Well, the voting's over, and my story "Alex Trebek Never Eats Fried Chicken" has narrowly won the 2008 Million Writers Award.  Once again, I'd like to thank Steven McDermott for publishing the story in Storyglossia, Therese Rudzis for nominating it, and of course everyone who voted for it.  Thank you!

The other finalists are all great stories, and I can't suggest enough that you go and read them.  I'm not going to pretend that I'm not happy I won or that I'm against receiving cash prizes, but the biggest reward has been the amount of people that read the story over the last month and let me know what they thought about it.  Hopefully the other finalists had a similar experience.  I know there was some controversy when the Notable Stories came out this year, and certainly not everything went according to plan, but I really do think that the original goal of the Million Writers Award--to bring a group of stories to a broader readership--is working, and for doing that for me I'm thankful to StorySouth and Jason Sanford.

I'm off to Chicago in the morning for an anniversary weekend (and music festival) with my wife Jessica (four years!).  See you all when I get back!