You ever notice the sheer volume of celebrities with one eye that points slightly outward?

     That was a recent text from my old roommate.

     No, I typed. Show me.

     The examples poured in. Tom Brady. Ed Sheeran. Martha Stewart. And on and on.

Every TV show, he explained, every anchor. They never look straight at the camera, so it doesn’t get picked up. But watch the eyes, and you’ll see it.

     An epidemic I’d never noticed! But what was the cause? Conspiracies were bandied: lizard-men, fallen angels, hybrids, or just an uncanny outbreak of squint-eye? Perhaps something darker was at play – the branding when falling in league with Satan himself, you know, the proverbial talent-for-your-soul trade-off? The one Robert Johnson sang about at the Crossroads. The one Bob Dylan admitted to on that weird 60 Minutes interview.

     This is nothing new, and when you take a look at the world around, what are we supposed to conclude? Call me jaded, but I just don't give the folks at the top the benefit of the doubt anymore. Like, everything is corrupt, and nothing is about merit. Nothing is earned. And the writing world is no different. Hacks, phonies, fakes, and frauds have nested themselves into every nook of influence. Fun fact: this is largely why I founded this magazine, because I grew tired of losers sucking up the spotlight that somebody else deserved.

     And maybe you are too.

     Maybe your talent has gone unseen.

     Maybe your hard work has never paid off.

     Maybe everywhere you submit your beloved stories, they get bumped by some dimwit scribble, so often that you’ve pulled out the last of your hair and have nearly given up.

     If that’s you, welcome to the club.

     If that’s you, we have a remedy.

     It’s the Story Unlikely Annual Short Story Contest. We’ve been running it for years, giving away thousands of dollars, blind judging by people who actually understand what makes a good story, and who are laser-focused on sifting the wheat from the chaff. That’s what we care about. That’s what I care about. And when I hear things from past winners like “Winning this contest literally changed the course of my life,” well, that’s the fuel that keeps me going.

     So here's to our 6th annual contest, and all the writers out there who thought about giving up, who were told they weren't good enough.

     We see you.

     We hear you.

     We feel you.

     And you are not alone.

     

     That's right, our annual short story contest is open for submissions! If a $4,000 prize package and no entry fee isn't enough to get you excited, perhaps a custom story illustration for the top three winners is, or our propensity to pick up and publish finalists (at pro rate, no less!), and include all of them in our annual print anthology, with full color illustrations! So many reasons to submit your story today. Be sure to check out the guidelines HERE.

     And if you're looking for a leg up against the competition, scroll down to this month's Writer's Gym article - a Q&A dedicated entirely to the contest, where you can get the inside scoop, and gain an edge over your competitors!

by Zack Harmes

 

 

The man swam out of the pre-dawn darkness. His face fish-belly white, dirty blonde hair pasted to his forehead by the rain. Meth skinny. Clothes damp. “Yo, bro-ski, you got the time?” he asked, tapping two fingers against his wrist. As if he was late for a meeting, like he hadn’t watched from the alley since the moment I parked my truck outside the bar.

     “Five forty-five,” I said. The sunrise was due any minute, and that was my deadline. I was behind schedule because the hotel I’d just come from ordered more beer kegs than usual. It was Thursday. Keg day.

     Rain meant spring was coming. Patios were opening, and everyone ordered beer on tap. I had seventy-two kegs on the truck, a new record, getting heavier as the days grew warmer.

     “Cool, cool, cool,” he said, and stepped backwards under the awning. The empty, darkened windows of downtown Davenport reflected the copper shine of sodium street lamps. The doors were all locked.

     He tore off a stained hoodie, stripping down to a dirty tee and a pair of black jeans, swinging his arms, swiveling his head constantly up and down the street.

     I rested my arm on the handle of my two-wheeled cart, watching him. I believe in multiple universes and alternate realities.

     In this one, I was about to be robbed.

