D’Ancey LaGuarde Literary Tribute Competition: Winners and Runners Up.

Hallo all!

It’s done! It’s complete! The inaugural D’Ancey LaGuarde Literary Tribute Competition is complete and this year’s winners have been selected!

This was a rough judging process. I had failed to factor in a few things, and weirdly this time, none of the things I’d failed to consider were the normal things I fail to consider - how much longer everything takes me now, my sleep deprived brain etc.

In fact, the things I hadn’t considered would make this difficult that turned out to make the judging difficult were as follows.

1) I was so thrilled with literally every single one of the entries, because it’s astonishing and delightful that anyone decided to jump aboard my little joke, let alone with such enthusiasm and then also (!) skill !!! My chuffed-ness interfered with my critical faculties.

2) I asked a few published and famous professional writer friends to help me split the (very long) short list, and the problem there was that they didn’t know the source material, so weren’t sure which funny concepts were to be attributed to the Original D’Ancey Synopsis, and which were the product of YOUR minds, and which were pitch perfect executions of the D’Ancey vibe and which were original and delightful takes.

3) I eventually got it down to about eight finalists and then to four unsplittable winners. In the end, I’ve decided NOT to give a £200 cash prize, but to instead give a £200 cash prize and three £50 cash prizes.

4) All shortlisted entrants get the £1000 in imaginary cryptocurrency, of course. And entry into my Non-Distributed-Ledger, a photograph of which I will take and send to you if I remember.

So! Enough Faffery.

The Winner is:

Pips Pollard, with their magnificent chapter 14 of Dark Bridges of The Heart, headed, “Sexy Cage Of Destiny’s Desires”. Linked here. The cover art contribution of their wife Max Smith was much appreciated, but specifically not counted or considered in the final score.

The three runners up who will be winning £50 (in non-alphabetical order) are:

• ‘Nora Van Chocstracof’, via the dedicated amanuensis Aaron Goodisman, with a tantalisingly delicious “Chapter 7” of Down for the Count. Linked Here.
• Andrew Bates submitting Chapter 68 from A Hill to Call My Own, entitled, ‘In which our heroine bares her heart, soul and creamy breasts, and melts a heart of iron with steamy passion’. Linked here.
• Sarah Marcotte with chapter one (and a title page) of The Crystal Throne Linked Here

Stay tuned for more honourable mentions, extracts and readings on The Gargle Podcast.

I love you all. I laughed so much reading these. My goodness what a fucking delight.

Xx

Alice