Understanding Your Options for the Upcoming Dragon Awards
By Tamara Wilhite
By Tamara Wilhite and Declan Finn
What Are the Dragon Awards?
The Dragon Awards are a set of literary awards voted on by fandom. They’re presented at Dragon Con, a convention typically held in Atlanta, Georgia over Labor Day weekend. The Dragon Awards were first awarded in 2016. It has become one of the largest multi-media and pop culture conventions in the United States.
The Caliber of Her Father’s Regard
Runner Up in the Spring contest: Fantastic Fathers & Magical Mothers
By Ken Lizzi
The components of the 9-millimeter automatic lay scattered across her workbench like a three-dimensional schematic. “Keep track of your parts,” her father had told her and that advice, at least, had made sense. The pistol was stock, a low-end brand, and sporting no modifications beyond aftermarket grips and iridescent dots on front and rear sights. No surprise the cheapskate owner required the services of a gunsmith now, she figured. A higher end manufacturer would have employed a better grade of steel for the frame rails, and a gunsmith assembling a custom build would have swapped out the rails and channeled longer tracks into the slide.
Frankenstein, Politician
Grand Prize Winner of the Spring Writing Contest: Fantastic Fathers & Magical Mothers
By David Walls-Kaufman
“Divide the realm! Let Oligarchs own the cesspool Cities! Common and Partisan shall take the rest. Let each govern as they see fit and prove to the other who governs best. Let Partisan crash the tax and sweep away the regulations.” Of course, Oligarchs would hear none of this. Well did they know the discouragement tyranny brings. When rulers are the winners at every turn. Could Oligarchs leave two gardens growing side by side for comparison? No, they must bite out both eyeballs to stop from being seen!
Frankenstein declared for martial law across the Realm. He launched his campaign with the brilliant speech on “The Cancer against Freedom”, given before the army in the Valley of Kings. He warned against disloyalty of not only the bureaucracy, but also some generals for fear the intellectuality of the Oligarchs had beguiled them. “Soft men bring hard times; hard men bring soft times,” Frankenstein quoted.
The Winners of the Spring Writing Contest: Fantastic Fathers & Magical Mothers
By David M. Swindle
Click here to read about our Summer Sci Fi contest. And click here to read about our upcoming Fall and Winter contests so you can get a head start. And the winner is…
Enter Our Spring Writing Contest: Fantastic Fathers & Magical Mothers
Two Week Extended Deadline: June 6
By David M. Swindle
Premise: Write a short story or the first chapter of a novel in the fantasy genre (any of its sub-genres), featuring themes involving fathers, mothers, or parenting. 8,000 words maximum. Extended deadline: June 6. Date of publishing: June 14-20 (Father’s Day)
New Fiction: Ishka’s Garden
An Honorable Mention from The Heroes Half of The Contest
By Bokerah Brumley
Beneath the alabaster arches over my narrow windows, something flutters against my curtains, interrupting my reading. I squint toward the sound as I rub my earpoints. They’re sore from concentration. I’ve spent my half-day studying the techniques recorded in the leather-bound journal of a master arborist.
A tree in my garden needs pruning before the Moontide festival. The tree that I’ve come to think of as Seesha’s Tree. My little friend will be so pleased with her new home. Fesh designed it well and picked the perfect branch. The two of them favor my Mergone and not many Fae can say a pair of the winged creatures live nearby.
New Fiction: Ringside at the Circus of the Fallen
An Honorable Mention from The Heroes Half of The Contest
By Roy Griffis
Robert was waiting at Zinnia Hotel, well up in the rather barren hills north of Burbank, that evening in early spring 1937. He was to meet a friend at the Grill, the hotel’s bar and curving dining room, when a foursome had arrived to take a booth. The two men and two women –– a somewhat Rubeneseque matron and a wide-eyed olive-skinned young girl who could scarcely have been sixteen, both of them overdressed for the room –– slid into the bench seats, the women on the inside while the men bookended them on either side. They seemed an odd group for this nightclub.
New Fiction: What Hath God Wrought?
The Runner-Up of The Villains Half of The Contest
By Roy Abrams
“Gentlemen, please, if I might have your attention. Is everyone present? There ought to be ample room for all of your colleagues, if you could please muster here, in the main hall. Yes, if would organize yourselves into serried ranks, the spacing will be more efficient, as when a grocer packs oranges. This is the first principle of an army, even an army of dedicated newspapermen and radio journalists such as yourselves. Please refrain from jockeying for a better position. The acoustics of the room have been designed so that I shall be perfectly audible to all of you from this dais. Indeed, Ignacy Paderewski entertained us here at the Tesla factory once, and from the back of the room, you could discern the faintest pianissimo. The mazurkas danced through the air and the polonaises crashed like thunder. Evanescent strains of beauty illuminated the room like tendrils of energy from one of my oscillators. It was a memorable evening that transported all of us, for a brief few hours, to an idealized world, almost as though it had been synthesized in a laboratory.”
New Fiction: The Bigfoot
The Runner-Up of The Heroes Half of The Contest
By Robert Arrington
The Bigfoot would be an unlikely hero. He didn’t know that, but then he didn’t know what a hero is. For that matter, he didn’t know that he was a Bigfoot, or that the Cherokee who once lived in these same mountains called him and his kind Tsul ‘Kalu.
He thought of himself and his family, and the other Bigfoot families in the most remote reaches of the Blue Ridge and the Smokies as the People, although he didn’t really have that word, or any words. A paleontologist would have called him a Panthropus robustus, but he didn’t know that either.
The Heroes Vs Villains Writing Contest’s Final Fight
Cast your votes!
By David M. Swindle
Announcing the winners, runners up, and honorable mentions from last year’s contest.
