The polls for the”Z” Stories are now closed . . . and the Alphabet Challenge has ended. Hard to believe it began last January 22nd . . . 443 days from the start date to the end date. Or 1 year, 2 months, 18 days. Or 14 months, 17 days.

Want more numbers? . . . 10,632 hours, or 637,920 minutes, or 38,275,200 seconds (assuming whole days). Rounding down, it was 63 weeks, which means we averaged a story roughly every 2.5 weeks. I’m talking stories that ran anywhere from 2,000 to as much as 6,000 words (I think one was 8,000 words).

I know, I know . . . you want to know the results of the voting. You can check them HERE<<link, but since few people click on links, here are the results.

Here’s a photo before I continue . . .

It’s Devils Tower treated to Topaz Impression 2.0 and framed using Topaz Studio 1.0. (If you want to see a post about it, click this LINK).

So, what does the result of the voting mean for the writers? Well, outside of a few bragging rights, not much. But, let’s proceed with the reveals, the answer to the “Who wrote which stories?” question.

“Z” Stories writers and scoring:

Zoo<<link: That would be me. I get 3 points for the first-place finish.

The Zen of Whiskers<<link: That would be Gary. He gets 2 points for the second-place finish.

Z-Man<<link: That would be Perry. He gets 1 point for the third-place finish.

With 36 votes cast, I consider this an excellent voting round. It tied with three other rounds for the highest voting rounds. It would have been nice seeing 50 votes, but we’re grateful for what we got, especially given all that’s going on in the world.

Winning the round was a surprise as I thought for sure the other two stories stood a better chance of resonating with readers.

The round didn’t mean much in terms of the overall scoring since Gary was mathematically the winner at the end of the last round; meaning, he could not be caught. 

So, what are the standings? Well, as I said, Gary could not be caught, so he’s still the winner of the challenge.

I plan a post summarizing the whole experience of writing 26 stories in fifteen months.

We were supposed to do it in twelve months, but life threw some delays at us. Still, I think it was a pretty good effort (although some rounds were rushed). And, it was nice to read a fair number of compliments about this last round (compliments about the quality of the stories, and not about this being finally over).

So, here are the final results . . .

I’ll be doing an “awards” post and, as mentioned, a recap of the stories and voting. I’ll try to get the writers to give their thoughts about the whole effort, as well as providing links to all the stories so that they are all available in one place.

A few readers have expressed sadness at the challenge ending and have suggested we keep going. To that end, the writers are discussing potentially doing another challenge, but not one as demanding as this one.

Again, more info forthcoming soon.

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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