#WEP WINNERS : AUGUST 2023 CHALLENGE - CHOCOLAT

 Hi! This is Sonia and Denise for the team, to sum up the August Challenge and to announce the winners!

To begin with, a big thank you to all participants for joining us in August and for blowing us away with their nuanced, intricate, brilliant responses to the prompt. We had some first timers for 2023 and the overall reading experience with the range of genres and plots was certainly gratifying. Why don't you read them for yourself if  you haven't already to check the incredible range of talent pool. 

Here is a round up of all the entries.

1. Denise Covey -  Food is a memory trigger extraordinaire!

2. Nilanjana Bose - Engraved: a double scoop sundae romance story in a story

3. Yolanda Renée- Solace is found in the simplest gesture

4. J Lenni Dorner- Elves trade with chocolate, but that's poison to wolves

5. Sonia Dogra- The Circuit of Life

6. Jamie Dorner- Chocolate and Death: A tragic, controversial, trigger-heavy, realistic fiction.

7. Bernadette Braganza- The Workshop After Christmas : A behind-the-scenes look at Santa's workshop during the year.

8. Olga Godim- How to grow cocoa trees on Mars. 

9. Pat Garcia- After working throughout the night making her sweet round dark chocolat balls, she had wanted to stay home, but Friday afternoon was the usual time she went to Mass.

10. Carole Stolz- The Sinking and the Sweet: To a young woman depressed and without means after a shipwreck, salvation comes from an unexpected encounter.

11. Hilary Melton-Butcher-  Like water, like chocolate... both lifelong intimate companions...

12. Damyanti Biswas- Stay in your lane.

13. Jemi Fraser-  Brownies: Not quite how mom used to make.

14. Ornery Owl- Fudge: Treat the patient, not the chart!

15. Donna- Guarding the chocolate-finding a way from fascism to hope

16. Shilpa Gupte- A Bittersweet Tale of a Chocolate Pastry : The Hunger Games

17. Beth Camp- Memories: One day we'll return to Paris

18. Roland Clarke- Chocolate Pots: The Night Witches taste from the past and discover new delights.

19. Kalpana Misra- Chocolate Queen writes a letter to the Carrot Queen.

20. Silver Tree- Chocolate in Renaissance Times: A world without chocolate would be a sad world indeed; thank God for the adventurous ones who brought chocolate home from distant lands!

SHORTLIST

This month we had an eclectic mix of genres, ranging from poetry to romance, contemporary to nonfiction. The interesting part is that the shortlist isn't really 'short'! It goes on to show that we have a great bunch of writers who make the task pretty tough for the team. 

With six members in the team, it's not easy to reach a consensus. As they say, readers are a subjective lot. All the WEP members have good reasons to support their choices, before a final list is sent to our judge, Nick Wilford.

For the prompt 'Chocolat', here is the not-so-short shortlist (in no particular order)!

Shilpa Gupte 

Hilary-Melton Butcher

Beth Camp

Kalpana Misra

Carole Stolz

Pat Garcia

Jamie Dorner

Damyanti Biswas

BUT...We love our WEP writers and see you all as winners! Sometimes the attention to craft combined with explicit research delights our writer's heart. Thank you for a feast of Chocolat!

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 Christine Rains

LINKS:

Website

Facebook

Twitter - X

Goodreads

AND NOW IT'S TIME TO CONGRATULATE THE WINNERS!

WE HOPE YOU AGREE THE BADGES ARE BEYOND AWESOME!

THANKS, OLGA GODIM!

And, the Oscars go to...

Three winners, three Oscars!

AFTER MUCH DELIBERATION, THE WINNER OF THE JUNE 2023 CHALLENGE 

~CHOCOLAT~

IS

CONGRATULATIONS SHILPA!

Shilpa's short and effective flash, A Bittersweet Tale of a Chocolate Pastry, blew us away!

Nick says, "Succulent and heart-breaking at the same time - showing the societal divides that still exist through a device as simple as a pane of glass."

Shilpa, please post this badge on your blog and link it to your winning entry. Tweet (X) it/Facebook it if you desire to share the love! Use the critique prize from our loyal supporter Christine Rains or pass it on to the next winner if you can't avail yourself of it in the next few months.

~*~

THE RUNNER-UP OF THE JUNE 2023 CHALLENGE 

~CHOCOLAT~

IS

CONGRATULATIONS JAMIE!

Jamie's story Chocolate and Death was achingly beautiful while terrifying.

Nick says, "Hard hitting and hard to read, in a way. But worthwhile for raising such issues that many will be unaware of."

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

~*~

THE ENCOURAGEMENT AWARD FOR THE JUNE 2023 CHALLENGE 

~CHOCOLAT~

GOES TO

CONGRATULATIONS CAROLE!

Carole's flash, The Sinking and the Sweet, brought a smile and a lovely twist to a beautiful tale.

Nick says,  "Tragedy and delight combined - and a testimony to the power of chocolate for sure!"

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

Be in it!

A mock-up temporary cover created on Canva.

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.

GUIDELINES FOR NEW RELEASE POST!!

Hey WEP writer friends! 

If you'd like to promote your latest release, we offer a shout out.

email Denise: den.covey@gmail.com and 

CC Sonia -soniawrites2018@gmail.com 

and read more details on this here

Please join us for the Challenge in October! 

The Phantom of the Opera

Your host is Renee and she is excited to host October! She loves the creepy thrills, but all genres are welcome, not just horrot! 

If you're excited too, please invite your writer friends to join us. We'd like to read more awesome stuff. As they say, the more the merrier!

Click on our Challenges 2023 page for ideas for October. 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 AUGUST‘23 #CHOCOLAT #winners @DeniseCCovey @yolandarenee @jemifraser @SoniaDogra16 #amwriting #writingcontest #flashfiction #wepwinners https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2023/08/wep-winners-august-2023-challenge.html

#WEPFF AUGUST ’23 #CHOCOLAT #winners announced @DeniseCCovey @SoniaDogra16 @yolandarenee @jemifraser #amwriting #flashfiction #wepwinners #writingcontest https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2023/08/wep-winners-august-2023-challenge.html

Come congratulate our AUGUST ’23 #CHOCOLAT #winners! #WEPFF Challenge @DeniseCCovey @yolandarenee @SoniaDogra16 @jemifraser #amwriting #flashfiction #wepwinners #writingcontest https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2023/08/wep-winners-august-2023-challenge.html

Signing off for now

Sonia and Denise

for the team