 

~

 

     Six months before I had crashed and burned. I’d left active service with the Army National Guard, where I had been a recruiter for four years. There was every excuse, but the truth is I was tired in a way that sleep couldn’t fix. I lost sight of the mission. My heart wasn’t in it anymore. My plan B didn’t work out, which left me with plan C. The problem was that there was no plan C.

     So, I applied for a job as a beer man. Class A CDL truck driver. They were willing to train. Twenty-one bucks an hour. That isn’t much anymore, but drivers also got free beer on Fridays. I aced the interview and was waiting for an offer.

     The first of the late fees started rolling in. The disconnection notices weren’t far behind. I was robbing Peter and robbing Paul to keep the lights on. One night, after the kids had gone to bed, my wife asked me, “Are we going to be okay?”

     “We gotta be,” I told her. There were six kids counting on us.        

     I believe in multiple universes and alternate realities. In one of them, I have a rich uncle. It was not this one.

     Life brings us intersections. They are great places to change lanes. I told her I wanted to make an attempt at writing, and writing seriously. Somewhere between Hawaii and Alaska, between Iowa City and the Des Moines Military Entrance Processing Station, the dream was discarded on the side of the road. I had a Word document full of thoughts accumulated over a decade of soldiering. The odds seemed unlikely that I could pull a story out of there, but it was all I had.

     Some spouses laugh when they hear that. Others cry. My wife stayed awake for hours that night, scouring submissions calls.

     I woke up the next morning to a link she texted me. A magazine was running an international writing contest. No entry fee. All genres welcome. Blind judging to ensure it was about the words, not the author. Best of all, the huge cash prize and custom story illustrations for the top three winners. Only one hitch: my story was 6,000 words over the acceptable limit, with a deadline in three days.

     So, I cut.

     I gutted whole scenes. I carved almost every bit of dialogue. I slashed character’s names. The more I trimmed, the stronger the story became. Hours before the deadline, though, two problems remained: I had a beginning I didn’t like, and no ending at all.

     Exhausted, I retreated to the back alley for a cigarette. I searched the gray clouds for words worth remembering, my thoughts turning to the soldiers I had once been counted amongst—all of us in formation, arranged in neat and ordered rows, faceless in the darkness of pre-dawn. Shoulder to shoulder we stood, a machine waiting upon a single command to set loose the anger boiling inside. Together, we told the same story that transcends generations. Alone, those stories warped and twisted and went untold.

     In my alley, searching for the right words, I lit a smoke and examined the pack. All those cigarettes crammed in there, standing at attention, perfectly ordered.

     Just like us.

     Then it hit me.

     The words fell from the sky.

 

~

 

     Writers deal in imagination, even if the odds of success are unlikely. I named my story “Five Miles to Epworth” after a road sign I passed every time I returned from training. I’d never seen a road sign that measured distance that short; I took it as an omen that success can happen if you bet on yourself.

     And in this gamble, there was no time for feedback, and only minutes left before the deadline. The winners wouldn’t be announced until spring, so I made a vow: until then, write as many words as possible. If I won, I would have a body of work to build a new career on. If I lost, I would give it all up.

     With time racing, I gave everything a once-over, and it wasn’t until this last glance that the name of the magazine struck me—Story Unlikely. Not as remarkable or unusual, poignant or pretty, but simply the odds this cosmic gambler was giving himself.

     Unlikely.

     I hit submit.

 

~

 

     I was a steel-toed angel in service to the Patron Saint of Good Times, a genie trapped in a longneck bottle, the prophet of pretty lies and broken hearts, harbinger of fun and friend to all. With the stitched sigil of Budweiser on my chest, I brought the amber word from the King himself. The word was this: “drink.” “And drink some more.”

     All heads swerved upon my arrival. They leapt before me, parting on the sidewalk, flattening themselves against the walls as if I were a doctor racing to save a gasping man. “Clear a path, give him room!” Doors were held open, and heads bowed. The Man was on the clock, with places to be.

     I’ve carried a gun and worn a flag on my shoulder, but I was never treated like a real American Hero until I bore the “crimson crown.” Life is funny like that. It all depends on who you work for.

