Entries are closed for SS4 of 2016

All Entries are in for SS4 of 2016!  Reviews coming this New Years!

RULES
All entries have to follow these rules:
1) No fewer than 1,000 word count | No more than 10,000 word count, based on the image of the quarter (writers choice of two pre-made covers each quarter).
2) The title of the cover you select needs to appear somewhere in the body of the text for your entry to count toward the contest.
3) Must mention contest its being submitted for in the deviation description.
4) All entries must be submitted to the SS Comp Entries album in the group gallery.
You choose one of the two covers and write a short story around it that meets the 4 rules (the 4th rule tells you where to submit it).  If you win, you are awarded the prizes listed for your placement (1st, 2nd, or 3rd).  No covers are awarded. We award short story reviews, DA points, and free publicity via journal announcements about your work.

2016 SS4 - Schedule of Events:  

Submission Starting Date: Oct 18, 2016. Submission Deadline: Dec 18, 2016
Review and Award Reveal Date: Winners will be announced by Dec 30th, and we will begin the 1st quarterly challenge of 2017!!!

The prizes for the 4th quarter are as follows:
FIRST PLACE:
1) 60 DA Points
2) Featured in the Writers-Guild-DA journals
3) Featured on Perry-Pictures's Personal winners hall of fame journal

SECOND PLACE:
1) 30 DA Points
2) Featured in the Writers-Guild-DA journals
3) Featured on Perry-Pictures's Personal winners hall of fame journal

THIRD PLACE
1) 10 DA Points
2) Featured in the Writers-Guild-DA journals
3) Featured on Perry-Pictures's Personal winners hall of fame journal

A big round of applause to our writers from the last quarter brodskales, Ancusmitis, Lugal, KKH514, WindMeister8, clara-01, ratscout and SouthernWriter2! Their stories are located> writers-guild-da.deviantart.co…
Beneath the reviews are the book trailers from 2015, and the announcement for the 4th quarter of 2016~


“The Tale of Ragman: As told by Rag Queen” by brodskales at fav.me/daiwy9c
Aleš merges two different environments; the jungle and the streets.  The Tale of Ragman makes a curious parallel between tribalism and gang warfare.  In his interpretation, I see the main character (the Rag queen) embodying an unfortunate sense of monkey see- monkey do lemming mannerisms and perhaps that is the image he wants us to take away from his story.  Aleš comments often in his writing on the theme of blind obedience and many of his stories revolve around a rebel without a cause, but this one I feel has something that the others did not - and that is a plot! (WOOO! You did it!)  Rag Queen is on a mission, to resurrect one of the fallen in her gang. They have a shaman, a botanists, and she's spinning her wheels trying to figure out how to use those to her advantage so she can bring Ragbags back from the dead.  I only wish that we reached a resolution in the end since there was a really good set up there, but the story veers off on a tangent when their leader vanishes suddenly and she takes up a new mission to find him and that story arc is also unresolved.  

“Ianus/Bifrons" by Ancusmitis at fav.me/daiku2q
Ancus Mītis's submission is based on the "I AM" cover.  The parallel universes with the bizarre differences kept me interested all the way to the end.  I can see how this relates to the cover art, and I like the interpretation.  I imagine this would make a really amazing film, and I think it is part of a longer story (the comments section hints at a precursor but the link didn't lead me to it).  Ancus has a talent for imagery, and I enjoyed how he reinvented things we understand and made them confusing, curious and new.  I did get lost somewhere in the second half, I liked the modification to who 'evolved' in the alternate reality, but I didn't understand the final line of dialogue or why Maggie decided to say that to Becky. It was kind of ambiguous which is cool in a climatic moment, but I think when we deliver an ambiguous message at the climax, the story needs to follow-through with an "aha" moment at the resolution.  Or maybe it did, and I didn't pick up on it.  If you got it, and want to explain it to me, please do~ I'd be happy to read more about it in the comments.

“Industrial Magic” by Lugal at fav.me/dai8bws
Andrew wrote a fantasy about what happened to magical creatures during the Industrial Age and it is full of rich details. The rules of his story universe felt solid and the creatures transitions/situations in the industrial era seemed sensible to me.  I really felt for Lyn, poor girl, and I liked the subtle things like the racial slur "gremlin's" for Fae by the humans that would prefer to demean them.  The story flowed well, and there was a distinct beginning, middle, and end.  When Inspiration strikes, Andrew delivers.  The Dragonherders language added more depth and helped to distinguish them.  The variety was great without wearing the story thin by trying to fit too many types of creatures in.  The happenstance made sense, Twyla wasn't just running into creatures for the sake of it, everyone had a reason for existing where they did.  And lastly, I would like to comment on Andrew's penchant for fantasy names.  Its a hard balance to reach in fantasy between interesting, and positively impossible to pronounce (even in our heads) which can lead to making the characters hard to identify.  Andrew has mastered that balance.

