Anne Graham - Adjudicator.

Anne Graham is the winner of last year’s Tinsel Tales flash fiction competition. Writing as Anne Stenhouse, she is a performed playwright and author of published short fiction and humorous articles.

She has acted as reader or judge for many national short story competitions and as a distance creative writing tutor. Her award winning play, Love To Death, is available from New Theatre Publications.

Theatre Broad of Stirling ran two productions of Anne’s work this year in The Byre Theatre, St Andrews and in The Albert Halls, Stirling for the Off-the Page Book Festival.

Christmas Chillers Results

1^st  Stolen Child
by Steven Wade

2^nd The Distant Snow Covered Trees
by Mike Owen 

3^rd  Heaven Sent
by Toni Mannelli

Highly Commended:
Beware: Never Forget Your Fairy
by Angela Cornwell

Scarred For Life
by Helen Lowry

OTHER SHORT LISTED ENTRIES
The blank canvas
by Felicity Cousins
The Prick of Conscience
by Liz Richards
A Taste of Magic
by Jay Smedley 
Mother of the Cabinet
by Milethia Thomas
The Christmas Present
by Marie Therese Walsh
Silent Night
by John Allen
Christmas Tree Fairy
by Darren Paterson
Eternal Sin
by Christine Nedahl
Fairy Tale Dread
by Steven Arkell
Christmas Fairy Cake
by Helen Duke
Fear-y Story
by Joanne Trapp 
The Three Wishes
by Janet Stock
The Sixth Day of Christmas
by Neil Gillespie
The Marionette
by Anne-Marie Nardini
The good, the bad and the simply nasty
by Wallace G Park 
Christmas Wood
by Diane Carsey
The Good Fairy and Christmas Eve
by Rod Ideker

CHRISTMAS CHILLERS 2009 - RESULTS
Adjudicator’s Report by Ann Graham

The opening line was, “The good fairy stared through the sifting curtain of snow and wondered...” and of all the stories that complied, writers then made free with style, plot and technique.

The winning story, The Stolen Child, was told from a fairy’s viewpoint drawing the reader immediately into a fairy world, but many writers chose to move into other viewpoints and other worlds. There were stories about politics and parallel universes. There were stories that challenged our cultural myths by asking, for example, is Santa not in fact Satan? There was one powerful story about the descent into madness, Fairy Tale Dread.

After the use of the opening to set the scene, how did the writer chill? Many of the stories were about the death, loss or theft of a child. It’s not readily clear why this should be but perhaps the juxtaposition of Christmas and Fairies brings children to mind. Some stories had a building sense of dread and some, like the Highly Commended Never Forget Your Fairy, achieved horror by the actions of the characters. There was humour, in a story called The Good, The Bad, and The Simply Nasty an incompetent fairy gets her comeuppance but the story didn’t meet the challenge of also being chilling. Several writers found their chill in inevitability. The horror being recounted would go on year on year as in the other Highly Commended, Scarred For Life.

While the standard was high, there are one or two general points I think might be helpful. In a short story, it’s a good idea to stick to one viewpoint. There are ways, such as dialogue and internal observations of the viewpoint character, to show the reader what other characters are thinking. Some of the stories were under edited. Before you submit to a competition or an editor, check your language. Leave the work aside for a few days and go back to it as a reader. At that time you will see the places where you have repeated a word rather than found a different one and spot simple spelling mistakes. One of the stories referred to the fairy’s ‘raven trusses’. I feel sure the writer meant ‘tresses’.

Winner: THE STOLEN CHILD
This story rose to the top of the pile because it gets right into the mind and actions of the fairy of the opening. It is the fairy’s story and, although she is a good fairy, she has done a great wrong by leaving a changeling with innocent people in exchange for their beautiful baby. Her efforts to right that wrong are enormous but inevitably doomed because she does not give up the stolen baby. On the surface level, the story is about magic and its atmosphere is enhanced by the use of little phrases like ‘mo chuisle’, explained as ‘my pulse’. The rural setting with its farmhouse, goats and weasels is very apposite for a work about fairies.

Second: THE DISTANT SNOW COVERED TREES
The second story is also about loss of a child. In The Distant Snow Covered Trees, a mother is reading to her daughter on Christmas Eve but finishes abruptly in case the child suffers nightmares. Alas, the mother dreams her daughter’s fate and wakens to find her gone. We see the child’s pink dressing gown around a snowman on the lawn and know she has been lured by ghost children to the frozen pond where she has drowned. The chill is in the frighteningly familiar and simple actions of children that lead to catastrophe.

Third: HEAVEN SENT
In Heaven Sent, the good fairy is a child in fancy dress who becomes the catalyst for the action. Our hero, Alex, is knowingly visiting a church that has no yew tree to protect it from evil when he is drawn into the life and death battle between the abducted child’s Guardian Angel and the Devil. Although the story would benefit from some simplification, it is an amazing leap of the imagination.

Anne Graham, December 2009

DIDN’T MAKE THE SHORT LIST? HERE’S A FEW COMMENTS THAT MIGHT HELP ...

I’ve lost track of how many years the Chillers has been running. As always, we had some very imaginative entries, but similarly, we have the usual crop of submissions that shot themselves in the foot by not observing some simple rules of good writing practice.

If you didn’t make the short list it was probably due to one of the following reasons.