     My kingdom stretched from BeerTini’s on Rockingham Road to Armored Gardens on the shores of the Mississippi River. Every bar, gas station, bodega, and restaurant stood between me and clocking out. The trucks rolled between midnight and 3 a.m. For those quiet hours, I was lord of the rainswept neon avenues, snaking through alleys and parking the wrong way on one-way streets. The city was my playground. My boss told me traffic laws don’t apply to a Beer Man. “You can do whatever you want, as long as you have the hazards on.”

     This was the Valley of Third Shift, in the notorious West End where people got shot. The houses were old, and every door was locked. The bars opened at six in the morning and served breakfast. It was a place to blunt the sharp edge of a twelve-hour shift at the Purina factory.

     The route was case-heavy but keg-light, meaning on an average day the truck was loaded with over nine hundred cases of bottles and cans, usually about ten kegs. Thursday was the only exception, where I never had less than fifty kegs but only three hundred cases. Most of the kegs went to the Armored Gardens, which never ordered less than thirty half-barrels. Sales equal gallons, and the people of Iowa are drowning in Busch Light. The truck was always considerably lighter afterwards, and the day got easier. I looked forward to Thursdays.

     After delivering to Armored Gardens, I took a smoke break at a hipster bar called The Raccoon Motel. I timed my pace to meet the rising sun by the Rock Island Bridge. I walked around the corner to watch the first rays dapple the roiling Mississippi River, the last shadows of the night melting away in a fury of blazing orange. Rain clouds boiled on the horizon, as if lit from within by a nuclear candle. Like they were made of golden smoke and pinkish cream. If there is a God, I think He paints in watercolor.

     The day stretched before me with infinite possibilities. Anything could happen. Today could be the day I get news that I won the contest, that the window of opportunity had finally cracked open enough for me to squeeze a fingernail underneath. All I needed was one lucky break, one chance to prove I could do it. Today could be the fulfillment of a dream, a lifetime in the making.

     It could also be the day I’m served with wage garnishment papers. The phone rang every hour from creditors who told me how much they were dying to hear the sound of my voice. The messages they left were filled with reassurances that I wasn’t alone and forgotten in the world. One of my co-workers once asked me, “Who inspired you to write?”

     I told him, “Capital One.”

     One day, the book I write will be dedicated to everyone listed on my credit report.

     Fifteen minutes of nicotine and peace. Fifteen minutes where nothing could be taken from me. I looked forward to it every Thursday, and then it was back to work, back to my little kingdom.

     The one that stretched—if you counted the zigs and counted the zags—about five miles.

 

~

 

     In the alley, meth guy circled my truck, glancing down the street for cops. Time to move on; I could return later. I stacked the kegs in their bays and closed the doors, and started to climb into the cab when I remembered that the front door of the bar was unlocked.

     I walked to the doors, put the key in, and snapped the latch. When I turned around, the guy was right there.

     “Isn’t this great?” He opened his arms wide and gestured towards the river two blocks away. “I love this shit, man. Early morning. It’s dark. It’s quiet. Ain’t nobody around.” He said this between gritted teeth, but his eyes weren’t smiling. “Nobody ’cept you and me.”

     It was the way he said it that I’ll never forget. There was a message there. A wise man once told me, “Words mean things.”

     This guy’s words, in the early morning darkness, in the rain that never seemed to end, meant nobody was coming to save me…

About the author:

     Zack Harmes is a father, husband, and then everything else. He’s the previous winner of Story Unlikely’s annual short story contest, and was short-listed for the H.G. Wells award. He has work forthcoming in Footshooter magazine and Weathervein Press’s Burn The Fleet Anthology. Zack can be found on Substack where he posts free short fiction. He was last seen piloting a speeding starship in a running gunfight with the Interstellar Revenue Service, somewhere in the Ford Galaxy.

 

 

 

 

     Sometimes I can tell by the very first sentence if a story is not working. Usually it takes a paragraph or two. Others (and these are the stories that pass to the next round) require more reading. More on process below.

