On Monday morning the 15th of February, the day after Valentines Day, I received an email from Queensland Writers Centre notifying me that I had won the GenreCon Short Story Competition.
Its a good thing no-one was home at the time, because I was screaming.
This competition took over QWC’s regular Right Left Write flash fiction competition for the month of January, and we were challenged to write a genre fiction story up to 1,000 words.
This is the first time I have entered this competition, and there was only one prize on offer. Not only did I win on my first try, but I won the only prize to be won! I’ll be honest, I’m pretty proud of myself right now!
The competition’s theme was ‘Tarot’ and initially I was quite stumped as to what to write about. Although I use tarot and oracle cards personally, they’re not something I would usually write about in my stories. Then I remembered a conversation I’d recently had with my best friend Meg, and before too long, the ideas started flowing in. I had words spilling out onto the page which became my entry, a crime fiction short story titled Ten of Swords. A dark and disturbing piece, naturally coming from me!
I can never thank my writing community enough for their support in my writing journey, especially my dear friend, writing companion and fellow author Christine Betts for encouraging me to enter the competition, and for reading and providing valuable feedback for my story as I developed Ten of Swords.
Although validation shouldn’t be important gosh darn it feels good to get it! That the hours and days spent scribbling and tapping away, driving ourselves crazy rereading and revising, actually make a difference sometimes. It tells us we’re on the right track and our crazy ideas actually resonate with someone else.
I’m looking forward to attending GenreCon and developing my genre craft even further! If you haven’t got your tickets yet, I highly encourage you to do so! You’ve still got time before the weekend!
You can read my winning short story, Ten of Swords here: 
https://bit.ly/3rPHheJ
Kate Kelsen 
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