I’m just thinking that the rest of the SDMB is in such awe of the talent presented here that they are afraid to say anything. 
I will say, Le Ministre, that I rather liked the twist ending on yours. Very O. Henry-ish.
First, I would like to congratulate our thirteen authors. In order, they are -
Spoons
perception
Cuckoorex
DMark
Serenata67
chrisk
elfkin477
Le Ministre de l’au-delà
Hrududu
xenophon41
GIGObuster
Stealth Potato
maserschmidt. Take a well earned bow, everyone.
And a very special congratulations to Spoons, who wrote the outstanding “Homeward By Polaris”, and who is the winner of this month’s “PoeHenryParkerSaki” award. Bravo!
Also, my thanks on behalf of all of our authors to the Mods for their ongoing support, and a special thanks to all of you who have read and voted on the stories. Your input is greatly appreciated.
It’s also not to late to comment on any of the stories that particularly strike you. (I, myself, am tremendously happy that no one has commented on the glaring plot hole in my story.)
I’m hoping to do another of these sometime in October. In the meantime, my best wishes to all of you,
Le Ministre de l’au-delá
First of all, thank you Le Ministre de l’au-delà for once again organizing this! I like the changes you have made (with the spoiler boxes) and the subject words and photo was indeed a challenge. Sorry more people didn’t vote - perhaps you should have signed that deal with the Teabaggers to get more voter turnout.
Otherwise, maybe next time keep the poll open for an extra week?
I also want to congratulate Spoons (great story!).
Granted, now I know how Crystal Bowersox felt, but still - it was fun to be a part of the whole event! Looking forward to the next time.
To all of those who voted for my story - as promised, I will take you all to dinner! You know that really expensive French restaurant that costs $100 per entree?! Well, across the street is Wiener On A Stick - we’ll meet there at 6:00 PM - weenies and fries are on me!
Thanks again Le Ministre! And congrats to Spoons and everyone else - fun stories, with a few tearjerkers thrown in to make my eyes glisten.
Congratulations, Spoons! As said, great story (really liked the exposition of the character names).
And thanks Le Ministre for your willingness to shepherd us through these contests. I urge anyone thinking of participating to take the plunge; it really is fun.
Le Ministre de l’au-delá wondered something, and I sort of do now too: did those of you who read “Osgood’s Machine” catch how I used the word “Cherish” given the actual word doesn’t appear in my story?
The songs on the radio were:
“Cherish” by Madonna
“Anything You Want” by T.I.
I did not spot that. Didn’t stop me from giving you a vote though. 
I completely missed the reference, but once it was explained to me, I thought that was a very interesting way of incorporating the material.
I was also curious if anyone else would notice.
Missed that! I thought you were going for a thematic connection in the story (Frankie’s commitment to his grandfather). Glad you pointed your real usage out. It’s a better correlation to the assigned word than what I was thinking you’d done!
I think I like that sort of Easter Egg usage (unless it were wedged in artlessly, which yours wasn’t). I also enjoy seeing an assigned word illustrated through a plot point or theme, and wouldn’t be upset if the word itself was missing, if the meaning being employed was well drawn.
I wanted to bring up a couple of ideas that xenophon41 mentioned in a PM. Perhaps we’d get more commentary on the actual stories in a separate thread - could it be that the readers are a little hesitant to express themselves directly in front of the writers? Maybe a second thread for discussions might break the ice for them. Your opinions, everyone?
One slight variation I’d like to suggest for next time - I’d like to use the teaser followed by the spoiler box, I quite liked that in terms of appearance and ease of getting around. I thought, though, that the spoiler box should have the continuation of the story after the teaser left off. I was just finding it odd, especially when reading them through one after the other, to have the first 100 words or so repeated. Wait, didn’t I just see that? Thoughts?
My goodness, many thanks!
I’m quite impressed that ‘Homeward by Polaris’ was written so well and so quickly, and I loved the source of both the title and the names - just enough explanation and then leave it.
I hope your copy of ‘The Canadian Writer’s Market’ is kept in a handy place.
Thanks for running this contest, Ministre - some excellent writing on display here. My votes would be no, not to have a second thread for commentary, but yes, to have the spoiler-boxed text pick the rest of the story without repeating the intro which already appeared in the post.
Wow–thanks, everybody; and my thanks go to the voters as well. There were excellent stories in this competition, and I think everybody deserve congratulations. IMHO, to be able to produce what we did in the time allowed, while including given elements that had to be incorporated, demonstrates that we have some terrific writers here.
Le Ministre, as regards your question; yes, maybe a separate thread is needed for commentary. I find myself continuing to think about Xenophon41’s remarks about Stephen King, and how many votes/views that thread had–perhaps it is easy to discuss King and vote for his stories because he isn’t here (at least, not that we know of). But we writers are here, reading and posting in any and all fora daily. Wonder if there’s something to that idea.
I also like the idea of the spoiler box picking up where the first hundred words left off. But either way, I think the spoiler box method works much better than the Gigantic Wall of Text.
Again, thanks folks, and especially to Le Ministre, for running the competition. I’m looking forward to the next one!
Second’d about the spoiler boxes not repeating. I though the new suggestion was how it would be this time, actually.