 

     A trained eye can tell the skill of the writer very quickly just by a few paragraphs – sometimes a few sentences, as I just mentioned – and I’ve employed this process quite effectively without letting the gems get sunk by inexperienced first-round readers (which is becoming more and more of a problem nowadays).

     And this is where I’ll say: make sure your opening is as strong as possible. Penning killer openings is the single biggest struggle I see with submissions. Most writers haven’t developed the skills necessary to do it properly, which is why our process is so effective.

     I’ll add this as well: I typically see about 1% of openings as what I’d label “Stellar”. When second-round sorting begins, these 1%’ers go directly to me. IMO, if you write an opening that good, you deserve the editor-in-chief’s attention. Not surprisingly, these stories see a much higher percentage go through to finalist, published finalist, and top three.

     So yeah, openings matter, but only because they’re a quick window into the writer penning them.

 

     1st round is the gleaning of stories that are clearly not “ready to read” material. Most submissions fall into this category.

     2nd round: All stories that made it through the first round get sorted by genre and sent out blind (and remain blind until the end, btw) to our volunteer readers, who then send (typically) the top 10-20% back to me.

     3rd round: I personally read all these stories, place the ones that made Highly Honorable Mention and Semifinalist, and send the finalists back to our readers for the final round of judging.

     4th and final round: Stories get ranked. Ranks get tallied. Stories get placed. Boom goes the dynamite.

 

     In the first round, I’m looking for cues that a writer doesn’t know what they’re doing. These are mostly a lack of mechanical aptitudes, but can also be a lack of understanding of how a story works and how to engage a reader, so I can quickly send it to the reject pile and move on to the next submission.

     When it becomes apparent that a writer knows precisely what they’re doing – I wouldn’t describe it as an ‘ineffable thing’, rather a culmination of competencies – that’s when I get excited, and my hope, as I read on, is that they can properly land the plane.

 

     Anyone can win this contest – history has proven this time and again – but the rates that we’re seeing Paying Members make it further into the rounds (more stats below), and eventually place or get picked up as published finalist, are significantly higher than your typical free subscriber. How much is it the added Membership perks, versus the propensity for writers serious about winning this contest becoming Members? I can’t say. But the numbers are telling us a story: Membership is worth the price of admission.

 

     Subliminally – there just might be! The last week, we are inundated with submissions, especially as we near the final day. Once, we saw 500 submissions on deadline day alone! Since reading is done throughout the submission window, that’s a lot of stories to sift through at the end. It’s quite possible that our editor eyes become weighed down by such volume. Now, I think a stunner of an opening is going to pass on to the next round regardless of when a story is submitted, but on-the-fence story openings might just have a better chance if submitted earlier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Some of these – like total number of submissions – we post in the issue where we announce contest winners (typically in our June issue – Members can go back and read at their leisure). But here’s some stats we haven’t posted:

 

 

 

 

     Members typically make up 10-15% of total submissions

     Members typically make up 25-30% of Highly Honorable Mention through Finalist

     (Most impressively) Members have made up about 45% of the top 3 placing stories

Listen on:

Hello Dan,
 

     I'm a lazy, late-blooming boomer who at 60 gave up a promise-free career to return to college to complete the MFA I'd started 35 years earlier. Subsequently I had a few stories published, some contest success. Then at 67 I published my first novel The Femme Fatale Hypothesis (Regal House Publishing). The experience of publishing that first book put me in an ITOFTS (I’m too old for this shit) mindset.

     Despite not having the energy to pursue publication and promotion, I've continued to write (completed a crime novel and working on #3), dithered ad nauseam about self-publishing/serialization, and have kept one foot in the online community that includes folks like Hope Clarke and her FundsforWriters, where I stumbled upon Story Unlikely and was immediately drawn to your full-throated iconoclasm. How refreshing to discover a story corps that takes the story, but not themselves, so seriously, and understands the literary power the snake has wielded since Genesis 3:1-15 to boot!

 

David R. Roth

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