And so it has come to pass that the voting for Round 7 of this great challenge has come to a close. All that’s left is to report on the results of the voting that took place over the past two weeks.

Some Venician masks, anyone?

20 votes were cast since voting started, which is less than usual. I believe that might be a function of me not doing as many reminders, which also meant the Twins sent out fewer reminders.

The voting was pretty tight (Gary and Perry tied for most of the two weeks) until the very end when Perry pulled a slight lead.

Someone running late and still wanting to express their appreciation for their favorite story can do so HERE, and, while any additional votes will not count, they will be registered for posterity. For them who still haven’t read the stories, here are the links and a teaser description:

E. J. D’Alise submission<<link
Nick must solve the case of the disappearance and possible kidnapping of both his partner, Dana, and the daughter of Anubis (yes, the Egyptian god). Along the way, he joins up with Chip, the wolf, and a Griffin named DuskHunter. Note: this story is set in the world set up in the story Permeabilty Police (LINK).

Perry Broxson submission<<link
Maynard Ballcock wanted only to create the perfect bourbon. History and happenstance, however, had other plans. Plans that included the making of an American president, and perhaps the unmaking.

R. G. Broxson submission<<link
There’s a new phrase in the Meriam Webster’s Dictionary this year. It’s Side Hustle. We used to call them side jobs. In my story, the not-so-Holy Ghost gets a bit bored with his day job and decides to venture out into the world to spice things up. He gets more than he bargained for as we get a new look at the Old Time Religion.

As a reminder, each writer wrote a story drawing on whatever inspiration they got from the title “Side Jobs”.

The voting closed today at Noon. Here are the results.

Congratulations to Perry for the win and Gary for the silver.

My votes total shrank to a pitiful 2, but given that I didn’t publish mine until three days ago, well . . . it’s still sad, mostly because it’s about the same votes I normally get, showing that as far as my stories are concerned, the length of time during which voting is open doesn’t matter much (maybe 1 vote, but that’s more dependent on the quality of the story, I’d wager).

What about another mask?

A Round 8 title has been chosen (by Gary), and the stories for that title — Dear John — are tentatively set to publish . . . well, I don’t know when since I’ve not touched base with Gary and Perry, but let’s shoot for next weekend. I’ll actually try to get mine done before then, despite doing some painting around the house.

For this post, I used photos of Venitian Masks I’d photographed and ran them through Topaz Studio 2.

Some turned out quite nicely . . .

The masks look interesting in person, even without the treatments I’ve digitally added to these photos.

You can click on the images to get a larger version open in a new tab or window, and anyone wishing to see the full-size versions can visit the SmugMug Gallery of all the Reminder Photos and look at the photos for this round. But meanwhile, here are two more.

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

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