but none is binding. We stress - this is YOUR story, written YOUR way in your chosen genre.

 We aim to publish a high-quality eBook and print book. If your entry is accepted, you will be asked to perform further self-edits and the editorial team will do any final editing. WEP's raison d'etre is to improve writing, so the writing must be well edited and excellent overall.

 The Anthology is the culmination of the work and collective wisdom of 13 years of enthusiasm for flash fiction. Most of the current team have been with WEP in one role or another for the duration.

 We envisage submissions closing at the end of December ‘23.

 

Please join us for the Challenge in August! 

Chocolat

Your hosts are Sonia with Denise assisting. Both are so excited to host this delicious theme!

If you're excited too, please invite your writer friends to join us! We're not getting enough stories to satisfy our insatiable desire to read! Please help us!

Click on our Challenges 2023 page for ideas. But we stress, write you entry your way! As we said in the June 1 post - 

"None of our prompts require any prior awareness or deep knowledge of anything." But most of us have a deep knowledge of chocolate and the way it adds sweetness to our life.

SHARE THE LOVE IF YOU WISH. IF YOU DON'T DO SOCIAL MEDIA, THAT'S TOTALLY FINE.

We announce our WEP JUNE‘23 #CLOSEENCOUNTERS #winners @DeniseCCovey @yolandarenee @jemifraser @SoniaDogra16 #amwriting #writingcontest #flashfiction #wepwinners  https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2023/07/wep-winners-june-2023-challenge-close.html

#WEPFF JUNE ’23 #CLOSEENCOUNTERS #winners announced @DeniseCCovey @SoniaDogra16 @yolandarenee @jemifraser https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2023/07/wep-winners-june-2023-challenge-close.html #amwriting #flashfiction #wepwinners #writingcontest

Come congratulate our JUNE ’23 #CLOSEENCOUNTERS #winners! #WEPFF Challenge @DeniseCCovey @yolandarenee @SoniaDogra16 @jemifraser #amwriting #flashfiction #wepwinners #writingcontest https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2023/07/wep-winners-june-2023-challenge-close.html

Signing off for now

Nila

for the Team

See you in August!