Every artist has a beginning. Stephen King once wondered whether his first attempts at writing would ever see print. Orson Scott Card, as a child, no doubt gazed at the stars and thought, "There are worlds within worlds out there. I should write about them." Before his famous grapes ripened through his pen, John Steinbeck might have jotted notes on whatever scraps of paper lay before him, notes that would one day take us east of Eden.
So when does a beginning writer shine? What does it take for the ideas in his head to explode onto the page? When will she realize, "Hey. I can do this?" Well, perhaps it's through seeing their work appear in print or online. So the minds behind Liquid Imagination decided to offer writers new to the world of short fiction a chance to realize that goal.
The rules? Simple. Been writing with the intent to publish for less than a year? Check. Have fewer than 10 publications to your name, and none of those being a professional publication? Check. The theme? An irrational, unexplained phobia, the weirder and more obscure the better. That's it.
So we opened the floodgates with our first Beginner Writers Contest with the promise to publish the first through third place entries, and we proudly present those winners this issue.
Read them, and you may find yourself wondering, as we did, if their fiction is this good now, imagine how impressive they'll be when not considered beginners anymore.