August 2012 Flash Fiction Voting Thread

**norm** · August 26th, 2012, 07:35 AM

Alright, so here are this month's entries. You each get ONE vote, and one vote only.

Enemy of the Triumvirate

Grinders

Last of the Tooth Fairies

Discovering Death

Starting The End

My Soul To Keep

To vote, make a post here in this thread stating which story you voted for. Comments and critique are encouraged as well, tell us what you liked or didn't like about each story.

Voting will end at midnight on Friday, August 31st. I will then tally up the votes and declare this month's winner.

**tmso** · August 26th, 2012, 04:07 PM

Man, only one vote?

Okay, I left individual comments in the threads, so I hope that counts for comments and critiques. Here's what I liked about each:

Enemy of the Triumvirate - an atheist martyr! Excellent!

Grinders - the story's sensuality

Last of the Tooth Fairies - great story premise: something is eating the tooth fairies!

Discovering Death - loved the idea of his soul holding onto the vengeance throughout the next life. This can be one of those great epic flash stories that easily leads the mind to on an never ending story.

Starting The End - great world building, and sci-fi notions of just what life is

My Soul To Keep - another great world builder, and I really like the Mr. Winters. In both this flash and your last one. Doesn't work too well as a flash, but still good reads.

Vote goes to...

Grinders.

Thanks for the reads.

**Tristis** · August 26th, 2012, 07:26 PM

I may or may not have internet access over the next 7 days, so I'm voting now.

My Soul to Keep gets my vote.

Thanks everybody. I was well entertained reading-wise.

**Slynt** · August 27th, 2012, 02:23 AM

Thanks to everybody for giving of their selves with interesting, and this time very different, stories. For me, the best story is either "My Soul to Keep" for its prose and concept, or "Starting the End" for its setting and mysterious conclusion.
Since Wulfen already has a vote and I think these two stories are equally entertaining (however in very different ways), I'll give my vote to Tristis and his "Starting the End".

**SuperFede** · August 27th, 2012, 10:29 AM

It feels strange this month. Usually i get a favourite one and just know it.

This time I don't have one. All good stories but i find it hard to find any one that stands over the others.

However i must vote for only one, and it is "Last of the Tooth Fairies"

As for the comments i left them on the individual threads, i owe one i think, to be posted soon.

SF!

**Slynt** · August 29th, 2012, 01:34 AM

It's terribly quiet around here these days.

**Wulfen** · August 29th, 2012, 08:35 AM

It definitely is quiet. I'm not sure if I've seen it this quiet since I've been here.

BTW, my vote goes to Starting the End, by Tristis. I really liked Enemy of the Triumvirate, too.

**aiasminor** · August 29th, 2012, 10:09 AM

There were several good stories this time around though not as many as usual.

SuperFede I like the story but I wish you would have did more editing.

Starting the End was also a good story though, like SuperFede, I had to read the story a second time. Only after I read all the comments on the thread did I understand the story. Not that the meaning was hidden or anything like that. It just didn’t stick out to me the first go around. I would have voted for your story except that one reason.

My vote goes to Last of the Tooth Fairies. I liked the idea. I thought about it for a while after I read the story and considered what it could have been. Though I wish we could have gotten into the story sooner and condensed the beginning so we could see what was killing the tooth fairies or spent more time considering the implications. But that could just mean that it was a good story that left me wanting more.

**Noumenon** · August 29th, 2012, 11:00 AM

I would like to vote for Grinders. Of all the stories I think it is the tightest, the most satisfying both in terms of style and in achieving a coherent flash-level narative.

Two stories came close for me by ticking one or the other of these boxes. I thought Starting The End did a good job of expressing the protagonist's murderous urge and I admired the ambitious scale of the ramifications, but on a prose level it demanded some deciphering; I suspect that ambition was complicated by the limitations of the word count. It seems well worthy of a rewrite, either to make better use of a thousand words or to go the other way and expand a bit beyond flash.

By contrast, My Soul To Keep has a solid style but in my opinion falls down as a self-contained narrative. It is a sound piece of writing, but to me it isn't flash fiction so much as a chapter. It may be a chapter of something good but, standing alone as it does, it feels like a transition between two more significant things. Grinders is a transition story as well, but while it tantalisingly hints at the protagonist's life before and after I didn't need them explored for the text itself to work.

**norm** · September 1st, 2012, 02:57 PM

So here are the results, by my count:

Grinders - 2 votes

Last of the Tooth Fairies - 2 votes

Starting The End - 2 votes

My Soul to Keep - 1 vote

Enemy of the Triumvirate - 0 votes

Discovering Death - 0 votes

Which leaves us with a three way tie. So I'm going to leave the voting open for another 24 hours. You each get one vote. Vote for any one of these three finalists:

Grinders

Last of the Tooth Fairies

Starting The End

**Noumenon** · September 1st, 2012, 04:08 PM

Not sure if I follow, but if I do, I reiterate my vote for Grinders.

**norm** · September 1st, 2012, 05:01 PM

Originally Posted by Noumenon

Not sure if I follow, but if I do, I reiterate my vote for Grinders.

As a tiebreaker I narrowed the voting down to the three entries tied with the most votes. Of those three, vote for just one. Tomorrow, the story with the most votes will be the winner. Your vote currently puts Grinders in the lead.