My wonderful filthy story, "Cochran's Navy Skirt," came up one place short in the 2010 NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge.

The contest started with 30 groups  -- "heats" they called them -- of around 25 authors. We all had two prompts, genre and subject, and two weeks to come up with a 1000-word story. Only the top two authors in each group/heat would move on to the 2nd and final round.

My genre was Comedy and my subject was A Gang. I dug deep and found a very obscure use of "gang" in the old Press Gangs that would force unfortunates into service in the Royal Navy. I also took a risk by making my main character an inordinately well-endowed loser, Cochran, who went by the nickname "Cock."

It was a naughty, fun little comedy.

When the results came in, I was hopeful. We had all waited a good long time, two months, to find out the results of the first round. I went to the site, clicked the link that would show the results in my group/heat and got excited. There was my name among the five featured stories. Seeing that, I was confident i had succeed. I posted on Facebook about my victory. 

A little later, I did the math. Five authors across 30 groups/heats. 150 stories to judge seemed pretty high for a final round. Curious, I returned to the results page that had given me such a boost. I read more closely and discovered that only the two top authors, the ones with the **FINALIST** next to their names actually moved forward.

As much as I appreciate the mention -- being featured IS nice -- by this time it amounted to a disappointing tease. Sad-faced, I reposted my error.

Maybe I shouldn't have gone blue, or at least light blue as the story wasn't overtly nasty. I could second-guess myself over and over, I suppose. But you can't win them all. The positive in this is I now have a funny little story that someone somewhere will buy. I don't feel defeated either. If anything, I feel heartened to try just a little harder next time.