I'm going to keep this short and sweet and to the point. Over the course of the month of August, the number of stories submitted to the Hint Fiction Anthology came to 2,463. With the 207 stories from the initial contest, it's safe to say that over 2,500 stories were submitted to the anthology.
The number of stories added to the "maybe" pile came to 276. I could probably have gone through those stories right away and cut it down in half, but I'm going to take a week or two off, come back to that pile with some fresh eyes. (And before anyone asks, out of the "maybe" pile I hope to select about 100 stories.)
I guess it's because this whole thing started off as a contest, but I've seen it around the Internet (not to mention I heard from the person stripping off the author info and forwarding me the stories) that many writers thought this was a contest too. I guess in many respects, just about anything is a contest, but this was simply an open reading period. A certain numbers of stories will be selected for inclusion; a large number will be rejected. There will be no definite winner -- no first or second or third place -- but I guess with competition so fierce, just the fact that if your story gets picked makes you a winner.
But I don't want to go that far, because in my book, you're all winners.
Now come on, people, say it with me:
