I made it to the third and final round of the 2014 Short Story Challenge. My story, “Blood and Guts,” was second among the top five for the prompts: historical fiction, a farmer, saving a life. The story is based on how my father earned his bronze star in WWII. So, yay, me!

The annual Short Story Challenge started with hundreds of writers from all over the world. Round one winnowed that down to 200; round two leaves forty of us vying for ten prize packages, which include some writing software, a writer’s concierge service (still trying to figure that out), and an e-book publishing package. Oh, and money. The first place winner gets $1,500, second place $500, third place $250, and fourth place $100. Places five through ten get no money but a varying degree of other prizes.

The top five from my group of prompts consists of three women and two men, from Florida, Virginia, Nevada, Great Britain, and Denmark. The only thing I wish we could do is read the top five stories from each group after the announcement of the results. The synopses sound interesting. If you want to see all the results for round two, click here.

Round three is the corker: twenty-four hours to write a 1,500-word story based on a set of prompts I’ll get one minute before midnight on May 2. Doable, unless the prompt isn’t in my wheelhouse. If that’s the case, I may pull my first all-nighter since, well, a long time ago.