Bohemia Village Voice

At last, those of you who entered our ultra-short story competition first announced on 18th November 2006 (issue 42) can be put of your misery. In the end we received 23 stories from 9 different writers. The longest was 266 words (yes, slightly over our word limit, but not enough, in our judgement, to breach the spirit of the competition, if not the rules); the shortest was a mere 24 words.
MERITS
We gave our judges a long period in which to assess the merits of each story, though as far as we are aware there was no conferring. The result was a great variety of marking ranges: the meanest judge gave all but one story no more than 5 out of 10, while the winner got a perfect 10; the most generous judge gave no story less than 6 and none more than 9. Our thanks go to all eight of them for the seriousness with which they approached the task. We sincerely hope they enjoyed themselves. As a reminder, our panel consisted of Allena Tyrell, Bill Third, Clive Linklater, Shelagh Davey, Vivienne Bond, Pauline Kentli, Peter Holland and Peter Winder.
FAITHFUL
And the story they thought best of all was Faithful by Doug Harcourt of De Cham Road. Hotel Paradiso by Julian Graff of Aldborough Road was a close second, while Terra Firma by Efrim Niccals of Bohemia Road was third. We also invited our judges to offer brief comments on the various stories. Vivienne Bond wrote of Faithful that she ‘enjoyed this story’, adding that it was ‘well written’, while Pauline Kentli found it ‘gripping’. Peter Winder also gave it a high mark, regarding it as a ‘good story’, and that he found it ‘similar to many others’. Shelagh Davey also gave the eventual winner a high mark. Allena Tyrell marked Hotel Paradiso highly, describing it as ‘well told, very real’ though lacking in ‘site-specific descriptions’, while Bill Third thought it ‘good’ and gave it a very high mark indeed. Clive Linklater wrote of Terra Firma, simply, ‘loved it!’
CHEQUE
A cheque for £25 for Mr Harcourt and a £10 cheque for Mr Graff have been sent. A £5 token  to spend in Bookman’s Halt has gone to Mr Niccals. The Voice intends to publish most of the stories submitted to it in forthcoming issues of the magazine. Having stirred the pool of local literary talent, it seems only natural to give Bohemia’s writers a wider readership. The first story to be published is, Faithful by Doug Harcourt (below). For those interested in the full results table of judges’ marks see page 11, opposite.