Pleased to announce that “Kuriko,” probably my most favourite story of all I’ve written, placed second in the recent “Monsters and Marvels” contest for Spark: A Creative Anthology. I’m not 100% clear whether the win includes publication, but will follow up on that when I am.
The story—essentially a “historical science fantasy” of sorts—tells the tale of a sentient mechanical doll in late 1800s Japan. There’s intrigue, danger, samurai and daimyo, and any number of other exciting and interesting things.
I wrote this one way way back in late 2009 as a contest entry on Scribophile, a social community for authors I used to be fairly active in (where it didn’t come close to placing because it didn’t really fit the theme), then polished it up quite a deal for Writers of the Future back in mid-2011 (where it got a semi-finalist—still my highest score there), before sending it around to ALL THE PLACES, finally doing a bit more revision earlier this year that involved significant trimming (to the tune of 2900 words chopped out), and submitted it to the Spark contest a month or so ago.
Hurrah!