“I Am..” by WindMeister8 at fav.me/dags8kt
Windy (Wendy?) throws us right into the double life of an actress/arms dealer.  Its first person POV and I believed in the present tense until I got right to the end, and discovered it wasn't. (Dont worry, I wont spoil the ending for you).  There is a definite element of sci-fi involved, which caused a dozen eager questions about the 'boy' to pop into my head all at once.  I liked Sarah's character, she was painted very clearly in the text but I would love to know more about the boy who we learned much less about.  The mystery around him was eerie (in a good way) and the way Sarah just couldn't conjoin the deep male voice with the male child was fabulous.  We've all, I think, hit that brick wall before where we just can't fuse certain elements together and it leaves us with that stutter stepping feeling. She did an excellent job pinning that emotion down.  

“The Dancing Night by Dorian Stone” by KKH514 at fav.me/dafq6wv
Kendra wrote a charming short that I think could work for either cover: I Am -or- Industrial Magic, given the context of the story.  Unfortunately since the title of one of the books was not included in the text (rule #2) so I can not consider it for a prize, but I will still submit my review.  Kendra's tagline "discover something wonderful in the midst of hard change" is very apt. We're given just enough context to understand that the story setting is as new to the characters as it is to the readers.  There is some apprehension and some resistance to the unknown, which I thought came across as very natural in the writing.  The description of the neighbor with her hand on the window glass spooked me and made me nervous for Charla's encounter with the fantasy elements outside, but the story has a warm-and-fuzzy ending that alleviated that tension and made even the neighbor seem approachable.

“The Arkesyyan Chronicles - Industrial Magic" by clara-01 at fav.me/dadolw7
Clara continues her Arkesyyan Chronicles with a look into the Reptillian Rebellion Fraction of Arktouros' military.  Grab your coffee/tea/etc. and strap in because a "light read" Clara's universe is not.  She opens up with a quick glossary, so even if you haven't read the other chapters you can still tackle this one solo.  She delivers a clever merger between the opposing forces of technology and magic.  “The Arkesyyan Chronicles - Industrial Magic"  is a "What if" proposition for the potential application of magic as a science that pushes the classic alchemy theory a step further. Clara explores the parallels between elementals on the atomic level and compares chemical compound structures with computer coding and programming.  It is a fascinating theory that not only strengthens her universe, but also sparks new creative ideas.

“I Am” by ratscout at fav.me/dacz7j9
Natasha's story seems so down to Earth and casual until you realize not everything is what it seems.  This is a story about reincarnation, in a version of our reality that hatches a reincarnated hero every 200 years on the mountain to fight the demons in a ritual when the veil between plains is at its thinnest.  The protagonist has it particularly hard, when he's expected to live up to the glory and renown of Serah, his former incarnation.  Aside from the whole "hatched" thing, the rest resembles real-life quite a bit. There's a lot of dark and stormy emotions played out in the protagonist day-to-day life. Feelings of weakness, helplessness, fears of inadequacy, emotional and relationship complications. It is composed of a lot of grey area smudged together in a way that felt very realistic to me. This story has a lot of texture.  There is a foreboding in it the closer he gets to the ritual, and at one point in the story we're told there are only 4 months left. That is about the time Serah's projection in his mind (think FightClub) increased the ways she tormented him.  I had a sneaking suspicion that perhaps really this was the demons pushing their boundaries from behind the veil and trying to tear him down before he could meet them on the fated day.  Unfortunately, the story concludes without reaching that day.  The resolution he finds for himself and his own peace of mind is nice, and I was relieved for him, but some part of me does wish we got to know the outcome of his big moment.

“I Am” by SouthernWriter2 at fav.me/dab09lz
Sean has sent us into the apocalypse this time.  Zombies. Everywhere.  "Call them whatever you want. Zombies, biters, walkers, ghouls, infected; it doesn’t matter. The point is they had crotch-punted the world and brought the United States to its knees. The deadliest pandemic in human history."  The grenade launcher/drone radio tactic was pure brilliance.  Cliffs choice of song was a complete win, I felt energized just thinking about it!  If I'm ever in an organized enough end-of-the-world zombie slaying team, I'll have to remember that and use it.  The story was short and sweet, concise but still full of well informed details.  He took his time with the weapons, the appropriate distances, and paying homage to the different senses (sight, smell, touch) in the writing to make it more colorful for the readers.  

I am a few days behind delivering these to you but I hope it was worth the wait!  The submissions as always were wonderful to read and I hope this community of writers continues to write and read each others work!  Congratulations to the winners and thank you all for participating!

The SS3 of 2016 contest winners!

- 1st place: with fav.me/dai8bws
- 2nd place: with fav.me/dacz7j9
- 3rd place: with fav.me/dadolw7

Check out the complete winners hall of fame at fav.me/daayjn3

"Only A Whisper"

 I am thrilled to share Lugal's book trailer youtu.be/cA0DrthUn9I A medium-range future cyberpunk/biopunk story for winning first place in the Deviant Art Writers Guild 2nd quarter short story contest 2015. *book trailers are not being offered until we catch up on the final 2015 winners trailer: "The Associate" (in production now, screenshots below).  


If you would like to see more, check out the first trailer we completed for this competition at youtu.be/aSjeCkfIbNg

You can find IICOINS online hwww.facebook.com/TwoCoinsProdu… and like us on Facebook to stay up to date on our current projects and progress~