We received over 80 stories for this year's Creative Loafing Fiction Contest, all related directly or peripherally to the contest theme, "Heat." Thank you to all who entered; the judges (University of Tampa's Jeff Parker, CL columnist Catherine Durkin Robinson and myself) had to make some tough choices. Here are our selections for the top ten stories, listed in alphabetical order by title:
"Bag Boy"; "The Curling Iron"; "Death by Bebop"; "The Guns and Queens of Rocky Point"; "Hot Air Cadillac"; "Looking in the Wrong Direction"; "Reap What You Sow, or Sing"; "Teenage Wasteland"; "Twilight and Brimstone"; "Volcano Kicking."
Now it's the readers' turn to weigh in.
This article appears in Dec 22-28, 2011.