TALYN ARC Contest — Second Round

By Holly Lisle

I’ve chosen and posted all the first-round finalists.

That was hard. What comes next is even harder.

I have to narrow these wonderful entries down to two winners, because I only have two ARCs left. At this point, I’m wishing I had more. I hadn’t expected the quality of the responses I got — and this is from ALL participants, not just the ones who made the first round.

Here is how I’ll be judging and winnowing the finalists. I haven’t decided on how I’ll weight each criteria yet, but I’ll be looking at all of these things:

  • How well it addresses the theme.
  • Quality of writing — not just grammar and spelling, but also coherence and flow.
  • How well it creates its intended emotional response.
  • Number of entries the author submitted.
  • Popular vote weight (I’m putting together a poll. You only get one vote, so make sure you’ve read all the finalists before you use it. The popular vote tally will give a fraction of a point per vote received. I’ll make the points valuable enough to act as a tie-breaker, but not valuable enough to create the winner. And if you have a horse in this race, of course you can vote for your own entry. Vote quickly, though. When I’ve figured out all the other parameters for each entry, I’ll close the poll and take my tally. (And I won’t be voting in the poll, of course.)

Here, in one list for your reading and voting convenience, are all the entries, listed alpha by title:

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