These two stories were written for a contest promoted by Wil Wheaton (yeah the guy who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek) and John Scalzi (current president of the Science Fiction Writers Association and well respected Sci-fi author).   The Prompt is at http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/05/30/fanfic-contest/.   Perspicacity brought it to my attention and we both entered.   Here they are for your enjoyment.   The prize is double pro rate (10 cents per word) and inclusion into a chapbook with Wheaton, Scalzi, Patrick Rothfuss and several other big names in writing all for a charity book with proceeds going to the Lupus Alliance.   Altogether, there were over 350 entries, so Pers and I aren't fooling ourselves that will win.   Still we wrote some pretty entertaining stories and figured we'd share them.

This was written for the OftenInspired.com Christmas contest.   It lost to an interesting story about Santa as a package of bacon, but I'm still pretty pleased with the result.  

This is an original piece that was written for Apex Digest's Election Horror contest.   Since it didn't win and it sort of loses it's timeliness, I figured that I would go ahead and release it here for your amusement.

Enjoy.