The Summer 2023 Nanofiction Writing Battle concluded this weekend.

Like all Writing Battles, I had a lot of fun!

Writers have 48 hours to prepare a 250-word story based on randomly generated prompts.

This time, my prompts came up golden, although I had to flip the genre once and like the character twice to get the combination I wanted.

My story, His Visceral Conviction, did well and scored 9/10 points through five peer-judged rounds. The peer results were released Sept. 4, 2023.

So, it’s off to the final judging round and, hopefully, victory!

The Failed Experiment genre describes fiction around scientific or technological experiments that have gone wrong or their unintended consequences. These stories may explore the themes of hubris, the limits of human knowledge, and the potential dangers of tampering with nature or playing with forces beyond our control.

My story is a Victorian-era Steampunk tale. The aged Sir Bartholomew Habsburg created a clockwork time machine, and his protégé, Octavius Glass, is tired of waiting for the old man to crank it up.

Habsburg, a reluctant inventor, struggles with the repercussions. Octavius, the young, arrogant, and short-sighted resilient survivor, murders Habsburg in the dead of night before stealing away to Habsburg’s secret workshop to activate the device and make history.

After the final scoring, I’ll share and link the story from my website.

On Sunday, Sept. 10, the story was accepted into the Elite Eight.

Personally, I’m nervous about SymbioShift - that’s an excellent story. More results coming in. Looks like I made it into the Ferocious Four.

I was shocked at losing SymbioShift in the race. I’m now more concerned about Fool’s Gold. And okay, looks like I made it as a finalist.

But it looks like Project Sibyl won …

Very, very close, one vote. Argh. Oh well, on to the next project!